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dren, and make them more doubt of God's love, and of their justification, than any thing else; whereas I know nothing that gives them less cause.

(1.) In what true faith consists.

For first. What do you mean by feeling? If you mean the enjoyment of the things promised, and hoped for, by inward sense; this is to overthrow the nature, and put an end to the use of faith and hope. For faith is the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen, Heb. xi. 1. And the apostle saith, Hope that is seen, is not hope, Rom. viii. 24. Indeed, faith gives a present being of the thing promised to the believer, but it is a being, not in sense, but in hope and assured expectation of the thing promised: wherefore the apostle, speaking of our spiritual conversation on earth, saith, We walk by faith, not by sight, 2 Cor. v. 7. These two, faith and feeling, are opposite one to the other in this sense; for when we shall live by sight and feeling, then we shall cease to live by faith.

(2.) The difference between faith and assurance.

Secondly, If by feeling you mean a joyous and comfortable assurance that you are in God's favour, and that you shall be saved, and therefore, because you want this joyous assurance, you think you have no faith, you must know this is a false conclusion.

For faith, whereby you are saved and brought into a state of grace, and this comfortable assurance that you are in a state of grace and shall be saved, differ much from each other. It is true, assurance is an effect of faith. Yet it is not inseparable from the very being of faith, at all times. For you may have saving faith, yet at sometimes be without the comfortable assurance of salvation.

To believe in Christ to salvation is one thing, and to know assuredly that you shall be saved is another. For faith is a direct act of the reasonable soul, receiving Christ, and salvation offered by God with him. Assurance rises from a reflex act of the soul, namely, when the soul by self-inquiry, and the help of God's Spirit, can witness that it has the afore-mentioned grace of faith, whereby it can say, I know that I