The dead saint speaking to saints and sinners living in several treatisesThe dead saint speaking to saints and sinners living in severall treatises

I will therefore join these two both together, as essentially pre-requisite, whereby we know and assent to our own miserable estate, the freeness of God promise, and grace which he hath tendered to the soul in Christ, both essential Antecedents to justification, of which some expound that, John 6.40. every one that seeth the Son and believeth on him, shall have everlasting life. Where, by seeing they say is meant Christum praedicatum videre & agnoscere pro filio Dei, to see and acknowledge Christ the Son of God, and Saviour of the World, and indeed this must go before; It is gradus ad rem; though not gradus in re, it is a pre-requisite or preparatory ⟨p. 48⟩to justifying Faith, but it is not justifying Faith; as in the Generation of a man, the sensitive soul goeth before, and prepareth a fit organ for the infusion of the reasonable soul and yet not the sensitive, but the reasonable soul doth inform; so in the reparation of man, historical faith doth precede, and make way for the inducement of justifying Faith, and yet not the former, but this doth justify; as Calvin saith, a Vulgar knowledge and assent to truth, doth join a man no more to God, than the sight of the Sun doth lift a man to Heaven. Otherwise did this historical assent justify, then it as well as Justification should be proper only to the Elect; so Justification is, Rom. 8.30. but so is not an historical assent, for that Simon Magus had, and other Reprobates may have.

I will therefore joyn these two both together, as essentially pre-requisite, whereby wee know and assent to our own miserable estate, the freeness of God promise, and grace which hee hath tendred to the soul in Christ, both essentiall Antecedents to justification, of which some expound that, John 6.40. every one that seeth the Son and beleeveth on him, shal have everlasting life. Where, by seeing they say is meant Christum praedicatum videre & agnoscere pro filio Dei, to see and acknowledge Christ the Son of God, and Saviour of the World, and indeed this must go before; It is gradus ad rem; though not gradus in re, it is a pre-requisite or preparatory ⟨p. 48⟩