FORGIVENESS REVEALED TO FAITI. 105 choose to rest in any thing rather than forgiveness. If men escape these rocks, and resolve that nothing but pardon will relieve them, yet it is impossible for them to receive it in the truth and power of it, if not enabled by faith. I speak not of men who take it up by hearsay, as a common report, but of those who know it is their only hope, and that they must perish everlastingly with- out it ; and yet, when it is declared to them in the words of truth and soberness, they cannot receive it. What is the reason I Why, they have nothing to lead them into the mysterious depths of the eternal love of Christ, and the promises of the Gospel. How do we see poor dis- eased souls standing every day at the side of this pool, and yet not venturing themselves into it all their days. 2. It is too great for any thing but faith to discover. Forgiveness is a thing chosen out of God from all eter- nity, to exalt and magnify the glory of his grace; and it will be made appear to all the world, at the day of judg- ment, to have been a great thing. When the soul comes in any measure to be made sensible of it, it finds it so great, so excellent and astonishing, that it sinks under the thoughts of it. It hath a length, breadth, depth, and height that no line of the rational soul can measure. There is exceeding greatness in it, Eph. 1 : 19, even " to know the love of Christ that passeth knowledge." chap. 3 : 19. Here, I suppose, reason will confess it- self at a stand ; to know what passeth knowledge is none of its work. 3. But Iltis is faith's proper work;- even to know that which passeth knowledge. To know that, in its power and efficacy, which cannot be fully known in its nature; to have, by believing, all the ends of a full comprehen- sion of that which cannot be fully comprehended. Hence, Heb. 11 : 1, it is said to be the evidence " of things not seen," though in themselves absent, yet faith gives them a present subsistence in the soul. So it knows things
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