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

Learn this definition, and understand it throughly, and it may prove a more solid useful knowledge (to have the true nature of Faith or Christianity thus methodically printed on your minds) than to read over a thousand volumes in a rambling and confused way of knowledge.

If any quarrel at this definition, because the foundation is not first set down, I only tell him that no Logicians do judge of the Logical order of words by the mere priority and posteriority of place. And if any think that here is more than every true Christian doth understand and remember, I answer, that here is no more than every true Christian hath a true knowledge of; though perhaps every one have not a knowledge so methodical, explicit and distinct, as to define Faith thus, or to think so distinctly and clearly of it, as others do, or to be able by words to express to another, what he hath a real conception of in himself. There is first in the mind of man a conception of the Object or Matter (by those words or ⟨p. 158⟩means which introduce it) and next that verbum mentis, or inward word, which is a distincter conception of the matter in the mould of such notions as may be expressed; and next the verbum oris, the word of mouth expresseth it. Now many have the conception of the matter, long before they have the verbum mentis, or logical notions of it: And many have the verbum mentis, who by a hesitant tongue are hindered from oral expressions; and in both, there are divers degrees of distinctness and clearness.

If any quarrel at this definition, because the foundation is not first set down, I only tell him that no Logicians do judge of the Logical order of words by the meer priority and posteriority of place. And if any think that here is more than every true Christian doth understand and remember, I answer, that here is no more than every true Christian hath a true knowledge of; though perhaps every one have not a knowledge so methodical, explicite and distinct, as to define Faith thus, or to think so distinctly and clearly of it, as others do, or to be able by words to express to another, what he hath a real conception of in himself. There is first in the mind of man a conception of the Object or Matter (by those words or