Chapter II
That when we come to Christ, and believe on him, there is a concurrence and consent of all the three persons in the Godhead unto that yreat work.
No wan can come to me, except the Father, which hath sent me, draw him; and I will raise him up at the last day. And he said, Therefore said I unto you, that no man can come unto me,
except it were given unto him of my Father. JOHN VI., 44th and 65th verses compared.
I design to prove from these words, that as Christ is the object of faith,
so, when any soul is converted, and drawn to believe on him, there is the concurrence of all the three persons in the Trinity to that work, and that
they all put forth conjointly a renewed act of agreement in it. I confess
in this text there is mention only of the Father, and his consent in it, for indeed it is hard for me to take a text that will hold forth all three persons together; but in this chapter you have all three. You have the Father s consent here in these words, No man can come to me, except the Father, which hath sent me, draw him. You have the Son s consent, ver. 37, Him that cometh to me, I will in no wise cast out. And you have (as some interpret it) the Holy Ghost s also at the 63d verse, It is the Spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing ; the words that I speak unto you they are spirit, and they are life, though I think by spirit is there rather meant the Godhead quickening the human nature of Christ. This
is a subject of great and weighty moment, and will be of use to you many ways to quicken your hearts. I will first open and prove it to you, and then make use of it.
When God doth convert and draw our souls on to believe, we use to look upon the work itself as a great work wrought in ourselves ; and it is
true, as I shall after shew. But there is more done for us in heaven than
is done in our hearts at that time. At that great union which is made between Christ and the soul, and the drawing on of the heart to close with
Christ, there is a special council called ; there is a concurrence, a consent, a joint meeting of all three persons to this great work, and that in a special manner. Though they concur in all works, yet where a council of them
all is professedly called, there is a plain note and character of a more
special and remarkable concurrence. Thus, at the making of man espe
cially, they are all named : as you read in Gen. i. 26, that when God made man, he called a council : Let us make man, saith he, and all the three
persons did concur and join in that great work. Now, at the making of the new man there is the like council held ; there is the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The Father draweth, the Son accepteth, and the Holy Ghost is the instrument of both, and quickeneth and enliveneth the heart. Such a great conjunction is a matter of infinite wonder. If you look into the heavens, you shall not see great conjunctions of planets every day. There hath been but seven since the creation itself, and the creation itself
began with one of them. But here is a greater conjunction in the heaven of heavens, when there is an influence of all the three persons into a soul
at its first turning to God.
There are four great conjunctions (as I may so speak) of these three
persons.
CHAP. II.] OF JUSTIFYING FAITH. 145
1. The one was from everlasting, at our election, in which both Father,
Son, and Holy Ghost had a hand.
2. The other was at our redemption, when Jesus Christ himself was
sealed up to be the son of God ; and at his baptism the Father from
j heaven appears and owns him, and the Holy Ghost descendeth like a dove
and lighteth upon him. And there was the Son of God, the second person, dwelling in the human nature. Thus did all these three meet together at
that time. And upon the cross likewise they did the like, for the Father s hand bruised him; therefore he cries out to him, My God, my God, &c., but all that while the Holy Ghost supported and upheld him, and he was
filled with the Spirit beyond measure for strength to stand under the
weight of the Father s wrath, for no created strength could have done it. And he himself also, through the eternal Spirit, the Godhead dwelling in
him, offered up himself as a sacrifice to his Father, Heb. ix. 14.
3. The third conjunction of them is, when faith is wrought, when the
sinner is called to Christ, which I am now to speak of.
4. The last conjunction is in heaven, when God and all the three per sons shall be all in all for evermore, which is the great conjunction indeed, and to which all the rest tend, and where they all centre.
I remember, in Acts xiv. 27, faith is called the door of faith. Truly there are three keys to open this door, and they are severally in the hands
of these three persons of the Trinity, and they all concur and bring their
keys with them when the heart is opened and the soul is drawn to Christ.
Though I dare not say that faith on our part is always explicitly a
marriage act, or that the soul did at first take Christ under the nature and consideration of a husband explicitly so considered, yet the thing in itself, in the nature of it, is a marriage, and it is the solemnisation of the greatest marriage that ever was but one, and that was when the human nature and the Son of God were married together, whereby that man Christ Jesus became the natural Son of God. Now at this marriage all the Trinity are
present ; and although Christ is offered to the soul at other times in the
preaching of the word, yet now he is actually given and bestowed. The
souls of all believers were given to Jesus Christ from everlasting, John
xvii. 6, and Jesus Christ was given for thee upon the cross ; but when thou comest to believe, and God cometh to reveal Christ in thee and for thee, then he is actually given to thee even by the Father.
