The root of the divine life is faith; the chief branches are love to God, charity to man, purity and humility…Faith hath…a kind of sense, or feeling persuasion of spiritual things; it extends itself unto all divine truths; but in our lapsed estate, it hath a peculiar relation to the declarations of God’s mercy and reconcilableness to sinners through a mediator; and therefore, receiving its denomination form that principal object, is ordinarily termed ‘faith in Jesus Christ.’
-Henry Scougal, The Life of God in the Soul of Man, (Sprinkle) p. 46
According to Scougal, Faith’s object is Jesus Christ. Faith is the root of spiritual life. Faith produces love for God, love for man, and holiness. Faith entails a ‘feeling persuasion’ of spiritual things and divine truth.
Using the analogy of a tree,
Faith is a root stretched out toward the life-giving soil that is Christ,
grows up and produces the trunk of spiritual life
and the branches of love for God and neighbor,
and soaks up the sun of spiritual reality and divine truth.
- Mark 4:20 But those that were sown on the good soil are the ones who hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold.
