The saints dignity and duty· Together with the danger of ignorance and hardness. /…The saints dignitie and dutie· Together with the danger of ignorance and hardnesse. /…

This, my brethren, is the nature of faith, if it be rightly ⟨p. 171⟩wrought in the soul, as you shall fee and find by ordinary experience. For take a man that is truly awakened, and whose conscience is throughly touched, and offer him crowns, and sceptres, and honours, and all the delights of the sons of men; alas, his soul will care nothing for them, but as Esau said, Gen. 25.32. Behold, I am at the point to die, and what profit shall this birthright do to me? So will the poor soul say, What will it avail me, to be high in the favour of men here, and to be a fiend of Hell hereafter? What are all these profits and pleasures to me so long as I am not in the favour of God? What good can these outward contentments afford me when I am without Christ? Oh Lord, what wilt thou give me, unless I have my Saviour, and mercy in him, and pardon in him, and all in him, and through him? Still thus beateth the pulse of a faithful soul; and this is the nature of saving faith, the faith of Gods elect. As for these things here below, these matters of the world, they are little in the regard and esteem of a Christian man: If he have them, he seeth God in them; If he want them, he is never a whit the worse. The Apostle speaking of believers, and the faithful people of God, Heb. 11. saith, That they let their hold go of all these things below; let the world take the world if they would, let the dead bury their dead; but as for them, Having seen the promises afar off, they were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth, even in that country that God had promised them, Vers. 13.

This, my brethren, is the nature of faith, if it be rightly ⟨p. 171⟩wrought in the soul, as you shall fee and find by ordinary experience. For take a man that is truly awakened, and whose conscience is throughly touched, and offer him crowns, and scepters, and honours, and all the delights of the sons of men; alas, his soul will care nothing for them, but as Esau said, Gen. 25.32. Behold, I am at the point to die, and what profit shall this birthright doe to me? So will the poor soul say, What will it avail me, to be high in the favour of men here, and to be a fiend of Hell hereafter? What are all these profits and pleasures to me so long as I am not in the favour of God? What good can these outward contentments afford me when I am without Christ? Oh Lord, what wilt thou give me, unlesse I have my Saviour, and mercy in him, and pardon in him, and all in him, and through him? Still thus beateth the pulse of a faithfull soule; and this is the nature of saving faith, the faith of Gods elect. As for these things here below, these matters of the world, they are little in the regard and esteem of a Christian man: If he have them, he seeth God in them; If he want them, he is never a whit the worse. The Apostle speaking of beleevers, and the faithfull people of God,