Fuller warns against presumption and superficial religion, exposing the folly of those who rest in a mere profession without the inward transformation required by the gospel. With warm exhortation, theological precision, and unflinching honesty, he calls the reader to a living faith—a faith that forsakes self-reliance and casts the whole soul upon Christ alone.
The work is divided into three distinct parts:
I. A Treatise of Faith – detailing the nature of saving faith, its object, the difference between dead faith and living faith, and the soul’s full reliance on the righteousness of Christ alone.
II. A Treatise of Repentance – unfolding the true marks of repentance unto life, not as a work of the flesh but as a gift of God’s Spirit, producing godly sorrow, hatred of sin, and a sincere turning unto God.
III. A Discourse on Self-Denial (An Appendix to the Treatise of Faith) – laying the axe to the root of self-love and self-righteousness, and revealing the utter need to abandon all confidence in the flesh for a full cleaving to Christ.
First penned in the furnace of post-Restoration nonconformity, this work remains as urgently needed now as it was then. It is no small matter to examine ourselves whether we be in the faith—and in Fuller’s pages, we are led to do so under the light of God’s Word.
Francis Fuller the Elder (1637–1701) was a Puritan Nonconformist minister and theological writer devoted to proclaiming the doctrines of grace in post-Restoration England.
C. Matthew McMahon, Ph.D., Th.D., is a Reformed theologian, and pastor of Grace Chapel in Crossville, TN; part of the Biblical Reformed Synod of Christ the King. He is the founder and chairman of A Puritan's Mind, the largest Reformed website on the internet for students of the Bible concerning Reformed Theology, the Puritans and Covenant Theology. He is the founder of Puritan Publications which publishes rare Reformed and Puritan works from the 17th century, specializing in the Westminster Assembly. He is also the owner of Reformed.org, and the Center for Reformed Theology and Apologetics.