^y OF PRI^•Cf73x OCT 101988 j
BX 9315 .G66 1861 v. 9 Goodwin, Thomas, 1600-1680. The works of Thomas Goodwin
NICHOL'S SERIES OF STANDARD DIVINES.
PUEITAN PEEIOD.
THE
WORKS OF THOMAS GOODWIN, D.D.
VOL. IX.
COUNCIL OF PUBLICATION.
W. LINDSAY ALEXANDER, D.D., Professor of Theology, Congregational Union, Edinburgh.
JAMES BEGG, D.D., Minister of Newington Free Church, Edinburgh.
THOMAS J. CRAWFORD, D.D., S.T.P., Professor of Divinity, University, Edinburgh.
D. T. K. DRUMMOND, M.A., Minister of St Thomas's Episcopal Church, Edinburgh.
WILLIAM H. GOOLD, D.D., Professor of Biblical Literature and Church History, Reformed Presbyterian Church, Edinburgh.
ANDREW THOMSON, D.D., Minister of Broughton Place United Presby- terian Church, Edinburgh.
Central €^Dttor. REV. THOMAS SMITH, M.A., Edinburgh.
THE WORKS
OF
THOMAS GOODWIN, D.D,
SOMETIME PRESIDENT OF MAGDALENE COLLEGE, OXFORD.
Mit^ (Bmtxul f rrfaa
BY JOHN C. MILLER, D.D.,
LINCOLN COLLKliE ; HONOKAUr CANON OK WORCKSTKK ; KECTOll OF ST JIAUTIN's, BlKMINf;n\>I.
BY ROBERT HALLEY, D.D.
PRINCIPAL OK THE INDEPENDENT NEW COLLEGE, LONDCN.
VOL. IX.
CONTAINING I
A DISCOUBSE OF ELECTION, &c. A DISCOURSE OF THANKFULNESS.
EDINBURGH : JAMES NICHOL.
LONDON: JAMES NISBET AND CO. DUBLIN: G. HERBERT.
M.DCCC.LXIV.
EDiyBORGH :
PRINTED BY JOHN GREIG AND SON,
OLD PHYSIC GARDENS.
TH"^
CONTENTS.
A DISCOUESE OF ELECTION, &c.
Pagk BOOK I.
Wherein is proved the necessity of an election grace, if any of the rational creatures be certainly saved : and that God hath made an election of some out of pure grace, proved by the event, out of the stories of all times, throughout the Old and New Testament. ..... 3
BOOK 11.
Of the order of God's decrees about man's election and reproba- tion.— Of the end to which we are ordained ; a supernatural union with God and communication of himself. — The infinity of grace discovered therein. .... 84
BOOK III.
The infinity of grace in God's choosing us, proved from the nature of election, both simply considered in itself, and also com- pared with that other act of reprobation. . . 150
BOOK IV.
The mighty and powerful grace which God dispenses to his elect, in effectually calling them, in preserving them from tempta- tions and sin, in strengthening and enabling them to persevere unto the end, and in bringing them at last securely to an eternal glory, by all which, the greatness of election grace is more fully cleared and proved. . . . 231
VI CONTENTS.
BOOK V.
Page
Election, in the ordinary course of it, runs in a line of succession from believing parents to their posterity. — The covenant of grace is entailed on the children of believers. — God most usually makes such his choice. — What judgment we are thereupon to have of them. . . . . 426
A DISCOUESE OF THANKFULNESS. ... 499
A DISCOUESE OF ELECTION, &c.
VOL. IX.
A
DISCOURSE
0 F
ELECTION,
OF THE
Free and Special GRACE of GOD Manifested therein ;
THE
Absoluteness and Unchangeableness of his DECREES ; and their Infallible Accomplishment.
BY
THOMAS GOODWIN, D.D.
LONDON,
Printed in the Year, MDCLXXXII.
OF ELECTION.
BOOK I.
Wherein is proved the necessity of an election r/race, if any of the rational creatures be certainly sav^d: and that God hath made an election of some out of pure grace, proved by the event, out of the stories of all times, through- out the Old and New Testament.
CHAPTER I.
Tlie necessity of an election, or super creation grace, if either angels or men (ichether fallen or unfallen) be certainly and securely saved.
By the necessity of an election, I mean not as if God had been necessitated thereunto, for nothing with him is more free ; and that it is termed an election of grace sufficiently testifies it ; but the necessity lay in respect of the eter- nal salvation of either angels or men.
Nor, secondly, do I mean, as if it must have been an act of election ; understanding it a calhng forth but of some persons only ; for that way of salvation, which is the grace itself, God might have saved all of either sort by, and not have made an election of it, that is, of some, although he was pleased so to do. It is true, indeed, in making an election but of some, the freeness of God's grace was the more manifested ; that is, in the point of the freedom of it ; and that, de facto, there was such an election but of some, both angels and men, I shall after shew ; but the dint of my present asser- tion, whilst yet I term it election of grace (because de facto so it was), lies in this : that, take the substance of that grace itself, which election hath chalked out as the way of salvation thereby, and that is it I now alone affirm to have been necessary ; I add securely, to bring to salvation both angels and men. And my assertion issues in this, that not any one of his creatures were, or had been eternally and efi'ectually saved (that is, none of his understanding rational creatures), without such a grace as election hath pitched upon ; no, not one of either sort, neither angels nor men, as, de facto, it appeared.
God, though he made angels and men in a state of perfect holiness, able
4 OF ELECTION. [BoOK I.
to stand with the inDate pondus, or poise and bias of hoh'ness, joined with that concurrence or assistance of God's that did accompany it ; yet that assistance being then suited to the laws and dues of creation merely ; that is, look what preservation in that state a creature could challenge, by the covenant of creation, as a due from God as his creator, so far forth there was an assistance did accompany that holiness ; and therefore was but such an assistance as was proportioned to that present state, whereby the will of the creature had a power to continue, if he would use that assistance, and those creation powers and principles, as he ought, so as it was every way such as the creature could not, but at any time (till the act of falling), say, I find myself able to stand if I will ; but so as the keeping of this holiness with that assistance, was committed to the free-will of man, as likewise of angels, which at the best was a mutable slippery thing, fickle and change- able. To make instance in the angels, by and from the example of whom it is that I make forth this necessity of election for the creature to be saved. In Job iv. 18, ' Behold, he puts no trust in his servants, and the angels he chargeth with folly.' We have the like in chap. xv. ver. 15, * He putteth no trust in his saints.' The angels were perfectly holy, but if he would give them no other assistance but what was their due from creation, there was no trust to be put in them, or their standing. If they were holy to-day, they might sin to-morrow. If God but sent them of an errand down into this world, they might sin before they came up again. The folly there was their mutability ; and to be carried on unchangeably to eternity, without the hazard and danger of miscarriage, was beyond the due of creation, which was their fii'st creation covenant they all appeared afore God in ; and there- fore immutably to have kept them, had been grace, which must flow from another well-head and original than the pure covenant of works or of crea- tion, and that can be no other than grace ; and the indispensable ground why the creature, by the law and covenant of creation, should be thus dealt with as aforesaid, and so be left to a mutability, is, that it is only proper unto God, and that essentially, not to be subject to change. And it was fit this difi"erence betwixt God's being, and the being of the creature (which it had by creation) should be thus stated by the creation -law as purely it came out of God's hand ; and so as that if God would impart the image of his immu- tability of holiness to any, and fix them in it, it might appear to be of grace. This is grace, and grace to the angels themselves. In James i. 13, you have it, that it is * God only that is not tempted with evil, nor can be tempted.' The creature, by what from the law of creation they have upon the terms of creatureship, may be tempted to sin ; and not only so, but fall and be lost, and then never to be able to recover itself again.
This being our creation state, God foresaw that if all of these his creatures were left to the conduct of their wills, assisted but only with these creation helps, that they were in a continual hazard of falhng, and that they would all fall at one time or another, one after the other ; he therefore made an election of grace to put all out of hazard in some ; and if you will not see the truth of it through the doctrine, you may view it by experience, for it fell out, as to their fall, both of angels and of men. Jude tells you, there was a first estate in which angels were created, but they feh from it ; and the rest would have done so too, at one time or another, for they were all made of the same metal, if they had been left to the mutability of their wills. It proved true of men. Take Adam and Eve their wills, they were perfectly holy, and yet what became of those two stout wills ? If but one of them indeed had fallen, you would have thought the other might have been immu- table ; but you may see they both fell, and so it was experimented they were
Chap. I.] of election. 5
mutable ; and that all their children they should have put forth were such, and would at one time have fallen as these have done, who were all of man- kind that were then in the world. Well, God foresaw all would be a-going ; there is a happy word in the text, Rom. xi. 4, xariX/'Trov, he made a reserve of some before the world was ; he laid his hand upon them ; nay, said he, I will have a remnant ; I will have some. He made a reserve when he fore- saw all would, or might in the end, be lost ; and that reserve was made by election. It was election itself; the apostle interprets that word, ver. 5. The great God had reason (shall I say, or rather that his infinite grace joined with wisdom) to have something out of all what he had made (for whom are all things) that should live with him, be happy in him, blessed of him, that might eternally bless him again. And accordingly he kept some of the angels, and caused them to abide with him, and ordained some of men, though when fallen, who should return to him again ; and this was done by election, which is that other well-head of all super-creation, or supernatural grace, opposed to that of creation-holiness and assistance.
You read of the angels who stood, 1 Tim. v. 21, that they are called the ' elect angels.' You read elsewhere that they are called ' the holy angels,' for they never sinned ; and they had as great a holiness as any creature could be capable of by creation ; also ' they excel in strength,' and so their holiness was a strong holiness. But was it that which kept them ? No ; you heard God could not trust them in the hands of their own wills ; there- fore it was that they were elect angels ; that kept them. In that new super- added title, you read the grace of God expressed as that which kept them in that holiness, and so fixed them.
Now, further, consider that where election is, there is grace ; whether the creature be fallen or not fallen, it is called ' the election of grace ;' and what- soever is above the dues of creation, and the rules thereof, is grace, and as truly such as that which is called mercy, as shewn to a sinner or creature actually fallen, is called grace. Grace and works, we read in the words of Rom. xi. 6, are so opposed, as those which intermingle not. The privileges of grace are eternally separated by an eternal law. If a thing be of grace, it is no more of works ; and if of works, it is no more of grace. It was not, therefore, their creation holiness fixed them, for that was works, both in the principle and in the assistance of it. Indeed, without their holiness they had not stood ; but what was it fixed their holiness but grace ? To ascribe their standing unto their own holiness, is to found a privilege of grace upon works. Grace were no more grace, if that took place. A perfect holiness, and a stronger hohness than man's, was their due by creation ; but to be kept by so strong an assistance as should eliectually fix their wills, and for ever after keep them so, this was above the ordinary creation-law, and so above the law of works. Had the evil angels had such a prevalent super- creation assistance, they had not fallen ; and therefore it must be super- creation grace kept those other. And all grace that saves is from election ; and election is the fountain of such a gracious stream, the channel of which should run on to eternity without failure or drying up, as this in them did and doth. Election and grace are never to be served y^ the angels then were saved by it, and not any one angel, but those who were elect, were saved : for all that stood are called elect. And, on the contrary, all of them that were elect were saved, and none miscarried. The election obtained it amongst them ; and you know what became of ♦ the rest.' Thus you see what made the ditference even amongst them also. Oh, let us therefore adore God for his election grace, as without which none of his creatures had * Qu. 'severed'? — Ed.
6 OF ELECTION. [BoOK I.
infallibly been saved. Thus much for a demonstration of this, taken from the angels.
For the case of mankind, now they are fallen, if God had not made an elec- tion among them, what would have become of them, if it were so with angels that never sinned ? 0 brethren, how much more with filthy man ! as Job xv. 15, 17, 'Behold, he putteth no trust in his saints; yea, the heavens are not clean in his sight ; how much more abominable and filthy is man, which drinketh iniquity like water?' and we may argue on this point as he doth there in that other. If not the angels, not one of them, were saved from the ruins of their nature but by election, then surely not man fallen. If election were necessary but for their confirmation in holiness, as our divines say (though I think there is a farther privilege joined with it), then how much more for man, that was irreparably fallen, as by himself, and that needed the whole of salvation for substance, and continuance therein also ! What a blessed provision did God make to make an election ! There is a scripture that hath often afi'ected my heart: Rom. ix. 29, * As Esaias said before,' saith Paul out of him, 'Except the Lord of Sabaoth had left us a seed, we had been like unto Sodom and Gomorrha.' It is spoken of elec- tion, he had discoursed of in that chapter. And what is that seed there ? It is plainly a reserve, a relic or remnant. And that speech in Rom. xi. 5, of a ^remnant according to the election of grace,' is all one with that 'seed' there; for many passages in the ninth chapter and in this hold a correspon- dence. 0 my brethren, if God had not taken such a remnant, not Israel only, but all mankind, had been like unto Sodom and Gomorrha. Not a man, woman, or child in Sodom or Gomorrha were saved, but whom God took out. Lot and his family. Therefore, say I, bless God for election, we had been undo;.c else to a man. And shall not this afi'ect ? Oh, despise not election ! therein lies all your hope, that there is a remnant shall infaUibly be saved.
After this narration of the angels, suppose that the case of us men were res Integra, and that we were still in that happy estate God at first created our first parents, and us with him, and were you now all as holy as Adam was — I will make that supposition — yet the case of us was but the same for changeableness, and would have been the same in the issue with that of the fallen angels, who are besides the weaker creatures of the two, and in that respect more subject to mutability. So as suppose Adam had stood, by the assistance of the power vouchsafed him by the covenant of works, so long till he had put us forth an holy seed, yet we must all have then personally stood upon our own single bottoms, which himself did at first stand (shall I say, or fall ?) upon, and so been in the same continual danger to drop away from God one after another. And as for that if he had stood, that both he and we should have been immutably confirmed in grace, as the good angels, there was no such promise made either to him or us under that his covenant and state by creation ; for if there had, it must have been by election-grace super- added to the covenant of works, which in the case of the angels is said to be; and if so, then promises proper to election must be supposed made to works of creation and the covenant thereof, and so grace be brought into works, founded upon works, which the apostle in Rom. xi. 6 makes incom- patible : ' And if by grace, then it is no more of works ; otherwise grace is no more grace. But if it be of works, then it is no more grace ; otherwise work is no more work.'
But I will make this further supposition, that if we in that state had heard that there was an election of grace, such as the holy angels stood by, whether would you have stuck and betook yourself unto creation-holiness barely, with
Chap. I.] or election. 7
the mutability of it, or election of grace for the way of your eternal salva- tion ? Were I as perfect as Adam, I promise you I would for my part betake myself to that of election, that super- creation privilege, [rather] than adventure my eternal condition in any free-will holiness, were it never so perfect.
Well, but we all with his holiness soon miscarried, we are irrecoverably (as of ourselves) fallen by it ; yet there is a fancy that hath possessed the minds of men, and hath run down throughout all ages of the world, — nothing can root out or dispossess men of it, neither constant experience, nor the view of the ruins of the generality of mankind that have perished by it, — and it is this, that if God doth set up the will and heart of man by furnishing it with new helps and assistances, vamp or recruit this old degenerate frame with fresh and new supplies, that then their wills may make a second hopeful ven- ture to obtain, although no such election-grace (as our doctrine sets forth) should be superadded nor strike in, to work the will and deed itself over- comingly on their hearts, or undertake for them invincibly so to work. And the use as to this respect which they make is, that Christ should have been,
1, intended (as a second Adam), for he was to purchase the pardon of sins;
2, to purchase helps for all; 3, and to give grace and assistance so far as they may, if they will use those helps well, with promise that if they do, and by these come to believe and be converted, then, 4, God's electing grace comes upon them, and then it is he chooseth them to eternal life, upon the intuition of this good usage of their wills; election only follows hereupon, and hath no influence at all afore their wills have cast it thus ; if God would but set up the will and heart of man anew, vamp this old, worn, and degenerate frame, assist it and furnish it with new helps and advantages.
And thus men will needs wilfully perish a second time, by venturing to sea again in that rotten leaking old vessel, their own free wills, in which and by which they shipwrecked so miserably once before, when they had wind and tide, and a new vessel, strong, and tight, and well built, with all other advan- tages to have preserved her; but this their will being pilot, so steered as all was cast away, and yet they will adventure to sea again therein. Adam's will had, besides the concurrence of God's assistance (such as was sufficient), an inward principle of habitual and inherent holiness, the image of God as a vital principle of motion within him, whereby not only to be able to act holily, but which also as a weight or pondiis did sway and incline his will to act holily, even as sin dwelling in us doth, as a weight hung on, incline us now to evil.
