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

1. If you know not what Faith is, it must needs be a great hinderance to you, in the seeking of it, the trying it, and the using it. For though one may use his natural faculties, which work by natural inclination and necessity, without knowing what they are; yet it is not so where the choice of the rational appetite is necessary; for it must be guided by the reasoning faculty. And though unlearned persons may have and use Repentance, Faith, and other graces, who cannot define them; yet they do truly (though not perfectly) know the thing it self, though they know not the terms of a just definition: and all defect of knowing the true nature of Faith, will be some hinderance to us in using it.

2. It is a moral subject which we are speaking of; and terms are to be understood according to the nature of the subject: therefore Faith is to be taken for a moral act, which comprehendeth many physical acts: Such as is the act of believing in, or taking such a man for my Physician, or my Master, or my Tutor, or my King. Even our Philosophers themselves know not what doth individuate a physical act of the soul ▪ (Nay, they are not agreed whether its acts should be called physical properly, or not.) Nay, they cannot tell what doth individuate an act of sense; whether when my eye doth at once see many words and letters of my Book, every word or letter doth make as many individual acts, by being so many objects? And if so, whether the parts of every letter also do not constitute an individual act; and where we shall here ⟨p. 155⟩stop. And must all these trifles be considered in our Faith? Assenting to the truths is not one Faith (unless when separated from the rest) and consenting to the good, another act: Nor is it one Faith to believe the promise, and another to believe the pardon of sin, and another to believe salvation, and another to believe in God, and another to believe in Jesus Christ; nor one to believe in Christ as our Ransom, and another as our Intercessor, and another as our Teacher, and another as our King, and another to believe in the Holy Ghost, &c. I deny not but some one of these may be separated from the rest, and being so separated may be called Faith; but not the Christian Faith, but only a material parcel of it, which is like the limb of a man, or of a tree, which cut off from the rest, is dead, and ceaseth when separated to be a part, any otherwise than Logical (a part of the description.)