We conclude with the second part of Glory of Christ - ed
Justification in Christ, and by Christ, and an open Justification with Christ do in each of those parts of Justification vastly differ from that intermediate branch thereof, for it is all substantially but one and the same Justification, but is so diversified in Scripture that all of the Justification is never put by the Holy Ghost into one text, though men harp never so much upon the sound of words. Then besides, the Virtue of Christ’s Beautifying Righteousness is so great in me towards Christ in the way of my help to apprehend Christ and his Righteousness as my own, Phil.3:12, that the Spirit of Christ working in and by the Righteousness of Christ imputed, Rom.4:6-7, (I say efficaciously working) on my soul, creates Faith in me towards Christ, Rom.4:16, that very moment; by which Faith openly laying hold on the Person of Christ as my own through God’s Free Gift, or in God’s Present Bestowment of him by the Comforter, I am then by a transient act of God justified, according to the Pattern of his Immanent or Eternal Act antecedently, (and if men must have a school-distinction for it, inasmuch as they run to the schools for their six causes in Justification, and will not be content, as I am, with the Scripture-Distinctions of “in” Christ, “through” Christ, and “with” Christ.) For, on the spot I may feel my Justification by his Mighty Spirit in my peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Rom.5:1. I am justified influentially, I Cor.6:11, that is to say by Faith, as the Holy Ghost’s work, and likewise evidentially, Gal.2:16, as to my own perceiving it upon the Fundamental Patterns of justifying me in Christ before time, and before Faith (for the justified state is in Christ, whilst the fall in nature state is in Adam) because of the Everlasting Covenant, (beyond the Decree,) and then next, because of the Mystical Resurrection of all the members in the Personal Resurrection of their Covenant Head. Faith is Evidence of things not (otherwise) seen. Heb.11:1. ‘Tis Life and Righteousness I have in Christ, Isa.45:25, before my eating of his flesh and drinking of his blood, that is, before my believing on him, as in John 6:53. For there is nothing against it which that text says, only very distinguishingly ‘tis declared not to be until then, that is, until believing, life in me. ‘Tis not my life in me before, but ‘tis my Life in Christ before, and before I can say ‘tis so.
Law & Gospel Distinctions
The Gospel promise is not about writing the Law in the heart, as it was the Law of God written in the heart of Christ, “I delight to do thy will, O my God; yea, thy law is within my heart;” (Ps.40:8;) but about writing the Laws of Christ in the hearts of the justified, as the phrase in the singular number in Jeremiah, (Jer.31:33,) is expounded by the Holy Ghost in the Hebrews. (Heb.8:10 & 10:16) The Gospel promise, or the promise, “I will put my Law (singularly) in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts;” is explained in the plural, “I will put my Laws (plurally) into their mind, and write them in their hearts;” and so Law is made Laws plurally, distinct Laws from the Law of God by Moses. Consequently, Christ’s Laws as means to carry on communion in that interest (one’s secured interest in and by Christ.) These Laws of Christ (being supernatural religion, under a continued and further work of the Holy Ghost, after conversion to the Person and Righteousness of Christ) none but true believers “without the deeds of the Law,” (Rom.3:28,) the Sinai Law; or, without conformity in the true Law sense, do find written in their hearts. It is not the Law of God at large, for that is men’s gross mistake to call it the Law of God, as if it was so at large, and make no distinction.
It is something Evangelical in the very Institution; Christ’s Laws are gracious laws of Government, Worship, and Ordinances that serve the Gospel. These come in the very nature of them after the Gospel. They are not natural commandments or moral precepts, as Mount Sinai’s Law was. The Gospel promise is first, and the Laws of Christ promised to be written in the heart are next. These come after the Gospel to serve it. Now still my comfort comes in by the Gospel portion which the laws of Christ wait on, not by the duty part which serves and is to be all my lifetime gathering up. However, says this inquirer further, (after he hath set up the Law of God, and confounded it with the Laws of Christ, written in my heart,) “and art thou conforming thereto in all things in thy life?” No, Sir, my answer is ready in the negative. I have not conformed to the Law of God written in my heart in any one thing, as the Commandment means; so far am I from conforming thereto in ‘all things in my life’ that I have conformed in nothing. And yet, through Grace, I take comfort! I take comfort exceedingly!
I take comfort unspeakably! I am not able to set out in words the comfort that I receive, which is full of glory! (I Pet.1:8) And yet I am conformed to no one thing of this Law of God written in my heart, otherwise, then I am conformed thereunto in and by my Surety! God’s being all in all to me in Glory to Eternity is effectually secured by Christ’s becoming all in all to me in his Grace here. Art thou conforming thereto in all things? What did the man mean, if not to etch out a Tuesday’s Lecture for Salter’s Hall, in which Lecture the Everlasting Antinomian-Gospel (for I speak the language of the times, as Paul did when he calls Gospel preaching the “foolishness of preaching,” I Cor.1:21,) is excluded! And yet this inconsistent man hath yet other strokes that are against the consent of that Tuesday’s pulpit; for he says, “Art thou conforming thereto in all things in thy life? If so, thou hast reason to take comfort, as one that is interested in this lovely Jesus; but none else,” says he. Here is Christ struck out with one dash by the stroke of a hasty and inconsistent pen! Besides, if this conformity lies in all things, then no man can take comfort until he comes to die, and is assured without any hesitation that he hath conformed to all the Law of God written in the heart, for the words of this test are absolute conformity thereunto. Now, until a man hath finished that which he derives his comfort from, he may not; that is, he cannot take this comfort. All the comfort I take from Christ’s (II Cor.5:21, I Cor.1:30) conformity to the Law of God written in his heart, rising out of his finished work, that I am not to do over again and spoil! So by this scheme of projected consolation, it is impossible that I should have any real consolation in all this life. But I bless the Lord for this; that I know no Door that lets in comfort into my soul, but that which lets in Salvation; and I know no Door that lets in Salvation which shuts out the comfort of salvation, less or more.
And as I am saved by Grace, (Eph.2:8,) I am comforted by Grace and am spiritually refreshed in no other way. Well, throw this man’s divinity, in point of this test of assurance, out of doors, and hear what the Spirit saith unto the Churches, as the Foundation and Encouragement of my constant opposition to this assurance test laid down, “Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned; for she hath received of the LORD'S hand double for all her sins.” (Is.40:1,2) Here the Lord comforts his people upon their receiving Christ (upon Christ being revealed and making Himself known in a way of salvation glory) in his Person and Righteousness, which is double, these two goings always together in genuine Gospel Faith. It is receiving Christ, both as to what Christ is and as to what Christ hath done, even unto Death. As to what he is; God in our nature manifest; as to what he hath done, a Surety Righteousness in our stead accepted. The ground of her comfort lay all together in what she hath received, and God hath finished for her; not at all in what she hath done, and conformed to.
The foundation of this comfort, and speaking comfortably unto her, is laid in no creature conformity to the Law of God written in her own heart, but it is laid in Christ. No, she was not to be comforted from required doings, nor to take it up from conforming to his Laws, though her duty lay in conformity thereunto. The laws of Christ are latter, and when they come, they are pointed to another end than comfort; her comfort was founded upon all that God did for her without her, in breaking off her warfare, and in accomplishing that for her which should no longer oblige, wherein she had always failed. God would put her no more to contend for the Sacrifices and Worship of the Old Testament, (Ps.40:6,) which she had almost in every age corrupted; she would miscarry in her efforts to keep up Temple purity of Instituted Church Worship; for she had turned aside, and turned back in the day of battle, and lapsed in the times of apostasy; (Ps.78:9,57) she had, instead of standing out vigorously to resist idolaters, and corrupters of the ways of God, instead lost her ground in the field of battle. The carnal Jew revolted, and yet now her warfare is accomplished! Jerusalem had contended coldly for the Truths of God; her weariness of the conflict for the very worship of a prophesied Christ, her standing up for types and shadows of good things to come, (Mal.1:13, Heb.10:1,) was now completely over, and summed up in this one Word of grace, “her warfare is accomplished.” And though she had spoiled all her Law work, yet she should have an evangelical reward of grace, (the prize of grace in running to obtain that which was already attained for her by Christ Himself. “Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receives the prize? So run, that ye may obtain.” I Cor.9:24.
Note: the prize was already won, the battle accomplished – the race as pertaining to salvation already finished by Christ – and He Himself the ultimate prized possession thereof,) and experience of precious soul comfort in receiving Christ and his Righteousness, as the better things intended by those Sacrifices and Worship. This was the Lord’s doing for her; not her own, to put an end to this warfare. Again, she was to take comfort in this, that her iniquity was forgiven her. This was still of the Lord’s doing, as the open Foundation of it in the Cornerstone discovered. (Ps.118:22,23) And both these, the accomplishing of her warfare, and the pardoning her iniquity, were works of grace without her that God had done for her; and all the work of God’s grace within her brought her under observation for the taking up her comfort, was her being enabled by the Holy Ghost to received the gift of God, the Lord’s Christ at the Lord’s hand. (Lk.2:26) And upon this the voice cries, “comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God.” Thus, when he helps me to take my comfort, it is altogether in the views of my Object, and not the mere exercise and putting forth of my own acts towards Him. I am under the conduct and management of God the Comforter in my every comfort. He doth not leave me to take up my own comfort; nor when Himself takes it up for me, doth he bear Witness of Himself (immediately,) and of his own work in me, but he begins with bearing witness of Another, in whose Name he comes.
Law & Gospel Distinctions
Doth not that Light of Christ (John 3:19) which, in the Preaching of the Gospel, discovers, that doing the will of Christ's Father (Mt.7:21,) is believing on Him whom the Father hath sent (John 6:29,) like as other obedience is obedience to Christ, He has all Power given Him (Mt.28:18) of the Father to appoint and command it, distinctly, set the bold Neonomians to corrupt the Faith of the Gospel, and the same practical Antinomians to trample upon the Order of the Gospel? As one, they cannot bear the Light of the Gospel, and as the other, they cannot bear the heat of the Gospel, in the Government of Jesus Christ, of the Increase of whose Government there is to be no end. (Is.9:7) I'll tell any man plainly, it is the Gospel, in the bright splendor and glory of it; that splendor which very few of all sides can endure, but a brand (with ignorance enough) for Antinomianism (Acts 14:2,) which was the only thing that ever drew me with the bands of Love into the strictest order of Fellowship, in breaking of Bread and in Prayers. (Acts 2:42)
On the other hand, in the carnal and confident way of pressing to the duties of the Gospel, before acquaintance with, and experimental interest in the Privileges of the Gospel; I mean, absolute Pardon of Sin, Holiness of Nature from Christ, Peace of Conscience, Joy in the Holy Ghost, and so forth; I say, before an Experimental Acquaintance with these, I was always a very great hater of the strictest Saints and Churches, and yet then a Preacher! (Jer.23:21) And so it had been in my soul to this day, both against the Government of Christ, his Gospel, and all Obedience to Him in it, (Mt.11:29,30,) if the Lord had not preached down all such (Preachers) as misted me! And that, by bringing His mighty Grace (Eph.1:20) into my soul, and turning all their way and scheme for doing the will of God quite out of doors! Blessed be Jehovah forever, I am now alive to Christ (Ps.72:18,19, Rom.6:11, 7:4,) and dead to their way of doings. Hence; the brighter Christ is, the more we find multitudes of Professors, of most Persuasions, fight Him, and run back to Old Adam! Lion of the Tribe of Judah!
The world cannot forbear encroaching upon the prerogatives of the King of saints, as the alone Head of that Body of which he is the Saviour. He hath made His spouse to be in all things subject to Himself (Eph.5:24, I Cor.11:3) as her Husband; and how incongruous is it for the wife, as subject in all things to Christ, to make her own laws that concern her Husband; especially, when her Maker is her Husband (Is.54:5,) and she believes the Second Commandment, that the Lord her God is a jealous God! (Ex.20:5) This power therefore in the ordinances, as she durst not usurp, so neither dares consent to in the usurpations of others; for which steadfastness and perseverance in her loyalty to Christ, she hath in most ages under the reign of Antichrist been barbarously persecuted by the world. No wonder then, if He, the Man, the Man Christ Jesus, whom God the Father hath appointed to judge the world in righteousness, (Acts 17:31,) be in His risen state a Lion, and ready upon his judicial Throne to execute, according to the day of vengeance in his heart; though these wretches think or say what they dare, being given up to think as ill of Him under their plagues when the judgment of Babylon comes, as they will. (Is.63:4, 59:17,18, Rev.16:21) Thus, it is only in Christ's risen and exalted state, in the terrible part of it to his enemies, destroying them, and as a Lion breaking all their bones, that he is represented and set forth by the Holy Ghost, according to this terror in Judah, as the Lion of that Tribe. (Ez.32:27,28) It signifies his reigning fiercely over his implacable Enemies, Jews, Pagans, and anti-Christians, crushing them to pieces, and getting mastery over them by subduing them, for the defense and propagation of his Church, and the opening of the reign of the Lord God amongst His own.
This, as the Lion of the Tribe, he hath brought on gradually, in his open government of the world, under the irresistible scenes of his providence, by terrible and bloody revolutions. And thus his Name stands, the Name by which he is known in his opening the book of Providence and Events. “Weep not; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, hath prevailed to open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof.” Rev.5:5.
Lion of the Tribe of Judah
Lion is not taken separately from the prediction in Genesis (49:9) of being so, but falls into the vision correspondently in the Revelation; though to John he appeared not under any such resemblance, but as a Lamb slain (Rev.5:6,) declaring what he was to the church in the benefit of his priesthood - a Lamb slain. And so he stood upon Mount Sion with his sacrifice blood of expiation and declaring himself in his relation to the world in the terror of his kingdom - the Lion of the Tribe of Judah. (Rev.5:5) So that the meaning of the expression in the Holy Word is, the Lord rises against his enemies to be very terrible to the disobedient, throughout all the earth. He is the Lion of the tribe of Judah in the righteousness of his wrath for despising the righteousness of his obedience, as a Lamb slain, imputed to be the justifying righteousness of the church. Hence he is a Lion in vindictive righteousness, or, a revelation of the righteous judgment of God.
Living in the Spirit
The Spirit leads us through Christ to the Father in all Acceptation of what we are, or do. As we cannot go to the Father but as we are led through Christ, so we cannot be led thus spiritually, but by the Spirit of Christ. Eph.2:18. Moreover, as there is an acceptance of what we are, so likewise of what we do through Jesus Christ. Eph.1:6. The acceptableness of the most spiritual performances (or the acceptableness to God of all our living in the Spirit) is founded alone in union to Christ, together with an interest in the complete Surety-Righteousness of Christ. Phil.3:9. Union in Christ; for the union to him does not reach this mystery. The branch is in the stock, so the soul is in Christ which lives in the Spirit and therein finds favor with God through Christ. Jn.15:2-5.
Also, this Union in Christ is together with an interest in the Complete Surety-Righteousness of Christ. Gal.1:4. And as the woman in marriage wears the husband’s name, and therein loses her own last name she had before her husband married her, so it is with the Gospeller in the Gospel-Righteousness. (“In his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely; and this is his name whereby he shall be called, THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS.” Jer.23:6. “In those days shall Judah be saved, and Jerusalem shall dwell safely; and this is the name wherewith she shall be called, The LORD our righteousness.” Jer.33:16.) This same Acceptableness with God, you’ll say is a great thing, which they who live in the Spirit attain. But how is it evidenced to the soul by living in the Spirit? Why, it is for God to hold out his Free Grace to you in the Faith of Christ, as your spiritual eye of Faith is kept up upon what he hath done for you in Christ. ‘Tis for God by the Activity and Power of his Spirit to descend upon your hearts, kindling up the life of the Spirit in you into more flame, into more ardent love to Christ. Lev.9:24. ‘Tis for God by his coming down (from the Advocacy of Christ in Heaven) upon your hearts, and there Efficaciously swallowing up all those things before you that were wont to be your main regard in Worship, you ever kept in your eye. I Kings 5:30-38. Secondly, the nature of living in the Spirit is more especially, 1. To live out of ourselves in Christ, by another Faith than the Common Faith of the world. Gal.2:20. 2. ‘Tis to live above in the views and enjoyments of Christ who is above. Phil.3:20. Psal.73:25. 3. ‘Tis to live under a constant maintaining of the Spirit’s own work by Himself from Christ.
Phil.2:13. 4. ‘Tis a conscious experience of living by the Spirit according to our Complete and Transcendent Relation above the natural. Our relation Mystical in Jesus Christ is above all our remaining nature-relation unto Adam. The victory is always from the transcendent relation above the natural. Rom.7:25. Thirdly, the concomitant is a walk in the Spirit. This is to walk with God in Christ by the same Spirit from whom we spiritually live. And of this Enoch, Gen.5:22, was a rare instance of in the times of the Old World. Heb.11:5. Moreover it is to walk with God in Christ by the Spirit of love, joy, peace, &c. Gal.5:22.
Nevertheless, it may be here inquired, how a gracious walk is spiritual, and when it is so. A gracious walk is spiritual by the Indwelling of the Spirit, I Cor.3:16, as the Apostle speaks, “but if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwells in you.” Rom.8:11. Likewise, a gracious walk is spiritual by the Daily Operation of the Spirit. “Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us.” Eph.3:20. When is a man’s walk with God spiritual? Why, it is so when the eye is always towards the Lord above forms and carnality. “I have set the LORD always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.” Psal.16:8. (“Mine eyes are ever toward the LORD.” Psal.16:4. "Behold, as the eyes of servants look unto the hand of their masters, and as the eyes of a maiden unto the hand of her mistress; so our eyes wait upon the LORD our God, until that he have mercy upon us.” Psal.123:2.) The eye of the soul by Faith and Heavenly Expectation. “My soul, wait thou only upon God; for my expectation is from him.” Psal.62:5.
Furthermore, ‘tis when Christ is our Principle by the Spirit, of his being our Example by the same Spirit. Also, when Christ is our life by the Power of the Holy Ghost. (“For ye are dead, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear.” Col.3:3-4.) Uses: Take heed, if you live in the Spirit, that you do not fulfill the works of the flesh. “Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.” Gal.5:16. Fall into them you will, even at unawares, from a corrupt nature-principle; but let everyone take heed how he deliberately finishes them. “For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die; but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.” Rom.8:13. Then, take heed of sinking below the natural excellences of a moralist, you that live in the Spirit. Jer.35:16. Would not one think this was needless? Yet the truth is, it cometh to pass, we have a need to give nature directions, in nature points, to even very gracious men. I don’t mean nature directions for men to come to Christ savingly, like your blind preachers; but nature directions to walk honestly among men, that spiritual walking with God may not be reproached for your sakes. Rom.2:24. (For, coming to Christ savingly is a Supernatural Work of the Spirit.)
