Sermon 24

Your faith is so Christ's, as the fountain and the cause, that it is ours as agents moved and acted by Christ. Hence it's a foul error to say, that there's no inherent righteousness in the saints, and no graces in the souls of believers, but in Christ only. There's water, even the spirit poured on the dry ground (Isaiah 44:3). God's spirit put within us (Ezekiel 36:26-27). The spirit of grace and of supplication poured on the house of David (Zechariah 12:10). A well within the saints springing up to life everlasting (John 4:14). The Father and the Son, through the operation of grace, take up house in them (John 14:23). Such a new stock and plant of heaven set in them, as they have the anointing dwelling in them (1 John 2:27). The seed of God abiding in them (1 John 3:9). Unfeigned faith dwelling in Timothy (2 Timothy 1:5). Grace in them as fire under ashes (2 Timothy 1:6). And a new divine nature (2 Peter 1:4). An inward man (2 Corinthians 4:16). Christ in you the hope of glory (Colossians 1:27). Nor are the faculties of the soul and the workings of it, in our conversion destroyed, as some say, as if the Holy Ghost should come in stead of these; for Christ takes down old work, and makes a new building for himself, but the stones are ours, the soul remaining in its powers and operations, the understanding and will remain, but opened (Luke 24:45; John 21:18; Ephesians 1:17-18; Ephesians 4:23-24). Christ removes the rubbish, and the perverseness, and over-gilds our stones; it's our matter, and his workmanship. Hence we are agents; grace teaches no man to be lazy, for because all the moral actions of the renewed are commanded of God; if we by grace were no agents in these, but mere patients, and Christ and the Holy Ghost the only immediate agents, in the omitting of believing, praying, praising, hearing, in not doing all our natural and civil actions for God, and in a spiritual way; yes, and in our forbearing to murder, commit fornication, blaspheme, etc. (for by the grace of Christ the saints abstain from sin) we should not sin, all these wicked acts were to be imputed to the grace of Christ and the Holy Ghost, which is blasphemy, and a flat turning of the grace of God into wantonness. Now we are by grace to be agents to purge ourselves (1 John 3:3), to run with enlarged hearts in God's way (Psalm 119:32), to stir up, and blow upon grace under ashes (2 Timothy 1:6), to walk in Christ as we have received him (Colossians 2:6), to keep ourselves in the love of God (Jude 21).

Use. We are to be careful of the stock, not to hurt or waste the stock of grace. He who is spending on his stock, before it be long shall have nothing; cast not water upon your own coal to quench the spirit or to grieve it. See what grows out of your stock? What income and crop of the fruits of the spirit shall return to Christ? The Lord demands of every child of God, what, and where is the stock, and where is the rent of Heaven? It is the virtue of the merchant to increase the stock, and in all losses to strive to keep it whole. There is a wasting of the habit of grace, which is a dangerous thing (Ephesians 4:30). There is a adding of the spirit, and a rubbing off of some letters or characters of the broad seal of the spirit which is forbidden; even as break some [reconstructed: spokes] or axle of the wheels of a great work, and the mill or the clock is at a standstill and can work nothing. Beware that no wards of the conscience be broken, for fear that the key of David that opens the heart should not fit them, or suit not with the lock. David broke a ward and a spring of the new heart by his adultery and bloodshed, and therefore no artificer but one only in Heaven could put the lock in frame again (Psalm 51:10). The new creation is like a curious clock made of crystal glass; it must be warily and tenderly handled. The frame of the workmanship of the Holy Ghost dwelling in us (2 Timothy 1:14) must be kept from the least craze or crack in all the wheels and turnings thereof; indeed, the least mote must not rest on it. Question. What must be done to keep in good temper the new creation? Answer 1. Beware to go to bed and sleep with a bone broken or disjointed in the inner man. It is good to be disquieted in spirit, as if there were an aching in the bones, after some [reconstructed: great] sin not repented nor bewailed. When Peter by denying his Lord had rotted a bone or a joint of the new man in himself, he rested not well that night; he went out and wept bitterly (Matthew 26:57). Jeremiah made a rash and passionate vow to speak no more in the name of the Lord; but he could not sleep with that coal of fire in his bones (Jeremiah 20:9). 2. Put the keeping of the new creature off your hand; make it a pledge committed to Christ's keeping (2 Timothy 1:12); let him answer for it. Be not you under the burden of it yourself. The habit of grace and the man put under lock and key to Christ is in sure keeping; consider what comes of him (Jude 24). This is a broken world; there are many loose-handed devils going abroad through the earth. There are robbers lying in wait in the way to heaven, to take the crown from us (Revelation 3:11). The believer who has a stock of grace must be at holding and drawing with men and devils. Commit the keeping of your souls to the faithful Creator, but be not you idle; do it in well-doing (1 Peter 4:19). 3. Deal kindly with Christ when you have him; break not with Christ if you would keep the habit of grace safe; do nothing against your state. Grieving of the Holy Ghost is unworthy of the condition of a redeemed one; your place cannot consist with walking after the flesh. The camp you are in cannot well bear compliance with the flesh. You have put on the Lord Jesus (Romans 13:14). You cannot lay in for, or victual such a castle as the flesh, for some exercise a providence and lay in provision for the flesh. 4. To be doing good keeps the habit of grace in exercise, and in life also; for grace is of the nature of life, and life is preserved by motion, and the frequent operations of life. Indeed, with this difference the natural life may be worn out and consumed away with too frequent and violent labour and toil. This life is increased by assiduous walking with God, for (John 15:2) every branch that bears fruit in Christ: 'My Father,' says he, 'purges it, that it may bring forth more fruit.'

