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

2. And the reason why the careless world are not as diligent, and holy as Believers, is because they have not this eye of Faith, and never saw those powerful objects, that Believers see. Had you their eyes, you would have their hearts and lives. O that the Lord would but illuminate you, and give you such a sight of the things unseen, as every true Believer hath! What a happy change would it make upon you? Then instead of your deriding or opposing it, we should have your company in the holy path: You would then be such your selves, as you now deride. If you saw what they see, you would do as they do. When the heavenly light had appeared unto Saul, he ceaseth persecuting, and enquires what Christ would have him to do, that he might be such a one as he had persecuted: And when the scales fell from his eyes, he falls to prayer, and gets among the Believers whom he had persecuted, and laboureth and suffereth more than they.

3. But till this light appear to your darkened souls, you cannot see the reasons of a holy heavenly life: and therefore you will think it hypocrisy, or pride, or fancy, and imagination, or the foolishness of crackt•brain'd self-conceited men. If you see a man do reverence to a Prince, and the Prince himself were invisible to you, would you not take him for a mad man; and say that he cringed to the stools or chairs, or bowed to a post, or complemented with his shadow? If you saw a mans action in eating and drinking, and see not the meat and drink it self, would you not think him mad? If you heard men laugh, and hear not so much as the voice of him that gives the jest, would you not imagine them to be brain-sick? If you see men dance, and hear not the music; if you see a Labourer threshing, or reaping, or mowing, and see no corn or grass before him; if you see a Soldier fighting for his life, and see no enemy that he spends his strokes upon, will you not take all these for men distracted? Why this is the case between you and the true Believers. You see them reverently worship God, but you see not the Majesty which they worship, as they do: You see them as busy for the saving of their souls, as if an hundred lives lay on it; but you see not the Hell from which they fly, nor the Heaven they seek: and therefore you marvel why they make so