Chapter IV
That all the powers of a man s will cannot enable him to believe. That faith therefore is an effect of the infinite power of God alone.
I now come to demonstrate that the power and faculty of will in a man doth not help him to believe, but is against faith.
1. Take the will of a man in his natural condition, let that will remain but still natural, and let it be excited and stirred up never so much by light, or by conscience, or anyhow otherwise, yet till that almighty power comes that puts a new life into it, there is both first an inability in it to help a man in believing; yea, there are principles in it that are all contrary unto faith and to believing. First, to make it out to you that a man s will
CHAP. IV.] OF JUSTIFYING FAITH. 503
is thus disenabled to believe, yea, that nothing is more unable than the will
is to give up the whole man unto free grace and to God s own way of sal
vation by Jesus Christ. Consider how this truth is sadly confirmed to us
by manifold experiences, and by the Scripture also.
If we come to many men that are upon their death-beds, or in distress,
and under the fears of hell and of the wrath of God, having their con
sciences enlightened, and God having struck sparks of hell-fire into them,
which have taken hold of all the gunpowder there, we _shall
find that the
will in such distress, when it comes to the point of believing, sinks into a
discouragement under thoughts of an impossibility. For ask them then if
they will be saved ? Yea, they would give ten thousand worlds to be
saved. Will you but then throw yourselves upon Jesus Christ and upon
free grace, and let your hearts be quieted in so doing ? for to have the will
brought to a quietness, this is the proper effect of faith there, to have this
storm allayed, and the winds still, by rolling a man s self, and committing
this little cock-boat to those waves of free grace to save him ; it comes to
this point, you shall find that the will sticks at nothing more, and these
poor souls will then tell you that of all things else they cannot do it, and
they will profess they cannot, and you shall see they cannot do it. Now,
if there were any ability in the will of a man to close with the Lord Jesus
Christ entirely and wholly, certainly a man would then do it, whenas he
himself professeth he desires salvation more than millions ^of worlds. I
remember in the story of Spira, who yet I believe was a believer and is in
heaven, that he being left to the nakedness of his own spirit, and divested
of the Holy Ghost to strengthen his heart in believing, to join with his
will for so the Holy Ghost doth when a man is enabled to believe and to
rest himself quietly upon God when all objections were answered, and all
the promises of the gospel laid before him, as they were abundantly by
many that came to him, and that pitied him with the greatest tenderness
that can be, he still complained of this, I have a wound in my will, and I
cannot do it, I cannot believe ; as once one said, being exhorted to lay hold
upon Jesus Christ, Bid me, saith he, pointing up to heaven, lay hold upon
yonder star ! Besides the manifold experience that we have of the truth of this point,
I shall give you a scripture or two for it. In John i. 13 the evangelist,
speaking, at the latter end of the 12th verse, of them that believe, he adds,
verse 13, which were born not of blood for say not you have Abraham
to your father nor of the will of the flesh. Take the natural will that
every man hath, and it will not help him to believe. No ; he that believeth
truly he is born of God; so saith the text in 1 John v. 1. He that
believeth on the Son of God (as verse 10 hath it, for you must take both
together), and doth do this truly, he is born of God ; and his being born
of God, so as to believe, is not of the will of the flesh. Compare these two
places together, and they clear this point fully. And in this Eph. n. what
is the eminent thing that the apostle in the series of his discourse doth
hold forth as the reason why faith is not of a man s self? He had said
afore, verse 1 and verse 4, that we were dead in sins and trespasses ;
and that faith is a new life, ver. 5. And where lies the death most ?