Be it to you as you will — Christ cannot long dissemble (to speak so) and keep up his love; he tried this woman hard; now he praises her to her face: Great is your faith, and grants her desire to the full. If there was such a brotherly and natural compassion in Joseph (Genesis 43:30), Joseph's bowels yearned, they were hot, and (Genesis 45:1) Joseph could not refrain himself — Vatablus notes that the Hebrew word is, He could not do violence to himself; his love was like a hot furnace, and it was like to make a captive of him, and to overcome him. Now the man Christ has the same heart and bowels of a man, and I conceive that as Christ was a man void of sin, so the acts of natural virtues — as to pity the afflicted — were stronger in him than in us. Sin dulls natural faculties, especially such as incline to acts laudable and good, such as are love and compassion to the miserable; and sin bows, or rather breaks, natural acts that are indifferent in their nature and further removed from mortality, and makes them intense above nature, sin being a violent thing. So in natural men there is little power in carnal reason over acts of generation, hunger, thirst, sleep, and such as have their rise from the sensitive soul. Christ, having strength of sinless natural reason far above, Adam was strong in the acts of the former kind and moderate in the other; especially being a high Priest that matches us in natural passions (Hebrews 4:15), even in a sympathy, and having these same passions that we have. He wept over Jerusalem (Luke 19), when they were crying Hosanna to him; and occasion of joy was furnished to him, yet (verses 41-42) he wept over the city and spoke words of compassion, but broken and imprisoned with sighing and sorrow: O if you knew, even you, etc. Now what compassion must be in him, when his affection had such an edge? Joseph is nothing to him, he having taken a man's heart to go along with the saints to heaven, sighing, weeping, mourning, tempted in all these as we are, but without sin (Hebrews 4:15). Now though there are no passions, as there are no infirmities in God, yet the flower, the blossom, the excellency of all these are infinitely in God; he strikes and tries, and yet pities. In Judges 10, Israel cries to the Lord in their bondage; he gives them a hard answer: Go to the gods (says he) that you have chosen, and let them deliver you. They still are in bondage and weep upon him (verse 16); the Lord's soul was grieved — cut short for the misery of Israel. So in Jeremiah 31: two evils befall Ephraim — one is God's correcting hand; another is bemoaning and sorrow for sin; both are trials. But how does God express himself toward Ephraim? (Verse 20) Is Ephraim my dear son? Is he a son of consolations? So the Hebrew: Is he my dainty child? For since I spoke against him I do earnestly remember him still; therefore my bowels are troubled for him. Observe the income of God's consolations after sad and heavy trials (Isaiah 54:11): O you afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted, behold I will lay your stones with fair colors, and your foundation with sapphires. (Isaiah 40:1) Comfort, comfort my people, says our God: Speak to the heart of Jerusalem, and cry to her that her warfare is accomplished. There is a violence of heavenly passion in Christ's love; it will come out at length. Tempted ones, wait on — you shall see Christ as Christ in the end of the day; Christ is well worthy a day's weeping and a day's waiting on. Compassion strangled and enclosed in Christ must break out; it eases Christ's mind that his bowels of mercy find a vent. Pity kept within God's bowels (to speak so) pains him; it must come out (Hosea 11:8): My heart is turned within me, my repentings are kindled together. O how rude and inhuman has sin made our nature! His love, who died for us, broke Heaven and rent the two sides of the firmament (as it were) asunder; our Lord descended and was made a man in all things like us, except sin. But O, the first — nay, the doubled summons of Christ's love are not obeyed. Love cries; we are deaf. Christ's love hunts no other prey but our heart, and he cannot have it. After Christ has tempted a soul, he must put it in his heart; it is an ease and comfort to Christ to ease and comfort the tempted. He is now trying Britain, and giving his bride a cup of blood and tears to drink; but who knows what bowels, what turnings of heart, what motions of compassion are in the man Christ now in Heaven? Those who shall live to see the Lord take his bride in his arms and embrace her after these many temptations that now your eyes see shall subscribe to the truth of this; and those who find Christ's love-embracements after desertions know this. Should we suppose that there were in Christ but this one attribute of tender compassion toward his own tempted ones, it should make him altogether lovely to us. For the motion of tender mercy in Christ, upon the supposition of free love that he died for his own, is natural — he having taken a man's heart to Heaven with him, and borrowed nature from us as our compassionate High Priest; he cannot but pity. Mercy acts as a natural agent in him. Now suppose we that the mother were eternal and her child eternal, but eternally weak; compassion should eternally flow from the mother to the child. Suppose a fair rose to grow eternally, and the summer sun to shine near it eternally, and life and sap to keep it vigorous eternally — it should cast out a sweet smell and offer its beauty to the eyes and senses eternally. In Jesus Christ the heart and tender bowels of the sweetest, mildest, and most compassionate nature of man that God can possibly form has met with eternal and infinite mercy in God Christ; and to say nothing that mercy in Christ man has been putting forth the sweet-smelling acts of love, without tiring, summer and winter, night and day, these sixteen hundred years, and that even now while you read this, he is casting out acts of love and mercy — an eternal High Priest could do no other thing forever but compassionate his own redeemed flesh. Mercy chooses a lover freely — Jacob, not Esau; this man, not that man; the fool, not the wise man; the beggar, not the prince; the servant, not the master — but having once made choice, it works necessarily and eternally. Christ's love has no vacation, no cessation; but when he tempts, smites, afflicts, tries, love and tender mercy work in the dark. Joseph's bowels were in action and busy when his brothers saw no such thing, even when he was accusing them as spies and dealing roughly with them. When the sword of the Lord, drunken, swelled, and fattened with blood, is now raging in the three kingdoms, mercy in our High Priest and his bowels are rolled within him, though we cannot see Christ's inner side. It is likely the place (Hebrews 4:15) is but an allusive exposition of the rolled and moved bowels of God (Jeremiah 31:20). Christ is, as it were, in Heaven burning and flaming in a passion of compassion toward his weak ones; he is not only touched but pained with our infirmities, so the word does bear. We shall not do well to make the tempted condition — that either the Church or a soul is in — the rule of God's love. God's fiery dispensation in Zion, or in a soul, in the burning bush, does not always speak wrath; make not false commentaries on Christ's tempting dispensation. Hell is incidental to the love of Christ and cannot change it. Suppose Christ's tender mercy were in the midst of the flames of Hell; yet there mercy should be mercy, and work as mercy, and not belie itself. Never a rod of God upon any elect child of God (save upon Christ only) did speak satisfactory vengeance for sin. Question: Why? Is not Christ now red in his apparel, and his garments dyed and dipped in blood, and has he not put on vengeance as a garment in the three kingdoms? Answer: Yes, and for the provocations of England — their unrepented idolatry, superstition, vanity, pride, security, unthankfulness to God, who has broken the rod of the oppressor and delivered them from pressures of conscience under Episcopacy, a Mass-service, and burdensome ceremonies — and for the sins of the King, Queen, Court, Prelates, and Prophets, the persecuting and killing the witnesses of Christ in Queen Mary's days and in the late Prelates' time, and the present injustice, careless and remiss minding of religion, and their laboring to spoil the kingdom of Christ of that power that Christ has given to his people of Church discipline, and translating it to their Parliament, to make Church discipline Parliament discipline, confounding so the two kingdoms; their tolerating of blasphemous sects — some denying the Godhead of Christ, some his kingly office to sanctify and govern his people, some his priestly, some his prophetical office, and many other sins of Prophets and people not repented of; and most of these sins, and many others, and especially the breach of the Covenant in Scotland — these two kingdoms are to fear heavy judgments, and that their calamity is not yet at an end. But rather, one woe is passed, but another comes, except these lands be humbled and lie in the dust before the Lord. Yet in all this, the dispensation of God, though bloody, is but the Lord saying — as of old, so now to Britain (Isaiah 1:25-27): And I will turn my hand upon you, and purely purge away your dross, and take away all your tin; and I will restore your judges as at the first, and your counselors as at the beginning; afterward you shall be called the city of righteousness, the faithful city; Zion shall be redeemed with judgment, and her converts with righteousness. A rough dispensation of Christ cannot long remain rough to the saints; he must answer and ease the pain of the woman's broken spirit. It is a night's pain to Christ to cause the tears to run down the cheeks of his Church all the night; he cannot but bring a daylight of joy before the sun's ordinary time to rise (Psalms 30:5). Christ smites and weeps for compassion both at once. Tender mercy in Christ moves as much, if not more, within than without. The mother's bowels are as much at work within when the child is but upon her breasts, and he is not capable to know a mother as a mother and love as love as ever; when the deserted is but new and hot come out of the second womb, and a babe born over again, yet in a spiritual fever, he is as much as ever in the bowels of Christ, though he is not in that case capable of the sense and actual apprehension of Christ as Christ, and of the sense of Christ's love as his love (Jeremiah 31:20): Since the time that I sufficiently talked with him in correcting him, or since the time of my sufficiency of speaking against him, in remembering him I do remember him. I spoke much in my anger against him, and half against my will; I did chide him and scourge him, but my moved bowels, the stirrings of a compassionating heart, did contradict (in a manner) my rough correcting; my heart came out of me with every rough word and stroke. The sun and nature work long and many years under earth, in the generation of gold and silver, before we see gold and silver. God and his servant nature did us a pleasure and a great favor in that kind, in secret, down in the bowels of the earth, to make unseen and concealed provision for our purses; this secret love to us acted down in the dark is no love to us while we find it and see it, yet is nature in a mystery under a veil, sweating under earth to bring forth for us metals, trees, herbs, flowers, corn for our service — but we see no harvest at that time. Christ's bowels are sweating and as much laboring in childbirth pain of compassion and love and tender mercy toward us when we are in an ague and a fit of desertion as at any time; but we are loved of Christ and pitied, and we know no such thing. All Christ's answers and words to this woman till now were but interpretations and proclamations of wrath and rejecting of her, as not one of the lost sheep of the house of Israel, a dog under the table, not a child of the house; love came never above ground till now, yet did Christ's affection and love yearn upon her all the time.

