man, not only his acts of rebellio.. but his rebellious, traitorous, deceitful, and deceived, heart in every thing respecting God; That he cannot make himself good for acceptance, but must come to Christ, as a wretched selfhopeless sinner, ready to perish, and deserving to perish: That he must plead only for mercy according to the promises of mercy: That he can bring no recommendation but his sin and misery; and that his simple and only trust must be, and ever continue to be, in the free, free grace of the Redeemer, who saves every sinner, convinced and repentant through the power of his Spirit, from everlasting death through faith in his blood. On the other hand, to set men upon working and upon duties, before or without this previous preparation of the soul for these which are the fruits of faith, is to lead them on to acts of self-righteousness, hardness of heart, conceited presumptions, the ignorance of pride, and that confidence in the flesh, which the Apostle, once a Pharisee and full of all these, found it his privilege, through mercy, both to understand and abhor. Thou hast found the life of thine hand (says the prophet); THEREFORE, thou wast not grieved. Is. lvii. 10. Men do not cease to live according to the flesh, till they begin to live by the faith of the Son of God. "Faith (said an excellent Christian) is a distinct grace, wrought freely by the Holy Spirit, quickening the heart to assent to and rest upon the word of God, upon the account of the Truth of God who spoke it. It is distinct, as seeing and hearing are distinct from the other senses. It is wrought freely by the Spirit, and so no acquired notion. It quickens, through conveying life from Christ to the heart, by divine appointment. It assents to and rests upòn upon the word, against the contradi tion of flesh and blood. It eyes the Truth of God, as the fountain of its satisfaction and success. And so it first unites the heart to Christ, and gives actual interest and property in him, and in the covenant which God made with him before the world was, and consequently in all the blessings contained in the covenant."* § 32. The work, then, we must conclude, is of God: And the gracious effects, foreign as they are to the sinful nature of fallen man, will prove their cause. * DORNEY'S Contempl, p. 188. Edit. 3. This truly experimental book was edited, the third time, by the late Rev. W. Talbot of Reading, with a recommendatory preface by the late Rev. W. Romaine. § 33. One great, if not first, effect of grace in the soul, is FAITH.* By faith, however, is to be understood, not that flimsy, superficial, unaffecting, notion, or assent to things revealed, or concerning God himself, whichsprings from sense, or rational evidence only set before the mind; but that holy principle of spiritual life, which is attended with the deepest convictions of sin and human depravity, of deserved ruin and utter inability to obtain relief from all created help; which brings the sinner to receive and rest upon the word of God implicitly and only; which prostrates the spirit of a man into contrition and humiliation, * Vita nostra (h. e. spiritualis) à fide sumit initium, quia justus ex fide vivit, quæ per Spiri-' tum Sanctum datur. Totum Deo adimitur, si et initium et consummatio fidei nostræ hamani arbiFULG, apud Cons, Patr. trii viribus applicatur. p. 153. into the very dust (as it were) of selfabhorrence and renunciation; which leads him, in this lowly frame, to the foot of the cross, as a cursed and egregious sinner, crying for mercy and forgiveness through the blood of Him, who hung upon it;* which, when the * Pious is the following apostrophe to Christ, composed by the devout Bernard, which an excellent German Minister, Lucas Pollio, desired to have repeated to him at his death, which occurred in 1583: Ne, quæso, more judicis, Tuo cruore deleas. The sense of which may be thus translated: O let me not thy presence meet; By blood divine for sinners spilt! soul |