m."

and causality. "Whom he predestinated", those also he called; and whom he called, those he justified; and whom he justified, those also he glorified." It is not those he will glorify, but hath glorified', to note that glorification is linked and folded up with justification, and is present with it in regard of their eternal coexistency in the predisposition and order of God, though not in effectu operis,' in actual execution. Now this eternal love and grace of God is not founded upon reasons in the object; for he justified', and, by consequence, loved, the ungodly. "He loved us when we were his enemies ";" and enemies we were not but by 'wicked works.'" Now, then, if wicked works could not prevent the love of God, why should we think that they can nullify or destroy it? If his grace did prevent sinners before their repentance, that they might return, shall it not much more preserve repenting sinners that they may not perish? If the mass, guilt, and greatness of Adam's sin, in which all men were equally sharers, and in which equality God looked upon us with love and grace, (than which sin a greater cannot be committed against the law of God"), if the bloody and crimson sins of the unconverted part of our life, wherein we "drew iniquity with cords of vanity, and sin, as it were, with cart-ropes ;"—if neither "iniquity, transgression, nor sin ";" neither sin of nature, nor sin of course and custom, nor sin of rebellion and contumacy, could poise the goodness and favour of God to us then, nor intercept, or frustrate his counsel of loving us when we were his enemies ;-why should any other sins overturn the stability of the same love and counsel, when we are once his sons, and have a spirit given us to bewail and lament our falls? I cannot here omit the excellent words of P. Fulgentius, to this purpose. "The same grace," saith he, "of

h Rom. viii. 29, 30. i Verba præteriti temporis posuit de rebus etiam futuris, tanquam jam fecerit Deus, quæ jam ut fierent, ex æternitate disposuit, &c. Aug. de Corrup. et Grat. cap. 9. k Eph. ii. 9. 1 Joh. iv. 10. Aug.

m Rom. 12.-En

q Sive

de Civ. Dei, 1. 14. c. 1.-Retract. 1. 1. cap. 23.-cont. Julian. lib. 5. cap. 4. et 1. 6. cap. 19.-De prædest. Sanct. cap. 10. 15. 1 Rom. iv. 5. v. 8, 10. n Col. i. 21. o Vid. Aug. de Civ. Dei, 1. 21. c. chirid. c. 45. Tertul. cont. Judæos, cap. 2. P Exod. xxxiv. 7. cum impiuni piè justificat, justus,—sive cum justum juste glorificat, piuseadem est operatio gratiæ, quæ meritum hominis bonum et initiat ad justitiam, et consummat ad gloriam, primò inchoans in homine voluntatem bonam; deinde eandem voluntatem adjuvans inchoatam; ut eadem voluntas et divino

God's immutable counsel doth both begin our merit unto righteousness, and consummate it unto glory; doth here make the will not to yield to the infirmity of the flesh, and doth hereafter free it from all infirmity; doth here renew it 'continuo juvamine,' and elsewhere jugi auxilio,' with an uninterrupted supportance, and at last bring it to a full glory."

Secondly, God's promise flowing from his love and grace; "An everlasting covenant will I make," saith God. And observe how it comes to be everlasting, and not frustrated or made temporary by us: "I will not turn away from them," saith the Lord, "to do them good." True, Lord, we know thou dost not repent thee of thy love; but though thou turn not from us, O how frail, how apt are we to turn away from thee, and so to nullify this thy covenant of mercy unto ourselves! "Nay," saith the Lord, "I will put my fear into their hearts, that they shall not depart from me." So elsewhere, the Lord tells us, "That his covenant shall be as the waters of Noah ";" the sins of men can no more utterly cancel or reverse God's covenant of mercy towards them, than they can bring back Noah's flood into the world again : though, for a moment, he may be angry and hide his face, yet his mercy, in the main, is great and everlasting. The promises of God as they have truth, so they have power in them they do not depend upon our resolutions, whether they shall be executed or no; but by faith apprehending them, and by hope waiting upon God in them, they frame and accommodate the heart to those conditions which introduce their execution. God maketh us to do the things, which he commandeth'; we do not make him to do the things, which he promiseth. "Ye are kept "," saith the apostle, "by the power of God, through faith unto salvation." Faith is first by God's power wrought and preserved: it is 'the faith of the operation of God,' namely, that powerful operation which raised Christ from the dead: and "your faith standeth not in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God," and then it becomes an effectual instrument of the

dono bona sit, et divino adjutorio malam superare concupiscentiam possit: ac sic in præsenti vitâ, gratiæ adjutorio, infirmitati non cedat; in futurâ autem, gratiæ beneficio, infirmitatem non habeat, &c. Fulgent. ad Monimum, lib. 1. r Jer. xxxii. 40. t Deus facit ut nos faciamus quæ præcepit: nos non facimus, ut ille faciat, quæ promisit. Aug. u 2 Pet. i. 15.

* Col. ii. 12.

s Isai. liv. 9, 10.

y 1 Cor. ii. 5.

same power to preserve us unto salvation.

66

'They shall all be taught of God;" and "Every man that hath heard and learned of the Father, cometh unto me." There is a voluntary attendance of the heart of man upon the ineffable sweetness of the Father's teaching. To conclude this point with that excellent and comfortable speech of the Lord in the prophet, "I the Lord change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed ":" It is nothing in or from your selves, but only the immutability of my grace and promises, which preserveth you from being consumed.

