Chapter VII
How the faith of a believer should depend on electing grace for salvation.
Though a believer views God s electing love, and depends on it for his
salvation, yet he doth not so commit his soul to that one single act of God s choosing persons as so to rely on it that God having chosen men s persons on his part, they themselves should care to do nothing as on their parts. No ; this is the highest degree of profaneness and contempt, and a per verting of our whole Christian religion, and to bring in that of Simon Magus, and indeed the devil s divinity, for he was the most famous sorcerer in the world, Acts viii. 9-11. It was depths, as they themselves termed their doctrine; but the Holy Ghost, who penned
"the Epistle, animadverts upon it, and calls them depths, Rev. ii. 20, 24. The Gnostics took no other part of the Christian profession but that, By grace ye are saved, and so left men unto a licentious liberty, which Peter speaks of: 2 Peter ii. 19, Whilst they promise them (i. e., their disciples) liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption. That was the latter part of their doctrine ; and Jude supplies the forepart in saying, verse 4, that they turned the grace of God unto lasciviousness. And yet even this hath been affixed as a calumny upon them that profess the doctrine of
irrespective election. I will therefore explain in these following particulars the true dependence of a believing soul upon electing love for salvation.
1. A soul who hath begun to be wrought upon by tasting how good the Lord is in his electing grace, or (as the apostle speaks, Col. i. 6) since the day he first heard of it, and knew the grace of God in truth, hath been affected with it, casts himself upon it to be saved. And so quick, and speedy, and operative was the power of God in the ministry of those
first times, and to such a height did their convert hearers ascend, as to apply themselves unto a dependence on that grace for salvation. Where God hath thus begun it in us (and we cannot begin any good thing unless God himself begins), we may look toward his electing love. Nor is any man fit to look toward the grace of God in election, till God awaken him with the gracious knowledge of it, no more than a sinner not yet convinced of his sin by nature, and his being under the wrath of God for sin, will ever look after Christ as a Saviour.
2. It is not my design to consider whether all saints, from their first conversion, know this grace of God in election, as that grace upon which salvation doth depend ; but whether sooner or later, as God pleaseth to dis pense great discoveries of grace to him, and whenever his soul begins to take in the sense and savour of this grace, he should follow on with might and main in his inquest after it. Let him follow on to know the Lord and his grace, and God will rain down righteousness upon him, as the prophet speaks in the psalmist s words. Let him
< follow hard after him, where the words in the original are follow him behind; i.e., if thou shouldst lose that sight of his face, and the taste that he is good begins to grow less and less in thy heart yea, and he to try thee turns away his
CHAP. VII.] OF JUSTIFYING FAITH. 251
face from thee, yea, and turns his back on thee, as offering to go away-
then down on thy knees, and like an importunate beggar follow him
behind, and with the most vehement earnestness desire him to give thee
his grace, and that manifestation of his face again, that overcame and took
thy heart at the first, and then thou shalt be saved.
3. Let such a soul be sure to look at and take all along with him the
whole complex of God s methods and holy purposes and decrees of grace
belonging to the doctrine of election. Now there are two sorts of decrees :
the first is an act of absolute election of the persons that are elected unto
salvation ; the other is of the means by which and through which God
brings men unto salvation, who are in that manner elected. And both
these are decreed with the same peremptoriness as to the decreeing of each,
and with like absoluteness indispensably ; so as no man ever was or will
be saved without his diligent attendance to the decree of the means, as
well as to that of his salvation, which is the decree of the end, as we call
it. And the putting these two together doth pave the way of seeking God
according to election complete. These two sorts of decrees we find dis
tinguished and stated to our hands : 2 Thess. ii. 13, God hath from the
beginning chosen you, namely, your persons, to salvation. With that
he begins ; and this is that election first mentioned, Eph. i. 4. And it is
our foundation, that is, of our persons elected, and also of all things else
(the means) decreed in order to our salvation ; and these two decrees are