Truly you will find in verse 3 that it is in the will : fulfilling, saith he,
the wills of the flesh; so it is in the original. As the chief subject of
death is the heart, so the chief subject of this spiritual death is the will of
a man. And (saith be) know this, that you being dead in sins and tres
passes, and dead in your wills especially, ye are saved by grace through
faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. It is the will, i. e.,
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< with the heart a man believeth to salvation, Rom. x. 10. To embrace mercy and grace offered according to the word, to close with it upon God s own terms, to bring the will off to this, this is a great point indeed ; for he must be born of God that believes truly, because it is not through the will of the flesh, for that is a dead will, utterly unable to believe. And because I have fallen upon that place in Rom. x., give me leave to speak a little out of it. The apostle there doth shew you (that you may see what a hard thing it is for the soul to believe thus) what plunges the hearts of men are put to when they are emptied of themselves and of their own righteousness. He had shewn in the former part of that chapter, and in the latter end of the 9th chapter, that it was the great error and fault of the Jews that they sought righteousness as it were by the works of the law, as I said even now. Now whenas a Jew, in whose case the apostle puts it, for he had discoursed of the Jews all along, should come to be convinced that he could have no righteousness by doing, see but what plunges that man s heart will be put to : The righteousness which is of faith, saith he, ver. 6, speaks on this wise : Say not in thine heart, Who shall ascend into heaven ? (that is. to bring Christ down from above) ; or, Who shall descend into the deep ?
the heart especially, that is the seat of faith ;
(that is, to bring up Christ again from the dead). Here you see the law of faith, when it comes to direct a man, doth begin to empty out of him abundance of sayings that the heart is apt to run into. Say not in thy heart, saith he ; the Holy Ghost goes to the bottom of the heart, and fetcheth up those despairing thoughts that arise out of the fainting, and succumbency, and despondency of the will ; and he pitcheth upon those sayings that the heart in that case is apt to form up against itself when a man is emptied of his own righteousness.
I will open this place of the apostle a little, Say not in thine heart, &c. The heart, when once it hath lost a bottom in itself, and is cast off from that legal way, is apt amongst other things to run into all sort of thoughts of impossibilities of ever attaining unto life. He expresseth the case as in the instance of a Jew living under the old law, that had heard in the abstract that there should be a Messiah, and that God must be satisfied by that Messiah. Now how would that Jew reason with himself in this case ? He would say, Who shall climb up into heaven, to bring down a Messiah from thence ? for he that must be my Messiah, and must save me, must come down from thence. Quis, quis, saith he, Who, who can go up to heaven and climb up thither ? No man hath a ladder to do this ; and though the angels go thither, can all the angels in heaven per suade the Messiah to come down from heaven and die for me, and do thus and thus for me, that I may be saved ? He speaks, I say, in the case of a Jew that is put off from the law, and lies under terrors of conscience, and hath heard of a Messiah, and that God for his part is willing to save men if the Messiah will do thus and thus. Such sayings as these, and such thoughts of impossibilities, will rise up in the man s heart ; Who shall ascend into heaven to bring Christ down from above ? or when he is brought down from heaven here upon earth in the nature of a man, who shall persuade him to undergo the wrath of God for my sins, and to satisfy for them, or they must never be satisfied for ? or if he be willing to do it, who shall support him in undergoing this ? Or who shall go down into the deep, into the abyss, to bring up this Christ again from the dead ? for he must rise again, or else he can never satisfy for ray sins, and so I shall never be saved. Oh who can do all this ? A Jew now would have all these thoughts, and have tired himself in these impossibilities concerning his
CHAP. IV. J OF JUSTIFYING FAITH. 505
salvation, if once he see he cannot have it by the law, which hitherto he
hath gone by. And these words which the apostle here useth, he quoteth out of Deut. xxx. 11. Now you must know this, that though Moses had
most of all preached the law, and given it at mount Sinai, and had hid the
