Faith: 'Get You to Christ'

Evangelista, the wise Christian in Fisher's Marrow of Modern Divinity, on faith:

I pity the preposterous care and unhappy travail of many, who study the practice of this and that virtue, neglecting this cardinal and radical virtue; as if a man should water all the tree, and not the root. Fain would they shine in patience, meekness, and zeal, and ye are not careful to establish and root themselves in faith, which should maintain all the rest. . . .

To pray, to meditate, to keep a Sabbath cheerfully, to have your conversation heavenly, is as impossible for you yourself to do, as for iron to swim, or for stones to ascend upwards; but yet nothing is impossible to faith; it can naturalize these things unto you; it can make a mole of the earth a soul of heaven.

Wherefore, though you have tried all moral conclusions of purposing, promising, resolving, vowing, fasting, watching, and self-revenge; yet get you to Christ, and with the finger of faith touch but the hem of his garment; and you shall feel virtue come from him, for the curing of all your diseases.

Wherefore I beseech you, come out of yourself unto Jesus Christ, and apprehend him by faith. . . . and then you shall find yourself loathing sin, and loving the law of Christ; yea, then shall you find your corruptions dying and decaying daily, more and more.

--Edward Fisher, The Marrow of Modern Divinity (Christian Focus, 2009), 222