Out of all this we collect: Christ may love persons, and yet his dispensation may be so rough, as that to their sense there is no ground of being assured that Christ loves them, till he shall be pleased to manifest it: Hence we may gather these propositions considerable for the times.

1. Proposition. God's free and unhired love is the cause of our redemption, vocation, sanctification, and eternal salvation; he loved us in our blood, and while we were polluted in our blood (Ezekiel 16:6, 8). When we were the lost world (John 3:16), ungodly (Romans 5:6), enemies (verse 10), he quickened us, called us, when dead in sins (Ephesians 2:1), without works (2 Timothy 1:9). The bill of grace is Christ's welcome and pay nothing.

2. Our divines say God loves the persons of the elect, but hates their sins. Mr. Denne takes offense at this, and so do the Arminians with the same reason: if God hates the works of iniquity he cannot but hate the persons, and workers of iniquity also. It is true, the Lord hates the persons of the elect for their sins, in that he takes vengeance of their sins on their surety Christ, but this is consistent with the Lord's loving of their persons to eternal salvation. The truth is, God's affection ad intra of hatred and displeasure never so passes on the persons of the elect as on the persons of the reprobate; he had thoughts of love and peace in secret, from eternity, to his own elect, he did frame a heaven, a Savior for them, before all time.

3. Proposition. Our divines do rightly teach that there is a twofold love in God: Amor benevolentiae, a love of well-willing, which he did bear to them before the world was, and it is called the love of election. Of this love, Romans 9:13, Paul speaks: I have loved Jacob and hated Esau — this is fountain love, the wellhead of all our salvation. There is another love called Amor complacentiae, a love of complacency, a love of justification (so Mr. Denne terms it) which presupposes faith. Without which it is impossible to please God (Hebrews 11:6); of this Christ speaks (John 14:21): He that loves me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him. Verse 23: If a man love me, he will keep my words, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him, and make our abode with him; so Christ the wisdom of God says, I love them that love me (Proverbs 8:17). And so Christ speaks of his love to his redeemed and sanctified spouse (Song of Solomon 4:9): You have ravished my heart my sister, my spouse; you have ravished my heart with one of your eyes, with one chain of your neck. Holiness and the image of God is the object of this love, not the cause nor any hire: it is not so properly love as the other. God rather loves persons, desiring well and good to them, than things. Mr. Denne is not content with this distinction; and why? The love of election, and the love of justification (says he) are not diverse loves, or diverse degrees of love, but diverse manifestations of one and the same infinite love; as when a father has conveyed an inheritance to his son, here is no new love from the father to the son, but a new manifestation of that love with which the father loved the son before. Answer. Men should not take on them to refute they know not what; not any Protestant divines ever taught that there is a new love in God, or any new degree of love in God, that was not in him before. Arminians indeed tell us of new love, new desires, and of ebbing and flowing; love and hatred succeeding one to another in God's mind — these Vorstian blasphemies we disclaim. It is indeed one and the same simple and holy will of God, by which he loved Peter and John from eternity, and chose them to salvation, and by which he so loves them in time, as of free grace he bestows on them faith, holiness, pardon in Christ, and follows these with his love. The former is called his love of good will to their person, before they do good or ill; the latter his love of complacency to their state, and the Lord's new workmanship in them, as with the same love the husband chooses such a one for his wife, and loves her being now his married spouse.

