of fiiith to lie in assurance, we should not only offend against the generation of God's children, but against the God and Father of these children, for at one clap we turn the greater number of those children he hath here on earth out of doors; yea, we are cruel to those that he is most tender of, and make sad the hearts of those that he would have chiefly comforted. Indeed, if this were true, a great part of gospel provision laid up in the promises is of little use. We read of pro- mises to those that mourn, ' they shall be comforted ;' to the contrite, ' they shall be revived;' to him that walks in darkness, Isa. 1., and the like. These belong to believers, and none else ; surely then there are some believers that are in the dark, under the hatches of sorrow, wounded and broken with their sins, and temptation for them, but they are not such as are assured of the love of God ; their water is turned into joy, their night into light, their sighs and sobs into joy and praise.
Secondly, I shall answer affirmatively, what justifying faith is ; and in the description of it I shall consider it solely as justifying. And so take it in these few words : it is that act of the soul whereby it rests on Christ crucified for pardon and life, and that upon the warrant of the promise. In the description, observe. First, The subject where faith is seated; not any single fiiculty, but the soul. Of this I have spoken something before. Secondly, Here is the object of faith as justifying, and that is Christ crucified. The whole truth of God is the object of justifying faith; it trades with the whole word of God, and doth firmly assent unto it ; but in its justifying act it singles out Christ crucified for its object. First, The person of Christ is the object of faith as justifying. Secondly, Christ as crucified. First, The person of Christ, not any axiom or proposition in the word; this is the object of assurance, not of faith. Assur- ance saith, I believe my sins are pardoned through Christ: faith's language is, I believe on Christ for the pardon of them. The word of God doth direct our faith to Christ, and terminates it upon him ; called thei'efore a coming to Christ, Matt. xi. 28 ; a receiving of him, John i. 12 ; a believing on him, John xvii. 20. The promise is but the dish, in which Christ, the true food of the soul, is served up ; and if faith's hand be on the promise, it is but as one that draws the dish to him, that he may come at the dainties in it. The promise is the marriage ring on the hand of faith. Now we are not married to the ring, but with it unto Christ. 'All promises,' saith the apostle, ' are yea and amen in him ;' they have their excellency from him, and efficacy in him : I mean in a soul's union to him. To run away with a promise, and not to close with Christ, and by faith become one in him, is as if a man should rend a branch from a tree, and lay it up in his chest, expecting it to bear friut there. Pro- mises are dead branches severed from Christ : but when a soul by faith becomes united to Christ, then he partakes of all his fatness : not a promise but yields sweetness to it. Secondly, As Christ is the primary object of faith, so Christ as crucified. Not Christ in his personal excellences : so he is the object i-ather of our love than faitli ; but as bleeding, and that to death, under the hand of divine justice, for to make an atonement by God's own appointment for the sins of the world. As the handmaid's eye is on her mistress's hand for direc- tion, so faith's eye is on God's revealing himself in his word ; which way God by it points the soul, thither it goes. Now there faith finds God, intending to save poor sinners, pitched on Christ, and Christ alone, for the transacting and effecting of it ; and him whom God chooscth to trust with the work, him and him alone will faith choose to lay the burden of her confidence on. Asa^ain, faith observes how Christ performed this great work ; and accordingly how the promise holds him foi'th to be applied for pardon and salvation. Now faith finds, that then Christ made the full payment to the justice of God for sin, when he poured out his blood to death upon the cross; all the preceding acts of his humiliation were but preparatory to this. He was born to die ; he was sent into the world as a lamb bound with the bonds of an irreversible decree for a sacrifice. Christ himself, when he came into the world, vuiderstood this to be the errand he was sent on, Heb. x. 5 : ' When he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and burnt-offering thou wouldst not, but a body thou hast prepared me,' i. e., to be an expiatory sacrifice ; without this, all he had done would have been labour undone. No redemption, but by his blood, Eph. i. 7: ' In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our sins.'
ABOVE ALL, TAKING THE SHIELD OF FAITH. 407