John Flavel - Keeping the heart during doubts

Do you apprehend a decline of your affections from God and from spiritual subjects? This may be your case, and yet there may be hope. But possibly you are mistaken with regard to this.

O! saith the upright soul, if ever I had been planted a right seed, I should have been as a green olive-tree in the house of my God; but my branches wither: therefore my root is naught. But stay,

May you not be mistaken about the decay of grace, and fading of your affections? What if they are not so quick and ravishing as at first, may not that be recompensed in the spirituality and solidity of them now? I pray God your love may abound more and more in all judgment: Phil. 1:9. It may be more solid, though not so ferverous; or do you not mistake, by looking forward to what you would be, rather than backward to what once you were? It is a good note of Ames, that we discern the growth of grace, as the growth of plants, which we perceive rather Grevisse quam crescere, to have grown, than to grow. 

But grant it be so indeed as you affirm, must it needs follow, that the root of the matter is not in you? David's last ways are distinguished from his first, 2 Chr. 17:3. and yet both first and last a holy man. The Church of Ephesus is charged by Christ for leaving her first love, and yet a golden candlestick, many precious saints in that church, Rev. 2:2-4.

- John Flavel (A Saint Indeed/Keeping the Heart, Part 3)