Precious faith considered in its nature, working, and growth

As to seeming contradictions, the believer hath a rare dexterity to enucleate them. ⟨p. 188⟩Touching which I shall give some instances. God commanded Abraham, offer up thy son, thine only son Isaac, to offer up a son was a seeming contradiction to nature, to offer up an Isaac, a son of promise, was a seeming contradiction to Gods truth, who before had said, in Isaac shall thy seed be called, but faith unlocks all these difficulties, God is able to raise him up from the dead, saith Abraham, and from thence he received him in a figure, Heb. 11.19. a parallel to this we may find in all true believers, the children of Abraham; God calls upon them, mortify the deeds of the body, and ye shall live; mortify and live is a seeming contradiction, to offer up our only ones, our wills, our loves, our joys, to be slain, looks like a piece of unnaturalness; but what saith faith? it is no such matter, offer up your only ones, your wills, your loves, your joys, unto God, and you shall receive them again from the dead, raised up in the incorruption of the new-creature, that which was sown a natural will, natural love, and natural joy, shall be raised up a spiritual will, spiritual love, and spiritual joy, your souls before dead in sins, shall have the life of God in them, this is the first resurrection; such things as these nature laughs at as strange paradoxes, but faith embraces as rare mysteries. Again, Christ saith, take my yoke upon you, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light, Math. 11.29, 30. what is Christs yoke but the Commandments? and ⟨p. 189⟩are these portable by any mere man? so say the Romanists from this very place, but the mistake is so gross that the communis sensus of Christians runs against it; faith can unriddle it another way, the impossibles of the Law, the sinless perfection unattainable by us were fulfilled by Christ, the heavy end of the Law, the dreadful curse unavoidable by us was born by Christ, the Covenant of grace is satisfied with uprightness in the ways of God, which is easy to a renewed man: its true, while there is only the pressure of a Law without, and nothing but a natural heart of enmity within, the ways of God are irksome and tedious, which occasioned a Divine to say, that a man might take a carnal man, tie him to a table, and kill him with praying and preaching;