Introduction
An Exposition of the Mystery which was kept secret since the world began; wherein the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity is manifested in the Glory-Man, the Lord JESUS, and that Christ’s bearing the Iniquity of our Sin in his Sufferings was the Atonement he made to God for the Elect; set forth against the Socinian and Neonomian triumphs, and against some other Cowardly Professions. It is likewise demonstrated that an Interest in Christ is built alone upon the Free, Absolute, and Everlasting Love of the Father, Son, and Spirit, towards an elect Remnant in Christ Jesus, against the Arminians. And therein is some account given of the Mystery of the Elect and their Union in Christ Jesus before the Foundation of the World; proving that their Free Grace Union according to God’s Ancient Settlements was never, as to the Comprehensive and Supreme Relation of the elect in Jesus Christ destroyed by their Subordinate Nature-Fall in Adam. To these things is added a Vindication of the Excellency of God’s Free Grace against the whole Arminian Scheme. And lastly, the Spiritual Operations of the Holy Ghost are Vindicated, as the Immediate Spring, Life, and Source of all True Religion.
Antinomianism
How many refined, blind, and willful idolaters have we still, that idolize men and gifts of learning, books, and authors, and depend more upon such men (in their breaking the Second Commandment, answerably to the day in which we live) and talk of them more as their helps, and bow and yield to them, and fetch more from them in Faith and Justification, than they do from Christ at this day. And whereas some dedicate a house, a hospital, a cathedral, to St. Peter, St. Paul, St. Bartholomew, St. Mary, &c., we have got men who will not by way of appellation so much as say St. Peter’s, St. Paul’s, &c., Acts 28:11 with 17:22, who yet scruple not to build their very Faith upon some of the saints of the last age; and will run down a truth of Christ merely because Mr. Such a One and Dr. Such a One were great enemies to the Antinomians, and wrote against them.
Antinomianism
Now don’t we see the same things oftentimes among the very Preachers, Pharisees, and Professors? The Gospel converts them not, but angers them, as God said he would deal with the Jews by the Gospel. They know they must be emptied, ashamed, and most of what they have said and written and made a stir about, must go down, one time or another, if the Gospel be true; and this goes against the grain of flesh and blood. And as it was among the Jews, what they had been used to in Religion must go down if the Gospel was received, and nature could not buckle to the Gospel; so that they heard and heard, but gainsaying all for Antinomian that was Anti- Jewish.
Why thus it has been among the Gentiles and is so among us at this day. Are we better than them? Rom.3:9. As the Apostle says, no, in no wise. It is branded with Antinomianism if we preach the Gospel faithfully, discriminately, and leave it in the Spirit’s hand to carry it to the particularly redeemed with a Distinctive Efficacy, even to Salvation of their souls, among our hearers; and if we don’t offer Christ to all, without regarding Scripture Distinctions in limiting our message, and discriminating our doctrine, we fall (they pretend) into an Antinomian error. They are afraid that all holiness will go down if it is not set up in their legal way; whereas I know the holiness of truth (as distinguished from the cheat) actually does go down, so far as holiness is set up in their Arminian way.
Arminianism
The natural free will is put by Arminians to act above its own sphere, spiritually, while it is but a natural will. Making use of Christ as a Physician, believing, repenting, &c., are looked upon by Arminians to be in the power of every natural man; and these are spiritual, supernatural acts, or acts that do arise from the bestowment of grace, which raises the agent in those proper acts to act above nature. (Phil.1:29, Eph.2:8) Man’s will hath a natural freedom for natural acts, as he is a reasonable creature; but he hath no free will for spiritual acts, though he is a reasonable creature. For these are acts above his capacity as a natural man. (John 6:44) The will of man in unregeneracy is a dead will, a hard, stony, inflexible will.
The wills of all natural men are at enmity with God. Their wills cannot freely bow to the will that God wills. No will can say, without eminent sanctification, not my will, but thine be done. (Luke 22:42) The will of the creature is of itself a blind, enslaved, disobedient faculty; and for this will to be put immediately upon making use of Free Grace, and coming to Christ as he is the Great Physician, is putting it to act spiritually before it is made spiritual. It is bid to discern and look while it is blind. To come, while it is tied and bound with the chain of its own sin. Vitally to look to Christ before it is quickened by Him. Now sinner let me not flatter thee, but in faithfulness give thee more encouragement, thy dead will must be quickened by a being born from above, life and motion of another kind than what you hast from Adam to hear, and pray, and read, and give alms, must be put into thee by a supernatural power, even by the Holy Ghost Himself, given to be and dwell in thee (I Cor.3:16, II Tim.1:14;) so that this dead will of thine must be quickened by the Divine will, and willingness of Another. (James 1:18, John 3:8) The quickening of this will and freeing it must be Pure Grace! These things must proceed in the will and act of God, and do so, before a vital act of faith. For a dead will cannot believe, because faith in the Son of God is a living act. Deut.29:2, John 6:44. The will must be taught of the Father, by sending down the Holy Spirit before the will goes to Christ.
Arminianism
We must preach the Gospel so as it is fitted, under the exalted Operations of the Spirit, to beat down the practical Arminianism of all our natures. We are ready to think that Arminianism lies only in the book, or the apostate churches; and that if we profess or protest against the ‘Acta Synodalia Remonstrantium’ (a book compiled by the Remonstrants in 1620, in explanation and defense of their five articles against the decisions of the Synod of Dort) against the Canons of the Synod of Dort all is well. But this is just another mistake. Arminianism is the universal nature of mankind. It is by nature everybody's principle, and there is no more religion in it than reasonable nature under corruption. It is our own state by nature, and I find it as natural in me to be an Arminian, as it is to breathe. I will own it, that every man before the Power of Grace changes him, hath a free will, or rather slavish will be an Arminian by nature. We were all born so, and without the Power of Grace, we die so. Now we that are Ministers under that power, must preach the Gospel so as to beat down Arminianism. If we lay down the Gospel in a Gospel way of Truth, we are delivered from the abominations of the Arminians; neither is there room for their subtleties to bring men into such labyrinths, as the things have been stated against offers of grace in this treatise of Gospel Truth. (Is.30:1,2) I must here profess my sorrow and burden for some of our present-day Non-Conformists, who have lost so much ground to serve the Gospel in their learning, as well as in their zeal for orthodoxy, (Rom.10:2,) that they seem at this day to be mere strangers to everything in the Arminian controversy, but the bare name of it.
Arminianism
Until I felt God's work graciously and most sweetly wrought upon this heart of mine, thereby slaying the enmity, I found all these points of the Arminians, as naturally growing up with my pride to stand upon mine own wooden legs, and with the swellings of my heart that then arose against God (Rom.8:7 with Eph.2:16,) as I have found it an easy thing to breathe. (Every man is by nature an Arminian if the books of the Remonstrants be read, and diligently compared with the rotten book of our hearts!) This was my old nature. “Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots; then may ye also do good, that is accustomed to doing evil.” Jer.13:23. I have experienced at one time or another what the Arminians experience; only the Arminians cannot experience, while such, as I have experienced from the Lord. Oh; the particularity, efficacy, and unchangeableness of Grace that I have found, since the first saving work of God the Spirit on my heart! What power, life, and communion hath been often felt through God's rich and special bestowment since! What conveyances in these points have arrived unto more faith and understanding through the Riches of his Grace! Well, I have believed, and therefore have I spoken. (II Cor.4:13)
And blessed be God, there are thousands in this nation that have been led into the experience of supernatural, effectual, free, special, and particular grace upon the foundation of God's electing love, choosing their persons in Christ before the foundation of the world. (Eph.1:4) It is this same doctrine in the hands of the Mighty God that hath quickened me to every good word and work (II Thes.2:17;) without which doctrine of Eternal Grace I am nothing, and can do nothing, spiritually good and acceptable in the sight of God (I Tim.2:3) through Jesus Christ. And this I have testified to the praise of the Glory of God's Grace against the flood of open Arminianism come in upon this poor perishing nation. Oh; that the Lord would be pleased, for His elect's sake to pour down His Mighty Spirit from on high upon men of all persuasions, till the unclean spirit of Arminianism is purged out of the land. (“And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the LORD of hosts, that I will cut off the names of the idols out of the land, and they shall no more be remembered, and also I will cause the prophets and the unclean spirit to pass out of the land.” Zech.13:2) Now as sin is sin and abomination, wherever it is found, so this luxuriant spreading of sin and abomination, called Arminianism, ought to be resisted through the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, which any of us receive, whether this spirit of Arminianism is a reminder of this corrupt nature in ourselves, and so we ought under the workings of influential grace to fight against it at home in our own hearts; or, whether it breaks forth amongst the professors of religion in word or writings. And if so, we should be zealously affected (Gal.4:18) in a good matter (for God's Effectual Grace is not my opinion, but my life,) and should fight against Arminianism; not the party, but the detestable error, contending earnestly for the Faith which was once delivered to the saints. (Jude 3)
Again, the more secretly this poison and drug of Arminianism is infused into specious labors, and not commonly discerned under the promising titles of some books, the more conscientiously should it be laid open by such as God hath delivered from those snares and dangerous obstructions of their Ministry, whilst that veil hung upon their minds.
Arminianism
In Arminianism men sin against every one of the Commandments. They sin against the First Commandment; for they make a divinity of man's power to use God's Grace, they deify the creature's workmanship into a man's own original choice of himself for happiness; not confessing God's sovereignty and antecedent choice, before creature obedience or disobedience, and so contrary to the First Commandment have other gods before Him, to His very face. In Arminianism men sin against the Second Commandment in bowing down to the supreme idol of man's power that they have carved, adorned by reason, reading, disputes, corruptions of a man's own heart and ways, and then set up, using it as a piece of religious adoration that will help a man to set out for heaven, and if used well will in due time bring him thither, as if it was the very same thing to go to heaven, as to go to London or Amsterdam.
How do men bow down to the grand idol Freewill, whilst they use their utmost natural powers to bring God over to them, by exalting the creature in those very things where the Lord alone should be exalted; and where by true saints the Lord alone is exalted (Ps.118:28) at this day, according to the Promise, without any regard to Freewill. “The lofty looks of man shall be humbled, and the haughtiness of men shall be bowed down, and the LORD alone shall be exalted in that day.” - “And the loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of men shall be made low, and the LORD alone shall be exalted in that day.” Is.2:11,17. The Lord alone shall be exalted in that day. It is twice mentioned. On that day, when? He tells us in verse 11. When “the lofty looks of man shall be humbled, and the haughtiness of men shall be bowed down;” and verse 18, “and the idols He shall utterly abolish.” I argue therefore if it must be thus when He pulled down (Rev.6:15,16) pagan idolatry, bodily idolatry; how much more when He is pulling down anti-Christian and Arminian idolatries; then how much more should men cease from these, and cease to plead for these idolatries in the hearts and spirits of such as profess His Name!
Arminianism
Along these same lines is his sixth error against Election in these words, “Let me exhort you then to give up your selves to him, to cast your care upon him, that so you may have an interest in him.” (Page 193) Can any man that believes the Gospel think the resignation of men’s selves to Christ, the casting their care upon him, doth go before their Interest in Christ? What should influence them to do this? It must be the Root as it stands by some Communications proper to the Root, or the Root can’t communicate. Now let nature be supposed the Root, will nature communicate influences to put on Christ? If it is Grace, as a Root that communicates, I am in it before the communication. What is wilder crab-fruit than this, that nature gives up itself to Christ? Does that nature cast its care upon Christ? Believe it not, “that which is born of the flesh is flesh,” Jn.3:6, and shall a man have the Spirit for being flesh and acting like flesh? This is a crab tree all over. Anything will please men of this Persuasion rather than the Gospel Truth of Antinomian-Union before Faith.
All Interest in Christ is passive, as it begins with Election-Interest, Lk.10:20 goes on to Redemption-Interest and comes home to Regeneration-Interest, or Influential enrapture by the Spirit’s Vital Quickening from Christ the Vine-Stock. How then do men get Interested in Christ by their own Acts and Duties? Benefits of Communion indeed they get, when from influential Interest percutaneously, they give up themselves to Christ, cast their care on Christ, &c., but it is mere topsy-turvy, to exhort men to do all this, that so they may have or obtain an Interest in Christ. (“He that hath the Son hath life, and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.” I Jn.5:12. “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life – believing as the evidence, consequence or result that he already hath Everlasting Life in Christ – and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.” Jn.3:36. “He that hears my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life – again, believing as the evidence, consequence or result that he hath Everlasting Life in Christ – and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.” Jn.5:24.) He that hath not an Interest in Christ before he casts his care on Christ, will never have an Interest at all, nor cast his care on him as the Scripture speaks, so long as he lives in this world, his doing all according to the Gospel rises out of the Gospel, Phil.4:3, and not his Gospel-Interest out of all or any of his doings. (“Knowing, brethren beloved, your election of God, for our Gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance.” I Thes.1:4-5.)
Arminianism
His seventh error against Election is the duplicate motive, “a motive to get an Interest in Christ, and a motive to beg of God to Interest you in Christ &c.” (Page 195) Why now if people are only serious, and not spiritually enlightened, Eph.1:18, this is looked on as brave Divinity, a sweet Exhortation to sinners, &c., and really it is but a cheat to the soul, in a spiritual robbery of the Honor and Work of the Glorious Persons in God interested by Gift, to take away the true Interest, and hide that being in Christ which these glorious Persons in Jehovah do jointly give; and all to suggest a creature-hand and power of interesting men in Christ, which neither Election and Redemption of their persons, nor Regeneration of their natures, do secure. ‘Tis a strange fantasy to think I was chosen in One, and yet that choosing me was no interesting me in the One in whom I was chosen.
Why did Christ redeem me if I had no interest in him by Election? (“As you hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as you hast given him.” Jn.17:2.) Christ never thought separately from the Father that his Death should save me, nor the Spirit separately that the work of Sanctification alone would save me. The Father’s thought of me was his Counsel in choosing me; and Christ came forth from God upon that Foundation, for he tells me, “I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me,” Jn.6:38, and “my sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me,” Jn.10:27; here is their Interest in Christ, as they are sheep belonging to their Shepherd, and from that Interest-Relation of their being sheep they hear his voice. Aye, but what saith the motive? (He lays the work more upon my begging act, than upon God’s choosing act; and so plainly sets up with the Arminian, a mere temporal Salvation.) “Get an Interest in Christ?” Proud worm! What, will not the Interest which the Father hath given the elect, to have Mystically in Christ, be allowed to be, or taken for an Interest, if the sinner be not a sent a fetching one on his own accord? “Get an Interest in Christ?” Ungrateful worm! What, will not the Interest Christ hath wrought efficaciously to maintain and secure, notwithstanding Sin’s Entrance, be taken for any sort of Interest, but the sinner must be sent all over the land of Egypt to get straw, and make into brick, Exod.5:11-12, to build his foolish pyramids of pride and vainglory which he calls an Interest in Christ, raised out of the materials of dust and clay? “Get an Interest in Christ?”
Conceited worm! What, will not the Interest the Holy Ghost gives influentially, be taken for an Interest in Christ, when yet he is the very bond and seal of it in his work, but the sinner must be sent out and off from the Spirit into nature’s field to be getting an Interest in Christ. (“Are ye so foolish; having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?” Gal.3:3.) Aye, and saith the other motive, a motive to beg of God to Interest you in Christ; as much as to say, “pray for an Interest in Christ” and “beg that God would Interest you in his Son.” He means thus; and then I say rather, pray for the eye-salve to open the eyes, Rev.3:18, of poor blind preachers, that the blind doesn’t lead the blind, Mt.15:14, and so both fall into the ditch. Oh! What fervent prayer is that (because the prayer of Faith) which rises out of Interest? But what Interest in Christ is it that ever rose out of begging God to Interest the Sinner in his Son Jesus Christ? Why must we pray to God for that which is not to be asked, but hath been already granted, (if we belong to Christ,) and has been bestowed to make way for all new grants that are still proper to come down, and to come on through Christ by Prayer?
Assurance in Christ Alone
“I shall (says he) only mention three special marks and signs of our being interested in Christ, and they are not only peculiar to some strong Saints but common to all that are united to him; yea, so common, that such as want them can never make out (from Arminian principles) their interest in Christ. At first, a cordial reliance on him. Secondly, a dear love to him. Thirdly, sincere desires and endeavors after universal conformity to him.” (Page 132) Here he thinks he has hit it, but most certainly he has missed it in this triple imagination. For, let anyone tell me (and be sure that I look for it from himself in the number) why there is not the mark laid down that concerns the principle faculties of the soul? And these are the Understanding and Conscience. (“Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water.” Heb.10:22.) Here is a mark for the will, reliance; for the affections, love, and desire; but where is anything for the Understanding? (“The righteousness of thy testimonies is everlasting; give me understanding, and I shall live.” Psal.119:144. “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; because you hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that you shalt be no priest to me; seeing you hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy children.” Hos.4:6.)
Again, where is anything thought on to purge the conscience, and wash the heart in order to a pure love? These things were forgotten, and without them, the others are not worth remembering. Did not the Israelites of old (strangers to their own hearts, as well as incapacitated as to any true knowledge of the LORD, Deut.11:16,) show forth their sincere desires and endeavors after universal conformity to God, when they told Moses, “all that the Lord hath spoken we will do?” Exod.19:8. And when they cried out zealously at another time, “God forbid that we should forsake the LORD.” Josh.24:16. And yet Joshua seeing their blindness would not take up this as a mark of grace, but beats them all from it, and discourages them from resting here, with a notable repulse, “ye cannot serve the Lord.” (“And Joshua said unto the people, Ye cannot serve the LORD; for he is a holy God; he is a jealous God; he will not forgive your transgressions nor your sins.” Josh.24:19.) You endeavor after universal conformity to him! You don’t know what you say. You are ignorant of God’s Righteous and Holy Nature, Deut.7:21, and so long as you come to him in your own blindness, and your ignorant sincerity, ye cannot serve the Lord; for he is a Holy God; he is a Jealous God, he will not forgive your transgressions, nor your sins, in the blind way you expect your pardons. (“Therefore say unto the house of Israel, thus saith the Lord GOD; I do not this for your sakes, O house of Israel, but for mine holy name’s sake, which ye have profaned among the heathen, whither ye went. And I will sanctify my great name, which was profaned among the heathen, which ye have profaned in the midst of them; and the heathen shall know that I am the LORD, saith the Lord GOD, when I shall be sanctified in you before their eyes.” Ezek.36:22-23.) Hath God the Spirit wrought a reliance upon the Person of Christ? How has he wrought it in thy soul?
The passive (the effectual work of the Spirit in Divine Quickening apart from any exertion on the part of the Sinner) includes the active (the response of the Sinner, under the Influence of Divine Grace) and secures it. If the Holy Ghost hath infused and wrought the reliance-grace, there shall be, by the effectual work of the Holy Ghost, the reliance-act. Eph.1:11. The passive doth not go without the active; only the deceit is, there is often an active, such a one as ‘tis (and ‘tis the Spirit must discover it a counterfeit) without the passive. There’s the man relies upon, and pretends it is cordial, that he does it with his heart; but all the while it may be the Holy Ghost hath never opened his eyes, and shown him what in Christ to rely upon distinctly. Professors commonly put themselves off with mere cheating, and too many ministers help to propagate the deceit.
