Abernathy - Houston-Packer Collection BX9178.A33 S4 1748 v.3

392 Walking by Faith, not by Sight, 5 ER nz. our power, by inveterate prejudices, to vi- XV. date our tafle, and even harden our hearts into an infenfibility of the beauty of holinefs. In like manner it is impoffible to extinguifh the defire of happinefs ; but it is poffible, and indeed too ufual, to pervert and mif- apply it, fo 'as to prefer trifles to things of the greateft moment, and, inflead of a wife at- tention to our true intereft, to purfue low and trarifrtory, enjoyments, as if the whole of man, the all of his happinefs, codified in them ; which proceedeth not from want of felf- Love, but riifplacing it ; and through the influence of corrupt partial affeétion misjudging the means whereby our true hap- pinefs is to be attained.. Upon the whole, then, the true notion of faith, as a principle to walk by, is compleáted in thefe three articles, a right underfianding of religious truths, thofe, I mean, which are eßèntial and direftly tend to a good life, an attentive confideration of them, and receiving them in love. This faith is a moral virtue, in- deed the root of all moral virtues ; fo it is always reprefented in fcripture, and fo it is properly injoined as the refult of all our mo- ral obligations : For as the due exercife of our rational powers will direétly lead us to Ole knowledge and belief óf the great fun - damental

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