2. Walking honestly agrees with the light of nature. This does not make you Christians, but to be Christians makes you walk honestly. (“But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin.” I Jn.1:7.) Never take up your righteousness to men to be your righteousness towards God; lest God make your heart sick of the plague he loathes. Psal.38:5. Therefore, if you live in the Spirit expect that that Spirit will soon give you experiences from wicked men and carnal professors, of the outward Reproaches of Christ. (“If ye were of the world, the world would love his own; but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.” Jn.15:19.) Lastly, a few words to the Unconverted, if the Holy Spirit will bless the instructions to them. 1. If ever God takes hold of your hearts it must be by His Spirit. Jn.16:8. 2. You cannot sit under the Gospel, but you will resist the Spirit if the Spirit does not conquer you. (“But when the Jews saw the multitudes, they were filled with envy, and spake against those things which were spoken by Paul, contradicting and blaspheming. - And when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad, and glorified the word of the Lord; and as many as were ordained to eternal life believed.” Acts 13:45,48.) 3.
If the Spirit works savingly in any of your souls, he will discover a thousand times more in Christ for you, than there is in Sin, Satan, and the World against you. (“For whatsoever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that overcomes the world, even our faith. Who is he that overcomes the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God.” I Jn.5:4-5.) The Spirit exalts the payments of Christ against all your own debts. He has paid all, yet is not one whit lessened in the stock. (“Who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father.” Gal.1:4.) The Spirit exalts the Holiness of Christ and sets it against all your own deformity and defilements. (“But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.” I Cor.1:30.) The Spirit shows you this. As the Spirit is given to you for your turning to the Lord, so it is the work of his Office to show you, in order to it, that all that is in Christ is for you. (“Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth; for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak; and he will show you things to come. 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.16:13-15.)
Non-Elect Dogs & Swine
One reason I exhibit against this absurd notion that the children of God were once of the “family of hell,” (prior to Conversion,) and “near of kin to Satan,” is, that when God speaks of “the rest,” (“the election hath obtained it, and the rest were blinded,” Rom.11:7,) he never calls them sheep, (“but ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep,” Jn.10:26,) children of God, his people, or the like, in all the New Testament; but serpent’s seed, and that is, devil’s seed, and Christ calls them serpents, a generation of vipers, and Peter sets them out by dogs and swine; names that as they are inconsistent with present Grace, so they will not stand with future Grace, or their ever having any interest in the Grace of God at all.
I begin with Genesis 3:15, “and I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed.” Between thee, the devil, who hath made use of the body of the serpent of the earth, to deceive the woman, and the woman so deceived, who shall be the parent of an elect head and company distinctly; and between thy seed; the wicked brood that is personally cursed as soon as propagated, having lost the Man Christ’s Nature-Image in the loins of their sinning, deceived parents; and her seed, the woman’s seed apart from the serpentine race of wicked men; “to seeds, as of many; but as of one, and to thy seed, which is Christ,” Gal.3:16, as is elsewhere said of the seed of Abraham. (“They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us; but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us.” I Jn.2:19.) And saith the LORD, “I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed.” Thou shalt hate the woman, and the woman shall hate thee, and the wicked that shall be thy offspring shall hate the righteous. I will also give a new nature and principle by the woman’s seed, which is Christ, that shall be enmity to the serpent’s seed and will leave this corrupt, serpentine nature incurable to be enmity to Christ, and all that belong unto him. Thus we see how in this text the non-elect, or those who had not Grace and Glory given to them in Christ Jesus before the world began, II Tim.1:9, are called by the Holy Ghost upon their Fall, the seed of the serpent; and so in the very article and joint of the Fall, they belonged to the family of hell, were limbs of Satan, and near of kin to the devil; and have remained such ever since, and upon all occasions do more and more open and discover themselves to be what they are; nor do Sermons and Exhortations ordinarily make these a jot the better visibly, unless now and then in some points of Humanity.
As for the Gospel, there is nothing in them that can receive it, it being foolishness unto them, I Cor.2:14, and they being a rational sort of mankind, many of them of fine wit and great understanding, and so do bark most furiously at the sacred truths of Election, Imputed Righteousness, Regeneration as the sole work of the Spirit, &c., the Holy Ghost never altering the thoughts of their minds, but wholly leaving them in all these matters to their own blind and wretched dictates. To the same purpose, next you have Matthew 23:33, “ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?” Serpents, here was the proper brood of the devil, as the old Serpent. (“And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceives the whole world.” Rev.12:9.) These belong to his family, and as he is a serpent, so they are serpents too. He was the old serpent, and they were the young serpents, hatching up and bringing on, under the incubation of the devil, from cockatrice eggs, and never to become any better thing than vipers. “Ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?” Whether should the young brood of serpents and vipers go but to the old one? As is his case, so is yours, ye Pharisees, and how can you avoid it? This was the Doctrine which our Lord, the meek and holy Saviour to his own, preached to the devil’s sect, who belonged to outer darkness. For being vipers how can ye not deserve hell? Again, Matthew 12:34, “O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things?” How could the Viper act other ways than the nature of the Viper, and he who had the sting cease to hurt therewith? Accordingly, says Christ, John 8:44, “ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do.” You are that murderer, and therefore you will do all you can to murder God’s New Image in the Head of the Election, just as your father the devil murdered God’s Natural Image in Adam. For, as to those Eternal Settlements in Christ, the Nature-Image was communicated (from him by pattern) to Adam the head of all mankind. “You will (absolutely) do,” for Christ as God saw this murder as absolutely done and finished, Acts 2:23, as if the thing had been openly done and finished to mankind.
There was to be no preventing, no stopping them from going on, no repentance to be given them when they had done it, and therefore no saving them from their sins, as in the former case; but they were to sin on, and be damned for it too. (“He that is unjust, let him be unjust still; and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still; and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still, and he that is holy, let him be holy still.” Rev.22:11.) “The said Jesus again unto them, I go my way, and ye shall seek me and shall die in your sins; whither I go, ye cannot come.” Jn.8:21. These now were the children of hell, and they labored to bring in others and make them worse than themselves. “Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites; for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.” Mt.23:15. Here now was a child of hell in the kind, such a one as was to continue so finally; and children of hell, or belonging to the family of hell, of the same kind that influenced them. All the children of hell are the proper children of it in relation, but all of them are not children of hell alike in degrees of wickedness, under that relation to it; nor are they alike in relation to the degrees of condemnation, Mk.12:40, appointed unto them who belong unto the family of hell, and are near of kin unto the devil.
On the footing of this, according to the good Pleasure and Justice of God, that the Pharisees in Matthew 23, who labored diligently to make their proselytes (or professors of the strictest sect of the Jews) into that doctrine, which taught that every man must keep the Law to be saved by it; and so directly struck at the Person and Office of Christ, both as the Lord our Righteousness in his Person, Jer.23:6, and as he is made of God unto us Righteousness, I Cor.1:30, in his Office, unto every one that believeth, Rom.1:16, were a generation threatened to receive the greater damnation, verse 14, “therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation;” that is, greater damnation than other sinners; but “greater damnation” for what? Not for cursing and swearing and whoring; for they seemed to be moral men that commendably hated these vices; and lived up high to the light of nature, they prayed, sought God, went to Church, &c., but they should receive greater damnation for not believing into the Doctrine of Revealed Religion, slighting Christ, and setting up a false righteousness to make them accepted with God; making long prayers to cheat poor souls with a belief that without abundance of long praying the Law is not kept, and so as if no flesh could be saved but by that way. And yet these men in their zeal of prophesying did make a man twofold, Mt.23:15, more a child of hell than themselves. The meaning is this, they searched all corners (for they compassed sea and land) to find out a man of parts, and when by an article in religion they had made him a man of a zeal too, zeal for their way; why this latter man, this last (most recent convert) Pharisee of the sect, partly by his learning and cunning, and partly by his zeal for the way, after they had fixed him, did twice as much mischief against Christ, in setting up that cursed notion in the world, (that a man must be saved by his own doings,) as the other Pharisees had done, and would carry it on with that blind, bloody activity, as to take everybody out of the way, Christ and all, that taught another doctrine. Thus the proselyte became twofold more a child of hell than the Pharisee.
Now as to these Pharisees who saw Christ, we do not read of one of them that was personally converted. As for Paul, who, after the strictest sect of the religion of the Jews, Acts 26:5, lived a Pharisee, he never saw Christ, till he saw him Glorified appearing to him as he was going to Damascus; and so that instance, Acts 9:3, of a Pharisee, converted makes not against this Observation, from whence it’s plain, that Paul belonged not to the family of hell. But those Pharisees personally of whom Christ thus speaks were a company of serpents, and vipers, Mt.23:33, that for their very kind’s sake must display their poison and their stings, and be taken off too for their kind’s sake, and because of the necessary propensity (or inclinations) of their unrestrained nature to do mischief, as noxious and hurtful creatures of God’s creation, that are not properly in their “own place,” Acts 1:25, till with Judas and the devils they are cast into hell. To the foregoing texts let me add, Matthew 7:23, “And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you; depart from me, ye that work iniquity.”
Here Christ never knew them in the Grace-Relation, nor ever knew them of the Glory-kin. He knew them in the nature kind, but they have lost that by iniquity. Now if Christ thus never knew them, then the family of hell are a distinct kind of creatures, and the near of kin to the devil are such as were never known in Foreknowledge of Grace, in Election Grace, Settlement-Grace, Union-Grace, Redemption-Grace, Regeneration-Grace, Communion and Experience-Grace. I never knew ye as sheep; I never knew you as the seed of the woman; I never knew you as the children of God; I never knew you as my people; I never knew you under any work of Grace; “depart from me, ye that work iniquity.” The non-elect are also called dogs and swine; says the Holy Ghost by Peter, “but it is happened unto them according to the true proverb, the dog is turned to his own vomit again; and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire.” II Pet.2:22. (“His watchmen are blind; they are all ignorant, they are all dumb dogs, they cannot bark; sleeping, lying down, loving to slumber. Yea, they are greedy dogs which can never have enough, and they are shepherds that cannot understand; they all look to their own way, every one for his gain, from his quarter.” Isa.56:10-11.) And so John in the Revelation by the same Spirit tells us, “without are dogs,” Rev.22:15, without the Holy City, all those that bark at the ways of Christ, have a peculiar way of scoffing and sinning against the Spirit, which elect sinners are kept from arriving to; these dogs are excluded from the glory of the New Jerusalem; not one of them shall ever come into it, as the dogs are without. And saith the Holy Ghost by Paul, “Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers, beware of the concision,” Phil.3:2; carry it cautiously with staff in hand; be armed with God’s Word; if you are in your own spirit and carelessness, they’ll fly upon you before you are aware of it.
So too the unbelieving Jews and Gentiles, the Romans and the people of Israel that crucified Christ are called dogs; Psal.22:16, “for dogs have compassed me; the assembly of the wicked have enclosed me; they pierced my hands and my feet;” both the Sanhedrin-power of the Jews and the mob, have enclosed me, they pierced my hands and my feet; that is, they crucified me; and so in other places. Again, “give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine,” Mt.7:6, now the elect of God before calling were among these, Lk.15:16, but not made any of these. Objection: Christ calls the woman of Canaan a dog, and yet she was an elect person; therefore this does not hold. Answer: So ‘tis generally taken in that Matthew 15:26-27, “but he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it to dogs. And she said, truth, Lord; yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.” Nevertheless, the common interpretation is an oversight-gloss, for Christ called not the woman dog.
This is plain because he does not say “dog” in the singular number, as he should, if he had called her, dog; but using the plural style, “dogs,” our Lord called the non-elect Canaanites, her country-folk, so; and proposes it to her under that term of reproach, “dogs,” to lay open how her faith should take it well, and not to be offended with Christ. It’s certain that nature can’t delight to have its kindred, country, religion, &c., though for Christ’s sake, yea, by Christ himself, blasted; but she being no dog, but a sheep, belonging to the Shepherd, whom he knew by the secret mark, (“and the LORD said unto him, Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof. And to the others he said in mine hearing, Go ye after him through the city, and smite; let not your eye spare, neither have ye pity; Slay utterly old and young, both maids, and little children, and women; but come not near any man upon whom is the mark; and begin at my sanctuary,” Ezek.9:4-6, “and it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree; but only those men which have not the seal – mark – of God in their foreheads,” Rev.9:4, “and I looked, and, lo, a Lamb stood on the mount Zion, and with him a hundred forty and four thousand, having his Father’s name written in their foreheads,” Rev.14:1,) though she did not then know her own relation in Christ, and therefore let it go as generally taken, and worshipped Christ never the worse for it all, being secretly wrought upon by Converting Power.
Offers of Grace
Have our men got wiser doctrine than the infallible election? When they are quite run from this glorious article to lay all shamefully at this day upon ministerial offers of grace, and terms of grace, which are but human endeavors. Offers of grace? Terms of grace? I'm afraid this looks like designing gibberish to reconcile men to a party, or at least to ward off the pseudo-nomian’s blow at what they'll please call the root of mental error. Offers of grace, terms of the covenant, and man's choice under the preaching of any parts of the Gospel, instead of the gift by Grace, and the gift of God from God's choice of his own settled number in Christ, do all proceed from a shutting of God's choice out. This notion of offers of grace is in no way suited to the firm belief of the doctrine of election, and non-election of persons, to obtain, and not obtain mercy. It is not fitted to a firm belief of election, and the other similar doctrines that are built upon it, because here it is grace given, under the positive work of God the Spirit, coming in where the gospel is preached to the elect of God, not grace offered.
An offer lays the thing only before me under invincible impediments of reaching it, as holding out my hand with money to a poor prisoner that looks through a grate, and begs, but can't come near me; he sees what I offer, but he cannot step forth to me, nor touch the money I expose and lay before him. But if I go up to him, and give it him, he hath it presently. Again, this doctrine of the offers of grace is in no way fitted to a firm belief of the doctrine of a non-election of persons. Can they do more than elect to take offers of grace? This is utterly repugnant to the notion of a non-election of some. And yet an abundance of our book zeal and sermon zeal is wrought up to an Arminian strain. They preach and write, not as if there were any vessels of mercy, or vessels of wrath distinctly; but as if offers were believed by them, as election is received by us, and as the Spirit of God, as the Comforter, is believed by us, and absolute fruit of election to be given to all the elect of God, sooner or later, under the preaching of the gospel. They in their offers preach and write, just as if they believed there were no non-elect, or else had a hope and arm to save them. This must proceed at least in unstable and ungrounded thoughts, as to God the Father's operations about Predestination, election &c., of Head and members, of Christ and His church. I am sure they can never firmly believe in election to keep it in their eye, as it is Scripturally stated, to go and preach offers of grace as they do. How can I steadfastly believe particular grace, as lodged in the hands of the Spirit to bestow it on none but the elect, when I offer this grace to all within the sound?
Offers of Grace
The preaching of Free Grace, as the mystery of the doctrine is laid open, makes them presently reply against God, and quarrel with the Most High; and say, “Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will?” (Rom.9:19,20) As it did there in the Ninth to the Romans. It soon touches them, especially when the points of Sovereignty or Absolute Grace, Irresistibleness, Discrimination, Passiveness, &c., are preached; for men cannot pretend to offer a sinner these pieces of grace; they being points of operation, and not of offers. The Doctrine of Grace is such an enemy to their carnal wisdom, that their carnal wisdom must be a principal of enmity (Rom.8:7) to the doctrine; for the doctrine is an enemy to their self-love, carnal interests, carnal ease, &c., inasmuch that preaching the true Gospel agonizes wicked men and irritates their minds, (Lk.4:28,) eats into the frame of their spirits, gnaws upon their inward pride and fills them with rage. (Acts 5:33) As Stephen’s hearers “gnashed upon him with their teeth,” (Acts 7:54,) when they heard the doctrine of Truth preached.
Stephen did not offer them, Christ, for they might have laughed that to ridicule, but he Preached Christ notably, and this preaching enraged them. For preaching either kills, (Acts 24:25,) or cures, if it be right; and makes a notable discrimination in the auditory. (Acts 28:24) So that non-elect refusers of the Father’s Christ, or open rejecters of the doctrine of Free Grace preached according to the Spirit's Revelation of it in the Word, can't stand before Gospel Preaching. How doth it enrage the Jews at Antioch, and that immediately to contradict and blaspheme! The apostles preached and it upset them without more excitement, Acts 13:45, so when Paul preached Jesus and the Resurrection, Acts 17:18, it presently touched the philosophers of Epicurus and the stocks to the quick and stirred up their wisdom to encounter him. If he had stood offering them terms, they would but have laughed him to scorn, and thought it not worth their while to have urged an argument against him.
But this preaching set them upon a philosophical prating; and the account given of the cause of their opposition, is not that Paul propounded the Offer, but he was (as they thought) a Teller and Celebrator (as the word in Greek signifies, which we read a “setter forth”) of strange gods. How ignorant were they and prejudiced together! Accordingly, Noah preached in his day (II Pet.2:5, Gen.6:3) home to the disobedient spirits that in the Apostle’s days (long after) were in the prison of hell. (I Pet.3:19) The doctrine of Preservation in the Ark was preached and not offered. Again, the Ark was built for Noah and his house, (Heb.11:7,) it was not prepared for, nor tendered to the old world.