Assurance in Christ Alone
How can a man know any one of these marks and signs of an Interest in Christ, but by Christ Himself, who is the true Light, and given me of the Father, by the most Absolute Grace, antecedently to all these marks themselves? (“Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world; he that follows me shall not walk in darkness but shall have the light of life.” Jn.8:12. “I the LORD have called thee in righteousness, and will hold thine hand, and will keep thee, and give thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of the Gentiles.” Isa.42:6. “And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising.” Isa.60:3.) What does it avail me to lay me down clouding marks of an interest in Christ? Secondary, marks, when all the primary ones, the gift of the Father, the Spirit of the Son, the translation into the Kingdom of God’s dear Son, Col.1:13, the calling out of darkness into marvelous light, I Pet.2:9, the seal of the Holy Spirit of promise, &c., II Cor.1:22, are all left out? The word saith in another case, marks and signs shall follow upon Christ; (“these signs shall follow them that believe,” Mk.16:17;) and so here, ‘tis a man’s first being in Christ, and then all things becoming new. (“Therefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away; behold, all things have become new.” II Cor.5:17.) Whereas the usual way of our marks-men and signs-men is to put marks and signs first, and make Christ and an Interest in Christ follow upon marks and signs. I Cor.6:5.
Union is first, the new creature, as the fruit of that Union, is next, and all things becoming new last of all. Now I can never judge the Last but by the First. If otherwise, I am deceived in the matter, Job 10:15; whereas I can judge in the light of Christ of the first thing by its own marvelous shine. Why should men act so preposterously, as to give me their marks which are but clouds to hide Christ, and their evidence as a false gloss to represent him, when Christ himself is to be seen and known in the soul only by his own light? (“For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” II Cor.4:6.) Let the Father’s Gift of Christ to me be discerned in the Faith of the Spirit’s Operation in my soul, and I have an essential mark of an Interest in Christ. (“But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb and called me by his grace, to reveal his Son.” Gal.1:15-16. “That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him; the eyes of your understanding being enlightened.” Eph.1:17-18.) Who can trust Christ with a Supernatural Reliance, who never discerned the Mystery of his Person, and the Grace of God in and with him by a supernatural eye? Who can love Christ that does not see him given of the Father to be mine or thine? I can’t love a stranger (“I am not ashamed; for I know whom I have believed,” II Tim.1:12,) with that kind of love wherewith I love an intimate. (“And the LORD descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the LORD. And the LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed, the LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, &c.” Exod.34:5-7.)
I declare I could not find in my sinful soul that I loved Christ, till I was made to see him by Faith of the Holy Ghost; and by the Gospel-sight of him I was brought to believe by the same Holy Spirit, that the Father had given me Christ, and in that Gift had admirably revealed Christ to and in my soul. (“And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath life, and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.” I Jn.5:11-12.) I could not perceive the love of God, but wrath, quarreling, a murmuring at God, shutting out what now I find most pleasant to my soul, till my fearful heart was made strong to take God at his Word. My first sign lay in discerning Christ, seeing the Son of God, and discerning things as God hath laid them out in order, by his Grace, before the eyes of my soul, according to what he hath made things to be, in Christ, before the Foundation of the World. (“And in that day shall the deaf hear the words of the book, and the eyes of the blind shall see out of obscurity, and out of the darkness. The meek also shall increase their joy in the LORD, and the poor among men shall rejoice in the Holy One of Israel.” Isa.29:18-19.) Therefore let a man cordially rely upon a Christ whom he never saw by Faith of the Operation of God, Col.2:12, and his cordial reliance will prove but a piece of old Adam’s flesh set a-strut; and the more cordially such a soul relies upon, the more ignorantly he is a zealous hypocrite. (“The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means, and my people love to have it so; and what will ye do at the end thereof?” Jer.5:31.)
Assurance in Christ Alone
Objection: The denying of marks and evidence of Grace in Sanctification is a sad mark of an Antinomian, both in this and in former days! Answer: We do not absolutely deny marks and signs of Grace in Sanctification, but we absolutely disown the unapt way and disorder (for it is every jot of it corruption) in which men have commonly laid them down. (“How does the gold become dim; how is the finest gold changed; the stones of the sanctuary are poured out in the top of every street.” Lam.4:1.) And I can see the common way of marking to be no more than the spots and shame of the men who have left their mark behind them. For, I cannot see from the Word, how there can be any of the Holy Ghost’s Evidences, but such as are presented in the true Light of Christ. (“But ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things.” I Jn.2:20. “And we know that the Son of God is come and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true, and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life.” I Jn.5:20. “Evil men understand not judgment, but they that seek the LORD understand all things.” Prov.28:5. “Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth.” Jn.16:13.) Now our acts are none of the Holy Ghost’s Evidence, nor Christ’s Light, in which our pieces of evidence from the Operations and Evidence of the Holy Ghost are seen. (“But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, yea, the deep things of God.
For what man knows the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him; even so, the things of God knows no man, but the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.” I Cor.2:10-12.) The Holy Ghost hath laid down many things in the Word, which he also works up the saints unto spiritually, II Cor.5:5, such as reliance, dear love to Christ, desires after conformity unto him, &c., which yet the Holy Ghost did never intend as marks of an Interest in Christ. Marks are Impressions of the Truth under the Spirit’s sealing them up unto the soul. Gal.5:22. Now there be many Truths of the Word which he works up the heart to, which yet is no ways congruous to his Office to seal up as a mark because his Office is not to mark and seal up from our acts but from Christ. (“He shall glorify me; for he shall receive of mine, and shall show it unto you. All things that the Father hath are mine; therefore said I, that he shall take of mine, and shall show it unto you.” Jn.16:14- 15.) He is the Comforter from Christ, not the Comforter from us. So that as to acts of Sanctification, we take them up as Truths revealed in the Word, and therein warranted by the Holy Ghost, and through Grace can bless God for the Holy Ghost’s work at the bottom of our acts. But yet we dare not say, the Holy Ghost seals up any of our acts, as the marks and signs of our Interest in Christ. Oh! No such matter, for I dare go by none of these confidences. They will not bear me out. They are neither God, nor Christ, nor the Spirit; nor are they God’s own Operations sealed upon my heart in my Gospel views of Christ. What are marks and signs in that which is spiritual without the Spirit of Christ? Oh! How do men cheat themselves in the common way of marks and signs! The usual procedure of men in trying their state by the common marks (and yet they call these special ones) must be found to be a grand disappointment. (“Take heed that ye be not deceived; for many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and the time draws near; go ye not therefore after them.” Lk.21:8.) This may fully enough be proved by comparing their marks with the Scripture marks. (“He that is of God hears God’s words; ye, therefore, hear them not, because ye are not of God.” Jn.8:47.) For, men usually go by their marks separately, with a total exclusion and sinful neglect of the Marker, the Holy Ghost Himself. (“The God in whose hand thy breath is, and whose are all thy ways, hast you not glorified.” Dan.5:23.) But thus the Scripture in marks and signs does not. “In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory.” Eph.1:13-14. The Apostle here does not try to interest in Christ by separate trusting but discovers how the Faith of God’s elect is prepared to receive the seal of Christ upon the heart by the Holy Spirit of promise. So, II Cor.1:20-22, “for all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen, unto the glory of God by us. Now he which establishes us with you in Christ, and hath anointed us, is God; who hath also sealed us, and given the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts.” Another preacher than the Apostle should perhaps have made my separate reliance upon the promise the mark of my interest, without any notice of my reliance upon the Promise in Christ, founded on Christ, built on Christ, and so the promise only yea and Amen in Christ. (“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ.” Eph.1:3.) Likewise Christ is our Establishment, who founds the Promise and bears up all the Word. I find that good men often proceed upon their marks very indiscreetly. For they proceed likewise without due regard to the marked, either in the antecedents, or acts of marking them; not confined to those whom the Scripture confines, or determines to be the marked ones, viz., the elect, the justified, the adopted, the regenerate ones; but they run to marks that are common to thousands of others. Whereas the Spirit of Christ is the guide of all the children of God. ‘Tis a sign of being God’s, by our being led by the Spirit of God, Rom.8:14, “for as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.” Children of God, and guidance, or conduct by the Spirit of God, do at last meet in One. Objection #2: I must have the marks of my Justification from my Sanctification; for I cannot know secret things but by more apparent. Answer: It
matters not so much whether you know them, as whether the things be. Job 23:8-10. For let a man go by what marks he can, as suppose love, prayer, attendance upon gospel-means, denying a man’s self, &c., yet if a man be not born from above, all those things are mere shows, images, deceitful representations, a fair show in the flesh, Gal.6:12, and the whole scheme of it not able to present one true mark. They are all wrong ones, for want of spiritual life, and that life derived from Christ by the Spirit of God, and so want of true holiness, or holiness of truth communicated from Christ in these marks deceitfully assumed. (“Be renewed in the spirit of your mind; and that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.” Eph.4:23-24.) And all true, solid, essential, and infallible marks of Grace are peculiar to the elect, the justified, the adopted, the newborn ones; but that which men run upon in the common marks of Sanctification can make no true discovery of Grace.
Assurance in Christ Alone
Now it is strange, that when the soul comes thus naked to Christ, and Christ accepts it for nothing, and clothes it for nothing; I say, ‘tis strange the soul (if we go this way to work in stating Justification) should see nothing, feel nothing, taste nothing of interest by all this in the Lovely Saviour, till it stays out it’s time for judging of interest by conformity to the Law of God, which is a thing, too, quite of another nature, than the Free Gift, or the Righteousness of Christ. Alas; the Righteousness of Christ in the applicatory work of the Spirit, comes home to me with such virtue by the Promise of the Father; (Lk.24:48;) that, blessed be God for Free Grace, I can judge (if spiritual senses may be believed in spiritual things, as natural senses are in things natural) sweetly upon the spot my salvation interest, by seeing Him in whom I have now believed on. I need not stay to take comfort until I have time to put into practice my preacher's set of directions; for he gives them all to a base end. Blessed be God, I know something of this. I can see something; I say, feel something, be assured of something when I am brought to believe in Christ without the works of the Law; (Rom.3:28;) yea, to believe on Him, though I am the chief of sinners; (I Tim.1:14;) for I am no dead one, no senseless one in the Spirit’s hand.
Believer’s Walk in Christ
Gospel fruitfulness the world cannot judge! They value us more when we bring forth wild fruit than when we bear the proper fruits of Christ's own planting; for the world never could, nor ever shall relish and delight in these. They delight not in the Fruit of the Vine, except it be of that vine of which they can be drunk, or now and then, sitting over a bottle of wine, be cheerful. Christ is the True Vine, and the wine he produces, since he was treading in the wine-press, is the Spirit (Zech.9:17,) with the which God's people to be fruitful are to be filled, and not drunk with other wine wherein there is excess. (Eph.5:18) Doth a spiritual man talk of fruitfulness, and refer to only that part of his life which the world is able to judge of? Alas! They can judge only of our leaves, not of our fruit. And here we ought, and are able, to bring forth leaves to men from common enrapture, or at least open enrapture into Christ; but though we ought, yet we are not able to bring forth fruit unto God (Hosea 14:8,) but by the life of God the Spirit in us. Saints are not fruitful in a Gospel sense, when their feet are kept from falling, and they do not slip before the wicked. Besides, if the Saints walked in the Spirit (Gal.5:25,) as Christ walked in the world, the world would be more upon them for that walk (because then there would be so much of the anointing in it from Jesus of Nazareth, Acts 10:38, so much of the Spirit, that the world could not bear, Ezek.33:30,) then they would be upon them for all their faults. Christ's walk was such that he would not bear the profession of the times, he preached more against the Church and the Chapel (Mt.23:13, 24:1,2,) than against the taverns and ale houses, and more against the sons of Zion, the Pharisees, than against the Philistines and the Romans. But now let a man do so in the fullness of the Spirit of Christ (for without Him in our souls, we sneak, and truckle under, I Thes.2:5, and fall in with the company, and are as bad as others,) let the Spirit of Christ carry out a man bravely against the preaching, and praying, and the Temple marks and signs of these times, and see what the world will say of this fruitfulness in good works.
Blessings in Christ
The promises are not offered unto us but are given (Gal.3:18) us, and Christ keeps the gift in his own Hand for us, and so manages it as serves all the gracious ends of the Donor. Gifts are for the elect and are received by One Chosen for them, (Ps.89:19,) even by their Head, before they are accepted by themselves who are the members. As the Holy Ghost saith; “you hast received gifts for men.” (Ps.68:18) They are effectual gifts, inasmuch as they are received by Another, even the Lord that hath chosen Zion, (Ps.132:13,) the Lord Christ for them. You Oh Son of God hast received gifts in the Man Christ Jesus, the chosen of God, (Lk.23:35,) as the Head of the corner, (I Pet.2:7,) for every one of the members; and so in Christ for all the elect of God. Thus Christ himself the Son of God is a gift of God for us; that is, for his people to know and believe, in the time God hath set. This truth will appear in Scripture under a double branch of donation. As to God's gift of Christ; “He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all;” (Rom.8:32;) gave him for us all. This act of God in giving Him to the cross for us was effectual in Him that was so given; for he was “obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.” (Phil2:8) Also; as to Christ's gift of Himself for, in point of saving benefit, as the preposition signifies. This also was an effectual act. “He gave himself for our sins.” (Gal.1:4) He gave himself for them to be above the reach and power of our sins, although he was to bear them as a heavy burden, or as a porter (I Pet.2:24) bears away his load, as the word ‘borne’ (Is.53:4) signifies. He gave himself to come under the imputation of them. There was an operation of Divine grace. So says Paul, “the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” (Gal.2:20) He gave himself for me to be above the reach and power of my own sins in particular. And also; “Christ loved the Church, and gave himself for it,” (Eph.5:25,) even for the Church to sanctify and cleanse it with the washing (Heb.10:22) of water (or with the abundant gift of the Holy Ghost) by the Word. Likewise, “who gave himself for us,” namely, for this end, “that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto Himself a peculiar people zealous of good works.” (Tit.3:8) And “the good Shepherd giveth his life for the sheep;” for this end, that the sheep may be saved (Is.53:6) into the life of grace here, and into everlasting life and glory hereafter. (John 10:11) And then, “who gave his life a ransom for all,” as saith that Scripture, (I Tim.2:6,) for all who have their election of God. (I Thes.1:4) In point of substitution and Suretyship; the Son of man came to give his life a ransom for many; or in the stead of many, or in the room and place of the many. Gifts are unto them in Christ. (“For all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen, unto the glory of God by us.” II Cor.1:20) The meaning is that gifts in Scripture (touching the Gospel or the Good News about the kingdom of God) are effectual and discriminate. They come so unto, and on the behalf of the person, as that he is by special grace singled out from every creature left. The elect are given unto Christ by an act of God within Himself from everlasting. Neither is there any other Head, or Saviour, trusted with them but He, in whom God's soul delights. (Is.42:1) This was the absolute gift of their persons to Christ, without any qualifications fore-viewed (Eph.1:5) to incline God unto the choice; and so was done immediately by a gift of God the Father. “Thine they were, and you gave them me.” (John 17:6) Christ is given unto the elect; unto them, so as that there is a conveyance of the grant and purchase. (II Tim.1:9) He is given in his Person to be a Head over all unto the Church which is his body. (Eph.1:22)
Blessings in Christ
All blessings are bestowed in Christ Jesus before the world began, as well as they are again bestowed through Him at Effectual Calling. (Eph.1:3-6, 2:7, Acts 10:43, John 20:31) Otherwise it is not blessing the elect in Christ, according as God hath chosen them in Him, for his choice made in Christ was made before the world began, as the text says. All blessings were so originally bestowed in Christ. So was the Father's justifying us in Christ, the Father’s sanctifying us in Christ distinctly, before the world began. But men will not learn of the Spirit of Christ to distinguish between the Father’s sanctifying in Christ Jesus, (Jude 1,) and the Spirit's sanctifying through Christ Jesus. Nor indeed can these things be understood, nor sanctified unto any man that meddles with them, to discourse or write of them with any holy savor, till the Holy Ghost hath taught him (apart from leaning upon the staff of his authors) humbly to submit to his own Revelation of the Truth of the Gospel, as it is distinguished to be in Christ Jesus first, by Him next, and through Christ Jesus last of all, in the Spirit's own applicatory work to the called of God.
Brook Cedron
This Cedron, or Brook of Kidron, runneth in the Valley of Moriah, at the bottom of the Temple Hill at Jerusalem. Into this brook continually ran all the filthiness and dung of the sacrifices for sin and for uncleanliness, the filth of the excrementitious ashes, and unclean parts of the sin offerings were washed down thither, after they were brought away from the Priest’s Court of the Temple, and disposed of as the Law required. (Lev.16:27 & Ex.29.14) And as the uncleanliness of the sacrifices were washed into Kidron, so the very sins and idolatries of the people, their worst sins were cast in thither. “The altars that were on the top of the upper chamber of Ahaz, which the kings of Judah had made, and the altars which Manasseh had made in the two courts
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of the house of the LORD, did the king beat down, and break them down from thence, and cast the dust of them into the brook Kidron.” II Kings 23:12. So likewise in the Reformation made by Hezekiah. “And they arose and took away the altars that were in Jerusalem, and all the altars for incense took they away and cast them into the brook Kidron.” II Chron.30:14. Again, “and the priests went into the inner part of the house of the LORD, to cleanse it, and brought out all the uncleanness that they found in the temple of the LORD into the court of the house of the LORD; and the Levites took it, to carry it out abroad into the brook Kidron.” II Chron.29:16. Thus for idolatrous uncleanliness. “And also concerning Maachah the mother of Asa the king, he removed her from being queen, because she had made an idol in a grove; and Asa cut down her idol, and stamped it, and burnt it at the brook Kidron.” II Chron.15:16. All these places show how unclean this brook was by reason of the uncleanliness cast into it and accursed idols brought and burnt therein. Over this unclean brook, Christ passed in his suffering way, when he went into the Garden with his disciples, and there his pure soul loathed our iniquities put into his bitter cup, represented by a drought of this black and nasty Kidron. Cursed brook, for he was made a Curse for us. (Gal.3:13) He was also sorely amazed, very heavy and exceedingly sorrowful even unto death. (Mk.14,33,34) Why? Because such contradictions to his Holy Nature, as our defilements were then being carried over to Him; and although it was impossible that he should be defiled with them, being an Infinite Person, as God; and so a Man too of pure eyes than to behold iniquity without abhorrence, yet he was still able enough to save us, as the Man stood in the Second Person of God, yet under the drinking of this black and bitter cup astonished. (Jer.14:9) The words are more emphatical in the original than in our common Translations. Now it was not pain, or torture abstractly in the bitter drought, but pollution, the dregs of our sins; Sin being the only impure thing in God's Account and so the spot of sin, the filth and pollutions of sin that were Imputed to Him by his Father, and put upon Christ's account, and mingled with his wormwood cup that it made his holy soul to tremble! I will be bold to say, that nothing but the Father's laying of sin upon him in all its formidable colors and abominable filthiness could have made Jesus Christ amazed! (Mk.14:33) Oh! This was the wine of our astonishment! (Ps.60:3) – And so our sins must put Him unto grievous pain distinctly from the operation of God's wrath for the guilt of them, and that upon the account of his abhorrence of the filthiness and loathsomeness that is in all sin; and having no principal, (Jn.14:30,) in his holy soul to mingle with it, or receive it with the least delight, but with an absolute, unspeakable detestation of what He drank down in his mingled cup of our sins and God's wrath in Punishment. Aye, and more a punishment to his righteous soul, than the extension of his body, and the nailing him to the tree of the cross, could be a torment to his flesh and bones. Oh, amazing love of our Redeemer! What heart is not melted when the Holy Ghost shows us this manner of his love! And yet all that I have said, cannot be saying so much of it, as the Holy Ghost hath said, in his saying that, “he was made sin for us,” (II Cor.5:21,) which makes me amazed at the audaciousness of some interpreters who give the Holy Ghost the lie in removing the old landmarks; and saying, it was but a sacrifice for sin. Oh! It was the bitterness and loathsomeness itself of sin which came into his soul, yet without infecting it, but tormenting him in a way proper to pollution, and the dregs of his sin cup. It was for this cause he fell under deep amazement; yea, they were these ingredients of our sin and guilt mingled, that were the inexpressible part of his sufferings.
