Of Saving Faith, Section 10
SECT. X.
Page 399. YOu next instance in Acceptance and Love to Christ. And I grant you still the conclusion, that these are not in the unregenerate in the same species as in the Saints. But that there is a Love and Acceptance true in its kind, and how it materially differs from that in true Believers, I have oft shewed, and shall do here further in my Additional Explication.
I said in my Aphorisms, that [the Acceptance of an offered Christ is the essential Form of Justifying Faith.] (not of Faith in genere,) and you say that I said so of [Love.] I know there is Love in Acceptance, or Consent, or Choyce: but if I might have chosen, I had rather you had charged me with what I indeed wrote, then with what you imagine may be implied in it.
Page 403. Your eighth Reason for the Cause that I maintain, is sound and undeniable.
Hence you pass page 404. to another Controversie, answering this Objection [Love may be Essential to faith, because its agreed that Fiducia is an Act of Faith, and that in the Will, and not only Mr. Baxter, but Bellarmine and many reformed Divines say so.] Answ. 1. I lookt in Bellarmine, and find him with the common vote of Schoolmen, and Divines placing Fiducia in the will, but so far is he from making it an Act of Faith, that the Position that he is there proving is, that [fides non est fiducia,] against the Protestants, and concludes as you, that that fiducia ex fide oritur, non potest esse idem cum fide. Sure you did not indeed mean to prove hence that Bellarmine is of the Protestant opinion which he writes against. I suppose your intent was to limit his consent to the last clause of the Subject of Affiance.
2. You might well say many Reformed Divines are for the point which you assault; for it is so common, that with Papists and our selves, it goes commonly as the Protestant cause.
As to your first Reason (and your whole cause) you utterly mistake and mis-report the cause. It is not a foreign that Protestants commonly mean by Affiance; no nor a foreign neither as that word most usually signifieth the confidence or perswasion of the intellect in a high Degree. But it is the very foreign or Faith it self, which we commonly express in English by [Crediting, or giving credit to a man; Trusting him, or having affiance in him.] And therefore our Divines do commonly maintain against the Papists that foreign inscriptum signifieth fiduciam ponere; and fidem habere; which is our Affiance. And our Translators thought sure that to Trust in God, and to hope in him was all one, (and so to Trust or Hope in Christ) when they so ordinarily translate foreign by Trusting, as in Luke 24, 21. foreign &c. The sense also shews it is not Hope as commonly defined that is here meant. So Matth. 12, 21. & Rom. 15. 12. foreign And in his Name shall the Gentiles trust. And the first Believers of the Ephesians Paul calleth foreign, those that first trusted in Christ, which is all one in Pauls sense with believing in him; for in the next verse [foreign] is used as Synonimal, to signife the same thing. And so in 1 Tim. 4. 10. & 6. 17. Phil. 2. 19 and other places, our Translators call this [Trusting in God,] which is our Affiance; and undoubtedly an act of the Will. And when other words (as frequently) are used, it is the same thing that is intended in many places of Scripture, which our Translators call [Trusting in God.] Now besides your Plerophory or Perswasion, there is in the nature of saving faith not only another Affiance, but a double Affiance essential to it in some degree: as I shall take the liberty according to my apprehension to open it.