Offers of Grace
Offers abuse the Redeemer; for they enlist all upon the acceptance of the sinner, but not at all upon the Redemption of Christ, as Christ hath procured the conveyance. For its in this very conveyance purchased that the acceptance must come to thee, and be wrought by the power of God in thee. A proffer of Christ doth not go as the things are conveyed by Christ, and as all obstacles are done away by Christ, but as the things are accepted by the sinner, and the last rub in the way taken out of the way by the sinner's own acceptance. A tender of salvation to all or any that come under the sound of the Gospel advances the reception of it more as it comes in by the creature, than it advances the procurement, as the conveyance was wrought out by Jesus Christ, in redemption for all the elect of God. God hath appointed the purchased conveyance of it to them, and not propounded the offer of a common grace unto all, as the doctrine of the offer teaches, resting in an arm of flesh. (Jer.17:5)
Offers of Grace
Offers exalt not God's Supreme Will. (Is.46:10) Preaching the Gospel is preaching glad tidings in an effectual Sovereignty of Grace to the Israel whom God hath chosen; (Is.44:1;) and the Blessings of the Gospel, as in Matthew; (5:1-10;) in the hearing of the multitudes, are pronounced and conveyed to the poor whom He hath chosen rich in faith, and heirs of the Kingdom. But proffering the Gospel debases the Sovereignty of God, instead of exalting it. How abject and precarious is it in the Great and Glorious Name of Jehovah, (Deut.28:58;) to stand up and say, ‘Here sinners, I offer you Christ, why don't you take him?’ Ah! It's a taking of God's Name in vain, and the perverting of God's Message, if man is God's Messenger. Preaching is supreme, it breaks in upon a man by authority; offers are servile; they make parleys and debase Majesty, and so cannot be the same thing with true Gospel Preaching that exalts it.
Offers of Grace
While men, therefore, are making offers of an unrevealed and unseen Christ, let them not think it is a preaching the Gospel in the Salvation and Glory thereof at all. Preaching the Gospel deals with the elect of God in order to change their nature, answerable to the settlement of their relation in Christ, and so to bring them, for the making of their calling and election sure, to an evangelical communion with Father, Son, and Spirit; by more spiritual and fixed believing on the Lord Jesus Christ, through the indwelling and consolatory operations of God the Comforter. Accordingly unto this end, preaching the Gospel is mightily owned by the Spirit of God to change the sinner, and elevate his capacity under sanctification of the Spirit in the new nature to the supernatural Believing and supernatural Communion.
The Scriptures do speak so much, and almost constantly of the Holy Ghost, either as to his Person or Work upon the soul in passive phrases, whether it be expressed of spiritual believing or its spiritual concomitants of repentance unto life, love, joy, &c., or its fruits, called the Fruit of the Spirit, that the ministers of Christ are plainly put in trust with the Gospel, to use all such meet words and passive phrases of exalting the Spirit and his Work, as are fitted to bring up the report of the Gospel to the honor and glory of God the Spirit, (Is.53:1,) in the practical Mysteries of Christ. An offer is in word only, but preaching is in power. “The Kingdom of God is not in word, but in power.” (I Cor.4:20) And effectual preaching is the stretching forth of the Rod of that Kingdom. (“The LORD shall send the rod of thy strength out of Zion; rule thou in the midst of thine enemies.” Ps.110:2) Men's preaching the Gospel is an act in Christ's name and in Christ’s Spirit.
Offers of Grace
The word ‘offer’ is not to be found in Scripture in any other sense than to sacrifice. (It is straying from the Sacred Text to corrupt it with foreign phrases. Mal.2:7,8) And be sure when men ‘offer’ Christ, they don't mean that they sacrifice Him. Having therefore quite another meaning of the word, they do express their conceptions in the case, as they turn it towards the preaching of the Gospel. And there they speak sometimes by ‘offers of grace,’ sometimes by ‘proffers of Christ,’ sometimes by ‘propounding the offer,’ sometimes by ‘proposal of the Gospel offer,’ sometimes by ‘tenders of the Gospel,’ and sometimes by ‘tendering salvation.’ Blind and Scriptureless forms! Methinks, if men had meant preaching the Gospel by these phrases, yet it's an intolerable assault upon the Sacred Text of Both Testaments to word it so untowardly. The Oracles of God have an elegant variety of expressions to set forth the preaching of Jesus Christ. For example; speaking – I Cor.2:7,13, speaking the word – Phil.1:14, preaching – Acts 20:25, preaching the Gospel, Luke 20:1, preaching glad tidings – Is.61:1, preaching the Kingdom of God – Acts 28:31, preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom – Mt.4:23, teaching – Rom.12:7, Col.1:28, teaching the Word of God – Acts 18:11, teaching the things that concern the Lord Jesus Christ – Acts 28:31, showing the glad tidings of the kingdom of God – Luke 8:1, declaring glad tidings – Acts 3:32, showing by the Scriptures – Acts 18:28, bringing glad tidings of good things – Rom.10:15, and the like.
But never once in all this variety of expression do the Scriptures call preaching the Gospel by the other names and phrases such as that of an offering, proffering, propounding and tendering grace, Christ, salvation, and glad tidings. How conceited then must some men be of their own, or other men's wisdom, (I Cor.1:19,) who notwithstanding that they have so little to say for their very phrases, are resolved to keep them up. Whereas this very hint, that the phrases are scriptureless, (“if any man speaks, let him speak as the oracles of God” I Pet.4:11,) and their meaning is unable to justify a right managery, or make an agreeable signification to befit (“and to this agree the words of the prophets; as it is written,” Acts 15:15) the Gospel; for if no more could be said it is enough to make poor, humble, modest souls drop these expressions; even such of the children of God, who are sensible that their mouths are not filled with Gospel sweetness unless as they have experienced it in the opening of their mouths wide, the Lord himself filling them. “I am the LORD thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt; open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it.” Ps.81:10.
Now if men find as great sweetness in phrases of human imagination, and in the defense of them, as they find in the Holy Spirit’s language of the Bible, which hath plentifully spoken the same things, and far better to instruct us, it's a sign they don’t open their mouth’s wide, nor can it be any argument that Christ fills them. For he hath used expressions enough to fill a man's mouth, when he speaks of the preaching of the Gospel, so as that he shall have no need to use these aforementioned phrases, into which the tongs of so many preachers have been dipped and sunk.
Offers of Grace
How are offers fitted to a translation out of darkness into the Kingdom of God's dear Son; (Col.1:13;) and out of “darkness into his marvelous light?” (I Pet.2:9) How do offers suit with a work that's above all created power; for so is faith declared to be. (Eph.1:19,20) The offer doctrine is in a style and way of preaching more fitted to things done by us in weakness and common profession, than to things done upon us by the infinite grace and Power of Jehovah. It is not fitted at all to passives, nor the efficacy of the Holy Ghost therein. It agrees better to the agency of the old man than to the formation of the new creature in Christ. More to self-justification, than to justification by grace. More to a disposal of our own goods upon proposals made, than to the adoption of sons by grace. (Gal.4:5) More to an ordering of our own faculties, than to the shedding of the Holy Ghost upon us.
More to an act of morality, than to a sanctification of the Spirit. (II Thes.2:13) More to the signing of some personal treaty, than to the writing itself which is called the Epistle of Christ; (II Cor.3:3;) or than it's fitted to the supernatural style of the Holy Ghost in putting Christ's laws within our hearts, (Jer.31:33,) and giving them the heart to know the Lord. (Jer.24:7) (“But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; after those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people.” – “And I will give them the heart to know me, that I am the LORD; and they shall be my people, and I will be their God; for they shall return unto me with their whole heart.”) In a word, man's offers are not fitted to exalt God's Operations. Free Grace is Effectual Grace, and never sinks on the Foundation into a free offer. This would be the way to debase the true Glory of the Spirit’s efficacy in his passive work on sinners. The Lord humbles us more and more, that we may lie in the dust, and never open our mouths again to tell sinners how we offer them Christ, since there is such a large theme of Effectual Grace to preach life both into saints and sinners, of the elect of God, by exalting Christ!
Offers of Grace
I believe that an experimental and enlightened believer in Christ led into the Mystery of God, and having a living communion with God in his soul, never hears the ‘offer’ drop in a Sermon, but it's in a certain frame and spirit of the minister while he lessons all he hath said. Offers of ‘grace’ are not fitted to exalt God in his Person, Grace, and Operations. And is this Good News? Then never preach thus, to follow the multitude into their offer language. (Ex.23:2) Offers are more fitted to bring glory to the creature, and so to make the creature boast of himself (contrary to Ps.32:11, which commands the new creature to be glad in the Lord) than they are fitted to venerate Jehovah the Spirit, and to give thanks to God the Lord for faith as the Scriptures teach us to glory. “We are bound to thank God always for you, brethren, as it is meet, because that your faith grows exceedingly,” (II Thes.1:3,) “we give thanks to God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus,” (Col.1:3,4,) “I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all, that your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world.” (Rom.1:8) How was this faith wrought? By Divine Power. Then what was exalted? The Power of God, not offers. Thanks were rendered for Divine Operations of the Spirit whereby the faith that was spoken of came.
Offers of Grace
It is there commonly when we come to Gospel application that we break the Second Commandment and bow down to other gods before Him. (Ex.20:5) Offers nod towards the creature, as a superstitious ceremony-monger bows towards his altar. Offers entangle and unravel the Spirit's work, in those parts of a discourse especially when they are called application. Now we should preach the Gospel as the Spirit delights to work within us Himself, even in bringing us to our duty. (Zeph.3:17) Away then with your offers in exhorting repentance, whilst concealing (Ps.40:10) the loving-kindness of the Lord, and how the Spirit delights to work this repentance from an exalted Christ, (Acts 5:31,) and to make it sweet by operations of Gospel repentance, and not bitter as your offers do. So again; offers put a slight and neglect upon all this delightful work of the Spirit; so that you can never imagine by offer preaching that the Spirit took any delight to create faith in you, or took any delight to work repentance in you. Thus do offers eclipse and injure the Spirit's work.
Offers of Grace
Offers are no institution of Christ but debase that institution into an invention of the creature. Preaching is an appointed proclamation, not an un-commanded proposal. Now proclamations come forth in the Name of the Sovereign with authority, but proposals creep forth without any due advancement of the Son of God in the royalty of his Grace and Sceptre. As we come in Christ's name, so in preaching the Gospel we are to exalt the Power of Christ to conquer sinners, and not beat the parlay in an offer to compound with sinners. (For it’s clearly a pity that free grace doctrine should ever be plucked down and all knocked on the head by free will application.) I am to preach to saints and sinners in one invariable piece of Free Grace.
Offers of Grace
The evil is, there have come preachers who wind up their sermons in a way of free-will application, (Gal.3:3,) or what too much looks that way, that as much exalts the sinner for believing, as our way exalts the blood of Christ for remission. The frame of their discourse doth, and all the contexture of that kind of exhortations which they affect, doth exalt a man’s self in the business of faith; which kind and way of preaching, Jehovah the Spirit will more effectually pull down in time to come, and will not lose the things he hath wrought. (II John 8) The Spirit is Jehovah, as appears in Isaiah 48:17, compared with I Cor.2:13. He is God, Acts 5:3,4; he is the Lord the Spirit, as the original of II Cor.3:18 testifies. Consequently; “his glory he
will not give to another,” (Is.42:8,) in the winding up of sermons by a company of dead, blind, and ineffectual offers, and what is called grace offers.
Offers of Grace
If the Spirit was duly honored, as we walked in the light of Christ, the Gospel offer/proposal would never be spoken of, and God the Holy Ghost working in us from the Father and Christ, of God's own good pleasure, be altogether concealed. The light, if we “walked in the light as he is in the light,” (I Jn.1:7,) would secure us from this blindness; and we would have fellowship one with another; that is, (as the plain coherence lies,) God with us, and we with God; God with us by the virtue of Imputed Righteousness, or through it, (Rom.5:19,) and the communion of his Spirit under it; and we with God under the same Righteousness of God, in a holy delighting in God, to set up the glory of his grace, and with the small rain of his blessing in the dews of his Spirit to lay in the dust that which proud flesh has raised before our eyes, by using men's mouths to the offers of Christ, which should be filled with the praises of Christ's Operations.
I am certain, it is not my carnal judgment, it is not my dead opinion, but it is my life, my experience (as God's Word and God's Work have met together in my soul) that the mighty Operations of God renewing the faculty, (Jer.33:6,) elevating the understanding, strengthening the will, purifying the conscience with the blood of Christ do leave no room in our thoughts to offer Christ; (Ps.119:118;) and why should we not employ all our light, influences and clearest experience to speak of the things of God as we have found them upon our own souls under the Spirit's work; (Ps.73:28;) so that if I go forth upon my Master's work, under the operations of this glorious Spirit, and also in his work do believe that Christ's Spirit is with me, (having both his Word and Work for it meeting in my heart, Jer.15:16,) to what purpose should I, in seeking to reach the souls of the elect, and using means to convert them, stand to pitch so low and poorly in the dark, blundering upon nature, as to talk of Offers of Christ; whereas I come forth and preach Christ crucified (I Cor.1:23) in the Light and Operations of the Everlasting Gospel. (Rev.14:6)
Offers of Grace & Arminianism
Offers are fitted up to divers pieces of old Adam in the Arminian way, far beyond what any can pretend they are suited to in any one piece of new Adam; though men are loth that this should be known because it disturbs them in an easy way. Howbeit; offers are fitted to creature power, to self strength, as it is partly, if not purely, or rather impurely our own strength. Offers do not argue the necessity of a New Birth, that “except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God;” (John 3:3;) as they do argue a necessity of ‘closing’ with Christ and accepting him, whether a man be born, or be not born from above. What then is the offer fitted to but Arminianism at the best? Offers to men in the flesh to accept Christ unto salvation, do more argue that they who are in the flesh can please God than they do argue that they who are in the flesh cannot please God. (Rom.8:8) Is not this Arminianism then? When men remain under such large pieces of the veil of Arminianism on their natures that they cannot see Arminianism in their principles, nor propositions!
Offers of Grace & Arminianism
Offers of Christ to unregenerate sinners are suited to creature cooperation and creature concurrence, and so to Arminianism. (A sort of Neonomian quill pen dipped in Arminian ink, and cast abroad into nature's blot, on purpose to confuse the people about the true Preaching of the Gospel.) They tend to form up the preacher's counsel, exhortations, and persuasions into a joint cause, as Arminians call it, with the Spirit of God. Thus the creation work upon the soul, which hath no concurrence, is tactfully denied, and all that is spoken is suited to Arminianism to a hairs breath. Where is the Single Operation of Effectual Grace as managed by God the Spirit insisted on among men that offer Christ? I do not find it. Are offers more fitted to exalt God that “worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure,” (Phil.2:13,) than they are fitted to exalt the agreement of the creature with God's grace to accept these offers? The Scripture tells me, “Be thou exalted, LORD, in thine own strength.” (Ps.21:13) Here is no cooperation of strength; for it is all God's own that he must be exalted in. Here is the pride of all flesh that must be stained (Is.23:9) when he comes to rain down righteousness in the blood of Christ, (Hos.10:12,) so as that the Lord alone shall be exalted! (Is.2:17) Man's righteousness he has made such a flutter about is stained when God reigns down his own righteousness. And man's wisdom is stained, as soon as he comes but to see it in the light of God's Spirit through his Son. (“The LORD of hosts hath purposed it, to stain the pride of all glory, and to bring into contempt all the honorable of the earth.” Is.23:9. “Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap in mercy; break up your fallow ground; for it is time to seek the LORD, till he comes and rain righteousness upon you.” Hos.10:12. “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.” Isa.2:17.)
Particular Effectual Atonement
The Truth is, as a proper Satisfaction was made to God by Christ, so that proper Satisfaction or Atonement and full Sacrifice was an infallible, particular one, for all the sins of the elect, to include severally every thine and mine throughout all the sins of the whole mystical body given to Christ their Head, and settled in Him, by the secret and mystical union from everlasting. This is the Doctrine of the Scriptures. This state of it defended makes out the most complete defense against Socinians and Arminians, it being the most opposite to them. Moreover, my encouragements in Christ, and the comfort I reap in that doctrine, under and against all sinnings, are raised thereon and received therefrom accordingly; and they are the necessary antecedents of my coming to Christ when I have strength from the Holy Ghost to walk if ever I come to Christ with the mine eyes open. My fundamental comfort in the doctrine is founded upon this, that Christ's Satisfaction to God for the sins of all the elect is so founded upon (Heb.10:7) God's will, and Christ's covenant mediation as (Heb.7:22 – Gal.2:20) my Surety, the (Isa.9:6) responsibleness of my Surety Is founded on his Deity, as the Son of God, and the qualifications of his sacrifice, or the (Heb.8:3) offering to pay my debt is founded upon his Covenant, as Mediator, and particularly the Man in God, and (Ez.36:22-32) either way hath no precarious relation to my willingness, or unwillingness, to my heart or lack thereof. This is suspended or advanced upon none of this creature's footing. Here is my first and fundamental comfort in the doctrine of Christ’s Satisfaction.
Prayer
‘Tis praying with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit. Ephesians 6:18. All sorts of prayer; invocating the Person, Titles and Names of God in the Name of Christ; confessing Evangelical Mercies; confessing also Sin (because there is the remainder of it, even after Mercy received) and especially our birth-sin, the Sin of our fallen natures, and the nature-guiltiness and pollution of our state, so far as it lies in Adam; supplicating in these humble views for blessings and good things to be conveyed through Christ, according to the Pattern how that God has secretly blessed us with them already in Christ; complicating for more and more of these things to be so conveyed, as we find God raising our hearts to behold them in Christ, and implore them at this Throne of Grace; deprecating evils from ourselves and all the elect of God, with submission to His Supreme Will; imprecating evils upon those whom the LORD Himself knows to be His own implacable enemies, Psal.139:21; thanksgivings for particular mercies received &c. This is praying with all Prayer and Supplication.
Even as he hath buckled on our armor; and this is the Gospel- begging; and so is the work of a regenerate man, and not Mr. Hunt’s unconverted beggar in his exhortation to sinners; as he puts an unconverted man to do more without the Spirit, than the saints themselves find they are able to do with the Spirit of Christ. They must pray in the Holy Ghost, Jude 20, as to viewing of their state, and by the Holy Ghost as to their assistances; for otherwise, they know not what to pray for as they ought. Rom.8:26. There must be light in prayer before the heat, a sight of the Object, as an Advocate with the Father, I Jn.2:1, to receive our prayers, together with the Spirit of Supplication to be the Principle of life in our prayers; or else, in the matters of the Gospel, what are they all worth?
Prayer
Is not a being possessed of Christ, if I am a true believer, though I am poor, and want such things (at least, have not such things) as I see others enjoy, a fitter argument to be pleaded with God, that he would from thence make me by his Spirit thankful for what I do have, and to contend in my present state, than any confession otherwise of the contrary fault is able to make me so? (“As sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things.” II Cor.6:10.) It is not a naked confession and acknowledgment of my sins, but a faith wrought of God in my Supplies that are all treasured up 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.1:10,) and there laid ready for me, upon the footing of Everlasting Grace, which is the effectual fervent and availing prayer of the righteous man. (Js.5:16) For, can I believe that the Lord will hear my prayer if I ask for what I do not believe he hath ready in his Hand for me, to be granted upon the Foundation of God at my own asking. (“Nevertheless the foundation of God stands sure, having this seal, the Lord knows them that are his.” II Tim.2:19.)
