The Application

USE 1. This doctrine may shake loose and unsound professors out of their carnal security and false peace, by means of their resting in their faith. A false faith breeds to many a false peace. Many there are that use their faith still to shelter them from all convictions and terrors of the Lord: they have bad hearts, and many corruptions, and are full of wants and failings, etc. Indeed, but they believe, and that salves all: they have faith in the name of Christ. Indeed if your faith be of the right stamp, you may rejoice: true and sound faith in Jesus Christ is that, whereby we have our righteousness; and may have our peace in the midst of many failings and imperfections. So Paul had, and so the saints in Scripture had. If you have but Paul's faith, that is, a sin-lamenting faith, as (Romans 7:24), a groaning faith (Romans 8:23, 26), a laboring faith (Colossians 1:29), a sanctifying faith (Romans 6), a growing faith (Philippians 3:10–13), and if you have John's faith, a faith that works by love; then indeed you may triumph over relics of sin, and imperfections of grace. But the false and counterfeit faith will be the ape of the true; that also will cry peace, and then it does but deceive.

Men will cover all their noisome and running sores, with the fig-leaves of a false and ineffectual faith, which will be but as a spider's web at last (Micah 3:11). Oh! Remember there is a faith that will not do; a believing that will never save; and search and see if yours be not such. An awakening thing it is to consider, that a man may be a believer and yet fall short: he may have a faith, and yet perish and be damned for all that. Now (I say) seeing there is a faith that will not evidence the subjects thereof to be in a safe estate; therefore rest not presently because you have some kind of faith; but search and see whether it be not unsound or no: and to find out this, I may refer you to the premises, and what may be spoken in the following Use.