But, alas, there is now that vast difference and disadvantage in our case, beyond, infinitely beyond, what was in his as to these respects ; that instead of a perfect holiness possessing and inclining the will and mind, there is no such vital habitual principle in our hearts left ; nay, an utter disability unto what is spiritual, holy, and good ; yea, contrary enmity and opposition there is unto * holiness in truth,' as the apostle calls it. Men err, not knowing the power of original sin, nor the depth of corruption that is in their own hearts. The will of man now is the prime and proper seat of sin, and the throne thereof is seated therein. And as no prince's will, in full and actual possession of regal power, can be brought by ordinary or any persuasions to be willing, much less to be indifferent, to be dethroned, so nor may we think that sin in our wills will upon easy terms lay down his crown : * The flesh is enmity to God, and is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be,' says the apostle. The will and mind, and whole heart of man, must first have that corruption which is in possession dethroned from its dominion, and then the same vital habitual principle of inherent holiness created in it anew : ' A new
8 OF ELECTION. [BoOK I.
heart and a new spirit' must be given it, and *a heart of stone taken away' (whereof with the affections the will is the subject, as the reins are of the other stone in our bodies). The will and affections are the seat of this spiri- tual stone, and as incapable to act one holy act as the stone in the kidney is to act an action of life or vital motion. They must be made an heart of flesh that hath a new life, and sense, &c., given it, and thereby that which must be the cause and subject of any one the least such living operation, other- wise you may as well * gather grapes of thorns, and figs of thistles, as good fruit of a corrupt tree.' Mat. vii. 16, 17, 'The tree must therefore be made good ere its fruit can be made good,' as Christ (the root) hath told us. Mat. xii. 33, 'Either make the tree good, and his fruit good; or else make the tree corrupt, and his fruit corrupt: for the tree is known by his fruit.' And what are all those helps they talk of, either that rb yvuGrbv roj ©fcoD, that light of God from the works of creation which God gave to heathens of himself, Rom. i. ; or the light of conscience, of the law, Rom. ii. ; and a natural devotion suited to it in the will and affection, whereby men have a reverence and addiction to a Deity, accompanied with impressions of moral honesty (which we call virtue) ; and let these be impregnated with the light of the law and gospel, delivered with all the signs with which God once did enforce the law, and Christ the gospel, yet the coiTupt will will inwardly and habitually be a corrupt will still. And though all these helps, with the assistance from God they speak of, may stir and affect it, yet they will never be able to write the holy and spiritual law in the heart in new and living characters, and dispositions conformable and suitable unto the inward hoHness of it, unless God put forth an omnipotent power and efficacy to change it. All the 'helps they speak of, they are all short and deficient; helpers of no value, as in Job xxx. 13. A refiner or chemist may as soon, by his common earthly fire, with the mixtures and arts he useth, sublimate a clod of earth or a globe of brass into a star, such as are in heaven, as these helps, and the use of them all, can take away the innate con-uption of the will, and make it spiritual, or endow it with a spiritual life ; for nothing works above the sphere of its activity. Those helps, elevated with the afore- said light of the law and gospel, and enforced with outward signs and wonders to the utmost, and accompanied with a striving power of the Holy Ghost, may wonderfully stir, and affect, and demulce this will of man ; but if God do not over and above endow it with a new principle of inherent holiness and workmanship created to good work, it will be still utterly unable to bring forth one act that is pleasing to the holy God.
This truth was experimented both under the law and gospel. The Jews at Sinai had God's voice uttering the law to them. You have the manner of it both in Exodus, and in brief recapitulated by Moses : Deut. v. 22-28, * These words the Lord spake unto all your assembly in the mount, out of the midst of the fire, of the cloud, and of the thick darkness, with a great voice ; and added no more : and he wrote them in two tables of stone, and delivered them unto me. And it came to pass, when ye heard the voice out of the midst of the darkness (for the mountain did burn with fire), that ye came near unto me, even all the heads of the tribes, and elders ; and ye said, Behold, the Lord our God hath shewed us his glory, and his greatness, and we have heard his voice out of the midst of the fire : we have seen this day that God doth talk with man, and he liveth. Now therefore why should we die ? for this great fire will consume us. If we hear the voice of our God any more, then we shall die. For who is there of all flesh, that hath heard the voice of the living God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as we have, and lived ? Go thou near, and hear all that the Lord our God
Chap. I.] of election. 9
shall say; and speak thou unto us all that the Lord our God shall speak unto thee, and we will hear it, and do it. And the Lord heard the voice of your words, when ye spake unto me ; and the Lord said unto me, I have heard the voice of the words of this people, which they have spoken unto thee: they have well said all that they have spoken.' And yet all this did not change the will, nor give the generality of that people an heart spiritually to obey; for in the next words, ver. 29, God himself doth thereupon make this remark upon it, * Oh that there were such an heart in them, that they would fear me, and keep all my commandments always, that it might be well with them, and with their children for ever ! '
And again, at last, Deut. xxix. 2-4, * And Moses called unto all Israel, and said unto them, Ye have seen all that the Lord did before your eyes in the land of Egypt unto Pharaoh, and unto all his servants, and unto all his land ; the great temptations which thine eyes have seen, the signs, and those great miracles. Yet the Lord hath not given you a heart to perceive, and eyes to see, and ears to hear, unto this day.' Not their wills only remained as they were, but they had not understandings enlightened with spiritual light, spiritually to discern and perceive the holiness in truth that was therein.
The case and condition of the whole world I gave instance in afore. They had all those helps, with the advantages of time and improvement of them, living so many years. They had also the Spirit of God striving with them, Gen. vi. 3, and the righteousness of the gospel preached with power, from the assistance and concurrence of the divinity of Christ, appearing in it with power; of whom yet Peter, by the Holy Ghost, declares, 1 Peter iii. 8, 'Christ,' says he, 'being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit' (namely, of his Godhead); ver. 19, 'By which also' (that Spirit, namely) 'he went and preached to the spirits in prison' (that is, that are now in hell), ' which sometimes in the days of Noah were disobedient' unto that Noah's preaching the gospel to them, with which Christ's Spirit had gone forth and preached in and by Noah to them. And yet, with all these helps of free-will grace (as we may call it), they remained flesh, or unrege- nerate and ungodly, as Moses in Gen. vi. and the same Peter tells us; yea, an whole 'world of ungodly' ones, 2 Peter ii. 5, and but one Noah with his family were saved. And how came that to pass, but as God says of him, 'Noah hath found grace in my sight;' answerable unto 'By grace you are saved,' as the apostle to the elect Ephesians, chap. i. 4, 5 compared with chap. ii. 4, 5, whilst the world round about them continued 'dead in tres- passes and in sins' (with all their helps, that could not quicken them), Eph. ii. 1-4. I might go over the instances in Christ's and the apostles' times, wherein you would see the same issue; but let these suffice.
Only because some may perhaps inquire, that if the wills and aff'ections of these Jews were really aff'ected and stirred, then they had the power to will and to turn ; and wherein were these helps defective then, and not sufficient ?
The answer is, that they still wanted a power spiritually to will and dis- cern, as hath been said. Their wills remained still in their native corrup- tion, and had not new inherent habitual power infused into them, without which they could not will any one act truly good. This habitual change of heart is that new heart which God complained was wanting, even whilst, and in the midst of their being so affected. The will of man is, as was said, the proper seat of sin ; and the strength of that sin, that is therein seated, is the predominancy of self-love ; and that self-love remaining in its pre- dominancy, is that which the Scriptures do term flesh, as well as any other
10 OF ELECTION. [BoOK I.
last. And this self in the will remaining still in its predominancy, as it doth until a new principle of holiness towards God chiefly be infused, may be affected with many things, both in law and gospel. And from out of that principle so affected and stirred, man's will may use those helps and assist- ances, and act accordingly ; and so the issue falls as it did afore ; that the heart and will remaining a thorn as afore, and not turned into a fig-tree, you cannot gather figs on it. There is a work, and it is the highest work, of the word and gospel, that is short of saving ; it is a work accompanying the word and Spirit, which greatly affects the heart, so as to suffer persecution, and yet is short of a saving work, or of the heart its being made the ' good ground,' and an * honest heart.' It is the ' thorny ground,' as Christ in the parable hath told us, that though the word took root in it, yet it changed not the thorns, but was the thorny gi'ound still ; and so the heart remaining inwardly such, is therefore in all it brings forth, plainly said to be unfruitful : Mark iv. 19, ' And the cares of the world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things entering in, choke the word, and it becometh unfruitful ;' yea, ver. 7, ' to yield no fruit.' Why ? For all actings of the heart, though about things spiritual, that are only for a man's self, are said to be ' no fruit to God :' Hosea x. 1, ' Israel is an empty vine, that bringeth forth fruit to itself;' which whilst it doth only for and to itself, self-love then is said to continue in its predominancy. And it is said, that regeneration is * not of the will of the flesh,' John i. 13, that is, of the will still remaining flesh, which yet it is, though a man be never so much affected with what the word delivers, if his will and affection be moved chiefly or only by what affects self-love, without having an higher principle ingenerated or begotten in it by election-grace. And therefore no wonder if the apostle says, ' It is not of him that runs, or him that wills ;' for men's wills may be greatly moved and incited unto a running, which is the swiftest motion, and yet be deficient of regeneration. So that to conclude ; —
One of the foundation causes of this error, doating on this free-will grace, is, that whilst they imagine such helps and assistances as they define may give a TO jjosse, a power to turn, &c., leaving it to the will to cast the act, they withal do suppose the will to remain a principle in itself, as it were inclinable in itself unto spiritual good, and able to move to good, if its shackles were once off, and that the knowledge of God and the gospel doth but once visit it, and come in, and that the Spirit presents the motives thereof to it, in a way of persuasion, &c. Oh, but I demand who or what shall create a new principle of holiness, * a new spirit' in the will, and take the ' heart of stone' out of it ? Until which be done, the will is the most averse principle, and fullest of enmity, both to God and his law, in the spiritualness and true holiness of them, and cannot rise or act (though never BO much otherwise affected) beyond the sphere of its own inward activity, as no creature else we see can do ; as a stone will not ascend upward, but whilst it is moved by force, and some outward hand that throws it out, for it hath not a natural principle thereto, as fire hath. But this is not all that goes unto calling, to give a new spirit of habitual holiness, and then assist it in acting, but so far as Adam's holiness was assisted by the law of creation ; and that it is the most which the highest of free-willers do desire of God, to be out of his grace assisted withal. Nor are these all that the omnipotent power of God is laid forth upon in our calling, and afterwards in keeping us ; but there is an exceeding greatness of power concurs to every act or work that is good and holy all along, even the same that wrought in Christ his rising from the dead, according to that Eph. i. 19, 20, ' And what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who beheve, according to the
Chap. I.] of election. 11
working of his mighty power, which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places,' &c. It is not such an assistance only as Adam had, but as Christ had in rising from the dead. A principle of holiness, though it be a disposition and inclination to holiness, may and doth lie dead, and besides, is clogged and hindered in its motion with a weight of sin that is contrary to it in us (read Itom. vii. 23, 24) ; if electing grace strikes not in with an omnipotent Bweetnetis (as Austin's word is), or an invincible secret power (for by that place now quoted, the saints are not always sensible of the greatness of it) that draws this will and its principle of holiness into act. And upon the Spirit's drawing forth, and carrying on, the actings of holiness in us, it is that Austin, and Jansenius out of him, do set the crown, as that which is the complete eminency of eflicacious grace ; for since the fall, all other helps are short of causing us to act, thougli holiness be dwelling in us without effecting power. The promise therefore is not only to give a new heart, as in Ezek. xxxvi. 26, ' A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you ; and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh ;' but it further follows, ver. 27, ' And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them ;' that is, I will work in you the act itself also, even the will and the deed.
Now the giving of this new heart, &c., in which doth consist the mark of the true inward power, is the proper fruit of election-grace, and of that alone, with diflerence from what this free-will grace, as it is stated by these men, doth suppose necessary ; and the covenant of grace (which is the transcript of election-decrees indefinitely expressed) runs in those terms, ' a new heart will I give you, and a new spirit,' &c., Ezek. xxxvi. 26. And thereupon also it is that election-grace doth always infallibly and invincibly, at one time or another, work this by effectual calling in those it hath predestinated, as many Scriptures shew ; as Rom. viii. 28, 30, ' And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. Moreover, whom he did predestinate, them he also called ; and whom he called, them he also justified ; and whom he justified, them he also glorified.' And in Rom. ix., in the case of Jacob, he speaks thus, ' That the purpose of God according to the election might stand, not of works ' (wrought by free will), * but of him that calleth.' "Which shews that God, having from everlasting first elected, doth manifest the firmness of that his purpose to save by effectual calling, as he did in Jacob, by virtue of election. The same you have also confirmed towards the con- clusion of his discourse about election, in the same chapter. Having just afore said, ver. 23, * That he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory ;' he imme- diately subjoins, as adequate thereto, ver. 24, ' Even us whom he ha,th called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles.' As if he had said, even us whom he hath thus ordained by electing mercy, to make known the riches of his glory upon, are those that are called, and likewise those that shall be. So as let no man think that when we say, ' the election hath obtained it,' that we should mean, that the elect by election only, without an efi'ectual work of calling, doth obtain. No ; none that are grown up to years of knowledge but God calleth if he hath elected them ; and by calling, endows them with a new heart, and a new spirit (as hath been spoken).
Also, understand between, that when the apostle speaks of election grace, Rom. xi. 6, we confine it not to those purposes of grace in God's mind from everlasting, but take in that operative grace in calling, as comprehended
12 OF ELECTION. [BoOK I.
under it, the whole grace in calling us in that election grace in the text ; for election set it a-work, and did design it. And the same election grace is that which runs along, and is immediately at the head of calling, &c., it is the same grace. The one is the grace of purposing, as it is abstractly con- sidered in the decree and intention ; the other in calling is the grace of execution. My conclusion from all this therefore is, that we, the fallen sons of men, would see and be convinced of the necessity of this election grace, so far beyond what the draught of their free-will grace sets forth, as which if God had not peremptorily resolved in his purposes to put forth to work in us, to save those of mankind whom he chose ; or if less than this, not any of mankind had obtained ; but now the election, through the operation of this grace, hath and doth obtain salvation to a man. And do you in reason consider, that there being but those two ways to obtain salvation by, ever started or pretended unto by the sons of men ; and all being reducible to one of these two, as in the fore-cited text, Rom. xi. 6, you see works (the head and principle of which is man's will, acting in and by itself) and election grace, divide them into these two, and do but set them in opposition one to the other, as the Scriptures likewise throughout ; both which the apostle hath summed up in that short sentence, ' It is not of him that runs, nor of him that wills, but of God who sheweth mercy ; ' namely, the true and right act of willing and running by an election grace (and election grace is his argument there in hand), round about, and afore, and after. For otherwise, without running and willing no man is saved : as in Philip, iii. 12, 13, * Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect : but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus. Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended ; but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before.' Our salvation is wrought out by God's giving the will and the deed. If, then, the first hath failed them that have betaken themselves unto it, and never no man was yet saved by it (as hath been already declared), nor could be for the reasons aforesaid, and that the Scriptures still cry, and peremptorily, * Not by works,' and then posi- tively and conclusively, by being ' called with an holy calling, according to his purpose and grace given us in Christ Jesus before the world begun,' then let us not only be convinced, but further adore and bless God for this election grace, without which also Christ had died in vain, and not saved a man, and been in heaven alone, to lament that he had come short in this work, by having omitted to put in one clause into his covenant in dying, viz., that besides his purchase of helps, whereby men might be saved if they would, he had not further purchased an invincible overcoming of their wills for whom he died, but had left to the will of man itself, to use or not to use those according to the pleasure of their wills, and had not meritoriously also procured of God efficaciously to work the will and the deed, * according to his good pleasure.' And so Christ should be left to satisfy himself with this rehef, that he had done his part, but the obstructions lay in man's will, that would not put forth the act of willing, though he had given them suf- ficiency of helps to do it. Yea, God himself must have suspended, and have forborne his dearest delight and highest first blessing, as Eph. i. 4, 5, viz., the exercise of his electing grace, ' according to the good pleasure of his will ' towards any, until man's will had first used those helps well, and put itself forth into willing out of its liberty to ast, or not to act ; and so all electing grace might have been for ever frustrated. All which necessarily follows, that it might thus have been, upon the doctrine of free-will grace, if the way thereof had been God's way for salvation ; and if that God should
Chap. I.] of election. 13
have kept to the laws thereof, which men have set for the salvation of them- selves and others. But, oh ! blessed and thrice blessed be he, the God of all grace, who foreseeing all this, peremptorily struck in with an election grace, whereby to be sure he would save some, whom he had afore by elec- tion given to Christ, who a few hours afore his death professeth to die for all that God gave hira, John xvii.