To which purpose I have the Spirit given unto me, as a Spirit of Grace and Supplications, (“and I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications.” Zech.12:10,) in order both to my own plea, and my Redeemer's Grant built upon his Intercession and opened at my own. Is not Communion in the soul with Christ's Treasures better able to make me believe that all things shall work together for good and that God will never leave me, nor forsake me; than it is likely to avail me to regard and eye only the plea of my sin and utter helplessness.
Prayer
Who is it but God that justifieth? And that he does according to His own pleasure and covenant with Christ, in the application of Gospel Righteousness. And what is it but the virtue of this, in the application thereof, which sets the heart asking through Christ, what the eye (by a work of the Spirit) certainly sees to be its own in Christ. For whatever is not of faith is sin. “And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.” (Mt.21:22) The person who asks to believe is the only petitioner who receives what he asks. For, if I believe not my own interest in Christ secured, I can never in faith ask that it may be done. The reason is, God can never alter His councils (Mal.3:6,) if it is not done in Christ already it will never be done in Christ by begging it. Therefore knowing already ‘tis done in Christ, I am to ask believingly that it may be done through Christ upon me influentially, from a sight that it is done in Christ for me in election settlements federally.
Prayers & Supplications
Though man in his common miseries and common mercies eyes not the Great and Only Sacrifice, yet God always did and always will respect that Sacrifice alone, as the ground of his regarding the prayers and tears of his oppressed people. The neglect of the influences of the Great and only Sacrifice hath done a world of mischief in divinity, darkening the honor of God’s Glory, and eclipsing the comforts of the elect, which are secured not by prayers and tears, but by the Person and Righteousness of Jesus Christ alone! Though men do not eye Christ in their prayers and tears to God for what they ask or need, yet God always eyes Christ in bestowing everything he grants. What have prayers and tears to do in the proper matters of the great and only Sacrifice? The case is nothing here as it is in common mercies. In the matters of Salvation by Christ, the Holy Spirit of God effectually calling by the Gospel preached, gives grace to the creature, as his own child, to become a new creature, openly by influences, through Christ, according to the pattern of God’s fore-knowing him so, secretly in Christ by his Grace from Everlasting; and so makes this new creature see all his Salvation and Help to be laid up in Christ.
Prayers & Supplications
This very language in our ears naturally tends to carry off a man’s thoughts, either in whole or in part, to prayers and tears; that is to say, to carry them off to these in the same end and efficacy with Christ. Such language finds it easy, we bring all prone naturally without it, to run off our thoughts with our praying and weeping to the same design, and mix them in one common end with the Death of Christ. It hath a tendency in the very conjunction of words, in such a frame as the proposition condemned puts them, to set men a looking after God’s grants upon the same kind of footing, granting for prayers and tears, as when he grants for Christ; and therewith secretly suggesting, that God gives out salvation upon prayers and tears, together with his granting it upon Christ’s Sacrifice! Which is utterly false; and supposes the Father conjointly eyed prayers and tears with his eying Christ for the spiritual blessings and eternal life to men! And this is as the papists also affirm, who build heaven and salvation in their belief partly upon Christ, and partly upon prayers and tears.
Prayers & Supplications
If you trace the plea, you shall find in it much creature emptiness and nothing of Christ’s Gospel fullness. I would ask any man truly taught of God, and led into the knowledge of Christ and himself too, whether he doth not see more of the creature, in creature discerning, (for he runs upon natural, providential, and common discernings,) than he can find of Christ’s teachings (for though he began with the King, he hath quite shut out both the Priest and Prophet) either to live by faith upon Christ, or to pray in faith unto Him? (Heb.10:38) Is there one quarter so much in all the pleas said of Christ, as there is of religious self? Now, if all these mischiefs be ever redressed in self, it is Christ, not a man’s own dead nature pleas that must do it. Again, if the soul be spiritual, under any true work of Christ by his Spirit in the Gospel, is it not strange, that such a heavenly soul should not be led throughout, to fasten upon any one argument, from the fullness treasured up in Jesus Christ? “For it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell.” (Col.1:19)
What, no fullness in Christ’s blood to eye, nor plead? Strange, that soul tears and strong cries must take up all! Alas! What is the soul's most pitiful moan to Christ’s Intercession in Heaven; aye, or to his strong crying and tears, when he offered up prayers and supplications in the days of his flesh. (Heb.5:7) Where is that preacher’s own living upon Christ the most Excellent, who frightens a poor soul with the danger of being overcome by sin? Is not Christ as able, is not Christ as willing, is not Christ as present, do not I feel it so if I am raised into any sweet experience, if I have any quickened communion with Him in the true Gospel, and am enabled by Grace to venture upon throwing off this mixed Gospel, to keep me graciously, (or any true believer,) from being overcome with sin, wheresoever I lawfully go, and in whatsoever I lawfully do, as the same Christ was able, willing and present to keep his disciples at sea from being drowned in the storm? Where’s that man’s faith, joy, and confidence in God through Christ, who can’t trust the Lord in one place he comes, nor in one step he takes? What, was none of Christ’s sufficiency in this case fit, or thought upon to be pleaded? It is poor crying to God without it.
Preaching Christ
It had been wiser work if you had preached God's Everlasting Settlements of Christ for poor Sinners, than their own palsy-acts of Faith to build Christ on for their help. It had been better if you had preached Election in Christ, the Riches of God's Grace and Merits in Redemption, the Spirit's Efficacy in Regeneration, and the several Branches of the Government of Christ in Gospel-Order; that the New-born being converted to Jesus Christ, and freely giving up themselves to His Sceptre and Ordinances, might know to behave themselves in the Church of God (I Tim.3:15,) than to use worldly policy for preventing their going off from your ministry, and press and pull them into Churches under early stirrings, before they are ripe to sit down in the Kingdom of God. (Mt.8:11) You insist much in the applicatory part of preaching, upon Coming to Christ; but I profess I could never find one of such as you, understandingly and discreetly lay open the Springs of that motion. It is under Efficacy of Doctrine, and not the force of press that the soul is drawn to Christ. Wisdom has graciously done the work if God owns it at all.
Preaching Christ
How do some of you open the Scriptures to lead into the mysteries of the Love of God? Into the Glory of Faith? Do you open them from Men? "Therefore, behold, I am against the prophets, saith the LORD, that steal my words everyone from his neighbor. Behold, I am against the prophets, saith the LORD, that use their tongues, and say, He saith." Jer.23:30,31. Do you go to open them without judgment and experience? Experience of the Word built upon sound Judgment? "Thus saith the Lord GOD; woe unto the foolish prophets, that follow their own spirit (not opening the scriptures by any judgment or experience of the Spirit of Christ in the Word itself; but their own spirit in evident mistakes by the natural sound of the words, or by some other misunderstanding of the text and Coherence,) and have seen nothing.” Ezek.13:3.
Preaching the Gospel of Christ
The doctrine of the Cross of Christ, or the doctrine of Salvation, (II John 10,) in which salvation is brought to the elect alone, is a doctrine that must be preached even to them that perish; (II Cor.2:15;) or else, how will the wisdom of God in it appear to be foolishness unto them that perish? So Paul in preaching the doctrine of Christ to the very enemies in the Synagogue, “increased the more in strength, and confounded (by the wisdom of God in the Old Testament) the Jews which dwelt at Damascus, proving that this is very Christ.” (Acts 9:22) The synagogues opposed him, but he had strength from Heaven to confound them all. (Acts 9:20) We read of none converted there at Damascus. What then? The Gospel nevertheless is preached, and the end of it there is attained, namely God's Wisdom glorified, while the Faith is preached which once Paul destroyed. The Wisdom of God must be preached to sinners, and the report made, though not one soul be converted by the Grace of God in all that Synagogue. The net must be let down into the waters, (Mt.13:47,) though the fish may not lie where the net comes, (Ez.47:10,) and a man may toil all night (Lk.5:5,) and take nothing. This is a mighty argument for preaching the Doctrine of Christ, where the Salvation in the Doctrine doth not at all belong.
Preaching the Gospel of Christ
We are to preach the New Birth, the Washing of Regeneration, and the Renewing of the Holy Ghost; (Tit.3:5;) as men are born from above, (John 3:3,) and therein born of the Spirit. (John 3:5) We should preach the Gospel as consistently with the praise of the Spirit's work in Regeneration Grace, (I Pet.1:23 – John 1:13,) as we ought to preach it consistently with the praise of the Father’s act in Electing Grace; and yet I am sure that very few do. We are to preach the new man, (Eph.4:24,) the hidden man of the heart, (I Pet.3:4,) the inward man, (II Cor.4:16,) the inward and hidden parts, (Ps.51:6;) all which tells us, it must be Divine Operations of Grace, not offers of grace, that are to be used of God and exalted of man. (Jer.18:12) We must preach the circumcision of the heart, (Deut.30:6, Rom.2:29,) the new nature, (John 3:6,) the new heart, (Ez.36:26,) a clean heart, (Ps.51:10;) all which passive phrases in a great door and effectual opened of the Lord, (I Cor.16:9,) though there be many adversaries, are fitted to set forth Operations of Grace. It is our work in the ministry of Christ to preach the efficacy of Divine Grace in begetting the soul in an Evangelical sense and begetting a people to God above the work of nature. “In Christ Jesus, I have begotten you through the gospel.” (I Cor.4:15)
Preaching the Gospel of Christ
The preaching of the Gospel of the Kingdom is the preaching of so high and heavenly a Dispensation in the hands of the Lord Christ, that it's above all human, secular, and temporal interests in the world. (John 18:36) The Gospel of the Kingdom of God is above all methods, ministrations, and wise and learned ways of preaching. It consists not in humanity, which now passes for Divinity; nor in offers which jostle out the gift of God, and exalt not the Operation of the Spirit. Whatever is the way of man wide from the paths of wisdom, a man left to himself in the pride and stoutness of his mind, (Is.9:9,) will adhere unto it, until God hath hedged up his way with thorns, (Hos.2:6,) or broken him to pieces, either by humbling him, (I Sam.2:6,8,) or silencing him in the dust! The Gospel belongs to a high Kingdom, and shall give way to none on earth; but all interests and dominations, wisdom, ways, and forms under heaven shall stoop, or be broken by our Lord Christ's Sceptre in the efficacy of his mighty Spirit. All our pride and wisdom, thoughts and ways that are not God’s, (Is.55:8,) must stoop, and shall give way unto the Gospel!
This is the Gospel of the Kingdom of God. (The kingdom of God to the non-elect is not Grace proposed, but Dominion and Subjection imposed because they are under the Law, Rom.6:14, and not under Grace. They disobey Christ's right to govern, and will be crushed under the Scepter of the disobeyed Prince for their daring rebellion!) The preaching of the Gospel, therefore, is not only to save men's souls who belong to God, in Him who is Elect, precious; (I Pet.2:6;) but it's also to set up Christ's greatness in the Work, and as a piece of the travail of his soul (Is.53:11) to see the saved brought into Gospel Order. For, Order ultimately in the Glorious Kingdom, as well as intermediately in the spiritual and established Kingdom of ordinances and open worship in these present times, as Christ's present Kingdom is not of this world, (John 18:36,) but differs from all kingdoms of this world; so this order is, and is to be, a special Fruit of the Gospel. (Is.9:7) Consequently, the Government and Spiritual Kingdom of Christ under the success of the Gospel is to be propagated everywhere among the elect of God, and in the face of men though they persecute it; for the Gospel is to be preached on the behalf of God's elect to all people, to all sorts of sinners, and under the whole heavens, wheresoever there is an opportunity to utter the joyful Sound.
Preaching the Gospel of Christ
Men’s rational powers have been made to stoop to the witness of the Lord Jesus, whom God “hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds.” (Heb.1:2) And a community of men has been made providentially subject to the Mediator through teaching and preaching the Word of the Lord in every city (Acts 15:35,36) where the Word of the Lord hath been sent to be preached, (how powerfully did the Preaching of the Gospel discriminate the elect from the non-elect at Jerusalem; it presently severed them into two companies, breaking their carnal union. “Then I cut asunder mine other staff, even bands, that I might break the brotherhood between Judah and Israel,” Zech.11:14,) though there hath been here and there of the hearers the elect of God (for indeed the elect lying hid, the Salvation of the Gospel belonging to them) to be made spiritually subject to the Lord Christ. (Jer.3:14,15)
Besides, it must still be so, for he is King of all, and hath a right to govern all by his Rectorial Scepter. And that, as he is both Lord and Christ (Acts 2:36) the Anointed One, or the Messiah, appointed for the Rule and Government of all in the natural parts of religion, as well as Messiah under the special unction of Jehovah, or anointed for the Salvation of the Church alone. The Gospel is Free Grace to the elect (as the Spirit works in them savingly to believe on Jesus Christ, and guide them to this eternal life in Him,) and the full prerogative both to them and all the world besides. Thus the Lord our Righteousness (Jer.23:6) will carry it on among the world, even his Gospel, as the proclamation of an Overpowering King, and a High Magistrate who will have his own laws stand and will make all other laws do, and give way to His. We must preach Christ thus, and this is Good News indeed to the elect (hid for some time among the rest) to strengthen their hearts. Now will any ask me, ‘How must we preach the Gospel to sinners, if we do not offer the salvation thereof unto them’? I'll answer them; ‘here is enough about the Gospel of the Kingdom to preach to all. Here is the good news of the Sceptre, (Num.24:17,) a Sceptre of Righteousness and Power, to make as many as the Lord pleases outwardly bow to the pure Gospel, and so to be providentially helpful to the elect who receive the Salvation of the Gospel. This is some of the fruit of preaching the Gospel to all sinners.
Preaching the Gospel of Christ
This natural receiving of the doctrine of the Gospel, and the temporal fruits of it in the Divine Providence, hath been much like the natural repentance of Nineveh at the preaching of Jonas; (Mt.12:41;) and may be compared unto the sparing of that great city (Jon.4:11) some considerable space of the forty years, which are meant by the forty providential days in that message, “yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown;” (Jon.3:4;) at the end of which days, or years, Nineveh was appointed to be overthrown, for the wickedness that had passed already. And albeit the Ninevites took the limits of the prediction for forty natural days, in which space the threatened overthrow not coming to pass, as they apprehended it at forty days end, they returned to their customary wickedness; and so Nineveh was destroyed to purpose, according to the true indictment of the Lord in the preaching of Jonas; even at the end of forty providential days; which destruction we read of in the first and second chapters of Nahum, containing the substance of the fearful overthrow of that city. A common reception of the truth of the Gospel hath sheltered nominal Christians from the ruinous seizure of the Infidel Nations and hath been blessed to an expulsion both of the Turks in Germany and of the Moors in Spain.
Preaching the Gospel of Christ
The doctrine is to be preached with an eye to God's Justice upon despisers. (Acts 28:26) It’s also to be preached boldly, as Paul preached at Damascus. (Acts 9:27) We are to bear testimony of the Word of the Lord, though it brings justice upon men for their refusing. Our work is to testify of Christ to men. The doctrine and witness of Christ come to all, and principally comes on the errand of Salvation to God's elect, to bring the true efficacy of that Eternal Redemption which is in Christ Jesus; (Heb.9:12;) but yet derivatively from the main Fountain of God's purposes, other ends obtain. And while men refuse and bespatter glorious Truths, such Truths as most exalt God in Christ, and most debase man in himself, some of the other ends, as purposed by the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ are seen. It was once said of Christ himself, for the glorifying of the Justice, as well as setting forth the mercy of God; “this Child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel; and for a sign which shall be spoken against. (Lk.2:34) For which cause, non-elect wranglers and refusers of the said doctrines, in which salvation comes to a “Rufas chosen in the Lord,” (Rom.16:13,) or to an “elect sister,” (II Jn. 13,) are righteously condemned for the “hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.” (Jude 15)
Preaching the Gospel of Christ
We must preach the Gospel as it comes to the elect of God through Christ, (Rom.6:23 & Eph.2:7,) and not preach the Gospel merely concerning Christ as the common way is. We may speak many things of Christ, but if we do not advance the Holy Spirit's work, which is all wrought through Christ, (Acts 13:38,) our preaching fails in point of usefulness through shutting out God the Spirit. “For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things; to whom be glory forever.” (Rom.11:36) All things through him in the applicatory pursuits of Grace by Jehovah the Spirit, as well as all things of him, or from him, as Jehovah the Father, and all things to him as Jehovah the Mediator; for he and the Father are one; (John 10:30;) and he that honors not the Son honors not the Father which hath sent him. (John 5:23) When the Spirit is given to be the Worker and Principal of our faith in Christ, then it is that in believing we have life through his name. (John 20:31)
Preaching the Gospel of Christ
In Regeneration, the Truth is said, to be a form of doctrine whereto ye were delivered, (Rom.6:17,) as the Greek reads that text passively of the converted, into which type or style of doctrine ye were delivered; though the translation, not seeing the mystery, is contended to read it passively of the form itself, as to say the form of doctrine which was delivered to you. He likewise, who hath the love of God dwelling in him, (I Jn.3:17,) hath far more than the Orthodox doctrine of the love abiding in him; and this indwelling love, because of the Spirit of Christ, (Rom.5:5,) who upholds it is a strengthening experience in the soul concerning God's Grace; and so will cause a true believer faithfully to prefer God's honor in the Gospel to all other interests. God's thoughts and ways are honorable, while they debase our own thoughts and ways. And he that is practically in his own heart lead into the Truth of God, will see a large field of the doctrine of Christ to preach at all times faithfully, and will be contended to preach the doctrine, and not trust in lying words that cannot profit. (Jer.7:8) We have a field-room enough in doctrine to deliver all our holy errands, if the Lord be pleased to make us wise to know, and faithful to keep our own bounds. The Lord guides the steps of his ministers, so that they may not err in vision, nor stumble in judgment. (Is.28:7)
Preaching the Gospel of Christ
What present practical use then, you will say, doth that text, “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved,” (Acts 16:31,) now serve for, if sinners are not immediately to be commanded from it to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ? I answer, that the Ministers of the New Testament ought from hence to open the Object of Faith, the Lord Jesus Christ, whom God the Father hath appointed, sent, accepted, raised, exalted, heard, and is always hearing as Advocate with the Father and Intercessor at the right hand of God for all the elect of God unto salvation; and next to open the renovation act of believing, as caused by the Spirit's Power and Grace in Regeneration from and under the Father's Christ. (Phil.1:29)
Preaching the Gospel of Christ
Let me a little state the doctrine of exhortations according to the Scriptures. (And this is the more needful since Popery and Arminianism have made such sad work with our Bibles in confounding spiritual and moral acts.) Exhortation should not be legal, such as a Jew in the Synagogue would be content to hear. It is said of Paul and his company at Antioch that, “after the reading of the Law and the Prophets the rulers of the synagogue sent unto them, saying, Ye men and brethren, if ye have any word of exhortation for the people, say on.” (Acts 13:15) Implying that, ‘we have read the Law, now you may exhort the people to the keeping of it.’ The Jews and Jewish Christians too, were for exhortation to keep the Law. (Acts 21:20,24) The Jews were for exhorting to some natural duty belonging to the fear of the true God. They did not see any need for Salvation by Christ to be sent to them; (Acts 13:26;) because they feared God, and trusted that.
