Precious faith considered in its nature, working, and growth

A man of a mere implicit faith, is a man without a balance or judgment, he knows not how to estimate or weigh the excellent things of God, and therefore is ever poised down by the world and the lusts thereof. It is the explicit faith only which is in the soul as the balance of the Sanctuary, rightly determining the true weight of things, and thereby giving heavenly things the victory above earthly in the heart. Oh! where this is, what a feather, a vanity, a nothing is the world? what in it can weigh against God, or Christ, or the exceeding eternal weight of glory? surely nothing; wherefore the followers of faith become conquerors of the world.

A man of a meer implicite faith, is a man without a ballance or judgment, he knows not how to estimate or weigh the excellent things of God, and therefore is ever poized down by the world and the lusts thereof. It is the explicite faith only which is in the soul as the ballance of the Sanctuary, rightly determining the true weight of things, and thereby giving heavenly things the victory above earthly in the heart. Oh! where this is, what a feather, a vanity, a nothing is the world? what in it can weigh against God, or Christ, or the exceeding eternal weight of glory? surely nothing; wherefore the followers of faith become conquerors of the world.

Fourthly, This belief must be total and absolute, ⟨p. 47⟩without any salvos or limitations. The Gospel must captivate [Greek or Hebrew], all the intellect, or every thought to the obedience of Christ, 2 Cor. 10.5. The Reason must not go at large or random, but be kept in safe custody under the Gospel and the divine mysteries thereof; it is not to be trusted to, never since the fall put an enmity into it against God. The Socinians believe the Scriptures only so far forth as they are congruous to reason; thus Socinus professes, that if this proposition (that Jesus Christ satisfied God for our sins) were once and again extant in the sacred monuments, yet non ideirco, he would not therefore believe the thing to be so as we ordinarily conceive of it: And another lays down this for a rule, Nihil credi potest, quod à ratione capi & intelligi nequeat, that cannot be believed by faith, which cannot be comprehended by reason. It seems they will trust God no further then they can see him, and depend more on their blear-eyed reason, then the divine oracle. Touching this Socinian faith, I shall endeavour to show, first the irrationality of it, and then the nullity.