Use. Now, then, we may enter a just complaint against the world, that although election grace is thus necessary unto salvation, yet all the thanks God hath from the unthankful sons of men, ignorant of their own interest, and the ways of God, is, for him to be quarrelled at for this his election, in that he took not all, as well as some (for in so much as they quarrel with those that hold it, they quarrel with God himself therein, even as Christ said, ' In that ye did it to those, ye did it unto me') ; that whereas God before the fall was free of any obligations unto the creature, but those by the laws of creation, which he exactly performed, and yet notwithstanding man fell ; and whereas by the fail he was absolutely quit and discharged of all obhgations to men, by the forfeitures of the dues and assistances by all the laws of God due to them ; yea, and on the contrary, was by his justice provoked to damn them, that it had been infinite grace to save, though but one man ; yet these would impose upon him a necessity to give forth a com- mon grace, and that he should purpose upon free-will terms to save all, or else with them, it is not grace to mankind, nor worth the name of it ; so zealous are they in pretence for their own nature. Whereas, on the con- trary, according to their draught of what is their common grace, when all is summed up, and it comes unto the event, it w^ould not save a man ; corrup- tion in man is so strong, and their assisting grace which they propose is so weak. I do not say that those that hold that way of free-will grace, none of them are saved ; but this I say, if God should deal with them but only according to their own model and draught, to the measure and proportion of that grace and the works of it, which they do judge sufficient, that work w^ould not save a man of them, if God should not out of grace work beyond the extent of their opinions. It is as if the angels should have said, out of zeal to their common natures, that because God has let go so many of us, that is our nature, to fall, whom he did not choose, but suffered to perish eternally, that therefore we will not accept that grace of election by which we stand, and w^hich was offered us at first for confirmation of us.
But this is not all, viz., this unthankfulness, but there is an higher encroachment made upon God in their denying him this way of salvation by election, and an entrenchment made upon his freedom ; I do not now say, upon his sovereignty. They will not allow him the ordinary privilege of choice, to and for himself, of whom he will. They would restrain him in what is ordinarily the privilege of kings, yea, of all men. They allow to every man to choose their wives, because they choose for themselves ; to choose their friends, because it is for themselves. The Persians allowed it as a due and just maxim, * What shall be done to the man whom the king will honour ? ' They allow to kings to have their friends and bosom favourites, as Solomon had Zabud, 1 Kings iv. 5, that is called the king's friend ; yet they quarrel with God if he chooses Abraham to be his friend, unless it be with a respective decree, that he foresees he will be so through the creature's free will. They quarrel with him that he chooses the seed of Abraham his friend, as Isaiah xli. 8, * But thou Israel art ray servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, the seed of Abraham my friend,' as rather than others; where as it is in his freedom to choose the person, so it is in his power to make that person his friend, and work him so to be.
14 OF ELECTION. [BoOK I.
Yea, and in this they quarrel with him that he should bestow what is properly his own, which to give and communicate as a man pleases is an allowed principle by all the sons of men. Now there is nothing so much his own as election grace ; yea, and is purely his own, without any pretence of a dueness upon creation, or any the like condition from the creatures, for it is the bestowing himself. It is to admit them to see his face immediately, which election grace ends in, and creation grace reached not unto. Now the promise made to Adam it is* to carry the will of a creature on invin- cibly to love himself, who hath an overcoming sweetness and goodness in himself, when he shall but manifest it to the creature, invincibly to persuade it omnipotente suavitate, as Austin's word is. The super- creation grace is most properly his own riches, and called ' the riches of his grace.' To give holiness to Adam was a creation due ; but to give grace and glory, which election doth, this was a super-creation grace to Adam as it was to the angels. Our Saviour Christ enforceth that maxim that is so common amongst men: Mat. xxv. 15, * Shall not a man do what he will with his own?' Now this grace was so his own as no creature could lay claim to it. As in the city freedoms one-third of a man's estate his wife may claim ; another third his children, but they have reserved a liberty that one-third part is so their own as to bestow it where they please, and in this case yourselves would think much to be deprived of this privilege, or that laws must be set you how you must bestow that third part you call appropriatively your own. Now, is not God's grace God's own ? Why is it called free ? As the Israelite ' limited the holy One of Israel,' so these would do the gracious One of Israel.
Well, but the iniquity of these stay not here. For the sake of whom is it that they do this ? It were well if out of such a commiseration to the nature of mankind in general, as Paul professes he had for his own flesh, that he was in continual sorrow of heart for them ; it were well, I say, if out of such a commiseration they did the like. And yet Paul wholly submits it to God's will. But it is to set up against God's free-will grace (which is the fountain of this election) that other fluid, fickle, yea, and corrupt principle in the heart of man, and that is the freedom of man's will, and that as now fallen ; and to preserve the liberty thereof (forsooth), and that that may be no way entrenched upon, they would deprive God of the liberty of his will, and the dominion thereof, and also of a power invincible to work upon man's will infallibly ; as if that God had made a creature which he could not rule ; whereby they put God into Darius his straits, that he should all the days of a man's life strive with a man to save him, yet so as man's will may cast it otherways, and he cannot help it, but must submit to man ; and they frame such a model and way to salvation as shall be proportioned to that freedom of man's will, and unto such a kind of freedom of a man's will that he may do or not do, when God hath done all. And that this is the opinion they have set up against election, and the ground of the quarrel, all ages testify.
* Qu. ' reached not unto, nor the promise made to Adam ; it is ' ? — Ed.
Chap. II.] of election. 15
CHAPTER II.
That there is 'an election of grace, with a non-election or passing by others, — That difference to be out of the pure grace and good pleasure of God. — Which purpose of election is the cause of their effectual calling and salvation,
J say then, Hath God cast away his people? God forbid. For 1 also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. God hath not cast away his people which he foreknew. Wot ye not uhat the scripture saith of Klias? how he maketh intercession to God against Israel, saying^ Lord, they have killed thy prophets, and digged down thy altars ; and I am left alone, and they seek my life. But what saith the answer of God unto him? I have reserved to myself seven thousand men, who have not bowed the knee to the image of Baal. Even so then at this present time also there is a remnant according to the election of grace. And if by grace, then it is no more of works ; otherwise grace is no more grace. But if it be of ivorks, then it is no more grace ; otherwise work is no more work. What then ? Israel hath not obtained that which he seeketh for ; but the election hath obtained it, and the rest were blinded. — Rom. XI. 1-7.
It was a great exercise to Paul's spirit, as appears by chapter ix., in the beginning, and unto the carnal Jew a stumble, a shrewd objection against Christianity itself, that after the Messiah, our Christ, was come in the flesh, and was ascended to heaven, and his gospel had had its course among that nation, both by Christ's own ministry amongst them, and of his apostles after him, that there should be so few of that nation that believed on him ; yea, that the generality of that nation were cast off by God upon their hav- ing rejected him for their Messiah, when as yet there had been made all along the Old Testament such large and abundant promises to that nation, of whom Christ was to come, which might have been expected should have been fulfilled unto them upon his coming amongst them in the flesh. The consideration of which might and did lie in the way, as a great stumbling- block unto his former doctrine of salvation by faith on Christ. This you have insinuated from the coherence of the fourth and fifth verses of chapter ix. : * In that they were Israelites, to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the pro- mises; whose are the fathers, and of whom, as concerning the flesh, Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever,' as the Christians professed their Christ to be. And that yet these Israelites should so few of them be professors of him, was a strong presumption that therefore it was not he that was the true Messiah. And this objection is again revived in the first verse of this second chapter : * Hath God cast away his people ? ' (meaning the Jews.) Now unto this he there gives two answers.
His first ansiver. That God had not * cast away his people whom he fore- knew,' or whom he aimed at in his promises of the covenant of grace, the word of promise. The carnal Jew understood by God's people the whole, or at least the generahty of their nation, unto whom yet, but as in a type, those forecited privileges and promises were made ; and under that respect it was they made up the church of the Old Testament. He therefore care- fully puts in, you see, by way of distinction, ' He hath not cast away his people uhom he foreknew ; ' as if he had said they were his people in outward profession, and endowment of outward privileges, but those really and indeed his people, whom he hath chosen to salvation, and they [who] were so foreknown
16 OF ELECTION. [BoOK I.
by him only are his, as he emphatically indigitates, and he hath cast off not one of them. All and every one of them he intended and had in his eye when he made those promises of the covenant of grace, those he hath not, nor ever will cast off. And as for the rest, they were his people but by outward profession, rather typically such, as in a shadow of the other hidden ones amongst them, for whose sake it was those promises and privileges were continued to the community of that nation ; these only are said to be the children of the promise and the children of God, and none other : Rom. ix. 6, 7, * Not as though the word of God hath taken none effect. For they are not all Israel which are of Israel : neither because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all children : but, in Isaac shall thy seed be called.' And what he understands by * children of promise,' he exemplifies by Isaac, whom he proves to have been a child of promise in respect of the election of his person without foreseen conditions in him, and by virtue of which elec- tion, had been called. This he doth, ver. 9, 11, as I shall shew when I come to speak unto his instance in the following story of election, which manifestly dissolves the strength of their objection that they were all Israelites, and that to them the adoption pertained, in ver. 4, 5. For that to have been but in respect of outward profession, title, and external calling, and also because they w^ere types and shadows of the true seed to come, this distinction of typical Israelites, and Israelites indeed, and in truth, plainly appears to be in his intent to avouch, in that he flatly denies that all of Israel were Israel ; that is, as Christ says of Nathanael, an Israelite indeed. He denies also that they were children of God, ver. 7, or rightly the children of Abraham according to God's intent in his promise to the seed, although according to the flesh they were, as you find it express in ver. 7, and although of them he had said, 'that to them belonged the adoption,' or title of children.
His second answer. Observe that word, ver. 5 of chap, xi., 'For the pre- sent time ; ' it is that there are so few, but in ver. 25, 26, ' He would not have them ignorant of this mystery, that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. And so all Israel shall be saved.'
Now that which I intend in the words is, that he clearly resolves the utmost account of that paucity or fewness of them, who at that present were saved, into election, &c. Thus in those words, ver. 2, ' His people whom he foreknew,' and then again, those who ' at that present time,' he says, were then saved, he calls in ver. 5, 'a remnant,' and a 'remnant according to the election of grace ;' and in ver. 7, 'What then? Israel hath not obtained that w^hich he seeketh for ; but the election hath obtained it, and the rest were blinded.'
I shall therefore further, to lay a foundation for this my subject, open these two verses, 2d and 5th. Wherein,
First, That by ' his people whom he foreknew,' ver. 2, is meant his elect out of grace.
His people; and made his by election. God casting his eye upon them, said within himself of them, Those are mine; as John xvii. 6, 'Thine are mine, and thou gavest them me.' The elect, afore ever they are converted, are styled by God his people: Acts xviii. 10, 'I have much people in this city.' And Christ saith, ' Sheep I have not of this fold' (Gentiles), ' them I must bring.' They were sheep afore they were brought in, and they were so determinately, fixedly, and resolutely God's sheep, foreknown by him to be such, as that Christ himself (to whom God hath committed the salvation of them) saith, ' I must bring them in,' as upon God's peremptory command
Chap. II.] of election. 17
to have them saved. And therefore election, or foreknowledge of them, is as the cause joined with their being his: 2 Tim. ii. 19, 'The Lord knows who are his.'
Secondly, This their election, that makes them his, and is here signified by foreknowled,£je — 'whom he foreknew' — is a word appropriated to the elect and their election by God; and election is ascribed unto it, as in Rom. viii. 29, 'Whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate;' and 1 Peter i. 1, ' Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father;' that is, out of that special foreknowledge which God took of those whom he chose ; even such a foreknowledge as is common to no other creatures or persons, although
* known unto God are all his works from the beginning.' And as several interpreters have observed on the same word. Ram. viii. 29, he saith not oug 'TToofihi, whom he knew, as but with a bare, simple act of knowledge, for so he doth all things ; but oZg vrposyvu, whom he acknowledged, approved of with a knowledge of liking and love. And so he notes,
1. A singular love joined with the foresight of them, or God's casting a loving eye with aflfection upon them. Words of knowledge import affection ; conjugal communion which is transacted between man and wife, and riseth from the entirest love, is styled knowledge of each other; as, on the contrary,
* I know you not,' and ' I never knew you,' doth in Christ's speech express an utter rejection and privation of affection to them.
2. There is T^h (or before) added to this knowledge; by comparing other scriptures to which, imports that this his love was before the foundation of the world, and so from everlasting. And so that particle is explained in the same chapter of Peter, ver. 20, when Christ's election is spoken of, whose election is the pattern of ours : ' Who verily was foreordained afore the foundation of the world;' and Christ himself, John xvii. 25, 'Thou lovedst me afore the foundation of the world.'
3. It was not such a foreknowledge as that whom he foresaw would believe, and be holy, that them, as such foreseen, he chose and loved; that were un- worthy of God, qui scientiam non accijiit a rebus, and had been an uncertain foundation for God to build upon, who builds not upon sand, the mutable will of the creature; but 'the foundation of God' is said to be 'sure,' by this, that he knows who are his; qui, not qua, that is, the individual persons, who they are; not who, that is, so or so qualified. And in Rom. viii. 29 it is not said he predestinated those whom he foreknew that would be conform- able to the image of his Son. No ; but, on the contrary, that those whom he foreknew, and so loved, ' he predestinated to be conformable unto the image of Christ his Son.' Yea, and in this place, Rom. xi. 6, he expressly puts it wholly upon grace, and utterly excludes works foreseen, as the motive unto God: 'And if by grace, then it is no more of works; otherwise grace is no more grace. But if it be of works, then it is no more grace ; otherwise work is no more work.'
And thus the sense or meaning of this foreknowledge riseth up to this, that those particular persons, whom out of pure grace and love, without any con- sideration of works of any kind that were to be in them, he casting his love freely upon them, did, from everlasting, and out of that love, choose to be his, and they are alone his people. And so for substance and in effect, both these words in verse 2, 'whom he foreknew,' and those that after follow, ' a remnant according to election of grace,' prove both to be one and the same. The doctrine I draw the words summarily forth into is, That there is an election of some, with a non-election, or passing by, of others ; which election is out of the pure gi'ace of God, and is the cause of their effectual calling and salvation.
VOL. IX. h. B
r %
18 OP ELECTION. [Book I.
There is another general doctrine to follow from out of the interpretation of the fourth and fifth verses, viz.,
That those two companies, or forces of men, the election, and the rest, or non-elected, have been extant in all ages of the world, and have divided mankind past, and will be found in the world, to the end thereof, for time to come.
The former of these two is indeed the ultimate subject in my aim, which that latter serves to confirm ; but the second shall be the doctrine which I shall more largely insist upon, and that but so far as it is a medium of proof to evidence the first, that there is an election, &c. ; and my handling of that (the first) shall be only so far out of an interpretation of the first, second, and third verses, which, when performed, I shall leave the further evidence thereof unto the instances and story of the second doctrine ; for which also I shall find a good specimen and ground in the text itself, in verse 4, when they come to be opened.
As for the first doctrine proposed, and the interpretation of verses 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, &c., I shall go over the words thereof by parts, as they are placed in that doctrine.
1. That there is an election. That is in the letter of the text, wherein the elect are called * the election ;' and election imports a calling, or singling some from others; as 2 Thes. ii. 13, on s'tX^ro, exernit, selegit, he exempted, excepted some; or, as it is here in verse 4, * reserved to himself.' If some were not passed by, there were not an election. On the opposite side, the other are called 'the rest,' ver. 7; that is, non-elected. And to say 'the rest,' is the mildest and softest word that could be given of it, and importeth merely a non-election, as it stands in this distinction here from the election, which is its opposite. Again,
2. Of the one he says God did foreknow them, — ' his people which he fore- knew,'— and by his foreknowing took them to be his: 2 Tim. ii. 19, ' The Lord knows who are his;' he speaks it of election. But there is another part of that distinction (for such those words in verse 2 are), there is a rest^ whom he never knew. Although he foreknew them as he foreknows all things, yet without a love or owning of them; thus Christ, Mat. vii. 23, •! never knew you ;' there is the badge of the rest, that he says he never knew them. That never reacheth up as high as eternity, and that from thence even unto that hour he never knew them. And as he never did know them, 80 he never will to eternity. You see here are two companies, the elect, and the rest; one foreknown, and the other never known.