gospel under the types and shadows of legal ceremonies ; yet now when he was to die, he doth, through the Holy Ghost coming upon him, preach the
gospel and deliver the covenant thereof clearly and plainly to the Jews ;
for you may read in Deut. xxix 1, that he calls it the words of the cove
nant which the Lord commanded Moses to make with the children of Israel
in the land of Moab, beside the covenant which he made with them in
Horeb. It is another covenant ; and therefore the apostle pertinently
quotes the words of this last great sermon of Moses, to distinguish the
covenant of works and the covenant of grace. Now then he propounds
this covenant unto them ; and when the soul comes to enter into that cove
nant, being left naked by the law, Moses sheweth the averseness that is in
the heart thereunto, and how apt the spirits of men are to turn aside into
all sort of thoughts of impossibilities in the way of that covenant. When
the law was given in Horeb, Exod. xix. 8, when that other covenant was
given, oh then they were very forward, as if they would have undertaken to
have fulfilled the whole law : All that the Lord hath spoken, say they,
that will we do. But when Moses comes to preach this other covenant,
besides that which he had taught them before, he knew well enough, as the
llth verse of that Deut. xxx. hath it, that they would say in their hearts,
4 Oh this is hid from us. But this commandment, saith he,
* which I command thee this day, it is not hidden from thee, neither is it far off : it
is not in heaven, that thou shouldst say, Who shall go up for us to heaven, and bring it unto us, that we may hear it and do it ? (you may see that
they made a greater difficulty of this covenant, than they did of fulfilling the law delivered in Horeb) ; neither is it beyond the sea, that thou shouldst
say, Who shall go over the sea for us, and bring it unto us, that we may hear it and do it ? They were apt to say that this covenant was hidden
from them ; and the word there used for hidden is used by Moses also for
what is too hard, for what is impossible, as in Gen. xviii. 11, the angel tells
Sarah, when the promise was made of Isaac, Is any thing too hard for the Lord ? Now if you look into Luke i. 37, you shall find, that unto Mary
the mother of our Lord Christ, that unto her, being in the same unbelief
in some degree of it, the angel useth the same expression, only changeth the word too hard into impossible :
* Is any thing impossible for the Lord ?
That which is here hidden, is all one with hard, and that is all one with
impossible. So that this is his meaning, when he saith, Say not this com mandment is hidden from thee ; that is, Say not that it is impossible for
thee to attain it. And, by the way, let me give you this note upon those two places last
quoted. Isaac, you know, was the type of Christ, eminently made so in Rom. iv., and also in Heb. xi. Now it is observable that the angel used
the same word to Sarah the mother of Isaac, when his birth was promised, that the angel useth to Mary, whenas the incarnation of Christ, typified out
by Isaac, was promised also. Now the instances which Moses gives of
climbing up to heaven, and going over the sea, were to the Jews the lan
guage of impossibilities. They were ready to say, You may as well bid me
go climb up to heaven ; and where shall we have ladders to do that ? You
may as well bid us go over the world, and fathom the great gulf, the great
sea, and fetch things from far, which in those days, because they wanted
the loadstone, and therefore could not launch out into the vast ocean, but
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were fain to creep along by the coasts, was thought a thing impossible ; you may as well bid us do these things as bid us believe in this word, and join with this covenant you now give us. This their hearts were apt to say. Now the apostle, alluding to this place, and giving the interpretation of it, speaks in the language of a Jew that is to believe on Christ as to come, and as coming to die for him ; which Jew, when he shall hear that he is a sinner, and that the law cannot help him, nor all his sacrifices and oblations, but that there must be a mediator that must satisfy God for his sins, and this mediator must come from heaven to do it, and he must go to hell too, and be fetched up again from thence, will presently say within himself, Who shall go up to heaven to persuade the Messiah to come down and die for me ? Alas, it is impossible I should be saved if this be the way of salva tion. And when the Messiah is here, and is to undergo the wrath of God, and to die upon the cross, who shall support him ? This the soul of a. Jew would be apt to speak, as sinking under the desperate impossibilities of this way of salvation. Now these impossibilities which the heart of a Jew would
