Precious faith considered in its nature, working, and growth

Sixthly, That faith stands in resignation, may appear from the scope of Religion. It is the very centre of all Divinity, and grand axiom therein, that the creature is to be abased and God exalted, no flesh must glory in it self, but in the Lord, all pride must be stained, and boasting cut off, that God may be all in all, and the creature nothing. Now nothing is, nor can be more accommodate to this Central Divinity, then faith, considered under the notion of resignation; which I shall show in the following particulars.

Sixthly, That faith stands in resignation, may appear from the scope of Religion. It is the very center of all Divinity, and grand axiom therein, that the creature is to be abased and God exalted, no flesh must glory in it self, but in the Lord, all pride must be stained, and boasting cut off, that God may be all in all, and the creature nothing. Now nothing is, nor can be more accommodate to this Central Divinity, then faith, considered under the notion of resignation; which I shall shew in the following particulars.

First, This doth exceedingly abase the creature. Resignation is the lowest posture of a creature, and so the fittest to take in all those graces which the Gospel hath entailed on believers. Would you have adoption from God? leave thine own kindred and thy fathers house, stand not upon thy birth-right or parentage, which in a child of wrath, such as thou art by nature, is as base and low as hell it self; go forth to Christ the natural son of God, that thou mayest be an adopted one. Would you have pardon and justification? stay not at home in thine own righteousness and repentant tears, these will not be habitable, when God comes in the pure glory of his justice and holiness, go out and put on the glorious righteousness of Christ, go out and lye down at the door ⟨p. 164⟩of the pardon-office. I, I am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, saith God, Isa. 43.25. Would you have sanctifying graces? thine own Will cannot teem them out, thine own power cannot form them. Albertus Magnus the Philosopher, spent fifty years in making the Statue of a man so, as that with Engines it could speak articulately, but when all was done, it was but a poor dead thing. Shouldest thou live the age of Methuselah, and all the while in the artifice of thy reason, and power of thy will, labour to forge out true holiness, it would be at last but an umbra, a dead shadow of grace, though it might speak fairly in the way of notions and gifts, yet it would be without the heavenly life and vitality; thou must therefore yield up thy self to Jesus Christ, that his spirit may come upon thee, and form the new-creature in thee; the sum of all is this, put off thy ornaments, that God may know what to do unto thee, yield, resign, be in the lowest posture of a creature, that all the Evangelical graces may be thine own.