A57982:428
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.
Faith hath but half words and half affections •••ching the world, half acts or broken acts in […] affections, closing with the creature, smell […] a Faith with child of eternity; to make the ⟨p. 324⟩excellency of the creature a matter of mere opinion, to reckon the worlds witchcrafts of lust, gain, glory, but uncertain and topic arguments to conclude a God-head and a golden heaven in the creature, is the height of the wisdom of Faith: So Paul, Gal. 2.20. I am crucified with Christ. O then (may some say) Paul, you are a dead man: He saith no. Nevertheless I live, but I live the life of Faith, For Christ liveth in me. All his motions toward the creature were half dead, like the vital motions of a crucified man half out of the world, and his acts of Faith were lively and vital, and high tuned, like the highest note in the music song. Faith cannot break and violently rent in sunder the two sides of the affections, with too violent and intense acts of love, joy, fear, desire, sorrow, as these are terminated upon the creature: Its true, Faith clippeth nothing from the outmost and most superlative pitch of the love of God, of desire, fear, sorrow, joy, as they act upon God; but addeth wind to the sails in that flux of the souls way toward God.1 But Faith moderateth and lesseneth all these in relation to the creature, so the Faith which hath its direct aspect toward eternity, and looketh on the shortness of sliding away time, and the transient wheeling away o• the poor figure of this world, 1 Cor. 7. v. 29.31 turneth all these acts into but half a face on th• creature, and into leisurely and leaden motions or to half non-acts, as if made up of heavenly ⟨p. 325⟩contradictions, v. 29, 30, 31. Having wives, having no wives: Weeping, no weeping; Rejoicing, no rejoicing; Buying, no possessing; Using the world, not using the world. When the Saints throng through the press and crowd of the creatures (for the world is a bushy and rank wood) thorns take hold of their garments, and retard them in their way: Faith looseth their garments, & riddeth them of such thorny friends, as are too kind to them in their journey: who diggeth for Iron and Tin in the earth with mattocks of Gold? What wise man would make a Web of cloth of gold, a net to catch fish? Expenses should over-grow gains: There's much of the metal of heaven in the soul: