Precious faith considered in its nature, working, and growth

Sixthly, The merely notional knowledge is but superficial, a flash and away, a light taste, such as was in those Apostates, Heb. 6.5. a word sown but unrooted, such as that in the stony ground, Mat. 13.21. But the light of faith is another thing, it is truth in the hidden parts, Psal. 51.6. wisdom entering into the heart, Prov. 2.10. and a word ingrafted or innaturalized in the mind, Jam. 1.21. As an appendix to this difference, I may add another; mere notions, being but superficial things floating in the brain, do not so establish the heart in Religion, as that supernatural light which intimately mixes it self with the heart. Hence many Princes and Grandees of the Letter have been sick with intellectual bottles, and shamefully reeled up and down in Articles of Faith. Some stumbling in the mire of gross Pelagianism, and others rolling in the ditch of foul Socinianism; with them Christs Deity is but somnium Athanasii, and original sin but Augustini sigmentum, such horrid spewing from learned mouths hath been made on the glory of Religion. And no wonder, for the notionalist wants that love of the truth, which is an antidote against errors, and that pure conscience, which is the Cabinet of Divine mysteries. On the other hand, supernatural light is a more establishing thing: the Apostle calls it [Greek or Hebrew], the firmament of faith, Col. 2.5. all the heavenly truths are there as so many fixed stars in their Orb. Gerson relates ⟨p. 29⟩this story, A man vexed with doubts in Articles of Faith, at last came to such a certainty in them, that he no more doubted of them then of his own life; and this he had (saith he) Non ex ratione aut demonstratione, sed ex humiliatione ac admirabili quâdam Dei illuminatione à montibus aeternis. All grace, because divine, hath an establishing property, and among the rest, so hath the light of faith, because it comes from the eternal mountains.