forge, and did forge unto themselves, the same under the gospel do the
spirits of men, if the Holy Ghost leaves them but a little unto themselves. Though they hear what God hath done, that he hath gone and sent Jesus Christ from heaven for them, and hath fetched him again from the deep (for what Moses calleth the sea, the gulf, that the apostle interprets hell, at least by way of allusion), and that God requires nothing in the world of them but to believe this ; so saith ver. 9 of Rom. x., If thou shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. Yet notwithstanding, though a Christian knows all this, and though the
gospel and the way of believing is most clearly and nakedly preached, the
soul, when it forecasteth with itself all his own sinfulness, and unworthiness, and discouragements, will sink under the same thoughts of the impossibility of his salvation that the Jew had : he will still be saying, Who shall climb up to heaven, to bring Christ down to this heart of mine ? or where shall I have a ladder to reach up to close with Jesus Christ ? or if I be sinking down to hell, who can go and get Christ to put forth his arm to pull me out again ? This, I say, is the manner of the spirits of men, even under the gospel. The scope of the apostle there, is to hold forth two contradic
tions, namely, that of all things else, it is the most easy to believe, and that of all things else, it is the most impossible ; so taking in all that the sinful heart of man is apt to say of itself. It is easy, a man will say, for
it is no more but this : there is Christ, and there is the word, God hath done all for you ; he hath sent Christ down from heaven to die for you, and all is ready, and God requires nothing of you, when the news is brought to your hearts, but closing with it. So that take the act in itself, and it is the easiest thing in the world that God requires, the smallest matter that could be required of the sons of men. But yet, when a man is divested of his own righteousness, he will have thoughts of a thousand impossibilities, as this despairing Jew had, and he will still have such sayings in his heart, Who shall bring this Christ down hither ? and who shall move this Christ to pull me up from the deep when I am sinking thither ? Is it possible that God should ever do thus for me ? Is there any hope that he should regard my soul so from everlasting, as to persuade his Son to come and die for me that am thus and thus a sinner ? Is it possible that ever salva tion and I should meet ? That though God hath sent Christ down from heaven, and he is come up again from the deep, is it likely that Christ should do this for me ? I may as well think to climb up to heaven, and take hold of Christ there, and go down into the deep, and come up with Christ there
CHAP. IV.] OF JUSTIFYING .FAITH. 507
in my heart, as to believe this. The heart, I say, is apt to fall into these
thoughts of impossibilities.
I have been the longer upon this, because it gives light to that scrip
ture, which is exceeding difficult to understand. I know there is another
meaning of the words, namely, that when the soul is emptied of itself, and
hears that there is a Christ, it thinks to get him by endeavours. What
though I have nothing in myself, yet I hope to climb up to heaven, &c.
But the text clearly holds forth likewise, these despairing sinful thoughts which the soul is apt to have when it comes to believe ; therefore what
saith the apostle in the following verses of that chapter ? Though God re
quires no more of men but that" they believe that God hath raised Christ
from the dead, and that all these impossibilities which the Jew might
plead are taken away, and that God looks for nothing more than that the
heart and the word meet, yet how doth the apostle complain, that although
they have heard, yet who hath believed our report? verse 16. For a man so to believe it as to give up his soul unto it, who hath done it ? Few
do it ; so that, though Jesus Christ be thus nakedly and plainly taught, and men need not frame the Jew s impossibilities of moving Christ to come down from heaven and die, and of supporting him under his Father s
wrath, and bringing him up again from the grave, yet to persuade them to
rest quietly in this Christ, and to have their hearts and wills quiet in so
doing, how hard a business is it ? When the soul is humbled for sin, and
stripped of itself, it is the greatest impossibility, as to his own power, to
believe ; Who hath believed our report ? and why ? Because the arm of
the Lord is not revealed. It must be the arm of the Lord, an almighty
power, that must do it.
