for the living God.”  Psalm 43:2; 63:1; 143:6.  Well, what shall he done for this man?  Will his God humor him, and answer his desires?  Mark what follows:  “When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none”—­when all the promises seem to be dry, and like clouds that return after the rain—­“and their tongue faileth for thirst, I the Lord will hear them, I the God of Israel will not forsake them.”  Aye, but, Lord, what wilt thou do to quench their thirst?  “I will open rivers,” saith he, “in high places, and fountains in the midst of the valleys:  I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water.”  Behold, here are rivers and fountains, a pool and springs, and all to quench the thirst of them that thirst for God.

What greater argument to holiness, than to see the scriptures so furnished with promises of grace and salvation by Christ, that a man can hardly cast his eye into the Bible but he espies one or another of them?  Who would not live in such a house, or he a servant to such a prince; who, besides his exceeding in good conditions, has gold and silver as common in his palace as stones are by the highway side?

It sometimes so falleth out, that the very promise we have thought could not reach us to comfort us by any means, has at another time swallowed us up with joy unspeakable:  Christ the true prophet has the right understanding of the word as an Advocate, has pleaded it before God against Satan; and having overcome him at the common law, he has sent to let us know it by his good Spirit, to our comfort and the confusion of our enemies.

XVIII.  CHRISTIAN GRACES.

Faith.

Faith!  Peter saith, faith, in the very trial of it, is much more precious than gold that perisheth.  If so, what is the worth or value that is in the grace itself?

Faith is so great an artist in arguing and reasoning with the soul, that it will bring over the hardest heart that it hath to deal with.  It will bring to my remembrance at once, both my vileness against God, and his goodness towards me; it will show me, that though I deserve not to breathe in the air, yet God will have me an heir of glory.

Faith is the mother-grace, the root-grace, the grace that has all others in the bowels of it, and that from which all others flow.

Faith will suck sweetness out of God’s rod; but unbelief can find no comfort in his greatest mercies.

Faith makes great burdens light; but unbelief maketh light ones intolerably heavy.

Faith helpeth us when we are down; but unbelief throws us down when we are up.

Unbelief may be called the white devil; for it often-times, in its mischievous doing in the soul, shows as if it was an angel of light; yea, it acteth like a counsellor of heaven.

It is that sin above all others that most suiteth the wisdom of our flesh.  The wisdom of our flesh thinks it prudent to question a while, to stand back a while, to hearken to both sides a while; and not to be rash, sudden, or unadvised in too bold a presuming upon Jesus Christ.