That I may express it to you, and tell you what great things are done in heaven for you when your hearts are drawn to believe, and then make it out when I have done,
1. Let me tell you, that when your souls are first turned to God, and when you believe, though perhaps you know neither the time nor the thing I now speak of, yet notwithstanding even at that time, first God the Father
riseth up in heaven (as I may so express it), and as Jesus Christ said to
* Woman, behold thy Son, so
his mother when he hung upon the cross,
* Son, yonder is a soul which I gave thee from ever
saith God the Father,
lasting, which thou diedst for upon the cross, and now is the fulness of time come for to have mercy upon that soul, go take him and own him for
thine, and actually now possess him. This you have here in John vi. 37, All that the Father gives me shall come to me. Here is, you see, a
giving before our coming, and it is a giving de prasenti, at present, to dis
tinguish it from that of everlasting ; a deed of gift made, and that by the Father ; an actual delivery and seizin, whereby the soul is put into the hands of Jesus Christ. And the Father likewise, he whispers to the heart VOL. VIII. K
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of the sinner, woos the soul to come to Christ ; and therefore the 43d verse
saith here, that they shall be all taught of God, that is, the Father; and
* no man can come unto Christ except the Father draw him, ver. 44.
that
It may be thou art at church, or in the assembly of the saints, and there thou hearest the word preached, and perhaps standest in the crowd mingled among many others; or it may be thou art at home, and there art weeping and bewailing thy lost condition ; saith God the Father unto Jesus Christ, Son, behold thy spouse ; behold yonder soul that stands in such a place, I will marry you two before such time as this soul stirs out of this place. It is as if a king, when his son comes into an assembly, should rise up from his royal throne, having spied out a beggar all in rags standing in the midst of the crowd, and should say, Son, yonder is your wife, go and take her
and marry her here presently before me. So it is here ; for there is none comes to Christ but those to whom he is thus given. And then Jesus
Christ is glad that the hour is come ; This is the joyful day (saith he), that
I have long expected ; and so he goes and embraces that soul, though per haps the soul knows not this.
2. Our Lord and Saviour Christ knows all his byname, John x. 14, 15, which place indeed is very emphatical ; for he saith, that look as the Father knows him, and as he knows the Father, so he knows his sheep, and is known of them (for known of them he shall be in the end), and he knows them all by name. And when the Father hath thus commended and actually given a soul unto him, Jesus Christ looks upon that soul, and
thinketh with himself, Yonder soul I should know ; that is the soul that my Father presented unto me in all that beauty from everlasting, which I now am to be the author of, and must bestow upon it. Ay, but doth
Christ know the soul in all her sins ? Yes ; and by a good token (saith he),
I. should know that soul though in her sins, for I remember she was brought to me in all her sins, when I hung upon the cross to die for her ; and together with her was the catalogue of these very sins presented to me when I was
in the garden, and when I hung upon the tree. And what doth Christ now do ? He apprehends this soul (as the apostle saith, Phil. iii. 12), takes it, and takes it as commended unto him actually by the Father: That I may
apprehend, saith Paul there, that for which I am apprehended of Christ
Jesus. He had spoken before of a race which he was to run ; now, saith
he, Jesus Christ took me by the hand when I entered into this race. It may have an allusion to that, or it may allude to the mother s apprehend
ing the child in the womb, which she doth, though the child apprehends not her. However, this is certain, that he speaks of conversion and
entrance into the race of Christianity ; and that before we apprehend Jesus
Christ, he apprehends us, and takes us upon the gift of his Father as his; even as we love God because he loved us first, so we apprehend Christ
because he apprehends us first. And Jesus Christ doth this with the
greatest gladness that can be ; for as he longed to die for all our souls
( Now is my soul troubled, saith he, John xii. 27, and for this cause came I unto this hour ), so when the fulness of time is come that the
Father hath appointed for him to receive a soul, how glad is he of that hour ! If he sits in heaven expecting when his enemies shall be made his
footstool, how much more doth he expect when a soul which he hath loved and paid so dear for shall be brought unto him.