Thirdly, The obsignation of the Spirit ratifying and securing these promises to the hearts of the faithful: for the Spirit is the handsel, earnest, and seal of our redemption d; and it is not only an assignation eis doλúтpov, 'unto redemption,' arguing the certainty of the end upon condition of the means; but it is an establishing of us, eis Xpioтov too, into Christ, as a means unto that end: so that, from the first-fruits of the Spirit, a man may conclude his interest in the whole at last; as St. Paul, from the resurrection of Christ the first-fruits, argueth to the final accomplishment of the resurrection.f

Fourthly, The nature and effects of faith, whose property it is to make future things present to the believer, and to give them a being; and, by consequence, a necessity and certainty to the apprehensions of the soul, even when they have not a being in themselves. St. Paul calls it the subsistency of things to come, and the evidence and demonstration of things not seen :' which our Saviour's words do more fully explain, "He that drinketh my blood, hath eternal life, and shall never thirst." Though eternal life be to come in regard of the full fruition, yet it is present already in regard of the first-fruits of it; and therefore we find our Saviour take a future medium to prove a present blessedness; paxápioi σтe, "ye are blessed when men shall hate you," &c. "for great is your reward in Heaven."-Which inference could not be sound, unless that future medium were certain by the power of faith, giving unto the promises of God, as it

a Quisquis non venit, profecto nec didicit. Aug. de Grat. b Mal. iii. 6.

z John vi. 45. Christi, lib. 1. cap. 14. e 2 Cor. i. 21.

■ Eph.

c Eph. i. 13, 14.

iv. 30.

were, a presubsistency. For it is the privilege of faith to look upon things to come, as if they were already conferred upon us. And the apostle useth the like argument; "Sin shall not have dominion over you; for you are not under the law, but under grace." This were a strange inference in natural or civil things, to say, You shall not die, because you are in health; or, You shall not be rejected, because you are in favour. But the covenant of grace, being sealed by an oath, makes all the grants which therein are made, irreversible, and constant. So that now, as when a man is dead to the being of sin (as the saints departed this life are) the being of sin doth no more trouble them, nor return upon them; so when a man is dead to the dominion of sin, that dominion shall never any more return upon him.

Consider farther the formal effect of faith, which is to unite1 a man unto Christ. By means of which union, Christ and we are made one body": for 'he that is joined to Christ, is one";' and the apostle saith, that he is the Saviour of his body, and then surely of every member of his body too : for the members have all care one of another P, else the body of Christ would be a mangled and a maimed thing, and not as St. Paul calls it, wλnpwua, 'the fulness of him that filleth all in all.' In the body of Christ there is a supply to every joint, a measure of every part, an edification and growth of the whole compacted body', from him who is equally the head to all.

Being thus united unto Christ, First, The death and merit of Christ is ours; whatsoever he really in his human nature suffered for sin, we are, in moderated justice, reputed to have suffered with him. The apostle saith, that "We were crucified and dead with Christ ;" and that as truly as the hand which steals, is punished, when the back is beaten: and surely if a man were crucified in and with Christ, by reason of his mystical communion with him, he was crucified, as Christ, for all sin which should otherwise have lain upon him. He was not in Christ, to cleanse some sins,-and out of him, to bear others himself. For the apostle assures us, that

the merit of Christ is unconfined by any sin: "The blood of Christ cleanseth from all sin." As saint Ambrose " said to Monica, the mother of Austin, when with many tears she bewailed her son's unconversion, 'Non potest tot lacrymarum filius perire ;' that is, 'That it could not be that the son of so many tears should perish,'-so may I more certainly say to any soul, that is soundly and in truth humbled with the sense of any grievous relapse, Non potest tot lacrymarum frater perire,'-'It cannot be that the brother of so many tears, and so precious blood, which from Christ trickled down with an unperishable sovereignty unto the lowest and sinfulest of his body, should perish for want of compassion in him who felt the weight of our suffering, or for want of recovery from him who hath the fulness of grace and spirit.'

X

"Christ

Secondly, The life of Christ is ours likewise. liveth in me," saith the apostle. Now the life of Christ is free from the power and reach of death. If death could not hold him when it had him, much less can it reach or overtake him having once escaped. "He died once unto sin, but he liveth unto God: likewise," saith saint Paul, "Reckon ye yourselves to be dead unto sin, but alive unto God;" and that "through or in Jesus Christ," by whom we, in like manner, are made partakers of that life which he, by rising again from the grave, did assume, as we were by Adam made obnoxious to the same death, which he, by falling, did incur and contract. For Christy is the second Adam; and as we have borne the image of the earthly in sin and guilt, so we must bear the image of the heavenly in life and righteousness: and that which in us answereth to the resurrection and life of Christ (which he ever liveth) is our holiness and newness of life, as the apostle plainly shews, to note that our renovation likewise ought to be perpetuala and

t 1 John i. 7. 11, 14.

u Aug. Confes. lib. 3. cap. 13. y 1 Cor. v. 45, 49. Rom. v. 15, 21.

x Rom. vi. 9, 10, z Rom. vi. 4. Eph. • Per

ii. 1. 5. Phil. iii. 10, 14. Col. ii. 12, 13. Col. iii. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. hunc mediatorem Deus ostendit eos, quos ejus sanguine redemit, facere se ex malis deinceps in æternum bonos: est quippe in nobis, per hanc Dei gratiam in bono recipiendo, et perseveranter tenendo, non solum posse quod volumus, sed etiam velle quod possumus, quod non fuit in primo homine. Quid erit autem liberius libero arbitrio, quando non poterit servire peccato? &c. August. de Corrupt. et Grat. cap. 11, 12.