8. There are diflerent issues and events befall these two; proceeding, the one from God's foreknowing the one, and the other, that God never knew them. The first doth infallibly obtain: 'The election have obtained it.' Obtained what ? and how ? Efi'ectual calling first, and salvation at last thereby. What, then, does befall the rest ? ' They were blinded ;' so the text, ' And the rest were blinded.' In like equipage Christ speaks in the 10th of John, that he had sheep which were not yet to be called; so at verse 16, ' And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold : them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice ; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd ;' and that his Father had given them him. And then oppo- sitely he speaks of another company : ver. 26, ' Ye are not of my sheep ;' and the same difi'erent events do follow upon each that are here said to befall these two companies here. Even as here, of those that were his sheep he says, ver. 16, * They shall hear my voice, and them I must bring;* and verses 27, 28, ' My sheep hear my voice, and I give unto them eternal life ; and they shall never perish.' But of the other, ' You believe not,
Chap. II.] of election. 19
because you are not of my sheep,' ver. 26. Observe, it is not tbat Christ says they were not of his sheep because they beheved not; but, on the con- trary, they believed not because they were not of his sheep. And it was election of the first sort that put the difierence; for the first, he calls his sheep, because the Father had given them him, and that before their calling and believing ; for, says ho, * I have sheep which are not of this fold : them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice ; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd.' So it was his Father's gift of them afore calling, for which they are in these places called his sheep ; and given by his Father with such a command as, I must bring them in, says Christ.
4. This separation by election is out of pure grace ; that was another thing I put into the doctrine. And so it is here said to be 'according to the election of grace;' that is, grace was the founder and sole author of that decree, and that election merely of grace ; for it follows, ver. G, * If it be of grace, then it is no more of works; otherwise grace is no more grace;' which plainly excludes works of man, as foreseen, and therewith shuts out also the will of man, which is the author of works, to be in any way the cause of such an election as foreseen. He makes these two utterly exclusive one of the other, that is, as to the point of electing; as it follows, * If it be of works, it is no more of grace ; otherwise work is no more work.' Admit but the least of works, it is no more of grace out of which God electeth ; they are two contradistinct, opposite things.
For the farther confirmation of this main doctrine, now gathered out of the eleventh chapter, I might here largely shew that the same is the very scope of the ninth chapter, and withal give the correspondencies which these pas- sages in this eleventh chapter do hold, with the like in the ninth chapter ; in which ninth he had treated the doctrine of election and preterition, as in the proper seat for them ; and this eleventh chapter that follows is a part of the application and praxis of that very same doctrine treated in chapter ix. And it is as evident to me that he treats in that ninth chapter the doctrine of the election of persons, without the consideration of any worth or dignity in them foreseen, as certainly as that the coming of Christ in the flesh, and his being crucified, were foretold in Psalm xxii. or in the 53d chapter of Isaiah.
He had indeed begun in a way of general thesis, or summary position, to propound the doctrine of election in the chapter afore, and how effectual calling, &c., flows from thence, and depends thereupon, as so many links upon the first link of that golden chain ; that is, in chapter viii. from verse 28-30, * We know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. For whom he did foreknow, he did also predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the first-born amongst many brethren. Moreover, whom he did predestinate, them he also called; and whom he called, them he also justified; and whom he justified, them he also glorified.' And upon occasion of that grand objection I fore-specified, that God had left the com- munity of that nation of the Jews to obstinacy against Christ and unbelief, whose yet were the promises, &c., and that so few of that nation had enter- tained the gospel, he was necessitated thereupon to prosecute and clear the same doctrine more at large, as that which had put the difference between those few that were saved of that nation, and that generality that were left to blindness. And this he begins to do from the instances of the fathers of that nation, in those eldest, primitive times thereof; shewing how that, from the first, election by grace of the persons of Isaac and Jacob in Abraham's family (the founder of that nation) had put the vast discrimination between
20 OF ELECTION. [BoOK I.
them two, and the persons of Ishmael and Esau, whom God had rejected. And therefore no wonder if the same difference fell out upon the same foun- dation, in the succeeding children of Isaac and Jacob. These being leading examples, and types of what was to come ; notwithstanding the promise made "was to ' Abraham and his seed,' for inheriting eternal life, which the Jews understood to be universal of their whole nation, but was indeed but inde- finite, which the apostle's argument, ver. 7, 8, doth shew they were.
The occasion of his proceeding upon this argument, in the 9th chapter, being thus stated, you then have the main subject of that 9th chapter sum- marily proposed in ver. 11, the latter part of the verse, viz. :
That the purpose of God, according to election, might stand ; not of works, but of him that calleth.
And this doctrine, as thus stated, he fetcheth out from those two instances of Isaac and Jacob, as a genuine inference, and conclusion thence deduced ; -which I shall but give the sense of in brief : and this inference or conclusion, though drawn but from those two instances among the Jewish nation, he yet proposeth as a general maxim, appliable to all other men in the world that are elect, whether they be Jew or Gentile. The same reason holds of them as it did of these two, Isaac and Jacob.
That, &c., chap. ix. ver. ] 1. This particle shews the final cause or intent of God, and of Paxil's alleging these two examples according to God's true intent in them ; as if he had said, to this end or purpose, God hath in the Scriptures put this open difference of Isaac and Jacob's persons from that of Ishmael and Esau's, that he might give forth a most manifest and general demonstration of the like in the condition of all others.
That God's purpose according to election. Which, Jirst, always imports with it a singling forth one, or divers, from others who are not chosen ; and so here doth connotate the rejection of others, namely, Ishmael and Esau ; or else, secondly, that clause is put in to distinguish it to be that sort of pur- poses which are election purposes ; that whereas to reject, or pass by others, is from a purpose too ; but this is his purpose according to election ; or, thirdly, that clause may be thus understood : that God's purpose made according to the way, mode, or manner of election ; which in the eleventh chapter, he using the same phrase, doth there intend it to express that it is out of pure grace. And snch was this of Isaac and Jacob's : it was after the way and mode election useth to hold ; out of the principle of pure grace, whence election always proceeds. This further to have been, to the end,
That it might stand ; that is, firm, or sure ; as being built upon the unchangeable will and good pleasure of gmce in God himself. That did not stand waiting, or suspend upon man's will, to see how it would work, and cast the matter, and use his grace, ere he would decree or purpose their salvation.
isot of works : as they are in us, and from us. And his reason insinuated in that word, might stand, shews why he took that course ; for if it had been of works, that might make the decree or purpose wavering and uncertain.
But of him that calleth. That whereas God had also decreed that works of faith and obedience should exist in them, he saith yet that his purpose of election to save them depended not on those works, but on his grace, to work those works efficaciously in them ; which when he did elect, he withal decreed to put forth by calling them, which was God's act on them, and gives an invincible demonstration that no work, as theirs, either afore call- ing or after, was the measure or condition that in election God went by ; but his calling immediately proceeding from election, begins first with them,
Chap. II.] of election. 21
and works all in them ; that so the whole glory might be * his that calleth,' and not of them that are called : he working that calling, and the works in and of them thence flowing, from his own almighty power and grace ; and therein executing but that which his purpose of election had from everlasting determined.
This doctrine and maxim the apostle professeth to be a just inference from both the examples of Isaac and Jacob (whom he accordingly wrought an effec- tual calling in) ; but had chosen their persons in his eye and purpose simply considered, thus to call and work upon them, and by so calling them, to save them. And from the particular examples of these two, his scope is to shew in them, as examples and types, that God doth the like with the rest of the sons of men, especially that live in the church and household of God.
And this is no other but the sum of the doctrine of election as we teach it, and state it out of him ; which thus in these instances at the first pro- pounded, he then pursues in the rest of the chapter, from ver. 14 to ver. 24 : * What shall we say then ? Is there unrighteousness with God ? God forbid. For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy. For the Scripture saith unto Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might shew my power in thee, and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth. Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth. Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth he yet find fault ? For who hath resisted his will ? Nay, but 0 man, who art thou that repliest against God ? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it. Why hast thou made me thus ? Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour? What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath, fitted to destruction : and that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory. Even us, whom he hath called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles.' In which words he further proceeds by answering some queries, and three objections, to clear the same assertion laid down in ver. 11 ; which I shall not now enlarge upon, they all so broadly speaking the same very thing which he has thus declared in ver. 11, and inferred from those particular examples of these two, as examples as well as types of the rest of the sons of men, who prove to be either vessels of mercy or of wrath.
And then, when he had thus delivered the doctrine of God's decrees about mankind, unto ver. 24, he then proceeds to the execution thereof upon those elect, which, in ver. 11, he had said was by calling : * Of him that calleth,' according to that decree ; which calling he, in the last words of ver. 23, expresseth to be a preparing of them for that glory, which was by his decree ordained them. And so he goes on, ver. 24 : * Even us, whom he hath called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles.' And the difference which effectual calling, proceeding from election, puts between the elect and others, he handles from that verse unto the end of the 10th chapter.
That which, in the third place, I observe, is the correspondency, or rather identity, which the foremcntioned passages in the 11th chapter (wherein my text is) do hold with the like in that foregone, chap. 9th, which shews that his scope as to this point of election is one and the same in both, and which do therefore give light each to the other. . In this 11th chapter (the scope whereof I have last given), 1, he revives
22 OP EiiECTioN. [Book I.
the application of that doctrine to the Jews, upon the very same occasion he had entered upon it in ver. 9. And there it was said that these Jews had the privilege of being Israelites, and that to them pertained the adoption or title of the children of God, the covenants and the promises ; and that * theirs were the fathers,' meaning especially Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob ; thus in ver. 4, 5 ; and yet that nation should, in the community of it, be left to infidelity, and but so few whom the promises had taken eifect upon. This he insinuates in those words, as containing the substance of an objec- tion, * Not as though the word of God had been of no efi'ect,' or had been wholly void and frustrate ; which implies that such an objection did lie in men's minds, or at least might do, and so weaken the truth of that doctrine of Christ, which he had delivered in the former part of this epistle, as being utterly inconsistent with so great and high titles of privileges enumerated in the verses afore. 2. They imply that there were yet some whom the word of God had taken hold upon, and these enough to vindicate the truth of God's word declared concerning them ; and, thirdly, those words, not as thoiujli, chy^ okv, sound plainly a prevention or pre- occupation of that objection ; fourthly, the word there spoken of is meant the promise made to Abraham, and his seed, to be heirs of eternal life, which is thus expressed concerning Isaac and Jacob, the two persons here instanced in the text, that they were * heirs of the same promise with him,' as Heb. xi. 9, which the Jews understood to be universal unto all his seed after the flesh ; and that, therefore, they were ' all the children of God,' as their reply to Christ shews in John viii., which the apostle his answer and arguing in ver. 7, 8, — ' Neither, because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all children : but, in Isaac shall thy seed be called ;' that is, They which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God : but the children of the promise are counted for the seed, — shews to have been at the bottom, as the cause and occasion of this his vin- dicicB, or apologetical discourse, as I may well call it.
Now, then, look at this false supposition, that all the people of Israel were the children of God, by reason of their being Abraham's and Israel's or Jacob's seed ; and hereupon those their titles and privileges aforesaid were the occasion, in that ninth chapter, of his treating of the doctrine of election there ; so here, in this eleventh chapter, he reassumes the very same occa- sion, when he goes on to apply it to the Jews, beginning at the very first verse, ' I say then. Hath God cast away his people ?' He speaks in reality the same thing ; to which he answers, ver. 2, with that distinction taken from election, ' God hath not cast away his people whom he foreknew.' The occasion is the same, and the answer is the same ; and the objection is solved by the doctrine of election.
2. The difierence put between the true Israelite and the outward, is resolved into election, and that of pure grace as the foundation thereof: ' The election obtained it,' ver. 7, * and the rest were blinded.' And that election, such as was out of pure grace, by virtue of which it was that they obtained it, by obtaining through that election an effectual caUing ; for want of which, the rest, or non-elect, were left to their hardness. Such a grace as was purely grace, unintermingled with works foreseen, as in the verses afore, when he said, * a remnant, according to the election of grace,' ver. 5. He then explains what that grace was, and indeed that word carries its own inter- pretation with it : ' For if by grace,' saith he, ' then it is no more of works : otherwise grace is no more grace,' ver. 6. Insomuch as Austin, comparing these passages of both chapters together, and especially that of ver. 11 of chap, ix., * For the children not being yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand ;
Chap. II.] of election. 23
not of works, but of him that calleth ;' with these now mentioned in chap, xi. ver. 5 and 6, observeth the accord* and agreement of the same scope in both.
3. And, thirdly, the accord appears in that the apostle termeth those few of the Jews called the election, * a remnant,' in both places ; also in chap. ix. ver. 27 : ' Though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, a remnant shall be saved ;' which, as relating unto the words, ver. 25 and 2(), De Dieu interpreteth as spoken of election, and so fully accords with ver. 5, chap, xi., * There is a remnant according to the election.'
The corollary brought ofi* from these references and respects of these two chapters, one to the other, as touching election, is, that if election to life and salvation out of pure grace be the subject of the eleventh chapter, it must be also intended in the ninth chapter. Now the difl'erence that is put between the election and the rest, in that eleventh chapter, is purely and clearly that which is in order unto the obtaining of eternal life, and there- lore must be intended in the instances of Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau, bJso ; which some have gone about to divert, by contending the scope of both to have been solely in respect of temporal things, and that in their posteri- ties also.
And surely, if many of the several passages in either chapter be compared together, this election we contend for, without respect to the foreseen con- ditions, will appear to have been the subject in both, if in either of them ; they both speak ad idem, unto the same thing.
This for the interpretation of 1st, 2d, 3d, 5th, 6th, and 7th verses of the eleventh chapter.
I shall now proceed to the instance alleged by the apostle of an election and non-election, in Elias's days, among the people of that nation ; or to an interpretation of the third, fom'th, and fifth verses of the eleventh chapter.
Lord, they have killed thy j^rophets, a7id digged down thine altars; and lam left alone, and they seek my life. But what saith the answer of God unto him ? I have reserved to myself seven thousand men, who have not bowed Vie knee to the ima/fe of Baal. Even so then at this present time also there is a remnant according to the election of grace.
The allegation of this single instance for all other is to confirm his asser- tion, viz., that there was an election ; for so he closeth it at last, in ver. 5, * Even so then at this present time also there is a remnant according to the election of grace ; ' also to confirm what he had last said, that ' God had not cast away his people whom he foreknew ; ' but had an election of grace con- tinued in that nation of the Jews, when yet the face of the generality of that nation were apostates from God, and his true worship ; and that yet God had a people whom he foreknowing had reserved to himself, whom the pro- mises made to that nation had taken hold of, and with an eye and respect unto whom, and for whose sake the nation had the promises indefinitely given to them, even as in chap, ix., in the fore-part thereof, he had in like manner discoursed. And his inference from thence accordingly is, ver. 5. And therefore it followed not that because the generality of that nation believed not in Paul's time, but were hardened, that therefore Christ Jesus, whom the apostle preached, was not the true Christ, because it had no greater efl'ect upon the multitude of that nation, who were, in profession, and in the style of the old covenant, the outward people of God, whilst yet God had a very considerable number that had embraced Christ, and the promises made in him, and were the true people of God ; that is, ' whom God * Cui loco satis iste locu3 coacordat. — Ep. 106 ad Sixtum.
24 OF ELECTION. [BoOK I.
foreknew,' says he, should be existent in those days. Even as there were seven thousand in Elias's time in God's list and catalogue, which were enough then to make this good, that though the generality of that people were left to unbelief, yet God having a number, though but of some, whom election had saved, and preserved from a froward generation, that God had not cast away his people now, when Christ was preached to them ; not now, when so few believed ; for God had far fewer in Ehas's time among the ten tribes ; for still God had them, and as many of them for a people to him, embracing his Son, whom he foreknew, and had chosen for his ; and this was sufficient to break the force of the objection they made. But why God foreknew so few among them in that age, this the apostle resolves into God's good pleasure and foreknowledge.
This is a pat and pertinent instance to this purpose, and in many parti- culars parallel to the state of things in the apostle's days, which is likewise the apostle's scope, besides the former, as the apostle's own words in the applying of the instance shews, ' Even so then also at this time.' I shall therefore compare them in a few things.
1. In himself. God hath not cast off his people, * for I also am an Israelite ; ' so Elias had instanced in himself alone : ver. 3, ' I am left alone ; ' which shews, if there had been but one IsraeUte that had believed in Christ, it had solved the cavil.
2. Elias makes intercession against Israel : ' They have killed thy pro- phets, and digged down thine altars ; and they seek my hfe ; ' and so now might Paul have said in like manner in his times, that his countrymen, the Jews, had stirred up persecution everywhere ; their great business was to go about to throw down the churches, and sought his life above all others ; of which you may read in the story of the Acts, and in the epistles, summed up, 1 Thes. ii. 15, 16.
3. It was election made the difference in men's spirits then and now, which election of those in Elias's time, is expressed by this, ' I have reserved to myself,' says God, ver. 4, * I have left,' as the words of God are in the story of the Kings; answerably election that now was in Paul's time, he calls them Xs/x/ita, or xaraXs/x/xa, ' a remnant, a residue, or reserve,' the word reserved in ver. 4 answering to /J/x/xa in ver. 5.