And they thought whosoever of them feared God, it was enough; that this religious fear would bear them out, and they should be happy by it in another world. (Mt.19:16) And so they thought they wanted nothing but a little whet to this same fear in an exhortation. They were for no instructions about the way of Salvation by Christ; besides, were altogether ignorant of it, nor could endure to hear anything of God in Christ. (Acts 7:57) But all their lurry was an exhortation! An exhortation; thought Paul preached the necessity of a Revelation of the Gospel, an Instruction into the Mystery of Christ to make you believers! And (thinks he) now I have gotten left for this Exhortation (as they'll have it;) I'll take the opportunity, under the Lord’s Operation, to preach the Gospel among them here in the Synagogue; and so he stands up, (Acts 13:16,) and preaches the Gospel Evangelically in that Synagogue at Antioch. He there commences by telling them what God had done in the Old Testament to make way for Christ, (John 5:39,) and how he had sent Christ into the world; as also how they that dwelt at Jerusalem crucified him, and therein fulfilled the Scriptures in condemning him. (vs.27) He preaches his Resurrection (vs.30,) and declares Glad Tidings to the Antiochian Jews. (vs.32) He preaches to them forgiveness in his Name; (vs.38,39;) and he concludes with a prophetic sort of caution, lest that blindness and judicial hardening spoken of in the Prophets come upon them for open contempt, hatred and persecution of the Gospel. Here now was the Apostles Doctrine; (Acts 2:42;) and no doubt but the rulers of the Synagogue would have been glad to have seen all this instruction, or declaring and showing of the Gospel turned into legal exhortation, according to what they had, first of all, moved to be spoken to the people. But blessed Paul would disappoint them all!
Predestination
An interest in Christ begins at Election, at God’s choice of the persons of a remnant, viz., as the objects of Electing Love, viewed and considered apart, and so distinguished from conditional objects, or persons if they do so and so, &c., from false propositions, such as he that is holy shall be Happy, he that repents shall go to Heaven, he that believes shall be Saved, &c. These propositions were chosen secondarily for elect persons, and not elect persons, elect as viewed in the primary decree, elected under the view and truth of the secondary, and under-fall Decree in these propositions. Again, their persons are chosen, as distinguished from qualifications good or dis-qualifications bad; from motives to get an interest, and the like.
It is absolutely the person in the over-fall decree, (the Supralapsarian Decree prior to the Fall,) and not the proposition that the one who is saved walks in Gospel ways, for the “Lord knows them that are his,” II Tim.2:19, and all such who name Christ in truth do depart from iniquity, and not in order to obtain righteousness, but because their righteousness resides in Christ. This we have absolutely pitched upon. The text for it is Romans 9:11-13, which I need not open again, having done it in my 29th Chapter already. I will here only answer to the Arminian evasion in this proof. You must know the Arminian Remonstrance have devised a new plan of their own, to evade the strength of those texts brought against them in Romans 8; 9, and the eleventh chapter, by perverting them to an Election of the good things of this life, (as in Acts 17:25, Matt.5:45, Rom.2:4, &c.,) and that according as God foresees man’s behavior to be good or evil. But nothing can be more odd than such an evasion.
For that question, 9:14, “What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God,” disproves this new Excogitation and Device of theirs. The Apostle in the question doth obviate the objection which does naturally arise out of men’s hearts against God’s Supreme disposal of the everlasting states of men by a Decree from Everlasting. (“Whatsoever the LORD pleased, that did he in heaven, and in the earth, in the seas, and all deep places.” Psal.135:6. “But our God is in the heavens; he hath done whatsoever he hath pleased.” Psal.115:3. “Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, my counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure.” Isa.46:10. “And all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing, and he does according to his will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, what doest thou?” Dan.4:35.) This is certainly the matter which unregenerate men grumble at, and therefore this is the Doctrine the Apostle was defending by this question, “is there unrighteousness with God?”
Men can make a shift to be pretty quiet (though not altogether easy) under the Decrees of Providence, that the Lord would make one poor, while another was made rich in this world; one low, while another is great and exalted; they are not so apt to quarrel that all be not Kings, Lords, Dukes, Magistrates, Knights and Gentlemen, I Sam.2:6- 8, as they are to find fault with the Decree of Predestination, that one is chosen to Everlasting Life, and another left to drop of his own accord into Everlasting Destruction, without any primary (though there is a secondary) consideration of Sin or Holiness. This is that which almost hath set all the world a grumbling, Rom.9:19- 20; to this therefore, which is most reasonable to interpret, the Apostle is speaking, in the question put; as if he had said, what of all this? “Is there unrighteousness with God?” Supposing it had been spoken of an Election to the things of this world; yet works are expressly excluded, as having any Influence or Motive with God towards this getting an Interest in Christ; and (to argue from the less to the greater) will not this overthrow the Arminian sense of the Decree, wherever they themselves will allow it to be spoken of Election? For if the children there, verse 11, without any consideration of their works are chosen to good things here, and God will not so much as look at earnings for the bread of this life that perishes, Jn.6:27, can we think that God would go by it in the bread that endures unto life eternal, and decree to give his Christ and Happiness and Glory with him upon the foresight of man’s works?
Preservation in Christ Alone
Oh; says the Apostle, now it is, that when so many of the tribes are parceled out, some divided one way, some broken off another, some divided to the Roman conquests, others divided to a diversity of factions, and standing it out upon their own defense, yet some are divided into Christ’s Lot, and parceled out by Free Grace! Some of them are gone forth into the World, others are departed to the Devil; still (I, Paul) am one of the Tribe (Benjamin) divided out to Christ! One of the little Benjamin (Ps.68:27) saved alive in, by, through, and for Christ! In Him, because it began with Election (Eph.1:4;) by Him because it went on to Redemption; through Him because it came down to Sanctification; and for Him because it now appears in Gospel fruit, and breaks out in Christian service. Ah; as to ourselves, we do not know what our Ancestors have been; no, not in the 4th, 5th & 6th Generations from ourselves. Nor, if not called by Grace, how preserved by Providence; though all this Mystery will be opened to us hereafter in the Glory Kingdom, after the Resurrection of the Body. Nevertheless, this we may know at this day – they were preserved for our sakes; for “God hath not cast away His People whom He foreknew,” but we are alive, and are brought into Christ at this day.
Priesthood of Christ
Jesus Christ, though he is thy Husband, always keeps up the honor of his blood to send down every answer. He is gone to be a Priest upon his throne, (“and speak unto him, saying, thus speaks the LORD of hosts, saying, Behold the man whose name is The BRANCH; and he shall grow up out of his place, and he shall build the temple of the LORD; even he shall build the temple of the LORD; and he shall bear the glory, and shall sit and rule upon his throne, and he shall be a priest upon his throne; and the counsel of peace shall be between them both,” Zech.6:12,13,) and therein is still present in all the believing pleas rising out of his blood, and in every answer that comes swimming down in it. It is his blood that is the atonement for thy sin, (“for the life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes an atonement for the soul,” Lev.17:11,) and his blood is the cure of it, in the hand of his own Mighty Spirit from the Father. It is the Holy Spirit, whom Christ’s own pleas sent down into thy soul, sets the soul to plead below, agreeable to what Christ pleads above, and hereby the answer is secured if ever help comes. Christ doth not cure sin, nor prevent it, by a Kingly charge; (such as the inward and universal corruption of our natures;) but by his Blood and Spirit that make way for all the obedience to the charge. He sanctifies us as he is a Priest, and then bids us look to his Word, as he is a King.
Propitiation
As to Gal.3:1; “O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you?” The word for ‘set forth’ is a word that signifies fore-written, and graphically described in the doctrine of his blood and sufferings. This was no offer of Christ, but an emblem of Christ, as we also behold it livelily represented in the ordinance of our Lord's Supper. That he may be looked on, conversed with, fed on, delighted in, and enjoyed in his Word and Ordinances, as the great Gospel Object of faith unto those souls who have the Spirit of God working in them from and towards this Object. So in Rom.3:25; “whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God.” The word is not ‘set forth,’ but it is foreordained, as the original language tells you. Now fore-ordaining or fore-appointing was an act of God purposing, fixing, setting, and settling it in Christ the Mercy-Seat, how and after what manner the doctrine and preaching of Christ should be made effectual; namely, as God's fore-ordination of Christ is an Object of truth spiritually conveyed into the soul through the eye of the new creature, faith, faith in his blood. “Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you.” (I Pet.1:20) I observe that the next word translated ‘propitiation’ is not the word that is used for propitiation in I John 4:10 & 2:2, where there it signifies a thing accomplished in the Death of Christ; but the word here is a Mercy-Seat, which the Apostle likewise calls a Propitiatory in Heb.9:5, (“and over it the cherubims of glory shadowing the Mercy Seat; of which we cannot now speak particularly,”) and signifies the mysterious way of accomplishing salvation in the sufferings of Christ through the Human Nature of God-Man; and so is a close allusion to the typical figure of the Human Nature of Christ in the mercy seat. (Ex.25:17)
For indeed the Holy Ghost in this text of the Romans hath used the same word which the Septuagint has used to express the Mercy-Seat there in Exodus 25 in their translating the Hebrew word ‘mercy seat.’ Now the mercy seat in Exodus was an effectual gift of God's love, so far as then to be a positive type of a greater Mercy- Seat, which God had within himself long before in his certain pre-ordination of the sufferings of the Human Nature of Christ as the way of our Justification by Grace.
Providential Reign of Christ
As for the Creation, though marred by Sin, yet in Him, and because it consists of Him ("who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power," Heb.1:3,) it is not fallen in pieces in Him. As to the elect part, it is as He stands in God, so they do stand in Him. As to the rest, still, He is the Foundation of their natural standing (I Tim.4:10,) that all do not fly to pieces in a moment. God looked upon this draught at first, and would hold all together by Him in whom He drew it, and after framed it openly. By Him they stand to this day, notwithstanding the constitution of mere creature-frailty (in all the beings of the world made by Him) and notwithstanding the entrance of sin upon the more noble parts of the Creation, and the reign of it in the lusts of men. Still, by Him, they all consist and hold together. God doth always look upon this glorious pattern of His works; He evermore beholds this Alpha. “I was daily before Him,” says Wisdom, in the days, or dates of Everlasting. God is provoked to wrath in the world by sin; as He early was, so He always is. God is angry with the wicked every day (Ps.7:11;) and yet they shall not be cast into outer darkness (Mt.8:12,) sooner than the time, having to continue until their allotted time. “The rich and poor meet together; the LORD is the maker of them all.” (Ps.22:2)
God has underpropped the world by His Son that He bears up the pillars (Ps.75:3,) of it as the Mediator, into whose hands all things are put, and God governs the world in no other ways than by Him. Thus God hath put all His works into a steady frame by Him. “And He is before all things, and by him, all things consist.” (Col.1:17) He hath brought them out of nothing for His Son, in the glorious ends He will bring about unto Himself by Christ. There is mercy to His own in Christ. There is fiery indignation to the strangers, and still by Christ, (Heb.10:29;) who in the utmost conclusion shall devour His adversaries. Thus in the sense of providential latitude, to provide temporal good things for, and prolong eternal evil things for the wicked, in conjunction with the purchase and conveyance of eternal salvation for and to the elect, that He is the Saviour of all men, and especially of them that believer, (I Tim.4:10,) and it is no other sense whatsoever that He is so. So that now for Christ’s sake, who is the Image of the Invisible God, subsisting in the Son of God, God carries the world, and all things as they are, till the time of the end comes, (Dan.8:17;) for as God hath always looked to the end of all that He hath begun by Him; so all things are ordered by Him and stand together, till the Great White Throne of the last judgment of all comes, and He that (in the vision) sat upon it, from whose face, the earth and the heaven fled away, and there was found no more place for them. (Rev.20:11) And thus we see how by Him all things consist. How they hold together, being made or originally by and for this noblest draught of Wisdom - Christ. Hence, they do not dissolve by innumerable burdens of sin, nor crumble into pieces, and fall into annihilation (being reserved for the glorifying of mercy and justice forever, that they can fall out of being into nothing again) by past and present provocations. Because the Wisdom-Image, by which they are consolidated and held together, stands in God forever!
Reconciliation & Peace through the Blood of Christ
“Let him take hold of my strength, that he may make peace with me; and he shall make peace with me.” (Isa 27:5) The truth of this text will appear by seeing into the foundation of all peace with God, (Is.9:6 – Is.53:5,) and of that peace brought into the soul in the strength of God. “Let him take hold of my strength;” or rather, thus saith the Lord, ‘let that sinner be wise, and take hold of Christ who is my strength, and in Salvation as revealed to be the Strength of God.’ Let him take hold of God in Christ who speaks in righteousness through all his petitions (Heb.7:25) for sinners, and is mighty to save. (Is.63:1) Then it follows without a ‘that,’ which is not found in the Original, and which entangles and corrupts the sense thereof; “he (he; that is, Christ, who is my strength,) may make peace with me.” It is not an attribute of strength in God that is spoken of, but a Person (Ps.19:14) of strength in God, a personal strength. Even He who is mine Anointed (Christ,) says the Father, on whom I have laid help. (Ps.89:19) This Strength of mine, says the Father, in the very battle fought against sin by my wrath and justice in the conscience of a sinner, is what I behold; this engagement of my Son, who is my Strength, and that even as he lay under the legal Imputation of sin unto Him, (Is.53:6,) is that indeed that shall stop the outgoings of my wrath in the sinner's conscience; for upon the account of this Atonement made, “fury is not in me.” (Is.27:4)
He shall make peace by the efficacy of his blood because by Covenant from Everlasting, he is my Strength. He, says the Father, my Christ, the Strength of God, engaged his heart, as God-Man to approach unto me, and so he shall make peace. (Jer.30:21) Accordingly, he ever liveth, being God's strength, to make intercession to the uttermost for all that come unto God by Him. (Heb.7:25) The Old Testament language was thus, “he may make peace - he shall make peace.” For having received a special Commandment of the Father to go and lay down his life, (John 10:18,) he stands engaged, saith the Lord, as the Surety of the better Covenant (Heb.7:22) in my strength that cannot lie, (Tit.1:2,) to do so, and confirm the Everlasting Compact. And it shall become unto all intents and purposes through the laying down of this life in the greatness of my strength, (Is.63:1,) a full, a clear, and a most effectual Ransom in the very fullness of time. “He shall make peace.” “Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most Holy.” (Dan.9:24)
And thus by going from “faith to faith,” (Rom.1:17,) now at last in the supernatural change, the sinner having had sight of armed justice in his conscience, and next a view of Christ engaging (Jer.30:21) that justice for the sinner, the sinner feels Effectual Grace that turns his heart in upon this Strength; and so he is sweetly brought by an act of Omnipotent Grace (Eph.1:13) to an act of holy believing, in taking hold of this Divine Strength in the Person of a Crucified Saviour, (I Cor.1:23,) and he finds the promise of his peace sure, that this strength hath made his peace with God in a way of sprinkling his conscience, (I Pet.1:2, Heb.12:24,) even as Christ hath established this peace, in a way of atonement (federal justice) with God. Hence it is the poor souls now can sing, “I will go in the strength of the Lord GOD; I will make mention of thy righteousness, even of thine only.” “My mouth shall show forth thy righteousness and thy salvation all the day.” (Ps.71:15,16) “Not unto us, O LORD, not unto us, but unto thy name give glory, for thy mercy, and for thy truth's sake.” (Ps.115:1) Now this interpretation of Isaiah 27:5 is the clear Gospel, free of the Arminian muddying, and agrees with the whole scope and analogy of Faith. But the translation by a ‘that’ hath so muddied the stream, and preachers still going over it one after another in the Arminian footsteps - obscure the true Gospel in the text, for there is many a poor sinner that hath thought under some natural convictions to clap in themselves believing and repenting, as their own mediator between God and them, so as to make peace; and from hence likewise hath sprung that ignorant and common question out of the natural Popery and Arminianism of men's hearts amongst us, ‘have you made your peace with God?’ So that the Mediator is thrown out and made to stand by for a cipher; and no wonder the people throw Him out of their thoughts when the preacher so often throws him out of the Text. The sense must be carried thus, of a Covenant Declaration of the Undertaking of Christ in the latter part of the verse; because it is according to the scope of what follows in verse 6, “He shall cause them that come of Jacob to take root.” A glorious promise!
Regulative Principle
He who makes One Proposition that hath not its Basis in God's Word, to be a Measure either in his Catechism or his Canon, (Phil.3:16,) will not scruple, if he sees a fair occasion, to make another so, and another; and then by the same pattern of transgressing, or leaping over all bounds of Divine Revelation, a Heretic (Tit.3:10) might plead for a whole Body of Doctrine to be compiled; and by this instruction begun, he should expose the Bible to contempt, and discard the mysteries of its Sacred (Acts 7:38) Oracles!