Cleansing Virtue of the Blood of Christ
The Gospel answers the figure by opening the true design thereof. “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so, must the Son of man be lifted up.” (Jn.3:14) Now Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness to be looked on by the stung Israelites under the contagion of their wounds; “even so must the Son of man be lifted up,” crucified to be viewed, discerned and received into our souls by faith, under all the filthiness of that sink of sin which our souls have been wallowing in; and at all times when we contract new filthiness, we must still come unto his blood in the lively motions of faith, wrought by the Holy Ghost, and believe into that blood whereby there is cleansing; and again, it follows for our encouragement, “that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” (vs.15) We are to take all God bestows with Christ not only for time but for eternity.
Conditionalism
Come all ye religious cheats, whoever ye are, that deceive your own souls, and other men’s; bring out all your rank insinuations against the Righteousness of Christ, and the Pardoning Grace of God, after the Gospel has been preached so many years in England before any of our present-day was born, and tell me, was that Gospel perfected, Prov.4:18, to come up to the Scripture-Pattern in Two Ages? Hath it not required more time to build up God’s Temple since the darkness and smoke, the dust and ruins of the Papal Interest among us? And are we got no farther in this Generation, as to the point of the Remission of our Sins, Lk.1:77, than to blaze it abroad from mere sparks, Isa.50:11, of our own kindling, (never taken off the Altar, Psal.118:27, where God’s own Sacrifice provided was bound and laid on,) to condition the Forgiveness of sins upon our willingness to part with them, in saying that “there is no just cause for thee to fear thy sins are too great to be pardoned by Christ if they are not too dear (for there lies their greatness in this argument, their dear greatness, or their great dearness) to be parted with for him?” Are we got no farther into the Greatness of Pardoning Grace at this Day, than to be at a stand with it upon the greatness of our sins, too dear to be parted with for Christ? What do we make of the Great God all this while? What do we make of the Great Price, I Cor.6:20, that was not too dear to be parted with? And will we now, at last, go about to make people believe this must stop Christ’s Kingdom, in finding out and bringing in the elect, if these elect ones have sinned too dear to be parted with for Christ?
What stuff is this! What confusion and turning things topsy-turvy! Thus ye see, I take in the “greats” and “dears” of both sides. If I am great and dear in God’s Account, (greatly beloved and dearly embraced in Christ,) not only as to Pardon but Adoption, I say, if this be the case, my case or thy case; then we are too great and dear to God for God to part with us for dirt, who hath bought us with a Price! (“Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot; who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you, who by him do believe in God, that raised him up from the dead, and gave him glory; that your faith and hope might be in God.” I Pet.1:18- 21.) And as God is greater than ourselves, ‘tis not our sins too dear for us to part with, that must go and frustrate the Eternal Purpose of God, Gal.2:21, of his Covenant-Faithfulness in Redemption; that God must part with us because we have sinned too dear to part with for Him. No; for the LORD has his Effectual Way, at last, to make us all agreed to cut off root and branch every sin, Heb.12:1, and to part with them, as dear as they are, and use us in his Service to confess Conquering Grace in Christ, (“nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.” Rom.8:37.) (“Having, therefore, these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.” II Cor.7:1.)
Let another cast it upon the Prevalence or Sweetness of great sins too dear to be parted with for Christ; I dare not but lay the final Prevalence over Sin upon the Absoluteness of the Spirit’s Effectual Work, according to his own Gracious Covenant-Obligation to the other Persons, the Father, and Christ, to come down upon and into every one of the elect in a Special way of Grace, applying God’s Grace in a harmony with what the Father and the Son have done therein; and so make it to be Grace Experimentally in my soul, reigning through Righteousness unto eternal life. (“That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so, might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.” Rom.5:21.) Thus, I take and lay all these great and dear things of both sides, in my Examination of the matter, and lay them one against another, to show my readers which is the greater. Accordingly, you see here is great upon great, and one dear thing weighed against another dear thing. Moreover, I love to take up the Great Things of Christ and his Gospel upon the Certainties which the Holy Ghost hath laid them down by in the Word, and weigh them against other Certainties, all my certain Sins and Corruptions; and then I don’t know among all the elect of God, I profess to men, where to find sins too great either to be pardoned or to be parted with. I am clearly for issuing of things upon Gospel-Principles, and not upon Conditional yeas and nays, ifs and buts; for I am for going upon Fundamental Efficacies and Assurances, and not making all the main things of the Gospel Doubtful. (“But as God is true, our word toward you was not yea and nay. For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us, even by me and Silvanus and Timotheus, was not yea and nay, but in him was yea. For all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen, unto the glory of God by us.” II Cor.1:18-20.)
Conditionalism
This is a way now wherein men discover they are much Ashamed of the Gospel of Christ. Oh! But how shall I know it to be the Gospel of Christ, if another man, a good man be not agreed with it, especially, if the Ministers constantly blow upon it? Know it, says Paul? Know it by the Power of God, an in-wrought Power in your own souls that brought you to all your right Grace-Faith in Christ. This is the way to know it, “for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth,” Rom.1:16, “for our gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance,” I Thes.1:5, therefore do I discerningly perceive (am I convinced by spiritual sight and affection too) that it was the sheer Power of God unto Salvation that makes me believe the Truth of the Glorious Gospel of Christ, I Tim.1:11, against natural principles, against common persuasions, against my own righteousness, above my own frames at other times, above my own enlargements, above all the ordinances in their own common nature; yea, even above the Scriptures, which without Christ are a killing letter in my hands, II Cor.3:6, in a task of so many chapters a day, or such a portion of them to be read in a constant round, (without examining the Scriptures, Jn.5:39,) morning and evening?
Do I discern this, I say, and feel this, in a matter where I go much alone? Other men’s sins therein are too great to be parted with? They won’t be beaten off their old way for Christ's way. Which side now shall I believe about this one point? Which are the sins too dear to be parted with, and which are not? Shall I shut my own eyes in all the light God hath by Sovereign Grace allotted me, and determine the Matters of God upon the votes of the people? Away with them, for they will not deal with me by Gospel-Arguments and giving me any Account of how God brought them to Christ. Or shall I believe the Lord of Glory, who hath in an abundance of things we have been apt to take up for Religion and Truth, spoken against us all; and discovered that there are many things we have mistaken for Grace, which really after all the demonstrations of humility and modesty, are deadly Pride, and become the very sins which indeed are too dear with us to be parted with, for Christ? The Lord makes nothing of it to give it against your good men, as he did against those three good men in the case of Job, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite. Job 42:7-9.
The Lord hath spoken against me too, in everything where I have not hearkened unto the voice of his Word and Spirit in Conjunction; for ‘tis sad to see how men generally divide these, and look to the Word without the Spirit, or the Spirit without the Word. Now if I believe God, if I experience his Power going forth with his Word in my soul, and find this power loosening my heart from my sins, whenever, or upon what case soever, this Power comes into act in my soul; why now, I can confess and sit down thereby, and be assured, though all men, for my trial, were to stand by and contradict me, that there is no Gospel-Believing one moment, without a touch upon the heart from Heaven by this Power. It is a dead Faith (if Nature does prevail to heave it up at all) when Divine Power is not Sovereignly Dispensed and Asserted to set Faith into Motion. Again, I see and can through the same Grace find it thus in my own soul, that there is no Non-Believing, where the Power of God unto Salvation comes. Here are no too great sins to be parted with where the Power of the Most High is put forth, which is the bringing in, and the only means of bringing in, every one that believeth. And these are to be found nowhere but amongst the elect. Oh! I hate to mince the Gospel as if the Gospel freighted me, and we were got into a Doctrine fit to scare men out of their wits! When I know, as I know the sweetness of my food by a hungry appetite, that the Revelation of the Grace of Christ is the sweetest Doctrine under the sun; and is that which hath put its sweetness into all the rest of the Doctrines of the Everlasting Gospel. Rev.14:6. What, shall I believe Election, an Election of a select number of Adam’s race into a number of believers, and yet raise a doubt upon the Righteousness of Christ imputed to every one that believeth, only upon the absurd Condition that I part with them in order to get Christ? How dare I come and flutter it over thus with creature performances? As if the creature was above God and his Grace; and God and his Grace must stand by, in anticipation to see whether or not an Elect Vessel of Mercy will barter or exchange his sins for the Righteousness of Christ; and that in the day of Christ’s power too? (“Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power.” Psal.110:3.) Yes, it should seem so by this toxic admixture of Truth with Error! Oh! Contradicting spirit of this preacher that sets the matter out with a vulgar face, as if God and Christ could do nothing by the Holy Spirit to purpose, till they find worm-creature free to part with his sins and agree with God about the Pardon. (“Now the God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you perfect in every good work to do his will, working in you that which is well-pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ; to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. Heb.13:20-21.)
Come, come, O my soul, believe him not, (“O my soul, come not you into their secret; unto their assembly, mine honor, be not you united, &c.” Gen.49:6,) this is this preacher’s lie wherewith he hath been wont to make the heart of the righteous sad, whom the Lord hath not made sad, and has strengthened the hands of the wicked (by a mixed Gospel) that he should not return (by the pure Gospel) from his wicked way, by promising him Life upon conditions, qualifications, if’s, and I know not what else; and not suffering the Justified to rest upon the Righteousness of God alone, though he is Jehovah our Righteousness, Jer.23:6; to rest upon him for Wisdom, Righteousness, Sanctification, Redemption, I Cor.1:30, and All, as well as Pardoning Grace. (“Because with lies ye have made the heart of the righteous sad, whom I have not made sad; and strengthened the hands of the wicked, that he should not return from his wicked way, by promising him life; therefore ye shall see no more vanity, nor divine divinations; for I will deliver my people out of your hand; and ye shall know that I am the LORD.” Ezek.13:22-23.) Besides, how unfruitful are these sorts of preachers in a Day when the Gospel is risen more upon England, for the Lord will not make use of the same sort of men in every Age, and in every Day of Grace alike! For my own part, when I make inquiry how the Work of God goes on, I can hear of nobody that parts with their sins among the blockaders of Free Grace and Righteousness, Interest, Pardon, and Acceptation with their ‘ifs’ and ‘ands.’ But I take notice that these preachers are sure to hold their sins of self-righteousness fast; for I can discern that their sins are too dear to part with for Christ and that these good men preachers are in a worse condition, and far greater sinners by propagating spiritual wickedness in high places, Eph.6:12, than their poor hearers, whom they charge to part with their sins and come to Christ! Oh!
What a dreadful disappointment will it be, when such a great company of our zealous Reformation Preachers against profaneness and corporal wickedness, shall be found Enemies of the Cross of Christ! Phil.3:8. And that their spiritual sins in warm Sermons and sharp Exhortations (I mean all their soul-ruining way of Preaching, whilst they represent the Mighty Gospel as a bugbear to the people) are sins too dear to be parted with for Christ. This is the heart-life of their Anti-Antinomian Doctrine, and their Anti-Union Gospel, “thy sins are not too great to be pardoned by Christ, if they are not too great to be parted with for Christ.” I observe these men believe all they believe in the dark and will have nothing, no, not so much as a candle with them in the dark to make anything of God’s work upon the soul clear.
Conditionalism
Seventeen Hundred Years ago the way of Conversion was by drawing. "No man can come unto me, except the Father which hath sent me draw Him." (John 5:44) It is the Father that draws - why? Because all must spring from the Everlasting Love of the Father, who is the Fountain of the Deity; but since the days of the Pelagians, since the days of Popery, since the days of semi-Pelagianism, since the days of Arminianism, and since the new schemes of some of the Non-Conformists, the matter hath fallen otherwise. Men often preach and dispute, sometimes with, and sometimes without provocation, as if no man came to Christ without driving; driving into the duties of the Gospel, in order to partake of the privileges of the Gospel; or driving them to fulfill the Conditions of the Covenant, as they sinfully call obedience to the duty-part. But the Lord open their eyes where any of them belong to the Election of Grace (Rom.11:5,) and give them to know, that this invention was never the order of things, to begin with the duties, and postpone the privileges; it was never the order either in the Decrees, or their executions of the Blessings of Christ and Obedience of Him, instituted and revealed under the Light of the Gospel.
Thus it is, when men have shut out God the Spirit in Divinity, and set up their own and other men's guides, they run into confusion. This is the fruit of their preaching, to overthrow all order and settlements of Father, Son, and Spirit from Everlasting to the Elect; and all to serve the vain ends of their own Babel or confusion! All this is not Christ! Let us look above, and expect His coming down from Heaven, as our way thither to the Father, and ask for the old Paths Solomon had been describing (Prov.8:22,23,) about this Messiah; who had written of the glorious Paths, the ancient paths of Love, long before Jeremiah. Stand now, see and enquire for these, and see how far you are wandered and got quite out of the way.
Conditionalism
Aye, but you must repent. True; but these ministerial hirelings never drove me to the Repentance of the Gospel. (Acts 11:18) For lo; they drive themselves to fulfill the conditions of the Covenant of Grace for their Peace in Repentance. Well; says one, but though they aim at fulfilling the conditions, they come up, we hope, to a sincere Obedience, and this God accepts, and this will bring us safe to heaven than all your 'Antinomian fooleries.' (I use the term which mine ears once heard a popular preacher of the City - now flourishing - call the great things of Christ and the Gospel.) Well; says I, remember sincere obedience is not enough for you, except it is the sincere Obedience of Christ, who was obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross!
Take heed that your sincerity be not the sincere cheat of old Adam, for there is nothing which comes from old Adam which is accepted with the only wise God; for He knows no sincere obedience but what proceeds from the Tree first made good. (I Tim.1:17, Matt.7:18) The hasty Conditionalist will drive me to a conditional Christ; and if any secret guidance from the Word would incline me right, (if it is not strong and effectual, but a mere motion without new Principle) this Jehu, this furious and dangerous one will drive me, and drive me (II Kings 9:20,) till he has got me off from the Motion, and Way too, that I must not dare to venture upon the Doctrine of Love-Union before Faith; nor venture so far neither by Faith, as to venture in after my absolute Fore-runner, who is for me entered, without any Condition I am to fulfill, within Veil. (Heb.6:20)
Conditionalism
Others have set up with conditional offers, with conditional proposals, and with conditional tenders. That is, you shall enjoy heaven and salvation, if you repent and believe, and perform sincere obedience to the Condition of the New Law. And thus the Neonomians interweave a coarse thread of Popery (out of which the terms of New Law and Conditions first arose) which runs through all their fine cloth they make up for heaven, out of other men's spinning, into the reformation of manners, and sincere obedience. But how short is this of the fine linen, white and clean, and the white raiment, (Rev.3:18,) which is the Imputed Righteousness of Christ put upon the ungodly, and therein made the righteousness of Saints, as the Holy Ghost calls it, “and to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white; for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints.” Rev.19:8.
Conditionalism
His Twelfth Reflection is an enhancing and raising the price of our own righteousness, above the price of Christ’s Fulness to enable the soul to receive him in the Day of Grace. His words are these, “so now Christ is preached to you, as one in whom all fulness dwells, as one that is able to supply all your wants; but if you refuse him, this day will soon be over, and then no buying, no, not with Money or Price.” (Page 23) ‘Tis dismal blindness to run on and reflect, after this inconsistent manner, upon the fulness of him that fills all in all, Eph.1:23, I mean the Mystical fulness of Christ. That fulness is the Mystical Church, or the elect of God, the Body of Christ. Dare any man that believes Gospel-Election fright the elect with their refusal and think to bring them into God and Christ by a lie, Job 13:7, by telling them of the Day of Grace soon over? As if Christ would as soon part with the members of his Body, mystically planted in him by Settlement-Grace before the world was, as these idle words of unstudied preachers, or words they utter without labor in thinking, tend to make them believe? No, no, God in Christ and the Holy Spirit have other means to bring home the elect than this poor way as taken up in this scarecrow.
When did Christ or his Apostles ever preach Eternal Salvation to the elect by any argument of this import? ‘Tis sad, when men ignorantly utter a matter of the Sanctuary, before they have weighed it at the Sanctuary on the Fundamental Balance. As if Jerusalem’s temporal calamity foretold by Christ, Lk.13:34-35, to come upon the non-elect citizens and countrymen of our Lord, ought to be leveled at the Everlasting Destruction of the elect for miss-improving and neglecting the Day of Grace! Foolish builder to daub thus with untempered mortar! If he had but read the Arminian Controversies, he would have seen all the woof of his argument, akin to this single thread, and as fairly unraveled by the whole set of the Anti-Arminian writers. ‘Tis a more dismal blindness to run on and reflect at this rate upon the personal fulness of Jesus Christ. That fulness which is in Christ by treasure of the Father’s Grace is enough for all the elect to be brought in and receive Christ before their Day of Grace can possibly pass away. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but Christ’s words shall not pass away, Mt.24:35, who has said, “All that the Father giveth me shall come to me, and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.” Jn.6:37. So when he speaks so inconsistently regarding Election, and shows no regard to the Influences of Jesus Christ’s Righteousness in the hand of the Spirit, he comes on at last to a downright reflection upon the Value of the Righteousness of Christ, by enhancing the price of our own, beyond all due bounds, upon the Supposition of refusing him, and the “Day of Grace soon over,” in these words, “and then no buying, no, not with money or price.” This naturally tends to beget some thoughts of transcending worth in our own doings, above the Righteousness of Christ. The saucy language too plainly speaks this, no buying, no not with my own righteousness. For ‘tis my own righteousness, excellencies, and moral qualifications which are the money and price, in opposition to which Christ is bestowed freely upon the poor creature, who is made to see by the Holy Ghost that he hath none of these. “No buying, no, not with money or price?” Who sees not, but that my righteousness, by this, must be supposed to have a purchasing virtue; only in this case it happens, I have slipped my time, and the commodity is not to be had? It must certainly be so, for if he will suppose Christ by his Righteousness and Blood hath not absolutely bought Eternal Life for me, on the account of my temporal alienation by nature through Sin’s Entrance, Eph.2:1; I say, if he will not suppose it, then there should have been the full stop; for it is vanity to tell me that “now it is too late,” if before it was not my Day of Special Revelation Grace and Effectual Calling. And in these cases wherever there is such a Special Season, Effectual Grace steps in and prevents the refusal, and the “too late,” and the Day of Grace to a chosen vessel, Acts 9:15, “over,” and yet that vessel not efficaciously brought in to Christ. I say this is infallibly prevented, let my spiritual liars tell me what their spiritual delusion dictates. Isa.66:4. If the Lord had not intended me for Christ’s fulness, Mr. Hunt should have put the full stop at Christ’s fulness, and not have flattered me with a comma, and the danger of a refusal, as if the Staff of Authority was in my hands, and the Key of David, Rev.3:7, at my creature-disposal! Oh! Worm Pride! Humble Wickedness! Proud Humility! Puritanical Uncleanness! No, rather than put the stop at Christ’s fulness according to God’s will, and let me know it was not to be had beyond the bounds of God’s will; he’ll rather set up a New Market with my own righteousness in not refusing, and by mine own diligence not slipping the Day of Grace, and tempt me by a mere creature trick to look to it in time, without any regard to the Spirit’s Obligation to God and Christ, and sink to prevail and bring me in by a headstrong argument that has neither the reason of Law nor Gospel in it; that if it is not secured now, it will not be done afterward with money nor price. (“What then? Israel hath not obtained that which he seeks for; but the election hath obtained it, and the rest were blinded; according as it is written, God hath given them the spirit of slumber, eyes that they should not see, and ears that they should not hear; unto this day.” Rom.11:7-8. “So then it is not of him that wills, nor of him that runneth, but of God that shows mercy.” Rom.9:16.) Oh! How this tends to draw out the mind of man to hanker after that in obtaining Christ, as having a natural efficacy of
our own in it, to work wonders towards it which the Scriptures take no notice of! Just thus hath Mr. Hunt exalted our own righteousness above the Righteousness of Christ in this last scandalous reflection!