Objection 2. Men like those whom they love, and so does God. Answer. We grant all; these terms of God's good loving and good-liking are chosen by divines to express the thing. God loves and likes Jacob not Esau, from eternity, before he believes or does good; but he does not so love and like Jacob from eternity, to bestow faith and the image of the second Adam on him, while in time he hears the Word and is humbled for sin. The truth is, the love of complacency is not a new act of God's will that arises in God in time, but the declaration of God's love of good will in this effect, that God is pleased to bestow faith and his beauty of holiness, which makes the soul lovely to God, and it is rather the effect of eternal love than love. And God has a love of complacency toward the persons of the elect, and love of good will (though not of choosing good will toward them) for their holiness (Song of Solomon 4:9).

Objection 3. It is absurd that God should love the elect with infinite love to choose them to salvation, as touching their persons, and withal to hate them with an infinite hatred, as workers of iniquity. Answer. It were absurd, I grant, if God's hatred to the elect as sinners were any immanent affection in God opposite to his love, by which he should be averse to their persons. But God's hatred to the elect, because they are sinners, is nothing but his displeasure against sin (not against the person), so as he is to inflict satisfactory punishment on the surety Christ for their sin. A father may so love his prodigal son, as to retain a purpose to make him inheritor of a kingdom (if he had a crown for himself) and to pay his debts, and yet both hate and punish his profuse and lavish wasting of his goods.

Mr. Denne would teach us how love and hatred toward sinners does consist. The Law (says he) and the Gospel speak different things, the one being the manifestation of God's justice, tells us what we are by nature; the other, the manifestation of God's mercy, tells us what we are by God's mercy in Jesus Christ. The Law curses and condemns the sinner, the Gospel blesses and justifies the ungodly. Answer: What is this else but that which Mr. Denne and other Antinomians condemn in us? How can one and the same unchangeable God curse, condemn, and so hate sinners as to punish them eternally, and yet bless, justify, and love to eternal salvation their persons, except they teach the same very thing which we do? For the Law and the Gospel are no more contrary one to another than love to the persons of the elect, and hatred and revenging justice to their sins. Mr. Denne would further clear the point thus: whatever wrath the Law speaks it is to the sinner under the Law, although the elect are sinners in the judgment of the Law, sense, reason, and indeed oftentimes conscience, yet having their sins translated into the Son of God (in whom they are elected) they are righteous in Christ the Mediator. Answer: The Law speaks wrath in regard of its reign and dominion to death to the elect not yet converted, and to the reprobate without exception of persons; but it cannot speak wrath to the believer though he be one that daily sins, and is under the Law — that is, under the rule of the Law. Now to be under the Law to Paul (Romans 6 and 7) is to be under the damnation of the Law, in which regard believers are not under the Law, but under the sweet reign of pardoning grace, yet are they under the Law as a tutor, a guide, a rule. And that the rule and reign of the Law are different is evident: first, because the ruling power of the Law is an essential ingredient of the Law, without the which the Law is not the Law; the reign or damnation of the Law agrees to the Law by accident, in so far as man is a sinner, which is a state accidental to the law. Second, the Law is a rule, and has a proper guidance and tutelage over the confirmed angels, and should have had over man if he had never sinned, but the Law can have no reign to death over the confirmed angels, and man in that case, as the jailer has no power over the man who was never an evil doer. First, we are sinners in the judgment of Law, both sin dwelling in us, and second, the guilt of the Law lying on us to condemnation; but being once in Christ, and justified, we remain sinners as touching the indwelling blot, but we are not sinners as we are justified in Christ, as touching the Law obligation to eternal condemnation, from which we are fully freed. But the justified and redeemed of Christ remain as formally and inherently sinners as milk is formally white, a raven black: justification removes not the indwelling of sin, and so in regard of sense, reason, and conscience, we are sinners to our dying day, but not condemned sinners. Mr. Denne objects: We pray daily, forgive us our sins, then we are not righteous in Christ; he answers, that Protestants say we beg greater certainty and assurance of forgiveness; but not content with this answer, he adds, when we pray for forgiveness, we magnify his grace, who has freely given us forgiveness — it were not folly to a condemned person, having received a pardon, and being assured of it, to fall down and say, Pardon me my Lord the King. Answer: What Protestant divines say in this, we acknowledge; but if we seek only a fuller certainty of forgiveness in this petition, and not also the application of the general pardon, as appropriated to the sins we daily fall in, I see no other thing we seek but a greater measure of faith to lay hold on remission. I should ask a warrant of Scripture to prove that forgiveness of sin signifies assurance of the pardon of sin. Second, that to seek forgiveness daily is to glorify and magnify him from whom we once received forgiveness, is not to the purpose, for that is a general in all petitions that we put up to God, no less than in this. Third, if a pardoned malefactor having assurance he were pardoned should fall down and beg pardon of the King, and not rather tender him thanks and blessings for a received pardon, I should believe he called in question the King's favor; but should he every day, when he eats bread, beg pardon from the King as we beg daily forgiveness, he might be charged with more than ordinary folly. Mr. Denne: God loves us in blood (says he) and pollution, as well before conversion as after conversion; and though faith does not procure God's love and favor, yet it serves us for other uses, that we may be sealed by believing (Ephesians 1:13) and may thereby know the love of God. It is said, he that believes not is damned, not because his believing does alter or change his estate before God, but because God has promised that he will not only give us remission, but also faith for our consolation, and so faith becomes a note and a mark of life everlasting, as final unbelief is of eternal condemnation. Answer: First, it is true God loves the elect before conversion equally as after conversion, in regard of that free love of election that moved him to give his Son to death for them (John 3:16) and to call them effectually (2 Timothy 1:9; Ephesians 2:1-4; Titus 3:3-4).

