Book III

Though faith be a difficult work, yet we ought to use our endea vours to believe. What those endeavours are. Cautions about using them. . . . 520

BOOK IV.

Though faith be a difficult work above our power, yet God com mands us to use our utmost endeavours to believe. The reasons why God commands us so to do, and how the infinite power of God in working faith, and our own endeavours, are very well consistent together. Discouragements removed, which may arise either from our own unability to believe, or from the sense of our great sinfulness, or from the thoughts of an absolute decree of election, resolving to save only some particular persons. Directions to guide us in our endeavours to believe. . . . 546

A PKEFACE TO EHE HEADER*

As in this fourth volume of the author s works, which by the generous encouragement of some few worthy gentlemen, who in a noble zeal to promote the doctrines of the gospel, engaged to take off the whole impres sion, there are great and important truths discoursed with the same life and spirit which shined in the former, so I doubt not but it will find the same grateful acceptance. After the discourse of the person and mediation of our blessed Lord Jesus, which you had in the third volume, it naturally follows in order to have the knowledge of the genuine nature of that faith which looks to the Mediator, and comes to him from an interest in his person, sacrifice, blood, and righteousness. You have first the infinite mercies of God s nature displayed as far as man s thoughts and words can reach them, proposed as the great object which a believer regards, as the spring of all those acts of grace exerted in saving a sinner, and in which he trusts and hopes. You have then the promises, which are nothing but the mercies of the divine nature, and his gracious purposes proclaimed to, us, and so are absolute as they themselves are, proposed as another object which the soul considers in believing. You have then Jesus Christ set forth as the great object of faith in his person God-man ; and it is indeed a sufficient argument to prove his divinity, that we are commanded to believe on him ; nor could we have a certain and undoubted faith in him if he were not God : for what assured confidence and hope could we have in a creature, whose goodness, wisdom, and power, in the highest ex cellence of them, are imperfect and defective ? The author therefore insists on it, that the true believer who heartily comes to Christ for life and salva tion, regards him as the Son of God, and looks to and considers the spiritual excellencies of his person. He is the object of faith, too, in respect of what he hath done and suffered for our salvation, and of what he at present doth.

He is the object of faith proposed to us in his death, resurrection, and in tercession : and therefore I once had thoughts to have drawn into this dis course of the object and acts of faith, as into their proper place, those * As the greater portion of this preface relates to the treatise contained in this volume, it is inserted here. ED.

X PREFACE TO THE READER. treatises of the triumph of faith in Christ s death, resurrection, and inter cession, which were many years ago printed in quarto by my dear father himself. But when I considered that that excellent book is in so many hands, and perhaps the most of them who will have this volume have that already, I apprehended it would look like a wrong, and an imposing upon them, to reprint it again, to make them pay for what they had already. Therefore the reader is to take notice, that the latter end of the title of the second book in this first part of the object of faith, directs him to those discourses of the triumph of faith which are in the quarto volume.

The second part of this treatise is concerning the acts of faith, in which that chapter about joy in the Holy Ghost was his Concio ad Clerum, which the author made when he commenced Bachelor of Divinity in Cambridge, but finding in his papers that he designed it to be a part of this discourse, and not finding that he had done it into English himself, I translated it, that it might be suitable to the other parts, though my English doth not reach the eloquence of his Latin.

The third part treats of the properties of faith, and in it you have dis couragements removed, and the Arminian objections answered. They reproach us, that by depriving men unregenerate of power to believe, and by ascribing the work of faith entirely to grace, we make men s endeavours to believe impossible., and all their attempts of this nature frivolous and vain. The author, with great strength of thought and clearness of expres sion, baffles these unreasonable cavils, and shews how the prevailing and always victorious grace of God and our endeavours may very well be con sistent together.

In the discourse of the order and government of the churches of Christ,* though the author hath drawn down those forms which have been erected by men, and fashioned to suit with the political regiment of kingdoms, and hath in the room of it asserted that order which is of Christ s own institu tion, which, though it doth not dazzle and take men s vain minds with any appearance of greatness and state, yet sufficiently recommends itself by its own plain native beauty. Though it is not pompous, yet it is handsome ; though it is not framed according to the admired rules of human policy, yet it is orderly, and so perfectly suited by the wisdom of the Great King of saints to the cases, circumstances, and necessities of them his subjects in all ages, so fitted to prevent corruption both of doctrine and manners, to promote holiness, and to attain all the ends of religion, that as there never hath been any need, so there never will be, to add anything to his orders.

It is this institution of Christ which the author asserts, but maintains it with that candour as well as strength of mind, that they who differ from him in judgment cannot be angry. Here is no pride nor arrogance, which is insufferable in any man, much more in a minister of the gospel. Here are no reproaches, no base and sly insinuations, no invidious reflections with which controversies are usually managed ; but here are sober thoughts, * To be given in a subsequent volume of this series. ED.

PREFACE TO THE READER. XI

calm reasonings, and the truth shewing itself in such a mild and lovely aspect as may create inclinations to it in the souls of all persons whom passion or interest hath not too much prejudiced.

Thus I have endeavoured to set before thee at one view the general design of this book ; and that thou mayest see that thou hast all the MSS. which I promised printed in it, I have annexed a catalogue* of them, direct ing in what part of the book thou mayest find any of them.

I am,

Thy hearty servant,

In our Lord Jesus,

THO. GOODWIN.

This catalogue it has not been thought necessary to insert. ED.