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

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.)

6. In this assent our belief in God, and in the Mediator, are conjunct in time and nature; they being Relatives here as the objects of our faith. It is not possible to believe in Christ as the Mediator, who hath propitiated God to us, before we believe that God is propitiated by the Mediator; nor vice versâ: Indeed there is a difference in order of dignity and desirableness; God as propitiated being represented to us as the End, and the Propitiator, but as the Means: But as to the order of our apprehension or believing, there can be no difference at all, no more than in the order of knowing the Father and the Son, the Husband and Wife, the King and subjects: These Relatives are simul naturá & tempore.