4. Proposition. It is a palpable untruth, that the elect by believing in Christ, and being translated from death to life in their conversion to God, are equally loved of God, before conversion as after conversion, if we speak of God's love of complacency, for though the inward affection and love of God, as it is an immanent and indwelling act in God, be eternal, and have not its rise in time, and be not like the love of man to man, which is like the sea ebbing and flowing; or the moon, which admits of a cloudy and dark visage, and of an illuminated and full condition, yet as the same love of God is terminated upon sinful men, or rather that which is called, the love of complacency, which is indeed the effect of God's love; it is not every way one and the same after conversion and before; as it is the same fountain and spring that runs in its streams toward the south, which by art and industry of men may be made to run toward the north, the change is in the streams, not in the fountain, yet we say the fountain now runs not southward, as it did before, but northward: also give me leave to doubt, if these same very visible sun beams, that did fall upon Adam and Eve, do this summer fall upon us, yet I doubt not but the same sun that did shine the first six hours of the creation, on the Garden of Paradise, shines upon all our gardens and orchards that now are. So God's love is one and the same toward the elect before time, and while they are wallowing in the state of sinful and depraved nature; and now when they are changed in the spirits of their mind. But it may well be said that God loves his Church, as washed, as fair, and spotless (Song of Solomon 4:7), and that he does now say of her (Song of Solomon 4:10), 'How fair is your love, my sister, my spouse! how much better is your love than wine, and the smell of your ointments than all spices?' whereas the Lord said before of her (Ezekiel 16:3), 'Your birth and your nativity is of the land of Canaan, your father was an Amorite, your mother a Hittite. As for your nativity, in the day that you were born, your navel was not cut, neither were you washed in water to supple you: you were not salted at all, nor swaddled at all' — 'And when I passed by you, and saw you polluted in your blood: I said to you, when you were in your blood, live:' and all this the Lord might speak to the same Church yet unconverted; and at that time the Lord could not utter that expression of love, to say to a bloody and polluted Church as he does (Song of Solomon 4:7), 'You are all fair, my love, there is not a spot in you;' now could it be said, that the Father and the Son loves such a Church, as such as loves the Father, and keeps the words of the Son, as it is (John 14:21, 23). The Church was not fair, not spotless; but filthy, polluted, not washed, not justified as yet; and though it be true, that faith does not procure God's love and favor (it is a calumny that ever Protestant divine taught any such thing) for the work of God's eternal love in election to glory, or his hatred in reprobation, is not the yesterday or the day's birth of our faith, or our unbelief, yet that believing, or our effectual conversion makes no alteration or change in our state before God, is a gross untruth; Faith and conversion makes indeed no change of any state in the Ancient of Days, in the strength of Israel, who cannot lie or repent, and puts not God from the state of a reprobating or hating, or a not loving and choosing God, whereas before he was such, who did love and choose us to salvation, (the Lord is our witness) we asserted the contrary doctrine of free grace against Arminians and Papists.

