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

4. The soul that knoweth all this concerning God, cannot yet love him savingly, both because he wanteth the Spirit to effect it, and because a holy sin-hating God, engaged in Justice ⟨p. 219⟩to damn the sinner, is not such an object, as a guilty soul can love: but it must be a loving and reconciled God that is willing to forgive.

5. When Christ by his Word and Ministers hath taught a sinner both what God is in himself, and what he is to us, and what we have deserved, and what our case is; and then hath taught him, what he himself is as to his person and his office, and what he hath done to reconcile us to God, and how far God is reconciled hereupon, and what a common conditional pardoning Covenant, he hath made and offereth to all, and what he will be and do to those that do come in, the belief of all this seriously (by the assenting act of the understanding) is the first part of saving Faith, going in nature before both the Love of God, and the consenting act of the Will to the Redeemer. (And yet perhaps the same acts of faith in an uneffectual superficial measure, may go long before this in many.)

5. When Christ by his Word and Ministers hath taught a sinner both what God is in himself, and what he is to us, and what we have deserved, and what our case is; and then hath taught him, what he himself is as to his person and his office, and what he hath done to reconcile us to God, and how far God is reconciled hereupon, and what a common conditional pardoning Covenant, he hath made and offereth to all, and what he will be and do to those that do come in, the belief of all this serio•sly (by the assenting act of the understanding) is the first part of saving Faith, going in nature before both the Love of God, and the consenting act of the Will to the Redeemer. (And yet perhaps the same acts of faith in an uneffectual superficial measure, may go long before this in many.)