A25294:238
The substance of Christian religion, or, A plain and easy draught of the Christian…The substance of Christian religion, or, A plain and easie draught of the Christian…
The substance of Christian religion, or, A plain and easy draught of the Christian catechism in LII lectures on chosen texts of Scripture, for each Lords-day of the year, learnedly and perspicuously illustrated with doctrines, reasons, and uses / by that reverend and worthy labourer in the Lord's vineyard, William Ames ...The substance of Christian religion, or, A plain and easie draught of the Christian catechisme in LII lectures on chosen texts of Scripture, for each Lords-day of the year, learnedly and perspicuously illustrated with doctrines, reasons, and uses / by that reverend and worthy laborer in the Lord's vineyard, William Ames ...
London: printed by T. Mabb for Thomas Davies, 1659
Title page typeset from the transcription.
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
Justifying Faith is an act and fruit of the experience of Faith; and not the first affiance and trust, that justifies. Our Doctrine is hence gathered, in that the object of Faith in this place, is no intellectual or logical truth, as such; but some good, as the object of the practical mind & of preelection, viz. the means of salvation, which is a single or incomplex term (as Logicians call it) in these words; on the Lord Jesus Christ; where not any thing of or about Christ, but Christ himself is the object. Next, because Faith is said to be busied about this object, as about a prop or stay; so that the heart of a man otherwise destitute of all help, and about to run into despair, casts it self upon Christ, as a stay, that by him it may be sustained and upheld; which is intimated by this phrase, believe in our Lord Jesus Christ. By affiance, we understand not any assent or act of the understanding about logical truth, or affirmation, or negation; nor yet properly the confident expectation of the will, which is assigned to our hope, and confidence therein contained, or from thence arising; but that act of the will or heart, which properly is called e•ection or choice: whereby we rely upon Christ, repose and rest on him, and adhere to him, as a fit and sufficient Mediator, by whom we ⟨p. 51⟩may be saved. By this affiance we are said every where in the Old Testament to be united or joined to God, as Isa. 48. 2. & 50. 10. And by this affiance properly we come unto Christ, Joh. 6. and are said to receive Christ, Joh. 1. 12. which things cannot be affirmed of any complex knowledge, or assent of the understanding, whether general or special. It is true, that such a knowledge, on the behalf of such as belong to Christ, is a necessary antecedent, and the cause of this faith, and affiance that justifies; and so in that respect, it hath the title of this faith as well in Scriptures, as in common discourse: But yet when Faith is considered precisely as it justifies and saves, then it is understood either as an act or as a disposition of the will or heart, which follows the foresaid knowledge, and for the begetting whereof that knowledge doth serve. From this affiance if it be lively and vigorous, and joined with fitting knowledge, there follows a certain persuasion of remission of our sins; and therefore true Faith useth often to be described by this persuasion;