00.2. To the Reader
What the scope of this treatise itself is, the title-page and the table that follows will sufficiently inform you: I shall only here acquaint you with what was mine, in a few words. I have by long experience observed many holy and precious souls, who have clearly and wholly given up themselves to Christ, to be saved by him his own way, and who at their first conversion (as also at times of desertion) have made an entire and immediate close with Christ alone for their justification, who yet in the ordinary course and way of their spirits have been too much carried away with the rudiments of Christ in their own hearts, and not after Christ himself: the stream of their more constant thoughts and deepest intentions running in the channel of reflecting upon, and searching into the gracious dispositions of their own hearts, so to bring down, or to raise up (as the apostle’s words are, Romans 10:8), and so get a sight of Christ by them. Whereas Christ himself is "nigh them" (as the apostle there speaks), if they would but nakedly look upon himself through thoughts of pure and single faith.
And although the use of our own graces, by way of sign and evidence of Christ in us, be allowed us by God, and is no way derogatory from Christ, if subordinated to faith; and so as that the heart be not too inordinate and immoderate in poring too long or too much on them, to fetch their comfort from them, unto a neglect of Christ: yet as pleasures that are lawful are unlawfully used when our thoughts and intentions are too long, or too frequent, or too vehement in them, so as to dead the heart, either to the present delighting in God, or pursuing after him, with the joint strength of our souls, as our only chief good: so an immoderate recourse unto signs (though barely considered as such), is as unwarrantable, when thereby we are diverted and taken off from a more constant actual exercise of daily thoughts of faith towards Christ immediately, as he is set forth to be our righteousness, either by the way of assurance (which is a kind of enjoymIn his Death, Resurrection, Ascension, Sitting at God’s right hand, & Intercession, As the CAUSE of Justification, and the OBJECT of Justifying Faithent of him), or recumbency and renewed adherence in pursuit after him.
And yet the minds of many are so wholly taken up with their own hearts, that (as the Psalmist says of God) Christ "is scarce in all their thoughts." But let these consider what a dishonor this must necessarily be unto Christ, that his train and favorites (our graces) should have a fuller court and more frequent attendance from our hearts than himself, who is the "King of Glory." And likewise what a shame also it is for believers themselves, who are his spouse, to look upon their husband no otherwise but by reflection and at second hand, through the intervention and assistance of their own graces, as mediators between him and them.
The reason of this defect, among many others, I have attributed partly to a "barrenness" (as Peter’s phrase is) "in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ," and of such things revealed about him, as might be matter for faith to work and feed upon: as also to a want of skill (while men want assurance) to bend and bow, and subjugate to the use of a faith for mere adherence, all those things that they know and hear of Christ as made justification unto us. It being in experience a matter of the greatest difficulty (and yet certainly most feasible and attainable), for such a faith as can yet only rely and cast itself upon Christ for justification, yet rightly to take in, and so to make use of all that which is or may be said of Christ, his being made righteousness to us, in his death, and resurrection, as to quicken and strengthen itself in such acts of mere adherence, until assurance itself comes, for whose use and entertainment all truths lie more fair and directly to be received by it. They all serve as a fore-right wind to assurance of faith, to fill the sails thereof, and carry on with a more full and constant gale (as the word used by the apostle for assurance imports), whereas to the faith of a poor recumbent, they serve but as a half sidewind, unto which yet, through skill, the sails of such a faith may be so turned and applied towards it, as to carry a soul on with much ease and quietness unto Christ the desired haven; it notwithstanding waiting all that while for a more fair and full gale of assurance in the end.