The life of faith in three parts, the first is a sermon on Heb.…

2. Which will the more appear when we consider, what is done against it within us and without us! what privative and positive averseness we have to it, till God do send down that Life, and Light, and Love into our souls, which is indeed his Image! How violently our fleshly sense and appetite, strive against the restraints of God, and would hurry us contrary to the motions of grace! How importunately Satan joineth with his suggestions! What baits the world doth still set before us, to divert us, and pervert us! And how many instruments of its flattery, or its cruelty, are still at work, to stop us, or to turn us back! to invite our affections down to ⟨p. 122⟩Earth, and ensnare them to some deluding vanity, or to distract us in our heavenly design, and to a•right or discourage us from the holy way.

2. Which will the more appear when we consider, what is done against it within us and without us! what privative and positive averseness we have to it, till God do send down that Life, and Light, and Love into our souls, which is indeed his Image! How violently our fleshly sense and appetite, strive against the restraints of God, and would hurry us contrary to the motions of grace! How importunately Satan joyneth with his suggestions! What baits the world doth still set before us, to divert us, and pervert us! And how many instruments of its flattery, or its cruelty, are still at work, to stop us, or to turn us back! to invite our affections down to ⟨p. 122⟩Earth, and ensnare them to some deluding vainty, or to distract us in our heavenly design, and to a•right or discourage us from the holy way.

And if we think this an easy work, because it is also reasonable, do but observe how hardly it goeth on, till the POWER of God by grace accomplish it! what a deal of pains may the best and wisest Parents take with a graceless child, and all in vain! what labours the worthiest Ministers lose on graceless people! and how blind, and dead, and senseless a thing, the graceless heart is, to any thing that is holy, even when reason it self cannot gainsay it! And God is pleased oft-times to weary out Parents, and Masters, and Ministers, with such unteachable and stony hearts, to make them know what naturally they are themselves, to bring them to the more lively acknowledgement of the POWER which is necessary to renew and save a soul. But having spoken at large of this in the forementioned Treatise, I shall take up with these brief intimations.