4. They are parallel in the fewness. There were then but seven thousand, and now in Paul's time not many thousands in comparison ; for although at first there was a great flush, and that. Acts xxi. 20, the brethren of Jerusalem say unto Paul, * Thou seest, brother, how many thousand of the Jews which beheve,' yet afterwards there was an ebb, both in a cessation of any more being converted, as also by so great an apostasy of many that had professed Christ ; as it was evident to Paul God had cast off the generahty of that nation.
But the main thing I observe is the force of this word xargX/Tov ; it im- ports, first, a laying hold on some when all were going, and they are there- fore said to be reserved, as things that are left when others are gone. And of those that be elected, he says that he reserved them to himself; oppositely, the other, he left them [to] go where they would : he let them go after Baal ; he suffered them to * walk in their own ways,' as in Acts xiv. 16; 'He left them to their own counsels,' Ps. Ixxxi. 12 ; he left them to themselves; but, says God, those I reserve for myself.
And this expresses the grand end of election, with difference from what becomes of others. Election is a reservation unto God; it is his own reserv- ing persons for himself ; they have the whole of him ; all the love, all the blessedness he hath, they have among them. It is not only he chooses them
Chap. II.] of election.
2^
from within himself, as having no motive out of himself why he should do it; therefore it is said of election, 'which he purposed in himself;' but further, it is ' for himself,' he reserves himself for them, and reserves them for himself.
Use 1. And therefore it is as grand an evidence as any other, that thou are elected, if thou sequesterest thyself unto God, and choosest him for him- self, and say est of him, ' My lot is fallen in a good ground ; the Lord is my portion, says my soul.'
2. Let the saints therefore not live to themselves. We live not to our- selves, nor die to ourselves, but to the Lord ; for we are God's, reserved by election.
3. Let men take heed how they meddle with the saints ; they are God's, reserved for himself. Says David to Saul's courtiers and his own enemies, ' Know that God hath chosen the man that is godly' (David means himself) * to himself,' and therefore take heed of wronging or opposing of me, Ps. iv.
4. God is engaged to carry thee on, and to carry thee through, for he hath reserved thee for himself; therefore he will not lose what is so selfly* designed and chosen for himself. * The Lord's portion is his people.'
5. You see what keeps men in evil times, as these seven thousand were kept in the times of Elias, from the superstitions and idolatries of the times ; it is election. Rev. xiii. 8, ' And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship the beast, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.'
6. The worst and most persecuting times that are, cannot extinguish the elect. Ahab and Jezebel could not, nor yet cause them to defile their con- sciences. Jezebel searched every corner, and yet Elias lives ; and three hundred t prophets were hid with him in a cave, and lived, though with bread and water.
7. If you be the elect ones of God, that God hath reserved for himself, it is no matter what times you live in. The Lord hath appointed in several successions, greater and lesser difficulties. Some times wherein the churches have peace, and some wherein they stand in jeopardy of their lives every moment ; and some must have the worst, for as the day is his, so the dark- some night is his, as the psalmist speaks of good and evil times. Thus those did in Ahab's time ; and what matter was it, seeing God had reserved them to take them to himself. If it be thy lot to live in as bad as they did, yet whereas heaven is reserved for thee, and God hath reserved thee for himself, thou needest not be anxious ; thou shalt stand up in thy lot, as the angel comforted Daniel, who would fain have lived to have seen those blessed days the angels told him of. When times in any age are upon the tropic of turning from bad to good, there are some precious ones shall die just in the vertical point, as old Simeon did, and never enjoy the prosperity of them.
8. Be content with little in the world, and out of the world. Thou seest that God, that made the world, contents himself with but a few, but a rem- nant ; and so he hath them safe with him to heaven, he satisfies himself with the enjoying them to eternity. Were thy houses and thy goods burned, care not, seeing God hath reserved thee wholly for himself.
, * That is, particularly or exclusively —Ed. t Qu. ' an hundred ' ?— En.
26 OP ELECTION. [Book I.
CHAPTER III.
That^ de facto, God hath made an election of some out of pure grace, with a non-election of others, proved by the story of all ages of the world, through tlie Old and New Testament.
I found upon the same text of Rom. xi. 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th verses, this second assertion, that these two companies or sorts of men, thus diffe- renced, the election, and the rest not elected, have been in all ages of the world, and have divided mankind, and shall to the end.
1 . All the world are and have been either the election or the rest ; yea, and therefore those other are termed the rest (the tenderest word that could have been used), as being the other whole remainder when the elect are taken forth. As if you have a great heap afore you, and you cull out some, and what are the remainder are called the rest, there is not a third company ; and they are so distinguished, as that none of the elect do become of the number of the rest, nor of the rest do become of the number of the elect. And therefore you must never intermingle them, by thinking that a man may be of the elect to-day, and at their death reprobate; for these two, as contra- distinct sayings, remain such to eternity. If any of the elect were finally hardened, then this other saying, ' the rest were blinded,' were not true ; or if any of those that are the rest did obtain it, then that first, ' the election have obtained ' (as they stand thus differenced one from the other), were not true. The elect and the rest stand severed in such a contra-distinction, by two such events appropriate to each ; you must take election and obtained it as eternally yoked, and belonging to the company alone ; and on the con- trary, tJie rest were blinded, as the issue of that company alone ; who are not eaid to be the rest, because they are blinded, but being the rest that is severed from the election, it comes to pass that they are blinded; as on the contrar}', the election being a company chosen out from the rest, they obtain it, and are not finally blinded.
2. That this division is and hath been in all ages, &c. I found it thus far upon the text. You see the apostle instanceth in two ages, and parallels them together in this very respect. Elijah's times in the old, in which God had an election (though the worst of times), seven thousand men, and the rest fell all to Baal ; so even in this present age, says he, it proves to be among my countrymen the Jews. And the word so then is an inference from the former instance to prove it, as well as it is a parallel to exemplify it. So that although he instanceth but in two, these ages past and present, yet it leads on and gives a just occasion to extend inquiry into all ages. How doth he prove that there is an election now as well as a parallel ? Or how doth this follow, that if he had an election before, he hath now ? Because elec- tion nunquam excidit, saith Parens, election never ceaseth to be in the world. A church unto God must then cease to be extant, for whose sakes the world doth stand, and will continue no longer than till God hath all his elect out of it, and then will the end be.
To evidence the demonstration of this, that there is an election, &c., I ehall make use of no^ other argument than a representation and scheme of the course and current which runs down through all times, as the Scripture stories have purposely, in a continuation of instances of persons elected, drawn a line of election, and oppositely, together there is a line of rejection through- out all ages ; which way of proof is most proper and suitable to the course of the text, which hath recourse to an exemplary instance of election, con-
Chap. III.J op election. 27
tinned in an age as deplorate as whatever in the Old Testament. This draught of the whole, set in one view, may prove pleasant to you, and will be profitable for your instruction.
There are those in the world that say God hath loved all mankind alike as to salvation, and to that purpose hath in all ages given them helps and divine assistances in common, more or less, which we usually term common grace, which, if their wills, being stirred up and moved thereby, will use well, then they may and do obtain faith, and an efi'ectual calling unto salvation. And upon the right use of those common adjutories it is that God doth then elect them, and not till then ; or upon the foresight from all eternity that they will do so. But if they do not use those helps well, then they are reprobated or rejected.
But from that rehearsal of instances through all ages, when put altogether, it will appear that the special grace of election hath put the difi'erence, the one obtaining (as the word in the text is) by virtue thereof, ' the election bath obtained it,' while the rest of mankind, with all their common helps, have perished, being left to the blindness and hardness of their own hearts in the use of them: 'And the rest were blinded.' And the story of the one sort set oppositely to the other, as the Scripture in all ages doth, will evince it.
Now my argument from matter of fact, or from the examples recorded in such a continued series, to prove that this proceeded from God's eternal pur- poses and decrees, and that one are argumentative of the other, is founded upon this rule, which will not deceive us, that what hath been done and fallen out in the world, and as it hath been done, that God afore decreed and determined should come to pass, yea, and in that manner as it hath come to pass, the infallibility of which maxim is abundantly evident in Scripture declarations, and from undeniable reason, drawn from the perfections of God. If, therefore, in the stories of all ages, this difiering condition and dispose- ment of persons be found, then certainly the decrees of God must have been the supreme cause and determiner thereof. But above all things else, this general rule will undeniably hold in the matter of grace and election out of grace ; for there is nothing more God's own, to dispose of to whom he pleaseth, than grace in us, and glory to us, out of the freedom of the grace in himself, and so are evidently dependent on his sovereign will : ' Shall he not,' says Christ of him, < do what he will with his own ?'
And for the confirming of this rule in this special case touching election, that the matter of fact, or what doth fall out in persons, as touching their salvation, doth come to pass in the event, according to God's everlasting decrees thereabout. I shall only mention what an apostle, in an assembly of apostles, Acts xv., did only mention and allege to this very purpose, as the ground why the Gentiles came now, and but now, to be converted, which was newly begun to be done afore their eyes in that age, ver. 14 ; yea, and together therewith, the falling down or decay of the house of David, or the church of the Jews, and the building of that church in the room thereof; applying for the issue, or fulfilling of both these, the prophecy of Amos, chap. ix. His words the apostle rehearseth in Acts xv. ver. 16, 17, 'After this I will return, and will build again the tabernacle of David, that is fallen down ; and I will build again the ruins thereof, and I will set it up : that the residue of men might seek after the Lord, and all the Gentiles, upon whom my name is called, saith the Lord, who doth all these things.' And to cause this great alteration foretold to have the more weight upon the minds of that assembly, and cause the greater observation by them, he adds, ver. 18, * Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world.'
28 OF ELECTION. [BoOK I.
The coherence of which passage with that afore, brings forth this conclu- sion, that as God had foreknown and decreed, even so he had foretold ; and as he had both decreed from eternity and foretold, even so in the events it came to pass, and that at that time wherein he had foretold and decreed they should. Therefore in the close of the 12th verse, you read how the prophet Amos doth add these words to his prophecy of it, * saith the Lord, who doth all these things.' It was not therefore his simple foreseeing what man would do, nor what these Gentiles would do in their turning to God, and that this conversion of them should fall out at that very time or age ; for the prophet notes that circumstance also, ' After this, I will return, says God,' to do so and so. Whereby it appears that the conversion of the Gentiles, and that at that time, and not for two thousand years' time afore, notwithstanding all those common helps that had been (as must be supposed) continued to them ; this, he says, was the ' Lord's doing, and was marvellous in their eyes.' It was the Lord that ' doth all these things,' that so foretold it all, and every particular of them, who is said to ' work all things according to the counsel of his will,' as Eph. i. And the apostle, he imputes and ascribes it there- unto : ver. 18, ' Ivnown unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world.' He brings this matter of fact or event, or that these things thus fell out, and God's everlasting foreknowledge of them as his sole work, to- gether, and shews how the issue or event and his decree corresponded, and were answering one to the other. He had foretold them long afore he did them or brought them to pass, and foretells withal that it should be his doing, and not man's, that effected them. And both his foretelling and the effecting them, he tells us, were from out of his foreknowledge and decree so to do.
So that my conclusion from all these three stands firm, that all these things, or these matters of fact and real events (as he terms them), as they fall out, so they were foreknown and decreed : and that therefore bv the like issues and events m pomt of men's having had grace and being saved, we may infallibly judge and infer what were his decrees. Let us hold, then, the contemplation of this rule in our eye in all the instances that I shall give of persons. That look w^hat we find fell out in the execution, was but the effect of God's foreknowledge, even as the conversion of the Gentiles at that time was the same, and will hold true of the conversion, faith, and sal- vation of every person recorded in the Scripture story of their godHness ; yea, and therefore also we find matters of fact, or things to be done and come to pass, are said to be written in God's fore-decrees, as in the Scrip- ture of truth : Dan. x. 21, 'I will tell thee,' saith the angel, * what is noted in the scripture of truth.' And yet there was no outward scripture as yet had spoken of it. God's decrees, therefore, are the scriptures in which matters of fact are fijst written. And therefore, what our Scriptures have set down and written, are all but extracts and copies taken out of the scrip- tures in God's heart, in which they were written from everlasting ; wherein it is equally said, the names of all those particular persons that are elect men were first written as the first- bom, and thus Clement, and those with him, * whose names are in the book of life,' Philip, iv. 3, says the apostle ; and therefore by the same law and rule, we conclude that all those particular persons whom out of the Scriptures we shall make recital of as just, and holy, &c., we may safely write upon each and every person of them, that they were elect, and that they become holy and righteous, it was by election ; and of the other sort, of wicked and ungodly, left to their natural blindness, we may say, they never were written in that book of life, but under the title of the rest, left out ; yea, and as the apostle's word is, Jude 4, forewritten
Chap. III.] of election. 29
too in another book. We may say of every one of each sort the Scripture gives the different catalogue of, Concordat cum originali.
And so I come to the story I proposed ; which is the map of God's decrees in the execution of them, who doth all these things exactly, according to his everlasting purpose about them, whose his works are known to him from the beginning.
I begin from the fall, with the first two that were put forth into the world ; next after Cain, an election brake forth in Abel : he was of the election, and Cain was the first-born of the rest, or seed of the serpent. You know that God, when he preached to Adam and Eve, had by prophecy divided all into two seeds. Of the one, Christ was to be the head, * the seed of the woman,' &c. ; and of the other, the serpent. And the seed of the serpent are not all men as by nature, but those that prove wicked, and have an enmity against the saints. Now, 1 John iii. 12, Cain is said to be of that wicked one ; there began the seed, as election of grace and works here in the 6th verse, make up the fundamental division. So the covenant of grace and the covenant of works are the concomitants that follow thereupon. And to shew that the covenant of grace followed upon election, and so the other upon works, they accordingly did work in the hearts of these two first men, the sons of Adam : Cain betook himself to the covenant of works, as God speak- ing to the way of his heart shews, ' If thou dost well, shalt thou not be accepted ?' but Abel being of the election, he betook himself to faith, he dealt with godly faith : Heb. xi. 4, ' By faith Abel ofiered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness ;' that is, he was righteous. And faith betakes itself to the grace of God, or God's special grace and love, and is proper to the elect. So, then, Abel was of the election of gi'ace. Now, Titus i. 1, it is called the faith of God's elect. And to manifest that Cain was a castaway, he was presently upon it cast out of his father's family, where the presence of the Lord was, and never returned ; but he and his people fell a-building cities. The election obtained it, as the phrase is of Abel, Heb. xi. 4, and Cain and the rest were blinded.
But then Seth, he through election obtained it, and election ran in that line among his seed, and then men that were of him ' began to call upon the name of the Lord.' They were worshippers of God, and professed themselves to be of the separation from Cain and his posterity ; and though few of them were elect (as by and by), yet among them we have some, as in those godly persons, whose catalogue you have in that of Seth's children, Enoch, Methuselah, &c. But in process of time, as the world was filled and multiplied, even those that professed themselves the sons of God cor- rupted themselves, as you see Gen. vi. There was few of them regenerate, they were of the company of the rest ; for you read in the Gen. vi. 3, speak- ing of the sons of God, * My Spirit shall not always strive with the sons of men, for they are all but flesh.' They had the gospel preached, as 1 Peter, chap, iii, by Enoch, &c. ; and God's Spirit strove with them, so as to assist their wills to turn, but not to overcome their wills, and so they remained but flesh. And again, at ver. 5 of Gen. vi., * And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.' God had cast up the accounts of the whole world after sixteen hundred years, and he brings in this general, that * every imagination of their thoughts were evil, and only evil, and that con- tinually,' even in these sons of godly professors, who yet, notwithstanding, were thereby evidently unregenerate. For a regenerate man's thoughts are not only evil, for he hath a world of good thoughts and aflections. And again, ver. 12, 'And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt :
80 OF ELECTION. [BoOK I.
for all flesh had corrnpted his way upon the earth.' All flesh, of one and the other sort, of Cain's seed and Seth's. It is worth the inquiry into the original cause of this. Why, one there is, they were left to their free-will grace ; that is, those common helps of light of nature, &c., to assist their wills. They had the preaching of Enoch, Noah, a preacher of righteous- ness, and the Spirit of God accompanying their ministry ; for he did strive with them. And Christ was preached to them, 1 Peter iii. And the Spirit's striving must be supposed to move and assist their wills, and these opera- tions men call free ; yet the poiidas, or weight of flesh and corruption, pre- vailed, and carried them another way, and they were blinded.
