Precious faith considered in its nature, working, and growth

That Christ who is in glory in heaven at the right hand of Majesty, comes to be in glory in the heart by the resignations of faith. Thus he himself faith, the spirit shall glorify me, Joh. 16.14. that is, by working faith in the heart, as the Father glorifies him above, so the spirit, and under that faith, glorify him below. If any man go about by his faith to pick out the merits and righteousness of Christ for salvation, without a respect to his teaching and ruling offices, he mangles and tears in pieces Christ, as much as in him lieth, renting of Jesus from Christ, nay and Jesus in twain, whom he admits only to save him from the ⟨p. 121⟩guilt of sin and not from the power and love of it, separating the blood of his Saviour from the water, and his merits from the spirit, which are and ever must be in conjunction; such an half and divided Christ as this is, is not the Christ of God, but a Christ of his own fancy, one that will save him in his sins, and justify him in his ungodliness; he that believes in such a Christ, doth at once miserably cheat his own soul, and as much as in him lieth, profanely trample on the blood of Christ, as if it were shed on purpose that sinful men might have the reins laid down on their necks to riot in their cursed lusts with all impunity. Moreover, as to the word of God, the believer is for all of it, he is not only for cordials, and pots of Manna, and distillations of grace in the promises, but for precepts also, his meat and his drink is to do the will of his Father in heaven; whilst his eyes are on the Land of promise, his feet are in the Land of uprightness. Antinomians boast themselves to be above the Law, and as free as if they were in heaven, and that their sins are but seeming sins, sins to sense and to the world outwardly, but no sins to faith and before God who seeth no sin in them. But alas! these are but swelling words of vanity, to be above the Law is Antichrist-like to be above God himself, whose Majesty and holiness break forth in it; and if sins be but seeming sins, the Law is but a seeming Law, and God (whose authority and sanctity shine forth in it) is but a seeming God: Promises and Precepts run together in the Scripture, and must be taken together into the heart ⟨p. 122⟩by faith. Promises are effluxes out of Gods grace, and faith takes them in by recumbency;