Conditionalism
Either we are all (‘Antinomian’-wise) cleansed in Regeneration, by the Washing of the Holy Ghost before we believe by Christ’s approaches to us, and so in the sight of God through Christ, as to our grace-portion in Christ we are clean before faith, or (Arminian-wise) we are not clean until after we believe. If we are cleansed before, then the mystical cleansing and Gift of the Holy Ghost too depend not on the antecedence of our going to Christ by faith, as the Arminian is wont to lay it upon faith, and presses sinners to believe, and then they will have all, and without believing they receive nothing at all; and there is nothing mentioned in regards to Regeneration and Washing of the Holy Ghost towards motion-faith, but all the emphasis is upon getting an ‘interest in Christ’. So the Arminian lays it all out in creature-acts in his exhortation to sinners; and shows that sinners have nothing before they give up themselves to Christ; consent to receive Christ; get an interest in Christ; receive Christ; give up themselves speedily to Christ; flee to Christ; come to Christ; believe on Christ &c., thus it goes on and on; as if all regeneration followed these acts, and not as if Regeneration was the State of Grace that infallibly produced them. Thus the Arminian intermingles such frights and threats with his exhortations as can be executed upon none that pass under Regeneration. “If you die out of Christ you will find yourselves miserably mistaken.” Why, if born again, how can they die out of Christ? If not born again, how can they perform the acts that he exhorts them to? By all this, it appears that the Arminian makes no more of the Cleansing in Regeneration than he doth of the Life thereof.
Confession of Sin
Coming to Christ with our Sins, or in the Apprehended Pollution of our Adam-Nature, is putting him in remembrance, as the Word says, how these very Sins that we bring to Christ confessedly, were once laid upon him judicially. “I, even I, am he that blot out thy transgressions for mine own sake and will not remember thy sins. Put me in remembrance; let us plead together; declare you, that you mayest be justified.” Isa.43:25-26. Thus, I say, we come before him, or to him in our filthiness laid open, and so in our Sins confessedly, and in this Grace of access through the Spirit, Eph.2:18, Christ hath Communion with us, and his blood still by fresh supplies of Application in the very Communion with us, cleanses us from all unrighteousness, I Jn.1:9; even to a sight of our Absolute Perfection as we stand in Him, and yet consistent with our Daily Pollution, so far as our natures derive from, and relate unto Old Adam. (Our State is in Christ, but our Nature is within ourselves. Our State in Christ is not Sinful, whilst our natures in ourselves are so. For ‘tis by Nature in ourselves that we are children of wrath even as others, Eph.2:3; not by State in ourselves, much less by our State in Christ. So that upon this Distinction of State differenced from Nature, it is evident the soul comes to Christ in a justified State, yet with a filthy nature.
Thus, the soul in coming to Christ, and venturing on him, brings the filthiness of its present nature to Christ, even whilst it is absolved from all Condemnation, as to its Standing in Christ, and there in that very act of the souls coming to Christ, and flinging itself - committing itself freely into the Ocean of Christ’s Blood, finds a full virtue of cleansing in that Infinite Ransom-Love!) Christ is well pleased to see a soul come Confessedly unto him, and lie down before him in the strength of his Omnipotent Grace, acknowledging the very Pollution of his Sins upon his own nature-self, now by Grace in the dust before the Lord, and there depending on the Mediator, for fresh, experimental sprinklings of his blood against his Sins, to wash them off again sensibly. “Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through Sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ; Grace unto you, and peace, be multiplied.” I Pet.1:2. And it is impossible for a soul to come to Christ, and not come thus, in and with his Sins and Uncleannesses upon him in his own eyes; for the virtue of Christ’s Righteousness sometimes stops influentially to me, as to my nature, though it never ceases in its virtue to God for me, touching my State and Condition to Eternity. God sees me in Christ still without a spot. Rev.14:5. Yet I often can look no higher influentially than to see myself in and under the sensible Operations of Old Adam.
Nevertheless, sometimes under Mighty Grace, I can see myself in Christ, what God sees me to be in Christ without spot. Thus, if I look upon my Condition in Christ, my Grace and Holiness I have mystically in Himself, I see myself every way complete, Col.2:10; but if I look upon Grace and Holiness itself derived from Christ upon me; as soon as that but comes to shine through my nature, it is quite another thing in me, then it is in Christ. Grace itself is discolored, and much of my filthiness in my very graces every day appears to me. My help therefore is in the name of the Lord, Psal.124:8, and I am sensibly relieved in and to myself, by looking unto Jesus under the Spirit’s Operation. Thus I and my Grace in Christ have no spot, but in me, it is mixed with much Corruption, in which I daily come to Christ by Faith.
Confession of Sin
He that can’t be too guilty in his person, to come, or go to Christ by Faith, can’t be too filthy in his nature, to go of Faith unto him. But the elect of God are not too guilty in their persons to go to Christ by Faith; therefore they are not too filthy in their natures to go by Faith unto him. And again, he that is too filthy to go to Christ by Faith is too guilty to go to Christ by Faith likewise. Guilt and Pollution go in couples, so far as the elect are related in their nature-part to Adam. This evidently appears in the type of the two goats, Leviticus 16, provided both for the Guilt and Uncleanness of the people too. For, after the goat of the sin-offering for the people, upon which the Lord’s lot fell, was offered up for a sin-offering, verses 9,15, and Atonement made with it, verse 16, because of the uncleanness of the children of Israel, ‘tis expressly said thereof, verse 21, that “Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins, putting them upon the head of the goat, and shall send him away by the hand of a fit man into the wilderness;” what was this but coming with the guilt and filth of sin both, included in that phrase, “their sins,” and separately called “iniquities and uncleanness”?
Who was it a coming to in the Mystery and Intendment of that type, but Christ? Heb.9:9-14. Atonement was to be made for their uncleanness, and their transgressions in all their sins, verse 16, both being coupled and laid together in that provisional Sacrifice looking unto Jesus, Heb.12:2, the Author and Finisher of our faith. “Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is none else.” Isa.45:22. So that as guiltiness and filthiness in sin go by couples, and ample provision is made in bestowing Christ against both, the elect is quickened to this end that they should immediately look towards Christ with both uncleanness and transgressions and then go to him with both, fiducially and confessedly, putting him in remembrance, Isa.43:26, upon faiths viewing him, that both of these have been laid upon him; and if I can’t act thus in respect of the filth of sin, I can’t act thus either in respect of the guilt of sin. “I, even I, am he that blots out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins. Put me in remembrance; let us plead together; declare you, that you mayest be justified.” Isa.43:25-26. For we see how they go together, and how the matter is still to be taken up through Christ for time, according to the Settlement-Patterns of the Grace of God in Christ before Faith or time either; because I love to eye the language of one text in the light of other texts, consistently. Furthermore, know that all sin is an Abomination in the Sight of God. The guilt of sin or Filth of sin, let men distinguish it as they are wont, under this form, ‘tis utter Abomination still, as a hateful thing in God’s eye.
If there be never so little of it that men think remains, when they diminish it into the remainders of sin, (which the Scriptures make out to be the abode and indwelling of sin,) that same pollution is abominable, and that same iniquity, whatever low measure flesh and blood may reduce it to in the Estimation, is abominable defilement in the Pure Eye of God. And is there any child of God in the world which can go to God without sin in the relation of his nature-part to Adam? Again, can any sin be clean? Is it not contrary to the nature of sin to be so? Can the stains which the last sins committed, it may be the greatest and blackest offenses of the number, have left behind them in the soul, be found a clean thing? And the heart in which they have lodged, be influentially clean by communication of Grace, before the time which that Communicating Grace, according to the Mystery of Grace, enables the heart practically to deal with Christ? So that if the soul goes at all, it goes with its abominations to the Son of God manifested to take away our sins. I Jn.3:5. How does a man go to the water but dirty? Whether he hath much or little dirt upon him, ‘tis filth and dirt still; and to the water he goes with that defilement. And is it not too with all the pollution he hath? And if they are torrid defilements must he stay till they cool upon his fingers? No; let him hasten immediately and wash, for the sooner the better. Is it not dirt that a man carries to the basin, with confidence the water will fetch it out? And then why not spiritually go to Christ in the Fountain of his Blood with our great and many abominations? Why not with many, why not with all our filth, as well as all our moral fineness? The LORD hates all abominations alike! Sin is sin, as that which is brought out of an unclean thing is unclean too; “that which is born of the flesh is flesh,” Jn.3:6, and “the flesh profits nothing.” Jn.6:63. So be assured from the Authority of Holy Scripture, that none were ever forbidden to come to Christ, because of filthiness; that is, to come to him in Faith, which must be distinguished from coming to him in other Ordinances; and therefore I boldly conclude upon the evidence of Supernatural Truth revealed, that there are none too filthy to come to Christ by Faith. “All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me (but what if he comes in his filth? If he does, the text excludes none that so comes to Christ. Him that cometh unto me, says he,) I will in no wise cast out.” Jn.6:37.
If in no wise, why then it must be in this case he will not among other cases, though a man come unto him in the filth of sin. I will suppose a man had no other objection, and it is enough if he does not look on it in the light of the Glorious Gospel, II Cor.4:4, to object and say, oh! I am unclean! I am filthy! How shall I come to him of pure eyes? Hab.1:13. Yet if the Holy Ghost gives him Faith, or in the work of the New Life put him upon coming after all, and the soul ventures with this filth sticking in his conscience, here’s nevertheless an “I will in no wise cast out.” So that ‘tis in Unbelief men are shut up, and restrained from going to Christ with their filthinesses, as Mr. Hunt all along in the matter of his opinion about going to Christ in filth hath pleaded the cause of Unbelief, in opposition to the Faith of the Gospel. ‘Tis want of strength shuts them up, not want of holiness. Life and pollution are consistent with motion, but unbelief, or spiritual death and pollution are inconsistent with it. Life in Faith wrought is one thing; this opens our spiritual graves, as the voice of Life did for Lazarus. So that if the Lord gives me Faith to come to Christ with the filth of sin, or go unto him compassed with pollutions, ‘tis not uncleanness shuts me up; for having Liberty and Boldness through the Spirit, II Cor.3:17, I go unto Christ with the same pollutions laid open.
This Faith in the Operation of God is a Power to go to Jesus Christ under defilement, as discerning Faith views the encouragements to do. There is no State and Condition a sinner can be in, but if the Holy Ghost gives him Faith (for it is his own mighty work) he may go by that Faith in the same condition to Christ with all his filth immediately, and all his guilt too. Motion-Faith goes by the Power of God, not the principles of nature, or the persuasions of other men. If I see my grounds, and feel my under-girding strength, then sin does not fright me, nor the disputer of this world trouble me; for I see a holiness in Christ engaged on my side that outdoes all my own Pollutions.
Confession of Sin
We do lay our sins upon Christ by Faith, based upon the certainty that they were once laid on Him Judicially. That is, when we come before Him with our pollutions, or in our filthiness, we do by faith and holy confession in trust put Him in remembrance; (“put me in remembrance; let us plead together; declare you, that you mayest be justified,” Is.43:26;) as the Word bids us; that is to say, making mention of them, (after it hath been in our poor souls for some time through our own unbelief as if God had forgotten us,) how these pollutions of ours were once laid upon Christ by an act of the Father judicially by Imputation. So that the foundation of our going forth (Heb.4:16) is Christ who completed the work that the Father had given him to do. And in our act we do but with a fiducial heart confessedly declare it, which is our laying sin upon Christ reflexively by faith, and not directly. Nothing that Christ hath done is rendered hereby imperfect, but the foundation of all is actually made use of and built upon, for if sin is thus fiducially and confessedly laid on Christ, by acknowledging God's mercy to ourselves in his past laying iniquity upon him by Judicial Imputation, and so pleading this with an eye to Christ for fresh supplies and communications out of his once bearing our Sins, and this is honoring to the Satisfaction of Christ as to the design and virtue thereof, both in reference to Justice and Holiness. Accordingly, though Christ bore our sins and took our sins away, it was by the Federal boundary set thereunto by God's Will, (Heb.10:7,) which excepted the remainder of sin in our natures though born again, and so left room to designate us upon the same account sinners, as to pollution in this present life for the glory of God the Spirit in our daily sanctification, though not to remain on our persons, after this new birth, to condemnation in the present life.
Contending for the Faith
Oh! but the Canaanite dwells in the Land, Gen.13:7, and what will he say? Aye, these are your Israelites indeed! Do but see how they write one against another. Be it so; for our writing one against another, I Kgs.13:18, argues, we believe ourselves spiritually interested in that which attends upon the Main. Now that’s above all carnal party interest. It argues that we are concerned so as to take pains in the Bible, Dan.12:4-13 when God the Comforter quickens up our thoughts and hearts to pursue these Everlasting Interests. It is likewise evident that we must spend less time on other things that divert the flesh and the mind. It’s a good Argument to prove that we will not, as the manner of some is, merely dress up an easy chat by the walls, Ezek.33:30, against the Injures of Truth, and there leave our Eternal Interests. “Meditate upon these things; give thyself wholly to them; that thy profiting may appear to all.” (I Tim.4:15) This becomes none who receive “the Truth as it is in Jesus.” Eph.4:21. When I see my own and others’ Eternal Interest in the things of the Gospel assaulted, it becomes my duty to awake and rise as Christ gives me light, Eph.5:14, and reply in the Vindication of the Cause, like David. “And David said, what have I now done? Is there, not a cause?” (I Sam.17:29)
Contending for the Faith against Arminianism
Where are the men upon earth that should be valiant for the Truth? “And they bend their tongues like their bow for lies, but they are not valiant for the truth upon the earth; for they proceed from evil to evil, and they know not me, saith the LORD." (Jer.9:3) Even for that Truth of God which most stumbles and hardens the Arminians? Shall we trim it, conceal our principles, give up truths, and alter them to gain a better esteem of our doctrine among the Arminians? (The Truths of the Gospel are to be preached first of all absolutely, as matters of God's Glory.) Away, Away! Lord help me to stand fast in those glorious liberties wherewith Christ hath made me free! (Gal.5:1) Since Arminians will be hardened at the doctrine of God's Grace, let it be so; for “if our gospel is hidden, it is hidden to them that are lost.” (II Cor.4:3) And better all the Arminians in the world were hardened, who strike at God's Grace and Christ's Righteousness, and plainly declare that they have no work of God's Spirit upon them above nature, and wrought in them to bow to God's Sovereign Grace, than that one of God's righteous, little ones, under the Imputation of that Righteousness, should be made sad, offended, injured, or entangled and bewildered.
Contending for the Faith against Arminianism
Quotation – “If then you would be truly beautiful, if you would have the better part of comeliness in God's sight, then throw away your paint, and make use of the Rose of Sharon.” Here is a project; and a woeful one, to set on foot, to make you truly beautiful, and the better part comely in God's sight, and all done by your own act and deed! No operation of God so much as minded, but all free will, and more free will; as if it were all in your own hand. The operation of God the Father shut out! The operation of God the Son not thought upon! The operation of God the Spirit, in the language of this natural advice, hath nothing to do but stand still and wait, whilst this free-willer transforms himself into all this beautiful piece of work! Ah, vile piece of stuff, when set in a true Gospel Light, and not wrapped up in the natural darkness of the aforesaid exhortations. Souls, throw away Mr. Hunt's book, and under the lively breathings of the Holy Ghost, being sanctified by Christ's blood, as he is the Great High Priest over the House of God that sprinkles you in drawing near, so approach, and in sweet communion, a branch of your everlasting grace union, looking forwards to the appearing in the bloom of his open Glory Kingdom.
Making use of this Rose of Sharon? What man, is there that can make himself truly beautiful in God's sight? “Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots; then may ye also do good, that is accustomed to doing evil.” (Jer.13:23) And yet when the Arminian books are set forth, we are told that we must not print against them. ‘If you think’ says one, ‘that there are any weak passages in Mr. Hunt's book, in my opinion, it would be better and more regular to write unto him in a spirit of love, than to appear in print upon this occasion.’ “Love the truth and peace,” says the Spirit of Christ. (Zech.8:19) Let us not then be cajoled out of our Vindications of the Truth by such ‘sons of peace,’ as adhering to their advice will bring down War from God upon our Consciences. Hath the Truth done so much for me, and can I refuse under God's call to do so little for the Truth, as to stand up and maintain a good warfare in defending it. When God’s Truth is openly wronged, what rule of Christ hath this persuader given me to put my pen in a corner? Why is a man's name dearer than Christ's? Why must a man be given liberty to abuse our Saviour in print and I allowed none to vindicate him in print thereafter? What if the Spirit of God will stir up a man to this work, what hath any man to do to “kick against the pricks,” (Acts 9:5,) and pretend to peace, when he fights against God? How many poor souls are pinched when the truth is set in stocks, and who can be set at liberty when the Gospel is bound? And when the Glorious Gospel of Christ is seen to be thus mixed and blended by unskilful workmen, why should not I, though a poor worm, set upon this work in the Lord’s strength?
Conversion to Christ
Conversion to Christ is no blind motion (Acts 16:14, 14:27;) though conversion to all other objects, conversion to parties, to churches, to professors, to duties, to ordinances, to preaching and hearing the Word itself, is all, without conversion to Christ, above and beyond them, blind enough. (Rev.3:17) Indeed; when I went no further than to come to Ordinances, and there stuck, thinking in my very soul that coming to them seriously was coming to Christ, I went then all upon the peradventure as others do (I Kings 20:31, Gen.32:20;) but when I came home to Christ, it was otherwise. (Is.45:24) I did not come to him upon any persuasive If (if I come, satisfaction to God is made for all my sins – if bring my penitence, Jesus Christ will bring my pardon – No, when I came home to Christ, I did not come thus;) but I came upon positive drawings to the Object, God-Man, in clear and distinct discoveries (Job 33:23,24) of his Person, Righteousness and Grace to my poor soul! I felt his Power after I beheld his Fullness! He had opened himself unto me. The certainty of it in my views (Ps.119:130,131, Is.40:31) made me run, for I received more ground (Is.45:22) now in one single consideration than I used to get under a whole set of motives and directions! Oh; Gospel faith is no blind faith, no melancholy faith, no roundabout faith! I see full Satisfaction made, and all in Christ's hands for me! And Gospel faith in the believing act (Ps.36:9) hath the view of its Object as distinct and certain.
Conversion & the Sovereignty of God
God is Sovereign to convert whom he will; but let men know that God is just in converting them, (Is.53:11,) when it comes immediately to the work thereof in bowing the soul to Christ. It is certainly thus although his immediate justice be founded upon his original sovereignty, his sovereignty never thwarts his justice but reconciles that upon his own appointed way. (Rom.5:21)
Conversion to Christ
Let us as wise and understanding as to what the will of the Lord is, (Eph.5:17,) look at a right Conversion to the Kingly Office of Christ. For all sound Christians of any standing, in conversion to Christ, must more or less, at one time or another, be convinced by the Holy Ghost of this, and to what distinct end from true saving Conversion to Christ. This Conversion to the Kingly Office and Government; (and to talk of your humble, holy walk without this, is no more than mere branches of moral virtue, that make useful to men, but not at all serviceable to Jesus Christ;) I say, this Conversion to the Kingly Office and Government of Christ can never be brought about in the soul and life before Conversion to the Priestly Branch of the Mediator. Though it is done by the Power of the King to dispense the Grace of God, in the light of the teaching office, or what we call the Prophetical Office of Christ, under the virtue of the healing in his wings, (Mal.4:2,) or his Priestly Office in the Gospel, to which as our Object in the Person of Christ we must be first turned. For Conversion or the act of turning, is always to do again, and be repeated, after every act of departure from the Living God, (Heb.3:2,) though it be but a departure from Him in our thoughts, although Regeneration was wrought at once in the same instant.
