DIRECTIONS TO UNBELIEVERS for attaining faith 1/2

But possibly thou wilt ask now, how thou mayest get this precious grace of faith?  The answer to this question, take in these following directions.  First. Labour to get thy heart convinced of, and affect­ed with, thy unbelief.  Second. Take heed of resisting or opposing his help to the Spirit of God, when he offers his help to the work.  Third. Lift up thy cry aloud in prayer to God for faith.  Fourth. Converse much with the promises, and be fre­quently pondering them in thy musing thoughts.  Fifth. Press and urge thy soul home with that strong obligation that lies on thee, a poor humbled sinner, to believe. The unbeliever must get his heart convinced of its unbelief 

           First Direction. Labour to get thy heart con­vinced of, and affected with, thy unbelief.  Till this be done, thou wilt be but sluggish and slighty in thy en­deavours for faith.  A man may be convinced of other sins and never think of coming to Christ.  Convince a drunkard of his drunkenness, and upon leaving his drunken trade his mind is pacified; yea, he blesseth himself in his reformation, because all the quarrel his conscience had with him was for that particular sin. But, when the Spirit of God convinceth the creature of his unbelief, he gets between him and those bur­rows in which he did use to earth and hide himself. He hath no ease in his spirit from those plasters now, which formerly had relieved him, and so kept him from coming over to Christ.  Before, it served the turn to bring his conscience to sleep when it accused him for such a sin, that he had left the practice of it; and, for the neglect of a duty, that now he had taken it up without an inquiry into his state, whether good or bad, pardoned or unpardoned. Thus many make a shift to daub and patch up the peace of their con­sciences, even as some do to keep up an old rotten house, by stopping in, here a tile and there a stone, till a loud wind comes and blows the whole house down.  But, when once the creature hath the load of its unbelief laid upon his spirit, then it is little ease to him to think he is no drunkard as he was, no atheist in his family—without the worship of God—as he was.  ‘Thy present state,’ saith the Spirit of God, ‘is as damning, in that thou art an unbeliever, as if thou wert these still.’  Yea, what thou wert, thou art; and wilt be found at the great day, to be the drunkard and atheist, for all thy seeming reformation, except by an intervening faith thou gainest a new name.  What though thou beest drunk no more? yet the guilt re­mains upon thee till faith strikes it off with the blood of Christ.  God will be paid his debt; by thee, or Christ for thee; and Christ pays no reckoning for unbelievers.

           Again, as the guilt remains, so the power of those lusts remains, so long as thou art an unbeliever —however they may disappear in the outward act. Thy heart is not emptied of one sin, but the vent stopped by restraining grace.  A bottle full of wine, close stopped, shows no more what it hath in it than one that is empty.  And that is thy case.  How is it possible thou shouldst truly mortify any one lust, that hast no faith, which is the only victory of the world? In a word, if under the convincement of thy unbelief thou wilt find—how little a sin soever now it is thought by thee—that there is more malignity in it than in all thy other sins.  Hast thou been a liar? That is a grievous sin indeed.  Hell gapes for every one that loveth and telleth a lie, Rev. 22:15.  But know, poor wretch, the loudest lie which ever thou toldest is that which by thy unbelief thou tellest.