alike fixed, and made absolutely necessary to be attended to; but the
latter as subordinate, or rather subservient to the other, and ordained to
accomplish and bring into effect that first original act, the election of our
persons, by bringing us to that salvation which was ordained to us. And
this decree of the means the apostle subjoins in those words, Through
sanctification of the Spirit, and belief of the truth, that is, of the gospel, which in New Testament speech has that title, the truth, by way of emi-
nency. Which true means are indeed no other than a true, saving,
justifying faith, and holiness of heart, and new obedience. And these
two, as they are the decreed means to bring us to that end of salvation, so
they are parts or pieces of that salvation itself which we were chosen unto
by the first decree, and which God has ordained, not as conditions of that
original act, of which he had said before, he had chosen us from the
beginning unto salvation. Conditions they are not, in any sense, either
of the Arminians, who would have a man acknowledge when he has^ truly
believed that then he is actually elected, and not before (now, according to
our doctrine, God chooses no man for his faith, but unto faith, and through
faith), or of those other divines that orthodoxly do hold election of persons, who do call them quasi conditions, but as it were conditions, no more than
a pepper-corn, if it be required is an acknowledgment of a rent-farm, which is the lowest diminutive term. But I am afraid to give it, lest it
should diminish from the praise of the glory of God s free grace, and lest
he should not brook it. There are two points which God is especially tender of : that of justifi
cation is the one, and his free grace in election is the other. But God is
especially tender in point of election ; for that act is wholly within himself,
wherein he has no creature to look on, but the ideas of us which himself
hath formed and represents us to himself by. In which first act also
within himself, his grace, the highest principle in him, assumes to himself
the most sovereign absolute freedom. If you come to that point with him
(and it is of that point he speaks it), God in his sovereignty proclaims, Eom. xi. 35, Whoever hath first given him, he shall be recompensed, be
^ OF THE OBJECT AND ACTS [BOOK III.
it but a peppercorn. I am afraid to diminish an hair from God in speak ing what will have the sound or preference of the least such appearance in the point of justification. It is not the proud notion of merit only (though the primitive fathers used the word in a good sense, but our protestants have generally avoided it), but of works too, must be exploded. God loves not faith as a work, though it saves his children whom he loves, much less will he admit . it to be considered in election, which is a purely pure act of himself within himself. Besides, I cannot see that what is a part of salva tion itself (at least the beginning of it) should have put upon it the nature of a condition. If a father should say, Marry my daughter, upon a con dition that you marry her, I should think he at least speaks not so properly ; for to marry her is to have the person herself, and not the condition of having her. And whereas the Scripture says,
< Look unto me, all the ends of the earth, and be ye saved. Looking (there) unto him is not the condition of being saved, but that whereby we are saved, and so he that
believes^hath eternal life. Marrying a man s daughter (in the case men
tioned) is not a condition, but an essential ingredient into the constitutive nature of the thing, and the means of enjoying her person. Both the decree of, and production of the means decreed, is in Scripture expression termed the fruits which flow from his original decree of the election of the person, in the virtue of which God bestows them; and God s choice of the person is the cause of our performing them, according to that of the Psalmist, Ps. Ixv.,
* Blessed is the man whom thou choosest (there is the first decree, and then follows), and causest to approach unto thee. So as the bestowing of these means which we are to observe and perform are seminally contained in the choice of the person, and in the love out of which he is chosen. Yea, the love that God bears to the person chosen is that which moveth God s heart to appoint the means, and then to work the means in the heart. Yea, further, this love moves God to the act of elec tion itself, and is therefore the original grace of all grace, even as that we call original sin is the cause and matrix of all sin. Let no man therefore
(this being the order of God s decrees) separate what God hath inseparably and unalterably joined.