5. Proposition. Our believing and conversion to God does alter and change our state before God: 1. Because God esteemed an unbeliever that which he was; even an unbeliever, a child of wrath, one that is disobedient, serving various lusts, a soul unwashed, polluted in his blood before his conversion to God; but being once converted and graced to believe, his state before God is altered and changed, even in the Court of Heaven, in the Lord's Books he is another man, he goes now for a fair and undefiled soul, the Church that was in a polluted, filthy, and miserable condition (Ezekiel 16:3-8) is now in Christ's heart as a seal (Song of Solomon 8:6), so fair, as her beauty ravishes the heart of Christ; now Christ names things according to their nature. 2. The condition is so changed before God, that (Hosea 1:10) it comes to pass, that in the place, where it was said to them, you are not my people, there it shall be said to them, you are the sons of the living God (1 Peter 2:10), which in time past, were not a people, but are now the people of God, which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy. 3. The words of Scripture, that imports a real change, does prove the same, as (Colossians 1:12) who has made us meet, or sufficiently qualified us, to be partakers of the inheritance of the Saints in light. Christ is a qualified workman, and changes Hell, and the most untoward timber of Hell, into Heaven and into a vessel of glory. It is a vain thing, to dream that Christ has no other esteem and warmness of heart to us when we are dead in sins and trespasses, and posting as in a horse race after the Devil, who rides, and acts and breathes in the children of disobedience, and when he has raised and quickened us for his great love, and placed us in Heaven with Christ (Ephesians 2:1-4), and made us kings and priests to God. Then the state of Hell and Death, should be the very state of Grace and Heaven before God. A new creature (2 Corinthians 5:17), light in the Lord (Ephesians 5:8), partakers of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4), renewed in the spirit of the mind (Ephesians 4:23), such as are begotten again, to a lively hope, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead (1 Peter 1:3), born again not of corruptible seed (1 Peter 1:23), kings and priests to God (Revelation 1:5), a generation of kings and priests to God (1 Peter 2:9), must be in their state, some other thing than old creatures, than darkness, than unrenewed, uncircumcised old men, slaves of sin, persecutors, blasphemers, injurious persons. The Lord speaks of a change great enough (Isaiah 43:4), since you were precious in my sight; you have been honorable, and I have loved you, etc. Were the children of wrath from eternity honorable? No, were they more precious and honorable actually before God from eternity, than the rest of the nations? No, the contrary is evident (Ezekiel 16:3; Deuteronomy 7:7-8; Psalms 147:19-20; Deuteronomy 26:5). Certainly, if faith or conversion to God (a special part of which is faith) does not alter the state of believers before God, then are they believers, and actually converted before God, and so justified from eternity? When were they then sinners? Never, their sins were just no sins from eternity, and blotted away as a cloud, as a thick cloud, as it is (Isaiah 44:22), and that from eternity, and from eternity sought and not found, because pardoned (Jeremiah 5:20), no more remembered (Isaiah 43:25), now they were justified from eternity, and before they believe in him that justifies the ungodly, no other ways than in God's decree and eternal purpose. But the truth is, this is the principle, false and rotten pillar of all Libertinism, which I overturn thus; and they shall never be able to answer it, if faith be so far forth a manifestation of our justification before God, because justification was in the sight of God actually done from eternity, before all time; then are we never ungodly and actually sinners before God. For it is impossible (say Antinomians) that God can both hate us, as ungodly, and love us as justified in Christ; and it is vain, and nonsense (say they) that God loved the persons from eternity and hated the sins, or that he loved the elect with the love of election, or love of good will, and did not also love them with the love of justification (this is their term not mine) or with the love of complacency, and his good liking to faith in them. Then (say I) from eternity the justified were never ungodly, never sinners, never the heirs of wrath, never such as served various lusts, and were disobedient, polluted in their own blood, which is downright contrary to the word of truth. 2. Observe the principle of Antinomians: We are not justified by faith (say they) — how then? Because we are justified from eternity, only we are said by Paul to be justified by faith, in that by faith we come to the knowledge and assurance of the state of election, and of justification, and God's act of not imputing sin to us, which acts were passed upon us from eternity, and before the children had done good or evil (Romans 9:13). And observe the words of Mister Henry Denne to this purpose: I do believe (says he) sin to be of that hideous nature, and the justice of God so perfect, that he cannot but hate the person, to whom he imputes, and upon whom he charges sin, if so be the person charged cannot give full, perfect, and present satisfaction; and yet will I not say, that the Son of God, upon whom all our iniquities were charged, was at any time, Filius Odii, a son of hatred (for the Father was eternally well-pleased with him) the reason is, that our sins were no sooner charged upon him, but that he had given full and perfect satisfaction, being the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world (Revelation 13:8). Answer. If God cannot but hate the person upon whom he charges sin, either God never charged our sins upon Christ: contrary to Scripture (Isaiah 53:6; 1 Peter 2:23-24; 2 Corinthians 5:21), or then he hated Christ, which no sound divine dare say. The payment and satisfaction which Christ made, cannot hinder Christ to hate sin, and so the person upon whom sin is (as Antinomians teach, while as they refuse this distinction) no more than the satisfaction that Christ made for sin, can hinder itself, or hinder Christ to die for sin; for if God should hate Christ, it should be satisfactory hatred, and penal. 2. I much wonder, if God from eternity charged sin upon his Son Christ (for the place he cites, Revelation 13:8, and the judgment of Antinomians so expounding it, evinces this to be his meaning) how Christ from eternity could give full, perfect, and present satisfaction to prevent the hatred of his Father, is not imaginable. Indeed, when Christ gave satisfaction, I believe that it was full and perfect: but that Christ from eternity gave present satisfaction, and that to make us actually justified from all eternity, is a point no head can conceive, except Herod, Pilate, Jews and Gentiles, the traitor Judas, and all who were wicked actors in killing of Christ, be men uncreated, who had existence and being, and sinned from eternity; this lies fairly for the eternal world of Aristotle. Then surely faith does not bring us to the knowledge, only of our state of justification, as passed, and done from eternity, as if election to glory, and the love of God therein, and justification, and that love, as manifested by faith, were two co-eternal twins, both at once begotten from eternity. Sure I am, we are justified by faith; but sure I am, we are not elected and chosen to life eternal by faith. And if to be justified by faith, be as our masters (though ignorantly) teach, nothing but this, that we come to the knowledge of our justification by faith, as by a sign, even as the day-star makes not the Sun to rise, it being only a sign that the Sun shall rise, and that justification is as old a child of free-love as election to life. Then say I, Paul might have taken the like pains to prove these propositions: We are chosen to glory before the world was, by faith, and not by the good works of the law: and this (men are reprobated from eternity by final unbelief). For sure it is, that we come to the knowledge of our election to glory by believing; not to say, that Paul's large dispute with justiciaries, was not whether we know, and apprehend our own justification by the works of the law, or by faith in Christ. 3. If Antinomians say, that Christ was slain for our sins from eternity, not actually, but only in God's eternal purpose; and they must say, either he was the Lamb actually crucified for us from eternity (which is a new eternal world) and we are actually justified from eternity, and our sins imputed to Christ, and actually translated off us, and laid on him, and so our sins are actually pardoned from eternity. Or, then they must say, Christ was the Lamb slain from eternity, not actually, not really, but only in the decree and gracious purpose of God; now that is (I grant, sound divinity) Christ died not from eternity, but God only decreed and purposed that in the fullness of time, he should die. But then it must follow, that God did not actually charge sin on Christ from eternity, and that Christ did not actually from eternity justify the ungodly, but only in his eternal purpose, he did justify the ungodly. Then the ungodly are justified in time; and when is this time? I believe the word of God, that it is never while the poor soul believes; even as the sinner is condemned, and under wrath, but never while he misbelieves, and rejects the Son of God. But 4. if the meaning (that Christ is the Lamb slain for our sins from eternity) be, that he is slain only in God's purpose, then are we no more justified and pardoned from eternity, and so before we believe, than the world was created from eternity. Now in the Antinomian sense, as we are justified by faith, that is, we come to know that we were in God's mind actually justified; then it may be said, the world was created by faith: for (Hebrews 11:2) through faith we understood that the world was created; and God laid our sins upon Christ by faith: and Christ died for us, and bore our sins, on his own body, on the tree, by faith. For, by faith, we come to know that God made the world; but because the knowledge and apprehension of the creation (may some say) is not a point serving for peace of conscience, and Christian consolation, which yet is false, (every point of saving faith is apt to breed peace and consolation) yet certainly we came to know and apprehend that God laid our sins upon Christ by faith (Isaiah 53:6), and that Christ died for us, and bore our sins on his own body on the tree by faith, and by faith only, to our peace and consolation. And so, if justification by faith be nothing but the manifestation of God's love to us in imputing our sins to Christ, and have no subordinate organic act in our justification, but we be justified before we believe, and that from eternity, upon the very same ground, God created the world by faith, Christ died for our sins by faith. 5. Indeed, in this sense the world must be created from eternity, and all things which fell out in time fell out in eternity, because as Christ was the Lamb slain from eternity, in God's eternal purpose, so were all things, and the world created from eternity in God's purpose and decree, but things that only have being in the decree of God, are not simply, nor have they any being at all. And therefore our free justification from eternity had no being, but only was to be, and actually is, when God gives us faith to lay hold on the remission of our sins.

