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

This Doctrine therefore which undeniably (whatever may be wrangled) taketh down Christianity, and all belief of God or man, is not to be believed merely upon such a Philosophical conceit, that every Action is a Being, and therefore must in all its circumstances be caused by God. As if God were not able to make a faculty, which can determine its own comparative act to this rather than to that, by his sustentation, and universal precausation and concourse, without the said predetermining premotion: When as an Action as such is but a modus entis; and the comparative exercise of it, on this rather than on that, is but a modus vel circumstantia modi. And they leave no work, for gracious determination, because that natural determination doth all the same thing (equally to duty and sin) without it.

This Doctrine therefore which undeniably (whatever may be wrangled) taketh down Christianity, and all belief of God or man, is not to be believed meerly upon such a Philosophical conceit, that every Action is a Being, and therefore must in all its circumstances be caused by God. As if God were not able to make a faculty, which can determine its own comparative act to this rather than to that, by his sustentation, and universal precausation and concourse, without the said predetermining premotion: When as an Action as such is but a modus entis; and the comparative exercise of it, on this rather than on that, is but a modus vel circumstantia modi. And they leave no work, for gracious determination, because that natural determination doth all the same thing (equally to duty and sin) without it.

Direct. 15. Consider well how much all humane converse is maintained by the necessary belief of one another, and what the world would be without it; and how much you expect your selves to be believed: And then think how much more belief is due to God.

Though sin hath made the world so bad, that we may say, that all men are liars, that is, deceitful vanity, and little to be trusted; yet the honesty of those that are more virtuous, doth help so far to keep up the honour of veracity, and the shamefulness of lying, that throughout the world, a lye is in