THE following extracts from Rev. William Romaine and Ambrose Serle indicate their views of the grounds of faith, the first extract being from the pen of Romaine:—
“If the poor, weak believer should say, ‘I should be glad to have my faith so fixed that I might be freed from doubts and fears,’ then let it rest upon the Word of God, which is the only ground of believing, and is, therefore, called the word of faith, upon which it is nourished and grows up. The believer should receive and rely upon what God has spoken, and because He has spoken it, for His Word changeth not; it abideth the same forever: therefore what it truly reports stands upon an immovable rock. Sense and reason may report things contrary to it, but the believer can silence them with, ‘God has spoken it’: faith looks at God’s word, calling the things which be not as though they were, and is commonly forced to contradict sense. Sense judges from what it sees—faith by what God says. Sense is governed by what appears, faith by what God says shall be. Sense looks inward—faith looks outward. Faith can answer the seeming contradictions which sense opposes to it from the Word of God, which cannot be broken. And when sense is ready to despair, and all its frames and feelings are gone, then it is the believer’s happy privilege still to trust in the Lord, and to have a good hope because of the Word of His grace. But perhaps thou art ready to say, ‘It is written that there is great joy and peace in believing, yea, joy unspeakable and full of glory.’ True, these are what faith produces, not what it is. The more simple the believer is, the more (led by the Spirit of God) he eyes Christ the object of faith, and the Word, the ground of faith, the more clear and distinct will the actings of faith be; and consequently it will bring greater peace into the conscience, and more joy into the affections. But still these fruits are not faith, any more than the fruit is the tree. The fruits do not go before faith, but follow it, and grow from it. This is God’s order. He gives us His Word to be the ground of our believing. Some may begin to object, ‘What! are you against all lively frames and sensible comforts?’ No, God forbid. I would have them spring from the right cause, that they might be more pure and fixed than they generally are. God’s Word and promises are an unchangeable foundation to rest upon, even when sensible feelings are gone, because Christ, revealed in the Word, and laid hold of in the promises changeth not. Therefore, reader, for thine own sake, and for the glory of God, take heed what thou buildest thy faith upon. Beware of making anything that sense reports to thee the ground of it, but rest it upon that which abideth for ever. The Word of God is a sure foundation; it will never fail thee. When the Word of God is the ground of thy faith, which rests there, and is grown to a thick settlement, then thou wilt be enabled to go on comfortably.”
Septimus Sears says concerning the foregoing extract from Romaine:—”On re-reading the above, it has struck me some might say, ‘If this be true—if faith be the simple believing God’s Word, upon the sole ground that it is God’s Word, must not this be an easy thing?’ I answer, he that thinks it so easy a matter has, I fear, never attempted, under a sight and sense of his guilt and vileness, and the wrath of a holy God, to close in with Christ by saving faith.”
Ambrose Serle further extends the answer to Septimus Sears’s question as follows:—”It seems easy in a way of reason to take God at His Word,
and right that it should be so; but reason is not faith, and can never ascend this holy mountain, nor perform, when the trial comes, this apparently easy and reasonable thing. Faith is a gift which cometh down from above; and, wherever it is bestowed, it causes the soul to crucify that fleshly wisdom, that presumptuous and intruding (Col. ii. 18) reason, which, not holding Christ the Head, nor drawing grace and instruction from Him, but from corrupt nature only, is in spiritual things the plague and enemy of every real Christian, as it is ever arguing against the life of grace in him, and troubling him with such cogitations of all kinds, as tend to draw away his heart, or to weaken his hand, in the course of his duty. They who know not the conflicts of their carnal mind with the faith which God bestows, may well suspect whether they have faith or not; or, rather, whether they have not deceived themselves with speculations about godliness, instead of enjoying the real life and experience of it.
“Abraham obtained faith in God, and the obedience of faith followed the life and possession of it. When the Lord commanded him to leave all, and to come out from his kindred and the world, by faith he ‘went out, not knowing whither he went.’ He reasoned not upon the matter, nor asked the why or wherefore, but gave himself in devotedness to God. The same is said of him when he was about to offer up his son Isaac; and the same is said of those who are recorded as examples of pure and living faith, in that noble role of honour inscribed to the Hebrews. All of them did what they did, by faith, and it is so repeatedly and so expressly put down, lest we should mistake the works for the principle, the effect for the cause, the mere action for the life, as we are prone to do. Had these gracious persons been left to themselves for the execution of any one of those deeds, which they performed,—that is, if faith had not been granted them for the very purpose, above their own natural powers, it is more than probable that every one of them had been an apostate in the very thing they were enabled to do, and that like Cain, Esau, or Judas, they would have given up God and His truth for the world, or for their own present convenience in it.
“If any reader doubt this, let him try to detach himself from the spirit of the world, to become a stranger and pilgrim on the earth, to crucify the affections of his flesh and spirit from what they naturally seek after, to give up his reputation, his interest, and inviting prospects among men, to live in devotedness of soul to God, and to desire above all things the promotion of the honour and glory of a crucified Saviour, and the spiritual welfare and salvation of others. I say, let him try not merely to approve and talk of, but to put all this into practice. He will, I believe, either censure me as too rigid for such a proposal, or endeavour to explain it away and soften it into nothing. He will own, if he be honest to himself, that it is impracticable, upon the principles of natural strength and reason, or of (what men call) that common good sense, which leads them above all things to establish an interest here. At any rate, he will be no more able to comprehend how salvation can flow through such a simple grace as faith will appear to be to him, than a carnal Israelite in the wilderness could have accounted for the restoration
of health from the sting of a serpent, only by looking on a brazen one suspended on a cross or pole. The antitype, or thing signified, stands equally inexplicable to mere professors of Christianity now, as the type stood to the worldly and nominal Israelites of old. Those who have faith in God and are living for Heaven, know how extremely difficult this business of living by faith is to them at all times, and a welfare is carried on by that life against themselves, and these will humbly own, that they will never hope to prevail in any instance, or at any time, but through that faith in the Son of God which draws down His almighty gracious power continually to their relief.”
The above extracts are given that the reader may not lose sight of the fact that faith is the heart’s believing God’s Word on the sole ground that it is God’s Word. Such a faith, nevertheless, is utterly beyond the reach of nature. It is supernatural and Divine. May the Most High give us all a large measure of this supernatural heart-faith, and enable us to estimate mere intellectual assent or head-knowledge at its real worth, or rather worthlessness, where the eternal salvation of our precious immortal souls are concerned.