Nor is it enough to say, that faith is only given for our joy and consolation, and not for the alteration and change of our state; that of unjustified we may be justified. For this lays down these false grounds: 1. The believer is so in every moment of time to rejoice, as he is never to sorrow for sin, nor to confess sin, because sins were pardoned from all eternity; but so, neither after a soul believes, nor before he believes, is he to confess sins, or mourn for them; because both after and before, indeed from eternity, sins are not at all, but removed in Christ. 2. It lays down this ground, that we are justified no more by faith, than by the works done, by the saving grace of God after regeneration, and that Paul in the Epistle to the Romans and Galatians, does contend with justiciaries, how those who were from eternity justified, shall come to know and apprehend, for their own peace, joy, and consolation, that they were justified, and elected to glory; whether men may know this by faith in Christ, or by the works of the Law. But 1. this is not the state of the question between Paul and the Justiciaries: For (Romans 3), Paul concludes strongly, we are really and indeed changed from a state of sin, to a state of justification, even before God; not because by keeping the Law we know we are justified, but because all have sinned, and are come short of the glory of God, and so are inherently wicked, abominable, doers of ill, and condemned therefore, before God, from David's testimony (Psalm 14), (Psalm 53). This Argument concludes real and intrinsic condemnation (verse 19), not the knowledge of condemnation, nor the knowledge that we are not justified by the works of the Law. (Romans 4:2) Paul proves, that we are justified as David and Abraham were: Now they are not said to be justified by faith, because they come by faith to the knowledge of their justification: for Abraham's righteousness, and the blessedness of the justified man opposed to the curse of the Law, from which we are freed in justification (Galatians 3:10-13), is the real fruit of justification, and of believing in him that justifies the ungodly (Romans 4:1-9). But this blessedness, and freedom from the curse of the Law, is not any fruit or effect, or consequent of our knowledge and apprehension of our justification in Christ: as if we were, before we believe, blessed and freed from the curse of the Law, because ever the Elect before they believe are under the curse, and are not blessed. 1. Because they are, before they believe, the children of wrath (Ephesians 2:2). Therefore, they are under the curse. 2. Because Paul and the Elect, before they be under grace and belief, were under the Law, and so under wrath (Romans 6:14-17), (Romans 7:4). Therefore my brethren, you also have become dead to the Law, by the body of Christ, that you should be married to another. 5. For when we were in the flesh, the motions of sins, which were by the Law, did work in our members, to bring forth fruit to death. 6. But now we are delivered from the Law, that being dead wherein we were held, we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the Letter. Hence it is clear that there was a time in which Paul and the Elect at Rome were servants of sin (Romans 6:20-21), under the lusts and motions of sin, which work in their members to bring forth fruit, that is sins to eternal death (Romans 7:5). Therefore, they were then under the curse of the Law, and so far from blessedness, and the servants of sin (Romans 6:20), and persons in the flesh. But the case is changed, they are now not the servants of sin, but servants of righteousness (Romans 6:22), married to a new husband Jesus Christ (Romans 7:4). From where came this change of two contrary states; indeed, and before God contrary? (for before God, it cannot be one state to be servants of sin, under the Law, and servants of God, and under Grace.) Certainly from faith on our part, or some other grace in us; at least there must be something of grace, by which the alteration from a cursed estate, to a blessed estate is made; then faith is not a naked manifestation of the blessedness of justification, to which we were entitled before we believed, for before we believed, we were in a cursed estate. This also may be added, that if faith be but a declaration or manifestation, that we are justified before we believe; Paul had no reason to deny that we are justified; that is, that we know to our comfort, by works of holiness that we are justified, for works of sanctification are evident witnesses that we are in Christ, and are justified (2 Corinthians 5:17), (1 John 3:14), (1 John 2:3), (James 2:24-25), (2 Peter 1:10). 3. It lays down this false ground, that grace is nothing in us, but a mere comfortable sense, and apprehension of Free-love, and Grace is conceived to be only and wholly in Christ, so that there is no inherent grace in the Believer, by which he is differenced from an unbeliever, sanctification and duties flowing from the habit of grace, are nothing but dreams of Legal men; Christ justifying the sinner is all and some in the Elect: strict and precise walking, contribute nothing to salvation. To think that it can do anything in order to salvation is to worship (says Mr. Denne) an angry deity. 2. To satisfy justice with our works, fasting, tears, duties. Therefore our

6. Proposition: It is a vain distinction of Mr. Denne, who would have a reconciliation of God to man, and of man to God. 1. Because we read that man is reconciled to God (Romans 5:10; 2 Corinthians 5:18-20; Colossians 1:20-21; Ephesians 2:16). Man is the enemy, whereas in Adam he was a friend, and in Christ the second Adam he is made a friend: but that God is reconciled to man or changed toward his own elect from an enemy and a God that hates their persons into a friend and lover of them, I never read; if at any time God be said to be comforted toward his people, or eased, these are borrowed speeches. 2. The love of election — indeed, the love that puts God on work to redeem, call, justify, sanctify the elect is no love bought with hire; indeed, the price of redemption, which Christ gave for sinners, cannot buy eternal love; blood, and the blood of God shed cannot mortgage ancient love; all the sins of devils, of men cannot forfeit it; make sins, floods and seas, and ten thousand worlds of rivers — they cannot quench that eternal coal and flame in the breast of so free a lover as God; in a word, the shed blood of Christ is an effect, not a cause of infinite love. 3. What then, does reconciliation place any new thing in God? No. Does it turn him from a hater to a lover? No. Reconciliation active on the Lord's part is a change of his outward dispensation, not of his inward affections: Fury is not in me, he says of himself (Isaiah 27:4). He cannot wax hot and angry in the acts of his spotless and holy will. Reconciliation turns not the heart, but the hand of the Lord, upon the little ones, as he speaks, so that he cannot deal with or punish his elect as otherwise he would do. The Lord's justice may be satisfied; his love cannot be budded or hired, and the effect of justice — the inflicting of infinite wrath — is diverted, as a river that ran east has been made to run west, and an issue of blood in one member of the body has been diverted to run at another channel. Justice was to run through the elect of God in the due and legal punishing of the sinner (which yet is extraneous to the just and eternal will of God), but infinite wise mercy caused that river to run in another vein, through the soul of Jesus Christ.

