Obadiah Sedgwick on the co-existence of faith with doubt

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Reformed Covenanter

Cancelled Commissioner
... 1. Doubtings be sinful, for they are the smokings of corruption.

2. They be no part of Faith.

3. They cannot consist at the same instant with the acts of faith; for it is impossible that faith should formally doubt. As it is impossible that I should lay hand on the rock, and not lay hand at the same time; or that mine eye should see and not see the colour at the same time; or my hand receive, and not receive the gift at the same time: So is it impossible that the soul when it doth believe, should doubt, forasmuch as Faith in act, and doubt in act, are opposite; and the soul cannot possibly set out from one faculty at the same time opposite acts; I confess successively it may, yet simultaneously it cannot: But now to believe, and to doubt, are opposite; for in the one I embrace, in the other I do not embrace; in the one I rest, in the other not, &c.

Yet fourthly, Actual doubting may be in a person who hath habitual faith; for this you must know, that faith and doubtings are not opposed as life and death, where the presence of the one determinately concludes the total absence of the other; but as cold and heat in remiss degrees in the subject, where though the nature of cold be not the nature of heat, but naturally one is expulsive of the other, yet both lodge in the same room; So Faith is not Doubting, and Doubting is not Faith, one of these is expulsive of the other, yet both may and do meet in the same person: ...

For more, see Obadiah Sedgwick on the co-existence of faith with doubt.
 
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