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

Direct. 12. Lastly, What measure of Light soever God vouchsafeth you, labour to turn it all into Love; and make it your serious care and business to know God, that you may love him, and to love God so far as you know him.

For he that desireth satisfaction in his doubts, to no better end, than to please his mind by knowing, and to free it from the disquiet of uncertainty, hath an end so low in all his studies, that he cannot expect that God and his grace should be called down, to serve such a low and base design. That faith which is not employed in beholding the love of God in the face of Christ, on purpose to increase and exercise our love, is not indeed the true Christian Faith, but a dead opinion. And he that hath never so weak a faith, and useth it to this end, to know Gods amiableness, and to love him, doth take the most certain way for the confirmation of his faith. For Love is the closest adherence of the soul to God, and therefore will set it in the clearest light, and will teach it by the sweet convincing way of experience and spiritual taste. Believing alone is like the knowledge of our meat by seeing it: And Love is as the knowledge of our meat by eating and digesting it. And he that hath tasted that it is sweet, hath a stronger kind of persuasion that it is sweet, than he that only seeth it; and will much more tenaciously hold his apprehension: It is more possible to dispute him out of his belief, who only seeth, than him that also tasteth and concocteth. A Parent and child will not so easily believe any false reports of one another, as strangers or enemies will; because Love is a powerful resister of such hard conceits. And though this be delusory and blinding partiality, where Love is guided by mistake; yet when a sound understanding leadeth it, and Love hath chosen the truest object, it is the naturally perfective motion of the soul.

For he that desireth satisfaction in his doubts, to no better end, than to please his mind by knowing, and to free it from the disquiet of uncertainty, hath an end so low in all his studies, that he cannot expect that God and his grace should be called down, to serve such a low and base design. That faith which is not employed in beholding the love of God in the face of Christ, on purpose to increase and exercise our love, is not indeed the true Christian Faith, but a dead opinion. And he that hath never so weak a faith, and useth it to this end, to know Gods amiableness, and to love him, doth take the most certain way for the confirmation of his faith. For Love is the closest adherence of the soul to God, and therefore will set it in the clearest light, and will teach it by the sweet convincing way of experience and spiritual taste. Believing alone is like the knowledge of our meat by seeing it: And Love is as the knowledge of our meat by eating and digesting it. And he that hath tasted that it is sweet, hath a stronger kind of perswasion that it is sweet, than he that only seeth it; and will much more tenaciously hold his apprehension: It is more possible to dispute him out of his belief, who only seeth, than him that also tasteth and concocteth. A Parent and child will not so easily believe any false reports of one another, as strangers or enemies will; because Love is a powerful resister of such hard conceits. And though this be delusory and blinding partiality, where Love is guided by mistake; yet when a sound understanding leadeth it, and Love hath chosen the truest object, it is the naturally perfective motion of the soul.