7. Proposition: Joy of the Holy Spirit is a fruit of the kingdom of grace (Romans 14:17), but not that joy spoken of in Revelation 21:4 and Isaiah 35:10, which excludes all tears, death, sorrow, crying, all sighing, as Mr. Denne dreams, so that joy can no more be separated from the subjects of that kingdom than light from the sun, heat from the fire, or ebbing and flowing can be stopped in waters (as he says). Far less is it true that actual love and obedience does inseparably follow this condition, except we were made angels when we are once justified. Nor is the kingdom of God spoken of in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, and the seeing of God in Hebrews 12:14, the kingdom or state of grace, or the seeing of God in a vision of faith here in this life (but of the kingdom of glory, and of the vision of God in the other life), as Mr. Denne expounds it, that he may elude all necessity of holiness — but that which flows from no obligation of any law or commandment of God, but which is in our power of love to perform or not perform; if we perform it not, it is no transgression of any law of God.

1. Mr. Denne himself grants (page 84): God is not like some niggardly man who will not bid us welcome to his house unless we bring our cost with us. Nor is holiness required of us without faith, and before we believe and enter as citizens of the kingdom of grace. In fact, by this interpretation (1 Corinthians 6), we must be justified and washed before we can inherit this kingdom (verses 9, 10, 11). But we are not to be washed and justified before we inherit the kingdom of grace, and before we believe; for so we should be justified and washed before we be justified and washed. And the like I say of the kingdom of God (John 3:3), for it should follow that a man must be born again before he be born again, if he must be born again before he enter as a subject of the kingdom of grace. In fact, not any such condition can go before man's reconciliation to God.

Proposition 8. Christ can love dearly and tempt [reconstructed: roughly] both at once. 1. His love consists [reconstructed: not] in a taking his Church into his bosom, and [illegible] continual, and never interrupted laying of her [reconstructed: between] his breasts; indeed, tempting flows from the love of God, nor is it any act of Justice; indeed, to take vengeance on the inventions of his people (satisfying Justice he cannot exercise toward his Elect; yet a punishing and correcting Justice, he may, and does put forth on them) but it has its rise from love; all the wheels of God's dispensation sweet or sour, are rolled upon this axle-tree of free love, the bowels of Christ act, move, and breathe all dispensations to the saints, through no other pipe and channel, but free and tender compassion, so as mercy is an immediate actor; when the Lord is wasting his Church with bloody wars. And (which is wonderful) mercy is Christ's armor-bearer, and mercy immediately kills, even when death climbs in at the windows, and enters into the house of the believer, either in a pestilence known to come from no creature, or second cause; or in the raging sword, when the carcasses of men fall as dung in the open field, and as the handful after the harvest men, and there be none to bury them (Jeremiah 9:21-22). 2. Tempting mercy is wise mercy, it were not a tempting mercy, if we saw all the secrets of love, and the reasons why the Lord builds Zion with blood; even the Elect, and beloved of God, though they be in Christ's court they are not always upon his counsel (John 13:7). Many are within the walls of the Palace, that are not in the King's Parlor, and taken into his house of wine. The love of Christ has its own mysteries, and unknown secrets, as why one saint is led to heaven, and to men's eye, the candlestick of the Almighty shines on his tabernacle, and he washes his steps in oil: he is rich, holy, prosperous; and another, no less dear to Christ, never laughs while he be within the gates of heaven, but eats the bread of sorrow all his days, his face never dries while he be in glory, is a secret of heaven. The love of Christ is often veiled and covered, and we know not what he means; but he hastens to show mercy.

Use. This should make us very charitable of Christ when he frowns, and covers himself with a cloud, and very inclined to pardon (if I may so speak) rough and bloody dispensations in Christ: He loves, and he bloods, scourges, and gives his own child a cup of gall and wormwood. Could we in silence believe it is Christ with two garments on him at once, Christ clothed with love, wrapped in the unseen mystery of tenderness of compassion, and yet his upper garment is vengeance, and rolled in blood, we should kiss the edge of Christ's bloody sword; so we are to believe: for (Isaiah 63:1) Christ at one time travels in the greatness of his strength, and speaks in righteousness, and is mighty to save: and at the same time his upper garment is blood. It is true, it is the blood of his enemies: but it is often the blood of the children of his own house and Sanctuary (Ezekiel 9:6; 1 Peter 4:17). And what more concerns us than to keep our first love to Christ? When he multiplies our widows in the three kingdoms, as the sand of the sea, and brings against the mother of the young men, a spoiler at noon-day (Jeremiah 15:8). This woman stayed on her watchtower, and now the vision speaks mercy to her: Say they were injuries that Christ inflicts (which is a blasphemous impossibility) yet it is Christ, it is the Lord, let him do what seems good to you. The absolute liberty of the Potter closes the mouth of the clay vessel if it could speak (Romans 9). That unbelief has no reason to stomach and dispute against hell's fire coming from him, who has absolute dominion over us. As Devils, and wicked men burn in hell with eternal fretting against God for their pain, so, if it were possible, that the Elect and Regenerate were thrown into hell, they are to have eternal charity, and love to the holy and just Lord, and to believe his eternal love.