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

How faith by beholding this glorious end, doth move all the faculties of the soul, and subdue the inclinations and interests of the flesh, and make the greatest sufferings tolerable, is the work of the holy Ghost in this Chapter to demonstrate, which beginning with the description, proceeds to the proof by a cloud of witnesses. There are two sorts of persons (and ⟨p. 3⟩employments) in the world, for whom there are two contrary ends hereafter. One sort subject their reason to their sensual or carnal interest. The other subject their senses to their reason, cleared, conducted and elevated by faith. Things present or possessed, are the riches of the sensual, and the bias of their hearts and lives: Things absent but hoped for, are the riches of Believers, which actuate their chief endeavours.

How faith by beholding this glorious end, doth move all the faculties of the soul, and subdue the inclinations and interests of the flesh, and make the greatest sufferings tollerable, is the work of the holy Ghost in this Chapter to demonstrate, which beginning with the description, proceeds to the proof by a cloud of witnesses. There are two sorts of persons (and ⟨p. 3⟩imployments) in the world, for whom there are two contrary ends hereafter. One sort subject their reason to their sensual or carnal interest. The other subject their senses to their reason, cleared, conducted and elevated by faith. Things present or possessed, are the riches of the sensual, and the byas of their hearts and lives: Things absent but hoped for, are the riches of Believers, which actuate their chief endeavours.

This is the sense of the text which I have read to you; which setting things hoped for, in opposition to things present, and things unseen, to those that sense doth apprehend, assureth us that faith (which fixeth on the first) doth give to its object a subsistence, presence and evidence, that is, it seeth that which supplieth the want of presence and visibility. The [Greek or Hebrew], is that which quoad effectum is equal to a present subsistence. And the [Greek or Hebrew], the evidence is somewhat which quoad effectum is equal to visibility. As if he had said, [Though the glory promised to Believers, and expected by them, be yet to come, and only hoped for, and be yet unseen and only believed, yet is the sound believer as truly affected with it, and acted by its attractive force, as if it were present and before his eyes] as a man is by an inheritance, or estate in reversion, or out of sight, if well secured, and not only by that which is present to his view. The Syriac Interpreter instead of a Translation, gives us a true exposition of the words, viz. [Faith is a certainty of those things that are in hope, as if they did already actually exist, and the revelation of those things that are not seen.