But you will say. Was there none of the elect among them ? Yes, Noah was, and some of his family. Well, but still what put the difference of Noah from the rest of the whole world ? Look into the same chapter, Gen. vi. and the 8th verse, * But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.' Pray, what do you think to be the meaning of finding grace in the eyes of the Lord ? It expresseth election in the words of my text. As also when God says of Moses, the chosen of God, * I have known thee by name, and thou hast found grace in my sight;' and is all one with the apostle's 'By grace you are saved,' Eph. ii. ; and so he * became heir of the righteousness of faith,' Heb. xi. 7, for faith follows election inseparably. So, then, the election obtained it, and the rest, with all their free-will helps (yet being left to flesh), were blinded and hardened. This is a strange thing, that among an whole world of people there should not be found one whose free will, assisted by common and general grace, should have obtained it; for he styles them the ' world of ungodly.' What ! not one ? And that Noah by election-grace should obtain it. Who would not venture to be saved by the way of election-grace, when it is a world to one that a man is saved no other way ?
Thus the old world, as the apostle calls it, both began and ended in * By- grace you are saved.'
Let us now view the world that now is, as the same apostle calls it. No sooner doth Noah with his three sons come forth from the ark, which was the epoc/ia from whence the new world began, but the election and the rest began anew to be declared, even among those three sons that had been pre- served from the flood. And this appeared by prophecy of Noah, directed thereto by God: 'Blessed be the Lord God of Shem,' says he. Gen. ix. 6, which imports that God was his Lord, and had chosen him, and blessed him with all manner of blessings. But what of the other, ' Cursed be Ham, he shall be a servant of servants,' which is still that whereby rejection is ex- pressed. Japhet and his posterity should one day be persuaded to ' live in the tents of Shem,' which was meant of the calling of the Gentiles, the European Christians, ver. 27, fulfilled more than two thousand years after. For which, with difference from Ham, when Shem's genealogy comes to be recorded. Gen. x. 21, it is first prefaced, ' Shem, the father of the children of Eber;' that is, of the church that was to be of the Hebrews or Jews. And then it is added, ♦ The brother of Japhet.' Was not Ham the brother of Shem also ? Yes ; but Japhet was to be the father of the Gentiles, of whose race the church of the Gentiles was afterwards most to consist; and 80 they are yoked as brethren in this blessing, as Simeon and Levi in evil.
From these sons of Noah did come the division of the nations that then rose up. God divided their languages, appointed the bounds of their habi- tations, according as the three sons of Noah, and their sons that came of them, did disperse themselves. The number of which nations, in their division, you have recorded in the catalogue of those fathers of them that
Chap. III.] of election. 81
descended from Noah's three children, Gen. x., which to be the scope of that chapter the last verse shews : * By these were the nations divided in the earth after the flood.' And the number of those fathers, and so of the nations, is found to be just seventy.
At this division of the nations, which in his counsel God appointed, Acts ivii. 26, God was then to choose again in what nation or nations he would have the great current of his election to run. This division of the nations is said to be made in Eber's time, Gen. x. 25, who was the great-grand- child of Noah, or the third succession descended from his son of blessing, Shem ; for until then all the children of Noah and his sons lived together, and were of one language. But after so long a time it was that they were confounded in their language, and began to scatter at Babel (and not afore his time), and from that time to be scattered, and so did first begin to be set up those several nations, which yet at the first must needs be supposed to have been done in some succession of time.
But why is it with such a special notoriety said, this division was made in Eber's time ? Even to signify that upon the division God began to separate the Jewish nation to himself in Eber, whom he first set out to be the father of the Hebrew nation, or the church of the Jewish nation, to begin with him. At the division of other nations, the elect of Noah's family havinrr before that division lain promiscuously intermingled with those that were those nations, but not till then divided. Therefore, chap, x., at the very entrance of Shem's genealogy, Moses doth with the like observancy begin it thus, ver. 21, * Shem, the father of all the children of Eber.' And why of Eber's children, when Shem had other children, whose genealogy he also there records, as Elam and Ashur (the fathers of the Assyrians and Persian nations), who were the elder brethren to Arphaxad the father of Eber, and Eber, too, was the third from Noah by this Arphaxad.
It is high time now to demand what should this long narrative tend to ? Even unto this, to make way for and to discover that next great and long stage of election in its new race after the flood, upon this division of the nations, how and what course it took and held, viz. that when God was now after the flood to begin to choose among the nations when they were first divided (which we have heard was in Eber's time), that then he chose the Hebrew nation from among all those nations, through whom this mighty current of election should run for above two thousand years' continuance. Every tittle of this is the result of the foregoing passages, compared together, as any intelligent reader, by putting things together, will easily discern ; for in that it is said in Eber's days the nations were divided, is imported withal that in him and from him did the Hebrew nation begin to be divided from the rest, as the other nations were from one another. And accordingly we find his posterity (when even few) was called Hebrews, as their national denomination and distinction from those other nations they lived amongst: Gen. xiv. 13, * Abram the Hebrew,'' it is said, and ' Joseph the Hebrew,' Gen. xxxix. 14. And therefore also when they grew up into a great body, and were multipHed so as to deserve the name of a nation for their numbers, and as then living in one of those divided nations, viz. among the Egyptians, they then re-assume that title, and are again styled Hebrews, Exod. xv. 16. But yet more expressly in Balaam's prophecy the whole nation is- styled Eber: Num. xxiv. 25, 'They shall afflict Asshur' (meaning the Assyrian nations, so called from their father), * and they shall afflict Eber,' that is, the Hebrew or Jewish nation, named Eber from this their forefather in like wise.
And then for the other part, that at the division of the nations God caused
82 OF ELECTION. [BoOK I.
his election to take its course through the heart and howels of that Hebrew nation, with diflference from the other sixty-nine nations, as the event suffi- ciently evinceth ; so another scripture, added to these, doth signify and con- firm. And you have it as a memorial set down in that highly divine song of Moses, which was his last to that people : Deut. xxxii. 7-9, ' Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations: ask thy father, and he will shew thee ; thy elders, and they will tell thee. When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel : for the Lord's portion is his people ; Jacob is the lot of his inherit- ance.' He bids them look back unto ancient days, the traditions whereof their fathers had left down to them, and among other, how his eye of grace and favour was upon them, to single their fathers forth then, when he divided the nations (relating to that famous division, Gen. x.). The number of the children of Israel being, when first in Egypt, seventy souls; and just so many, even seventy heads, or fathers of the nations, is the number they are divided into, Gen. x. ; and from thence to have continued to that day the same to themselves, who were their posterity, with this great difi'erence, that unto the nations he appointed (as also Paul, Acts xvii.) ' bonds of habitations' as their portions and inheritances on the earth, as in verse 8 ; but had that eye of grace upon this nation, as to make them a portion and inheritance unto himself; for (says he) as thereby expressing God's special love by this, ver. 9, ' For the Lord's portion is his people ; Jacob is the lot of his inherit- ance.' And by these and the like expressions it is that election is signified in many places parallel to this ; as Deut. vii. 6, * The Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth ;' Ps. cxxxv. 4, * For the Lord God hath chosen Jacob unto himself, and Israel for his peculiar treasure.' And you see it is so in my text; which, though as it is spoken of that whole nation, was but in a type ; yet in that type was shewed that in that nation peculiarly there were those his chosen people that were ordained to eternal communion with himself.
Well, but you may demand what became of the other nations, and what was the general condition of them ? Truly, their lot fell to be the rest, to speak in the language of the text. The apostle hath given a brief resolve ; and that being added doth make the proof of the other part of the doctrine, and so the whole of it complete. Acts xiv. 15, 16, * We preach to you,' says Paul to the Lystrians, ' that you would turn from these vanities ' (so he terms their idols and false gods they generally worshipped) * to the living God. We preach unto you, that ye should turn from these vanities, unto the living God, which made heaven and earth, and the sea, and all the things that are therein : who in time past suffered all nations to walk in their own ways ; ' which he adds, to shew how the condition of all nations was the same with that of these Lystrians, given up to the same idolatry. The issue, then, of all comes to what is in the text, that ' the rest were blinded.' God took [the] election out from among the Jews for himself, and the rest were left to the counsels of their own wills.
We might here leave oS", and sit down and take breath, for the two thou- sand years' and upwards space that follow, as having seen how, and where [the] election was disposed of, together with the preterition of the rest. That God had alone known, and owned the Jewish nation, and an election proceeded forth from amongst them, as by the prophet Amos, a long while after the times we have been now upon, God utters himself. And so we might come immediately to the times of the New Testament ; but that we
Chap. III.] of election. 83
find among Eber's children, both before and after it grew up into a body aa a nation for numbers, some eminent observations in the story of the Old Testament, how election went on to make the like difference, even amongst them ; and hath (as if the Holy Ghost delighted to do it) recorded many apparent particular instances of an election, and the rest, to have run along in their families and tribes ; and this I am bound to do, the rather because our apostle in these 9bh, 10th, 11th chapters to the Romans insists especially on those instances as most apparent examples of what I pursue.
1. Before they grew up to be a nation for number, as in Egypt they became, the genealogy of Shem and Eberis set down, Gen. xi., from ver. 27 to the end of the chapter, and centres in Abraham.
So then we are to begin anew in him, and from him, whom God made his covenant with, for him and his seed after, saying, * I will be thy God, and of thy children,' which was indefinitely spoken ; but the apostle informs us all were not children, but those were the children that were children of promise ; that is, those whom God in giving out the promises did intend therein, and they were only his elect.
The prophet Isaiah, chap. li. 1, 2, calls upon that people to consider Abraham their founder and original : ' Look unto the rock whence ye are hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence ye are digged. Look unto Abra- ham your father, and unto Sarah that bare you : for I called him alone, and blessed him, and increased him.' And unto what should they look at in him or her ? 1. At what his condition was afore his calling : a server of other gods ; until his calling, an idolater ; from the midst of whom God did single him out, which Joshua lays afore that people to look at and consider: chap. xxiv. 2, 3, ' And Joshua said unto all the people, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Your fathers dwelt on the other side of the flood in old time, even Terah, the father of Abraham, and the father of Nahor : and they served other gods. And I took your father Abraham from the other side of the flood, and led him throughout all the land of Canaan, and multiplied his seed, and gave him Isaac' Was it, then, his well using of natural helps, or additional light by education ? Surely no. But as degenerate children of Eber, he and his father both were servers of other gods. Therefore look, 2, that it must be election or electing love that moved God so to call him, and could be no other. Moses in the general layeth afore their consideration God's love and choice of their father: Deut iv. 37, ' He loved thy fathers,' of whom Abraham is counted first and chief. And chap. x. 14, * Only he had a delight to love them, and so set his heart upon them.' And that word only singly points out that his love to have been the sole cause ; it was only that he loved them, &c., and so in like manner chose you after them. As it follows in Deut. x., but more particularly and expressly, Nehemiah in his solemn prayer says it of Abraham, chap. ix. 7, * Thou art the Lord the God, who didst choose Abram, and brought him forth out of Ur of the Chaldees, and gave to him the name of Abraham.' For an election of grace was most conspicuous in his example. Therefore, ver. 3, ' I called him alone' (says God by the prophet there). Consider that too. I know that that word alone interpreters wholly carry to import that he was called a single or an alone man when God called, as in reference and in way of opposition to what follows ; and I increased him in so numerous a pos- terity out of that one man's loins. But why not also, and perhaps rather, that God singled him out alone in respect that he was the first that was called ; and his father, and Lot, and Sarah were by and upon his calling moved to turn with him to the true worship of the true God ? But he alone fitst, and so was the restorer of religion in that family; and therefore in him
VOL. IX. 0
34 OF ELECTION. [BoOK I.
election did first eminently break forth in God's so extraordinarily taking him forth alone as he did, as Paul difierenceth his conversion from other Jews, without being instructed by man, but by revelation. And this Stephen observes, as with difi'erence from those others that left their country with him. Thus, Acts vii. 2, ' The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham, when he was in Mesopatamia, before he dwelt in Charran ; ' the title of ' the God of glory' is thus given him, because God appeared in a glorious manner to him, and he also is alone there mentioned ; because he was the he goat, and first leader of his father and them into Charran, and after his father's death, of Lot into Canaan. And this Ainsworth hath also observed upon the 31st verse of Gen. xi., especially from those words in that verse, that ' Lot and Sarah went forth with them from Ur of the Chal- dees ; ' that is (saith he) with Abraham and his father ; whom Abraham acquainting with the oracle of God to himself, his father repenting of his false worship went out with him (as Ainsworth's words there are) and so Lot with them ; that is, with Abraham and his father.
And that God revealed to Abraham his electing of him, and so that his first call proceeded therefrom, as also of all the spiritual seed, that one passage cited and interpreted by Paul, Heb. vi., hath abundantly satisfied me ; Abraham being therein made the pattern of us in election, the original of salvation, as well as he is in point of believing and justifying, the way to salvation : Heb. vi. 13, ' God sware by himself, saying. Surely blessing I will bless thee, and multiplying I will multiply thee ; ' that is, first, I will bless thee in thine own person, and then in multiplying thee into a spiritual seed, the heirs of promise with thee ; of whom thou shalt have the honour to be styled the father, because therein thou bearest the type of my Christ, who is the everlasting Father, and my first chosen, and others in him. Now the apostle in applying this to the comfort of elect believers, who were intended in that part of the promise, ' in multiplying I will multiply thee,' as is plain in the place he cites, — Gen. xvii. 22, ' In multiplying I will multiply thy seed,' — he interprets this promise to have proceeded from, and to declare God's eternal purpose of election, by his inserting by way of gloss those few words, ' the immutability of his counsel,' as that which his promise proceeded from, and expressed, ver. 17, ' Wherein God willing more abundantly to shew unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath.' And what is the immutability of his counsel, but his unchangeable decrees ? A promise made by God to us is one thing, and God's counsel is another ; his counsels are his decrees within himself from everlasting, as Eph. i. 4, 9, 10. And what other is a promise with an oath but God's immutable counsel, or election, put into promise? And who are ' the heirs of promise,' but the same whom in Kom. ix. he terms ' the children of promise' ? ' And if children, then heirs,' such as Isaac there is said to have been, Eom. ix. 7, 8. ' Neither because they are the seed of Abraham are they all children, but in Isaac shall thy seed be called ; ' that is, * they which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God : but the children of the promise are counted for the seed.'
But though we have seen the election to have obtained it in faithful Abraham, yet that is but one part of my assertion ; you may yet inquire concerning the other part. Are there none recorded to have been the restj as those that were blinded, so to set ofi" the grace of Abraham's election, and render it the more conspicuous ? Yes, verily, even in his father's house, his own brother Nahor. You not only read not of his not removing* with Abraham, as converted with him to his religion, which his father Terah * Qu. 'his removing'? — Ed.
Chap. III.j of election. 85
repenting did, and Lot, of which you may read. Gen. xi., but Nahor would not stir, not he, a foot, though father, and brothers, and sister went out from Ur of the Chaldees, but remained still with his idolatrous countrymen, and continued an idolater, and derived it down as his religion to his posterity.
You know, or have heard it, I suppose, out of the story of Laban's (Nahor's grandchild) his images, Gen. xxxi. 19, which himself calls his gods, ver. 30 ; as also how, when Jacob and he came to take an oath, ' Jacob sware by the god of his father Isaac,' who was then living ; and Laban sware by the god of his ^grandfather Nahor, ver. 53, yea, and in the plural calleth them the gods ^'^7^^, ' the (/olIh of Abraham, and the fjods of Nahor, judge between us ;' whether meaning thereby that at first Abraham himself had served the same gods that Nahor had done, or that Laban joined Nahor's gods with Abraham's, the true God, and so that Nahor served both, so to blind* him- self and Jacob by oath, I have not time now to dispute ; for, however, thereby it is plain that Laban professed to worship those gods, and so other gods besides the true, which the jealous God will in no wise bear in those he calls to draw near unto him to worship him. Whereas Jacob swears only by ' the fear of his father Isaac,' that is, whom Isaac feared ; and answerably, Laban professeth further, that these gods he swore by were the gods which his father Bethuel, and his grandfather Nahor, Abraham's own brother, had worshipped as their gods. So, then, you see of what religion they of that line were of, and that they had continued idolaters in their suc- cessive generations, and thereby are manifestly declared to have been of the rest that were blinded.
Abraham's family (as a worthy interpreterf hath observed) did in his next and immediate succession bear the type or resemblance of the future condi- tion of the church ; and in his family and next successors there fell out, of all other, the most pregnant instances of election and preterition ; for as his family was the first part, so the epitome of the ensuing whole ; and accord- ingly the Scripture hath made the most singular observations hereof. There are two pairs of instances in that family ; 1st, of Isaac and Ishmael, the immediate sons of Abraham ; then, 2dly, of Jacob and Esau, the sons of Isaac, extant whilst Abraham was alive.