3. And then when the Son hath thus owned and acknowledged this soul
anew, the Holy Ghost, who is the third person, and who is privy to God s
election, and to the heart of Jesus Christ when he died, and knows for whom
ClIAP. II.] OF JUSTIFYING FAITH. 147
lie died, and had a hand in all, he is sent down from heaven by Jesus Christ :
Gal. iv. 6, Because you are sons (sons by election), God hath sent forth
the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. And as
there was a fulness of time, and when that fulness of time was come (as it
is verse the fourth), God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law; and as the Holy Ghost did come and overshadow the Virgin Mary (as you have it in Luke), and did unite that man, that beginning of an infant (how shall I express it ? for Christ was in the womb as we are, as small and as little as we are), as there was a fulness of time in which
that nature was formed by the Holy Ghost, and was united to the Son of
God, so there is a fulness of time whenas the Holy Ghost, thus sent by Jesus Christ, having taken and apprehended the soul, cometh down into
the heart. In Isa. liii. 1, the Holy Ghost is called the arm of the Lord; and why is he called so ? but because he is the arm of the Son of God by whom he takes hold of the soul. Now this Spirit, when he comes down thus into the heart, works eyes, and feet, and hands, and all for to look
upon Christ, and to come to Christ, and to lay hold upon Christ ; for faith
is expressed by all these : by seeing of him, and coming to him, and receiv
ing him, and laying hold of him. And faith is eyes, and hands, and feet,
yea, and mouth, and stomach, and all ; for we eat his flesh and drink his blood by faith. It is compared to all the members, for the new man is
originally nothing but faith. Thus now, as Jesus Christ takes hold of us, so by the work of the Holy Ghost we come to take hold of him ; and we embrace him, as the phrase is in Heb. xi., and we embrace him gladly, as
it is in Acts ii. 41. And all three persons having thus severally and apart agreed together in
it between themselves, the Father beginning the business in commending us to the Son, and the Son sending the Spirit into the soul, and the Holy Ghost working grace in us, he leads us from one person to the other back
again. And therefore in our coming unto God, you have all the three persons mentioned together
* Through him we have access by one
: Eph. ii. 18,
Spirit unto the Father. Here is Christ, Father, Spirit. The word there which we translate access, in the original it is a conduct, a leading us by the
hand, flrgoffaywyijv ; for as Jesus Christ took us, and took us by the hand as
it were, and led us into that race, and took hold of us by his Spirit, so what doth the Spirit do ? He leads us by Christ to the Father, for we come to God by and through Christ, being led in the hand of the Spirit. Thus the soul conies to have communion with all the three persons, fellow
ship with the Father, and with the Son, and with the Holy Ghost, till this
fellowship is perfected in heaven. And though you see not these things, though you see not what the blessed Trinity do for you then at that time when you believe, as that the Father thus gives you to Christ, and that
Christ himself apprehends you, and that the Holy Ghost is sent down into
your hearts, and takes you by the hand thus, and carries you back again through Christ to the Father, yet all these things are done, and they are done for you ; and when God causeth your souls to close with the Lord
Jesus, they are thus transacted in heaven for you.
I will give you some instances of this in the conversions of men in the New Testament, and I will take Paul s first ; and although his story has this
extraordinary in it (which indeed is all the privilege he had in this above
us), that Jesus Christ appeared visibly from heaven unto him, and the Holy
Ghost likewise in a visible manner fell down upon him ; and the story tells us distinctly, that Christ and the Holy Ghost did thus and thus appear in
148 OF THE OBJECT AND ACTS [BOOK II.
it, and in that I say the story is extraordinary ; yet notwithstanding what soever was done at his conversion by God the Father, and by Jesus Christ, and by the Holy Ghost visibly, the like is done by the three persons be tween themselves invisibly at the conversion of every soul that is drawn to
believe in Christ. For in matter of redemption, and of salvation, and of
conversion, and of faith, and the like, the apostles themselves had no privi
lege which we have not. Now we see how all three persons met at his conver
sion. First, in Gal. i. 15, you have the Father ; he had appointed a time when he meant to give Paul to Christ, and to reveal Christ unto Paul. Mark the phrase,
* When it pleased God (that is, when the time was come),
* who separated me from my mother s womb, and called me by his grace, to reveal his Son in me. When it pleased God, saith he, i. e., God the
Father, for he saith, it pleased God to reveal his Son in him, so that it was he who appointed the time, and who at that time began anew to act
for him. And though God had Paul in his eye from his mother s womb,
yet there was a time appointed to call Paul in, and until then (saith he in the verses before), I lived as other Jews ; but then when it pleased God, namely, God the Father, to reveal his Son in me, then it was thus and thus with me. Here now is God the Father. You shall see likewise the second
person, Jesus Christ, coming in. When Paul was journeying towards Damascus, Acts ix. 6, Christ from heaven appears to him, and thus speaks to him, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest ; arise, and go into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do. And as Jesus Christ himself
