The second element included in that act of faith that saves the soul is trust, or implicit reliance upon Christ, and upon Christ alone, for all that is involved in a complete salvation. And salvation is promised absolutely and certainly if this command is obeyed. To believe in or on a person, implies trust as well as credence. Faith is the substance of things hoped for. Trust rests upon the foundation upon which expectation is based.
Hope reaches forward to the object upon which desire and expectation meet.
Hope, therefore, rests upon trust, and trust gives birth to hope, and faith must include trust in order to give reality or substance to the things hoped for. The same is proved by what are said to be the effects or fruits of faith. All this plainly presupposes that faith is not a bare intellectual conviction of the truth of truths revealed in the Scriptures, but that it includes a hearty embrace of and a confident reliance upon Christ, his meritorious work and his gracious promises. That this faith, although always as to essence the same, is often different in degrees in different persons, and in the same person at different times. That it is exposed to many enemies, and may be often and in many ways assailed and weakened, but that, through divine grace, it always in the end gains the victory.