222 THE soul's conflict.
faith desires healing mercy as well as pardoning mercy, and then to heaven and all things that may bring us thither.
By all this we see that it is not so easy a matter as the world takes it, to bring God and the soul together by trusting on him. It must be effected by the mighty power of God, raising up the soul to himself, to lay hold upon the glorious power, goodness, and other excellencies that are in him, Eph. i. 20. God is not only the object, but the working cause of our trust ; for such is our proneness to live by sense and natm-al reason, and such is the strangeness and height of divine things, such our incUnation to a self-sufficiency and contentment in the creature, and so hard a matter is it to take off the soul from false bottoms, by reason of our unacquaintance with God and his ways ; besides, such guilt still remains upon our souls for our rebellion and unkindness towards God, that it makes us afraid to entertain serious thoughts of him ; and so gi-eat is the distance betwixt his infinite majesty, before whom the very angels do cover their faces, and us, by reason of the unspiritualness of our natiu-e, being opposite to his most absolute purity, that we cannot be brought to any familiarity with the Lord, so as to come into his holy presence with confidence to rely upon him, or any comfort to have communion with him, till our hearts be sanctified and lifted up by di\dne vigour infused into them.
Though there be some inclination, by reason of the remainder of the image of God in us, to an outward moral obedience of the law, yet, alas, we have not only no seeds of evangelical truths and of faith to believe them, but an utter contrariety in our natures, as corrupted, either to this, or any other good. When our conscience is once awaked, we meditate nothing but fears and terrors, and dare not so much as think of an angry God, but rather how we may escape and fly from him. Therefore, together with a deep consideration of the grounds we have of trusting God, it is necessary we should think of the indisposition of our hearts unto it, especially when there is greatest need thereof, that so'our hearts may be forced to put up that petition of the disciples to God, ' Lord, increase our faith,' Luke xvii. 5 ; Lord, help us against our unbelieving hearts, &c. By prayer and holy thoughts stirred up in .the use of the means, we shall feel divine strength infused and conveyed into our souls to trust.
The more care we ought to have to maintain our trust in God, because, besides the hardness of it, it is a radical and fundamental grace ; it is, as it were, the mother-root and gi'eat vein whence the exercise of all graces have their beginning and strength. The decay of a plant, though it appears fijst fi'om the withering of the twigs and branches, yet it arises chiefly from a decay in the root ; so the decay of gi-ace may appear to the view, first in our company, carriage, and speeches, &c. ; but the primitive and original ground of the same is weakness of faith in the heart ; therefore, it should be our wisdom, especially, to look to the feeding of the root. We must, 1, Look that our principles and foundation be good ; and, 2, Build strongly upon them ; and, 3, Repair our building eveiy day as continual breaches shall be made upon us, either by corruptions and temptations from within or without ; and we shall find that the main breaches of our Hves arise either from false principles or doubts, or mindlessness of those that are true. All sin is a turning of the soul from God to some other seeming good, but this proceeds from a fonner turning of the soul from God by dis- trust. As faith is the first return of the soul to God, so the first degree of departing from God is b}' infidelity, and from thence comes a departure by other sins, by which, as sin is of a winding nature, our unbeUef more in-
THE soul's conflict. 223
creaseth, and so the rent and breach betwixt our souls and God is made greater still, which is that Satan would have, till at length, by departing further and fm-ther from him, we come to have that peremptoiy sentence of everlasting departure pronounced against us ; so that our departure from God now is a degree to separation for ever from him. Therefore, it is Satan's main care to come between God and the soul, that so unloosing us from God, we might more easily be drawn to other things ; and if he draws us to other things, it is but only to unloose our hearts from God the more ; for he well knows, whilst our souls cleave close to God, there is no prevail- ing against us by any created policy or power.
It was the cursed policy of Balaam to advise Balak to di'aw the people from God, by foi-nication, that so God might be di*a'«'n from them. The sin of their base aflections crept into the very spirits of then- mind, and drew them from God to idolatry.- Bodily adultery makes way for spiritual. An unbelieving heart is an ill heart, and a treacherous heart, because it makes us to 'depart from God, the living God,' &c., Heb. iii. 12. Therefore we should especially take heed of it as we love our lives, yea, om* best life, which ariseth from the imion of our souls with God.