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.