And when we are brought to new acts of conversion, or turning again and again (I mean from self, from sin and all-natural help) to eye Him and receive Him as our Gospel Salvation, still the same, after every day’s sinning, we must out of Regeneration, or the first principle of our New Life in Christ, be turned, or influenced, excited and fresh drawn again from all to Christ. And to that in Christ which at our first conversion of all we were turned to (when turned right,) even his Priestly Office, (Ez.6:13,) the Office of Christ in the matters of his Righteousness and Blood, whether sacrificed on the Cross or pleaded in advocacy on the Throne. In the light of this we discern his Teachings by the Holy Spirit; and in the peace and love thereof shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost given unto us, (Rom.5:5,) we are prepared to turn to Him as our King and Husband under his own sweet and easy laws suited to our new Relation by the Holy Ghost, for all newness comes into us, and upon us, by the effectual workings of the Holy Spirit.
Death & Resurrection of Christ
The Rose of Sharon (Song 2:1) is a Representation of Christ not as slain, but as alive. Christ, as he died for our iniquities, being set forth in the fittest representations of it, by things appointed in the Law to prefigure and shadow forth his Sacrifice, especially the Lamb slain. (Rev.13:8) And in the extreme sufferings of the human nature his strength was dried up like a Potsherd (Ps.22:15,) as the prediction of his sufferings hath declared; and ‘tis added, “you hast brought me into the dust of death.” Look, here was withering, and drying up the radical force of Human Nature in the dust of death, or the grave. All the creature sufficiency of the Man, if we look to the man abstractly, exhausted; that we might look still more to the fullness of his Person God-Man, both Priest and Propitiation Sacrifice in one Gospel mystery of the Person, through the union of the two Natures. It must therefore be Christ as alive again (Heb.13:20,) or, being brought again from the dead, and seated in His glory state in heaven to pursue all the ends of his efficacious death towards the church, every way here befitting the spouse's condition, as a spouse.
Destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD
“There remains no more sacrifice for sins.” - No more Law sacrifice for sins, no more Gospel sacrifice for sins either, if we refuse or reject the Lord Jesus Christ. There remains no more sacrifice of the Gospel because there is no other Messiah than Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God, to be the Gospel Sacrifice, so that same Messiah sacrificed is to be offered up no more. (“We are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once and for all.” Heb.10:10) Again, there remains no more sacrifice of the Law, because the sacrifices of the Law, which typified Christ, have all lawfully ceased in this most Perfect Sacrifice and can be no more renewed forever. Therefore, says he, upon rejecting Christ’s (once and for all perfect) Sacrifice, there remains no more sacrifice for sins; but, says he, there remains “a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries.” (Heb.10:27)
The direct meaning of the Apostle in this, is that the unbelieving Jews, thinking to mend themselves by going back to Judaism, should be mistaken; and that they should pay dear for this Relinquishment of Christ, the Gospel Sacrifice. For, instead of meeting with the opportunity to go on with the abrogated sacrifice in the Temple at Jerusalem, as their forefathers had been accustomed to do when they continued the legal sacrifices, they would but go and mingle themselves with the adversaries, who should be utterly ruined in the calamities of that provoked nation. The visible judgment of the Righteous Lord (Ps.11:6,7) should even swallow up their Temple, Country, and Commonwealth, and openly destroy the Jews, even in this world. And how that hath come to pass, hath been known to all the Earth. (“And all flesh shall see that I the LORD have kindled it; it shall not be quenched.” Ez.22:48) The Apostle spake thus to the Hebrews, as hoping it would be a means to fix the elect, and resettle the wavering of that number, and make them prize the mercies of the Gospel more, and not be afraid of them that upbraided them for their steadfastness, by setting forth the sad condition of the adversaries, which would issue finally upon none but the non-elect; and being encouraged to believe this Hebrew Epistle would be mightily blessed, as a means to prevent an open relapse (whatever might be the present, corrupt inclination) of the elect number, if not to convert some of the then uncalled elect of the Jewish nation, who might read the same, because of its subscription to the Hebrew people. Now as the Apostle had predicted of the adversaries, it came to pass. There was fiery indignation that devoured them; as they were swallowed up in a gulf of fire. This was more visible and literally executed upon such of the Jews as presumed to continue sacrificing in the Temple against all belief of the One Offering of Jesus Christ before them; their blood, as Christ had also foretold, was mingled with their sacrifices, (Lk.13:1,) in the horrible siege of Jerusalem by Titus Vespasian, when there was such a mighty slaughter made of them upon the very pavements of the Temple at the destruction of that city by the Romans.
And the fiery indignation as foretold by the Apostle Paul to these Hebrews, came upon them literally, in the destruction of their Temple, and burning that House of Sacrifice over their heads, for going on to kill the ox, whilst those who sacrificed the ox were the very Jews (“he that kills an ox is as if he slew a man; he that sacrifices a lamb, as if he cut off a dog's neck; he that offered an oblation, as if he offered swine's blood; he that burns incense, as if he blessed an idol. Yea, they have chosen their own ways, and their soul delights in their abominations; I also will choose their delusions, and will bring their fears upon them; because when I called, none did answer; when I spake, they did not hear; but they did evil before my eyes, and chose that in which I delighted not,” Is.66:3,4) that slew the Man, the Man Christ Jesus, (I Tim.2:5,) as the prophet hath clearly prophesied of the Hebrew people, at the time of God's rejecting them after Christ. The same fire which burned the Temple devoured the very adversaries of our Dear Lord Jesus, at their devotions therein. (“For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble; and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the LORD of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch.” Mal.4:1) Oh! It was that Day of the Lord which did burn as an oven, whilst all the proud scoffers at Jesus Christ, going about to establish their own righteousness, had not submitted themselves to the righteousness of God. (Rom.10:3)
Yea, with those proud, all that did wickedly, not only rejecting Christ but blaspheming him, were, to a very great number of them, got into the idolized Temple for shelter and sanctuary from the Romans in their storming of Jerusalem, (Ez.13:13,14,) whilst Christ was a Hiding Place to the elect of God, (Is.32:2,) who had seasonably retreated upon Christ's own warning (Lk.21:20) being given unto them. The rest were blinded as before, (Rom.11:7,) and so were but run from the Sword to the Flame of devouring fire. These soon found the Temple to be a Fiery Oven in the time of God's anger, even as was foretold by the Psalmist, “You shalt make them as a fiery oven in the time of thine anger; the LORD shall swallow them up in his wrath, and the fire shall devour them.” (Ps.21:9) This particular threat against the Jews in that Psalm is purposely penned by the Holy Ghost there among the recorded Victories and Triumphs of the Lord Christ, to set forth his Righteous Vengeance, even the vengeance of the Temple (Is.66:6) in his devouring Fire, upon his personal enemies, the Jews, who crucified Him, in revenging his despised blood upon their children, on whom the wretched parents had imprecated the dismal curse, (Mt.27:25,) even whilst Jesus, that he might sanctify the people (of God) with his own blood, suffered without the gate. (Heb.13:12) And whilst the burning Temple was thus a fiery Oven, the Jews in it became as a handful of stubble cast in to be devoured in the flames, both parents and their children! (Mal.4:1) That, as the prophet shows us, it did neither leave root nor branch, as many of them as were burnt in this oven, to get out from the fiery Temple, and a fiery Law, alive. (Deut.33:2)
And as that Temple had been a Type of the Human Nature of Christ, so at that time when it was thus clothed with devouring fire that burnt up the adversaries, it was a very terrible and solemn Emblem of the second coming of Christ burning with indignation against the wicked, “when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (II Thes.1:7,8) Now says the Apostle to these Hebrews, what would ye get by relapsing into the old bosom of your Temple, if God doth not prevent it by giving you the true and everlasting faith in Christ? What will the sacrifices of the Law advantage you, when God shall reckon with his adversaries for despising Christ, and shall burn the willful sacrificers with their empty sacrifices together, and fire down the house of their vain oblations too, (Is.1:13,) and pile them all up in one monument of His Kindled Wrath together? What will then become of all the Jew’s expectations in setting Moses up against Christ? What apostates, what temporizers, what compounders (or admixtures of Christ and Moses) will then escape, whose zeal for the Law shall but hurry them on faster to be devoured in this fiery indignation? The more haste they make, in a blind zeal and devotion, to sacrifice in their Temple, the more guiltily will they be consumed in the same Sinai House on fire. Now all this soon thereafter came to pass upon that miserable, infatuated, and befuddled people, as the Scriptures of the Old Testament had plainly enough foretold the Jews. (Heb.12:18 with Ex.19:18, Jer.4:22, Ez.20:46,47)
And as the New Testament epoch-annals of time, together, with the different pens of historians, have made the truth of devouring the adversaries this way to appear. And indeed the execution of the threats has been obvious. It's plainly beheld in comparing the prophecies and events together. All sacrifices are necessarily destroyed with the Destruction of the Jewish Temple. “There remains no more sacrifice for sins.” It must be remembered that the Apostle wrote to the Hebrews. These were Jewish professors of Christ, who at length were many of them wavering, and began to think they had made a false step in forsaking Moses to embrace Christ. Hence some of them seemed ready for absolute apostasy, others seemed ready to compound the matter, and ignorantly join Judaism with Christianity, and both were destructive of the True and Evangelical Sacrifice. - The main scope of the Apostle in this Epistle, when he had advanced in it so far the Worship of the Gospel, was to prove the complete abrogation of these bloody sacrifices for sin, and that the typical worship of the Law was done away by the Death of Christ, the true Gospel-Sacrifice, and that an Evangelical and Spiritual Worship was introduced, adequate to and consistent with the Resurrection and Glory of this One sacrifice for sins, and the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ, upon the heart and conscience of every Believing Worshiper.
Divine Revelation - Instructed in the Gospel of Christ
I am not against a Doctrinal opening of the Holy Scriptures, nor Practical writing; but let every man, as the Holy Ghost saith in Paul, “take heed how he builds” on the Foundation; the Foundation is Christ, I Cor.3:10, and it must be Spiritual building upon Jesus Christ. Let us not then be carried away with carnal reasonings, as the opinions of men, which the Scripture calls the “traditions of our fathers.” I Pet.1:18. “But I said unto their children in the wilderness, Walk ye not in the statutes of your fathers, neither observe their judgments, nor defile yourselves with their idols; I am the LORD your God; walk in my statutes, and keep my judgments, and do them.” (Eze.20:18-19) Let us not be put off with following in the tread, and steps, and notions, and language one of another, and call this, a building upon Christ; for ‘tis no meet building. Such stuff doth not suit the One Foundation which is a rich and costly building; or rather, a being “built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone.” (Eph.2:20)
Doctrinal and Practical writers are not to pin one upon another, as generally, they have done all along, to no mean disservice to the Gospel. Let me see things belonging to the Scriptures solidly made out by the Holy Ghost’s own arguments there, (“For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received.” I Cor.11:23. “But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man. For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ,” Gal.1:11-12,) and not by the Council, the Classis, the Fathers, the Quotations; nor, in short, by the Authority and Opinion, the Subscriptions and Prevailing Notions of the Times; the adhering to all which hath unanimously thrust out God’s Holy Spirit, and miserably stopped the progress of the Everlasting Gospel, Rev.14:6, in its business with the souls of God’s people. “I have not sent these prophets, yet they ran; I have not spoken to them, yet they prophesied. But if they had stood in my counsel, and had caused my people to hear my words, then they should have turned them from their evil way, and from the evil of their doings.” (Jer.23:21-22)
For we see manifestly, in spite of all the learning, that learned men, I Cor.1:20, have been building up a Babel of Confusion to lay their notions under everlasting Disputes; the Lord having confounded their language, Gen.11:7, and several opinions, till they understand not, nor believe one another! After all, is said and done, it is the poor that receive the Gospel. “Then Jesus answering said unto them, Go your way, and tell John what things ye have seen and heard; how that the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, to the poor the gospel is preached. And blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me.” (Lk.7:22-23) Oh! Therefore none like the Holy Ghost to make out his own meaning in the Word. I prefer God’s giving me the Holy Ghost, before all the men and books in the world, to understand the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make me wise unto salvation. II Tim.3:15. Let interpreters of the Word show me what they have seen from God, not what they have seen from one another. “Consider what I say, and the Lord give thee understanding in all things.” (II Tim.2:7) - It is needful to rely upon the Lord’s all-sufficiency to bestow wisdom, diligence, holy zeal, and a thorough heart for Christ (not a divided heart, as Hosea 10:2, not a heart and a heart, one heart for his glory, and another heart for our own names) for undertaking it. And this is the more needful, if we love our Lord Jesus Christ, and the souls of men, or take any due care about the field, which “the Lord hath purchased with his own blood,” Acts 20:28, and fenced round by enclosures of Free Grace, to distinguish it from the world besides.
Duty Faith & Repentance
Their Leaders err and cause others to err. How? They'll preach duty, that's well; but not well to preach it in their own way. Tis not well to neglect to preach duty in Christ's way, upon whose shoulders is the Government of Grace. How many preach duties and performances that will not endure to found them upon the Rock? For then they must be their own conceited Antinomians, and begin with Christ; for that which founded is always before that which is founded. How many preach duty and performances, that hate to hear that they must be spiritualized with the Holy Ghost? How many press them and give you whole sets of directions to come up to them, who will never believe, that to make men serve in the newness of the Spirit, and not in the oldness of the Letter, they must be all influenced by the same mighty power that gives the New Birth? In short, let these poor souls flatter themselves in their own iniquity, (and much of that iniquity, I know to be their own sincere obedience they rely upon,) yet their sin will find them out. The Holy Ghost never as a Living Principle stirs along with them in the common way, although he doth and will as a Righteous and Judicial Agent. But as they have left the Holy Ghost's counsel in their way of preaching duty, so the Holy Ghost hath quite left them. And if we speak against this, and write against this, we are Antinomians presently; the Lord judge between us and them.
Effectual Conversion to Christ
This expression ‘getting of Christ,’ to set forth the Creature’s Act, is an ill phrase of speech; it ought to be receiving Christ. John 1:12. “As many as received Him,” for He was not given to everyone that received Him. “A man can receive nothing, except it is given him from heaven,” John 3:27; says John the Baptist upon this very article of receiving Christ. To talk of getting Him is profane; as if Christ were like a common pledge, stake or wager, or ordinary sort of merchandise, wherein everyone who gets the wager, or wares, doth all in it himself, and perhaps none else is concerned whether he get or lose the money or goods. Whereas election of Christ to be our portion is the provision and care of a Father to lay up estate, bread, clothing, &c., (Deut.32.6;) and all for His children; so that when He comes to bestow Christ at last by the Spirit, He doth not lay it upon their getting, but upon His own free imparting, what He hath as freely made ready. Also, He gives them, as their Father, His effectual blessing with Christ, and that is His Spirit which seals up every good thing with the gift of Christ; as faith, repentance, sanctification, joy in the Holy Ghost, delight, increase of grace, and perseverance therein unto the end. (Rom.8:32)
So this is an expression very much against election. As if God had not elected Christ freely to be received, nor elected our faith, to as many of us as received him, nor elected the mission of His own Spirit to work that faith; but as if all depended upon the prosperous advances and successes of our creatureship, thus shutting out grace in the gift according to election, and putting in a man or woman's nature in the getting. I am sure there is no getting an interest in Christ (Rom.9:16,) if it is not gotten for me, and gotten in Christ already. An interest in Christ is a passive work, ‘tis gotten for me by Another, ‘tis wrought upon me, and not to be done by me, to interest me in the operations of the Spirit of Christ which are part of my interest in God. It is God's work for me and then upon me, and so passes from getting Christ to receiving Christ, when it is brought down by grace so far as a practical work of the soul.
Effectual Conversion to Christ
Christ sends the Spirit to all whom the Father hath given Him. Christ is able and willing, not only by his own responsible Person but by the Articles of his Father’s Covenant in Election-Grace to save into Faith, as well as into Heaven through Faith. Christ by his Spirit quickens, inclines them to come; Christ by the Spirit guides them, not by authors, but by Himself; and if he is in any of them, ‘tis still by himself above them and beyond them; ‘tis he Himself is the way to God, and the Life Everlasting, aye, and the way of Faith to these. ‘Tis evident to them that know the scheme of the Arminians, that the account they give of Christ’s ability and willingness to save, is stated as Mr. Hunt hath laid it out; that is, they say that Christ is able and willing to save all that come unto him, and it would be a hard thing to conceive, the Orthodox should write against that state of the case, and prove that Christ was able and willing to save the elect of God, antecedently to the elect’s being comers unto Christ, namely, able and willing to save them into Faith, which is not of themselves, but the gift of God, Eph.2:8; if these Orthodox had judged the true state of it, and the sense and scope of Hebrews 7:25 to be both one and the same thing.
The distinction between coming to Christ and coming to God by Christ are two things. (“All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.” Jn.6:37.) The one is before the other. Coming to Christ is believing in his Name in the Motion-Faith, by venturing in the strength of Christ, (and that strength is often felt in the soul under Ordinances,) by the Holy Ghost. (“But as many as received him, to them gave he the power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name.” Jn.1:12. “And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life; he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.” Jn.6:35.) This adventuring is going out of one’s self, and casting one’s whole self, without any excellency or qualifications of our own, upon Christ’s Person and Righteousness, in the fulness of this Person and way of Grace to save us, Phil.3:7-8; and this is before coming to God; or before believing into God’s well-pleasedness with us through Christ, and resting our souls upon God’s accepting us for Christ’s sake. (“Not unto us, O LORD, not unto us, but unto thy name give glory, for thy mercy, and for thy truth’s sake.” Psal.115:1.) Now it comes to pass, that after the initial work, or that same coming thus to Christ hath been wrought in the soul, there are strong temptations arise, and break in upon the soul, making it to doubt if it is not mistaken, and whether it does not make too much of Christ, Gal.1:6, and whether there be not some other way wider, and safer to go to God for Acceptation and Eternal Life than to go thus all in a narrow way, Mt.7:14, along by Christ alone to God; and hence upon these temptations and doubts in the soul, there are diminishing thoughts of Christ, and new jealousies grow up, and a thousand fears torment the soul, Lk.24:25, and suggestions from Satan and Unbelief, what if I am wrong! What if I have committed myself to hands where there is less power than I thought! Heb.10:23. Oh! What if I am out of the way that leads to God! Now these apprehensions rising up in the heart do weaken Faith, and overthrow all the further motions of it in the soul; for the heart is as it were killed upon the spot under these temptations. (“And David said in his heart, I shall now perish one day by the hand of Saul.” I Sam.27:1. “For thus saith the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel; in returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength; and ye would not. But ye said, No; for we will flee upon horses.” Isa.30:15-16.)
It does not know what to do, or think of it, and this was the case of these Hebrews after Faith. (“Now the just shall live by faith; but if any man draws back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him.” Heb.10:38.) They had believed, but at last were afraid they had done wrong in leaving the Law, as the Jews held it, for Justification, and in relinquishing Moses, the Temple, and Sacrifices, Acts 6:14, and began to think of coming to God some other way than by Christ; and thought surely this same Gospel with such new Doctrine, and the other doctrine that we have been used to of so long standing in the Church, that they now doubted of Christ’s Ability to save them without the works of the Law, and began to make a sad stir about this. To take it off therefore, the Apostle magnifies the fulness of Jesus Christ in this chapter from the fulness of his Priesthood above that of Aaron’s; (“if therefore perfection were by the Levitical priesthood, for under it the people received the Law, what further need was there that another priest should rise after the order of Melchisedec, and not be called after the order of Aaron,” Heb.7:11,) therein he shows, that as he had been able to them-wards to carry out their hearts to himself already, so he was able God-wards to give them acceptance for the sake of his own Righteousness; and they had no reason to doubt of it in any case whatever, and so encourages them to come to God by him, this Man being still the Mediator between them; and encourages them to maintain their boldness towards God, Heb.10:19-22, in all their worship of him by the worship of the Gospel, on earth, so long as they had this full and Glorious High Priest at the right hand of God to make Intercession for them in Heaven; and as many of them as belonged to God, Heb.6:9, were, by the virtue and ability of this High Priest, made willing again to come to Christ, and to go on boldly through Christ to God, and rest upon Christ, and believe the love of God to them in and through the well-beloved.