speaks to Paul, so likewise Christ goes and speaks to Ananias : verse 11, The Lord said unto him in a vision, Ananias, arise, and go into the street which is called Straight, and inquire for one called Saul of Tarsus. You see both that Christ knew Paul fully, and took notice of him, and knew him by name ; and so he doth every soul that is turned to him. And he names the house too, he vouchsafeth to do so ; Go, saith he, and inquire at the house of Judas. This was to shew what notice he takes of all circumstances when a soul is converted to him. And he tells Ananias like wise what Paul is doing
* he prayeth, he is mourning and bewailing his condition. And he takes notice too of his election* and under that notion sends Ananias to him : He is, saith he, verse 15, a chosen vessel unto me. You see how withal he orders every circumstance. Thus now you have, first, the Father appointing the time, and at that time
: Behold, saith he,
putting forth his act, When it pleased the Father to reveal his Son in me, and you have the Son likewise appearing from heaven to Paul, telling him that he would send Ananias to him (so verse 12), and appearing to Ananias likewise, and telling him that he must go to Paul. Now, at the 17th verse, you have the Holy Ghost, the third person, for he in a visible manner falls upon Paul when Ananias came to him, and had laid his hands on him. Here then, in this instance of Paul s, you have all three persons concurring in this great work. Now that which was thus acted in this
extraordinary and visible manner towards Paul in his conversion (I mean
visibly by the Son, and by the Holy Ghost), the like is done invisibly, that
is, undiscernibly to thee. Paul s conversion had a pattern in it, and it is a pattern of the extraordinary conversion of the Jews his countrymen, who,
it is thought, shall be called after the same manner, and it is most likely they shall be so. But yet, notwithstanding, if you take that in this con version of Paul s, which is the privilege of all believers, namely, to have then the joint consent of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, so far his conversion
is a pattern of all conversions, and of the work of faith in all God s people
CHAP. II.] OF JUSTIFYING FAITH. 149
to the end of the world. And do but mark it, that which was done here
visibly, in the conversion of Paul, and by express direction from heaven, is in
effect oftentimes done as plainly in ordinary conversions here below. You
shall find a soul guided by a secret providence to go to such a church to hear such a man. Though it is true indeed he is not directed by an
extraordinary revelation, as Paul was to Ananias, yet moved and guided he
is to go to such a place, and there he goes, he knows not why ; and when he is there, God directs the minister to speak that to the soul which shall most nearly concern it, even as in a vision he directed Ananias to speak to Paul what concerned him. Now when he hath brought the heart and the word thus together, by his providence (for what he did then visibly, he doth now by his providence) the Holy Ghost falls upon the heart, and draws it
to Jesus Christ.
You shall find the like in the story of Cornelius, Acts x., which likewise
is an instance of the same thing. While Peter was speaking those words,
namely, preaching of Christ to him, for, saith he, verse 48, To him give
all the prophets witness, that, through his name, whosoever believeth in him shall receive remission of sins. While Peter yet spake these words, saith the text, the Holy Ghost fell on all them which heard the word. And you have the same story repeated again by Peter himself, Acts xi. 15.
As I began to speak, saith he, the Holy Ghost fell on them. And as
the Spirit fell on them thus in their hearing the word, so Christ himself bade Peter go, for he had a vision from heaven, and the Lord spake to him
to that purpose. Here now is both the Son and the Holy Ghost visibly
concurring in the working of faith, yea, of that distinct degree of faith which
Cornelius had to believe evangelically, though he had a faith before in the
Messias to come. Now look what extraordinarily the three persons did
thus in heaven, and from heaven by revelation then, the same thing, though in an ordinary and in a secret invisible way, doth the Holy Ghost, and the
Son, and God the Father, now do for all souls that are turned to Christ.
They do by a secret providence guide thee, and cast thee to live in such a
family, and there thou receivest this and that instruction ; or they guide thee to such a ministry, or to such a passage of Scripture, and then the Holy Ghost falls on thee. Jesus Christ hath as much hand in this, and the Holy Ghost as strong a hand, and it is as great and strong a fruit of the eternal
decree of God, as it was to Paul and to Ananias.* Though many do not know the time of their conversion, yet by the story of it you shall have as
strange and as extraordinary providences of God, in bringing them to the means of comfort, and the means of comfort to them, and in bringing them
to the means of faith, and setting it on upon their hearts ; and you shall
herein have as strong a providence as this was of speaking visibly from
heaven to Paul and Ananias. And the reason of it is plain ; for what is
our calling and believing ? It is but the acting, or rather fulfilling, of
election ; and accordingly it hath the name of election given to it oftentimes
in the Scripture. Now what the three persons did at thy election, the same is done when thy soul is called and believeth ; though perhaps thou
hast not the knowledge of the time when, much less of the thing, yet all this
is done for thee, and that in heaven, when God doth draw thy heart first to
believe.
< Cornelius ? ED.
* Qu.
150 OF THE OBJECT AND ACTS [BOOK II.