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

It is an exceeding common and dangerous deceit, to overlook both this principal object and principal use of the Christian Faith. 1. Many think of no other object of it, but the death and righteousness of Christ, and the pardon of sin, and the promise of that pardon: And God and Heaven they look at as the objects of some other common kind of Faith. 2. And ⟨p. 151⟩they think of little other use of it, than to comfort them against the guilt of sin, with the assurance of their Justification. But the great and principal work of Faith is, that which is about its final object; to carry up the soul to God and Heaven, where the world, and things sensible, are the terminus à quo, and God, and things invisible, the terminus ad quem: And thus it is put in contradistinction to living by fight, in 2 Cor. 5.6, 7. And thus mortification is made one part of this great effect, in Rom. 6. throughout, and many other places: and thus it is that Heb. 11. doth set before us those numerous examples of a life of Faith, as it was expressed in valuing things unseen, upon the belief of the Word of God, and the vilifying of things seen which stand against them. And thus Christ tried the Rich man, Luke 18.22. whether he would be his Disciple, by calling him to sell all, and give to the po•r, for the hopes of a treasure in Heaven. And thus Christ maketh bearing the Cross, and denying our selves, and forsaking all for him, to be necessary in all that are his Disciples. And thus Paul describeth the life of Faith, 2 Cor. 4.17, 18. by the contempt of the world, and suffering afflictions for the hopes of Heaven: [For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.] Our Faith is our victory over the world, even in the very nature of it, and not only in the remote effect; for its aspect and believing approaches to God and the things unseen, and a proportionable recess from the things which are seen, is one and the same motion of the soul, denominated variously from its various respects to the terminus ad quem, and à quo.