Declining affections toward God

“Now you may say you have declined, and have much revolted, and so have continued even many years, consider whether you may be not mistaken. Every abatement in affection is not a declining in grace. Possibly we may not grieve for sin afterward so much as at our first conversion, yet we may hate it more. At first you may pray more against it, yet afterward watch more against it. We never see the face of sin so ugly, as in the glass of God’s free love, and do you not see the free love of God more? Possibly your affections might have been higher at the first, but is not conviction more clear and full? As affections dry up, so we grow more settled in our judgment; and if your judgment be more settled, you have not declined, though your affections be somewhat abated.”