Belief is either voluntary and a Duty, or involuntary, and no moral good. The latter is the faith of the Devils, and all that believe the Truths of God as things that are against them, and would not have them to be true, and perhaps had rather not believe them (for the understanding is not free in it self.) This kind of belief is meerly of the Intellect: The voluntary vertuous Belief of God, is either of some things that we apprehend as meerly True, and having no other good in them as to us but the Truth (nor perhaps to others) There are no such Revelations; but yet our apprehensions may be such of them. Here Truth it self is a certain sort of Good. And thus the Intellect receiveth these Truths, but not alone: For the Will hath a double concurrence. 1. Looking with Complacency on the good of verity Revealed, 2. Looking with a Complacencial Affiance or Trust to the Veracity of God the Author or Revealer. Thus it is that we believe some Histories. II. Or this voluntary Belief is of things hurtful to us, in our apprehension, as in case of our belief of Threatnings. Here the Will hath an Aversness to the material Object; but still hath a complacency joined with it both in the General Good of Verity, even as in a Threatning, and a Complacency in, and voluntary approbation of the Veracity of God in his Threatnings. Thus it ought to be: And this compliance of the Will with Gods Veracity in a Threatning, is not commonly called Affiance; but a consenting or Complacencial Approbation. III. This Belief hath sometime a Revelation apparently good to us, (or to the Church, or our Brethren and Gods honour) for its Object. Thus all merciful Narratives, Offers and Promises, are believed? And here are these Acts. 1. The Intellect apprehendeth the Veracity of God-Revealing. 2. The Will hath a Complacencial Approbation of this Veracity of God as good in it self and a Divine perfection. 3. The Intellect Apprehendeth the Letter and sense of the Revelation. 4. And the Truth of it as proceeding from Divine Verity it self. 5. And the Goodness of it as its Truth in General. 6. And the special Goodness of it from the Matter in special. 7. And the Will concurreth in these Apprehensions by Commanding the Intellect according to that Degree as the acts are Imperate. 8. And the Will hath a special Affiance or Trust (together with the Intellect acquiescing herein) in the Veracity of the Revealer as it respecteth this special Object. For as 9. The same Will hath a Complacency, or Consent or Acceptance, as to the Good Revealed, Promised, Offered; so it hath an answerable respect to the Power, Wisdom and special goodness of God that promiseth; and so looking at his Veracity (the result of these three) as the Foundation and formal Object of his faith, he must needs look at it with a special Volition, which we commonly call Affiance or Trust; and this last is the very Act that is called by the name of fides, or fiducia, or Affiance, comprehending the rest, but so as that they are all denominated usually from this as the perfective Act. And this is the Affiance, that we say is essential to Faith in general as it hath a Promise, for its material Object, and which is directly signified by foreign, To trust a mans word, or to credit him, or take his word, or trust his credit, and to believe him, and have Affiance in him, are all one. IV. The special faith of the Gospel called faith in Christ, conteineth all these nine Acts aforesaid, and a tenth superadded which is a special Affiance in Jesus Christ as the Saviour to do the works of his undertaken Office, in our Salvation. So that all these ten Acts are in saving faith, as they are distinguished by the several objects; which yet are all but one faith in a moral sense, and all these but the several parts of the Object. He that denieth this, must in equity except against those particular Acts that he thinks may be left out.
By this much I have told you what acts of the Intellect, and what of the Will are in faith, and what Affiance is in it: Two acts of Affiance are in saving faith. The first is an Affiance, or Trust in, or crediting of God as the Promiser, because of his Veracity: This is in the Genus. The second is, An Affiance in the Redeemer as such, by which we Trust in him for the effects and Ends of his Office. And this is essential to the Christian faith in specie. All these are comprized in these three General acts. 1. Assent. 2. Consent or Acceptance. 3. Affiance. This last Affiance in the Mediatour, is not the same with the General Affiance in God as Promiser, before mentioned. This is the act that was commanded the Jaylor, (comprizing the rest) Act. 16. 31. foreign &c.] To these is Adoption given, John 1. 12. foreign,] So Rom. 4. 5. and 10. 14. & passim.
Now the Plerophorie that you call Affiance, is either an Assurance or Confident perswasion of our own particular state of Grace; or of our particular Acceptance with God in our addresses, or else some high Degree only of the forementioned Affiance or Asssent. Now it is none of these that we call Affiance, when we make it essential to saving faith. Amesius shews somewhat of the difference in Medul. Theolog. l 1. c. 3. & l. 2. cap. 5. Where also he largely proveth faith to be in the Will; and yet your forementioned special Articles are none of its object: Assensus verò special is quo statuimus Deum esse nostrum Deum in Christo, non est actus primus fidei, sed actus ex fide emanans. Nulla enim est major in te quam alio certitudo hujus veritatis, nec verior ejus apprehensio, antequam te ad Deum fide singulariter applicaveris, saith Pemble, Vindic. Grat. pag. 260. [that kind of Fiducia which we call Assurance, and full perswasion of the pardon of our sins, is a fruit of the other Fiducia, or Trusting unto the Promise it self, wherein stands the proper Act of Justifying Faith. And it follows it not alwayes presently, but after some long time, after much pains taken in the exercise of Faith and other Graces.] But that the other Fiducia is essential to faith he proves by several Arguments; pag. 258. (In which our more voluminous Disputants against Popery are much more copious.) And pag. 170. 171. Where in the Margin he saith, [It is an erroneous curiosity to make Fiducia a Consequent of Fides, and to say therefore I trust a man because I believe the truth of his promise, that he will do what he sayes; there can be no good construction of such a saying: for it is as much as this; I trust him because I trust him. &c.]
And thus your first Censure is answered: Affiance is essential to true faith.