I will even betroth thee unto me in faithfulness: and thou shalt know the LORD.
Ver. 20. I will even betroth thee unto me in faithfulness] Tremellius, Drusius, and Tarnovius render it in fide, in faith, and interpret it of de fide vera et salvifica, of that true justifying faith whereby we are united to Christ; and for this they urge the next words as an exposition of these. "And they shall know the Lord": alleging some other texts of Scripture wherein saving knowledge is put for justifying faith, as Isa 53:11 Jeremiah 31:33 Joh 17:3. The Septuagint also render it επιγνωση. Now επιγνωσις in the New Testament is often used for saving and growing faith, 1 Chronicles 2:1; Colossians 3:10, which indeed is the bond of the spiritual marriage, and is itself nothing else but a fiducial assent presupposing knowledge. For man is a rational creature, faith a prudent thing, comprehending in itself these three Acts 1:1,26. Knowledge in the understanding; 2. Assent, or rather consent, in the will; 3. Trust or confidence in the heart; certainty of adherence, if not of evidence. The Papists fasten faith in the will as in the adequate subject, that they may the meanwhile do what they will with the understanding and the heart. To which purpose they exclude all knowledge, aud detest trust in Christ's promises, expunging the very name of it everywhere by their Indices Expurgatorii. A blind belief, as the Church believes, is as much as they require of their misled and muzzled proselytes. Bellarmine saith that faith may far better be defined by ignorance than by knowledge. But how shall men believe on him of whom they have not heard? Let us leave to the Papists their implicit faith and their blind obedience, and cry after Christ as that poor man did, "Lord, that mine eyes might be opened," and that I may "know the Lord"; yea, "grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ." "These things have I written unto you" (saith St John to those that were no babies or zanies in faith or knowledge) "that believe on the name of the Son of God, that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may (yet more) believe in the Son of God," 1 John 5:13. David, though he had proceeded farther in the discovery of divine truths than those before him, Psalms 119:99, yet he was still to seek of that which might be known, Psalms 119:96. Even as those great discoverers of the newly found lands in America were wont to confess, at their return, that there was still a plus ultra, more yet, to be discovered.