justifying faith ; but doginatical faith doth not infer justifying faith. Justifying faith cannot be without a dogmatical ; it implies it, as the rational soul in man doth the sensitive. But the dogmatical may be without the justifying, as the sen- sitive soul in the beast is without the rational. Judas knew the Scriptures, and, without doubt, did assent to the truth of them, when he was so zealous a preacher of the gospel ; but he never had so much as one grain of justifying faith in his soul, John vi. (jl : ' There are some of you which believe not; for Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that believed not, and who jhould betray him ;' yea, Judas's master, the devil himself, one far enough, I suppose, from justifying faith, yet he assents to the truth of the word. He goes against his conscience when he denies them : when he tempted Christ he did not dispute against the Scripture, but from the Scripture, drawing his arrows out of this quiver, Watt. iv. 6. And at another time he makes as full a confession of Christ (for the matter) as Peter himself did, Matt. viii. 22, compared with Miitt. xvi. 17. Assent to the truth of the woid is but an act of the understanding, which reprobates and devils may exercise. But justifying faith is a compounded habit, and hath its seat both in the understanding and will ; and therefore called a believing with the heart, Rom. x. 10; yea, a believing with all the heart. Acts viii. 37 : ' Philip said. If thou believest with all thy heart, thou mayest.' It takes in all the powers of the soul. There is a double object in the promise ; one proper to the understanding, to move that ; another proper to the will, to excite and work upon that. As the promise is true, so it calls for an act of an assent from the understanding ; and as it is good as well as true, so it calls for an act of the will to embrace and receive it : therefore he which only notionally knows the promise, and speculatively assents to the truth of it, without clinging to it and embracing of it, he doth not believe savingly, and can have no more benefit from the promise than the nourishment from the food he sees, and acknowledgeth to be wholesome, but eats none of it. Secondly, Faith is not assurance. If it were, John might have spared his pains, who wrote ' to them that believed on the name of the Son of God, that they might know that they had eternal life,' 1 John v. 13. They might then have said, We do this already; what else is om- faith, but a believing that we are such as through Christ are pardoned, and shall through him be saved ? But this cannot be so: if faith were assurance, then a man's sins would be pardoned before he believes ; for he must necessarily be pardoned before he can know he is pardoned. The candle must be lighted before I can see it is lighted. The child must be born before I can be assured it is born. The object must be before the act. Assur- ance is rather the fruit of faith, than faith itself: it is in faith as the flower is in the root : faith, in time, after much conmiunion with God, acquaintance with the word, and experience of his dealings with the soul, may flourish into assur- ance ; but, as the root truly lives before the flower appears, and continues when that hath shed its beautiful leaves, and is gone again ; so doth true justifying faith live before assurance comes, and after it disappears. Assurance is, as it were, the cream of faith. Now you know there is milk before there is cream : this riseth not but after some time standing, and there remains milk after it is skinnned off. How many, alas ! of the precious saints of God nuist we shut out from being believers, if no faith but what amounts to assurance ! We must needs oflend against the generation of God's children, among whom some are babes not yet come to the use of their reflex act of faith, so as to own the grace of God in "them to be true, upon the review that they take of their own actings: and must not the child be allowed to be a child till he can speak of himself, and say he is so ? Others there are in Christ's family who are of higher stat(u-e and greater experience in the ways of God, yet have lost those apprehensions of par- doning mercy which once they were (through the goodness of God) able to have shewn. Shall we say their faith went away in the departure of their assurance? How oft then in a year may a believer be no believer ! even as often as God withdraws and leaves the creature in the dark. Assurance is like tlie sunflower, which opens with the day, and shuts with the night. It follows the motion of God's face ; if that looks'smilingly on the soul, it lives ; if that frowns or hides itself, it dies. But faith is a plant that can grow in the shade, — a grace that can Arid the way to heaven in a dark night. It can ' walk in darkness, and yet trust in the name of the Lord,' Isa. 1. 10. In a word, by makuig the essence
42(3 ABOVE ALL, TAKING THE SHIELD OF FAITH,