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

15. There is no distance of time between the Assent of Faith, and the first true degree of Love and Consent: (Though an unsound Assent may go long before; yet sound Assent doth immediately produce Love and Consent;) and though a clear and full resolved degree of consent may be some time afterward: And therefore the soul may not at the first degree so well understand it self, as to be ready for an open covenanting)

16. This being the true order of the work of Faith and Love, the case now lieth plain before those that can observe things distinctly, and take not up with confused knowledge. (And no other are fit to meddle with such cases) viz that the knowing or assenting acts of faith in God as reconciled (so far) and in Christ as the reconciler, so far as to give out the offer or Covenant of Grace, are both at once, and both go before the acts of the will, as the cause before the immediate effect; and that this assent first in order of nature (but at once in time) causeth the will to love God as our End, and to consent to, and choose Christ in heart-covenant as the means, and so in our covenant we give up our selves to both: And that this Repentance and Love to God, which are both one work called conversion, of turning from the creature to God, the one as denominated from the terminus à quo, viz. (Repentance) the other from the terminus ad quem (viz. Love) are twisted at once with true saving Faith. And that Christ as the means used by God is our ⟨p. 222⟩first Teacher, and bringeth us to assent: And then that assent bringeth us to take God for our End, and Christ for the Means of our actual Justification and Glory; so that Christ is not by Faith chosen and used by us under the notion of a Mediator or Means to our first act of love and consent; but is a Means to that of the Fathers choosing only; but is in that first consent chosen by us for the standing means of our Justification and Glory, and of all our following exercise and increase of love to God, and our sanctification; so that it is only the assenting act of faith, and not the electing act, which is the efficient cause of o• very first act of Love to God, and of our first degree of sanctification; and thus it is that Faith is called the seed and mother grace: But it is not that saving Faith which is our Christianity, and the condition of Justification and of Glory, till it come up to a covenant-consent of heart, and take in the foresaid acts of Repentance and Love to God as our God and ultimate end.