What need I prove it ? For all things abovef faith are above nature. The objects of faith are above nature, which are merely | mysteries. There is no seed of faith in us at all. It is harder to believe than to fulfil the law ; for there are seed of all commandments of the moral law, some impressions of it are yet left in our natures to serve God in some measure, to do justice. So that the moi'al men and pagans have been excellent in that kind. But to believe requires the revelation of the objects, which are Bupernatural things, above nature, contrar}' to carnal reason. Faith hath no friend at all in us. There is a cursed enmity of nature against every article of faith to call the foundation itself into question ; and we are prone to believe our own lying hearts and Satan in time of temptation, rather than divine truths. To believe the favour of God to a sinner, the heart will not conceive of it, unless the Spirit of God sets down to the soul that it is so. To believe life everlasting and glory, they be things above nature. Unless they were revealed by the Spirit, who w^ould have believed these things ? And therefore it must be power divine that must raise the heart above itself. Nothing can work above its own sphere. Nature cannot rise higher than nature ; a river cannot rise higher than the spring from whence it ariscth ; nothing can do above its activity. Natural things cannot apprehend spiritual things. The acts of faith are above nature. For a soul, a guilty soul, a soul under the guilt of sin, to apprehend the favour and mercy of a just and holy God, unless there be a Spirit to raise the soul above all guilt, and to see more mercy in God than sin in itself, it must be a supernatural act to do this. To overcome the world, all temptations on the right hand of pleasure and profit, and on the left hand fear and danger, is above nature. But faith enableth a man to overcome the world."' There- fore it must be the spirit of faith that enables him to overcome himself, the world, and the prince of the world and his temptations, where the object and the act is supernatural. Therefore surely we must have a spirit above our own. A man must be more than a man, he must be a spiritual man, that doth the things that faith enableth him to do. Therefore faith is wrought by the Spirit ; for a man to be able to conquer God himself, by his word and promise, it must be by God. And this must be by a spirit of faith. * That is, ' Mediterranean.'— G, t Qu. ' of ' ?— Ed. J That is, = altogether.— G.
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COMMENTARY ON
As our Saviour Christ overcome by the woman of Canaan, ' 0 -woman, great is thy faith,' Mat. xv. 28. Antl then Satan especially joineth against this grace of faith, because it most opposeth him in all his temptations and methods. Moreover, wo must have a Spirit of faith not only to work faith in us, but likewise in every act and exercise of faith ; for though we have the grace of faith, we cannot act and raise ourselves upon occasion, as the object is present, and duties to be done by the Spirit. ' He giveth both the will and the deed,' Phil. ii. 13. And for all these reasons there is a necessity of the Spirit to work faith.
Therefore faith is a gift of the Spirit. ' To you it is given to believe,' Mat. xiii. 11. ' Faith is not of ourselves, but the gift of God,' Eph. ii. 8, and a rare, excellent, and peculiar gift it is. The point is plain, that this excellent grace of faith, whereby we go out of ourselves and fetch all with- out, it is i'rom the Spirit of God, which indeed is first a Spirit of faith before it is a Spirit of love and patience. This is the first work of the Spirit ; the first work of the Spirit is a spirit of faith, and then of love, and patience, and contentation with the condition, but first the spirit of faith.
Use 1. And if it be so that faith comes from the Spirit of God, and groweth not in ourselves, then we must learn whither to go for it ; to pray, * Lord, increase our faith,' Luke xvii. 5. If we want it, to expect it in the use of sanctified means, even to look for it from above. ' Every good and perfect gift cometh from the Father of Hghts,' James i. 17, and therefore this excellent gift of all gifts. And account it an excellent grace, and that will make us sue more for it. We must have a Spirit of faith, else all things are nothing, for that is a fundamental grace. Therefore look to the power of the Spirit of God for it, the Spirit being the agent of the Father and the Son here below. As it proceeds from the father and the Son, so it works from the Father and the Son ; and by faith assures us of the love of the Father and the Son, for it knoweth what is in the breast of the Father and the Son.