Hence it is, that the faith and religion of the first world was in substance, the very Christian faith and Christian religion, one and the same way, and power of salvation; which oneness consists in this, that Christ, the same yesterday, to-day and for ever, was the same mediator between God and man from the beginning of the world, one and the same power of life and salvation to murdered Abel, as to martyred Stephen.
This faith from this original, was their peace with God thro’ Jesus Christ, the very same faith of which Christ saith, He that believeth in me shall never die. The same faith of which he again saith, If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink; he that believeth in me, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.
That this was the catholic, saving faith, common to all the [♦]patriarchal ages, we are assured by the Spirit of God in the epistles to the Corinthians and Hebrews, telling in express words, “They did all eat the same spiritual meat, did all drink the same spiritual drink, for they drank of that spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ.”
[♦] “patriarchial” replaced with “patriarchal”
Are we not told, that very same thing of the patriarchal generations, which Christ said to those that believed in him, that by eating his flesh, and drinking his blood, they have eternal life?
In the eleventh chapter of the epistle to the Hebrews, the same spirit, speaking of the patriarchal ages, saith, “All these died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were perswaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed they were strangers and pilgrims on earth,—who desired a better country, that is, an heavenly.”
Bishop Warburton is so out of humour with this whole chapter, thus full of patriarchal light and glory, that he gives it the heathenish name of the Palladium of the cause, which he had undertaken to demolish. And he accordingly attacks it with a number of critical inventions, that may as truly be called heathenish; for they are in direct opposition to all Christian theology.
He will have it, that the faith set forth in this whole chapter, is concerning a faith in the abstract, and not a specific faith in the Messiah. An invention as little grounded in the gospel, as goodness in the abstract, in opposition to specific goodness. Goodness in the abstract, if it hath any meaning, is all goodness, and therefore must have every species of goodness in it; so faith in the abstract, if it hath any meaning, is all faith, and therefore must have every species of faith in it.
His first reason, why this whole chapter is concerning a faith in the abstract, and not a faith in the Messiah, is taken from that definition of faith; “The substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
And yet this very definition, if it had been intended to give the most distinct idea of the nature of faith in the Messiah, could not have been better expressed, for there is every thing in it that can fully set forth that very faith. For if faith in a Messiah to come, must be a faith in things hoped for, and a reliance upon the certainty of things not seen; if this, and nothing but this, can be a true faith in a Messiah to come, how could it be more directly pointed at, than by making it to be the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen?