No church without his blood, Acts xx. 28 : 'The church of God, which he hath purchased with his blood :' E latere Christi moricntiii ex f Hit ecdesia. The church is taken out of dying Jesus's side, as Eve out of sleeping Adam's. Clmst did not redeem and save poor soids by sitting in majesty on liis heavenly throne, but by hanging on the shameful cross, under the tormenting hand of man's fury, and God's just wrath. And therefore the poor soul, that would have pardon of sin, is directed to place his faith not only on Christ, but on bleeding Clirist, Rom. iii. 25 : ' Whom God liath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood.' Thirdly, Tlie act of faith upon this object : and that is, resting on Clu-ist crucified for pardon and life. I know there are many acts of the soul antecedent to this, witliout which the creature can never truly exercise this. As knowledge, especially of God and Clu-ist, upon whose autho- rity and testimony it relies: 'I know whom I have believed,' 2 Tim. i. 12. None will readily trust a strangei-, that he is wholly unacquainted with. Abra- ham went indeed he knew not whither, but he did not go with he knew not who. The great thing that God laboured to instruct Abraham in, and satisfy him with, was the knowledge of his own glorious self, who he was; that he might take his word, and rely on it, how harsh and improbable, yea, impossible soever it might sound in sense or reason's ear : ' I am the Almighty God ; walk before me, and be thou perfect.' Secondly, Assent to the truth of the word of God. If this foundation-stone be not laid, faith's building cannot go on. Who will trust him that he dares not think speaks true ? Thirdly, A sense of our own vileness and emptiness. By the one to see our demerit, what we deserve, hell and damnation ; by the other our own impotency, how little we can con- tribute, yea, just nothing, to our own reconciliation. I join them together, be- cause the one ariseth out of the other ; sense of this emptiness comes from the deep apprehension a soul hath of the other's fulness in him. You never knew a man full of self-confidence and self-abasement together. The conscience cannot abound with the sense of sin, and the heart with self-conceit at the same time. 'When the commandment came, sin revived, and I died,' Rom. vii. 9. That is, when the commandment came in the accusations of it to his conscience, sin, that like a sleepy lion had lain still, and he secure and confident by it, when that began to roar in his conscience, then he died ; that is, his vain con- fidence of himself gave up the ghost. Both these are necessary to faith : sense of sin, like the smart of a wound, to make the creature think of a plaster to ciu-e it: and sense of emptiness and insufficiency in himself or any creature to do the cure, necessary to make him go out to Christ for cure. We do not go abroad to beg what we have of our own within doors. These, with some other, are necessaiy to faith ; but the receiving of Christ, and resting on Christ, is that act of faith to which justification is promised, John iii. 18 : ' He that be- lieveth on him is not condemned, but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.' Now every one that assents to the truth of what the Scripture saith of Christ, doth not believe on Christ. No, this believing on Christ implies an union of the soul to Christ, and fiduciary recumbency on Christ. Therefore we are bid to take hold of Christ, Isa. xxvii. 5, (who is there called God's strength, as elsewhere his arm,) 'that we may make peace with God, and we shall make peace with him.' It is not the sight of a man's arm stretched out to a man in the water will save him from drowning, but the taking hold of it. Christ is a stone ; faith builds upon Christ for salvation ; and how, but by lay- ing its whole weight and expectation of mercy on him ? What Paul, 2 Tim. i. 12, calls believing, in the foi'mer part of the verse, he calls, in the latter part, a conunittiug to him to be kept against that day. The foiu'th aiul last branch in the description, is the warrant and seciu'ity that faith goes upon in this act. And this it takes from the ])romise : indeed there is no way how God can be conceived to contract a debt to his creature, but by promise. There are ways for men to become debtors one to another, though never any promise passed from them. The father is a debtor to his child, and owes him love, provision, and nurtm-e. The child a debtor to his parent, and owes him honour and obcMlience, though neither of them promised this to each other. Much more doth the creature stand deep in (Jod's debt-book, and owes himself, with all he
428 ABOVE ALL, TAKING THE SHIELD OF FAITH.