We must distinguish the life and the soul; though there is a certain sense in which the life may be called the soul; that is, the life is the soul of the body.  But the soul is the life of the man, and Christ is the life of the soul.  Now the spirit of man, the spirit subsistent, is deeper than both, not only deeper than the body and its life, but deeper than the soul; and the Spirit descendent and supersistent is higher than both.  In the regenerated man the height and the depth become one—­the Spirit communeth with the spirit—­and the soul is the ‘inter-ens’, or ‘ens inter-medium’ between the life and the spirit;—­the ‘participium’, not as a compound, however, but as a ’medium indifferens’—­in the same sense in which heat may be designated as the indifference between light and gravity.  And what is the Reason?—­The spirit in its presence to the understanding abstractedly from its presence in the will,—­nay, in many, during the negation of the latter.  The spirit present to man, but not appropriated by him, is the reason of man:—­the reason in the process of its identification with the will is the spirit.

Ib. pp. 63-4.

Can we deny that it is unbelief of those things that causeth this neglect and forgetting of them?  The discourse, the tongue of men and angels cannot beget divine belief of the happiness to come; only He that gives it, gives faith likewise to apprehend it, and lay hold upon it, and upon our believing to be filled with joy in the hopes of it.

Most true, most true!

Ib. p. 68.

In spiritual trials that are the sharpest and most fiery of all, when the furnace is within a man, when God doth not only shut up his loving-kindness from its feeling, but seems to shut it up in hot displeasure, when he writes bitter things against it; yet then to depend upon him, and wait for his salvation, this is not only a true, but a strong and very refined faith indeed, and the more he smites, the more to cleave to him. * * * Though I saw, as it were, his hand lifted up to destroy me, yet from that same hand would I expect salvation.

Bless God, O my soul, for this sweet and strong comforter!  It is the honey in the lion.

Ib. p. 75.

This natural men may discourse of, and that very knowingly, and give a kind of natural credit to it as to a history that may be true; but firmly to believe that there is divine truth in all these things, and to have a persuasion of it stronger than of the very things we see with our eyes; such an assent as this is the peculiar work of the Spirit of God, and is certainly saving faith.

‘Lord I believe:  help thou my unbelief!’ My reason acquiesces, and I believe enough to fear.  O, grant me the belief that brings sweet hope!

Ib. p. 76.