Repentance & Faith
It is a blessed thing to be taught by God to discern what is the fit matter and manner of an exhortation to unbelievers. It is a blessed thing likewise to be enabled to distinguish between the Faith, and of the Repentance we inquire about in the matter of the exhortation, for there lies the point. Which faith or repentance are men referring to? What faith, and repentance do they think the Spirit of God intended in John the Baptists doctrine? It must no doubt be meant of such a repentance and faith, as was consistent with the day, wherein the Spirit was not yet given, (Mt.3:11, Jn.7:39,) to work anything in Reformation of manners, above the oldness of the Letter; (Rom.7:6;) and consistent with a state of unregeneracy. What kind of exhortation (Mk.1:15) was John’s exhortation to sinners? Was it not an exhortation toward their putting forth a natural and rational act of faith into the report of a Christ at hand, and so about the accomplishment of redemption (John 1:29) by Christ's incarnation, obedience, and sufferings to be shortly made appear? (Lk.24:26, Jn.3:33) Was it not into the Witness and Testimony of Jesus, (Acts 4:12,) and so into the Witness and Testimony of Salvation by Him according to the Scriptures? All this sort of faith, and so repentance that answers it, a man not born from above might be brought unto; for which cause John's ministry might well be an exhortation in that day hereunto; and what could it be else? Now all this natural repentance and faith, whether in the elect of God or the non-elect, is nothing to our purpose, where the common faith and belief of the report is settled. (Acts 20:21)
As to the non-elect it's not to the purpose, because the same natural and rational faith now in them, as at that day when John preached faith and repentance, is no coming to Christ for salvation; it's no believing into the Person of Christ, but a believing into the testimony of Jesus Christ. Then; as to the elect of God, the repentance and faith in John’s doctrine the people were exhorted to, was such as afterward was changed into Spirituality and Power, and from faith and repentance (Rom.1:17) belonging to the nature fullness of Christ, and received from thence without a saving change, went into another faith, and was raised into faith and repentance of a higher species (Acts 5:31, 11:18) and that belonging to the Gracefulness of Christ, and received from thence in, by and under a saving operation of God the Spirit. Natural and rational repentance and faith, though it is included in and connoted with the Gospel repentance and faith of the elect of God, is very distinct from it, and is swallowed up in it; and this Gospel faith and repentance swallowing up the other that's a natural and rational or a faith and repentance transcendent, exalted, spiritual, supernatural, wrought and raised in men according to the Spirit of the Gospel, as it lies above nature under the mighty work of the Lord the Spirit.
Representative Union in Christ
Though in our nature-selves we are polluted, yet faith given by the Spirit of Christ according to our grace-relation and glory-relation elevates the soul to an act that enters into Christ or into that within the veil, (Heb.6:19,) following Him into heaven without any pollutions, but soaring in pure faith to Jesus in whom we are perfect in the heavenlies, for no unclean thing shall enter therein. (Rev.21:27) So with the first look of faith we look on our nature-selves and see the Adamic part, and there we are defiled creatures; nevertheless though filthy, yet not discouraged thereby to magnify it into despair, that we are too filthy to go to Christ by faith, being enabled of the Holy Ghost to use Christ’s blood in the next act of discerning, we then in another act of faith ascend pure to Christ, so far as we indeed ascend and enter into heaven to Him with our spirits, coming up in that faith out of his blood in none of the nature-filth, but in the grace and glory-relations to Himself, and so are like a flock of sheep that cometh up from the washing, and do go into Him with a holy boldness, where in our relation to the heavenly (there) we sit together with him in glory, (Eph.2:6,) having not so much as the least spot upon ourselves, but are there without fault (Rev.14:5) before the throne of God.
Righteousness & Pardon in Christ Alone
Objection: Why do you allow yourself to call such as hold this Doctrine that Faith is a prerequisite for Justification wicked and unrighteous? Most of our worthy divines have done this; and so is it fit to call, or account these wicked and unrighteous? I answer, the Text spares none, whose way and thoughts are not God’s way and thoughts, as the 8th and 9th verses do expound the 7th. (Isa.55:7-9) It must be laid upon God’s way and thoughts, and not upon the worthy divines, if ever God owns it. Besides, a man, many a man at this rate, may slip by in the crowd who is a wicked man to God, that hath all along passed for a good man to men; so there is many an Unrighteous Man to God who is a Righteous Man to men. And lastly, the best of men, so long as sin dwells in them, have an abundance of wickedness in them, and unrighteousness in their thoughts towards God, and there is nothing takes it off that we ought to esteem them righteous for, towards God, except the Righteousness of Christ alone. And for confirmation of this, I have taken notice, even among your worthy divines, that when they have come to die, God has so effectually convinced, and touched some of their hearts upon this point, as it has caused them to renounce their own way and thoughts therein, having seen abundantly beyond it, as the Foundation of their parting with those sins, which before had been too dear to part with for Christ.
They would not hear of that upon a deathbed, which they had zealously pressed as the main of all at other times. Oh! Says a poor creature under a little natural Christianity, or the Gospel molded and fashioned by men after the common ideas of nature in them that receive its notions; you must believe first and come to Christ for Pardon, and then when you have closed with him upon Gospel- offers, (and be sure to do it now, before your day of Grace is past,) then God begins to Pardon and Justify you and not before; here’s now the unrighteous man’s way and thoughts to be forsaken. And turn to the Lord, says he, and ye shall obtain Pardon; aye, but God says in the turning to the Lord Christ, to Jehovah our Righteousness, God will more abundantly Pardon. (“In his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely; and this is his name whereby he shall be called, THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS.” Jer.23:6.) He will lead into that Pardon that hath not only begun with me to make me forsake my way and thoughts but opens so increasingly upon my thoughts (swallowed up in God’s thoughts of the matter) that now I am led into Pardon more abundantly, and then beaten off from all my old dead thoughts of the way of obtaining it. The Gospel is that Pardon in the Application of it, that it comes first without Faith in a strong virtue into my heart for Faith; and then in the virtue of it brings me the Spirit to discern and receive it, and come to Christ, with Christ, out of the Virtue of this Righteousness upon me. Now so long as in the Judgment of God’s Word, a man is wicked in his way, and unrighteous in his thoughts, this man does not only run on in his notion, and keeps his way and thoughts, but if there be opportunity and occasion given to show his Zeal, then he lays you open to what he verily thinks with himself he ought to do. (“I verily thought with myself, that I ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth.” Acts 26:9.) Oh! Says he, we must not bear with these Antinomians! Here’s a way of Justification indeed!
This is such a presumptuous coming to Christ, that ‘tis the ready way for the soul to be turned off and not pardoned at all. Hold, hold, brother-zealous, (for whatever you are to God, I’ll bother you, according to what you appear in your best to men,) you are mistaken. This text, “And let him turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for he will abundantly Pardon,” must be opened in the light of all other texts, where the Foundation of Pardon in God is laid firmly within himself; as to say, individually to a man all known to God, Acts 15:8, who every one of these persons is for. Accordingly, this text being but Superstructure, must be carried according to the gradual openings of the whole Mystery in all the Futurities (the Purpose of Grace within the LORD himself) and successive advances of those Acts accomplished in God, and then down again afresh from God by the First Patterns proceeding down to our Knowledge and Experience thereof, by Application of the Holy Ghost, as his Superstructure through Christ upon God’s Foundation. (“Nevertheless the foundation of God stands sure, having this seal, the Lord knows them that are his.” II Tim.2:19. “Now, therefore, ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God; and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone; in whom all the building fitly framed together grows unto a holy temple in the Lord; in whom ye also are built together for a habitation of God through the Spirit.” Eph.2:19-22.)
So then, let him turn to the Lord in the virtue of what hath already made him forsake his own way and thoughts; and let him turn to the Lord upon the Truth and Certainty of the contrary Evidence of the things to what he hath thought, as they lie in Christ, and to our God under these Evangelical Discoveries (for the best of them in Isaiah’s time had but stood upon legal points) for he will (in the openings of things, even in Demonstration of the Spirit and of Power, I Cor.2:4,) abundantly Pardon. The other way in which I took up my notions of Pardon, the other thoughts in which I conceived of Pardoning Grace, made it a dead, distant thing in the Apprehensions of my soul; for Pardon lay all then rolled up, and I could see nothing, and yet the Scripture insists so much upon seeing the Son, Jn.6:40, &c. Pardon that way never opened, never enlarged itself, never filled my soul or engaged my mind with fresh and glorious thoughts, never raised up my soul into wonderful Truths, nor came near any Gospel Conceptions of the Abundant Entrance into the Everlasting Kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. (“But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should show forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” I Pet.2:9.) Aye, but now under these Unveilings of Grace in the Foundation of God I am amazed! Now it is I have an abundant Pardon! Oh! How it grows upon my thoughts, whilst it can be never increased in itself! Now I see the Glory, Influences, Life, and Encouragement of it grow upon my poor heart, every day, and I am led in more into the Gospel of Jesus Christ! Oh!
This is the life of my soul! Now strike at this all you of the other side of the hedge, and my heart shall rejoice still in God my Saviour, for he hath remembered me in my low estate, having long humbled me for my pride in a way and thoughts of setting up your way and thoughts of Righteousness and Pardon. Alas! When I part with my sins, it hath been through the Virtue of my Antecedent Pardon. In parting with my Sins under his Mighty Pardoning Grace that took off the Condemnation before I believed, I did but the duty I was bound to, Lk.17:10, but when he pardoned them, he did so upon such a Glorious Foundation within himself, originally (according to the Rise and Order of the After-Fall Dispensations of Unconditional Grace,) as took the start of my Believing, even in the very Order of the Holy Ghost’s applying; and then in the Eternal Original (or the Before-Fall Decrees of Absolute and Total Grace) how free was the LORD in Himself, and not bound to connect such a chain of matchless wonders in the varieties of his Proposed and Settled Grace for me! (“Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called; and whom he called, them he also justified; and whom he justified, them he also glorified.” Rom.8:30.) Therefore this Greater on the side of Grace, must and will Influence and Compel me to part with my Sins; as it is both impossible to effect and preposterous to suppose it, that the less should influence the Greater; that is to say, my parting with my Sins influence his Pardon of my Sins.
And I am also sure, where the Influence precedes; there the Pardon precedes my act. “When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers; hath no man condemned thee? She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee; go, and sin no more.” Jn.8:10-11. She had not parted with her sins, for she had been just then taken in adultery in the very act, 8:4, yet Christ condemned her not but bid her go, and, upon that Declaration of Pardon and Non-Condemnation, mend, and sin no more.
The Righteousness of Christ & Gospel Fruitfulness
What can be sounder to give us interest in pardon, than Christ's righteousness imputed to us; and what can be more unsounded to give us evidence of pardon, than shutting out the virtue of that righteousness through Christ, by the work of the Spirit applying it on the heart, to bring unto obedience, through sanctification of the Spirit, and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ? (I Pet.1:2) How reflecting is it upon the righteousness of Christ imputed, to fall presently upon abstracted obedience, in doing what Christ commands, as our evidence of interest in this Righteousness, without any due regard, or notice taken of the virtue of that same righteousness, unto the gift of the Holy Ghost for it? For our evidence must certainly lie in the virtue of the Righteousness of Christ imputed, as our pardon lie there. It can never be proved that Paul hath called his inherent righteousness a garment at all. He never speaks of putting on inherent righteousness as a garment, but as the new man, after the image of God. (Col.3:10, Eph.4:24) Inherent righteousness is a new creature, the hidden man of the heart (I Pet.3:4;) and this is a distinct thing from putting on righteousness as a garment. Putting on Christ (Gal.3:27, Rom.13:14) is putting on both under the work of God's Spirit, when we are made by gracious acts to put on Christ outwardly in our profession, answerably to Christ's own putting on his righteousness upon us in our condition.
The righteousness of Christ is put upon us, as our garment to God, and in the virtue of this we are graciously brought in holy walking to put on Christ in the exercise of such and such outward graces, from the Spirit as our inward principle; which outward graces are our garments in the face of men, that cover and adorn us in our profession of the Gospel, as we live among them. Neither of these sorts of garments is our inherent righteousness. This is no garment that covers and adorns us in the sight of God or men. Inherent righteousness, though an ornament in the sight of God (I Pet.3:4,) as all spiritual beauty in the Saints is, through the virtue, the transforming virtue of the righteousness of Christ, yet is no garment in God’s sight, in which the justified are found; so God will have no garment upon them but the Righteousness of Christ. Again, inherent righteousness though it is the principle of open good works and of a becoming conversation in the sight of men, (Is.61:3, I Pet.2:12,) yet inherent righteousness is not the garment of the saints in the sight of man, because a garment is an open thing upon me, but inherent righteousness is a hidden principle of grace within me. Therefore as I have one garment alone in which I stand before God in Christ, though many ornaments, so I have distinct garments, or more garments than one, as I make an open profession of the transforming power of Divine Grace in the sight of men, none of which are imputed righteousness, the garment alone in which I stand before God (that is, openly clothed, whilst all my shame hides, as taken away, and cast behind His back in a gospel sense – Is.38:17) nor inherent righteousness which is hidden from men. My several garments to men are open things, distinct from inherent righteousness. My garments to men are things I am seen in amongst them. It is not my inward sanctification, which they cannot see, and which is neither my garment to God nor my garments to men. But it is my outward sanctification working among men from my inward principle through the Spirit of God which creates and maintains it, quite hidden from the view of all the world.
Accordingly, saith the Holy Ghost by John, under the pouring out of the sixth vial, Rev.16:15, “Behold, I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watches, and keeps his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his shame.” His garments, it does not read his garment; so it is all his garments; and these are all of their outer garments and no inherent graces. Of these garments of the believer, his garment, singly considered, is the Righteousness of Christ. (Lk.15:22, Is.61:10). This is a spiritual garment between Christ and the believer in which he is found before God. This garment of the righteousness of Christ, in the doctrine of the free and full Imputation of it to and upon all (Rom.3:22) them that believe; for their believing comes out of the virtue of it imputed, and not the imputation of it out of the virtue of their believing. Whereas, if this doctrine be let go, and the soul of the believer doth not watch about it to keep it from all doctrinal admixtures but gives way to them that would throw this garment of his out of place and use, this believer will quickly walk naked, he will so discover himself that men will see his shame and scandal upon him.
This is that which must give life and virtue to all he openly hath and doth in his profession. All that I am to God, in the righteousness of his Son, that I may not be an empty professor to men, and scandalous, but a credit and an honor to the holy Gospel in the very face of the world; I shall, if I am under the virtue of Christ's righteousness (my garment to God) watch, as to the outer parts of my Sanctification (my garments to men) having the image and principle of true Gospel Sanctification (Gal.5:16,) or inherent righteousness within; that is, the fruit of my garment open to God, which is the righteousness of Christ upon me.
Satisfaction of Christ
Faith is a very Orderly Grace in the Spirit’s Workmanship, though, as preachers for the most part ignorantly and carelessly lay it down, I Cor.3:10, it is a most disorderly and confused thing, without the Holy Ghost’s Distinctions. There is a great deal of Old Adam’s coming to Christ, Acts 8:13; I know (not only by the way of experimenting it, but I discern to be in others) by their Old Adam’s way of preaching it, Acts 21:18-24, which (though propagated by zeal, yet) never rose out of the Discerning which the Holy Ghost works in all who are efficaciously brought to Christ, the New Adam. Faith there is of the wrong kind; ‘tis but nature’s blunder, fancy’s dream, the creature’s gospel; but nothing of the Holy Ghost’s work, who begins it with an Opening the Eyes of the Understanding. (“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; that ye may know, &c.” Eph.1:18. “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.)
I am led positively to know by the Holy Scriptures to whom this Satisfaction was made. Psal.40:6-8 – Heb.10:5-10. It was made to God who hath received it certainly and discovers it in the same Certainty by the Pure Gospel when his children are brought off from the Mixed Gospel. Gal.1:6-7. And these Preachers of the Mixed Gospel, II Cor.11:13, think because Duty is much neglected, and that there is more of a need of Preaching Duty, (and so there is; but ‘tis only among such as have genuine faith to receive it, and walk accordingly thereunto; yet they think,) they have nothing so much to do as to jump presently into preaching duty; but let a poor worm tell these ministers, that themselves have too little of the Practical Mysteries of Faith in Discerning and Coming to Christ broke into their own souls, Tit.3:5-7, to be yet ripe enough for the Duty-Portion of the Holy Scriptures or skillful enough in their proper Gospel- Application.
The Pure Gospel, when it shines out of Darkness by the Holy Ghost in my heart shows me, that as Satisfaction was certainly made to God, so in that Certainty it was made for me, II Sam.7:18 with 23:5, and thus engages my heart to come. II Cor.4:6. “All that the Father giveth me shall come to me.” Jn.6:37. “It is written in the prophets, and they shall be all taught of God. Every man therefore that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father, cometh unto me.” Jn.6:45. Whereas if my heart must be somehow cleansed first, before I can declare a Satisfaction on my behalf, under the Spirit’s work begun in opening mine eyes, ‘tis a mere labyrinth, a maze, and a bewildering me, and making nothing, Isa.53:3, of all which Christ has done for me; I am speaking still of a soul under the Holy Ghost’s Discerning Work in opening the eyes of Understanding-Faith, Eph.1:18, to “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God” in the Person of Jesus Christ, II Cor.4:6; (so far am I from laying the foundation of nature’s presumptuous claims on the one hand, or a real enthusiasm, I Jn.4:1 with II Cor.11:14, which cannot be accounted for by those who experience it, on the other.) Whereas in going the other way, by the heart to come to Christ, with no vital Discernings of Christ, Jer.33:3, before the heart comes, there’s no way left for me to know, whether the Satisfaction Christ has made to God was made for me, or not? For, if it was uncertainly and indeterminately made to God for any sinner who hath no heart to come, and the Determination of it to anyone must be known by the posture of that heart; ‘tis a mere deception to think it must be so known to me, as it was never known to God, Acts 15:18, in the Order of the thing.
My heart must be determined under the Satisfaction made, II Cor.5:18, not the Satisfaction made determined under my heart. For, if the Satisfaction itself does not determine it for me above and beyond my heart, I have poor encouragement to trust a deceitful heart, Jer.17:9, when it comes. What ground the more could I have to discern it, determinedly made for me, and taking notice, and finding I had a heart to come, if my eye was inwards to mine heart, and not outwards to the Object of my heart? Isa.65:1. A man may have a heart from natural desires to possess that which is not to be had; neither can I have any evidence that the desires are Spiritual, and a true work of the Holy Ghost, because they come before Discernings of Christ, what he is in Himself, and what he hath, and possesses, certainly, by Settlement and Donation of the Father, for me; and so is a greater argument against me to keep me back from Christ, than any argument for me to move me to come unto him. “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.” Mt.11:27.