I shall end this thing only with giving you the reason of it, why it is
thus hard, and why the heart fancies all these impossibilities in faith, that
though God hath done so much, yet to believe that Gocl should have done
this so for me as that I may come and rest upon it, and to have my heart
quieted in so doing, is of all things in the world the hardest and the most
impossible.
This is a rule which I believe will be found true, that look what power God puts forth in doing anything, the same power is required to draw the
heart in to believe that God is able, or that God hath done that thing ; I mean to believe the thing in earnest, so as to venture all my soul for ever
upon it. This is partly the scope of that place in Eph. i. 18, 19, where
the apostle saith, that the same power that went to raise up Christ from
the dead, goes to the working of faith in them that believe. The Jew now in his despair (because Christ was not as yet come) must needs con
clude that it must be an almighty power and engagement that must draw
Christ from heaven, and support him under the wrath of God, and bring him from hell to be a Saviour unto him. But now, after all this is done,
there must yet go as great a -power to cause a man to believe that Christ
hath done all this for him, as there did to make Christ do this. The
place is express in that Eph. i. 19, where the apostle plainly saith that
the same greatness of power which wrought in Christ when he was raised
from the dead, works in those that believe, in causing the soul to rest
quietly upon this Christ for justification and salvation. So that, although God now requires nothing of us under the gospel but to believe the thing
is done (in the manner I have spoken), yet there must be as much power
go to work that faith in the soul, as to bring Christ from heaven, and to
raise him up again, which was the thing the Jew in his despairings stuck
at. This is a great truth (and I shall give you a further ground for it),
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that it is all one for God to do a thing, and to make a man believe it, and that the same power is required to the one as much as the other. In Mark ix. 22, 23, the father of the possessed child comes to our Lqrd and
Saviour Jesus Christ ; and what saith the poor man in the doubtings of his
spirit, and misgivings of his heart ? Lord, saith he, if thou canst do
anything, have compassion on us and help us. There he questions Christ and his power. What answer doth Christ give him again, who had more reason to question him than he had to question Christ ? Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth. Here Christ and the man do, as it were, stand looking one at another; If thou canst help me, saith the man, If thou canst believe, saith Christ,
all things are possible. I observe this from it, that Jesus Christ makes it the greatest matter to believe ; when the poor man asked him if he could do that which required an omnipotent power, saith he, Canst thou believe ? And he gives the reason of the hardness of it, because he that believes
aright, that man s faith doth invest itself, as it were, and doth join issue with the omnipotent power of God ; and he that believeth the one, viz., that an infinite power that can do thus and thus, his faith is stretched to a kind of infiniteness ; therefore saith Christ in the next words, all things are possible unto him that believeth. Now, for a man when he is con vinced of his sinfulness, to believe that God is able to pardon him, or to believe anything else in the matter of salvation, there must be as great a power come from God to make a man do this in earnest, to work this in a man s heart that this is possible to be done, as there is power in God to do it ; God can as easily do it as he can do the thing itself, and he can as
easily do the thing itself, as make the man believe it. As there is a hand of
omnipotency stretched out to do things of omnipotency , so there must be an eye created by the omnipotent power of God to elevate the soul of a man to see
it, and the will quietly to rest upon it, and to leave all else, and to betake
itself to this power of God, to this will of God, this grace of God, and mercy of God. I say, comparing these two places together, Christ speaks as if the working of a man to believe were a matter of as great power as to do the thing. So far as anything is impossible to any one s thoughts, so far it is incredible ; so far as it is possible, so far it is credible ; and
therefore, if a man believes that this thing is possible to be done which
requires an infinite power to do it, he must believe in that infinite power, and it must be infinite power that must stretch the soul to believe this, and to rest quietly in it. Therefore to draw the heart to believe is all one as to bring the Messiah down from heaven, and up from the grave again, though the thing itself, on our parts, seem a poor matter to it ; yet take the act itself, the same power goes to the one as to the other, and the heart of a man under the gospel will be as apt to object impossibilities, and doth object, as the Jew himself did before the Messiah came.