5. Hence, and above all, the principal object which I propose to your eye and pursuance is this love and grace which was and is in God s heart, and is that love which is the cause of all, but especially of working faith, and quickening at the first, and ever after, according to Eph. ii. 4-6 ; yea, this love and grace is the cause of election itself, and of all the fruits of it : Eph. ii. 4-6, But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ (by grace ye are saved) ; and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. It hath been even his love from everlasting which hath done it, according to that in Jeremiah, chap, xxxi.,
I have loved thee with an everlasting love. Let the soul then infinitely admire that love, and possess his heart with all the royal and glorious pro perties of it, as that it is free, absolute, unchangeable, everlasting, &c., as follows in those royal titles in which the Scriptures do array and present it to the sons of men ; and let him admire and adore that the great God should love so well his mere creatures, out of which love that absolute decree of election did then flow, and all those purposes concerning the means which that love all along continued unto a man s conversion, and doth then work, and put them into execution unto salvation itself (for this love is actus continuus, as the eternal generation of his Son is, and yet from
everlasting both), so as at and before, yea, unto the very moment before a
CHAP. VII. J OF JUSTIFYING FAITH. 253
man s conversion, it is one and the same love for the substance of it that
at any time was or shall be ; and it is the same love which wrought con
version itself, and which works every good work in us that belongs unto
salvation, though, according to the general rules of his own word, he hath
obliged himself from discovering it anyway, no, not to the men themselves,
until that fulness of time be come, appointed by his secret will, for every elect man s first conversion and calling ; and therefore this love is the prin
cipal principle and object, which is to be addressed unto and pleaded, and God plied with the utmost intenseness of a man s soul and earnest
diligence, both for the manifestation of itself after conversion, and also to
convert a man who is as yet to be converted ; and this I eminently propose to be noted in this seeking of God in the way of election ; and my proposal of it is for two uses or improvements of it in the matter of election.
1st, That the soul may implore this love, and the grace of it, to manifest and discover itself unto the soul of the person by an intuitive light of the
Spirit, joined with a word of promise, with an overpowering efficacy, as when in prayer God sometimes answers,
* Thou art a person so beloved !
2dly, That the soul may also wait with the most vehement expectations and longings (with a neck stretched out, as the apostle s word* is) how the work of God goes on in him, and how the discoveries of God s grace do rise and spring up in him unto a more perfect day.
8dly, That the soul may humbly beseech that pure free love both to
fulfil all and each of those designed graces and blessings decreed, together with that act of election, to fetch and dig out every grace thou wantest, or
art deficient in, in the exercise thereof, and to draw it forth cut of that full and inexhaustible mine of glory which is in God s grace
: Phil. iv. 19,
4 God shall supply all your need according to the riches of his glory by Jesus Christ. And the soul is to regard all and each of these as con
sequential fruits that spring from such a love, and were as peremptorily decreed to be in a subordination, as fruits of that great act of the election
of persons.
For a conclusion, let me but lay open the heart of one scripture: Col. i.
5, 6, Whereof ye heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel, which is come unto you, as it is in all the world, and bringeth forth fruit, as
it doth also in you, since the day ye heard of it, and knew the grace of God
in truth. The grace of God principally meant, ver. 6, is the grace of
elective love, which is properly in God s heart toward us. But what should be meant by the grace of God made known by preaching by their
faithful minister, and which, being known by them in truth, brought forth
faith and love in them from the day they heard it ? The grace of God, as
it stands in this coherence, must be either the grace which was by the
gospel made known to be in God s heart toward sinners, to move them to come in to God, and so to work faith in them, whereby to be reconciled to God ; or else it is the laying open what the grace of God required to be
wrought in them, and so to direct them how they should turn to God; or
else both of these, which is the truth. It is not what the grace of God
required to be wrought in them that only or chiefly should be intended by
grace, because that grace of God intended is that grace (if you observe the
series of the words) which, after it is known, brings forth that fruit spoken
of; fruit in you, says the apostle. Now that cannot be understood
chiefly or only of inherent holiness or faith, for that grace itself is the
thing that is the very fruit itself, said to be brought forth, and that in them, as the phrase there is. And therefore it is not the grace, or the knowing * Apparently fatiMi/ndjjMrafi Phil, iii. 14. ED.
254 OF THE OBJECT AND ACTS [BOOK III.
of that grace begun experimentally to be in them, that is wholly or chiefly meant. There must, therefore, be another grace of God, that was the cause of that grace or fruit in themselves, which could be no other than the grace in God s heart towards them, taught and discovered to those Colossians by the preaching of the truths of the gospel, ver. 5, which gospel itself is therefore styled the grace of God which bringeth salvation ; that
is, the blessed news to sinful men of salvation by the sole grace that is in God s heart towards them, Tit. ii. 11 ; and this doth most properly and
principally bear the name of grace, and of the grace of. God, and is in God
himself, who is the God of all grace, 1 Pet. v. 10, and is the cause of all
grace in us, and that by its appearing, being made known to us in truth. This is gratia gratians, the grace that makes us gracious.
