sPIRITÜAL PEACE Agro COMFORT. 263 Which that you may have, let me tell you briefly what it Man's soul hath two faculties, understanding and will : according- ly the objects ofman's soul (all beings which it is to receive) have twomodifications ; truth and goodness, (as those to be avoided are evil.) Accordingly God's word or gospel hath two parts ; the revelation oftruth, and the offer and promiseof some good. This offered good is principally and immediately Christ himself, to be joined to us by covenant, as our Head and Husband. The secon- dary consequential good is pardon, justification, reconciliation, adoption, further sanctification and glorification, which are all offered with Christ. By this you may see what saving faith is : it is, first, a believing that the gospel is true; and then an accepting of Christ therein offered to us; with his benefits ; or a consenting that he be ours, and we be his ; which is nothing but a true willingness to have an offered Christ. Remember this well, that may make use of it, when you are in doubt of the truth of your faith. Thousands of poor souls have been in the dark, and unable to see *themselves tobebelievers, merely for want of knowing what saving faith is. The Papists place almost all in the mere assent of the understanding. Some of thé Reformers made it to be either an assurance of the pardon of our own sins, or a strong persuasion of their pardon, excluding doubting ; or (the most moderate) a per- suasion of our particular pardon, though mixed with some doubting. The Antinomians strike in with them, and say the same. Hence some divines conclude, that justification and' remission go before faith, because the act doth always suppose its object. For they thought that remission already past was the object of justifying faith, supposing faith to be nothing else' but a belief that we are pardoned. Yea, ordinarily, it hath been taught in the writings of our greatest refuters of the Papists, ' That this belief is properly a divine faith, or the beliefof a divine testimony,'as is the believing of anyproposition written in the Scripture (a foul error which I have confuted inmy Bookof Rest, part m. 'chap. vii.) Most of latehave come nearer the truth, and affirmed justifying faith to consist in affiance, or recumbency, or resting on Christ for salvation. No doubt this is one act ofjustifying faith, but not that which a poor,' troubled soul should first search after and try itself by, (except by affiance, any should mean, as Amesius doth, election of Christ, and then it is the same act which I am asserting, but ,very unfitly ex- pressed.) For, (1.) Affiance is dot the principal act; nor that wherein the very life of justifying faith doth consist, but only an imperate allowing act, and an effect of the vital act, (which is con- sent, or willing, or accepting Christ offered ;) for it lieth mainly in that which we call the sensitive parr, or the passions of the soul. (2.) It is therefore less constant, and so unfittér to try by. For
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