Faith, Baxter explains as “both a general trust in God’s revelations and grace, and a special trust in Jesus Christ,” adding, “I have oft proved this justifying faith to be no less than our unfeigned taking Christ for our Saviour, and becoming true Christians according to the tenour of the baptismal covenant.” The characteristic nature of Christian faith he further represents as consisting of trust in a personal Saviour, inclusive of an assenting trust by the understanding; a consenting trust by the will; and a practical trust by the executive powers.[541] The linking of the exercises of faith upon three faculties in human nature may be observed both in Goodwin and in Owen; but Baxter seems to have proceeded further than they in carrying out the practical relations of faith, and in this respect to have occupied ground not unlike that of Thorndike.[542] [Sidenote: HOWE.] Howe’s Puritanism might almost be said to have reached him by descent; but his extraordinary thoughtfulness, and his singular originality, require us to believe, that far from blindly accepting the inheritance, he carefully investigated the whole subject, and became a Puritan from conviction. His father, appointed to the incumbency of Loughborough by Archbishop Laud, afterwards displeased his patron, by refusing to comply with his requirements, and was consequently ejected. The father took the son to Ireland, whence he was driven back by the rebellion; after which, John Howe, before he proceeded to Oxford, went to Cambridge, and there, from the “Platonic tincture” of his mind, became associated with Cudworth, More, and John Smith, from whom his Platonic tastes received the highest culture. The great Pagan theologue, however, exerted a more powerful influence upon his sympathizing disciple, than did any of these under-masters; for Howe carefully read Plato for himself. He had “conversed closely with the heathen moralists and philosophers; had perused many of the writings of the schoolmen, and several systems and common places of the Reformers. Above all, he had compiled for himself a system of theology, from the Sacred Scriptures alone: a system which, as he was afterwards heard to say, he had seldom seen occasion to alter.”[543]