But now the inquisition will be, what grace of God borne to us men should be here meant, whether to all men alike in common, a love of God alike to all men ; or the grace of election, exerted at election of some men chosen out by God out of the rest of mankind, designing particularly sal vation to their persons, but promulged and proclaimed to all men, so as his love to mankind hath appeared to all men, but is not intended to all men. That this grace should be intended here, there are these reasoni which prove it.
(1.) Because the truth and reality of God s grace, indeed, is but to a remnant: Rom. xi. 5, Even so then, at this present time, when the
apostle wrote, there is a remnant, according to the election of grace, ver. 5 ; whose very persons (God s choice carries the sway in it) are styled the election: The election hath obtained, and the rest, that are not elected, were blinded, ver. 7. And this election is but of a remnant whom God had reserved to himself, or they had all gone alike to the fire, and been as Sodom and Gomorrah, if they had been left to their own free wills.
(2.) I find election itself expressed by finding grace in God s sight, whilst others of the sons of men are not vouchsafed it. Thus Moses his election
* Wherein, pleads Moses to God, shall it be known that I (Moses myself)
is expressed, Exod. xxxiii. 1G,
* and this people have found grace in thy sight? The phrase is used to express the being God s own chosen people. And as for Moses, God owns it, and expresseth it to himself: ver. 17, I will do as thou hast spoken, for thou hast found grace in my sight. And he speaks more expressly for election yet,
* And I know thee by name. And as for the people of the Jews, Jer. xxxi. 2, 3, the chosen elect among that people are said to have found grace in the wilderness, the rest being cut off by the sword ; and thereby their being an elect people is also ex
* I have loved thee with an everlasting love ; and that, I am sure you will say, imports their election. And as for Moses, whereas he grew bold upon that encouragement, I know thee by name, to ask of God to see his face and his glory, God gave him this answer, I will make all my goodness to pass before thee, and will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee, The Lord, the Lord God, gracious and merciful/ &c., viz., all the attributes of his gracious nature. But to whom should the attributes be applied for their salvation ? God there makes a reserve of the elect only to be the persons who should have the benefit of these attributes for their particular salvation ; and therefore adds, I will be
pressed, for there it follows,
gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will be merciful to whom I will shew mercy. As if he had said, I have indeed proclaimed all the attributes of grace and mercy that are in my nature, in common to all the people, but with this reserve to myself, that as to my willy which governs the manage ment of those attributes unto persons for their salvation, this I keep the
CHAP. VII.] OF JUSTIFYING FAITH. 255
counsel of it unto myself, according to the counsel of my own will, Eph.
* I will be merciful to whom
i. 11. And so answerably it is in Exod. xxxiv.,
I will be merciful. And the apostle Paul allegeth these very words, I
will, &c., to prove the point of election to be by special grace, and the
good pleasure of his will, in the case of Moses his election, and in the case
of hardening Pharaoh. And that phrase, they found grace, doth not
import a grace inherent or discovered hi them, but a grace from God
without them, or dwelling in God s heart towards them,, and coming from
without upon them, not in them. And it is to be observed that that is the
phrase God himself, in expressing his shewing mercy to the persons whom
he there chooseth (as hath been opened, Exod. xxxiii. 19), I will be mer
ciful on whom I will be merciful. And to bring this home yet nearer to
these Colossians, and what is spoken of their receiving the grace of God
without them, which was the cause of their so quick conversion, as I
observed, this was truly the grace of God inventa et non quasita, in Isaiah s
< I am found of them that sought me not, as he promised. And of whom and what sort of men did he prophesy it ? Expressly of those heathen
words,
Gentiles, that had been heathens to the time of their conversion : Isaiah
* And I said, Behold me, behold me, unto
Ixv. 1, it follows in that verse,
a nation that was not called by my name; which was punctually fulfilled
in this city of Colosse, who were heathens, till the day they heard the
gospel of the grace of God ; but from that time brought forth fruit, and the
like was in all the world. We poor ministers in these times stand picking the lock, which asketh often much time, but the apostles and primitive ministers broke open the door of faith, as it is called.
OF THE OBJECT AND ACTS OF JUSTIFYING
FAITH.