Such a blind heart rather argues I would come to that which is not, the Satisfaction of Christ for me, than do that which is, the Satisfaction of Christ for me. God forbid, therefore, that I should go by man’s heart, and not God’s heart, as he determines and guides me by his Spirit and Word in this important matter. “Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of thy name; and deliver us, and purge away our sins, for thy name’s sake.” Psal.79:9. Again, when God gives me this heart to come to Christ, ‘tis because he has provided Satisfaction for me, and here he does only renew the first Assurance or Earnest of my personal interest in the Satisfaction of Christ I had by discerning it, to embolden and authorize my Motion-Faith to Christ. “Now he that hath wrought us for the self-same thing is God, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit.” II Cor.5:5. For, I have already had the first Ground of Interest-Hope in the Objective Evidences, I Tim.1:15, of the Spirit’s Testimony, or Revelation, working in me and upon me by and from the Word, viz., from the Doctrine of Satisfaction, or the Atonement in itself, Rom.5:11; or from some other Objective Word as it pleases the Holy Spirit to unveil the beauties of Christ to my enquiring mind and ravished heart; then the second ground of encouragement which was for me, is, that it is so powerfully revealed to and in me, Gal.1:16 so that I can no way disprove it to be for me, though I do not yet come to Christ, still feel a hard heart and a captive soul. (“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.) This may be thy case; though peradventure, thou art the soul, who canst not yet come for thy bonds, Exod.2:23, and venture thy Self and Condition entirely upon Jesus Christ; thou art yet straitened with an abundance of ensnaring self-matters, Lk.9:59, 61, and canst not get out of thy prison of self and these shackles of thy own imprisonment, to come to Jesus with that Gospel-Freedom, as both Lord and Christ, Acts 2:36, which thou seest other Saints have done. The Lord hath opened thine eyes to see thy full remedy, and thou hast tasted so much that the Lord is gracious, I Pet.2:3, as though thou dares not question but his Satisfaction was made for thee; and yet such hardness in thine heart still, as thou wishes, Mk.9:24, a coming power added unto thy seeing eye, to come and venture all that thou art and hast, Sin, and Grace, upon Jesus Christ; that the One (sin, guilt, and condemnation) cannot hurt or displease him if thou comest with it to him; and that the other (Grace in its perception) has lain dead and useless in thy soul, ever since thy first Awakenings, because you have set up Inherent Grace in thy thoughts, and bowed down in thy soul unto it; and then no wonder if thou are bowed down in thy soul for it! (“For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.” Jer.2:13.)
Thou hast bowed unto it, and honored Grace in thy soul as if Grace was Christ; as if frames were Christ, Psal.36:9 with I Cor.1:30, as if dawnings and stirrings and hopes begun were Christ; and thus, poor soul, thou hast been kept at home in self-graces, (in essence, working out thine own righteousness, Rom.8:4,) and wants a heart, Hos.6:6, yet to come to Christ. Poor soul! What must I say unto thee? My errand is this. Hear what the Spirit saith unto them that mourn in Zion. “The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me; because the LORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn; to appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that he might be glorified.” Isa.61:1-3. Come poor soul, mind the next Discoveries; see, if the Spirit doth not show thee more in Christ than thou hast seen in meekness; more in Christ than thou hast seen in patience; more in Christ than thou hast seen in the law of love and kindness written upon any heart of flesh; (“for all those things hath mine hand made, and all those things have been, saith the LORD; but to this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembles at my word,” Isa.66:2;) see if there be not more in the “still small voice,” I Kngs.19:12, passing by before thee, and proclaiming “the LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth," Ex.34:6, when the Spirit shows you Christ’s Glory, than thou hast seen all thy days, of Christ, by reflection, looking into your heart, and poring on your graces. “Therefore I will look unto the LORD; I will wait for the God of my salvation; my God will hear me.” Mic.7:7. Come then, poor soul, at the Lord’s Proclamations of thy release in Christ; yea, without thy money and without thy price, Isa.55:1, and freely give up all your charters, Isa.45:13, into Christ’s, the Lord Christ’s hands! And see, there is a more excellent way, I Cor.12:31, than making so much of, and trusting so much unto inherent grace.
Give it all up in one word, at one mighty lift of the Spirit of Jesus, Phil.1:19, into Christ’s hands, and live upon Jesus Christ alone. (“How excellent is thy loving-kindness, O God; therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of thy wings. They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of thy house, and thou shalt make them drink of the river of thy pleasures. For with thee is the fountain of life; in thy light shall we see light.” Psal.36:7-9.) ‘Tis the way too to have more Grace than ever; for thus, hast thou been kept at home in self-graces and wants a heart (till thou hast a heart for this) yet to come to Christ.
How ignorant then is that notion of the Satisfaction of Christ made to God for all thy sins which reaches not, Mt.9:28, the Doctrine of the Satisfaction of Christ made to God for all your sins, before thou comest to him, and by Motion-Faith believes on him? How ignorant is that conceit which teaches you to receive and take up his Satisfaction, as a mere speculative notion, if you come unto him. II Tim.2:1,13. For, it is almost certain that Christ made Complete Satisfaction to God for all my sins, even before I came to Christ! Though my unbelieving, treacherous, and conceited preacher would never tell me so. Mine unbelieving preacher; for, he did not believe this a way to direct me out of the Discerning Faith, and so on by the Motion-Faith home to Jesus Christ Revealed; when yet I was by such a way converted. My treacherous preacher! (“For it was not an enemy that reproached me; then I could have borne it; neither was it he that hated me that did magnify himself against me; then I would have hid from him; but it was thou, a man mine equal, my guide, and my acquaintance. We took sweet counsel together, and walked unto the house of God in company.” Psal.55:12-14.)
To betray me deeper into sin and snares, through the ignorance he kept me under, in the very way of instructing me. My conceited preacher! (“And art confident that thou thyself art a guide of the blind, a light of them which are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of babes, which hast the form of knowledge and of the truth in the law.” Rom.2:19-20.) For he conceives still within himself, that if this Free Way of Grace comes out among the people, and the old bondage-faith (I call it old because so much of old Adam is in it before we put on the “new man, which is renewed in knowledge, after the image of Him that created him,” Col.3:10, thus he seems concerned that his old Legal- System) goes down, and his confused notion of coming to Christ be overthrown; then farewell all Faith, Neh.6:8, what need the sinner believes if the Satisfaction be made to God by Christ for him, whether he believes, or whether he believes not! And farewell all holiness, and all duties of the profession at this rate; for thus he conceits; now can there be a more conceited preacher than this? (“The proud have forged a lie against me, but I will keep thy precepts with my whole heart.” Psal.119:69.) Let a wise and experienced soul, I Cor.10:15, judge by seeing him in his conceits, his farewells, and conceited way of taking leave of everything that’s good, if we admit the Free Gospel, Rom.3:31 with Rom.6:15, whether this Preacher be not a thing hugely conceited? “But ye are forgers of lies, ye are all physicians of no value.” Job 13:4.
Satisfaction of Christ
Away with your blind faith (Ps.38:10) upon acts of coming to you don't know whom or what! The Lord to be pleased to give me (John 6:68,69) Gospel faith, discerning faith upon Satisfaction made, and made for me, and made for my sins already, not to be made at this day, before I set out of doors. And though I cannot bring my heart to come, yet the Satisfaction (Rom.5:11) which Christ hath made for my sins can and doth bring me to come to the Glory of God by Christ. I there see the prevalence of the Satisfaction made, and the propriety of the Satisfaction sealed and settled in the Lord’s Covenant to be for me, I must see this by Gospel light of God the Spirit (I Jn.1:1, 4:13,14,) if ever I come to Christ, I say, with mine eyes opened, and not as the preachers do generally teach me to come to Christ blindfold (Rom.12:6;) for they make no distinction in the acts of believing, as if all faith lay in one act, or, in the act of coming. Away with all your precarious satisfactions, your precautious consolations! I look to what I see, the positive, proper satisfaction made by Christ. (Eph.1:7 or 2:7) I find encouragement to accent to this proposition as true, the satisfaction of Christ made to God was for me, in order to procure a believing heart to come (II Cor.5:15, I Cor.6:20 & Jn.10:10) - and rest my soul on Christ because I have the discoveries already which were procured by the same satisfaction. By faith, I saw his righteousness and blood were for me (Ps.49:15) in particular, and when I came in motion faith adventuring it was because I had this sight (John 6:40) distinctly before I came. For when I came, I came to Christ upon a (John 1:16) certainty discovered – a satisfaction made.
Sin & Confession
In my relation to my sin by Adam I am a sinner; as in relation to my grace experienced through Jesus Christ, I am nevertheless at the same time, in this different way of relation a gracious person too. Moreover, the gracious person in respect of Christ and the grace of God Quickening him, doth by virtue of that grace comes to Christ, notwithstanding his other polluted relation, in respect of the body of this death. (Rom.7:24) And so far as the polluted relation, or relation to sinful nature, which is pollution remained, so far I remain all my days after the New Birth a poor Sinner. Neither can I come to Christ, believing in his name, but all that sin dwelling in me is brought along with me. I know of no saint on this side of Heaven, but he daily comes as a Sinner to Jesus Christ, if he comes daily to him. Don't flatter the Saints to make them think of themselves in their nature relation to old Adam better than they are. They come to Christ with both pollution and derived graces too. Pollutions which are spread before the Lord for more influential sanctification, with graces in begun sanctification, but above all with the Spirit of Grace to carry on their communion with Jesus Christ. Sin and Corruption in Saints do make them as really, though not so specifically (for I cannot hit upon a clearer word to express it,) Sinners, as any drunkard or swearer in the world are sinners. They are therefore as truly filthy in that body of death, or in their corrupt natures related to old Adam, as they were truly filthy, though not so measurably filthy, before their first washing. The old Adam part never alters the relation so long as it keeps its being, and that is as long as the children of God are in this world. Oh, what work is there and must be for God the Spirit, as Comforter, to come and act upon the Foundation of God the Father and God the Son! It is God that worketh in us (through) God (from) God. (Gen.19:24 – the LORD from the LORD.) Now under a Work of God the Spirit, they are Quickened from the dead and quickened by, as well as co-quickened, or mystically quickened together with Christ for that end; and yet they come not to Christ with their sins that Christ might have communion with their sins; but that he might influentially convey pardon of the sin, purgation of the faculty, and communion with the Person.
Sin & Confession
I will shut up this prolonged chapter with some account of the nature of this practical part of the Gospel and of my own experimental going to Christ with my sins. An elect vessel of God having the heart changed by the Spirit of Christ ought to go, and accordingly, and by the operation of the Holy Ghost doth go to Christ with all his sins which are seen in his own heart and ways. Herein he transacts with Christ confessedly and fiducially in the use and under the virtue of this One Sacrifice, (Heb.9:28,) about his once bearing our sins for purgation and conveying of his Holy Spirit, by his lying under their pollution, as well as in that act for pardon by his lying under their guilt.
This elect chosen vessel transacting thus by the Faith of the Operation of God (Col.2:12) towards Christ, comes in that lively change made in the soul, in the Day of the Lord's Power; (Ps.110:3;) then he comes I say, and with the most humble admirations of the Riches of Grace, (Eph.2:7 & 1:7,) and as one of the peculiar people of the Most High, (I Pet.2:9,) called out of darkness into his marvelous light, in the joy of faith; (Phil.1:25;) saying, “Lord, all this filthiness and uncleanliness in my heart and life, of which thy Holy Spirit hath convinced me of, to be inherently in my own nature, the sin that dwells in me, as by nature related to the first Adam, was by Judicial Imputation of the Father once laid upon Thee, Lord Jesus Christ; that through thy Precious Blood shed I might receive the purifying; and thou by the Infiniteness of thy Own Self bearing away all my sins, guilt and filth, with power of Ransom; and rinsing me in the glorious Laver, I am made clean mystically in Thee, in the Infinite Fountain of the Blood of Thee, the God-Man, and in this Once mystical cleansing me from all, I stand mystically in Thee my Head, without fault before the Throne of God; and though personally in myself I am now spotted as to time, and by nature black and uncomely, yet under the strengthening Virtue of thy Redeeming Blood, I wait for the Hope of Righteousness by Faith to be hereafter personally without spot, and blameless with Thee the Lamb forever.” This is the substance thereof, I go by faith to God daily. In this Faith in the Holy Spirit, I perform all the acts of my ministry. In this Faith, I daily die to Sin. In this Faith, I live above the world. In this Faith, I am careful to maintain good works. In this Faith I have peace. In this Faith I have communion, and sometimes joy unspeakable and full of glory. In one word, in this Faith I delight in the Second Coming of my Lord, and breathe to see Him upon the solemn throne, with many crowns upon his Head, and Judgment; when all Christ's work designed both on me and others, under his own Grace, shall be completely finished. Thus, as through God's Spirit, I'm set for the defense of the Gospel, so by him I firmly contend for the same, as a piece of our most Holy Faith once delivered to the Saints.
Sin & Temptation
Can I suppose that the believer who has to do with Christ as the Pearl of Price, having been given grace to part with all his church riches for Him, his natural praying, his natural reading, his natural hearing of sermons and lectures; it may be, his writing and repeating them in the family, what things were gain to him, those he counts loss for Christ, is yet the man who in his trade in buying and selling, is not got above that sensual temptation to lie or to deal unjustly? Certainly, there is such an influence and pleasure upon, and in that soul from Christ, who deals in this One Pearl of Great Price, (“who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had, and bought it,” Mt.13:46,) that such gross temptations shall not by and by beset his soul.
Supralapsarian Glory of Christ
This Consideration of the WORD, and the WORD of God, Jn.1:1; Rev.19:13, which is the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ in the Apostle John’s Writings, doth manifestly speak of Him as Mediator, though of him as One that was God before he was Mediator. “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life.” (Jn.1:1) “And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood; and his name is called The Word of God.” (Rev.19:3) It is a Name that sets out the Son of God, as he was designed to be our Teacher and Prophet from the written Word, to instruct us in that Mysterious Way of Salvation by Himself that lay (up and down) hidden in the Old Testament, which men might otherwise read so often, and not see to be the Way of Christ. “Thus saith the LORD, thy Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel; I am the LORD thy God which teaches thee to profit, which leads thee by the way that thou shouldest go.” (Isa.48:17) “And all thy children shall be taught of the LORD; and great shall be the peace of thy children.” (Isa.54:13) “I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go; I will guide thee with mine eye.” (Psa.32:8) (See likewise, Psa.71:17; Isa.2:3; Psa.119:102; Psalm 25:8-12, and many other places &c.) It is for this reason that he is styled the WORD; as much as to say, the whole WORD of God is fulfilled in and by Him; and therefore, says the Holy Ghost, he shall go by that name from his making out the Old Testament so clearly to us in all God’s Mind about the Gospel. “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son.” (Heb.1:1-2) “And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.” (Lk.24:27) Likewise, as it was said of him, he was called the WORD. (So ‘logos’ is from ‘lego’ in Greek; that is, to tell, to say, to speak.) “For Moses truly said unto the fathers, a prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto me; he shall ye hear in all things whatsoever he shall say unto you.” (Acts 3:22) Again his Name, the WORD, suits with him as Mediator; because, it is written of him, as the Psalmist saith, “in the volume of the book it is written of me, &c.” (Psa.40:7) The Word was God, Jn.1:1, there is all his Mediatorial Person, Rom.9:5; namely, God and Man too, or God-Man; for he was God before he was the WORD. He was the WORD, because the Word hath made Him appear to have been set up from everlasting, Prov.8:23, and therein covenanted with from the beginning, to be Mediator. And so it was He, the WORD, according to this Covenant from everlasting, that in Time was made flesh. “By the word of the LORD were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth.” (Psa.33:6) “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” (Jn.1:14) Now, says John, “the WORD was God.”
What is that, but plainly to reveal to us, that he was God before he was the WORD, or before he was set up to be Incarnate Mediator, though setup thus from everlasting; or, as the Holy Ghost further explains it, “in the beginning, before his Works of old;” or, “in the beginning of his way, or ever the earth was.” Prov.8:22-23. Compare these verses from the Proverbs, with those in John 1:1,2, and you will find that same phrase, “from everlasting,” to be brought only up to this, which he calls a beginning; (“in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God;”) namely, a beginning with Christ-Mediator, before his works of old; all his works being designed in an absolute subserviency to His Glory, (“the LORD hath made all things for himself; yea, even the wicked for the day of evil,” Prov.16:4;) under this Settlement of His about the Mediator; He first ordained his Son in the Settlement to be a Man, Col.1:15, then ordained us Men, and presented a number of them to his Son; (set up the Man-Wisdom;) then ordained their creation under (Deut.32:8, Eph.1:11) one Common Head of a promised multitude, children and strangers, yet both without sin; then ordained the Fall of every One in that Common Head of Nature; then ordained the Restoration of the Children by this Elder Brother, and passed over all the strangers, or such whom he never appointed to acquaintance with these things. “Unto you, it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God.” (Lk.8:10) “The secret of the LORD is with them that fear him, and he will show them his covenant.” (Psa.25:14) Thus one thing fell in upon another in this same from everlasting, which though we cannot take in without a succession in our thoughts, yet they all lay together, though in the most perfect Order, in the Divine Mind. We behold successively, but God saw them all at once.
Supralapsarian Glory of Christ
Christ was in this same beginning of God’s ways, before his open Works, the WORD by Appointment, and therefore called the WORD by Revelation, according to that Appointment; because so he was the Mediatorial WORD, Rev.3:14 before the Word written was written, and before he had said, his Son should be Shiloh, the sent One, (“the scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be,” Gen.49:10,) before he was foretold to be Immanuel, God with us, Isa.7:14, (expounded by Matt.1:23,) and before he was declared to be Messiah, or Christ, the Anointed One, as his Name there in Dan.9:25, is discovered; and fulfilled in the Unction, when the Holy Ghost came upon him, as in the Evangelists, and anointed him, as we read in Acts 10:38, “how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power.” “Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the Most Holy. Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks; the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times.
And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself.” (Dan.9:24-26) Consequently, the Apostle tells us, because he should lose nothing of the Glory of his Essence, by this Name of his Office, the WORD, he had the same creating Power with God; God and he being ONE, Jn.10:30, in making all things out of nothing. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was at the beginning with God.” (Jn.1:1-2) The meaning is, that in the beginning of all God’s Works, he was with God, as the Con-Cause, to co-create them, and was God the SON, the co-worker of them with his Father. So it follows, “all things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made.” (Jn.1:3) Insomuch, that although these texts substantially prove the Godhead of Christ, both as he is the True God, and as he created all things; yet they prove, very cogently too, that this Excellent Person, as the WORD, is shadowed out in that Name, as Mediator, while it goes along with other proof, how antecedently he had a relation to God, above it all, and that is to be God in One Person, with God in another Person. It is evident then that the Name WORD, points us to Christ, as God-Man. He had never been called the WORD, if he had never been appointed to reveal the Word, and execute the Office of Mediator between God and us.
Supralapsarian Glory of Christ
Christ Himself entered into a federal obligation with the Father to secure the elect, before and after their fall in Adam. This federal obligation of their mystical, transcendent Head limited their fall, that it could be extended no further than their nature relation to Adam, and not to their Grace and Glory relation to Himself. Also, in that federal obligation, Christ stood for their redemption, as the Spirit stood for their regeneration, from their fall in nature Adam, to raise them above the obstacles that stood in the way of God's communion love, in the conveyances of grace, and foretastes of glory here. And hereby though they fell, yet on this account, they could not fall but with secret discrimination. Accordingly, in the federal and mystical Union, they were preserved for the influential and conjugal union, which the family of hell, and they who are near of kin to the devil were never capable of. Hence, when the apostle is setting out these two companies excellency in Jude, he tells us, the elect were preserved in Christ Jesus, then that must be in this mystical and transcendent union, above all open nature relation to Adam, and secured in a secret union and relation to Christ. For it is in Christ Jesus, and then called, Jude 1. So God and Christ had the elect in their eye, even at and before the fall in Eden, according to Eternal Purposes and Settlements.
Union to Christ before Faith
Christ hath hold of the elect, and will not part with one of them so, even whilst they have no hold of Christ. Here we come again to Union before Faith, which makes a separation of the elect from Christ impossible. Union is the fruit and result of Election-Acts, therefore I call it Election-Union. He who passeth immediately from Election into Faith, without any notice of intermediate union in Christ between these two, quite slips the joint. The blessings of the Gospel lay hold of a person in this Union before the person can lay hold of the blessings. (As a man is a Goat before he rejects Christ, so a man is a Sheep before he receives Christ.) For I would query of our brethren who deny any sort of Justification before Faith, whether they think a sinner doth believe, in order to his Justification, as he is in Christ, or as he is out of Christ, for the union lies plainly in the being in him, as the branch is in the stock? If they will have it, that the sinner out of Christ, in order to his union into Christ, and Justification by him, believes; then the tree brings forth good fruit, (“for a good tree bringeth not forth corrupt fruit; neither doth a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit,” Lk.6:43,) the good fruit, Faith, before it is a good tree grafted into Christ, contrary to Matthew 7:17-18 and Ephesians 2:5, in his Quickening with Christ, or Quickening in the same Head mystically, and then influentially, wherein he was chosen. On the other hand, if our brethren grant, that a sinner believes not, Jn.10:26, till he is apprehended of and in Christ Jesus, (as surely he does not,) then the case must stand thus in the influential union, as we Antinomians, for in this Mystery the Law hath nothing to do, hold it.
Christ in apprehending us doth first by Himself unite the person secretly to Himself, and in that act, he gives the Spirit, in that same instant the Spirit works life, and in due time that life issues forth in Faith, and joins the will to Christ, from a Power of believing to lay hold on the Person and Righteousness of the Son of God. Now by virtue of Christ’s act passing upon me, the Spirit works under that act, apprehends and renews my will to believe that the whole Righteousness of Christ is thereby, or in that act of Christ that has passed, cast upon my person, and that in this Righteousness alone now discerned, I am justified, and stand complete before God in Christ, whom I receive, though I have ever so much sin in and of my Adam-self. “Therefore being justified, by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Rom.5:1. Where the preposition manifests that Faith hath no proper antecedency to what is done in Christ, but is only a means of receiving from and through Christ by the Spirit, what God hath done of mere Grace for the poor sinner. “Tis upon this bottom, the interest God and Christ have in the elect, that the Conversion of the elect is secured, ‘tis not secured by freighting them, nor effected by telling them that without this or that they will be separated from Christ forever; “and see that you honor him more for the time to come, lest everlasting shame and confusion do at last cover you.” The Spirit of God, who is the Spirit of Truth, Jn.16:13, will never work by this way of a lie. How! Separated forever! And everlasting shame covers you! How do these things stand with a firm belief of Election of all those that are saved? Mr. Hunt will never be able to reconcile it. And did he think this fright, on the other hand, would convert any vessels that were chosen, when God has chosen Christ the way, Jn.14:6, which is quite another way, to convert them?
For instead of pronouncing Damnation upon them whom the Lord knows to be the non-elect, even Damnation upon these for their sin, he chides the same persons, whilst he sees them under a prospect of being separated forever, to believe in Jesus Christ. If he had not this prospect, but a hope the fright might work upon them as elect, he hath taken the wrong course. For they who preach to fright nature, and not the Gospel to heal nature in the elect, are but bug-bears in Divinity, and instead of calling the children in, scare them out of doors. Mt.12:20. ‘Tis the nature of the Gospel, that it lets out a discovery of the Excellency of Christ to raise and work the heart into a persuasion of interest, where the discovery of the Excellency of Christ Jesus our Lord converts, knits, draws and brings the heart into Christ sweetly and efficaciously. Acts 16:31 & 2:38-41. Indeed ‘tis a brave thing, a desirable experience, when this rich discovery weans it upon sight, and makes the heart esteem Christ more than all the world besides. ‘Tis in the power of Christ I am persuaded, in the light of Christ I am ravished, with the cords of a Man I am drawn, with the arms of the Mighty God I am held; if I am tempted, yet through Christ Jesus I am succored more. It makes me feel to let all go indeed when God will try me and fetch it all away. If I must part with my goods, yet let me never part with Thee, who art Gold tried, Rev.3:18, in the fire.
Let me rather put off a whole globe at once, than put off Thee who art a greater portion than Heaven and Earth, Psal.73:25, and then millions of worlds to me! This indeed is honoring him. But if thou canst not honor him thus, yet elect soul and precious to Jesus still, I tell thee thou hast so strong security in this Rock whilst thou seest it not, believes it not, as never to be dashed against a stone before thee! Everlasting shame shall cover the non-elect. There’s not one of these will ever have their will stand to put on Christ, Gal.3:27, but will love to go to a Heaven of their own, and in their own clothes; but the elect are hidden in Christ, and ‘tis the daily work of the Gospel, that they may be found in Christ.
Work of the Holy Spirit
How can I be in the Spirit; (Rom.8:9;) or live in the Spirit; (I Pet.4:6, Gal.5:25;) or pray in the Spirit; (Eph.6:18;) and pray in the Holy Ghost; (Jude 20;) or, how can I worship God in the Spirit, or in the Holy Ghost; (Phil.3:3, John 4:24;) if the Holy Ghost be not the principle of my life, (Gal.3:3,) of my praying, of my Gospel worship? For the text tells me, “God is a Spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.” (John 4:24) What is the meaning of that phrase in Spirit? Why, the meaning is, that to worship God in Spirit is to worship him in the Holy Ghost. The Spirit of God is the principle of worship, wherever the worshiper is brought to full participation in the mystery of true Gospel Worship. “The hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in Spirit and in Truth; for the Father seeks such to worship him.” Such? Whom? Why, such as must have the Spirit to be their principle in worship, whereby to know whom they worship. (John 4:22) And thus it is that they have the “spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge” of Christ, (Eph.1:17,) while the true worshipers have Christ together with the Father for the Object of their Gospel worship. It's this Spirit of wisdom, the Holy Ghost himself, who is also the Spirit of Revelation of the Object, who is the Spirit in which also God is rightly worshiped, as in the principle thereof. How can I be, and live, and pray, and worship in the Spirit, if God the Spirit be not my principle in and from which, through Christ, I live in the Spirit, and pray in the Spirit? So the Spirit given us to be earnest in our hearts, is God’s bestowing (Ps.16:5) Himself upon us through Christ by the Spirit, in giving us of the same kind of blessedness, which he will bestow upon us in Heaven.
Work of the Holy Spirit
As the righteousness of God in Christ abides on a sinner; (Rom.8:33;) so in this righteousness abiding there is a foundation of God's Free Grace Justifying, upon which the Spirit doth not only work renewing grace; as faith, repentance, humility, watchfulness, and the whole of sanctification, (I Pet.1:2,) joy and comfort, as likewise stability and increase of faith, with perseverance therein; but the Spirit abides in the soul as a continual Principle of Grace. (I Jn.4:13) He dwells there secretly, silently, surely, faithfully and federally, (Is.59:21,) even while he suspends his gracious Operations; at those times that he resents our follies, and corrects our disorders in this life; and at what time he will be grieved (Eph.4:30) to a ceasing of his joyous Operations, and his glad witness with our spirits, (Rom.8:16,) and thereby putting us to grief, and making our hearts sad, by the Testimonies, Texts and Arguments, which he brings against our follies; whilst He changes the theme that he normally insists upon, and alters his Voice in the Gospel into heavy tidings, which will make any new creature to be sad in heart, and full of grief and heaviness! Forasmuch then as he is the principle of this grief in the soul, (II Cor.7:9,11,) he Himself is said to be grieved in the provocation of it. For this cause, he further convinces us of the sin of quenching the Spirit (I Thes.5:19) in his work.
Work of the Holy Spirit
The Holy Spirit Operation in all these respects; as follows, on the Gospel, on the heart in moving the faculties towards the Object, both as the Worker and the Principle of the motion, and all under the Righteousness of God through Christ, depends upon a Cause, and so will work Salvation by nothing that is below the true means in the hand of that Cause. The Cause of the Spirit's working salvation is jointly the Father and the Son. The preacher then ceases to preach the Gospel, for by sinking in his offers he ceases to ascribe glory to God in the joint cause of the Spirit's operation. Now that cause is fore-ordination of the elect to salvation by an act of the Father, and redemption of the elect to that salvation by an act of the Son, and fore-operation of the Spirit upon the means of that salvation in his Applicatory Work, while he is pursuing salvation from the Father and the Son, who have certainly begun it, and advanced it in and by Jesus Christ. Salvation as it is managed by the Holy Ghost, depends entirely upon the joint Cause, of it in the Father and the Son, as to what hath been wrought a long time ago by God and Christ towards the ability of the sinner in the work of faith.
These carry the work of salvation by the Holy Ghost still on further from the beginnings thereof. The Spirit works all his works in salvation by the Father's Pattern (John 5:17;) accordingly, the Spirit works them in salvation upon all the elect alone, as well as in Providence for the elect's sake, (Mt.24:22,) according to what the Father and Christ have done. The Spirit operation is a new creature in the work of faith, which is called the operation of God. (Col.2:12) So that God and Christ do cause salvation to be wrought by the Spirit’s pre-operation upon fit means. (John 9:6) And salvation in believing is wrought through the Spirit’s working effectually on the Gospel, to make it right preaching from the joint Cause thereof. And then it is He forms Christ in the soul, (Gal.4:19,) or lets in the Object of faith through the eye of faith, fall in directly upon the newborn soul, that hath this ability created in it to discern Christ. And so Christ is formed in the heart, after the manner in which any outward object is formed in the eye. When I say I have such a man or object in my eye, it is not meant that the man or other object is in my eye locally, that's impossible; but they are in my eye objectively, as I see them. So Christ formed in us, or Christ in us the hope of glory, (Col.1:27,) is not to be understood that Christ at the right hand of God is locally and substantially formed in us, or is so in us the hope of glory; but it speaks, that Christ who is at the right hand of God is the Object of faith, the substantial Object, let in spiritually to the soul born from above, that the soul sees Him by a living act of faith, as he is represented in the Word. And this is Christ formed in us. When we come spiritually to have a complete sight of Christ in the glass of the Gospel. It is the Spirit's work from a cause to form Christ in the soul. He produces faith as an eye to discern God in Christ, and especially by discerning Christ's Person and Righteousness.
Work of the Spirit to Glorify Christ
"I am the Lord thy God that teaches thee to profit." Herein is His Prophetical Office, still under the Holy Ghost's Anointing. God teaches by Christ, and Christ teaches by the Holy Ghost. If God doth not teach us by the Mediator, there's no other Doctor that can teach our souls to profit; and the prophetical office of Christ, whereby we are taught of the Mediator, depends, by reason of the Covenant of Redemption- Grace, upon the unction of the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of the Lord God, says he, is upon me to preach the Gospel (Is.61:1,) as he says elsewhere in this glorious Prophesy of Isaiah, which leads thee by the way that thou shouldest go. There's his regal Office, the ruling and conducting part of His mediation; his Office as a Leader and Commander (Is.55:4,) and the Captain of our Salvation (Heb.2:10,) that still goes before us, under the same Divine Unction of the Spirit of God. For 'tis the Lord God and His Spirit hath sent me, he tells us. And this of the Spirit here is that for which I produce the Text to give the emphasis of all in the present matter before us. His Spirit hath sent me. He hath sent me for the Church's sake, he hath sent me as Redeemer for them; he hath sent me as Teacher for them; he hath sent me as Leader for them, to bring them up out of great Tribulation (Rev.7:14,) and make way for the Spouse to bring her up out of the Wilderness, leaning on Her Beloved (Song 8:5,6;) he hath sent me under his own anointing, to bring her up with all the powders of the merchant (Song 3:6,) and go before the glorious company in the Head of all the train. He hath sent me into the execution of my whole office, He, together with the Father, hath done it for the Church; in the undeniable argument that the Holy Spirit was jointly in the Council and Constitution of all before the World was; or, from Everlasting; and so cogently enough proves the Everlasting Love of God the Spirit to the Church, for whose sake all the Supralapsarian; or, before-fall measures of these ways and means, were taken up with God too before the world began.
Tis to this purpose our Lord Christ hath spoken those last words of John 15:9, “Continue in my Love.” Christ had told his Disciples in the foregoing words (I have opened) how the Father loved Christ, and how Christ his Disciples, and therein and therewith the Elect; for it is all the same Love of one Spouse, Christ hath no divided Love towards her. And here is now how the Spirit comes in and joins the Love-Wonder! He is the Bond of this union by continuing it. “Continue ye in my love.” There’s the Spirit, the efficient Bond of this everlasting Spouse-Union. So that “continue ye in my Love” is not mere bidding them to continue, but blessing them into continuance, as the settlements of the Grace-Union, on the Holy Ghost’s part, are provided for continuance under subordinate counsels, that work out the steadfastness of the elect after calling, against the creature’s mutability. Continue ye in my Love is blessing them with receiving the Holy Ghost (John 20:22,) in order to continue in the Love of Christ. (John 16:14,15) For, as the Spirit takes and shows us Christ’s Love, so he holds us sweetly there. Continue in it; it is not a Direction, and so a Freewill Continuance, as to say, do you so of your own nature, and creature Freewill; continue thus to please my Father (John 10:30) and me (nevertheless it is your nature duty so to do;) it is no direction unto self-power and readiness, but it is a donation, it is given you of my Father, and I will send the Comforter unto you from the Father, for that End. (John 15:26) The Holy Ghost shall come down upon you for this continuance, and you shall be kept faithful in your love to me, and so by Him abide in my Love. Here’s my Father’s hand for it, He hath loved you (John 17:23;) and here is my own Hand besides, as He hath loved me I have loved you (for you see I interpret the “place of the Scripture,” Acts 8:32, by laying this and another text together;) and; says he, the Spirit loves you; He has a will (John 16:7) co-equal, as the Spirit, with the Father’s will and Mine, though as Comforter, I will send him from the Father; and when the Comforter has come He will sweetly hold you to it, and make it fall easy.
Work of the Spirit to Glorify Christ
Now all those things, naming Him Christ, calling Him Messiah, revealing Him to be the Lord's Anointed, forming Him in the womb, and anointing Him in the open face of men, were all done in relation to the Church. If Christ had not had a Church given Him, the Father had never sent Him, the Son had never given Himself in the Incarnate Union, the Holy Ghost had never formed that Flesh, nor created that reasonable human soul, nor had anointed the Man Jesus Christ in that wonderful Union God-Man. This evidently proves the Love of the Holy Ghost to the Elect for the sake of whom Christ is thus a Saviour. As the Holy Ghost reveals His Names anciently, and all as suited to the mediatorial Office and Relation of Jesus Christ, before He was a made manifest, and gives Him one and the same sort of Names, before, as after, tis plain the Spirit had an eye upon us, loved us in Christ before we believed, before we were born, before the New Testament began, all through the Old Testament, and then, because God, why not as well from the Dates of Everlasting?
Universal Ruin in Adam & Particular Effectual Restoration in Christ
All fell, but all fell not alike. The elect of God fell as certainly in Adam, as the rest, all being alike Adam’s natural seed, yet still, they fell discriminately in the secret eye of God. (Eph.2:4,5) They all fell into the same openly poor and miserable condition, but not all fell into the same secret condition, nor at all into the same relation, farther than the corrupt relation of their nature part in Adam. (Eph.2:3) All fell towards hell, but not all to it. All fell by the Devil’s craft, but all fell not to be integral of the Devil’s company, or constitutively, to be one moment of the Devil’s number. And blessed be the Lord, I find so much evidence of this doctrine in the Scriptures, and so much comfort of this doctrine in my own soul, that I can through grace meditate upon the reverse, or that which is written upon the backside of this doctrine, I mean the terror of it, and yet whilst mine heart stands in awe, (Ps.4:4;) not afraid, according to that gracious promise made unto the Church, Isaiah 33:18, with verse 17. “Thine heart shall meditate terror” - “thine eyes shall see the King in his beauty; they shall behold the land that is very far off.” ‘Tis not the black doctrine of Calvin, as hath been represented, but the beautiful doctrine of Christ, as hath
been experienced. (Rom.9:11,14,15,18,21,22) These non-elect fell so as they were never restored to this day; but the elect, notwithstanding their fall at the same time, and in the same natural head, yet fell within the bounds of effectual restoration.
Note: The majority of these extracts are from Hussey’s GLORY OF CHRIST, though a few extracts from his next work, (published only one year later in 1707,) GOD’S OPERATIONS OF GRACE, are also interlaced throughout.
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