While denying the Roman Catholic doctrine that love is the life and soul of justifying faith, John Ball (1585-1640) strenuously affirmed that justifying faith cannot be without love. Faith and love are distinct graces which are “infused together” by the Holy Spirt at regeneration and “the exercise of faith and love be inseparably conjoined ( Treatise of Faith , 45-46).” Where there is justifying faith there is love: “As light and heat in the Sun be inseparable, so is faith and love, being knit together in a sure bond by the Holy Ghost (pg. 38).

If faith and love are distinct yet inseparable, so it is sometimes argued, “then Faith alone doth not justify (pg. 56).” The presence of love at the moment of justification implies that it is along with faith a co-instrument of justification. Ball responded to this objection by appealing to a common turn of phrase regarding the role of faith in justification: faith alone justifies but the faith which justifies is not alone. Or as it stated in the Westminster Confession of Faith : “Faith, thus receiving and resting on Christ and His righteousness, is the alone instrument of justification; yet is it not alone in the person justified, but is ever accompanied with all other saving graces, and is no dead faith, but worketh by love.”

Ball observed that while faith is utterly alone in terms of the instrument of justification, it is not alone in terms of the presence of love or other virtues for that matter. Justifying faith is “ever accompanied with all other saving graces" ( WCF 11.2). Thus love is present in the person at the moment of justification, but love is not the instrument or co-instrument of justification. Faith and faith only is that instrument. The “alone” of faith alone refers not to the absence of other saving graces or virtues but to its role in justification. Employing a standard illustration of the time, Ball said that faith is like an eye in the body. Only the eye sees but in order for the eye to see it must in a body that is alive and so with other working parts: