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

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.)

The Faith which hath the promise of salvation, and which you must live by, hath 1. God for the Principal Revealer, and his Veracity for its formal object. 2. It hath Christ, and Angels, and Prophets, and Apostles, for the sub-revealers. 3. It hath the Holy Ghost by the divine attesting operations before described, to be the seal and the confirmer. 4. It hath the same Holy Ghost for the internal exciter of it. 5. It hath all truths of known divine revelation, and all good of known divine donation by his Covenant, to be the material general object. 6. It hath the Covenant of Grace, and the holy Scriptures, (and formerly the voice of Christ and his Apostles) or any such sign of the mind of God, for the instrumental efficient cause of the object in esse cognito: And also the instrumental efficient of the act. 7. It hath the pure Deity, God himself, as he is to be known and loved, inceptively here, and perfectly in Heaven, for the final and most necessary material object. 8. It hath the Lord Jesus Christ, entirely in all essential to him, as God and Man, and as our Redeemer or Saviour, as our Ransom, Intercessor, Teacher and Ruler, for the most necessary, mediate, material object. 9. It hath the gifts of Pardon, Justification, the Spirit of Sanctification or Love, and all the necessary gifts of the Covenant, for the material, never-final objects. And all this is essential to the Christian Faith, even to that Faith which hath the promise of pardon and salvation: And no one