That Isaac was a child of pure election-grace, as the aforehand cause of his faith and holiness, and not the subsequent, of election without works, and that as such he was cast into Abraham's bosom, as a precious gift, whilst Ishmael was excluded from that blessing, is evident enough from the story itself in Moses, although the apostle should not have moreover expressly told us so, and alleged it to that purpose ; for that God, ere he was conceived, should declare him heir of the same salvation with Abraham, and immutably and irreversibly estate the covenant of grace upon him, as an inheritance settled on him by an entail, with a professed diiference from Ishmael : Gen. xvii. 19-21, * And God said, Sarah thy wife shall bear thee a son indeed; and thou slialt call his name Isaac : and I will establish my covenant with him for an everlasting covenant, and with his seed after him. And as for
* Qu, ' bind' ?— Ed.
t See Rivetus in Genesim. Exercit. 102, cap. 21. — Cum tamen certura sit domum Abrabami per ilium tempus fuisse typum ecclesise, non solum aualogia sumpta a parte ad totum, quae tamen in hoc argumento negligi non debet ; sed maxima a constantis- sima Dei natura, cujus una est semper sibi constans erga ecclesiam voluntas, unaque ratio quaB ex homiuibus sibi facit filios ; quemadmodum igitur in familia Abraharai per electiouem suam discrevit fratres ut unus esset hseres, alter excluderetur dome, quamvis ipse Abraham aliter statuisset ; sic enim per electionem suam aeternam dis- crevit filios promissionis, quibus fidem dare voluit, ut in semine Abrahami censeren- tur, ab iis qui carnis prserogativa turgentes, non sunt Israelitae secundum spiritum.
36 OF ELECTION. [BoOK I.
Ishmael, I have heard thee : Behold, I have blessed him, and will make him fruitful, and I will multiply him exceedingly : twelve princes shall he beget, and I will make him a great nation. But my covenant will I establish with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear unto thee at this set time the next year ;' which you know how the apostle applies unto the covenant of grace and works : Gal. iv. 22-26, * For it is written, that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bond-maid, the other by a free woman. But he who was of the bond woman was born after the flesh ; but he of the free woman was by promise. Which things are of allegory : for these are the two covenants ; the one from mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar. For this Agar is mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children. But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all.' And that afterwards, whilst Isaac was but young, and lay as a sacrifice bound upon the altar, God should by an oath confirm the promises made of blessing him, and with him his spiritual seed: Gen. xxii. 16, 17, 'By myself have I sworn, in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea-shore ; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies.' Whereof Isaac was the first included and intended, for it was in reference to, and upon occasion of him that God uttered it. ' Thou hast not withheld thy son, thy only son, from me,' ver. 13, * therefore I will multiply thee in him in so numerous a seed as are the stars or sands.' This oath, as we afore observed out of the apostle's interpretation of it, was intended of the spiritual seed, the heirs of promise, such as Isaac was, the declared son of promise ; and this oath declared how that promise proceeded from God's immutable coun- sel, as the apostle interprets it, which is election, that sure foundation, * the Lord knows who are his,' and knew well what he then did in so swearing. And shall we think that God's oath and irrevocable promise was built and founded upon the immutability of Isaac's free-will grace, and such helps, as he should by free-will use them, which he should for the future have in Abraham's family, in common with Ishmael ? Isaac was yet to live a long while in the world, and might, according to the principles of free-will grace', have fallen away and proved unregenerate ; and God could have no such sure and certain assurance of him as to venture, as I may so say, an oath upon him, with a peremptory irreversible blessing of him. What! and establish his everlasting covenant with him upon the uncertain fickleness and mutability of free-will, no otherwise ? Nay, would God have pawned by oath his own self, • by myself have I sworn,' so as to cease to be God, if Isaac and Abraham both should cease to persevere in faith to the end of their lives, for it was Abraham's case also, according to their position, to have been assisted but according to the rule of free-will grace's assistance, as surely as God said, ' surely,' &c. The foundation of this oath lay deeper in God's own heart ; it lay in the immutability of his own counsel, which he purposed within himself, wherewith he invincibly resumed and undertook to carry on Isaac's and Abraham's wills to the end ; not in the stability of what he fore- saw was within themselves. But we need spend no more time upon this of Isaac, nor would have done, had it not made for a comfortable issue to us all, of which by and by.
The apostle, therefore, to confirm that distinction of his, of an election, from the common Israelite, he instanceth to that end in the persons of Ish- mael and Isaac, and then Esau and Jacob ; which instances do manifestly declare, first, that the promises of God to Abraham, that God would be ' the God of his seed,' Gen. xvii., were limited in their intent to the persons of Isaac, and so to Jacob, as leading examples unto the rest of that seed of his
Chap. III.] of election. 87
that should be children of the promise ; in affirming of these, in particular, that they were, in God's foreknowledge, the only children of the promise, and not those other, either Esau or Ishmael ; only with this difference, from others of the elect to follow, that Isaac and Jacob were definitely and by name declared children of the promise, whereas the elect seed, which were to come after, are but indefinitely spoken of in the promise to Abraham. I will be a God of tiry seed, not naming who, and yet not intending all of his carnal seed, are therefore indefinitely delivered and uttered, and so are to be understood ; yet so as, in that indefinite promulgation of them, God did intend within himself (who alone knows personally who are his) those very individual persons whom he had chosen, and these only ; and they only are the children of promise, even as Isaac and Jacob are said to be. Only Isaac and Jacob came by name to be mentioned in personal promises of them ; but the other of the seed elect, their names are concealed, yet still 80 as the promises are only theirs, and they only children of the promise, as well as Isaac and Jacob were. All the indefinite promises of salvation are but the expressions of election, and its intendments, indefinitely declared as touching the persons ; yet those persons were fixed upon by God, and for their sakes those promises are given. And this is evidently the scope of the apostle's argument there, to prove that * all are not Israel, that are of Israel,' nor all children of the promise ; or else his proof of this from those instances had not held. Though the promises were, because indefinite, to be promulgated to all, that none knowing but that himself might be a per- son intended, as well as any other, might be moved to seek for an assured interest in the promise, by efi'ectual calling and conversion. And because of this general promulgation, it is that Peter exhorts the Jews in that man- ner as he doth : Acts iii. 25, 26 : * Ye are the children of the prophets, and of the covenant which God made with our fathers, saying unto Abraham, And in thy seed shall all the kingdoms of the earth be blessed. Unto you first God, having raised up his Son Jesus, sent him to bless you, in turning away every one of you from his iniquities.'
Now, as the apostle proves by these two pair of instances of Isaac and Ishmael, &c., that this was a leading case of the like difference among the people of Israel to come, so he as plainly resolves this difference put between them (and so in their example among others) into God's election, who, hav- ing pitched his eye and grace on some, doth in the foresight and intuition of them, effectually designed bj' him, give forth and utter those promises of salvation, which are but the very declaration of an election amongst the sons of men ; and the matters or things that are promised therein are but what election did design, only declareth them, as to us, but indefinitely as to per- sons ; so that still these elect only are ' the children of the promise ' in- tended ; which that they are so is in the end discovered by effectual calling, and conversion wrought in them and not in others. That all this is so (and it is a great so), is evident by the 11th verse that follows in that 9th chapter,
* For the children,' namely, Esau and Isaac,* * being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth.*
It is clearly resolved into God's purpose by election, and shews how that election discovers itself upon the children of promise, by causing the pro- mises to take hold, by working faith in the hearts of those who are intended by God in the promise, and are only the * true children of the promises,'
* sons of peace,' as Christ aforehand, when he sent his apostles to preach the gospel of peace, enstyles them ; and thus it was that election manifested
* Qu.' Jacob'?— Ed.
38 OF ELECTION. [BoOK I.
itself in Isaac and Jacob. And election manifested itself in the effectual calling both of Isaac and of Jacob. As the last words in ver. 11 [shew], * that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth.' And although in the instance of Isaac, he hath not mentioned a scripture that hath the election of him (and yet that in Gen. xvii. 21, ' My covenant will I establish with Isaac,' is a plain declaration of the thing itself), and then the difference professedly here put between him and Ishmael, and others of Abraham's children, doth sufficiently evince the grace of election to have been the cause of the difference. And however the drift and current of the apostle's discourse clearly insinuates it ; for in the other instance about Jacob, he manifestly declares it in those words, ver. 11, ' that the purpose according to election might stand.' And his allegation of Jacob's instance, and of Isaac's, are both to one and the same purpose, which is to prove an election, which he proposed as his thesis or assertion, in the words afore. If, therefore, the one doth so expressly mention an election of him as the cause of this difference of him from Ishmael, then, certainly, the same holds as intended in that of him as well as that of Jacob. Now, that election was the declared cause in the case of Jacob, he produceth two testimonies out of the Old Testament, the one given his mother whilst both were in the womb, * the elder,' namely, by birth, ' shall serve the younger ; ' the other uttered by the prophet, * Jacob have I loved, Esau have I hated.' Servitude was used to express the curse of rejection, as Gen. ix. 25, ' Cursed be Canaan ; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.' And in Esau it signi- fied also the loss of the inheritance which he had by birth-right, which was the type of heaven; all which agrees with the case of Ishmael, Gal. iv., ' The son of the bond-woman shall not be heir with the son of the free woman.' And so thereby the inheritance of heaven was declared not to be designed by God to him, and so the promises not to intend him. And this was said of him when yet he had not done good or evil ; that is, without the con- sideration of the difference of any works in either to have moved God to have put the difference. And this comprehended with Esau, first, the Edomites who came of him, in whom the curse began, and descended to them, as in the same prophet, Mai. i. 4, ' They shall call them the people against whom the Lord hath indignation ; ' whereas on the contrary, the love and blessing took hold first on Jacob, and so descended down to those that were the children of promise amongst his seed. Thus much for what of this argument is in the 9th chapter of the Epistle to the Romans.
Now, how punctually doth the apostle continue to prosecute this same argument here in this 11th chapter, though more amply and in plainer terms, yet to the same issue and effect, whilst he assumes the same distinction of children of promise, there distinguished from the rest of Israel, as children of the flesh, as here he doth of 'his people whom he foreknew' as the ori- ginal cause of that difference now in the apostle his days put between a few and the rest of Israel, that were passed by; which he doth in plain words, ver. 5, ' Even so then at this present time also there is a remnant according to the election of grace.' And ver. 7, 'What then? Israel hath not obtained that which he seeketh for ; but the election hath obtained it, and the rest were blinded.' So as whoever will but consider the reference and respect these and other passages in this chap, xi., have with those other in chap, ix., must withal acknowledge, that if election to salvation be meant in this 11th chapter (which no man can deny), that it must also be intended in chap, ix., which scope divers have gone about to frustrate and make null.
Well, I come to those. Now when Israel grew up to be a nation, and to be a church unto God, as they are called in the 7th of the Acts, why that
Chap. III.] of election. 89
God did take the whole nation in the type, because he had an election among them, it is put upon election, as you will sec in Deut. xiv. 2. Says he, * The Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a peculiar people to himself above all the nations that are upon the earth.' That he chose them above all the nations, was it because they used their free will better, for which he thus chose them ? Oh no ; he tells them along that they were ' a stiff-necked people ; ' and he tells them he did foreknow what they would be : Deut. xxxi. 21, * I know the imaginations which they go about, for I see their wickedness, yet have I chosen them.' ' Their vine was the vine of Sodom,* Deut. xxxii. 32 ; their vine worse than the vine of Sodom. If you read it as it is in the margin, * worse than the heathen about them,' Ezek. v. 6. He justified Sodom and Gomorrah in comparison of them, Ezek. xvi. 47, 48. Yet election pitched among them, though they had changed his statutes more than any people ; * Thou wast corrupted more than they in all thy ways ; ' look in Ezek. v. 6, ' And she hath changed my judgments into wickedness more than the nations, and my statutes more than the countries that are round about her; for they have refused my judgments and my statutes, they have not walked in them.' Yet the election took place among them.
My brethren, it is to me a great observation, though he chose them to be his people in a type, that there were a company among them on whom his heart was set. There was Moses, as he is called, ' the chosen of God,' and Aaron. What, to ofiice only ? No ; there was more in it: Exod. xxxiii. 12,
* I know thee by name ; ' and at the 19th verse, when God was to proclaim his mercies, he said, * I will make all my goodness to pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee ; and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy.' The Lord professes this aforehand, that he intends this but to some special ones among them: * I will be merciful but to whom I will be merciful.' The apostle quoting it in the case of election, adds, ' Whom he will he hardens.' It was an election whom he knew by name. What is election ? Why, it is, I will be merciful to such and such. Merciful, * saith the Lord, that hath mercy on thee ; ' that is, that hath chosen thee, and pitched his mercy on thee.
Well, then, when the people were come into the land, and the worship of God began to be settled, still election ran one way more than another. There were, you know, ten tribes and there were two tribes ; election shewed which way it bended. I shall give you a place out of the Psalms : Ps. Lxxviii. 67, 68, * Moreover he refused the tabernacle of Joseph, and chose not the tribe of Ephraim : but chose the tribe of Judah, the mount Zion which he loved.' He speaks of the times of the judges. The rejection of the ten tribes began to shew itself soon ; he says, he refused the tabernacle of Ephraim, but he chose Judah. After Solomon's time, they fell to wor- shipping of calves (let me tell you, it is the declining of election that undoes a nation, when election grows low, and ceases in an age), till at last the ten tribes were cast off, and they are at this day ; but the tribe of Judah had election among them.
Well, come to gospel times. When Christ first sent his disciples out, he gave them a command, and he gave them an instruction, as you may read in the 10th of Matthew, and the 10th of Luke. In Mat. x. 5, 9, says he,
* These tw^elve Jesus sent forth, and commanded them, saying. Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not : but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.' Yet afterwards, when the regions were white unto harvest, then he bids them * go and preach to every creature,' Mark xvi. 15. You have a direction which he gives them,
40 OF ELECTION. [BoOK I.
Luke X. 6, * Go ye and say, Peace be unto this house ; ' but be not troubled if it be not entertained, * If the son of peace be there, your peace shall rest upon it ; ' that is, one that is ordained to peace and salvation. What says Paul ? * Hath the word taken none effect ? ' * Brother,' says he, ' there be many thousands of the Jews that do believe.' If there be a son of peace, it shall rest upon that soul. Why now, then, when our Saviour Christ was gone off the earth, gone up to heaven, he sent the apostle, and where the election took place, they obtained salvation. What is the reason that the apostles were forbidden to preach in some places amongst the Gentiles, and bid to stay in other places ? It was because that God had much people there. Look in Acts xvi. 6, * Now, when they had gone through Phrygia and the region of Galatia, and were forbidden of the Holy Ghost to preach the word in Asia, after they were come to Mysia, they assayed to go into Bithjmia : but the Spirit suffered them not.' What is the reason, on the other side, when they were at Corinth ? chap, xviii. ver. 9, 10. Paul being at Corinth, the Lord spake to him by a vision : * Speak, be not afraid: for I am with thee, and no man shall set on thee to hurt thee ; for I have much people in this city.' And when they came to a city, one expelled them, others entertained them. What is the account that Paul gives of it ? Acts xiii. 48, * As many as were ordained unto eternal life believed.' There were but a few among those Gentiles that believed, others stirred up persecutions, and they expelled them their coasts.
Jesus Christ from heaven forbids Paul to stay any longer at Jerusalem, but to go to the Gentiles: Acts xxii. 18, 21, *I was in a trance, and saw him saying unto me, Make haste, and get thee quickly out of Jerusalem : for they will not receive thy testimony concerning me.' Whither shall he go, then? Ver. 21, 'And he said unto me, Depart: for I will send thee far hence unto the Gentiles.' It was as election ceased, or was found, so they were sent accordingly to preach. Where there was a good company of the elect, the gospel ran like wild fire. 1 Thes. i. 4, says Paul, ' I know your election to be of God.' Why? ' For our gospel came not to you in word, but in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance.' You know what manner of men we were among you. God did mightily raise up my spirit, and did a great deal of good. I need not tell you why the Jews were cast off and the Gentiles called; you may read from the 9th to the 11th chapter of the Romans.
Come to the dark times of popery, after the apostles were gone off the stage. He tells you that all the world should wonder after the beast; it is in two places : Rev. xiii. 8, 'All that dwell on the earth shall worship him, whose names are not writtan in the Lamb's book of life.' Look in the 17th chapter, ver. 8, 'And they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, whose names were not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast that was, and is not, and yet is.'
