'Answer'. (John xvi. 14.) Now where Christ is, there is the holy Spirit. The text saith plainly, 'The holy Ghost shall glorify me, &c.' Now Christ is in the faithful (although they have and feel sins, do confess the same, and with sorrow of heart do complain thereover); therefore sins do not separate Christ from those that believe. All in this page is true, and necessary to be preached. But O! what need is there of holy prudence to preach it aright, that is, at right times to the right ears! Now this is when the doctrine is necessary and thence comfortable; but where it is not necessary, but only very comfortable, in such cases it would be a narcotic poison, killing the soul by infusing a stupor or counterfeit peace of conscience. Where there are no sinkings of self-abasement, no griping sense of sin and worthlessness, but perhaps the contrary, reckless confidence and self-valuing for good qualities supposed an overbalance for the sins,--there it is not necessary. In short, these are not the truths, that can be preached [Greek: eukaírôs akaírôs], _in season and out of season_. In declining life, or at any time in the hour of sincere humiliation, these truths may be applied in reference to past sins collectively; but a Christian must not, a true however infirm Christian will not, cannot, administer them to himself immediately after sinning; least of all immediately before. We ought fervently to pray thus:--"Most holy and most merciful God! by the grace of thy holy Spirit make these promises profitable to me, to preserve me from despairing of thy forgiveness through Christ my Saviour! But O! save me from presumptuously perverting them into a pillow for a stupified conscience! Give me grace so to contrast my sin with thy transcendant goodness and long-suffering love, as to hate it with an unfeigned hatred for its own exceeding sinfulness." Ib. p. 219-20. Faith is, and consisteth in, a person's understanding, but hope consisteth in the will. * * Faith inditeth, distinguisheth and teacheth, and it is the knowledge and acknowledgment. * * Faith fighteth against error and heresies, it proveth, censureth and judgeth the spirits and doctrines. * * Faith in divinity is the wisdom and providence, and belongeth to the doctrine. * * Faith is the 'dialectica', for it is altogether wit and wisdom. Luther in his Postills discourseth far better and more genially of faith than in these paragraphs. Unfortunately, the Germans have but one word for faith and belief--'Glaube', and what Luther here says, is spoken of belief. Of faith he speaks in the next article but one. Ib. p. 226. "That regeneration only maketh God's children. "The article of our justification before God (said Luther) is, as it useth to be with a son which is born an heir of all his father's goods, and cometh not thereunto by deserts."