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to deceive you, with regard to that grand indispensable and prime article, the Being of God, which is undoubtedly the foundation of all religion pure and undefiled, consider and bear about with you, the meaning of the Holy Ghost in these words, He that cometh to God must believe that he is.

THE WORDS EXPLAINED.

Now, when a person is spoken of as coming to God, no man can be so foolish and absurd as to think of bodily motion from one place to another: for God, you know, is equally and essentially present in all places and times; neither can you go any whither from his presence, nor approach nearer to him, throw your bodies into what kind soever of motions or postures you please.

So, when we hear such expressions as these, looking to God; coming to him; drawing near to him; flying to him for refuge; cleaving to him; running to him as to a high tower; hiding one's self under his wings; taking hold of him; leaning, depending, and resting upon him; and other like forms of speech, we all know they are not literally to be understood of bodily motions or actions; but only as figurative resemblances and signs, which the Holy Ghost hath chosen, to express his own invisible workings in the spirits of those men whom he maketh willing in the day of his power, working in them both to will and to do, of his own good pleasure.

Thus, we may condescend upon an instance or two; "Looking to the Lord, fleeing from the wrath to come, and laying hold upon eternal life," we find explained by "believing on the Lord Jesus Christ, that we may be saved."

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And as to the meaning of that particular expression, coming to God," the Lord hath spoken full to the point, John vi. 35, where, comparing himself to bread and water, affording eternal life to the eater and drinker

thereof, he says, "He that cometh to me shall never hunger, and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.' Now, surely we come to him as the bread of life, in the same manner that we come to him as the water of life. And here you may perceive with your own eyes, that we come to him and receive everlasting life, when we believe him, or believe on him, for to believe him, and to believe on him, do signify precisely the same thing; as is evident from John iii. 36. "He that believeth on the Son, hath everlasting life; and he that believeth not the Son, shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him." Hence it is evident, that coming to God signifies to believe God; and in the text, it signifies also to approach God in worship under the influence of this faith: so that the meaning of the sentence will appear to be as if it had been written, He that really worshippeth God must" of necessity" believe that he is."

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The word believing, among men, plainly signifies, "Our holding of a thing for truth which is told us by another person, merely on account of that person's credibility or authority." If the authority or testimony on which we believe be only human, as when a man declares a matter to his neighbour, the belief arising from thence is merely a human belief, credit, persuasion, assurance, faith, or inward evidence, communicated to the mind by means of the outward testimony for all these are only different names for the same thing, which is the belief of a truth or a falsehood, according to the truth or falsehood of the testimony supporting it.

When we believe on the testimony or authority of God, this is divine faith, assurance, or certainty, in which there can be no falsehood; but only all pure truth, because God himself is the Testifier, with whom it is impossible to lie or deceive.

Now, it having pleased the Father of spirits, who knows the frame of every heart which he hath created, to speak to us of the heavenly and spiritual things in

the forms of human language, which he himself hath given us for the mutual communication of our thoughts, and which we naturally understand: when he useth any of our well-known terms, such as believing and hoping, for instance, thereby to discover to our apprehensions his own hitherto and otherwise unknown and eternal truths, it is manifest he would have us to take up his meaning in these words, according to their plain natural use and common acceptation, in the ordinary course of life and conversation among mankind. Otherwise, we behoved to say, (which God forbid !) that the Spirit of truth deceiveth and mocketh the world, when he crieth aloud by the mouth of all his inspired ambassadors, and saith to every creature under heaven, "Be it known to you, O men-that through Jesus Christ, is proclaimed to you the forgiveness of sins: and by him all that believe are justified-and saved— Except ye believe-ye shall die in your sins."

It is true, indeed, that though divine faith, considered in itself, resembles in all respects that which is human; yet it differs in these following peculiar and essential circumstances: for divine faith is not only distinguished from human, as said before, because it rests upon the testimony and authority of God alone, but also because God, the author of the testimony, is equally and solely, in his own special manner, the author of its manifestation as a truth in the conscience of the believer; and also, because it amounts to absolute certainty of assurance, without any mixture of doubt in the nature of it, being universally, wherever it is, without any exception, distinguished from a mere probability, or matter of doubtful disputation, by having God himself manifested in the conscience for its evidence. In proof whereof it is written, "Flesh and blood hath not revealed this to thee, but my Father which is in heaven-We believe and are sure that thou art that Christ the Son of the living God-I know and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus-If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater-Ye have

an anointing from the Holy One, and ye know all things -I have not written to you because you know not the truth; but because ye know it, and that no lie is of the truth-He that believeth hath the witness in himself-faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God."

Here, then, we may rest upon it, that divine faith does not come by human researches and reasonings; unless it should be said, that these and the word of God are the same thing; which were a direct contradiction to the Holy Ghost, as shall afterwards more fully appear.

Wherefore, let every man look to the ground of his faith, and see if it be the very record of God, imprinted by the finger of God upon his heart, and if his heart continue to bear a pure impression of the words of truth. For the truth of God, believed in the heart, bears the same relation and proportion to the truth declared in the word of God, as the figure and graving upon the wax to the same figure and graving upon the impressing seal.

Thus, O believers, God even your Father fulfils his covenant, manifests himself, and writes his laws of love in your hearts, and seals you by his Spirit to the day of redemption. So God hath spoken, and so have ye believed; that your faith might not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the demonstration of the Holy Ghost, and the power of God. Even as an apostle hath said, (and all believers have like precious and equally honourable faith with the apostles,) "I know whom I have believed. And he that believeth God hath set to his seal that God is true." Thus, unless he hath set his seal to a blank, to a nothing-and believeth not That which in very deed he believeth, and knoweth not what he actually knoweth, we must be allowed to say, that every believer of God hath in himself, and not in another, which were impossible, undoubted certainty, and that by means of the divine testimony, of that which he believeth, the reality whereof, while he be

lieves it, he can no more hesitate about, than he can hesitate about the reality of his own existence. "For he that cometh to God must believe," or be assured on the testimony of God himself, "that he," this God whom he hath believed, "is" even what he hath declared himself in his word to be.

THE METHOD.

For the further illustration of these words, that we may have in readiness to stop the mouths of gainsayers, for they are many, and an answer to give every one that asketh us concerning our faith in the Being of God; let us now, having explained in some measure the meaning of coming and believing; through the directing Spirit of grace and truth upon our hearts, proceed, with meekness and wisdom, boldly to search the scriptures; that we may receive nothing upon trust but only that which cometh out of the mouth of God, and see with our own eyes, what it hath pleased him to discover of himself by the light of his own everlasting word of revelation, and so have all our zeal according to knowledge: observing, as we go along, the use of the doctrine, and the utter impossibility of our having this knowledge of God, more or less, in any other way but in the revelation which cometh from God himself: which revelation to us, is wholly contained in his word; and then, after confirming the point, by answering the objections of adversaries, conclude with a general improvement of the whole subject.

May the Lord help, and, by his own good hand upon us, safely conduct and pilot us through all those hidden or manifest rocks of perdition, whereupon so many thousands who have gone before us, of professed inquirers into the Divine Nature, have so miserably struck and foundered.-Would to God we may reap the advantage of their ruin! For why should not the remains of their wreck, so to speak, floating as it were before our eyes in the history of all ages, serve as fire

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