While he was regent in the college, upon a report that some sinful oath was to be imposed upon the masters, he enquired at Mr. Gavin Forsyth, one of his fellow-regents, What he would do in this? He answered, By my faith I must live.----Mr. Blair said, "Sir, I will not swear by my faith, as you do, but, truly, I intend to live by my faith. You may choose your own way, but I will adventure on the Lord."----And so this man did continue (to whom the matter of an oath was a small thing) after he was gone, but it is to be noticed, that Mr. Forsyth was many years in such poverty as forced him to supplicate the general assembly for some relief, when Mr. Blair (who was chosen moderator) upon his appearing in such a desperate case, could not shun observing that former passage of his, and upon his address to him in private, with great tenderness, put him in mind, that he had been truly carried through by his faith, at which he formerly had scoffed. Some time after he was a regent in the college, he was under deep exercises of soul, wherein he attained unto much comfort.--Amongst other things, that great oracle, _the just shall live by faith_, sounded loudly in his ears, which put him on a new search of the scriptures, in which he went on till Mr. Culverwal's treatise of faith came out; which being the same with what is since published by the Westminster assembly, he was thereby much satisfied and comforted. "By this study of the nature of faith, and especially of the text before mentioned; (says he) I learned, _1st_, That nominal Christians or common professors were much deluded in their way of believing; and that not only do Papists err who place faith in an implicit assent to the truth which they know not, and that it is better defined by ignorance than knowledge, (a way of believing very suitable to Antichrist's slaves, who are led by the nose they know not whither); but also secure Protestants, who, abusing the description of old given of faith, say that it implies an assured knowledge in the person who believes of the love of God in Christ to him in particular: this assurance is no doubt attainable, and many believers do comfortably enjoy the same, as our divines prove unanswerably against the Popish doctors who maintain the necessity of perpetual doubting, and miscall comfortable assurance the Protestant's presumption. But notwithstanding that comfortable assurance doth ordinarily accompany a high degree of faith, yet that assurance is not to be found in all the degrees of saving faith: so that by not adverting to that distinction many gracious souls and sound believers, who have received Jesus Christ and rested upon him, as he is offered to them in the word, have been much puzzled, as if they were not believers at all: on the other hand, many secure and impenitent sinners, who have not yet believed the Lord's holiness, nor abhorrence of sin, nor their own ruined state and condition, do from self-love imagine, without any