(“And lo a voice from heaven, saying, this is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” Mt.3:17.) Thus he plainly shows that the Foundation of their coming to Christ by the Influences of the Gospel was by the Father’s Gift of their persons to Christ, Jn.17:2, 6:39, 10:29, and therefore too upon that Foundation that God had begun with them, and given them to the Man, and trusted them upon his Abilities, being his own Son, there was no doubt to be made of the other thing they questioned, and that is his Ability with God to save all that come unto God by him if they viewed their very coming to him upon this Foundation of love in God, (“nevertheless the foundation of God stands sure, having this seal, the Lord knows them that are his,” II Tim.2:19,) conjoined with the Power and Influences of their Mediatorial High Priest. This now is directly laid both against the Arminian state of the matter, and Mr. Hunt’s coincidence (or falling in) with their argument.
Effectual Conversion to Christ
To answer the rest of it about opportunities to get Christ not lasting always. It had been more to the purpose, if he had given God the glory of the Truth of His promise made to Christ, “thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power” (Ps.29:2; 110:3;) than to run on like the Arminianism of the Times among your ‘good’ men, who tell sinners, “that now whilst the day of grace lasts God is offering, and tendering, and wooing them with grace; but if they don't accept of mercy now, it will not be long before the wooings and beseechings of God will be over, and the day of grace past. Mr. Hunt, in the matter I am canvassing, is of the same piece with this Arminianism barefaced. And the whole strikes at Election, and therefore never make use of the doctrine of Effectual Grace. But the Truth is this, so long as there is an elect number (Rom.9:27 – I John 5:19 – John 13:18) to be gathered out of the world by the preaching of the Gospel, their opportunities of receiving Christ shall be continued and prospered. If opportunities should totally cease, I would say the elect in such times and places were totally gathered; for this is consistent with election, I mean determinate, everlasting, and unchangeable election, but the other is inconsistent with it. (II Tim.1:13, Eph.1:4, Rom.11:4,5)
Therefore because the elect are not all gathered, nor to be gathered in one place or another to the end of the world, their opportunities last as long as the Gospel lasts, and that shall be as long as the world lasts. “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.” (Mt.28:20) If Christ be with the Apostles doctrinally, authoritatively and influentially, always, even unto the end of the world, wheresoever and whensoever the Apostolic doctrine is preached unto souls, then the opportunities of the elect to receive Christ do last always, even to the end of the world likewise. (Acts 2:42) The Gospel continued so long in the East and South, to wit, in Asia and Africa, as until the elect were gathered, and then both of those Continents, where the Gospel had been preached, were given up to the Curse, and have become a staple for the horse of Mahomet. But this was only because He who lay in the manger had gathered in all his harvest thereabouts. The Day of Grace was not over so long as there was one soul intended to be saved. The elect are all gathered before the season ends. This argument, therefore, is against the doctrine which hath so often frightened the elect in the days of their ignorance, telling them the Day of Grace may be over if they do not close with Christ this evening, and if a sinner repents not today, he may sin away his time, and find it too late tomorrow.
This they hold, not distinguishing between the elect, whose opportunities are secured to their Effectual Conversion to Christ, and the rest who have no opportunities to believe and be saved, so long as they remain in this world, (Mark 4:12;) because the Spirit’s presence with the Word which makes the opportunity effectual to salvation is, and must be, restrained from them. And the Truth is, all these love to have it so when they come to hear what the Spirit and his work are. Therefore diverse Preachers go about promoting conversion most unskillfully.
Eternal Union in Christ
Let men snarl at this Love of God from Everlasting to the Elect in His Son Jesus Christ, if they dare. There is not a holy man amongst them under the Sun whoever shall see the Face of God for himself, but such a one shall be found to be brought into Christ, and with Him to stand into God (as the Greek is in John 17:23) upon this One Foundation of their Everlasting Union in the Christ. This Union I am speaking of tarries for or depends upon no man's Faith or Works; and that Union is put into the One-Love wherewith God loved Christ. This love, this union-love is the only frame that holds, in Christ Jesus of God, all the Branch-unions of it consequent in time, and following other things which stand before it in the same everlasting Frame. Thus Christ standing in God, and Love pitching upon our persons in Him; faith and works too in their place and frame can never fly in pieces, or be lost out of this settlement. The settlement of them is the only means in the hand of God in Christ, that Faith, Repentance, Holiness of Life; as well as Holiness of Heart, can never fall, or fail; but secures them every One. Here I pitch through Grace, on this, I live, and with this, I choose to die.
Everlasting Love of God in Christ
Must God’s love be suspended till the sinner’s faith? Does not God delight in my person in Christ, even whilst He pities my condition in Adam? God's pity indeed is one of the sweet points of the Gospel; for “great are his compassions towards us,” (Lam.3:22, Ps.117:2,) and as the heavens are higher than the earth, so is His mercy, coming from this everlasting love in heaven towards them that fear him (Ps.103:11, Is.55:9;) and as His mercy is the supernatural and influential cause of that fear, so His everlasting love, founded in His own will, is the first cause of that mercy shown. Nevertheless; this distinction, that God loves the elect with a love of pity before they believe, but not with a love of delight till after they believe, is a very pitiful and empty distinction in the sense of the schools. And our school men might be ashamed to take up this distinction, to apply their notion to God's elect. For though the distinction be the Papists, yet the use and application of it are rendered by too many of our Nonconformists, in Conferences, Books, and Sermons, for it mightily takes.
Everlasting Love of God in Christ
Now I come to the Everlasting Love of the Father to the elect, yet still with our eye upon Christ the beloved pattern. See John 17:23. “And hast loved them as you hast loved me.” From hence it is thousand times more consistent to believe God's everlasting love to us (Jer.31:3,) upon the foundation of His loving Christ, as Christ, than to believe that God's love to us begins with our faith, repentance, obedience, and earthly qualifications. I say, God's Everlasting Love! How consistently does God's everlasting love that is spoken of in Jer.31:3, (“the LORD hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love; therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee,”) fall in with all those texts that speak so much of God's love to Christ; before the production of His works of old, then to date God's love to my person from my yesterday's faith, repentance, and my day to day holiness and good works, as the Arminians do.
Everlasting Love of God in Christ
This is that everlasting love which hath been from God's eternal settlements. That love wherewith the Church has been loved everlastingly before she was drawn and therefore is she at last drawn by the fruit of it in open loving-kindness. It is expressed thus; “I have loved you with everlasting love.” It is neither ‘I will love you’ with an everlasting love; nor ‘I do love you’ with an everlasting love; but that I have done it! It is not I will because it was about a deed of Settlement; and to have said ‘I will love thee’ with an everlasting love had argued the thing yet to be settled, founded, and made sure; but that same love could not be wanting, for ‘twas done. That love was not to be settled with God hereafter, but was settled already; and from thence inclusively upon this lasting bottom of the Love, the everlastingness of it that hath been is to be continued and perpetuated the everlastingness of the same love hereafter. It is not ‘I do love you’ with everlasting love, for the same reason; but I have, to show that it is by grace, and not by present or future faith, repentance, works of righteousness, holiness etc. He hath loved Jacob and hated Esau before they have done good or evil. Observe, the Love of God is the glory of His Grace; it is the top and quintessence of all His mercy to the elect, even whilst they lie dead in trespasses and sins. The fall is decreed subserviently to exalt the riches of God's grace and love toward the elect. Eph.2:4,5.
Everlasting Love of God
Men speak out of ignorant fear, and not experimental trial of the Holy Ghost's Power (I Cor.2:14-16,) who think this doctrine a licentious doctrine. I would fain know what Doctrine of the Gospel is not licentious which the Spirit leaves in our hands! I have found the contrary doctrine, the doctrine of the Law, the most licentious (Rom.7:7,) doctrine to me, even to a hating of God, and wishing there had been no religion in the world! The doctrine of their Sincere, instead of Perfect Obedience brought me to it. Sincere! I saw nothing I had, nothing I did was sincere. I could never believe this Doctrine of Everlasting Love to be a licentious doctrine when the Spirit took it into hand! It is not what doctrine I will choose for the Holy Ghost to use upon me to make me holy, that must do it; but it is that doctrine the Holy Ghost will choose by application for me, that sanctifies me; and it is as consistent that men in their unchanged nature should stumble at this doctrine, as that they should stumble at Christ's Incarnation. "This Child is set for the falling as well as the rising of many in Israel, and for a Sign that shall be spoken against." Luke 2:34. How seldom do our poor meal-mouthed ‘brethren’ that often name Christ (Oh; that they oftener preached Him!) tell the people this. Accordingly, I see it clearly, and must therefore say it, God's Everlasting Love to the Elect in His Son Jesus Christ is set for the falling, and dashing, and quarreling, and despising in many of our Professors, (Rom.9:32, Matt.21:44, Gal.4:16,) and for a Sign, a Mark, and Infallible Sign of
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Grace that shall be spoken against. This I look for, and am never surprised, nor angry when I see it come! God's Word must be fulfilled. - Oh; blessed be God for Everlasting Love to the Elect in His Son Jesus Christ. Oh; this same Ancient Grace is Efficacious Grace!
The everlasting love of God in Christ
Christ's love of His spouse is God's love. “I and my Father are one.” (John 10:30) One in love, as well as one in Being. Whatsoever is said of God's love in the Person of the Father, proper to the Father, is said also of God's love in the Person of the Son, proper to the Son. What is it that is said of God's love in the Person of the Son, the Bridegroom this spouse’s Husband? Why, that Christ's love of the spouse rises up in comparison with God's love of Christ. “As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you.” (John 15:9) That is, as the Father hath a love to me in the everlasting union and loved you with an everlasting love, in the everlasting relation unto me, so have I loved you. Thus, Christ's loving the spouse will compare with God's loving Christ, and with God so loving her too in relation unto Him. “And hast loved them, as you hast loved me.” (John 17:23) From hence it is thousand times more consistent to believe God's everlasting love to us upon the foundation of his loving Christ, as Christ than to believe God's love to us begins with our faith, repentance, obedience, and qualifications upon earth. I say, God's Everlasting Love. For I am not yet come down from the Supralapsarian mount. How consistently does God's everlasting love spoken of in Jeremiah 31:3, fall in with all those texts which speak so much of God's love to Christ, before the production of His works of old, then to date God's love to my person from my yesterday's faith, repentance, and my today's holiness in good works, as the Arminians do. It is expressed thus; “I have loved you with everlasting love.” It is neither, I will love you with an everlasting love, nor I do love you with an everlasting love. But I have done it. It is not I will. Because it was about a Deed of Settlement.
And to have said, "I will" love thee with an everlasting love, had argued the thing yet to be settled, founded, and made sure. But that same love could not be wanting – for ‘twas done. That love was not to be settled with God hereafter but is settled already. And from thence inconclusively upon this lasting bottom of the love, the everlastingness of it that hath been is to be continued and perpetuated the everlastingness of the same love hereafter. It is not I do love thee with an everlasting love for the same reason; but I have, to show that it is by Grace, and not by present or future faith, repentance, works of righteousness, holiness, &c., he had loved Jacob, and hated Esau before they had done good or evil. Observe, the love of God is the glory of his grace; it is the top and quintessence of all His mercy to the elect, even whilst they lie dead in trespasses and sins - the Fall being decreed subserviently to exalt the riches of God's grace and love towards the elect! “But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, by grace ye are saved; and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” Eph.2:4-6. I have loved you with everlasting love, I have loved and never hated. “I have loved you, saith the LORD. Yet ye say, Wherein hast you loved us?” (Mal.1:2,3) Wherein says he?
In Election, and in all that belongs to everlasting settlements. And love you so as never to hate you, which I have not done to others whom I have hated. Was not Esau Jacob's brother, saith the Lord; yet I loved Jacob and hated Esau. I have loved you anciently, you my chosen, I have loved you before the foundation of the world. Come into time, and I have loved you always. Whatever I have been doing to the world, I have been doing nothing that should ever hurt you. Whatsoever plagues I have brought on mankind, be it what wrath or hatred soever I have at any time executed, and spoken to the nations in my hot displeasure (Psa.2:5,) yet I have always loved you. I have loved you anciently, I have loved you always, I have loved you only. I have made and preserved all, but I have loved none but you. It is the mystical Body of Christ that God hath loved with the same everlasting love, wherewith he hath loved Christ the Head of that body. I have loved first, and brought it about, upon an everlasting security, that you have loved next. “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us.” (I John 4:10) Loved us before we loved Him, and even when it came to sending Christ, as in the next words, he sent his Son before we were ready to receive him. Therefore, be sure, “if any man loves God, the same is known of him.” (I Cor.8:3) He that loveth is known of God antecedently to any man's loving him; and known of God influentially before his faith thus brought by love. “We love him because he first loved us.” (I John 4:19)
The Father chose us to love before we loved; the Son ransomed us to love before we loved, that we might love upon His own love. The Holy Ghost renewed us to love before we loved the Lord. The love of God in settlements from everlasting, the love of God in regeneration, is the love that in every way precedes us. I have loved before drawing, therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee, because I have loved thee with an everlasting love. In the very supralapsarian settlements, in the appointment of things upon the pre-ordination of the Fall, love is still before conversion. The love of God is towards sinners before sinners are converted. “But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” (Rom.5:8) It was as free to God to love us before the world was, as to love us yesterday in our blood, or a few years ago when we were yet ‘sinners,’ and had not believed through grace, nor were brought home to God in Christ. O, the prevailing of this ancient love, when God comes to open it up, and to bring it forth in time. It was this thought that hath drawn my soul first and last to Christ. It was this that drew my soul to Him upon reading Mr. Charnock's discourse of God's being the Author of Reconciliation, in the Covenant of Redemption before the world was made.
Exaltation of Christ in the Salvation & Cleansing of Poor Sinners
If the Church’s Righteousnesses are as filthy rags; how filthy then is her Adam- Nature that pollutes all her services; and this after she is brought to Christ. Therefore what poor notions have we got of saintship, and holiness, and churches, when we look home to ourselves and make our own saintship an object to take comfort in! Alas, says the Church better taught; “we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags, and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.” (Is.64:6) As when the body hath a running sore, it issues forth and defiles the garment, especially when our garments are next to the sore, and nothing comes between; so corrupt and unclean nature (Job 14:4) defiles all duties that touch it, and that it issues forth upon; especially when we go to make a plaster of this running sore of our own performances, and stick our righteousnesses unto them (as the Church now in this place was made sensible she had done) instead of washing our wounds in the blood of Christ. As David in the 38th Psalm says of himself, “My wounds stink and are corrupt because of my foolishness;” (38:5;)
Thus all our righteousnesses are filthy rags that must be burnt, or thrown out to the dunghill because we have stuck them upon unclean nature and trusted therein. Now by our righteousnesses naturally unclean from ourselves, we see how unclean we must be, and yet must we not come to Christ notwithstanding our uncleanness? Yes, and believe also, that while we are so unclean in one respect, as our nature stands related to Adam in this world, we are also without spot to God (Cant.4:7) in another respect, as we are absolutely related to Christ over and after Adam. We stand unchangeably related to Christ as to our eternal state and condition of our persons and natures. Hence in the exalting of grace under assistance we are saved by grace, and in the very cloudy pillar, we have hope, (Rom.8:24,) good hope through grace, even when we lack assurance, and in the worst of times do wait for the hope of righteousness (Gal.5:5) by faith. In all our filthy relation unto nature, we come to Christ and come to Christ boldly with a holy confidence in his blood, of our pure relation by grace.
Faith in the Operation of God
God gives importance to believing (for everybody naturally looks upon Faith to be easy work, only living well is the great difficulty) before he gives the Power to believe. (“Therefore they could not believe, because that Esaias said again, he hath blinded their eyes and hardened their heart; that they should not see with their eyes, nor understand with their heart, and be converted, and I should heal them.” Jn.12:39-40.) He doth this partly that the soul may feel the vanity of deceitful preachers, who make moral doing to be so hard, and Faith to be the easy point. Whereas the awakened soul finds morality to be easy, the strictness of living easy, and what men call holiness in their conversations easy, Faith is the hard knotty point, as so much impossible, in comparison with a way of duties unto feigned holiness of life. (“Who then can be saved? But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, with men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.” Mt.19:26.)
It is quite upon another Foundation altogether, (“nevertheless the foundation of God stands sure, having this seal, the Lord knows them that are his,” II Tim.2:19,) and by quite another Heavenly Principle asserted, (“the power of God unto salvation,” Rom.1:16,) that Faith ever comes upon a new Capacity of Grace Experienced and Truth Discerned. After I am emptied of all good (self-righteousness in the mask,) and capacitated for all fulness in Christ, (“it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell,” Col.1:19,) and only then to believe in the Son of God. (“These things have I written unto you that believe in the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life and that ye may believe in the name of the Son of God.” I Jn.5:13.) And now all that which I once looked upon to be the basis of my belief, I find quite upturned; for I now see that Faith must flow from the Fountain of Election-Grace, (“and as many as were ordained to eternal life believed,” Acts 13:48,) “the Faith of God’s elect,” (Tit.1:1;) the Faith that discerns the true Mystery of Godliness; (“God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth,” II Thes.2:13;) Faith that receives Christ; Faith that is of the motion-kind to come to Christ; and then ultimately to come to God by Christ; and Faith in all these which is of the Operation of God, (“the faith of the operation of God,” Col.2:12.)
Never then let preachers talk of Faith in that loose manner with this error that I am confusing, as if Election had not provided the Faith of God’s elect (“according to the faith of God’s elect,” Tit.1:1,) to be in God’s time, but merely left it upon the soul to believe of its self just now, or else its sickness must be unto death; and so never look to the Grace which hath impelled the person of the sinner to Christ, as a Security for the Application of Christ to the person of the sinner. This is therefore just as the Arminians that hate Election of Faith infused, as well as of persons discriminated, and love to set a man astride upon Free Will. Alas! How often do the elect add this sin to all the rest, of refusing to believe in him, and yet do not miscarry, nor can be finally lost. For after their refusing, and refusing, and refusing over and over, and instead of believing into Christ, will be believing into themselves when left to themselves, resting in themselves, living upon their own marks, and encouraged so to do by this preacher and many others, that Jesus Christ is shut out, and marks, signs, frames, self- holiness, duty, and zeal are taken in. Aye, love to the Party, and this called love to the brethren, when yet they could even kill an Antinomian or any brother that hath so much light and courage in the Gospel of Christ as to exalt Christ alone and beat down their false hopes. Ah! Till men are brought off from all the brave things they have wrought, let preachers flatter them never so much, I see no fruits of Election, I Thes.1:4, in all the common stir and stirrings, till men see they are nothing, and can do nothing, and believe least of all.
Faith in the Operation of God
Gospel Faith is not wrought but by the Gospel Author. “Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith.” Heb.12:2. ‘Tis a Faith which so receives Christ by an act of the new nature, or the evangelical workmanship of the Holy Ghost, “that whosoever believeth in him” (in this life-principle of the Holy Ghost) shall have Everlasting Life in the world to come. Therefore ‘tis spiritually a seeing the Son, and believing on him. “And this is the will of him that sent me, that every one which sees the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day.” Jn.6:40. Hence it comes to pass, that the other Faith was, as to the elect, inchoately, or in some begun sense, Jn.20:5, Gospel-Faith, viz., in the Object; but this latter, Evangelical Faith, is completely so. The other Faith had its external assistance, Jn.2:23 – Jn.6:2, 26, and nature was to work upon them; whereas this Faith has its internal Creation, and is made to act towards Jesus by the Spirit, when all the external assistance of the other Faith are withdrawn. I Pet.1:8 – Jn.20:29.
