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the wounding of your conscience, and to the working of true humiliation, causing the heart to relent, and to desire to know how to be saved? And if after this you have denied yourself, as to your own wisdom and will, power and goodness, and received and rested on Christ alone for salvation, according to the nature of true faith, as follows, then you have faith.

If you doubt you were never sufficiently humbled, then read Section X., of this Chapter.

Secondly, Consider rightly the nature and proper acts of faith, lest you conceive that to be faith which is not, and that to be no faith which is.

You may know wherein true saving faith consists, by this which follows: whereas, man being fallen into a state of condemnation by reason of sin, thereby broke the covenant of works, it pleased God to ordain a new covenant, the covenant of grace, establishing it in his only Son, Christ Jesus, expressing the full tenor of this his covenant in the gospel, wherein he makes a gracious and free offer of the Lord Jesus Christ, in whom this covenant is established, and with him the covenant itself, with all its unspeakable blessings, unto man. Now when a man burdened with his sin, understanding this offer, gives credit, and assents thereunto, because it is true, and approves it, and consents to it, both because it is good for him to embrace it, and because it is the will and commandment of God, that he should consent for his part, and trust to it; when therefore a man receives Christ Jesus thus offered, together with the whole covenant, in all its duties and privileges, so far as he understands it; resolving to rest on that part of the covenant made and promised on God's part, and to stand to every branch of the covenant, to be performed on his part; thus to embrace the covenant of grace, and to receive Christ, in whom it is confirmed, is to believe.

This offer of Christ, and the receiving him by faith, may clearly be expressed by an offer of peace and favour, made by a king unto a woman, that is a rebellious subject; by making offer of a marriage between her and his only son, the heir apparent to the crown,