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

Therefore as God made advantage of the sins of the world, for the honouring of his grace in Christ, that grace might abound where sin abounded, Rom. 5.12, 16, 17. So do you make advantage of your renewed sins, for a renewed use of faith in Christ; and let it drive you to him with renewed desires and expectations of pardon by his intercession: That Satan may be a loser, and Christ may have more honour by every sin that we commit. Not that we should sin that grace may abound; but that we may make use of abounding grace ⟨p. 197⟩when we have sinned. It is the true nature and use of Faith and Repentance to draw good out of sin it self, or to make the remembrance of it to be a means of our hatred and mortification of it, and of our love and gratitude to our Redeemer: Not that sin it self doth (formally or efficiently) ever do any good: But sin objectively is turned into good: For so sin is no sin; because to remember sin is not sin. When David saith, Psal. 51.3. that his sin was ever before him, he meaneth not only involuntarily to his grief, but voluntarily as a meditation useful to his future duty, and to stir him up to all that which afterward he promiseth.

Direct. 13. In all the weaknesses and languishings of the new creature, let Faith look up to Christ for strength.

For God hath put our life into his hand, and he is our root, and hath promised that we shall live because he liveth, John 14.19. Do not think only of using Christ, as you do a friend when you have need of him; or as I do my pen, to write, and lay it down when I have done: But as the branches use the Vine, and as the members use the Head, which they live by; and from which when they are separated, they die and wither,