The one sort of Faith had its evidence in the Works of the Son, the other sort hath all its evidence in the Works of the Spirit. One was no other Faith than what required visible miracles to produce it, and the other a Faith that depends upon an Invisible Power to work it, and maintain its being. ’Tis, for this reason, the Apostles do magnify the Holy Ghost in the Evangelical Faith, and discover that in their own Gospel-believing (as well as it was so in other Saint’s believing) they had the Spirit of Faith, II Cor.4:14, as the Author and Indwelling Cause of all the Grace of God in them. It must be the Spirit who is the inward Spring and Root of this Faith, for nature's Faith in the other branch of the distinction, suits not an Exalted Jesus; inasmuch as nature can’t behold him since he is passed into the Heavens, though it was fitted to behold Jesus in his humbled state at the sight of miracles, and was fitted thereupon to consent that he was the true Messiah, the Christ of God, that should come into the world. To speak so slightly of Faith, in concealing the Holy Spirit from it, as if it was but some external work of obedience, Jn.6:28, as the Jews looked upon working the works of God to be; and as if Gospel Unbelief was no more than a mere refusing to believe in Christ, as the Jews of old refused the nature- believing on Him in the time of his nature-state on earth. Zech.6:12. Nature-unbelief is a principle of dead nature in men, and Spiritual Faith, Psal.71:17, in Christ (in opposition to that unbelief) is more than a dogmatical receiving of Christ, and beyond, Mk.16:16 – Eph.1:19, an assenting to Him doctrinally with the heart and will, which is the only Faith Christ pressed upon his countrymen, the Jews, and which they refused to exert towards Him. Jn.5:40.
The Mystery and Power of Faith, as it falls under a work of God the Holy Ghost, is entirely excluded, (in Mr. Hunt’s book,) and no regard had to it. Nothing of it opened, not of the difficulty of it laid forth, none of the mistakes and cheats in it by counterfeit faiths obviated, none of the Holy Ghost’s guidance of it, by the narrow way, through the strait gate, Lk.13:24, the Accomplishments of Christ, to Eternal Life. If Mr. Hunt had intended to set out the true Faith of the Gospel, he should have insisted on the Exceeding Greatness of the Power, necessary towards this sort of Believing, and therein have exalted the Holy Ghost in a man’s going altogether out of himself to Christ by sheer Faith. How does the Apostle magnify it! Take the description of it as it lies in Ephesians 1:19-20, “and what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power, which he wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead and set him at his own right hand in the heavenlies, &c.” The Apostle sets the ground of an Evangelical Faith right. He had fixed it in the work of the Holy Ghost, in the Spirit of Wisdom and Internal Revelation, verse 17, and is there praying for more of this Spirit for these Ephesians in the daily work of the Holy Ghost opening their eyes to behold, “the eyes of their understanding being enlightened,” verse 18, and so are made, by Another, to behold, in all that they see of Gospel- Mysteries. He knits and couples this of Faith with the greatest of Evangelical Mysteries he had insisted on in, verse 18, and which the eyes of their understanding were enlightened by the Holy Ghost to see. The Apostle calls the Reason and Internal Cause of Faith in the saints, Power, distinct from Light and Vision, “power to us-ward who believe.” Power to us that have the Distinguishing Faith of the Gospel.
Power to us in our coming by that Faith and receiving it. ‘Tis the Power of God; for any other power is too low and too short to work the lively Faith of the Gospel. Faith is wrought by the Power of God, the Greatness of his Power. He puts forth great Power, Eph.3:16, to work that Faith which is led into Great Mysteries. He works by the Greatness of his Power to us-ward who believe. Nay, that’s not enough yet, the exaggeration, and heaping up one word upon another, till it becomes like the great mountains, Psal.36:6, runs higher still; even to Exceeding Greatness of his Power. He will put in enough and enough of his own great Power, and the Greatness of it, infinitely to out-do all the strength of sin that dwells in us, Rom.7:20; and put down all the contrary principles of the Law in our members, Rom.3:27, that the law of Faith shall prevail above it. And more emphasis still, “according to the working of his mighty Power.” A power in motion, a power going forth in the utmost activities of the Spirit of God and of Grace; and that in the most raised and noble wonder of the whole Creation! In the highest, greatest, and most amazing instance of Power, wherein the Power of God was ever shown! Which he wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead! It was a mighty working of his power, I Pet.3:18, to raise Christ from the dead; because as he died a Public Person, representing all the elect of God in Himself, so God’s power raised Him from the dead as a Public Person too, that all the elect rose with Him and in Him mystically complete, the Foundation of all influential completeness through Him to our persons. And this after all our sins had lain on Him to press Him down, and to keep Him down, both Naturally and Legally, had he not fully paid our debt. I Tim.3:16. Oh! Mighty power raises him!
And it is the same working of the Mighty Power of God, the Holy Ghost tells us, works Faith, while the Exceeding Greatness of His power is to us-ward who believe into Him. Oh! What nonsense do men make in Religion by their shutting out the Spirit of God thus! Why are men afraid of the Spirit? There’s our comfort in the Comforter. The Spirit is as infallible in securing His own work, I Pet.1:2, and as much interested in it, and as tender about it, as the Father and the Son are, in and about their Effectual Operation. The Holy Spirit reconciles me to that Light which else offends me (such is my natural enmity to Christ) if that Light doesn’t shine in me, that yet I am told is so near me. Men love darkness, Christ says, Jn.3:19, rather than light (all men do by fallen nature) because their deeds (in one kind or in another) are evil. Now what cause makes men out of love with their own darkness, and in love with the Light, Christ, and the Light of Christ in all the Doctrine of the Gospel, but the Mighty Spirit working in them by this Light, Christ, before they walk to Christ in it? The Spirit brings home the light to you, I Jn.5:6, sinners, before you come to Christ, believing on the same Light, in a motion-Faith to him. The Spirit heals you by this enlightening virtue. “The LORD thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; he will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing.” Zeph.3:17.
Faith in the Operation of God
Faith is an eye in the soul, a spiritual eye, and the Object is let into the soul through it. Hence that plenteous phrase of the New Testament – “through faith,” Rom.3:25, Acts 3:16, II Tim.3:15, Col.2:12, Rom.3:30,31, Gal.3:8,14, I Pet.1:5, Phil.3:9, and often in Hebrews 11. Is it now through faith; then justification is established in Christ above faith (II Tim.1:9) and before it (Rom.8:33,) because it is clearly conveyed through faith into the soul. Establishment of a Deed in the whole of its articles must be before the conveyance of it; though the conveyance too must necessarily be after the establishment and fixing of the several articles. Faith is beholding the Glory and Divinity of Christ's Person. (John 1:14) Now this discerning and beholding of Christ is as the Object is let in upon the eye of the soul through the Workmanship and Operation of God the Spirit. (Eph.2:10) In spiritual vision there is (after the manner of corporal vision) a fixing of the rays, or species of the Object by a gracious irradiancy upon the very retina (as is known in optics) or the inmost fine wrought part of the eye of faith. (Ps.139:14) Thus through faith, the eye of the newborn soul, Christ is let in, or Christ is received. (John 1:12,29)
This is a receiving of Him by the eye, as we receive objects in our common eyesight. So it's called at the Lord's Table a discerning of the Lord's body. (I Cor.11:24,29) Men of natural understandings, or of the most physical abilities and enlargements (take them in all their best ornaments, their clearest parts, and most intellectual studies) yet before Spiritual Renovation (John 3:3,5) are unfit spiritually to discern Christ. (I Cor.2:14)
Faith in the Operation of God
Here must be the Regenerating Work of the Spirit, to believe the Glorious Mystery of the Person and Office of Christ in an Evangelical Way. Why do men put so much of their own, and shut out so much of the Glory of Christ in those very cases where they bring and lay their own? The reason is manifest in this text. ‘Tis because they believe not that Jesus is actually the Christ. (“And you shalt call his name JESUS; for he shall save his people from their sins.” Matt.1:21.) Take them in their thoughts of the Great Mystery of Godliness, I Tim.3:16, and their understandings do not behold Christ by a Work of the Spirit. Take them in their assent and consent, and yet their will do not bow to him by a Work of the Spirit. Their hearts are not filled with him by a work of the Spirit, and so they rather believe that Jesus is a Jesus after their own fashion; that is to say, he becomes their Jesus, their Saviour, by their own faith, by their own repentance, by their own obedience and good works. (“For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God.” Rom.10:3.) And all the great matters they look for from this fabricated Jesus are, even so far as there is a great deal of their own to make him up a Jesus to them. And herein they do but think him to be such a one as themselves. For, as they believe they can’t save themselves without him, so they believe he can’t save them either without themselves. (“These things that you have done, and I kept silence; you thoughtest that I was altogether such a one as thyself; but I will reprove thee, and set them in order before thine eyes.” Psal.50:21.) Now this is not believing that Jesus is the Christ. They don’t in all this believe as born of the Spirit, in a supernatural way, but believe without it in a natural way. Acts 8:13.
Therefore in their believing they look but into the surface of the matter, not into the Substance of the Truth of Christ. (“All things are delivered unto me of my Father, and no man knows the Son, but the Father; neither knows any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him.” Matt.11:27.) For they don’t see the Father’s Commission in his Office, the Father’s Unction of the Mediator, in anointing in the Human Nature of Christ, (“for he whom God hath sent speaks the words of God; for God giveth not the Spirit by measure unto him,” Jn.3:34,) so as that he is every way fully and completely, before themselves, without themselves, above themselves and against themselves, their own corrupt selves, as well as for their elect selves, the Christ of God. Lk.9:20. And so they do not believe, according to the Holy Ghost’s own special mark of assurance, as born of God. “Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God,” I Jn.5:1, or born of the Holy Ghost, who is God. (“Wherefore I give you to understand, that no man speaking by the Spirit of God calls Jesus accursed; and that no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost.” I Cor.12:3.)
Faith & Repentance
There is a world of difference between the seasonable exhortations practiced in the Holy Scriptures (Ez.21:2) after the Holy Ghost is given to the elect - and between the common mode of exhortations to faith and repentance by way of legal precept. (Mal.2:8) The former is quick and evangelical, (Acts 15:31,) the latter dead and legal. Now in the dead preceptive exhortation, they make the nature of the act of faith extend to so low a thing as the effect of moral suasion; and this separately stands in the wisdom of men, as the Apostle says, “that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.” (I Cor.2:5) Now such a low, moral sort of faith as this, never goes out of a man's self to fasten on the Promise. True faith under the Spirit's efficacious work goeth out of a man's self into the Person of Christ, where the promise is Yea and Amen - into the Person of Christ as doing, dying, and as his soul was made an offering - a sin offering, in the room and place of the sinner! And so faith goeth into righteousness, as Grace reigns through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord. (Rom.5:21) Now this same going out into the Person of Christ (for faith is rather a going to Christ, than a coming to Christ, since Christ is at God's right hand, Col.3:1) is far beyond a going forth into the report, though to do that too, where ignorance, prejudice, etc., are removed, the arm of the Lord must be revealed. (Is.53:1) But men commonly make the faith of coming to Christ (to use their phrase) so low, as that there is indeed no necessity of the supernatural work of the Spirit (Eph.1:19,20) for it. And so while they make it to rise out of unrenewed reason and the old nature, there is no such need of Power for it above the human will, (John 5:40,) as there is for that faith of coming to Christ, or rather (as I have said) going to Christ, which is created out of the virtue of Christ's Ransom blood, (Mt.20:28,) and which is wrought by the Power of God.
Faith & Union with Christ
Many 'Christians' would, notwithstanding their own principles of Christianity, scandalize and blind us, if God left us under their trial, by their beating down a Union-Christ, an Interested Christ before believing. And this is their main delight to rob Christ, and 'young' Him in His interest; whereas His interest in the Church is the Oldest Interest in the world; He was in it before Adam, and all interest is reciprocal and relative; that is, it commenced with God of both sides together. If Christ has had an interest in me older than the world, I have had an interest in Christ too, secretly with God, before the world was. And my youthful interest in Faith is not my only interest, in Grace that caused Faith. It is but the breaking out of what I had before in Christ, and the communication of what I had not before in myself. I am for that Union, for that Salvation, for that Heaven, for that Love, the source of all, which were all Mine by Eternal Settlement, and then Communicative Donation, and both ways by Pure Grace before I believed, or before I raised a finger in believing!
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Forgiveness of Sins in Christ
There is a notable comprehending phrase in Acts 26:18, “that they may receive forgiveness of sins.” This goes deep into the mystery of the Pardon of Sin. For it takes in forgiveness, both as prepared, (Rom.4:25,) without which could not be forgiveness, and forgiveness bestowed without which it could not be received. Receiving it implies clearly that the thing received (forgiveness) was made ready in the fullness of Christ, and had a being in Christ, as ours by free grace, before the creatures receiving it. Besides, if things (or if all the blessings wherewith we are blessed in heavenly places in Christ) be in Christ before they are by him and through him, then sure they must be in Christ, before there can be faith in Christ, or before what the Holy Ghost calls faith into Christ.
Full Pardon in Christ Alone
To issue it, this is the Doctrine, through Grace, I abide by with my soul, and venture into Eternity with, that ‘tis the Great Pardon applied in the Virtue of the Righteousness and Blood-shed of Jesus Christ which determines my parting with the great sins, otherwise too dear to corrupt nature to be departed with for Christ; and not this wild notion that parting with the great sins and the dear and darling corruptions is that which determines the Great and Full Pardon. ‘Tis the Greater that must influence the less, not the less that influences the Greater. ‘Tis not so much for me to part with my sins, as for God to Pardon them. When I, as a wicked wretch, in my thoughts and ways, being helped in the New Creation to part with them through the Virtue of Real Pardon, the Pardon still opens, and I see what I saw not, more and more of the Glory thereof, breaking up into my views in a Pardon more abundantly, according to Isaiah 55:7, “let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return unto the LORD, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.” God accounts for every man as a wicked man that is not brought off from a Mixed Gospel. (“Flee out of the midst of Babylon, and deliver every man his soul; be not cut off in her iniquity; for this is the time of the LORD’S vengeance; he will render unto her a recompense.” Jer.51:6.)
For so long as he stands or seeks to stand in his own Righteousness, together with a notion of Christ’s Righteousness mixed, he is a wicked person and is in his own way, not God’s way of saving him; he is an unrighteous man, that has thoughts of Religion and Salvation and Preaching and Catechizing, that must everyone be changed, (though yet he finds his sinful thoughts in these ways of his righteousness too dear, his righteousnesses being his very sins, to be parted with for Christ.) Nevertheless, if the Gospel-way of Pardon he strikes at, changes his own way and thoughts, it must be by a pre-occupation of his heart with the real virtue (not the notion) of Christ’s Righteousness imputed to his person; for the Spirit falls with it into the heart, whilst this Righteousness comes upon the whole man from Christ by Real Imputation, and all done openly to Faith of the Spirit’s Operation in that Revelation Time by Divine Quickening, as beams of Gospel Light follow the rising of the sun immediately, and all according to the Secret Pattern of the same works of Grace wrought, as the Father had viewed the elect in and by Jesus Christ before the Foundation of the World. Christ in his Gospel-Righteousness hath a power to change the heart and nature by the Spirit, as well as Justify and Absolve the whole person by Authority from Condemnation. The unrighteous man in his way and thoughts of Pardon strikes at Christ, if he steps in with his Pardon before the soul is ready for it in Conditions fulfilled and Qualifications attained.
His notion is, if I believe first and come to Christ for my Pardon, I may have it. Aye, but this poor Notionalist is yet in prison, (and who but the Spirit of Christ can make him believe that, so long as he finds he has the liberty to ascend the pulpit?) Nevertheless, when the Pardon comes home, and is issued out to begin his first Spiritual Convictions about it, it will come and find him in Prison, a stronger Prison than New-Gate, shut up under the Works of the Law, Gal.3:23, and there demonstratively will convince him, he never did or could come to his Pardon, but his Pardon arrived, and shined into him; viz., in the openings of things according to the Everlasting Settlements of them before time, through Redemption-Operations which came in between their Settlements and Application. Aye, but till God come in by his Mighty Power thus, he will continue to strike at the Gospel, and all in a zeal to maintain what he calls Justification. What do ye think the wicked man in his way, and the unrighteous man in his thoughts will give Justification the preference to Faith? No, he will set Faith, as the elder, (as a prerequisite,) before Justification. Faith which he acts before Justification that God acts.
God's Efficacious Providence Regarding Sin
The entrance of sin into the world was ordained to be the means of bringing Christ into the world, as the Mediator of Redemption, and that to the elect, as to what they were involved in by Adam’s relation in the garden. And upon the Father's comprehensive provision of Christ, (Col.1:19,) a supreme, mystical and transcendent Head, Christ enters (Psa.89:3,) federally and freely, and every way fully into this world to be the Saviour of the elect body fallen. This effectually recovers them, in the supreme, mystical, and transcendent union, from all obstacles in the way of God's love for them.
Gospel Invitations
Ministers are called to divide the Word aright, (II Tim.2:15,) to give to everyone a proper portion, and not invite promiscuously dogs to eat of the children's bread (Mt.15:26,) and call this an improving the means of grace that they may be saved. Ministers are called to be the savior of death unto death in them that perish (II Cor.15:16,) and not to flatter and coax them, to get their own interest and worldly names up among them, as if all that heard them were universally redeemed, and so those that perish might improve the ‘means of grace’ and be saved. Justice must be glorified in the condemnation of the wicked (and wicked here are such as Christ will say he never knew in any sense righteous, Mt.7:23, not before their so-called faith in Christ, and therefore never after their ‘faith’) as well as mercy in the salvation of the upright, or those whom Mercy makes upright. I will tell them that which is otherwise crooked cannot be made straight. (Ecc.1:15) This is the Truth, the other is the mere dream of universal redemption. They are no ministers of Christ like to be graciously prospered (I say like to be graciously prospered) in this Gospel Day, who have a sort of Universal Grace to buoy up all the sons of Adam with a hope. And yet sad to be spoken, and because true, more sad not to be spoken; he has become a notable divine now that is most artful at preaching as a trade, to please men (Gal.1:10,) and so cog the dice, as to make grace as universal as nature!
Gospel Precepts
When the Apostles were taught to give rules, I find they were for saints’ outer and after-acts, to adorn the Gospel, (Tit.2:10,) in the form of Christ's Government, as that form is to be kept outwardly distinct from all other forms, according to the form of sound words, (II Tim.1:13,) and they were not given for their first inward acts, much less to obtain an interest in Christ and Gospel benefits by them in the life and spirituality of Christ's Government. (Is.28:5,7)
Holy Spirit of Truth
The Apostle John speaks of the Truth's sake which dwells in us. Doubtless, this is one of the titles of the Holy Ghost who is spoken of, whom the faithful were enabled to call by the name of Truth in that daring generation of professors, who in their blasphemies of the Holy Ghost, and also of the Son of God; for no doubt, they counted and called this Indwelling of the Holy Ghost in the Saints as their Principle of life, a lie. (“The anointing which ye have received of him abides in you, and ye need not that any man teach you; but as the same anointing teaches you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him.” I John 2:27) To do the Spirit honor therefore in the face of that generation, the Apostle calls him the Truth and professes his love to the elect (II Jn.1,2) wrought on by the Truth of the Gospel, and was knit to them for the truth's sake which dwells in us. Yea, it's expressly the Spirit's Title, “the Spirit is Truth.” (I Jn.5:6) And God “dwells in us” (I Jn.4:12) as the Principle of our life, and of our motion and obedience unto Christ. Likewise, (I Jn.4:15,16,) God dwells in him that confesses that Jesus is the Son of God; it being in that erroneous day which the Apostle bent his style against, esteemed a dangerous point to hold. And it cost the Saints much to be faithful to Christ in that age; and it seems not one in that day was able to come up to this sound, holy and bold confession that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, (Rom.10:9,) but what had God the Holy Ghost dwelling in them, and becoming the principle of the same confession. And “he that dwells in love” (for in that day too the faithful were hated, I Jn.3:13, for holding supernatural Truths) dwells in God, and God in him.” (I Jn.4:16) He that dwells in love therefore of the Truth, and of them that hold it, dwells in God as his Principle, and God dwells in him, as his possession and heritage forever.
