Three treatises of the vanity of the creature. The sinfulness of sin. The life…Three treatises of the vanity of the creature. The sinfulnesse of sinne. The life…

The first is a love and liking of those spiritual truths which by faith the heart assenteth unto: for according as is the evidence and preciousness of the thing believed, such is the measure of our love unto it. For saving faith is an assent with adherence and delight, contrary to that of Devils, which is with trembling and horror; and that delight is nothing else but a kind of relish and experience ⟨p. 504⟩of the goodness of that truth which we assent¹ unto. Whereupon it necessarily follows even from the dictate of nature (which instructeth a man to love that which worketh in him comfort and delight) that from this assent must arise a love of those truths whence such sweetness doth issue. By the first act of faith we apprehend God a reconcilable God; by the second a reconciled God; for faith shows us ^aGods love to us in Christ, proposeth him as altogether lovely, the chiefest of ten thousand, and thereby begetteth in us a love unto Christ again: and this love is a sincere, uncorrupted, immortal³ love; a conjugal and superlative love; nothing must be loved in competition with Christ; every thing must be rejected and cast away, either as a snare when he^d hates it, or as a Sacrifice when he calls for it. Therefore ^cGod required the nearest of a mans blood in some cases^c to throw the first stone at an Idolater; to show, that no relations should preponderate, or over-sway our hearts from his love. Christ and earthly things often come into competition in the life of a man. In every unjust gain, Christ and a bribe, or Christ and cruelty; in every oath or execration, Christ and a blasphemy; in every sinful fashion, Christ and a rag, or Christ and an excrement; in every vain-glorious affectation, Christ and a blast; in every intemperancy, Christ and a vomit, a stagger, a shame, a disease. O where is that faith in men which should overcome the world, and the things of the world? Why should men delight in any thing while they live, which when they e on their deathbeds (a time speedily approaching) they shall never be able to reflect on with comfort, nor to recount without amazement and horror? Certainly he that fosters any Delilah or darling lust against the will and command of Christ, well may he delude himself with foolish conceits that he loves the Lord Jesus; but let him be assured, that though he may be deceived, yet God will not be mocked;