confounded when thou producest thy faith, and hopest to save thyself with this, that thou believest on the Lord Jesus, but shalt have thy confidence rejected, and God tell thee to thy teeth, it is not faith, but a lie in thy right hand that thou hast got ; and therefore he will not accept the payment, though it be Christ himself thou offerest to lay down ; nay, that he will give thee up into the tormentor's hand, and that not only for not believing, but also for counter- feiting the King of heaven's coin, and setting his name on thy false money ; which thou dost by pretending to faith, when it is a false one thou hast in thy bosom. This were enough to awaken your care in the trial of your faith ; but to give some further weight to the exhortation, we shall cast in these three considerations.
Section I. — First, As thy faith is, so are all thy other graces. As a man's marriage is, so are all his children, legitimate, or illegitimate. Thus, as our marriage is to Christ, so all our graces. Now, it is faith by which we are married to Christ. ' I have espoused you to one husband,' saith Paul to the Corinthians, 2 Cor. xi. 2. How, but by their faith? It is faith whereby the soul gives its consent to take Christ for her husband. Now, if our faith be false, then our marriage to Christ is feigned ; and if that be feigned, then all our pretended graces are base-born, how goodly an outside soever they have, (as a bastard ^nay have a fair face,) they are illegitimate ; our humility, patience, temperance, all bastards ; and you know, ' a bastard was not to enter into the congregation,' Deut. xxiii. 2. No more shall any bastard grace enter into the congregation of the just in heaven. He that hath children of his own will not make another's bastard his heir. God hath children of his own, to inherit heaven's glory, in whose hearts he hath by his own Spirit begotten those hea- venly graces which do truly resemble his own holy nature ; surely he will never settle it upon strangers, counterfeit believers, that are the devil's brats and bye-blows.
Secondly, Consider, the excellency of true faith makes false faith so much the more odious. Because a king's son is an extraordinary personage, therefore it is so high a crime for an ignoble person to comiterfeit himself to be such a one. It is by faith that we become the sons of God, John i. 12. And what a high presumption is it then, that by a false faith thou committest ? Thou pretendest thyself to be a child of God, when no heaven-blood runs in thy veins, but hast more reason to look for thy kindred in hell, and derive thy pedigree from Satan ; this passeth for no less than blasphemy in the account of the Scripture, Rev. ii. 9 : 'I know the blasphemy of those who say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan.' God loathes such with his heart. A false friend is v/orse than an open enemy in man's judgment ; and a hypocriti- cal Judas more abhoi-red by God than a bloody Pilate ; either, therefore, get true faith, or pretend to none. The ape, because he hath the face of a man, but not the soul of a man, is tlierefore the most ridiculous of all creatures : and of all sinners, none will be put more to shame at the last day than such as have aped and imitated the believer in some exterior postures of profession, but never had the spirit of a believer, so as to perform one vital act of faith. The psalmist tells us of some, ' whose image God will despise,' Psa. Ixxiii. 20. It is spoken chiefly of the wicked man's temporary prosperity, which, for its short continu- ance, is compared to the image or representation of a thing in the fancy of a sleep- ing man that then is busy, and pleaseth us with many fine pleasing objects, but all are lost when our sleep leaves us. This God will despise at the great day, when he shall not give heaven and glory by the estates and honours that men had in the world, but tumble them down to hell, if graceless, as well as the poorest beggar in the world. But, there is another sort of persons, whose image God will at that day despise more than these, and that is, the image of all tem- porary believers and unsound professors, who have a fantastical faith, which they set up like an image in their imaginations, and dance about it with as many self-pleasing thoughts as a man doth that is dreaming himself to be some great prince ; but this great idol shall then be broken, and the worship- pers of it hissed down to hell with greater shame than any other.
Thirdly, None stand at greater disadvantage for the obtaining a true faith, than he who flatters himself with a false one. ' Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? there is more hope of a fool than of him,' Prov. xxvi. 12; that is,
ABOVE ALL, TAKING THE SHIELD OF FAITH. /^^g