A57982:418
The trial & triumph of faithThe tryal & triumph of faith
The trial & triumph of faith: or, An exposition of the history of Christs dispossessing of the daughter of the woman of Canaan Delivered in sermons; in which are opened, the victory of faith; the condition of those that are tempted; the excellency of Jesus Christ and free-grace; and some special grounds and principles of libertinism and antinomian errors, discovered by Samuel Rutherfurd, professor of divinity in the University of St. Andrews. Published by authority.The tryal & triumph of faith: or, An exposition of the history of Christs dispossessing of the daughter of the woman of Canaan Delivered in sermons; in which are opened, the victory of faith; the condition of those that are tempted; the excellency of Jesus Christ and free-grace; and some speciall grounds and principles of libertinisme and antinomian errors, discovered by Samuel Rutherfurd, professor of divinity in the University of St. Andrews. Published by authority.
London: printed by John Field, 1652
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
Great is thy Faith] For the clearing of these words; we are to consider three points: 1. What Faith is: 2. What a great Faith is: 3. Why he saith thy Faith, appropriating it to the woman.1 Now of Faith, I shall speak, 1. A word of preparations for Faith: 2. Of the grounds and necessary motives to Faith: 3. Of the Ingredients of Faith: 4. Of the sinners warrants to believe: 5. Of divers sorts of false, and ill rooted Faiths.
- 1Five things to betreated on concerning Faith.
1. There be some preparations which go before Faith:1 1. Faith is a seed of heaven, it is not sown by the good husbandman in unploughed, and in Fallow ground, Christ soweth not amongst thorns? we are builded on the Faith, stones are hewen, rubbish removed before one stone be laid: 2. Every act of Grace in God, is an act of Omnipotency, and so requireth not time or succession; God might have set up the frame of the world in all its fullness, with less then one thought, or act of his will put forth by Omnipotency: yet did our Lord subject the acts of creating the first world to the rule of time, and to a circle of evening and morning, nights and days, so doth the Lord set up a new world of Faith, in a soul void of Faith by degrees: There's a time when there's neither perfect night, nor perfect day: but the twilight ⟨p. 313⟩of the morning, and God not withstanding created the morning no less then the noon day Sun? There's a half Summer, and a half Spring in the close of the Spring which God made. The Embryo, or birth not yet animated, is neither seed only, nor a man-child only; so is a Convert in his first framing, neither perfectly untamed corruption, because there's a crack and a throw in the iron sinew of the neck; nor is he a thorough child of light, but as we say, in the dead-throw, in the place of breaking forth of children, as Hosea speaketh: A child with his head come forth of the womb and no more, and so half born only; so is the Convert while he is in the making, not taken off Christs wheels; half in the borders of hell, and looking a far off at the Suburbs of Heaven, not far from the Kingdom of Heaven.