Humility & Pride
I find spiritual pride, if the Spirit makes discoveries of myself to myself, whereas another finds humility. I see that to be pride if I see it by the Spirit, which another sees to be humility by the Flesh. If the Lord rips me every day, and upon every occasion, I cannot say that I am humble, because still by the Spirit I have my eye, and ought to have it, upon the proud part. Nevertheless, if I am humbled, as the Lord himself (not I) will judge of me by his Grace, in making me in myself what I do not see myself to be; why, it’s that I shall look on that humility, and I shall see nothing of it, to take the least comfort from it, but as it is in Himself, and I too in Himself perfected. He will show me more of my pride in myself, to keep me humble, whilst he shows me my Perfection in Himself to keep me believing.
Imputation
We must preach the Gospel as it always stands with the Reconciliation of Sinners to God, through the gift by grace in the Imputation of the Righteousness of God in Christ to them. (Rom.5:15) Let me begin and make out the doctrine of Imputation from Romans 4:22,23. “And therefore it was imputed to him for righteousness. Now it was not written for his sake alone, that it was imputed to him.” ‘It?’ What was this ‘it’? Abraham's act of faith says some. No; I answer, the ‘it’ was the Object of that act of faith. The Scriptures do everywhere in the analogy of faith, lay the stress of the matter upon the Object; that is to say upon Christ, upon his Righteousness and Blood to justify; and therefore that Object must be the matter of the imputation here meant. If any will attempt to show it to mean faith; for we read that Abraham “against hope believed in hope;” (Rom.4:18;) also vs.19 speaks of his “being not weak in faith;” and vs.20, of his staggering “not at the promise of God through unbelief;” and likewise of his, “being strong in faith;” and vs.21, of his being “fully persuaded,” (Heb.11:13,) all which speaks faith, and so the reason that it is this ‘faith’ which was imputed.
To which I still say that faith was not the ‘it’ which was imputed. One place must be expounded by many, not many places by one. Therefore the ‘it’ (which was imputed) is to be understood of that Object (I Cor.1:30) in his eye; as if I should say, ‘my sight tells me,’ the meaning would be, the object seen tells me. So if this faith which is the spiritual eyesight of the soul be interpreted among any to be that ‘it’ which was imputed, it must be understood according to soundness in the faith; that it was the Thing which was imputed (II Cor.5:21 – Jer.33:16) to Abraham, which his faith, that spiritual eyesight of his, discerned. And that Thing must be the Object which Abraham believed into. This was Christ and his Righteousness. Besides, there is enough to allow us the interpreting it the Object, though it had been said of the act of faith, that it was imputed. This appears in the common instances of a catachresis (misapplication of a word) in the Word or a figure of speech that signifies the use of a word beyond the common acceptation. As in Jer.46:10, “the sword shall devour;” here to devour, which is the property of a living creature with teeth, is catachrestically applied to the sword. So Rev.1:12, “I turned to see the voice that spake with me;” it's seeing the voice, which by this figure is used for seeing Him that uttered it. Ps.137:5, “let my right hand forget her cunning;” here forgetting is applied to the right hand, as in the same way as speech it's put for the memory failing. Likewise; Hos.4:8, “They eat up the sin of my people;” sin properly cannot be eaten; but the meaning is, they live upon the idol's table, or they eat the sacrifices that are offered up to false gods. Well then, after the same manner, if faith be understood to be that ‘it’ that is imputed for righteousness, it is but characteristically spoken, by ascribing the imputation to the Act which strictly belongs to the Object of that Act; namely, the imputation of what faith discerned and laid hold on of a justifying nature in Christ.
This is the ‘it’ which in the faith of Abraham was imputed to him. But then it is expressly spoken of the promise in the verse before, (Rom.5:20,) that “he staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief;” and what was this promise about? (Gal.3:22 – Rom.4:16) The seed, or Messiah, “so shall thy Seed be.” (Rom.4:18) Which seed is Christ. “He saith not, and to seeds, as of many; but as of One, and to thy seed, which is Christ.” (Gal.3:16) Christ is the Head with all his numerous members, of the faith of Abraham, more in number than the stars. (Gen.15:5) All this was promised Abraham to come to pass in his Seed, or in, by and through Christ. And the meaning then of those words, “and being fully persuaded that, what he had promised, he was able also to perform,” (Rom.4:21,) must be about the promised Righteousness of the Seed, Christ, and resolves the ‘it’ of (vs.22) that which is imputed, (II Pet.1:1,) namely the Righteousness of God which had been promised in this Seed; and so plainly expounds that text in Genesis (15:6) from whence the other in Romans is first derived. (“Blessed is the man unto whom the LORD imputes not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile.” Ps.32:2) And Abraham believed God (in his promise in verse 5) and ‘it’ - the promised blessing in the Seed Christ was counted to him for righteousness. It is not the faith, but what the faith beheld; so it is in the Seed promised. (“And I will put enmity between thee and the woman and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and you shalt bruise his heel.” Gen.3:15) It “shall bruise thy head,” as Elohim threatened the serpent in the victory to be obtained over him by Christ, who should “bare our sins in his own body on the tree.” (I Pet.2:24) This ‘it’ that's imputed is Christ. It's plainly meant of the Imputation of the Righteousness of this promise, or the Righteousness of God in Christ that is lodged in the bowels of this Promise. - See also Gen.15:6, “And he believed in the LORD; and he counted it to him for righteousness,” compared with Gal.3:6 & 6, “Even as Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness. Know ye therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham.”
Faith there is the Gospel, as verse 8, “and the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed;” and in Gal.1:23, “but they had heard only, that he which persecuted us in times past now preaches the faith (Gospel) which once he destroyed;” and all that’s meant is Christ, who is the Promise or the Thing (Object) promised; “that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the Promise of the Spirit through faith;” (Gal.3:14;) “and now I stand and am judged for the hope of the Promise made of God unto our fathers; unto which Promise our twelve tribes, instantly serving God day and night, hope to come.” - Then further, whereas they lay so much stress upon the act of faith, the Scripture foreseeing the disorder in men's thoughts hath quite shut the mention of faith out of Rom.5:9; and described the whole of Justification to the Blood, (Rev.1:5 – I Pet.1:19,) where the virtue of the mystery lies. “Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.” Here the Object of Faith is expressly mentioned apart from the act. The blood that paid our debt, while neither our eye beheld it, nor our hand received it. This now governs our construction of the matter, and well explains the ‘it’ to be meant of the blood of Christ, wherein his consummate Righteousness which paid our debt lay. It's the blood that hath all the virtue upon our faith, and our faith no virtue, or influence at all upon that blood. It is justification by his blood, (Rom.5:9,) and faith not at all expressed. Aye, but you'll say, no doubt but it's implied; for in Romans we read of those who were justified by faith.
Then is not Justification by the Blood implied as well, where yet it is expressed justified by faith? And is not the blood again implied, (I John 1:7,) where it is said, it is imputed for righteousness? Certainly, one must be as much implied as the other. And we justly conclude that what is expressed of faith (Rom.3:25) is but to open and lead to more of the mystery of what is expressed of the blood elsewhere; and all to signify that the Holy Ghost under the Imputation of the Righteousness of God in Christ (Ps.89:16) hath wrought faith in the blood of Christ, by which blood we are justified. Isaiah 54:17 plainly speaks for the Imputation of the Righteousness of God. “Their righteousness is of me, saith the LORD.” Of me, (I Cor.1:30,) and so comes upon them by Imputation; and faith comes in the virtue of the blood through the Righteousness of God, as it is witnessed. (II Pet.1:1) And it is not the righteousness of God which comes in the virtue of that faith. Thus, to preach up the fruits of Imputation is to advance the grace of God, and show poor sinners how one piece of Free Grace streams out of another (Rom.8:29,30) to them. “That being justified by his grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.” (Tit.3:7) The imputation of righteousness takes away all iniquity; (Hos.14:2;) and to preach thus to sinners advances Imputation Grace. (I Jn.2:12) Wherever the Righteousness of God is imputed the Spirit of God is bestowed; and in this way saving grace is given to all the elect of God.
Imputation
What had become of us upon this transaction, the Father’s laying of sin, and therein the loathsomeness of our sins upon Christ, had he been only a Holy Man, and not the Holy God too? Why if he had not been God, he must have been absolutely changed upon this Transaction, and the very filth of sin have defiled him. But being God, this was impossible, by reason of the close Union of the Natures, or the Man in God, to be in the least spotted with our defiling sins. Oh herein is the mystery of amazing Righteousness and Grace! Take all the Deluge of Corruption that hath flowed down upon the elect of God from Adam, and shall do so to the last man, yet all this sea of filthiness to us is but in comparison with his Infinite Power to subdue Sin a drop of water to a vast ocean, as large as the whole universe. (Is.4:4) Such a mighty nature and power had Christ in him to resist the infection and stain of sin, not contracting it, (I Jn.3:5,) whilst he bore our sins in his own Body on the tree. (I Pet.2:24) Whatever it be, I know that this similitude is imperfect to set out the matter, in the deep mystery of this Gold tried in the Fire, (Rev.3:18,) or the Person of Christ in his sufferings, the greatest of which was the Father's Imputation of our sins unto him; yet in all that Fire of Wrath which seized him, the Divine Nature did unspeakably sustain the Humanity, or upheld the Son of Man. Neither doth aforesaid illustration, though enough to stop the mouth of cavil, unbelief, and corrupt reasonings against the contrary, nevertheless set it out so evangelically and sweetly as Faith transcendently receives the point. For in the representations of it that are made to faith, faith sees how it was done. For Christ “was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” (Heb.4:15) Now one point is, that we are tempted with the pollution of our sins, some in one way and some in another, almost to question whether we have true Grace, because of so much filth and strong corruption. Yet when Christ was tempted (though after what manner that temptation of Christ wrought I know not,) he was without sin, without sin entering, contracted, or leaving any stain upon him, that his nature and act of bearing our sins, could be never rendered sinful by them.
Imputation
The types in the Old Testament upon which sin was laid were unclean because finite; (Lev.16:21-24 & 26;) but the Anti-type upon which sin was laid was evermore Pure, because an Infinite Person, and not to be altered by our impurities. Again, if he was infinitely able to be made sin, and yet not sinful, why not infinitely able then to be charged with our pollutions, and yet not spotted in the Imputation? The Father carried it over to an Infinite Person, the Son of God, and as one Infiniteness is the same in the Son as in the Father, so the Son could be no more defiled under the Imputation than the Father could be defiled by the Act of imputing it. Besides, the Socinians are wont to ask us, how could guilt be imputed to Christ, and Christ not an unjust one under the Imputation? And they ground their query upon a denial of the Infiniteness of his Person. And we answer it by the Infinite Accountability of our Engaging Surety.
Our own answer is impartially firm, that as he was, and continued to be the Just One, though he bare our sins and our guiltiness, and in the act of bearing them was a Righteous Person, because of his Infiniteness inability to lie under the Imputation of them, whilst in his Sufferings; so he was and continued to be without spot, the Holy One (for just and holy are not to be separated in the matter as appears in Acts 3:14,) though he bare our sins, and in the act of bearing them was an undefiled Person, because of his infiniteness to lie under the imputation of the pollution without contraction of the least stain. By Faith in the Operation of God, I firmly believe the full Mystery of the Imputation in each of the branches thereof, guilt and pollution; and satisfaction being made to God's holiness in Christ bearing our pollutions, as well as the Satisfaction that was made to God's Justice in Christ's bearing our guilt upon Himself; and so iniquity was laid upon Christ not by mere Sovereignty but Contract, according to the Eternal Laws of Holiness and Justice; for it pleased the Father as a Righteous Legislator, and not only as an Absolute Sovereign to bruise Christ.
Infinite Virtue of the Blood of Christ
This mystery of receiving Christ by faith, and our handling the Word of Life, (I Jn.1:1,) thinking that foul hands would defile Christ in meddling with him. Aye, but it is not so with the Mediator, who by reason of Absolute Perfection hath a Fullness that cannot be shadowed out unto us. There is that in our Redemption which is far above metaphor. The Infinite Nature in the Person of Christ, as it preserved his Humanity from the contagion on Earth, and gave efficacy to the Righteous Blood of Christ, dying on the cross a sacrifice for all the sins of the elect, and bearing away by his Infinite Virtue our defilements, when carried over to him in his being smitten of God and afflicted; (Is.53:4;) so he ever living to transact for us in this Infinite virtue to God, having his cleansing blood, with which he is entered into Heaven (Heb.9:12) to plead, can never be defiled with those defilements, with which in some respect; (as our natures are related to Adam;) we at all times are contaminated with, sin sticking to us in our approaching unto him; the merit of his Infinite Sacrifice never wastes or spends away its Virtue; and therein as he still bears away our guilt, as fast as we come and confessedly lay it upon him, saying, ‘this was once laid to thy charge,’ and by the Infinite Virtue of the Ransom Blood he carries it clean away into the land of forgetfulness, confess we never so much our daily trespasses over the head of this Glorious Scape-Goat; (Lev.16:21;) made sin for us, and yet knew no sin. (II Cor.5:21) As to the filth or pollution of sin, (however men in the language of the Scribes divide them, they are in the Word and in the nature of the thing inseparably connected,) he bears all away, that not her guilt, nor pollution, can ever follow them, (I am speaking of the children of God,) in the trace of his Blood into Heaven. No, nor whilst we are here, make us cease to be complete in Him. (Col.2:10)
And blessed be God, being continually made sensible of my pollutions, I so far live daily in the power of this faith of going in the pollution of my sin to Christ, that this is the life of my soul to God; God has laid our pollutions upon Christ judicially, and shall we be afraid or beaten off, under a mask of false zeal opposing it, to go and lay our pollutions on Him confessedly? If God had not done thus, there had been no provision in the way of Righteousness, (Rom.3:26,) consistent with the Justice of God's proceedings for exalting the Glory of his Gracious Name, to communicate his own holy nature to us in sending his Holy Spirit who is God's nature to be in us and amongst us. - God looks more at his Son's Blood than he values the ashes that you throw upon yourself to make you look odious, which alludes to that foul way of sorrowing and repenting, when they mourned and repented in the times of the Old Testament, casting dust upon their heads and repenting in sackcloth and ashes. Oh then; how is it that we daily come, even after daily defilements upon us, - that in and of ourselves we may be ashamed to look up to God; (Ezra 9:6;) yet God hath appointed that in this sad pickle, we look not on ourselves to be too filthy to go unto his Son notwithstanding!
Irresistible and Sovereign Grace
It is his gracious yielding to me that is my sole comfort; for my yielding to Him is but my duty, and the fruit of that comfort; and I am assured of this Truth and can say that I truly experience it; that is, I never yielded up my heart to Christ, till Christ yielded down his Hand to my heart; for I always found the spiritual part of the work impossible; nay, I could not spiritually put forth one act in it, till the Grace began of His Side. (The Lord’s sovereign prerogative in His initiating and irresistible work of bestowing grace and for through Christ by the Spirit!) My heart was a heart of stone contrary to yielding, until his hand was a hand of Love, in the time of love, contrary to disobeying, and fully reached my heart. (“Now when I passed by you and looked upon thee, behold, thy time was the time of love; and I spread my skirt over thee, and covered thy nakedness; yea, I sware unto thee, and entered into a covenant with thee, saith the Lord GOD, and you became mine.” Ez.16:8) The Word is plain according to Ezekiel chapter 36; for herein we find cleansing of my person before the softening of my nature. The whole applicatory work of the Gospel begins with God’s effectual calling to us at the first work of Influential Grace, and sprinkling clean water on us; that is, washing, which is pardoning us by the Spirit shed (“which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour,”) down upon us, (“such were some of you; but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God,” I Cor.6:11,) and this makes way for the rest; for then, after the washing, there comes the softening virtue, before anything of the hearts yielding. It is first of all, “I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean.” Then, (as a distinct and next thing in order,) “a new heart also will I give you; and a new spirit will I put within you, and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh.” This follows the cleansing part. And then lastly, here are the principles of yielding to the Kingly Office. “And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them.” (Ez.36:25-27)
Justification in Christ Alone
The virtue of Christ’s Beautifying Righteousness is great upon me towards God in the way of his Justifying me through Christ by the Spirit, as he saith, I Cor.6:11, “justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.” Ye are “now,” says the Apostle, justified by the Spirit in the name of the Lord Jesus, who was not (experimentally) justified through Christ by the revelation/application work of the Spirit prior to this sealing work of Grace. (“Who hath also sealed us, and given the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts.” II Cor.1:22.) So, Rom.5:1, “Therefore being justified by Faith,” (the Spirit’s work in the soul,) we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ;” for it is an equal matter to have peace with God by Faith, as to be justified by Faith, because some perhaps are for reading it with their early comma, therefore being justified, by Faith we have peace with God, &c., for which I could never see any solid reason in the connection of the fifth chapter with the last words of the fourth. So, Gal.2:16, “knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law.”
We will not evade the force of this text, but duly consider the scope of the Holy Ghost in it to intend Justification through Christ, by Faith of Effectual Calling, and yet ‘tis as plain that the Holy Ghost’s scope is but to give us a part of the Mystery of Justification, and the open manifestation/application part too, not the secret basis or fundamental part of the Mystery in that text, to wit, as it resides in Christ. So it injures not that at all, only builds upon it. Again, Gal.3:26, “for ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.” Ye are the Children of God by that piece of Adoption- Grace which is a fruit of the Spirit’s Work in Regeneration; that is, a Quickening of the soul in the vital Union to the Faith in Christ Jesus, opposite to the dead Faith of the world in Old Adam. Now this does not speak of all the Mystery of Adoption (for I bring like texts to illustrate) but of that particular branch of Adoption which only belongs distinctly to the Third Person in God; so neither do the texts men usually bring for Justification and insist on (because they would beat down the truth of being justified before Faith) take in the whole Mystery of it, only one branch of it (which we do all grant) as to the work of the Holy Spirit. Again, Jn.3:18, “he that believeth on him is not condemned;” that is, he is justified in Christ, and thus his Faith is evidence of his Justification by Christ. So that what is thence obvious is, that on a Person’s believing in Christ, the believer passes from his nature-state in Adam to his gracious state in Christ, which now becomes influentially to him, because the Spirit gave him in the Grace of God and the Virtue of Christ’s Righteousness, a State of Justification through Christ, to come up by the Spirit of our God to the soul’s Justification in Christ before (under that comprehensive word, Grace in Christ Jesus, II Tim.2:1,) as the secret Pattern of Justification through him.
The same for, Jn.5:24, “he that hears my word, and believeth on him that sent me (saith Christ) hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from death unto life.” Here we are to take notice that this Life here spoken of comes in through Christ by the Spirit in a way of Believing, and so is to be understood of the Open Life of Justification (Experimental Justification) flowing through Christ, to bring it up to the Secret Life of my Antecedent Justification in Him. What now do men gain of their point, when they bring these texts and cry, you see this, and you see that, and you see how it is all laid and conditioned upon a person’s believing; when as all their running of texts together doth but confound, muddle and entangle the Doctrine of Justification, which ought to be kept in all its parts distinct? This further appears by their pressing of Isaiah 61:10 & 45:25 into their service against all Justification before believing; whereas the Righteousness of Christ there spoken of is that portion of their Justification in the Christ. (“In the LORD shall all the seed of Israel be justified, and shall glory.” Isa.45:25.) For, it is not only said “shall be justified” for all the elect seed of Israel are now justified in Christ (as a full reward of Christ’s suffering) together, and in this they glory. (“Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name; that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” Phil.2:9-11.) The Scriptures ought to be brought and opened distinctly, and not texts rent asunder from one another and removed from the harmony of Divine Revelation, and all huddled into the same branch of the Article of Justification, as the ignorant manner is by the sound and chime of the words, without weighing the Argument.
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