A treatise of faith divided into two parts. The first showing the nature, the…A treatise of faith diuided into two parts. The first shewing the nature, the…

§. 3. Faith kindly planted must be regarded seriously and carefully confirmed.¹ For Satan useth all means to weaken faith, yea, quite to subvert and overthrow it. If an house begin to shrink or reel of one side, will we not put under some shore to prop it up? Or if any man question the Title of Land we have purchased, will we not search Records, and use means to strengthen it? The malice of Satan in seeking by all means to batter down our faith, is sufficient to show the excellency thereof, and to awaken us to a continual careful regard to preserve and increase it. In this life we are subject to many trials that require strength of faith to undergo them.² The world, by reason of our continual employment in it, is apt to creep into the heart, and insensibly to steal the affections from the eager pursuit of heavenly things, which calleth upon us for more then ordinary care to increase ⟨p. 165⟩our desires of grace, and moderate them in transitory things. He who will have a plant to thrive in a ground dry, barren, and unkindly for it, must strive much, because his soil will not do further, then it is forced: so he that will make fire burn in green moist wood, must follow it with blowing: thus to get faith to thrive in our natures, which are as apt to the weeds of diffidence and vice, as averse from faith and every true virtue, we must strive with them, and offer violence unto them. He who doth row against the stream, must ply his oar, or he will go down apace: so it is here, we go against the stream of corrupt nature, so far as we go in faith or grace. Our daily and continual weakness of faith which we find in assenting unto and receiving most objects of faith and promises of God, when it is encountered with temptations: Our ordinary failings in the practice of holy duties, and due ordering of our affections, which cannot be without a precedent defect of that faith which only can firmly unite us unto Christ doth sufficiently manifest how feeble our belief is in the special mercies of God towards us in Jesus Christ, which being the highest object is the hardest to be apprehended, and can never be separated from firm assent unto every precept of God, as much better then any incompatible good. And if men take food and physic to strengthen their bodies, because they are frail: