-- CHAPTER VII: A brief exposition of Jude, by way of confirmation of the precedent doctrine

-- CHAPTER VII: A brief exposition of Jude, by way of confirmation of the precedent doctrine

gang, which in those times were then extant, whom he accordingly points unto, ver. 6, 'Of this sort are they,' &c. So as those examples then were parallels of what in after ages was to come, which differing sort of professors extant together, will continue until the end, and be found to hold true, even at the very last. For at Christ's coming, Mat.

25:1, 2, our Lord tells us, that 'then,' that is, at that time 'The kingdom of heaven shall be like unto ten virgins, &c. And five of them were wise, and five were foolish.' There are as many of the one sort as of the other, and both had lamps, and both slept; yet the one sort fell short, and were shut out; the other were preserved, and taken in.

CHAPTER VII

A brief exposition of Jude, by way of confirmation of the precedent doctrine, that God's discriminating grace appears in the vast difference he puts between enlightened temporaries and his elect that persevere, with uses and directions proper to the doctrine out of that epistle.

This hath been the doctrine, and here is a whole epistle made on purpose for it, both for the confirmation of it, by the greatest and most famous instance of all others (which I therefore reserved last) and plentifully affording the most pertinent uses fitted unto the doctrine.

An introduction to the exposition. Before I can set out the doctrinal points and uses contained in this epistle, I must first speak some things as to, 1. The inscription.

2. The time, or season.

3. The occasion of writing the epistle.

1. The inscription, To the preserved in Christ. This inscription or dedication of the epistle in general speaks the argument of the whole.

'To the preserved in Christ,' which comes in after 'beloved in God the Father,' of which reading afterwards. A strange and uncouth title, and not found in other apostolical epistles; as Beza also observes, he giving withal this witness concerning it, that this passage alone fully testifies or argues the epistle to have fallen from an apostle's pen. It is indeed full of a spiritual emphasis in itself, and also breatheth forth the spirit and design of the whole epistle, which is the sum of this doctrine I have insisted on; for the true reason and ground of his saluting the Christians under this title of 'the preserved in Christ,' was the occasion of his writing against another sect and company of men, said to be fore-ordained to a contrary condemnation, ver. 4, which two sorts of men he sets as in opposition each to other, as those words, ver. 20, 'But you,' &c., do expressly shew, besides the evidence of the thing itself. And this so glorious a preservation, and that other so dreadful a condemnation, do take up the whole. And the epistle containeth nothing else; I say nothing else, but what belongeth unto these two: we are therefore called the more deeply to consider this argument, in that one whole and entire piece of Holy

Writ, should be on purpose penned by the Holy Ghost upon this argument, even as Solomon's Book of Ecclesiastes was to show the vanity and vexation in all worldly things. I shall not be solicitous about any accurateness of analysis, but will endeavour to give the rays and gleam of it under these heads.

2. The season and time of writing thereof. Jude lived the last of the apostles but old John; and at this time when he wrote this it may seem that Peter, and James, and Paul were dead, with the rest of those apostles, who did not write anything, who yet in their preaching had foretold this great apostasy Jude here speaks of. And this (as Estius hath observed) may not obscurely be gathered from his manner of citing the other apostles: ver. 17, 'But, beloved, remember the words which were spoken before of the apostles of our

Lord Jesus Christ,' as speaking of them now dead, and not then extant, as to whose living testimony, otherwise, he might have had recourse; and therefore also bids them remember their words, as of persons now gone off the stage; whereas Peter, when he wrote his second epistle concerning the same men that Jude here writes against, speaks in another strain: 2d Epistle, 3:2, 'Be mindful of the commandments of us the apostles,' the most being yet alive as well as himself. Not so Jude. However, it is certain our Jude wrote in the latter end of that apostolical ago, or the last of those primitive times, when the profession and course of Christianity had now ran out well nigh (if not the full) forty years since Christ's ascension into heaven.

In which space as perfect an essay and discovery has been made of what period, end, or issue, the profession of all, or any sort of professors converted by the apostles had come unto. Forty years was long enough for such a trial, and it is very likely that, as the people of Israel's coming out of Egypt, and falling in the wilderness through unbelief, Caleb and Joshua holding out to the end, is made in the New Testament a type of those primitive Christians, and of us all to the end of the world, and the issue of us all, one way or other, as 1

Cor. 10, Heb. 3. 4, and is here likewise in the first and chief place of all other old instances remembered by Jude,—ver. 5, 'I will therefore put you in remembrance, though you once know this, how that the Lord having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed them that believed not,'—so that in the very space of time there might some correspondency have been intended by God, that is, between that time of tentation then, and this of the first primitive ages, which was forty years to both.

Now towards the declinings of that age it was that Paul wrote to the Hebrews; and Peter likewise his second epistle, after Paul; and then

Jude, this his epistle after that of Peter's. For Peter therein setteth a seal of confirmation to all Paul's epistles, and also to that of his to the Hebrews, in a special manner in his second epistle, third chapter; and both those epistles touch much upon this argument of temporaries, and backsliders. But Jude wrote after Peter, for he in a manner cites him, if you compare Peter's third chapter, third verse,

and this of Jude, ver. 17, 18; as also because he takes up the instances which Peter useth in his second and third chapters; yea, the very words whereby Peter had set forth apostates, in that epistle of Judo; following Peter herein, as Mark in his Gospel doth that of Matthew.

3. As for the occasion. The thing being thus stated as for the time or season, the occasion now follows. That age aforesaid of Christians, which had thus enjoyed the apostles' ministry whilst they were all or most of them alive, I may compare unto the season of a hot and bright summer, such an one as no age ever since can be supposed to have had the light and heat of.

I also might assimilate John Baptist's and Christ's time to have been as the spring or beginning of the gospel, as Christ expressly calls it,

Mat. 11:12, 13, Luke 16:16; but the very last of that age, wherein Jude and Peter wrote his second epistle, were as the autumn at the end of the summer; and this of Jude was the last of that autumn, and so the declining of that age as the fall of the leaf, which John calls the last hour, namely, of that first day of the apostolic age, and not of the world only in the evening of which he wrote, and he proves it by this very token, 1 John 2:18, 19, 'Even now there are many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time. They went out from us,' &c.

And now to return to this my begun allusion. This age was as the autumn, and so fall of the leaf, after that foregone summer, in which the goodly fruit of many withered. It is Jude's own comparison, ver.

12; he compareth those apostate professors unto 'trees whose fruit withered,' δένδρα φθινοπωρινὰ; the use of which words is to signify trees of autumn* (as is well known), which is translated 'whose fruit withereth,' because fruit and leaves, and all fell off at the expiring of this age, as trees in autumn use to do.

Now, there having fallen out so great a falling away of many, as Christ also foretold should he afore the end of that ago, which was at the dissolution of Jerusalem (which also fell out towards the end of this autumn),—Mat. 24:12, 13, 'Because iniquity shall abound, the

love of many shall was cold. But he that shall endure to the end, the same shall be saved,'—hence these saints that continued to keep faith and a good conscience to the end, these were precious saints indeed; as in the account of God and Christ, so of these apostles that were left alive. And Peter so styles them in the beginning of that his second epistle: ver. 1, 'To them that have obtained like precious faith with us;' that is, with us the apostles of Christ, and called by the 'communication of the divine nature,' ver. 3; and Jude in like manner here. And the mind of this his frontispiece and dedication is as if he had said, Oh you preserved ones in Christ, I congratulate you, and Christianity preserved in you, that but for whom the Christian professors of this decayed age had been like unto Sodom and Gomorrah (unto whom Jude compareth those other apostates, ver.

7); but you remain as lasting monuments of perseverance, let this be written on your tombs, 'The preserved in Christ, and called.' In you, and upon you, hath that other part of Christ's prophecy been fulfilled, Mat. 24:24, 'For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, that shall shew great signs and wonders, insomuch that if it were possible‚ they shall deceive the very elect.' And such are you; it is apparent that you are them these false Christians could not deceive.

3. The weight and moment of the matter of this epistle‚ which is industriously insinuated in his preface unto it: ver. 3, 'Beloved, when

I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints,' which hath been in these times vehemently opposed, and in danger to be lost.

In which words I do take notice of three things:

(1.) That it was a more than ordinary impulse which he had upon him, caused him to write of this matter and in this manner. It is true indeed, says he, 'I had a great desire upon me to write to you,' as some other apostles have done, 'I gave all diligence or study;' that is,

I had a purpose and attention of mind to write to you, and waited for the Holy Ghost to come with a stream upon me, &c. But this proceeds not merely out of such an ordinary provocation; for when I did attempt, I found a necessity, Ανάγκην ἔσχον (it is undertranslated to say, 'I thought it needful'), I was constrained or impelled, a necessity lay upon me; thus Calvin. And therefore seeing

I was thus singularly carried on by the Holy Ghost to write what now I do, it is your part and duty, and a necessity lieth upon you also, to attend unto it.

(2.) Secondly, Whereas this my own desire of writing had pitched upon matters of salvation, as they did in common concern all us

Christians,—his word is 'the common salvation,'—that is, to have delivered such points of doctrine about salvation in a promiscuous way, as Paul and other my fellow apostles have done in their epistles; when, says he, I began to set pen to paper by the impulse of the Holy

Ghost, I was diverted by him from out of that common channel and general road into this particular channel, to write singularly and alone of this argument, the fatal condemnation of many the professors of this age, and the grace vouchsafed you that are sincere

Christians in the preservation of you. I found my spirit bound up and confined to this; and this the Holy Ghost directed me unto, and this alone; yea, and by a strong hand constrained me, as he did the prophet, Isa. 8; I was φερομενος, carried as with a stream into this channel, and it is all the message which the Holy Ghost hath, as by my hand, to deliver to you; yea, and though Peter had written afore of the same sort of persons as dreadful things as I do, yet the Holy

Ghost would have me to do it again, he would have this word set on by two witnesses; and therefore, beloved, do you entertain and regard this with the greatest attention, as that which is more than ordinarily intended for you by God.

(3.) For, thirdly, these things which I write are wholly for you and your instruction, and therefore 'I write to you,' ver. 3; it is to you only

I wrote this. For as for those others whom I write about, I know it to be as to them but as a sentence of death and condemnation (to

which, he says, they were ordained) pronounced by the Holy Ghost upon them, except some few there yet may be on whom he did shew compassion with difference, ver. 22, as of whom there may as yet be hopes; and therefore take it all as yours, directed and intended for your admonition. And accordingly we may observe how, beginning with the apostates, from ver. 4, he ends with the preserved saints; with divers exhortations, from verse 20 to the end; so as indeed what he had so much enlarged upon concerning these apostates from verse 4 to verse 20, served but to afford the stronger consolation and more powerful provocations to incite the called unto those duties he from the first had intended to exhort them unto. Those that he so declares against had not been always profane ones of the world, that had never been wrought upon, or that knew not God; but such as had been eminent professors of Christianity, but now were corrupted in faith and manners more than the worst of the heathen. The wrathful vials of woe and destruction he denounceth against them, as determined and prophesied by Enoch, ver. 16, 17, and by the apostles, ver. 18. This for the introduction; the exposition itself follows.

SECTION I

The first part of the exposition of Jude's epistle, wherein is demonstrated God's discriminating grace, as it appears in the vast difference God hath put between enlightened temporaries that fall away, and his elect he doth in Christ preserve.

These things premised concerning the occasion, &c., I come to the matter of the epistle itself, which I shall divide into two parts.

Two doctrinals, And two uses suited thereunto.

I. The first part and doctrinal is, the differing fate and condition of these two sorts of persons.

1. Apostates.

2. Preserved ones.

The condition of which apostates is set forth in, (1.) Their sin.

(2.) Their punishment, from verse 4 unto verse 18, 19.

What the condition of the preserved in Christ was, is scatteredly and promiscuously set out up and down in the whole epistle.

And as to this first doctrinal head, there is a singular use made thereof by the apostle, proper thereunto; an use consisting of several directions given upon occasion hereof unto those preserved ones, of what their duties are, that they may still be kept and preserved, and this from verse 21.

And these two—1, the doctrinal part; and, 2, those uses—do make up that which I call the first part of my exposition of this epistle.

In the second part there is, 1. The doctrinal, which concerns the different fountain or original (as in God's heart of old) of both these two so vastly differing conditions of these two sorts of persons.

(1.) The original causes of the preservation of the one, ver. 1, 2, 21, as their having been beloved in God the Father (of which reading afterwards), and given to Christ to be preserved and called, ver. 21,

22.

(2.) The original of that condemnation which befell these other: ver.

4, 'Fore-written of old unto this condemnation.'

This second doctrine, as the former, hath an use shaped out for it, and proper to it, as had the former been to its doctrinal specified;

and that use begins explicitly, ver. 24, 25, in the close and conclusion of the epistle, 'Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, to the only wise God our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, now and ever. Amen.' And this second-mentioned doctrinal, and this use, I cast together, to make up a second part of this epistle, and all serving properly and pertinently unto the main doctrine I at first proposed, concerning discriminating grace towards, &c.; and those two shall be all the uses I mean to make thereof, these being thus made unto my hands by the apostle himself.

I. As to the first part, and therein the first doctrinal head, setting forth the state and condition of these two sorts of persons.

1. What concerns the apostates' condition, which I reduce unto those three heads:

(1.) That these he so inveighs against had been professors of the true Christian religion once; both enlightened professors and eminent professors.

(2.) Their sin and apostasy.

(3.) The judgment denounced against them.

(1.) They were enlightened professors once.

[1.] Ver. 4 speaks thus of them, 'men crept in,' &c. It would seem by that word that there was a solemn admission ordinarily in use amongst professors of Christianity, which admission was carefully heeded and observed, with a strictness and wariness about them, when they were admitted. And the apostles had given all churches warning a forehand that there would be such as would prove false professors in the end, would notwithstanding 'arise from among themselves;' and some that were 'wolves in sheep's clothing,' as Christ gave warning, and Paul warns the Ephesians, Acts 20, who yet

pretended their having had a work of the Holy Ghost upon them, and had been received; yet on their part (they having never been truly called) their admission is termed but as a creeping in amongst the other that were sincere. For as Christ said to him that had not the wedding garment, 'How camest thou hither?' and as John, 'They were never truly of us,' there is one respect for which they are said to be crept in. And it may perhaps be said that many did creep in through negligence and want of strict heed and vigilancy in those that ought to have taken them in upon a thorough knowledge of them. Elders and churches should diligently inquire into whom they receive, which in those decaying times they did not.

[2.] These persons hero in Judo were such as have 'known the grace of God;' for so, ver. 4, it is said they 'turned the doctrine of grace unto wantonness,' both in loose opinions, and also practices, which, if they had not been enlightened in the doctrine of grace more or less, they could not be said to have so perverted the grace of God; that is, the gospel way; for the doctrine it consisted of is styled the grace of God, which taught the contrary: Tit. 2:11, 12, 'For the grace of God, that bringeth salvation, hath appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world,' &c.; and especially the doctrine of free grace revealed therein, and the love of God in Christ.

Likewise they are here said to have once professed the true and only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ, in the same 4th verse; for now it is said of them, they had 'denied him, the Lord that bought them,' whom once they had owned. Professors, then, of Christianity these had been, and received into their churches, though crept in.

They were eminent professors; which the examples he allegeth to set forth, and paint out their condition by, sufficiently shews. These examples are only such as are taken out of the Old Testament (as the manner of the apostles' allegations and applications unto men under the New was to do), yet of such therein, for the most part, as had been of men enlightened in the word and law, and had been persons eminent in their profession in their respective times. He compares

them to such as came forth of Egypt at first, which is attributed to have been done by some light of faith wrought in them, which Moses testifies of them, Exod. 4:31. The examples of those men whom ho prosecutes the description of in the fore-front, ver. 5, of this epistle, 'I will therefore put you in remembrance, though ye once knew this, how that the Lord having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterwards destroyed them that believed not.' Who indeed were lively types, as 1 Cor. 10, of these professors now, who through the light and power of the gospel, by the apostles' ministry, had come forth from under that common bondage of wickedness in which the heathenish world or generality of men doth lie; who, as John says, and as Peter says of them, had escaped from them that lived in pollutions and errors of that world; and this through the knowledge of Christ.

His second allusion is yet higher, even to the condition of the angels that fell: ver. 6, 'And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness, unto the judgment of the great day.' His drift is to compare like sin and punishment of the angels that fell from heaven with that of those professors, having once shined in their churches as angels of light, but, out of their own lusts and corrupt free will, have forsaken and fallen from that station, as these angels did.

Thirdly, Likewise to Balaam, the man (as himself speaks) 'whom the Spirit of God came upon; the man whose eyes were open, which saw the vision of the Almighty,' Num. 24:2, 4, 'and knew the knowledge of the Most High,' ver. 16; and what affections he had from that enlightening, you know that passage, Num. 23:10, also shews, 'Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his.'

Who yet, for a reward, gave that cursed counsel to entice the Israelites from God, by the Moabitish women, drawing them also to idolatry with that mischievous design, so to bring a curse from God upon them, Num. 31:16.

And he also makes his allusion to Cain, the eldest son of rejection, yea, and of profession; for ho offered sacrifice to God as well as Abel, as I shewed, yet in the end hated and persecuted his brother, as these also did the faithful Christians.

Likewise so Korah and his company (you have all those three together, ver. 11). Now you read, Num. 16:1, 2, 'Now Koruh, the son of Izhar, the son of Kohath, &c., took men: and they rose up before Moses, with certain of the children of Israel, two hundred princes of the assembly, famous in the congregation, men of renown.' So in like manner these were such as had been famous in the congregation of the saints in their times, but now wore rebellious against their elders, churches, and all.

In the same verse he says they had once been trees, that had had fruit on them, and after their first death in Adam, had yet had some life, sap, and greenness renewed in them, whereby they had put forth that fruit; but their fruit was now withered, and they were utterly become without fruit, and were now dead a second time, twice dead; and so incurably dead fur ever, having no life to come into them again.

Lastly; His allusion is to stars, that had their place and station in the heavens, and gave forth a shining light, and who had seemed in their motion to have gone the common course of the other stars; so these of the profession and practice of the churches they lived in; but now, after some progress of time, were discovered to be but 'wandering stars,' and to have had another by and eccentric motion of their own, differing from the common course of the rest; crooked ways, as the psalmist terms the private paths of such, Ps. 125:5. To instance in no more.

(2.) As to their apostasy, and what sort of apostates they proved, and how great.

[1.] As to the grace of God, which they had entertained and professed, their ungodly hearts turned this grace into wantonness;

their lust abused the doctrine of God's free grace, to warrant all licentiousness or liberty to sin, which Peter in other words expresseth of them; they promised, as if they had had God's warrant, and encouragement for it, 2 Pet. 2:18, 19, 'For when they speak great swelling words of vanity, &c.; while they promise them liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption,' &c. Simon Magus, they say, the first heretic of the primitive times, began this doctrine from the first, viz., that believers were free to do what they would; for men were saved by grace, and not good works;* and taught that good

[works] had come in but by accident, through the envy of the angels, that had laid hands upon men's consciences. Thus Irenæus.

Now, indeed, this Simon Magus having, afore he professed Christianity, been, through his famed sorceries, accounted the power of God,—Acts 8:9, 10, 'But there was a certain man, called Simon, which beforetime in the same city used sorcery, and bewitched the people of Samaria, giving out that himself was some great one: to whom all gave heed, from the least to the greatest, saying, This man is the great power of God,'—his pride became such, now under Christianity, as he took upon him to be the great God himself; yea, and in imitation of the commonly received doctrine among Christians of the three persons, he affirmed of himself that be was both God the Father, and the Son that was crucified at Jerusalem, and the Holy Ghost; and so, in imitation of the Christian doctrine, he taught that men were saved by his grace, as being himself alone that God in three persons; (which is a great confirmation also that to be saved by free grace had been the doctrine of the apostles). But he cursedly added, besides his other blasphemy, that all were at a liberty, as himself, to all sorts of actions free (as the cursed language of some in our age hath been), be it adultery, or any action else never so wicked, there being nothing, as they have said, in itself evil or unlawful, nothing common, unclean; and though these latter heretics, in this autumn of the gospel, when Jude wrote against them, after Magus had broke his neck, were ashamed to own him as their master (so Irenæus* expressly speaks), yet, saith he, they taught his opinions; that is, like opinions unto the example of his,

viz., that it was God's free grace indeed that saved men (not Simon, they were ashamed to own that), yet so as that grace did utterly set them that believed at loose from anything in respect of its being sin to them.

And the ground of this perverting so glorious a principle as God's love and free grace into so high wickedness, is that monster of selflove which, remaining in enlightened professors wholly unmortified, and the power of it remaining entire, and only directed unto other new divine objects, but is in them suited to a gratification unto self.

Hence self in them drinks in and entertains this grace greedily; but like as an impoisoned plant perverts the rain, yea, a sovereign cordial or water it is bedewed or watered withal, and by reason of its innate venom, turns all into poison like itself, so doth self-love the grace of God.

Two principles there are in man's nature, which (when a man is once enlightened) do endanger him, though to a contrary way, viz., conscience and self-love.

Conscience, not subordinated by faith, sets a man into a legal way, and calls upon him for strictness to satisfy conscience, but then turns all performances into legality, yea, even in gospel duties, and makes them, as it were, works of the law. Well, if that rock comes to be discovered, and the light of free grace comes in upon the soul, then self-love meets therewith, which receives the news thereof, that is, the doctrine of free grace, with joy, but converts all of it into itself, takes all to itself; and self is the most disingenuous abominable principle that ever was. We daily see and find, even amongst men one with another, how self will take all the love and kindness that another man shews it, and entertains all with selfish ends, and makes for a time some returns answerable, but in the end proves unthankful. But to God (whom, to be sure, naturally we love not, no, not so much as men do one another), to him self-love proves a devil, and will take and swallow down all the love and grace that he declares and revealed towards man; and not only proves unthankful

to return nothing again, but will in the end turn it all into an encouragement to sin and injuries to God, and a nourishment of lusts, which are the darling natural children of self, and not into the service of God: Deut. 29:18–20, 'Lest there be any among you, man or woman, or family, or tribe, whose heart turneth away this day from the Lord our God, to go and serve the gods of these nations; lest there should be among you a root that beareth gall and wormwood; and it come to pass, when he heareth the words of this curse, that he bless himself in his heart, saying, I shall have peace, though I walk in the imagination of mine heart, to add drunkenness to thirst: the Lord will not spare him; but then the anger of the Lord and his jealousy shall smoke against that man, and all the curses that are written in this book shall lie upon him, and the Lord shall blot out his name from under heaven.' Yourselves that have true love to God, yet having this hitter root self, find such (many such) springings up. And these two rocks men most ordinarily split upon; the circumcision did fall upon the first, those in Judo fell foul on the other.

You have next their sin and apostasy. And therefore you need not wonder at that wickedness in practice that you here read of, us that they ran into sodomy, fornication: ver. 7, 'Even as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.' Ver. 8,

'Likewise also these filthy dreamers defile the flesh, despise dominion, and speak evil of dignities.' They were despisers of dominion, dignities, that is, of ministry, whether ecclesiastical, as apostles, or others set over them, as all civil magistrates' power, and therefore are said to persist in the 'gainsaying of Korah,' that rebelled against both Moses and Aaron, Num. 16:3. And again, ver. 10, they sinned even against what they knew naturally, as it follows of them,

'But these speak evil of those things which they know not: but what they know naturally, as brute beasts, in those things they corrupt themselves.' They sinning as freely as brute beasts do actions of nature; these having first sinned away their light, you may read the other characters that follow, ver. 11–13, 15, 16, 'Woe unto them, for

they have gone in the way of Cain, and ran greedily after the error of Balaam for reward, and perished in the gainsaying of Korah,' &c. (as indeed what wickedness would not hereupon follow).

Then, again, in opinions, in the 4th verse, 'Denying the Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ.' For men began soon to turn or change (as the apostle's words is of the heathens concerning their religion):

Rom. 1:23, 'And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things.' So these, the glory of the person of Christ, which consists only of God-man in one person (the man crucified at Jerusalem), into multitudes of speculations and dotages.

They had begun to impose upon the saints, to set up another Christ, even in the time before Paul had wrote his second epistle to the Corinthians: 2 Cor. 11:3, 4, 'But I fear lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve, through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not preached,' &c. And to err in this point concerning the person of Christ, there is nothing more easy, nor nothing more dangerous; in nihilo facilius, in nililo periculosius, erratur. For his person consists in indivisibili‚ that is, in what nothing must be detracted from, or added to, and so and by either we do un-Christ him, make no Christ of him. There is an unity of faith concerning the Son of God, Eph. 4:4, 5, in all ages, which if any deflect from in the least, they spoil and evacuate the true Christ unto their faith, and embrace a cloud, and run into a fancy or phænomenon‚ which we see hath been verified in the varieties of heresies about his person in elder times; and since he is the Son of God, God united into one person with a perfect man, the man Jesus, who was crucified at Jerusalem in our Christ, add hereto, or detract from this, and he ceaseth to be Christ, a Saviour: as take away God, and take Saviour too; and so of the rest. And these men did both, and so denied him, as the text hath it.

Again, these were high-flown, seraphic, super-celestial professors, and were so much in spirit, as they professed, that as for all those

ordinances Christ had appointed, and themselves had embraced and once joined withal, (as the word separating shews), they pretended to be above them, being profited or benefited thereby, and now needing no such things; and upon that ground it was that they separated themselves: ver. 19, 'These be they who separate themselves, sensual, having not the Spirit,' as being past a building up by public preaching, or the like action and means, as the Lord's supper, &c.

This you may discern to have been the apostle's meaning in that expression, 'separating themselves,' by the opposite that follows, 'But you, &c., ver. 20, But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost.' From these, therefore, and such ordinances as these, it was they wholly sequestered themselves; and it was not a setting up these same ordinances among themselves, as we do, but a total relinquishing of them. And yet observe, these would partake in the good cheer of church fellowship therein with the true Christians, and their assemblings, as to such ends, when they had only feasts of love; and yet therein they, by their gluttony and riot, shewed and discovered they were utterly without all reverence or fear of God, from whom those blessings came,

'feeding themselves without fear,' ver. 12. But truly I would say to all such, that surely while their bodies needed those ordinances of meat and drink (the ordinances of nature), to repair their natural spirits, that surely their souls should need the Lord's supper and all the ordinances of grace much more.

They pretended unto a living in the Spirit, and being filled with the Spirit; and hence it is that the apostle ways of them, ver. 19, 'These be they who separate themselves, sensual, having not the Spirit,' as in perfect contradiction unto what they gave out of themselves, and what they pretended to, the most of any other. And this their life in Spirit, they professed to consist, 1st, In points of knowledge of higher mystery than the tenets of that common salvation Jude speaks of did

(which yet were generally hold forth by the community of Christians, and once delivered by the apostles), but they pretended unto a knowledge more sublime, and far more spiritual, which the apostle

Paul (it beginning in his time) aims at, whilst he reflects thus upon

them, 'Science,' or knowledge (as they cried it up), 'but falsely so called,' 1 Tim. 6:20; as also the evangelist John, 'Depths,' as they speak' (says he), but 'of Satan,' Rev. 2:24. 'The common salvation,' as Jude here, ver. 3, 'once delivered to the saints;' 'the common faith,' as Tit. 1:4; this they, as too common, despised, because of the commonness of it.

And, 2dly, They pretended to incomes of the Spirit, revelations and enjoyments, &c., which their doctrines and that Spirit raised them up unto, above what the doctrine of Christ and faith in him did elevate the true Christians unto (though that fills them often with joy unspeakable and full of glory), so as they boasted themselves to be the only spiritual men. Irenæus says that they styled themselves, φύσει πνευματικοὶ, naturally spiritual, and all other men, φυσικοὶ, living but an animal life, as appeareth by Tertullian's title of a book, and themselves to be spirited above all gracious actings or habits, beyond an having the Spirit communicated by ordinances. 'Sensual,' says the apostle of them, 'not having the Spirit.' And as to these their rants and high-flownness, the apostle, by similitudes, fully expresseth both them and their doctrines: 'Clouds they are,' ver. 12, that soar high, and the emptier the higher, 'but without water,' that is, any solid doctrine to make their hearts, or others, fruitful; and ver.

16, 'Their mouths speak great swelling things,' supra modum turgida, ὑπὲρογκα, or like bubbles swelled with wind, which therefore Peter,

2 epist. 2:8, termed 'swelling words of vanity.' But as for this high pretence of the Spirit, we also find it in 2 Cor. 11:4, 'For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if ye receive another spirit, which ye have not received, or another gospel, which ye have not accepted,' &c.; and the reason of it was, as in those words afore, 'The simplicity' of the gospel, of the person, that is, Christ, and the truths about him, which they look upon as too mean, and not high enough for them. But what spirit that was they had got instead of ours, and which inspected* them, and made a supply to them instead of our Holy Ghost by ordinances, and which blew them up above all apostolical truths, you may inform yourselves from the same apostle, in the very same chapter, if you read ver. 13–

15, 'Raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever,' &c. This for their apostasy.

(3.) As for the judgments he denounceth against them, they are the most dreadful. For Capernaum's case is a universal measure, that the higher men are lift up in enlightenings once, and in their affections unto spiritual things heavenwards, if they apostatise, the lower they fall into hell hereafter, and a diabolical frame of spirit hereupon. This

Heb. 6 4th and 8th verses shows.

Now the dreadfulness of their judgment is set out, [1.] In general, ver. 4, this condemnation with an eminency and transcendency.

[2.] Particularly. 1, 'Destroyed,' ver. 5; 2, 'reserved' irrecoverably 'in everlasting chains' under darkness, to the judgment of the great day, ver. 6, as the devils, to whom in their fall they had there been likened; 3, 'suffering the vengeance of eternal fire,' ver. 7; 4, 'woe to them,' verse 11; 5, 'They perish in the gainsaying of Korah;' and 6th

'are trees twice dead, to be plucked up by the roots,' ver. 12; 7, 'to them is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever.' Not darkness only, but 'the blackness of darkness;' if there be any place in hell darker than another, these shall have it; and darkness is attributed to hell, as 'the inheritance of light' is to heaven.

The sole observation I raise from hence is, that in such ages wherein the light of the gospel shines brightest and with most power, in that age God in his providence disposeth it so, that there shall be enlightened professors to the highest eminency of profession, that fall into the worst of errors, and the most abominable of practices.

Where there hath been such a summer, look for a great fall of the leaf; and this, instead of being a stumble or scandal to any against the profession of the true religion, doth rather give a witness and seal unto the soundness and power of it. Such an age breeds up desperate

apostates, like as the excessive heat in Africa doth monsters. The primitive times produced this, and also the times of Luther and Calvin, and of those other holy reformers, did the like, which the papists object against us; and our own experience in this age, in this nation, hath seen the same; so as we may say, As it was then, so it is now. Nor could such hellish abominations have been made even principles of religion amongst us, had not our light and privileges in that respect been alike, had not heaven been let down amongst us, or that we had not been lift up to heaven (as they were), this had not fallen out. I could make a great and large application of all these things, unto the complexion of twenty years last past, which was the autumn of a glorious summer foregone; and I believe that yourselves, in these characters I have drawn out of Jude, made by him of primitive deserters, have had your thoughts all along, in this my discourse of them, upon a reflexion on our times past which you have seen, and your experience had in your view; and the monsters of our times have been painted unto the life, in these portraitures of Jude's drawing of those of old, of many principles, doctrines, and actings that have been found amongst us. The devil hath read over his old collegian methods or lectures anew, but did it with some refinements, that old serpent growing wiser and learneder every age, and attempers his addition of falsehood to the temperament of the ages.

The use of the doctrine from those words in Jude 24, 25, 'Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, to the only wise

God our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, now and ever. Amen.'

To provoke you, the called and preserved ones in Christ, to give glory to God, and adore him for those differing dispensations of his, with difference from those other professors, this doxology at the close of the epistle, like a strong whirlpool, draws down and swallows up into itself the main stream and current of the whole epistle, as matter of praise to God, and that is the general scope of these two last verses.

And it is evident that the main drift of that stream, from the first to the last, had been to shew how the love of the Father, and the mercy of Christ, had been the original causes of the calling, and the contriving causes of the keeping and preservation of those called ones, whenas others had been not only left, but fore-written, unto so sad a fate; so the epistle begins, ver. 1, 2, 'Jude the servant of Jesus

Christ, and brother of James, to them that are sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ, and called: mercy unto you, and peace, and love, be multiplied.' So it runs on to verse the 4th,

'For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation; ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our

Lord Jesus Christ;' and appointed to this condemnation that follows.

Thus the epistle begins, and so it continues in ver. 21, 'Keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus

Christ unto eternal life.' And thus drawing to a conclusion, the apostle celebrateth God for all those specifications, the comprehensive drift of which celebration, I take up and methodic thus:

1. He takes in all those attributes or acts of God and Christ, mentioned afore, either in ver. 1, 2, or in the 21st verse; as love, mercy, which are all one with free-grace, and that we should for these glorify God and our Savior is implicitly intended.

2. Those attributes and acts which have had an hand hitherto, and must have, and still continue to carry on and perfect our salvation; as (1) his power, 'to him that is able,' ver. 24, which supposeth (2) his willingness to do it, and which being engaged, it will be sure to perfect it to the last and greatest act of it; which last act or scene he sets forth to be a 'presenting them faultless, &c., before the presence of his glory, with exceeding great joy.' (3) That great attribute of wisdom, which had secretly and hiddenly in his foreknowledge laid and contrived the whole of the design, from first to last, so as to glorify his grace the most that might be towards us.

[1.] To the wise God, [2.] The only wise God; and this as shewn in being our Saviour, for all which give glory to him again.

3. He mentions the ends which God had in these several designs in loving us, calling us, and preserving us, and to that end lays afore them the demonstration of his (1) glory, (2) dominion, (3) power, (4) magnificence, as Beza renders the word μεγαλωσύνη; and with these, and for these also themselves, celebrate him also, as those which eminently and above all appeared therein.

4. He specifies the time and the contrivance of our doing this: (1.) now at present; (2.) for ever. The love out of which he did all this was from everlasting, and therefore good reason we should adore him for ever. There is added the whole of our souls giving this praise, contracted and poured out in an AMEN.

You will say unto me, Is not this doxology or praise given to God only upon that general account, that it is ordinarily elsewhere given, as intending only the setting forth of his praise, what a glorious, wise, powerful God he is in himself? And upon that account only to give glory to him, as the apostle seems also to do, 1 Tim. 6:15, 16, in that passage, 'Which in his times he shall shew, who is the blessed and only potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords, who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto, whom no man hath seen or can see; to whom be honour and power everlasting. Amen.'

My answer is, 1, That this being so short an epistle for the matter of it, and that yet it should have in the close a large enumeration of attributes (larger for number enumerated) in this his doxology, than in the close of great and large epistles we find the apostles to have used, this must have some special reason for it, as relating to the eminency of the drift and subject matter therein.

2. And seeing every tittle thereof falls in so aptly, and suits unto that foregoing matter and scope of the body of the epistle itself, which tends to magnify God in his love and grace in electing, calling, preserving to the end, in which his wisdom, power, glory, majesty, dominion do appear.

3. And thirdly, Two of the titles of God here, for which he gives him praise, do eminently relate to his grace in electing, loving us, calling us, and preserving us unto the end: namely, 1, 'To him that is able to keep you,' &c., which begins the conclusive doxology, ver. 24. And 'to God and 'our Saviour,' ver. 25. This shews particularly, that what went afore is here again considered; and therefore to him, as such a God, be glory and power, &c. And for this reason all the other of glory, majesty, dominion, power, as contributors to this salvation, are to be included, and glory to be given for them.

4. The instances of the like doxologies, in other epistles, warrant this; as Rom. 16:25, 26, 27, 'Now to him that is of power to stablish you, according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery, which was kept secret since the world began, but now is made manifest, and by the scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment of the everlasting God, made known to all nations for the obedience of faith: to God only wise, be glory through Jesus Christ for ever. Amen.' In which the principal matter of that epistle is summarily wrapt, as the special ground of that praise given to God therefor: and therefore that epistle is a complete system of the doctrine of the gospel, which had been the great subject delivered in that epistle; and he winds in, as you see, and contracts the brief or main of all, as matter for which God is to be praised and adored by us. And Jude doth here the like, and exceeds that other apostle in enumeration of attributes and praises. The like you find done by Paul to the Hebrews; he, in a prayer, summing up the most material matters of that foregoing epistle in the close of it, Heb. 13:20; for which, see my sermon on that text.

So as, although I will not wholly limit this doxology in Jude unto the matter of his epistle (though most eminently it is suited to it), but also allow it to be extended unto all of this glory attributed to God in himself (as was objected), yet upon this warrant I shall at least handle all the particulars, only as they may and do relate unto the love and mercy of God the Father, and of Christ, as the original and continuing causes of our calling, preservation, &c. As this love is set off by those his differing dispensations unto the other apostates, as they have been opened; and thereby, by way of use‚ I shall endeavour to provoke you to bless God for each one of them, as he doth here those he wrote unto; and shall briefly shew how all these attributes are to be adored by us, in relation to these dispensations.

1. Go up to the original cause. Take, beloved, 'the love of God the Father,' ver. 1, and bring it down hither, and say, and cry aloud, 'To the only wise God and our Saviour, be glory,' &c., for that his love.

Bless him that he hath such, and so great a love in him, that he can love some of his creatures so well, who had not, nor could give anything to him, to move him to it; with which the apostle concludes his doctrine of election: Rom. 11:35. That he hath loved them so wonderfully, so immutably, so infinitely, in his electing love, that although you read he is willing, for his glory, to pass by others, and to take an occasion to shew the power of his wrath on such as have prepared themselves by sin for destruction; that yet he hath it in his heart, nature, and purposes to love some so singularly transcendently, who was bound to none more than to deal with them according to the law of their creation, which was and is the covenant of works. Draw but a draught in your own thoughts, an idea of what a love our doctrine of election out of Scriptures hath given; a love so great, as everlasting as himself; so free, unlimited, absolute, peremptory, unchangeable, invincible, and the same in such respects wherewith he loves the same;* and then bless him that such a love is in him, which must needs render him lovely, though thou hadst no share in it; a love of the greatest intimacy, 'Beloved in God the Father.' Let Beza quarrel the phrase as improper; to my soul, and that as it hath been opened, it is most expressive, importing that you

lie next his very heart, you lay in his very bowels; matrix, in the womb, or mother of his will, as that word in the Canticles signifies:

Cant. 4:9. Moses says, his 'people are in his hands;' as Deut. 33:3, 'Yea, he loved the people; all his saints are in thy hands: and they sat down at thy feet; every one shall receive of thy words.' And afterwards he says they are 'in his everlasting arms.' And being in his hand, Christ says, 'None shall pull them out.' Well, but you are nearer yet, you are in his heart, in the very womb of God, his bowels; and a piece of that must be pulled out, if you be pulled out. The phrase imports, as I have showed, out of 1 Thes. 1:1, and 2 Thes. 1:1,

'The Church in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ.' You would be safe enough in either of then, but for sureness, you are in both.

2. Consider his commending you, and giving you to Christ, as those that were his own, and whom he had loved; and had loved them with the same love he had loved himself, as John 17 tells you. And that, therefore, by all the love there was between them two, God the Father and himself, he supplicates, that God would be sure to love and take care of them. Christ remembered it well, and it stuck with him when he was to die. 'Thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and I have kept them in thy name.' Things dear and precious to us, we lay up in safest places. If a king hath a dearest spouse, an only one of his love, and there be armies and dangers round about in the dominions where she is, he will be sure to stow her so as to be preserved in come castle that is impregnable, if he have any such, and with a garrison to defend her. Now God hath done so with you in Christ; he hath committed you to Christ, you are the preserved in Christ, and he is your rock, defence, strong tower. Even all that the Psalmist so much and so often celebrates and inculcates,—that way is fulfilled in him: nor are you kept in Christ only as in your castle, but as with a garrison, which is all the power in God: 1 Peter 1:5, 'Kept as with a garrison,' as the word signifieth. If any have any jewels, where will he bestow them? In a cabinet, a strong iron chest. Remember who is your cabinet: it is Christ, who yet is more worth than all your jewels: in him are hid all God's treasures; as of knowledge, and wisdom, and riches, of merit unsearchable to save you; so also

yourselves, your persons, your salvation are laid up in him, as God's choicest jewels; and as, indeed, for whom all those other treasures are designed: never fear plundering, you are as safe as all; yea, 'your life is hid with Christ in God,' Col. 3. Hid as treasures are, and therefore you are as sure and safely lodged as Christ himself is.

3. You have the mercy of Jesus Christ, both in ver. 2 and ver. 21, 'The sure mercies' of that David, Christ, as they are called: Isa. 55:3, 4, and Acts 13:34 compared. These are the summity, the height, the sum of mercies God hath to bestow; the mercies of eternity. Take all other mercies bestowed on the world, which yet are infinite 'riches of goodness, patience and long-suffering,' Rom. 2, that are spent upon wicked men, to whom also he vouchsafeth such precious gifts, enlightenings, tastings, which you read of, short of grace; yet if you could suppose all such mercies that have been, from Cain the eldest son of wickedness, shewn and bestowed upon all of that sort, to the end of the world; if God should heap them all, and every one of them, in never so great measure, of such kind of mercies together, with all those gifts of enlightenings, and that man also were to live as many ages as the years of each man's life that have lived in a succession amount to, which would make a great hole in eternity to come, yet one call of his grace and loving kindness unto those, whom in Christ he terms the meanest, poorest, despicablest, miserablest of his called ones, is infinitely more worth than them all: for all that would not amount to the pardon of so much as the least sin. O, therefore, look to the mercy of Christ, as ver. 21. In Ps. 36, David having first discoursed at large of God's common mercies towards the wickedest of men, whose wickedness he had set out from the first verse to the fifth, he then stands admiring at the infinite vast heaps of mercies which he leaves with them, notwithstanding that wickedness; of which I understand the next immediate words: ver. 5, 6, 'Thy mercy,

O Lord, is in the heavens; and thy faithfulness reacheth unto the clouds. Thy righteousness is like the great mountains; thy judgments are a great deep; O Lord, thou preservest man and beast.' Which is to be understood common mercies vouchsafed to man, such as to beasts: that were he not a God that lives in heaven, and in perfect

blessedness, from whom those mercies came, he would never leave them with them, nor be in that manner good unto them. He then, in the contemplation of those other so far excelling mercies we are speaking of, with which he pursues his children that know him, breaks out, ver. 7–9, '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 light; in thy light shall we see light.'

O, therefore, bless God for this his mercy in Christ; and the mercy of this Christ our Saviour.

4. Bless God for the continuance of these both from everlasting, after they had been set upon their persons by the Father, until our calling, ver. 1, and until their being presented to himself before the presence of his glory, as ver. 24. The real import of the word multiplied‚ says de Quiros, in ver. 2, imports three things.

(1.) A continuation of them.

(2.) And that by a multiplication.

(3.) Until all be presented and completed.

(1.) Bless him for the continuation of these towards you, his love and mercy, as hath been opened. The constancy whereof I have opened; for such, and so great a love to continue the same, fixed and firm, from everlasting to everlasting, is of a long continuance; and for God to have you in his heart, eye, what can be more? No lover that ever was, had him or them he loved continually in his actual thoughts, much less for an eternity of time. This is only proper to the eternal and unchangeable God. And that God hath had his people thus in his heart, Isa. 49:16, shews, 'Behold I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands; thy walls are continually before me.' God did portray a model or draught of what he would make, and rear them up to be in glory in the end, and he bore it continually in his heart and thoughts;

and did set them, 'as a seal upon his heart and arm,' Cant. 8:6, as the Church speaks of his love, ver. 7. It is said of Christ, who had chosen them (as God had done), that 'whom he loved, he loved to the end.'

John 13:1. It ceased not after it first began, Isa. 64:5, 'In those is continuance, and we shall be saved.' In those; what things are those?

His ways of mercy and grace, spoken of before, which poor souls remembering, and having recourse unto by faith; though God be wroth for a while when we have sinned, yet in those ways of mercy is continuance, and we shall be saved. I quoted afore the 36th Psalm for the difference of those mercies which God vouchsafes his elect, that know him and trust in him, from those that are common to the rest of the world; this in ver. 7–9. And then he continues, ver. 10, 'O continue thy loving-kindness to them that know thee, and thy righteousness to the upright in heart.' The word in the original, as also in the margin, is varied, is 'draw out at length.' It hath been, one would think, drawn out unto a length great enough, in that it hath been continued from everlasting; but these mercies, and this infinite loving-kindness, will be drawn out to an infinity of length further, even to eternity in heaven, which follows, 'In thy light we shall see light.' They will stretch and reach from everlasting to everlasting, Ps.

103.

(2.) They continue and are drawn out at length, and so have been by their being multiplied, which was another thing I opened upon ver.

2, 'Renewed every moment.' And this still proves a higher aggrandizing of this. As they say of beams, or the species, or visual images that flow from the object unto the eye, that they are a multiplication of the same image, without interruption falling upon the eye, such as those rays and wings of the sun, it is but one and the same love multiplied in the acts of it continually; as justification is said to be but actus unicus‚ and yet is renewed all of the same every moment; so both is God's choice and love (which shews* overabundantly), that is, what it appertained to; yea, there is not only a new act of remembrance, but a cannot forget put upon it, Isa. 49:15.

'I will yet choose Jerusalem,' Isa. 14:1, and Zech. 2:12. Oh! at once comfort thyself, and bless and adore God; thou multipliest to sin, and

he multiplieth to love; thou multipliest breaches between him and thee, and he 'multiplieth to pardon,' Isa. 55:7. And the older you grow, the more you do need this multiplication of love and mercy the more; for your sins, take them from first to last, are multiplied. And all your sins of youth, middle age, are afore him, and would one day also 'encompass you round about,' as Ps. 49:5, were it not that God multiplies to pardon. Thus also grace, continuing to sanctify, is renewed day by day, 2 Cor. 4:16. Yea, night and day; yea, every moment: Isa. 27:3, 'I the Lord do keep it; I will water it every moment: lest any hurt it, I will keep it night and day.' O bless him and adore him for this!

(3.) It is continued until all is perfected, even as here, till thou comest to be presented afore the presence (ver. 24) of his glory, and then thou art safe enough. Thus, 2 Thes. 1:11, 'Wherefore also we pray always for you, that our God would count you worthy of this calling, and fulfil all the good pleasure of his goodness, and the work of faith with power; and Ps. 23:6, 'Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.'

And lastly, When thou art in heaven, that is the time when love and the kindness of love are drawn out, and drawn at length indeed:

'That in ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace, in his kindness towards us through Jesus Christ.' Heaven is but the kindness of God, heaped upon kindness; kindness indeed, and this continued in the fulness of it to all eternity.

Hitherto of our celebration of God for those attributes or effects thereof, which we find to have an hand and influence into our salvation in the foregoing part of this epistle.

I come now to those attributes and nets, which here in the conclusion of his epistle he more directly incites us to give God the glory of, for those his dispensations towards us, that are called and chosen with such a vast difference from others, as eminently appearing therein;

which part of the epistle begins at ver. 24, 'Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy.'

These words that celebrate his power, &c., have two scopes or aspects, as Estius hath observed.

1. The one implicit, yet strongly implied, viz., a support or prop unto faith, from what in God they should further eye, besides his mercy and love, as which are engaged to preserve them, and that is his power, 'To him that is able,' &c., or, as in Rom. 16:25, 'To him that is of power to establish you.'

The 2d scope is explicit, and that is, to give glory to God for that his power joined with his love, as that which would certainly keep them to the end; and that he should provoke them to praise God for this, afore the work was carried through to perfection (as in those he wrote to, as yet it was not), imports withal God's faithfulness to be joined with that power, which they might be assured of, he would put forth, even all the power that was in him to perform it.

Three particular things, then, you have further here to celebrate God for in this verse.

1. His power; that is engaged by his love to carry you through, 'to him that is able,' &c; and that his power is said to be engaged to be put forth, (1.) in this life, to keep us from falling; (2.) when you come to die, to present you, &c.

Where, secondly, comes (as a new head to be considered) the end or issue of all, as that which his love had designed (though it is his power must effect it), which is to bring you to the presence of his own glory faultless; for which so glorious end and issue of all you are to glorify God.

Thirdly, the exceeding joy that will be in God and Christ's heart, when he hath brought you safe home to himself, which argues his

great and constant love. This as to the setting out that division of the words, and the heads drawn out from thence, which I am to enlarge upon.

I. Celebrate his power; whereto, 1. In general: Ps. 59:16, 17, 'But I will sing of thy power; yea, I will sing aloud of thy mercy in the morning: for thou hast been my defence and refuge in the day of my trouble. Unto thee, O my strength, will I sing: for God is my defence, and the God of my mercy;' where you see mercy and power are still joined; as also in Ps.

62:11, 12. In Eph. 3, haying first prayed, ver. 19, 'And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God:' he then adds this doxology made to his power, as that which must work and effect all in them, ver. 20, 'Now to him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us.' The power that worketh in us is all one as to say, the power that is engaged in us, by having begun, is interested to continue to work. And you see how, upon the account of that alone, he gives glory to him (even as here): ver. 21, 'Unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen.' And as his love passeth knowledge, so, for our comfort, his power doth. The like to both you have, Rom. 16:25, 'Now to him that is of power to establish you, be glory for ever:' ver. 27, 'To God only wise, be glory through Jesus

Christ for ever. Amen.'

2. But, particularly, bless his power for two things.

(1.) For that it engaged to 'keep you from falling' in this life; that is, both from apostasy, which you have seen others run into, and in this life from falling into gross sins, which is Peter's sense of falling: 2

Pet. 1:10, 'If you do these things, you shall never fall;' that is, into any foul, scandalous miscarriage. As also Paul to the Galatians, chap.

5:16, 'This I say then, walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh.' And for that also, secondly, that if they do fall, they

shall rise again, and by repentance shew themselves 'clear in that matter.' as if they had never sinned. This is to keep you so, as in the end and issue of all to be blameless: and to carry us in this manner through all rocks, hazards, and dangers, as in respect of sinnings, is a far greater miracle than to steer a ship through the most dangerous seas that are known to be in the world, or to carry a candle through a vast heath in the midst of winds and storms, and to preserve it from being extinguished.

(2.) The second thing is at your deaths, and at the day of judgment to 'present you faultless;' which faultlessness must needs be understood of perfect holiness: for it is that faultlessness which is at your coming to glory, and is a further degree than that of being kept from falling, or a being reduced again in this life; for this faultlessness at death is to be without all sin, 'made perfect.' Is it possible, says the guilty and defiled soul, that ever I should be presented faultless, especially on such a sudden as the instant of death? Yes; God hath power in him to do it: Eph. 5:27, 'That he might present you to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy, and without blemish.' And there needs no purgatory for it, but Christ's blood, and the efficacy thereof (so in the words afore), 'who gave himself for his church, that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word.' O glorify his love that this is, and hath been, the design thereof: Eph. 1:4, 'According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love.' Ye see that was the first of his thoughts, as the order of its placing there shews; and indeed it is a greater benefit, and more than glory. And again, glorify his power that is able to effect this in you, when you look upon your 'vile bodies,' now vile or base; or if your souls would cast an eye into their graves, and see how they lie in dust and rottenness, and then consider that God's power is able, and will present them to himself as glorious as Christ's body now is; the shine that came from which is, and was, more glorious than the sun in its strength, as Paul testifies, Acts 26, who himself saw it. And yet be assured his power will effect this for you: Philip. 3:21, 'Who shall change our vile body,

that it may be like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things to himself.' And now from off the present condition of your bodies cast your eyes upon your souls, with all the more abominable filth and rottenness in them, and believe that that power that subdues all things [to] itself will change them into so glorious souls in holiness, as they shall be able to beat the presence of God's own glory without dazzling or winking. O bless in God his power! 'To him that is able thus to present you, to him be glory, &c. Amen.' This the first main head, to present you faultless in the other life.

The second thing proposed was the presenting of you before the presence of his glory, and your enjoyment of it, which is the ultimate end that God aimed at to bring us unto in his first loving us, calling us, and preserving us; the end, as it is called, which he made with our

Lord Christ: James 5:11, 'You have seen the end of the Lord,' says he, as if it had been spoken in reference there unto that which Paul says,

Heb. 2:9, 'We see Jesus crowned with glory and honour;' that was the end God made of him. And this end of Christ is the enjoyment of the presence of God's glory; as Christ says of himself, Ps. 16:10, 11, 'Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore' There is an enjoyment of God in and by effects of his, and means that manifest him, whether of his law, our graces, or creatures. And there is an enjoyment of his immediate presence. And thus Hales, that ancient schoolman (whom Aquinas and Bonaventure were scholars to), did clearly, and with evidence, long since state and difference it.* There is a twofold knowledge of God, says he, one by his effects, the other by his presence to and with the soul. And he is present, says he, to the soul, in that he presents or makes present that blessedness which is in himself (which are the very words of our test here). And the one,† the first, he says, is not of grace, but nature; but the other of grace. That is, say I, the one was by the knowledge of God, which by creation Adam was made for; the other is by Christ and grace only in glory: Ps. 16:11, 'Thou wilt shew me the path of life;' and is termed in Scripture the glory of God, which Christ receives us unto. Now this

glory of ours is not the issue, or event, or close which God's love brings us unto, but it was the original design of all at first; both unto which he hath subordinated all things ('All things are yours, and you are Christ's, and Christ is God's,' 1 Cor. 3:22, 23), as that which above all things his heart hath been in; this is the ἐυδοκία, or the 'good pleasure of his will.'

Now, therefore, that whereby I would provoke you to bless God for is this, that if our glory (as it is ours) be not only the issue of his election, but a primary intended end, and the direct ultimate end taken in for itself, out of pure and mere love intended, then there is all reason and obligation on our part that we should give all glory unto God for this, not only that himself intended it should be for his glory, but that he in such a manner also intended it as your glory, yea, and his own glory to be the immediate cause of yours; and this end of all out of grace to be the close and last scene of this continued plot and story. There is all reason, I say, for this, &c.; for nothing can be more proper or suitable than that for glory thus intended and designed to us we return glory unto God again, especially when God's glory is the principal and immediate cause of ours, as here in the text you see it is made to be. And therefore no wonder if in heaven the whole of their time runs out, and is spent in glorifying God. For why?

Their glory riseth immediately from the glory of God communicated unto them as the cause. And his being glorified in us ariseth not from the glory which he hath bestowed upon us, but from our being presented afore the presence of his glory; and so it is but the return or the reflection of that to him and upon him which they receive from him, glory for glory, not only given and received, but for glory given, as the immediate cause of that glory received; and therefore be provoked to give glory to God, as ver. 25, for his presenting you to the presence of his glory, the fountain of them and all, as the design of his pure love and heart towards you, as out of verse 1 I shewed.

The third thing to bless God for is, that himself will present you to himself with exceeding great joy; which joy is mutual, not on your parts only, but on his also. (What joy will be on your parts, I handled

in the use of direction.) For as it is his joy he admits you into,—'Enter into thy Master's joy,'—so it is the joy of his heart to admit you into it, as well as yours to be admitted. And to testify this, he presents you to himself‚ and rejoiceth with infinite joy (when that time comes) in doing of it.

You may measure what this joy on God's part will then be.

1. By what joy is in his heart at their conversion, which is indeed the first calling of you into glory, as Peter hath it, 1 Pet. 5:10. There is one whole chapter* on purpose spent upon it, to declare the joy that is in God's heart at that time.

Both in the parallel of the lost sheep and groat, which is spoken of the Lord himself, and shepherd of that lost sheep, who also, ver. 6, says unto his friends, 'Rejoice with me,' so as it is God and Christ himself that are the great rejoicers, for he calls upon his friends to rejoice with him. The bridegroom that hath the bride rejoiceth more than the friends of the bridegroom.

Secondly, In the parable of the lost son, ver. 22, the father said to his servants, 'let us eat and be merry.' It is the father says it, ver. 23; and these parables are applied unto what joy is in heaven upon the conversion of a sinner here in this world, ver. 7. Thus in that parable,

'I say unto you, that joy is likewise in heaven,' and the scope in both is therefore chiefly to set forth what is the heart of God the Father, under the representation of the father of a prodigal. Now, if this joy be at the initiation and birth of an heir of glory, how much more is there in the heart of God and Christ upon his coronation, and upon his first arrival in heaven, afore the presence of God's glory, to be for ever made partaker of it.

Thirdly, There is this further manifest reason for it, because 'the fulness of time,' so long afore designed and waited for, is now come, and also the consummation of that which all his decrees about us from everlasting had centred in, and primarily pitched upon, as that

which was the end of all aimed at, and that which he had from before the world so much pleased himself in with the thoughts of that day; for his delights aforehand were in them, as Prov. 8, even so long ago, and still continued; and to delight so long beforehand, must needs produce full and complete joy, when the thing delighted in is accomplished, and did begin the first consummation of all them delights, as this first presenting us afore him is. Moreover, between his electing of them and this consummation, he had called them, which is indeed a kind of new election, and the first beginning of the execution of the first election, and bears the image of it. Look as a merchant having launched a ship to sea (and such our calling is), for a great, long, and dangerous voyage, with certain hopes of great returns of profit if he come home safe in her, and proves also a ship that hath run through many hazards and dangers of shipwreck and piracies (as we through manifold temptations, &c.); and look as the merchant or owner rejoiceth when his ship doth come home so rich laden, through such great adventures, so doth God at our safe arrival in the haven, to which metaphor the Scripture once and twice alludes.

Now that God will entertain you with such an exceeding joy and triumph too (as the word here import?), affords the highest ground unto you to bless him, and give glory unto him in the faith and confidence hereof beforehand. For nothing can more argue that this glory was the design and longing desire of his heart, and delight of his soul from eternity, than that he so exceedingly rejoiceth when it is perfected; and it is a true and certain measure we may make hereof, that so much joy as ariseth in any one's heart, in such a case there was so much love, for these affections are commensurable. And therefore if God aforehand tells us he will present every particular person of us afore his own glory with so great joy as to himself, this infallibly argues the like proportion of an infinite love to have been borne by him towards us in his heart. Let us therefore, first casting our eyes backward unto his eternal love that designed all to us, and then turning and setting our eyes forward unto that joy that will be at the accomplishment, retire in the view of both to bless and adore him

for all, and sanctify him in our hearts; and this for that third and last thing in ver. 4.

SECTION II

The discriminating grace of election, as if appears in the difference God puts between temporaries, and those whom he finally preserves, further illustrated in an exposition of the other part of Jude's epistle; wherein are discovered the different fountains and causes in God's heart of our salvation, both original and continued.

You have in ver. 1, 2. of this epistle of Jude, the causes of salvation, and of our being kept, held up unto our view.

Then, secondly, The eminency of that grace and favour illustrated by the opposite thereof, viz. the condemnation and apostasy of others, ordained of old to this condemnation.

Then, thirdly, A provocation of these saved and preserved ones, to give glory unto God for all his discriminating grace towards them, ver. 24, 25.

And that we all should adore and bless this God for all these, is my second use which I intend to prosecute at this time, founding all I shall urge upon you therein, upon what Jude hath spoke before me.

In the doing of which I shall but open the remaining passages in Jude, not spoken to the last time, and which, added to the former, will prove as some brief exposition upon the rest of the epistle.

You have the causes of salvation and our preservation in Jude, ver. 1, 'To them that are the beloved of God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ, and called.'

In this first verse you have the original causes, both of the persons:

God the Father, and Jesus Christ; as also of the acts in both which are the foundation of our salvation, &c.

1. Love in God the Father, which speaks his electing of us. 'Beloved in God the Father,' for which reading I shall give an account.

2. Preserved in Christ; which speaks his having given us unto Christ, out of that love, for him to keep and preserve us.

3. That third, of being called, is brought in as the first breaking forth of that love of God upon us, at and from which Christ's actual performance in keeping of us, commenceth, and from thence is continued to the end.

Ver. 2, 'Mercy unto you, and peace, and love be multiplied.'

In this verse you have the continuing and continued causes of our salvation (as in the former the original), by the multiplication of which, with their proper effects upon us, it is that we are preserved to salvation, which yet for substance are no other than the former, in ver. 1, and these are three affections and dispositions in God's heart and Christ's.

1. Mercy or grace in Christ's heart, who undertook the preservation of us.

2. Peace in God's heart towards us, wrought and purchased by Christ.

He is our peace, Eph. 2:14.

3. The love of God the Father at first set on us. These being continued and multiplied in effects suitable to each, I call the continuing causes of our salvation.

As 1, The mercy and grace in Christ multiplying the attributes of mercy on us.

2. Peace from God, being at peace with us through Christ, and multiplying the sense of that peace in our hearts with joy, &c.

3. The love in the heart of God the Father, multiplied in all spiritual blessings, as Eph. 1:2, by which we are carried on unto salvation.

And although these come in as a prayer or wish, such as is used afore epistles, yet that here they are brought in with a pertinent connection with ver. 1, and the general scope of the whole epistle, as the causes of the preservation there specified, I shall after shew.

1. As for the original causes of our salvation and preservation. Ver. 1, 'Beloved in God the Father,' &c.

Three things are to be performed for the explication of this:

1. Some reasons why I so read the words.

2. To explain what the import of that phrase should be, 'In God.'

3. To prove that by that expression, 'Beloved in God the Father,' is connotated that God the Father chose and elected us.

You have it indeed here read, and translated, 'Sanctified by God the Father;' but if we consult both commentators and Greek original copies, as they are also cited by interpreters, we shall find that diverse, as authentic copies, as those that read it sanctified‚ &c., do write it beloved, in‚ or of, or by God the Father, ἠγαπημενοις, beloved, instead of ἡγτασμενοις; and the phrase ἐν Θεῷ πατρὶ, is all one, say some, with ἀπὸ Θεου ῶατρὸς, Beloved of God the Father, or διἀ, by God the Father, which reading Pareus justifies, and commentators generally do willingly agree to take either.

Now where there are found two such readings in so many copies ancient, and but a small difference in the Greek words themselves, which might easily occasion a mistake in the writers; in this case, that which must cast it is, unto whether of the two, the scope, series,

and order of the matter afore or after, rationally considered and compared with other Scriptures, do most incline; and therein (I take it) ἠγαπημενοις, Beloved, in and of God the Father, hath far the advantage and appearance for it, to have originally fallen rather from our apostle's pen.

For which there are these reasons unto me of weight.

1. Their being sanctified is apparently mentioned, and comes in afterwards, included under and in the word called‚ as in like manner often our sanctification doth; as in Rom. 8:30, and 'saints by calling,'

1 Cor. 1. And I confess the reading as here it stands, sanctified first, then preserved, and after both of them, then called; this did always in former times in the reading of it breed some jar in my thoughts, as if the words had not been, at least, rightly and orderly placed; but when

I met with this other, 'beloved of God the Father,' it reconciled all to me.

2. I consider that the act or work of grace here intended is that which is properly God the Father's, and so is to speak what his special hand is in our salvation and preservation. Now, to say, Beloved of God the Father, speaks what is most proper unto God our Father, and what his hand and original act in our salvation is, and is that which is more generally proclaimed throughout the New Testament, everywhere almost where he is spoken of in distinction from Christ.

For both, 1, love is in a way of eminency attributed to the Father, 'the love of the Father,' when the work of the three persons are distinguished, 2 Cor. 13:14, 2 Thes. 2:13, 16, and up and down everywhere.

Also, 2. Election is peculiarly attributed, to him as his eminent work; and to be beloved of the Father and to be elected are equivalent, and are put for each other, or are often joined together, love being the first and chief moving cause of election. Thus, Rom. 11:28, 'Beloved according to election;' that is, therein and thereby they are the

beloved of God indeed. And 2 Thes. 2:13, 'We give thanks to God for you, brethren, beloved of the Lord, because God hath chosen you,'

&c., and so therein and thereby hath manifested you to be his dearest beloved, and for that, and in that respect bearing the title of beloved; and join thereto ver. 16, where his having 'chosen us,' that went afore, in ver. 13 is here, 'who hath loved us.'

3. By this reading the series and order of the three things in verse 1 is set right, and rendered more clear at least: 1, beloved of God the Father, who is the first person, as that of election is the original act;

2, preserved in Christ‚ which is the second person's part; 3, called, which is the Holy Ghost's. Beza's gloss and interposition is very observable upon that second, preserved in Christ; that is, says he,* having been set apart, or chosen in and by God's eternal counsel, they who should be given to Christ to be kept by him. So as he, though he inclines rather to the other reading of sanctified‚ and makes a difficulty of our reading it beloved of God the Father, and is against it; yet he take in the sense thereof, as touched in the other word, 'preserved in Christ.' He discerned both from the scope of the epistle, and the great emphaticalness of that expression, 'preserved in Christ.' So that election by the Father must be supposed first, and necessarily taken in, and a giving us to Christ (which accompanied that election) to be the proper cause of our being preserved in and by that Christ; and so that 'preserved in Christ' referred unto the Father's act of giving, and therefore he would have it to be brought in somewhere, though but implicitly aimed at in that expression,

'preserved in Christ.' But why then should we avoid this other reading of 'beloved of God the Father,' which more plainly and expressly denotes that act of God's, out of which and together with which God did give us to Christ; and gave us thereby with this commendamus and declaration of his will, that he the Father, having loved them first, and thereby made them his, and had now given them to him, and that therefore out of all that love to him, and between them, he would preserve them (which I shall by and by again speak to); so then, that beloved of God the Father, that is, elected by him, should be said first to hold the most fair coherence of

all other with preserved in Christ, as that which follows next, declaring therein the very ground and foundation of that our preservation, and that as in Christ, and so shewing the true order of causes; God the Father's love first, in choosing, &c., and Christ's next, to whom they were given, and is answerably in order here first placed, it having been the fountain and original of all, the source and beginning of our salvation, as the Father is of the persons.

4. The parallel of other Scriptures does favour this our reading of the words; the apostle Peter in like manner annexing this benefit of preservation, as Jude here, unto election; for whereas, 1 Peter 1:5, he says, 'Who are kept by the power of God unto salvation,' he had first entitled his epistle, as Jude doth 'to the elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father,' ver. 1; and then, 'who are kept by the power of God,' ver. 5, and the word is the same that here.

5. The opposite mention of God's rejecting and ordaining those apostates to that judgment, ver. 4, as the original of their condemnation; this casts backward, and refers unto what he had said of these other, their having been ordained unto salvation and preservation. And therefore this reading, 'beloved of God the Father‚' is rather to be supposed to have been his meaning. For, 1, the apostle's scope being to comfort and instruct the saints in this epistle, much more than to set out the fate of these apostates, and the narration thereof being but to illustrate that state and grace to those saints, surely of the two he would to that purpose rather make mention of their election than of the other's reprobation. Especially,

2dly, seeing acts of grace do more readily proceed from God than acts of avenging justice, therefore if the one's reprobation be mentioned (as it is) much rather the others' election.

2. What the import of the phrase should be in God. 'Beloved in God the Father.'

Beza indeed sticks at the phrase 'Beloved in God the Father,' as the Greek ordinarily hath it. This is an unusual phrase to be used of the

act of the Father's election, but it ordinarily runs, and much oftener, 'chosen and beloved in Christ,' but 'in the Father,' we nowhere read.

But this is so far from being an objection, as it turns to be a reason to confirm our interpretation.

For, besides what was said, that ἐν is put for ἀπὸ, διὰ, or ὑπὸ, and so it is all one to have said, Beloved of‚ or by the Father, the phrase in the Father aptly notes out the eminency of that act in God himself, rising up and abiding within himself, in his own heart and breast, in himself alone, as from himself. And such acts, his loving us and choosing us from everlasting, were and must be acknowledged purely to have been, and thus in like manner it is termed, his 'good pleasure which he purposed in himself,' Eph. 1:9.

Nor is it an objection of weight enough, that it is said, 'Beloved and chosen in Christ,' to exclude this of ours, as if therefore 'beloved in God the Father' should be improper, no more than because in that place last cited it is said, 'which he purposed in himself,' speaking of the Father, that therefore it should be improper to say the same of Christ, which yet we find, Eph. 3:11, 'According to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord.' For that phrase, in the Father, denotes the subject and efficient cause, and that of in Christ, the medium or instrumental cause. Yea, according to this rule, their reading, 'sanctified in God the Father,' should be excluded also, because it is more often said, and in use, 'sanctified in Jesus Christ,' than 'in God the Father.'

3. The third thing for explaining this of beloved in God the Father is, that thereby is imported and connotated, that God the Father chose and elected us.

Yea, these two are mutually put each for other. The very act of election is expressed by God's loving us: 'Jacob have I loved,' Rom.

9:13, which is alleged as a proof of Jacob's being elected, spoken of

afore, ver. 11, and is there termed the 'purpose of God according to election,' towards him.

Thus God's election of Christ (whose election is the pattern of ours) as he is God-man, is expressed by his having loved him: John 17:24,

'Thou lovedst me afore the foundation of the world;' that is, thou lovedst me, and out of love chosest me. And he speaks not of that love he bare to him, purely considered as second person, but that of him as God-man and mediator; whilst Christ speaks it, he also says, that God had loved us as he had loved him. Now, between the love which God bare him as second person simply considered, there ought not to have been any such comparison made of what his love is to us, so as to say that he loved us as he loved him as second person; but as mediator it might be said; and therefore it was all one as to say he chose him; so that here for God the Father to be said to love us, is equivalent to say he chose us.

2. Preserved in Christ.

Between these two, beloved in God the Father‚ and then preserved in Christ, doth rise up, as couched in each of them, and as the result of both in this connection,— Our having been given by the Father out of his love to Jesus Christ for him to preserve, and that Christ undertook so to do.

This is strongly implied here, if withal we bring those other scriptures which Estius and divers others* (having observed this as connotated here) have sent us unto to explain this passage, in which is set forth the original rise, the descent, and story of our being preserved in Christ: 1, love in the Father made us to be his; thereupon, secondly, proceeded a giving us to Christ, that as he loved him, he would keep us as the end of his giving us; which, thirdly,

Christ willingly undertook and performs. All these you have fully expressed by Christ in his last public prayer, John 17.

1. That they had been given him by his Father as his own; so the second verse begins, that 'he should give eternal life to as many as God had given him.' He pursuing this again says, ver. 6, 'I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me;' then verse 9, 'I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me; for they are thine.'

2. Given him they were, for that end, for him to keep; and therefore he returns an account to his Father how he had kept them, and indigitates it twice: ver. 12, 'While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name: those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost.'

3. That he had undertaken to keep them upon his Father's giving them, all and every of those words declare; as, namely, his giving that account of the discharge of his trust therein: ver. 6, 'I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world,' &c.; and that he had done (what in him lay to do) that which might preserve them: 'I have manifested thy name,' ver. 6; 'I have given them thy words,' ver. 8. And also by the effects he had wrought in them: ver. 8, 'They have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that then didst send me.' And then likewise by his care to recommend them again unto his Father: ver. 12, 'While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name: those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost.'

4. And all this, and those other great benefits that follow, do run up into God's having loved them, which is not only implied in his urging they were thine, but that God had chosen them: 'Thou hast loved them as thou hast loved me,' ver. 23. Now of himself he says, 'Thou lovedst me afore the foundations of the world;' that is, hast chosen me, which I shewed even now. And he expressly gives it as the reason why he had so kept them: ver. 9, for 'they were thine.'

If you will take another scripture they also refer unto, John 6:39, 'And this is the Father's will which hath sent me, that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day,' these words show, 1. That they were given by election; for he says, 'All that the Father hath given me shall come to me,' ver. 39; and therefore given before their coming, and as the cause of their coming. And when afore, but at the date the Scripture placeth election at? 'Afore the world began.'

2. Given for this very end to be kept, and that to be God's will and intention in giving them, and expressed at his giving them, doth as manifestly follow there: ver. 38, 39, 'For I came down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him that sent me. And this is the Father's will which hath sent me, that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day.'

3. Their being called ariseth from their having been given by the Father, ver. 37, 'And all that the Father giveth me shall come to me,'

&c. And so you have in this one Scripture all those three things met which are mentioned in my text, and likewise the prop, order, and connection of all these: first, 'beloved of the Father;' and so, secondly, given to, and 'preserved in Christ;' and, thirdly, 'called.'

And this is a clear reason why preserved in Christ is set afore called, because it pre-imports that original act of giving us unto Christ, and also is the cause of our being called. For although indeed Christ's actual preservation of us, and his performance of it upon us begins from calling, and follows for ever after it; yet because the foundation of that preservation lay in God's having given us unto Christ out of his love, and this from everlasting, as hath been said. Therefore this of preservation in Christ is made conjunct with, and set next after beloved in God the Father, and before called; for calling itself proceeds out of that love, and our being given to Christ, as out of those passages of John hath been observed. There might other reasons be given why called is fitly set after preserved in Christ‚ as

that because there were some new converts, who had sprung up in that, though a declining age of old professors, which young ones had not had time or continuance long enough to experiment the grace of perseverance as those others had done; and yet they having been savingly wrought upon with an holy calling, were concerned both in the comfort and duties that he after gives, as well as those others that had been for a long time preserved. Alas! might some such novices say, I have not had the trial of having been kept long; I am but of yesterday. Well, but says Jude, thou yet hast the blessed experience of having been called, and thereby mayest comfort and assure thyself of thy being certainly kept against all the fears of falling away, which are incident to such Christians, from the examples of such apostate professors; the promise is as well unto the truly called as it is to you that have been a long while preserved. But though this be a reason of weight for this placing of called last, yet I conceive the other of more.

And this for the first, the original causes.

II. The continuing causes of our salvation and preservation in their being multiplied follows in ver. 2, 'Mercy unto you, and peace, and love be multiplied;' and in ver. 21, 'Keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.'

Three things are here to be explained.

1. What is meant by mercy, and peace, and love.

2. That here they are prayed for to be multiplied as causes, and the carriers on of our salvation and preservation.

3. What is meant by the multiplication of them.

For the first, the interpretation I give is, that 1. Mercy in the heart of Christ.

2. Peace or reconciliation having been made by Christ, and continued in the heart of God towards us by and through Christ.

3. That original love in the heart of God borne towards us being for ever continued and multiplied with the effects thereof; these are eminently intended.

I know interpretators generally understand love in our hearts to God, peace in our hearts, and all sorts of good things which are usually wished, under the names of peace, he wishing that these should be multiplied more and more in them.

But though I deny not these, as the effects of the former, to be included, yet I take it that the more principal, the other, as they are in God's and Christ's heart, are mainly intended as being the fountains of these effects, and so the effects with their causes were at once prayed for.

And my reasons are, 1. That look what is meant by love and mercy in ver. 21, the same is meant here. Let Jude interpret Jude. Now there he tells us, ver. 21, it is the love of God, and the mercy of Christ, which we keeping ourselves in, and by faith looking unto them to keep us, are the means of our being kept. Now, in the first verse, he had named, first,

God the Father; and, secondly, Christ. Why, then, his intention is to wish the love of God the Father, and the mercy of Jesus Christ to be multiplied towards us, as being the causes of that preservation and salvation likewise.

2. For one of these, this of mercy, all will acknowledge to be understood of the grace and mercy in Christ's heart; and not of the grace or mercifulness in ours; nor yet merely the effects of mercy; and therefore, by the same reason, why should not love also be meant of the love in God the Father's heart borne to us?

The Query will be, How peace should be meant in such a sense, which yet comes in between mercy and love? For the multiplying of peace would seem to import only the grace of peace in our hearts, as it is the fruit of justification and reconciliation with God, according

to that in Rom. 5:1, 'Being justified by faith, we have peace with God.'

Also peace imports all good things whatever, and so the effects.

Ans. I grant this, and take them all in; but I desire it to be considered, that all those effects of peace flow from this, that there first is a peace in God's heart borne towards us, which we may and must style the original peace of all, whatever that peace may import in us, or towards us. When Christ was born, the angels proclaimed this original peace in God's heart; 'Peace on earth, good will towards men,' Luke 2:14; and his decrees and purposes of grace, as to sinners, are styled 'thoughts of peace,' Jer. 29:11, 'For I know that the thoughts that I think towards you, saith the Lord, are thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.'

My third reason why I interpret them of what is in God's and Christ's heart towards us, as well as of the effects, is, that elsewhere these three are mentioned together in the like salutation, as in the second epistle of John, ver. 3, 'Grace be with you, mercy, and peace from God the Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, in truth and love.' By grace there, love is meant, being distinct from mercy; and withal, mercy and peace are added even as here, and thereby not the effects of mercy, &c. But the grace and mercy itself, which is in God's heart and Christ's towards us, are also intended there. It is expressly added, 'from God the Father, and from Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father;' and that as distinct from the effects on us; for they follow, 'In truth,' that is, sincerity and love, which are the effects in us of the former, in our hearts.

II. But the query will yet be, How is it that these are multiplied?

Gerard, upon the Epistles of Peter, in both of which grace and peace are wished to be multiplied, maketh the same objection; for he there interpreting grace, as I have here interpreted mercy and peace, not of the effects of grace chiefly, but of the fountain of them all, the freegrace of God, as I afore cited him,* thereupon he puts this objection, how the love in God, remaining always the same, should be said to be multiplied.

1. Himself answers it chiefly by this, that in respect of the manifestation of it to our souls, and the shedding it abroad in our hearts, it is therefore said to be multiplied: and to this effect he speaks in both those epistles, 1 Pet. 1:2, and 2 Pet. 1:2.

And unto this indeed agrees, what in that second epistle follows: where, when grace and peace are wished to be multiplied, it is added,

'In the knowledge of God, and of Jesus Christ:' which (as he) is all one with διὰ, 'through the knowledge,' &c., because through the knowledge of God and Christ, the love and peace that are in the hearts of God and Christ, are come to be multiplied upon us; so as by this answer and interpretation given, it is still more manifest, that it is the love in God the Father, and peace of Christ, which are the things multiplied in us, through and by the means of faith in us taking them, and receiving of them thereby into our hearts.

But, secondly, I should give a farther answer, viz., that even the love and mercy in God's heart, and Christ's, are within themselves truly said to be multiplied towards us. The word πληθυνθείη, signifies both a continuation of the same thing, and a renewal thereof, and also an increase, or the fulfilling of a thing unto perfection.* Now the two first significations do fitly agree unto this love in God to us; for there is both a continuation of it, after it was once taken up towards us, and that continuation is maintained by a renewal or repetition of the same, again and again, for every moment: I join both, and so it is continued by multiplication. Of justification, divines use to say it is one act at once, actus unicus et individuus; but yet because it is continued, yea, renewed every day, as our Lord's Prayer teacheth us, and many other scriptures, therefore the Scriptures expressly speak of it as a multiplying pardon, Isa. 55:7. We multiply transgressions, by adding unto the heap new acts of sinning; and for our comfort

God multiplies to pardon by renewing the act of grace in a full and perfect pardon every day; not only of those daily sins committed

(which yet we are most sensible of), but of all our sins, as at first, Col.

2:13; yea, and correspondingly hereto, the Scripture speaks of God's election itself, which of all other acts of God's, is supposed to have

been done but once, and that before the foundation of the world; and yet the Scripture, in many places, speaks of it as reiterated or renewed again and again, which repetition, or renewal of it, is spoken of upon solemn occasion of God's taking his people into his favour after some displeasure. Thus you have it: Isa. 14:1, 'The Lord will have mercy on Jacob, and will yet choose Jerusalem;' and in Zech.

1:17, upon occasion of restoring them, he speaks thus: 'The Lord shall yet choose Jerusalem;' and chap. 2:12, 'The Lord shall choose

Jerusalem again.' Nor is this meant wholly and altogether of a temporary choice (as yet in the type I acknowledge it was), but so as that type holds forth the substance towards his elect people among them; for it is such a choice as upon which his people's sins are done away, and whereby Satan, that impleads them, which in the next words, chap. 3 ver. 2, is rebuked. The angel, Christ, that pleads against him, answers him with this: 'The Lord, who hath chosen

Jerusalem, rebuke thee.' And it was by such an election renewed, as by virtue of which Joshua's filthy garments were taken away, that is, his sins, chap. 3:4, and so proper to God's elect, which that in Rom. 8 fully answers to, 'Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifies.'

Now as justification and election are thus renewed and multiplied, so I say not only, why may not, but that necessarily withal, mercy, and love, and peace, as in God's heart, must be together with them supposed to be so; for these mercies are but the thoughts and purposes of grace, love, &c., immanent in God borne towards us, as well as those acts of justification and election are acts of God upon us, and yet immanent first in himself; yea, and those mercies and that love are the causes of those acts, and therefore are renewed together with them, upon this renewal of them within himself. And hence, in the same sense, may love and mercy in God's heart be said, by a multiplication, to be continued to us, as those acts are. And in this respect it is that, Ps. 40:5, like as the works of God, so his thoughts towards us are said to be many, and multiplied: 'Many, O

Lord my God, are thy wonderful works which thou hast done, and thy thoughts which are to us-ward; they cannot be reckoned up in

order unto thee: if I would declare and speak of them, they are more than can be numbered.' It is Christ's speech, of whom the psalm is made, and that relating unto his Father's resolved purposes and contrivements from eternity, and those continued unto his sending

Christ into the world to die for us, as ver. 6, 7. It follows so, as although his thoughts and purposes were but one individual act at first, and never to be altered; yet they became many, through a perpetuated reiteration of them, wherein his constancy to himself is seen. The prophet David, in Ps. 25:6, imprecates God's lovingkindness in these words, 'Remember, O God, thy tender mercies and thy loving-kindnesses; for they have been ever of old;' which phrase imports 'it is of old,' that is, from eternity. So 'for ever of old;' that is, all along from eternity perpetuated, and therefore suitable to this meaning, he desires that God would remember them. It is good now to remember these, and remembrance is but a reiterated act of the understanding, with the same affections that were taken up at first.

And the reason from all this is as evident, for such acts as are of pure, free, and absolute grace in God, are in their kind such, as though he doth act any of them towards us in this moment, yet to continue the acting of the same the next moment, or upon the next occasion, is from, and depends upon, a new grace in him; yea, the promises of grace have a fresh act of grace to move him unto the performance:

Lam. 3:22, 'It is of the Lord's mercies we are not consumed, because his compassions (those which are in himself) fail not. They are new every morning (both the mercies which are the effects, and his compassions which are the cause): great is thy faithfulness.' And thus much for how they are multiplied.

The third thing is, to prove that mercy and love thus multiplied should here be mentioned and intended, as the causes of preservation and salvation unto the end.

And, indeed, that these are causes hereof, none shall deny; but the question only proceeds whether here in this salutation and wish, they be intended by the apostle? To which I answer, That they are so

intended here. Perhaps in other such salutations (especially in Paul's large epistles) they come in abstractly, or as altogether severed from a coherence with the matter afore or after; as human salutations among the Jews, and those eastern nations, ordinarily were wont to do, Dan. 4:1, yet here in this short epistle I take it, they hold a strict coherence with what immediately went afore, and follows after.

And the reason in general of this difference in this epistle and in others is, because that the sole and entire subject of this short epistle

(I speak of what immediately concerned the saints) is professedly the preservation of them unto salvation, as hath been shewn; and also it was the love and mercy of God and Christ, that had hitherto been the preservers of them, as ver. 1. And so as the series and order of things in those two verses proceeds thus: 1. That a love in God's heart hath given them to Christ to keep; 2. A mercy in Christ's heart hath moved him to undertake this; and thirdly, in order thereto he had purchased their peace with his father; 4. All which, love, mercy, and peace, hath broke forth in their first calling; and 5. From thence had been their custodes‚ the keepers of them thereunto. This is the substance or real sum of ver. 1. Hereupon, says our holy apostle, in ver. 2, in a pertinent coherence hereunto, what other is my wish and prayer for you, but that the same 'mercy, peace, and love of God the Father, and of his Son Jesus Christ' (as another epistle, 2 John 3, in words supplies this), 'be multiplied?' and thereby so continued on you, so as still to preserve you to the end, even all along, from the first being called unto the being 'presented faultless afore the presence of his glory with exceeding joy,' ver. 24. From this genuine coherence, I conclude, that this his prayer for the multiplication of this love and mercy, holdeth a strict connection with, and aspect unto, that cause

(preserved in Christ) as those which had been the causes of that their having been preserved for time past; and to that end he prays for the multiplication of them for time to come.

And that which more expressly shews them this reason is the aspect that ver. 11 hath upon this second verse. In ver. 21 it is and hath been made evident, that he points the eye of their faith to the mercy of

Christ, and love of God the Father, as those, which from time to come, the eye of their faith was to look at, as the primò moventia‚ the supreme causes of all other, of their being kept. The words are, 'Keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus

Christ unto eternal life.'

And that this interprets to us what love, and in whom, or whose (even that of God's and Christ to us) love it is that in ver. 2 is intended; especially when we take in thereto the coherence of ver. 1,

'Beloved in God the Father, and preserved in Christ,' hath been already opened. Now, then, what is the difference between these two verses, but this: that this second verse is an apostolical prayer to God, that the same mercy and love might be multiplied, which, in ver. 21, is an exhortation to them to have the eye of their faith upon; but so, as both do agree and centre in this, that those are the primary causes of their being kept, this being the common ground of either.

And to shut up this, there being the same mercy and love in both verses intended, the argument proves strong from the latter to the former, ver. 2, that if the mercy and love in ver. 21 be directed unto, as the causes of preservation, then that the same are intended in their being prayed for, as the causes of our preservation, ver. 2, which is the point in hand.

Thus much of the causes of salvation, in ver. 1, 2, both original and continued.

I come next to discover; II. The original or antecedent in God's disposement of the apostates' judgment and condemnation, as it is in ver. 4, 'There are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old fore-written unto this condemnation,' &c.

That this passage is set in way of opposition to and comparison with the former in ver. 3, 'Beloved in God the Father,' &c., to the end to illustrate the grace of electing, and discriminating grace the more, is

evident at the very first view of both, to any intelligent reader's thoughts.

And how infinitely the grace of election is magnified to us by such a comparative way of setting that of reprobation by it, I have remitted to another place or method. I shall now only give an exposition of this passage, and shew how this ordained of old unto this judgment is to be understood, this being in view one of the harshest speeches concerning God's dispensations to the sons of men, that is found in Scripture.

We are first to inform ourselves of these two words therein.

1. Fore-written‚ translated appointed.

2. This judgment‚ translated condemnation.

1. Fore-written‚ so the word in the original. We must know that God's decrees about the persons of us intelligent creatures, the sons of men

(being the top of his decrees), are expressed to us under the metaphor of writing in a book their names, taken from what is usual amongst men, that is, of such as have power to dispose of persons and things at their will, for ratification sake, do it by writing, or setting their pleasure down in some record; as when a man hath goods, or an estate to dispose of, he doth it unto persons by a written will, or record; or if offices to bestow, he pricks down (as our kings do sheriffs) whom he thinks fit, and leaves out whom he pleaseth; as among the Romans, patres conscripti‚ of senators; milites descripti‚ of soldiers. Thus the Scriptures do attribute unto God a book of life, in which the names of all his elect are registered, and thereby we find election itself expressed: Philip. 4:3, 'And I entreat thee also, &c., and with other my fellow-labourers, whose names are in the book of life.'

They do set forth in like manner God's disposal of the rest of mankind, as Rom. 11:5, they are termed under the same allusion.

That in general, Rev. 20:12, it is said, that at the day of general judgment, 'the books were opened,' importing that there were other

books concerning the rest of men, besides the book of life, which is there termed 'another book,' that is, a more special, and, as it were, a more choice private book, which God keeps by him; answerable, there is a black doomsday book, in which, what concerns those the rest‚ is registered and recorded, as foreseen by God concerning them.

And in prosecution of this metaphor, the Scriptures do more particularly set out what concerneth them under two acts.

(1.) Negative; That they are left out of the book of life, their names are not found written there. Thus Rev. 13:8, 'Whose names were not written in the book of life.' So that the first and main act concerning them, is but a leaving them out, and not writing them in that special book. And that negative act is indeed an act of pure, and mere, and absolute will in God, and is but this, That God did not love them so far, as absolutely to design them unto super-creation grace and glory.

Observe how I express it, it is but a leaving them out of that book, wherein was an ordaining men unto such benefits and blessings as were purely supernatural, and above the due of creation; whether for grace as the means, or glory as the end. In such things they were left out, and it was but a more leaving them out, as to such things unto which the other were elected, and their names set down to inherit.

Those blessings are thus expressed: Eph. 1:3, 'All spiritual blessings;'

(1.) in heavenlies; (2.) in Christ, which were not due by law of creation in Adam; and in such only the rest were left out; but otherwise, as to creation grace, and what herein by any law of their creation it was meet for God to give them, he ordained to give them it to the utmost, and to deal with them therein according to that law, even whatever, as to creatures, was any way requisite, all the good of holiness, life and reward, that by creation could be meet for intelligent creatures, endowed with free-will, to have, which was the law of their creation. This did God set out for them; but mark what holiness, by a super-creation title, was to be renewed in Christ, and by Christ, if they fell; the unchangeableness of that estate in holiness, which, as I take it, is the holiness which in Eph. 1:4 is said, that in election, as there it is intended, we were chosen unto, what life, and

glory, and a participation of God above the law of creation, or the attainment thereof, such as is in heaven, these were supernatural blessings in heavenlies, and in Christ; wherein God was at full liberty to dispose thereof where he pleased. It was no part of that estate which was due to creatures, as creatures, but as a third part of a Londoner's estate is by law purely his own to bestow. Now these were the blessings only which God left them out of his will about. Now search the Scriptures, and you shall generally find, that the stress of reprobation is put upon this negative act; as throughout the Scriptures of the New Testament I might shew you how it is expressed by this negative of not choosing: as 'the election obtained it, the rest,' Rom. 11:5; that is, the non-elected 'were left out.' So the one written in the book of life, implies the other not written; so of the one, 'the Lord knows who are his;' of the other, 'I never knew you,'

Mat. 7:23. That word, never‚ reacheth backward to eternity. So of the one, 'they are my sheep,' John 10:14, 'which my Father hath given me,' John 6:36, 37, 'But I said unto you, that ye also have seen me, and believe not.' 'All that the Father giveth me, shall come to me,' &c.

And 'I must bring them,' &c., ver. 16, 'Because I know the Father,' ver. 15, and whom he hath decreed to save. 'But ye believe not, because ye are not my sheep,' ver. 26. It rues on in the negative.

(2.) But now you will say to me, But here in this place there is a positive act expressed, a being of old 'forewritten to this condemnation,' and that doth import, that God not only had a book of life, which they were left out of, but a book of death, their names were set down in.

I will not answer you here as Dr Hammond doth; they were forewritten, that is, prophesied of by Christ, Mat. 24, which gospel was then writ in Jude's time.

I shall in few words give you my thoughts of this.

[1.] Those men, as to this act, are looked upon by God as fallen; for however election, and non-election in the sense given, might have

proceeded upon man, considered as not fallen; yet fore-writing to condemnation, necessarily importeth more. And in that their fall,

God used no prerogative will at all, no super-creation act, only decreed to permit it: and that Adam sinned was from the mutability of his own will and defect, unto which, as a creature, he was obnoxious; and for God to have kept him from falling, as here, ver.

24, Jude speaks of us, had been super-creation grace, and belonged to the rank of those benefits which are in Christ, as, to be 'preserved in Christ,' is said here to be; God must have gone out of his line of communication to have kept him, and it had been an act of supercreation grace.

Then the first man being fallen, by the same creation law it was that all men fell or sinned in him, as Rom. 5:12. I say by the law of creation, the law of our nature, viz., that equal law, that holds as justly one way as the other; that he, being the first father of all mankind, as Isa. 43:27, if we should have received holiness from him, by the same we should receive sin from him; it was the law of our propagation from him, such as was given to all creatures having seed of life, Gen. 1, to bring forth in their kind; and in that sense we are 'children of wrath by nature,' that is, by the force of the law of nature, Eph. 2:3, as well as by birth.

[2.] Now, then, secondly, all men being fallen, and their being fallen having been at one and the same instant foreseen by him, as all his own works were uno actu intuitûs‚ by one intuitive act, thereupon all men were now by nature viewed prone to all sin; for so their nature, being fallen, disposed them even to all or any kind of sin whatever of themselves, and still not by any influence of his.

[3.] Hence, thirdly, their running into sin is only of themselves, and from their own corrupt nature and inclination, according to the outward circumstances and conditions, &c., which they should stand in, and all that of God is said, as to any positive influence of his into sin, you have well expressed: Acts 14:16, 'Who in times past suffered all nations to walk in their own ways.'

[4.] Yea, and fourthly, they being not ordained to super-creation grace, in and by Christ, by which their sin should be any way healed, in order to eternal glory, but left unto themselves, without it; hence that mere negative, and not being elected, that alone without any positive act of God's ordaining, would have left them to all or any sin whatever. And hence you find, that in those Scriptures, where but only that negative act of non-election is mentioned, in the same places, the sins they commit are mentioned as the consequents of it. I do not say the effects, for they flow from their own corruption. Thus,

1. For their not doing good, that they believe not, is attributed as the consequent of their not being God's sheep: John 10:26, 'But ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep, as I said unto you.' 2. For their doing evil, their own corruptions so carry them thereto. Rev.

13:8, 'and all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.' Where plainly, their giving themselves up to antichristian worship and idolatry, is attributed to the negative, that their names were not written in the book of life; for why, supercreation grace being restrained, which at no time was their due, their own corrupt hearts would of themselves carry them on to those sins.

So in that other place cited, for I instance in all I quoted, Mat. 7:23, their damnation is ultimately resolved into two acts. 1. The negative,

'I never knew you.' 2. Their own, being 'workers of iniquity.' Which a mere negative act of God's could have no positive influence into; for out of a mere negative, never did anything positive arise; all this is but to them, whereto the said cause of men's damnation is to be resolved.

Well, but you still urge, that here is a positive act of God's, his forewriting them to this condemnation. Mr Cotton observes, that the word κρίμα, signifies contention, as in that place to the Corinths: 1

Cor. 6:7, 'There is utterly a fault among you, in that you have, κρίματα, contentions.' And that in like manner it should be here used, of their opposition unto that faith, which upon that occasion he has exhorted true believers that they should 'contend earnestly' for,

&c. And so that should come to this, that amongst the sinners of that

age, that were afore of old in God's view (when he was the ἀγωνόθητος, orderer of those contentions), he had wrote down their names, as the men and persons that should so oppose the faith; and so it is an allusion from the manner of those games, which was conscribere‚ to set down in writing the names of those that offered themselves to enter into the lists.

But, secondly, the strength of my answer rests upon this small word, εἰς τοῦτο, to this condemnation, or sinful contention; and it is to me a mighty word, to clear this matter in hand, that God did forewrite their individual persons unto this or that particular way of sinning.

Now consider what that will amount to at the utmost, taking in what was aforesaid; but only unto this, how that all men lying fallen in God's view, and of themselves prone to all sin, he might leave them to their own swing and corruption, to one sin as well as another; but he shews himself a God in ordering or ranking their actual sinfulness, and particular ways of sinning; some to this sin, some to that sin, that all might not run into any;* and so it is but merely the disposing of men's sinnings, which of themselves they would commit. When all the world were sinners, and there was no difference, and all and every man would be as devils, and run wildly, headily, and as horses into the battle, into all manner of wickedness, the great God in his infinite wisdom and goodness, leaves one man to such a particular sin, as those here to this contention; another man unto that, and not all to perpetrate every one, which of themselves they would do. As he turned the heart of the Egyptians to hate his people, and restrained them from other sins, as he did Abimelech, 'I kept thee,' from that act of adultery. But then he suffers them to take a liberty to such or such particular corruptions and wickedness; so as indeed this fore-writing these men to this contention, rather than other sins, was no more than leaving them electively, to that, and not to another, and leaving them to that way of sinning, and not other men of the same age, and in the same circumstances with them; which particular way of sinning is purely their own way, and their own doings, without his decree having any influence upon them, but setting them in such and such circumstances. And this ordering thus

some men to this sin, some men to that, though it be from God's will, to order and leave them thereto; yet the fact itself is not from God, and yet is justly styled a fore-writing, appointing it so and so, and deserves the name, because it is electively, and designedly, and truly done by him; and yet herein this appointment of his has no more outward influence than of a man that would draw water into such and such a channel, he adds nothing to the propension of the waters, they run of themselves; and thus God is said to have turned the Egyptians' hearts to hate his people, and to turn the hearts of kings as rivers of waters.

2. This fore-writing to such great sinnings, is but by the way of punishment of other sins which they first commit; as Rom. 1,

'Therefore God gave them up.' That these men, Rev. 13, 'worshipped the beast;' this account is given, 2 Thes. 2:10, 11, 'Because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusions, that they should believe a lie: that they all might be damned,' &c. And so he wrote down these men to this contention and apostasy, upon the foresight of their sinning.

3. Let me add this to justify God, that this fore-writing of men to several particular ways of sinning, whenas they are all prone to all or any, and every man would be as wicked as the devil, to whom no sin comes amiss; to act or set that man to this, is so far from being that harsh act of absolute reprobation, so exclaimed upon, that it is goodness and mercy to the generality of mankind. For, 1, it is done with a restraining them from other sins, which else would make this world an hell. I may express it by this comparison: Suppose a thousand barrels, full of either precious or poisonous liquor, that had each of them a thousand holes to let that liquor run out at; for a man that is the disposer of them, to stop with pegs the most of those holes, in every such barrel, and to let out here and there as he pleaseth; some he lets run at the top, and there comes out weaker kind of poison, others at the bottom, whence the most deadly flows; and he did all these in a wisdom and discretion, and by an

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