November 30

Building up yourselves on your most holy faith.—Jude 20.

Our faith must be strong, vigorous, active, confident, and patient, reasonable, and unalterable, without doubting, and fear, and partiality. For the faith of very many men seems a duty so weak and indifferent, is so often untwisted by violence, or ravelled and entangled in weak discourses, or so false and fallacious by its mixture of interest, that though men usually put most confidence in the pretenses of faith, yet no pretenses are more unreasonable.

1. Our faith and persuasion in religion is most commonly imprinted in us by our country, and we are Christians at the same rate as we are English or Spaniards, or of such a family; our reason is first stained and spotted with the dye of our kindred and country, and our education puts it in grain, and whatsoever is against this we are taught to call a temptation: in the mean time, we call these accidental and artificial persuasions by the name of faith, which is only the air of the country, or an heirloom of the family, or the daughter of a present interest. Whatever it was that brought us in, we are to take care, that when we are in, our faith be noble, and stand upon its proper and most reasonable foundation; it concerns us better to understand that religion, which we call faith, and that faith whereby we hope to be saved.

2. The faith and the whole religion of many men is the production of fear. Men are threatened into their persuasions, and the iron rod of a tyrant converts whole nations to his principles, when the wise discourses of the teacher of religion seem dull as sleep, and unprevailing as the talk of childhood. That is but a deceitful faith, which our fear begot, and our weakness nurses, and brings up. The religion of a Christian is immortal, and certain, and persuasive, and infallible, and unalterable, and therefore needs not be received by human and weak convoys, like worldly and mortal religions: that faith is lukewarm, and easy, and trifling, which is only a belief of that, which a man wants courage to disbelieve.

3. The faith of many is such, that they dare not trust it: they will talk of it, and serve vanity, or their lust, or their company, or their interest by it, but when the matter comes to a pinch, they dare not trust it; when Antisthenes was initiated into the mysteries of Orpheus, the priest told him, that all that were of that religion, immediately after death, should be perfectly happy; the philosopher asked, Why he did not die, if he believed what he said? Such a faith as that was fine to talk of; but to die, is a more material consideration, and to be chosen upon no grounds, but such a faith, which really comes from God, and can secure our reason, and our choice, and perfect our interest and designs. And it hath been long observed concerning those bold people, that use their reason against God that gave it, they have one persuasion in their health, and another in their sickness and fears; when they are well, they blaspheme; when they die, they are superstitious. It was Bias's case, when he was poisoned by the atheisms of Theodorus, no man died more like a coward and a fool; "as if the gods were to come and go as Bias pleased to think and talk:" so one said of his folly. If God be to be feared when we die, he is also to be feared in all our life, for he can for ever make us die; he that will do it once, and that when he please, can always. And therefore, all those persuasions against God, and against religion, are only the production of vicious passions, of drink or fancy, of confidence and ignorance, of boldness or vile appetites, of vanity or fierceness, of pride or flatteries; and atheism is a proportion so unnatural and monstrous, that it can never dwell in a man's heart as faith does, in health and sickness, in peace and war, in company and alone, at the beginning and at the end of a design; but comes from weak principles, and leaves shallow and superficial impressions: but when men endeavor to strengthen and confirm it, they only strive to make themselves worse than they can. Naturally, a man can not be an atheist: for he that is so, must have something within him that is worse either than man or devil.

He that means to build himself upon, and to please God by his faith, must have his faith begotten in him by the Spirit of God, and proper arguments of religion. He must profess it without fear, he must dare to die for it, and resolve to live according to its institution. He must by it regulate his life, and value it above his life. He must "contend earnestly for the faith," by the most prevailing arguments—holy living, zeal, patience, prayer, and increasing in the knowledge and love of God, and his Son Jesus Christ.