Precious faith considered in its nature, working, and growth

What the Jewish fringes did typify, that the Christians Faith operates, in keeping men from seeking after their own heart; but to go on, take sin not as mere sin, but in the dress of some apparent good; let it be [Greek or Hebrew], a well-circumstanced Sin, as a learned man takes that place, Heb. 12.1, flowing in riches, or rolling in sensual pleasures, or holding forth Crowns and Sceptres, and all Mundane glory; nay, if it were possible, let it invest it self with a Creation, all the lower World cannot make it eligible to Faith. Set down a World, if Faith subtract but a God or a Soul, what will remain but infinite damage? those treasures, which glitter so much to dark sense, are to Faith but poor rusty moth-eaten things; that which is substance to the World, is to Faith but a shadow, an apparition, a thing that is not, a mark too low for an Immortal Soul to fly at: These things at present and in the Now-World seem something; but if Faith look through the World unto the universal conflagration, and beyond it to the World to come, what will they signify? Are they able to survive those last flames, or purchase any thing in the World to come? Surely just nothing; except only so much thereof as is exchanged thither in Charity and good Works: to Faith the whole inventory of them is but a ⟨p. 271⟩great cheat; the Riches are not the true ones; the Gold is not that tried in the fire; the Land doth not lie in the Country which Faith seeks after; there is nothing in them to feed or cloth, or enrich the inward man; and to hazard a God or a Soul for them, must needs be an infinite loss. And what are the pleasures of this World to Faith? In carnal Sins, they are but the titillations of sense, in which the Rational faculties, were they not Spiritually incarnate and become flesh, would have no touch of delight: In Spiritual Sins, they are but the false gusts of a vitiated Reason and Will, which if made right by Faith, find no congruity but in what is true and good, neither of which can be in a Sin: In both, momentany as they are, they perish in the using, and die in the embraces; like the dead Son of the Emperor Basilius Macedo, who being Magically presented to his Father as alive, after a few touches and doting glances, disappeared; so they go off, only they leave a sting and a worm behind them in Conscience;

What the Jewish fringes did typifie, that the Christians Faith operates, in keeping men from seeking after their own heart; but to go on, take sin not as meer sin, but in the dress of some apparent good; let it be , a well-circumstanced Sin, as a learned man takes that place,