plainly taught by our Saviour himself in his public ministry in the world, yet these were the doctrines which his apostles preached continually, and they received them from him by private instructions, or the inspiration of his Spirit, so that they may be properly called the doctrines of Christ. But this is not all that is required of believers; for so much knowledge, and so much faith as this is, the devils may have, and Simon Magus the sorcerer might have as much as this when he believed. The faith that is expressed in this epistle, and in other places of scripture, is more than a bare assent to the great truths of the gospel; for it is such a faith as _overcomes the world_, such a faith as _gains a victory_ over things sensual, and over Satan; such a faith as evidences a man _to be born of God_. And therefore something more must be implied in it than a mere belief of the nature and person of Christ, and the truth of his doctrine. 2. It therefore implies a _betrusting the soul into the hands of Christ, that he may be our Saviour_. And I have sometimes thought that those words in the Greek, which we render _faith_ and _believing_ are continually used in the New Testament, to signify _faith_, a _saving faith_; because they not only signify, in their natural sense, the _believing of a truth_, but the _trusting in a person_. They signify believing the doctrine of Christ, and committing the soul into his hands as a Saviour, as it is expressed by St. Paul; 2 Tim. i. 12. _I know whom I have believed, and I am persuaded he is able to keep what I have committed to him._ To _believe on the Son of God_ therefore, is when a person, from a sense of sin and danger of eternal death, and his inability to escape any other way, applies himself unto Christ Jesus, as the Son of God, the Saviour of the world. When the soul commits itself into his hands, as one All-sufficient in himself to save, and one appointed by the Father for this glorious purpose. When the soul is made willing to be justified by the merits and righteousness of another, seeing itself unable, by all its own works, to attain to a justifying righteousness. When the soul is desirous to be sanctified by the grace that is from above, because it sees the necessity of holiness, and yet feels itself utterly incapable to renew its own nature, to mortify its own sins, or to form itself fit for the enjoyment of God and heaven. When the soul for these ends, puts itself under the care of Christ Jesus, who is authorised and commissioned by the Father to take care of sinful and guilty souls, to remove and cancel their guilt by his sacrifice, and invest them with a perfect righteousness, to begin the work of grace in them, to fill them with principles of holiness, and by degrees to fit them for his glory: such a soul is a believer on the Son of God, and such a soul has the witness in himself, that our religion is divine, and that christianity is from above.