*Without faith we cannot be thus saved. For we cannot rightly serve God, unless we love him. And we cannot love him, unless we know him; neither can we know God, unless by faith. Therefore salvation by faith, is only in other words, the love of God by the knowledge of God: or, the recovery of the image of God, by a true spiritual acquaintance with him.
4. Faith, in general, is, a divine, supernatural ἔλεγχος[¹] of things not seen, not discoverable by our bodily senses, as being either past, future or spiritual. Justifying faith implies, not only a divine ἔλεγχος, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, but a sure trust and confidence, that Christ died for my sins, that he loved me and gave himself for me. And the moment a penitent sinner believes this, God pardons and absolves him.
[¹] Evidence, or Conviction.
And as soon as his pardon or justification is witnessed to him by the Holy Ghost, he is saved. He loves God and all mankind. He has the mind that was in Christ, and power to walk as he also walked. From that time (unless he make shipwreck of the faith) salvation gradually increases in his soul. For so is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground.—And it springeth up, first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear.
5. The first sowing of this seed, I cannot conceive to be other than instantaneous: whether I consider experience, or the word of God, or the very nature of the thing—however I contend not for a circumstance, but the substance; if you can attain it another way, do. Only see that you do attain it; for if you fall short, you perish everlastingly.
*This beginning of that vast, inward change, is usually termed The new birth. Baptism is the outward sign of this inward grace, which is supposed by our church, to be given with, and through that sign to all infants, and to those of riper years, if they repent and believe the gospel. But how extremely idle are the common disputes on this head? I tell a sinner, “You must be born again.” “No, say you, he was born again in baptism. Therefore he cannot be born again now.” Alas! What trifling is this? What if he was then a child of God? He is now manifestly a child of the devil. For the works of his father he doth. Therefore do not play upon words. He must go through an entire change of heart. In one not yet baptized, you yourself would call that change, the new birth. In him, call it what you will; but remember mean time, that if either he or you die without it, your baptism will be so far from profiting you, that it will greatly increase your damnation.
6. The author of faith and salvation is God alone. It is he that works in us both to will and to do. He is the sole giver of every good gift, and the sole author of every good work. There is no more of power than of merit in man; but as all merit is in the Son of God, in what he has done and suffered for us, so all power is in the Spirit of God. And therefore every man, in order to believe unto salvation, must receive the Holy Ghost. This is essentially necessary to every Christian, not in order to his working miracles, but in order to faith, peace, joy, and love, the ordinary fruits of the Spirit.
Although no man on earth can explain the particular manner, wherein the Spirit of God works on the soul, yet whosoever has these fruits, cannot but know and feel that God has wrought them in his heart.
Sometimes, he acts more particularly on the understanding, opening or inlightening it, (as the scripture speaks) and revealing, unveiling, discovering to us the deep things of God.
Sometimes he acts on the wills and affections of men; withdrawing them from evil, inclining them to good, inspiring, (breathing as it were) good thoughts into them: so it has frequently been exprest, by an easy, natural metaphor, strictly analogous to רוח, πνεῦμα, spiritus, and the words used in most modern tongues also, to denote the third person in the ever-blessed Trinity. But however it be exprest, it is certain, all true faith, and the whole work of salvation, every good thought, word and work, is altogether by the operation of the Spirit of God.