The Breastplate of Faith and Love

Now all this is done by the Spirit, it is the wonderful work of GOD: for when CHRIST is propounded to men, when he is offered, (as we have often offered him to you, we have showed you what access you have to him, that no man is excluded, that he is offered to every creature under heaven, we have showed you the generality of the promise, that it takes in all, that you are contained under it, that you may apply it to your selves; I say, when all this is done) yet when a man comes to perform this, to apply it to himself, he is no more able to do it, then a dead man is able to stir himself. Therefore the same power that raised CHRIST from the dead, is required to work faith in our hearts, as it is in Eph. 1.19.¹ According to his mighty power which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead. So that it is as great a work, to move a mans heart to CHRIST, as to put life into a dead man; we are as unapt and backward to it, as a dead man is to receive life. For what else is the reason, that when we preach CHRIST to you, when he is offered to you, that there be so few that are affected with him, that there be so few that take him? doth it not show that you ⟨p. 56⟩are dead? yea, so dead, that unless GOD call you, and that there be a mighty work of the Spirit, the hearts of men will never answer unto us. Therefore that is required as a condition in all them who will come,² Act. 2. So many as the LORD our GOD shall call. That is, when we preach, except there be a secret voice of the Spirit of CHRIST speaking to your hearts, as we do to your ears, and saying, Come and take CHRIST, no man will come. We see, CHRIST said to his Apostles, Follow me, and presently they followed him; (for it was not the outward voice that did it, there was a secret voice within) so, when GOD shall call men to take CHRIST, then they do it, but not before. That word that is used, Luk. 14.23.³ Go and COMPEL them to come in, that my House may be full, it intimates a great backwardness in us.