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

I mention this for the cure of two mischiefs: The first is that of the presumptuous Opinionist, who goeth to Hell presuming that he hath true saving faith, because he confidently believeth, that he himself is pardoned, and shall be saved. The second is that of the perplexed fearful Christian, who thinks that all his uncertainty of his own sincerity, and so of his salvation, is properly unbelief, and so concludeth that he cannot believe, and shall not be saved. Because he knoweth not that faith is such a belief and trust in Christ, as will bring us absolutely and unreservedly to venture our all upon him alone.

And yet I must tell all these persons, that all this while it is ten to one, but there is really a great deal of unbelief in them which they know not: and that their belief of the truth of the immortality of the soul, and the life to come, and of the Gospel it self, is not so strong and firm, as their never-doubting of it would intimate, or as some of their definitions of Faith, and their Book-opinions and Disputes import. And it had been well for some of them, that ⟨p. 273⟩they had doubted more, that they might have believed, and been settled better.

Direct. 30. Think often of the excellencies of the life of faith, that the Motives may be still inducing you thereto.