God's Law condemns me, my own Conscience accuseth me, and Justice will have its due.
3. The want of a Mediator, or some suitable Person, which may stand between the Sinner and God. If on my part there be unworthiness, and on Gods part exact and strict, and severe Justice; and withall I see no Mediator, which I may go unto, and first close withall before I deal with the infinite glory of God himself, how should I but despair, and cry out? O wretched man that I am! O that I had never been! or if I must needs have a being; Oh that I had been a toad, or serpent, or any venomous creature rather than a man; for when they dye they perish, and there's an end of them; but the end of a reprobate sinner is torments without end: O wo and alas! I cannot believe, there's no room for faith in this case! these are the hinderances.
2. The helps of faith in this sad condition are these.
1. A consideration that God is pleased to pass by, and to overlook the unworthiness of his poor creatures; this we see plain in the very act of his incarnation; himself disdains not to be as his poor creatures, to wear their own flesh, to take upon him humane nature; and in all things to become like unto man, sin only excepted.
2. A consideration that God satisfies Justice, by setting up Christ who is Justice it self; now was it that mercy and truth met together, and righteousness and peace kissed each other; now was it that free grace and merit, that fulness and nothingness were made one; now was it that all things became nothing, and nothing all things; our nature which lay in rags, was enriched with the unsearchable treasures of glory; now was it that God was made flesh; and so that flesh which was so weak, as not able to save its own life, was now enabled to save millions of souls, and to bring forth the greatest designs of God; now was it that truth ran to mercy, and embraced her, and righteousness to peace, and kissed her, in Christ they meet, yea in him was the infinite exactness of God's Justice satisfied.
3. A consideration that God hath set up Christ as a Mediator: that he was incarnate in order to reconciliation, and salvation of souls, but for the accomplishment of this de∣sign Christ had never been incarnate; the very end of his uniting flesh unto him, was in order to the reconciliation of us poor souls, alas we had sinned, and by sin deserved ever∣lasting damnation, but to save us, and to satisfie himself, God takes our nature and joyns it to his Son, and calls that Christ a Saviour: This is the Gospel-notion of Christ, for what is Christ, but God himself in our nature, transacting our peace? In this Christ is that fulness, and righteousness, and love, and bowels to receive the first acts of our faith; and to have immediate union and communion with us; indeed we pitch not our faith first or immediately on God himself; yet at last we come to him, and our faith lives in God (as one saith sweetly) before it is aware, through the sweet intervention of that person which is God himself, only called by another name, the Lord Jesus Christ; and these are the helps of faith in reference to our unworthiness, Gods justice, and the want of a Media∣tor betwixt God and us.
3. The manner how to act our faith on Christ incarnate, is this—
1. Faith must directly go to Christ: we find indeed in the Bible some particular pro∣mises of this and that grace: and in proper speaking the way to live by faith, it is to live upon the promises in the want of the thing, or to apprehend the thing it self contained in the promise: but the promises are not given to the elect immediately without Christ; no, no, first Christ, and then all other things, Encline your ears, and come unto me; 1. Come unto Christ, and then, I will make an everlasting Covenant, (which contains all the promises) even the sure Mercies of David. As in marriage, the woman first consents to have the man, and then all the benefits that necessarily follow; so the soul by faith, first pitcheth upon Christ himself, and then on the priviledges that flow from Christ. Say Soul, dost thou want any temporal Blessing? suppose it be the payment of Debts, thy dayly Bread, Health, &c. Why? look now through the Scripture for promises of these things, and let thy faith act thus, If God hath given me Christ, the greatest blessing, then certainly he will give me all these things so far as they may be for my good: in the twenty thirst Psalm we find a bundle of promises, but he begins thus, The Lord is my Shepherd, saith David, and what then? Therefore I shall not want; the believing Patriarchs through faith subdued Kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stoped the mouths of Lyons, did won∣ders in the world; but what did they chiefly look to in this their Faith? Surely to the pro∣mise to come, and to that better thing, Christ himself; and therefore the Apostle concludes, having such a cloud of witnesses, that thus lived and died by faith, let us look unto Jesus, the Author and finisher of our Faith.