Reasons Why We Should Be Serious In The Trial Of Our Faith 2/2

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2. Reason.  Consider the excellency of true faith makes false faith so much the more odious.  Because a king’s son is an extraordinary personage, therefore it is so high a crime for an ignoble person to counterfeit him­self to be such a one.  It is by that we ‘become the sons of God,’ John 1:12.  And what a high presumption is it then that, by a false faith, thou committest? Thou pretendedst to be a child of God, when no heaven-blood runs in thy veins, but hast more reason to look for thy kindred in hell and derive thy pedigree from Satan.  This passeth for no less than blasphemy in the account of the Scripture.  ‘I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan,’ Rev. 2:9.  God loathes such with his heart.  A false friend is worse than an open enemy in man’s judgment; and a hypocritical Judas more abhorred by God than a bloody Pilate. Either, therefore, get true faith, or pretend to none. The ape, because he hath the face of a man, but not the soul of a man, is therefore the most ridiculous of all creatures.  And of all sinners, none will be put more to shame at the last day than such as have aped and imitated the believer in some exterior postures of profession, but never had the spirit of a believer so as to perform one vital act of faith.  The psalmist tells us of some whose ‘image’ God will ‘despise,’ Ps. 73.20. It is spoken chiefly of the wicked man’s temporary pros­perity—which, for its short continuance, is compared to the image or representation of a thing in the fancy of a sleeping man, that then is busy and pl easeth us with many fine pleasing objects, but all are lost when our sleep leaves us—this God will despise at the great day; when he shall not give heaven and glory by the estates and honours that men had in the world, but tumble them down to hell if graceless, as well as the poorest beggar in the world.  But, there is another sort of persons whose image God will at that day despise more than these, and that is the image of all temporary believers and unsound professors, who have a fantastical faith, which they set up like an image in their imaginations, and dance about it with as many self-pleasing thoughts as a man doth that is dreaming himself to be some great prince; but this great idol shall then be broken, and the worshippers of it hissed down to hell with the greatest shame of any other.
3. Reason.  Consider that none stand at greater disadvantage for the obtaining of a true faith than he who flatters himself with a false one.  ‘Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit?  There is more hope of a fool than of him,’  Prov. 26:12, that is, there is more hope of persuading him.  Of all fools the conceited fool is the worst.  Pride makes a man incapable of receiving counsel.  Nebuchadnezzar’s mind is said to be ‘hardened in pride,’ Dan. 5:20.  There is no reasoning with a proud man.  He castles himself in his own opinion of himself, and there stands upon his defence against all arguments that are brought.  Bid a conceited professor labour for faith, or he is undone; and the man will tell you that you mistake and knock at the wrong door.  It is the ignorant person, or profane, you should go to on the errand.  He thanks God he is not now to seek for a faith, and thus blesseth himself in his good condition, when God knows ‘he feedeth on ashes: a deceived heart hath turned him aside, that he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand?’ Isa. 44:20.  The ignorant profane person, like the psalmist’s ‘man of low degree,’ is plain ‘vanity.’  It is not hard to make themselves to acknowledge as much as that they have nothing, de­serve nothing, can look for nothing as they are but hell and damnation.  But, such as pretend to faith, and content themselves with a false one, they are like the ‘men of high degree’ ‘a lie,’ which is vanity as well as the other, but with a specious cover over it that hides it.  Therefore the devil is forward enough to put poor silly souls on believing, that he may forestall, if he can, the Spirit's market, and prevent the creature’s obtaining of a true faith, by cheating of it with a counterfeit.  It is like the wicked policy of Jeroboam, who, to keep the Israelites from going to Jerusalem, and hankering after the true worship of God there, set up something like a religious worship nearer hand, at home, in the ‘golden calves;’ and this pleased many well enough, that they missed not their walk to Jeru­salem.  O friends, take heed therefore of being cheat­ed with a false faith.  Every one, I know, would have the living child to be hers and not the dead one.  We would all pass for such as have the true faith and not the false.  But, be not your own judges; appeal to the Spirit of God, and let him, with the sword of his word, come and decide the controversy.  Which faith is thine, the true or false?