You are come now to our very times. There will come a time when those hardened people the Jews, that they say spit at the name of Christ; con- tinually hardened more and more, and caked in hardness this sixteen hun- dred years ; the Rom. xi. tells us that there is a time coming wherein ' all Israel shall be saved;' ver. 25, 26, ' I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits ; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. And so all Israel shall be saved,' &c. Why? But what is the case of these elect? *As concerning the gospel, they are enemies for your sakes ; but as touching the election, they are beloved for the fathers' sake,' ver. 29. ' For the gifts and callings of God are without repentance.'
Chap. IV.] of election. 41
The Gentiles have had it so many hundred years. What is the reason of difference ? It is election ; therefore he concludes, ' Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!'
CHAPTER IV.
The instance of Noahy and his heinff saved in an ark, and God's covenant made with him, proved more largely and f idly to he a great exemplar and typical representation of election and the covenant oj grace.
In that draught of the line of election that runs through the whole Scrip- tures, I could but briefly touch upon that one particular instance of Noah and his sons ; but my meditations have been since more especially enlarged about this Noah, that not only himself, in his own person, as recorded in his story, to have been a special instance and example of electing grace, and of the covenant thence flowing, but farther, that God's covenants made with him and his seed, and God's dealings with him according to those cove- nants, were prophetic figures of his covenant with his church, in the times of the New Testament; who were, by virtue of the election of grace, to be raised up out of his loins. And the demonstration of this out of the Scrip- tures is the design and subject of this appendix, which I chose thus to sever from the former, because it would have taken up too much room in that brief enumeration of so many other persons that are instances of election in that catalogue ; and yet it subserveth to the same end and purpose. I therefore annex it thereunto, as an appendix to that discourse.
I have a long time looked at that which both the Old Testament and the New style the ' covenant of grace,' or the ' new covenant,' to be but election purposes and designs put into promises; God expressing therein the gracious intentions and resolutions of himself towards his elect, which had been taken up by him from eternity; only whereas election in God's heart then did design the individual persons, together with the things decreed to them ; he hath in the promises and revealed declarations of the covenant of grace, con- cealed the particular persons, and doth only indefinitely propound the sub- jects of those promises, touching the persons intended, that they are ' sinners of mankind,' and that of all sorts and conditions, to whom, and upon whom, God therein declareth that he will certainly and infallibly make good that covenant and the promises thereof. And himself hath therein undertaken to perform it in them, though not for them, as to give them ' new hearts and new spirits,' to ' teach them to know him' and his Son Christ, the mediator of that covenant, and the like ; and in such absolute terms of promises on God's part doth that covenant run, with difierence from the covenant of works, so as the materials of the covenant of grace are all one with election decrees in the things decreed, though the persons are not named whom God will infallibly bestow them upon, but yet with greater certainty declared that God will perform it to and amongst mankind; and yet the persons uho being left indefinite, that ought to set all a-work to seek to come under it, in such ways as God hath commanded all men that [are] within the hearing of it [to] seek him in [it].
Noah's story doth partly in the reality to his own person, partly in the type of things in that story, [contain] these two eminent parts concerning our salvation.
1. God's covenant of grace, and God's everlasting kindness therein,
42 OF ELECTION. [BoOK I.
which is the spring of that covenant, and for that I take Isa. liv. 9, 10 for my text.
2. The type of the mediator of that covenant, Christ, which was the ark; and how that Christ, as signified in our baptism, is the sole author of salva- tion to us; and for that I refer to the 1 Peter iii. 20, 21, 'Which sometime were disobedient, when once the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a-preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls, were saved by water. The likejfif/ure whereimto even baptism doth also now save us (not the putting away the filthiness of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God), by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.'
3. The work of the covenant in us and upon us, namely, of faith, &c., which God hath as peremptorily also ordained to be the means of the appli- cation of Christ for salvation to us, and without which we shall not be saved. And for this take Noah's instance : Heb. xi. 7, ' By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house ; by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteous [ness] which is by faith.' The example of Noah there in the type set out, gives us a lively pattern of the work of salvation in us, answer- ing to his faith about the ark (that is) through the work of application to us by faith on Christ.
4. The difficulties, distresses, hazards, temptations, through which we pass (after our being in Christ), under the covenant of grace, ere we arrive at heaven; and for this I take those words in the fore-cited Isa. liv. 11, '0 thou afflicted, and tossed wath tempest, and not comforted ! ' speaking to his church, which in their coherence with the verses afore, 9 and 10, have mani- festly a respect to Noah's condition in the ark, which in those 9th and 10th verses God hath first made mention of.
And it is the first of those, upon Isa. liv. 9, 10, which I single forth for my present argument ; which is an exemplification of election, and of the covenant of grace in Noah's person and story.
SECTION I.
Of election, and the covenant of grace, and the church of the New Testament, the subject of both, as typified forth in Noah's story. — That Noah, in his own j)erson, was intended as an example of election; the covenants made with him before the flood, and vjith him and his sons after, were types of the covenant of grace; proved in a discourse on Isa, liv. 7-11.
For a small moynent ham I forsaken thee; hut with great mercies will I gather thee. In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment; but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the Lord thy Redeemer. For this is as the waters of Noah unto me: for as I have sworn that the waters of Noah should no more go over the earth; so have I sworn, that I will not be wroth with thee, nor rebuke thee. For the mountains shall depart, and the hills shall be removed; but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee. 0 thou affiicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted ! — IsA. LIV. 7-11.
That these words speak, in the first place, the pure covenant of gi'ace, and the everlastingness and perpetuity of that grace and covenant, as it flows in God's heart in and from election, may be apparent in the very reading the words; and, secondly, that they refer to the story of Noah's covenant and
Chap. IV.] of election. 43
waters at the flood, as the figure and exemplification thereof, I hope, through God's grace, to make evident throughout this whole discourse ; but at present,
1. For the first, you have not only the very word covenant in express terms, — ver. 10, ' My covenant,' and that *of my peace,' — but also the pure grace and kindness of God, out of which he made the covenant, and which he exerciseth throughout in all the dispensations of it. This those many words that surround the text do declare ; as that, ' with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee,' ver. 8; 'my kindness shall not depart from thee, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee,' ver. 10. And that the grace of election, though it be not under that term or word mentioned, yet in sense and reality is specified, that word, 'with everlastinrj kindness,' insinuates, as grasping within it both everlastings ; a kindness everlasting for time to come, being but the continuation of an everlasting mercy and kindness that hath been for ever of old : Ps. xxv. 6, ' Remember, 0 Lord, thy tender mercies and thy loving-kindnesses ; for they have been ever of old ;' that as God's own everlastingness comprehendeth both, — Ps. xc. 2, ' Even from everlasting to everlasting thou art God,' — so doth and is his loving- kindness towards us. And those other words, * Says the Lord that hath mercy on thee,' miserator tuus; which is a periphrasis of election, and is tantamount as to say, * The Lord who hath chosen thee,' as Rom. ix. (where election is handled), the apostle expressly doth shew.
2. For the second of these, that these things are found in and may be fetched out of Noah's story and covenant, declared to him upon occasion of the flood, appears from this in the text, that God, to verify the truth of his covenant to his church, allegeth and referreth both himself and us to the waters of Noah: * This is the waters of Noah to me,'' saith he.
Three general heads of the first part of this discourse drawn forth out of the words, ver. 9.
In which words, and those that follow, God doth (for they are his words by the prophet, as his mouth), 1, at once point us both to Noah's person (whom therefore he twice mentions), and his waters in his salvation from them, as an example of that covenant and mercy which now he promiseth unto his church, and all her children (as ver. 13 they are called), to perform the same to them as he had done it then to him ; as likewise, 2, that the story of him and his waters or flood, and God's covenant with him, his sons, &c., and oath thereabouts, though in the letter the semblance they bear was but of the temporal salvation and deliverance from the flood, yet in the mystery thereof they were (as is here signified) intended as figures of God's eternal covenant and mercies unto his elect church, which were to come out of Noah's and his sons' loins ; 3, which church, that is here specially pointed at concerning his covenant, with which he says, ' This is to me the waters of Noah,' is the church under the New Testament, and the seed of Japhet especially, whom this covenant and promises do more particularly concern, as in ver. 1, 2, 3 of this chapter will appear.
And these are the three heads and branches of this general part of this discourse.
1. The first of these three heads hath two branches in it.
(1.) The first, concerning Noah's particular person, that he was first intended in it as an example as well as a type of that grace, and election, and covenant here declared to the church.
(2.) The second, that the covenants made with him afore the flood, and with him and his sons after, were figures of the same, &c.
44 OF ELECTION. [BoOK I.
(1.) Noah in his own person was intended as an example of the covenant of grace.
That himself was the principal and first covenanter, declared heir of the covenant of grace, and that made known to him by God himself upon that occasion of the flood, is evident by this, that he is said by faith to have entertained it, and accepted on his part God's declarations made then to him, as understood by him to be the declarations of the covenant of grace. And therefore it must be that God also on his part had with that intention nttered that covenant unto him personally. Now that Noah did well under- stand and apprehend that under the type of the ark and his salvation thereby, that a further salvation than temporal was signified thereby to him, and another manner of ark than that of gophir wood, even Christ the promised seed, to save him from a more dreadful inundation of wrath to come, and 80 from a greater destruction than that which the waters only brought upon the lives of the ungodly of that present age ; that, I say, he understood by faith these things, the Holy Ghost, that knew both Noah's heart and God's also in his covenant to him, and transactions thereupon with him, hath informed us: Heb. xi. 7, ' By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen, prepared an ark to the saving of his house; by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith,' which last words, ' he became heir of the righteousness which is by faith,' do give us the true intent of the former words, by shewing us that Noah had in those dealings of God with him the very same righteousness for the object of his faith, which our gospel now proposeth to us, and which our faith doth lay hold upon ; for why else doth he propose it as an example of that faith he exhorteth us now to have ? which the same apostle in his other epistles doth in the same phrase and language style the righteousness of God, and the righteousness of Christ, which is by faith : Philip, iii. 9, ' Not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith ; ' which right- eousness for justification he more setly treateth of in the epistle to the Romans, under the same very words : Rom. iii. 21, 22, * But now' (that is, under the gospel) * the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets ; even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ.' Now Noah was a prophet. Gen. ix., and among other prophets witnessed to this righteousness, himself first believ- ing in it, and then being a public preacher of righteousness, as the other apostle calls him ; and not only of that righteousness of an holy life, in which he himself so exceeded, which follows upon believing, but of that right- eousness which is by faith, as it hath Christ for its object. And certainly, if he were a righteous preacher, as he was, then that righteousness himself had recourse to [forj himself and his own salvation, that he preached unto others for their salvation. Nov/ it was that righteousness Noah had an eye upon (as typified by his ark, and from thence had learned it), and had recourse unto for his eternal salvation, as the apostle to the Hebrews testifies ; although he were, as is testified of him in respect of his own inherent righteousness, the most righteous man in his generation : ' A perfect and just man.' And in sign and token that yet he had his eye upon this righteousness out of himself to save him, it was through the same faith he betook himself to that ark, a means wholly out of himself, to save him from the waters, which otherwise all his own righteousness would never have done ; for why else is it there said, that by preparing the ark, ' he became heir of the righteous- ness which is by faith ' ? Which righteousness by faith, to be Christ's right- eouness, all sound protestants do profess ; and as the righteousness he
Chap. IY.] op election. 45
believed on, and was made heir of, was this gospel righteousness, signified to him by the ark, so the rest of those things there mentioned did in their several designs much type out to him things spiritual, and of like spiritual mystery. As the flood typed forth the wrath of God unseen by carnal eyes ; and the condemnation of the world there spoken of was the condemnation to hell, and not to the waters only, as Peter informs us ; yea, and he con- demned the world more by preparing that ark, and by preaching a gospel righteousness to men, or the Messiah to come, whom he is also said to have preached in the figure, 1 Peter iii. 19, 20, than by all his holiness, as that Heb. xi. 7 doth witness.
Let us now approach to bring together what I premised concerning the covenant, and grace, and election, which are the subject of the text in Isaiah, and mine also, and the passages which we find in Genesis concern- ing Noah, together, and see how appositely they correspond and agree to this my purpose.
[l.J It is greatly observable, that in the sacred story Noah was the first of the sons of men unto whom God ever spoke of a covenant. There was promise indeed of Christ, the woman's seed, uttered before, which all the patriarchs before the flood lived upon ; but under the title of a covenant never no mention, no, nor of the word grace till now. Noah had the first honour of both these expressions, grace and covenant. And therefore most properly and meetly hath God here in Isaiah singled out the instance of Noah for both ; for, jwiimim in quolihet geiiere est mensura reliquorum. The first in every kind is the measure of the rest of that kind that do after fol- low. This of covenant you find in Gen. vi. 18, ' But with thee will I estab- lish my covenant ; ' there is the first ; and, 2dly, the expression of grace is to him, and first to him in ver. 8, ' But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.' And it is God's own speech unto him, though spoken by God as in the third person of himself. And it is not the addition of Moses the penman, but it comes in a continued sermon made to him by God himself, and uttered privately to none but him ; and that speech is pure New Testa- ment language : to * find grace,' and * obtain mercy,' as Heb. iv. 16. And after it had been thus first uttered to Noah, this speech came after into more frequent use, both in the Old and New Testament, as unto Moses, Exod. xxxiii. 12 ; ' Unto David his chosen,' Acts vii. 45 ; and the blessed Virgin Mary, Luke vii. 70, thou art 'ingratiated,' gratia donata, endowed with God's favour ; and the sense is the same. And this title Noah was the first that bore it, as a new addition to the coat of arms of God's elect, which from that time they have worn as the highest title of honour.
[2.] And it was not afore now given to Noah ; yea, grace in the Hebrew (as Ainsworth observes) is in a manner the anagram of Noah his name, thou^rh the letters in the name Noah do in their direct order signify rest ; yet such a rest as is out of grace given and bestowed, which an inverted order of the letters signifies. See for this Ainsworth on Gen. vi. 6.
[3.] And, thirdly, it was the grace that is and was in God's heart towards him, that is meant, as that additional shews, ' in the eyes or mind of Jeho- vah ;' and not that grace which was in Noah's heart : that was but the efiect. To find grace in one's eyes, is indeed a phrase used likewise of man's being favoui-able to another (as in those places Gen. xxxiv. 11, 1 Sam. i. 18, and many other) ; which yet comes then to be used, when the kindness sought, or to be bestowed, depends merely on the good will of the man who is to cast it upon the other, and wherein they that seek it, when that man- ner of speech is used by them, do acknowledge no merit or worth in them- selves, why that favour should be shewn them ; and therefore much more it
46 OF ELECTION. [BoOK I.
hath that import, when it is spoken of God, and of his grace towards man, of whom the apostle says, ' who hath first given to him ?' &c. ; and moreover imports, that God's eyes and foresight saw nothing in the creature why he should endow him with it ; yea, furthermore, to find grace in God's eyes, is when God prevents the creature, in its very seeking of it ; as Isa. Ixv. 1, ' I am found of them that sought me not ;' which was because they had found grace in God's eyes afore they sought it, and without their having done any thing to move him to it. And the word found, also, which is added unto grace (as here), doth superadd to this import. The Grecians call a thing unlooked for, not dreamt of, or freely cast on one (by chance as it were) without his looking for it,— they call it ?y^7;/xa, a thing found ; and such is God's grace, as that word, ' found grace,' intimates : all which expressions suit perfectly with grace in God electing, or with electing grace. The emi- nentest person to whom grace (as electing) is attributed, was Moses, who bears that title, ' Moses his chosen,' Ps. cvi. 23 ; and the election of him is expressed by this very phrase : Exod. xxxiii. 12, ' I know thee by name, and thou hast also found grace in my sight ;' that is, God had chosen him freely, to be personally and individually his. And we find God's foreknowledge is put to express election, as it is * God's foundation :' ' The Lord knows who are his ;' and God's people ' whom he foreknew,' in Rom. xi. 2, are in ver. 5 but ' a remnant according to the election of grace ;' and so towards Moses, God's grace cast on him was the sole product of God's will : so ver. 19 of Exod. xxxiii. interprets it, and applies it to him, * I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious,' God therein giving Moses the true ground and account why he was gracious unto him, when not to others ; and therefore those very words are cited under the instance and case of Moses, by way of discrimina- tion from Pharaoh, as the opposite person whom Moses had to do with, to prove election, Rom. ix. 15 ; and in the same tenor and meaning of speech, it is, that God declares of Noah, Noah hath ' found grace in the eyes of Jehovah ;' and it may also be said of him, that God knew him by name ; for to testify his having pre-ordained him, and separated him from the womb (as Paul speaks of himself), unto salvation ; as also that deliverance in the flood, out of his mere free grace, he inspired his father with a prophecy about him at his very birth. Look as God inspired his great prophet Enoch, to give his son Methuselah a name that foretold the flood, and the year of the commct of it, being by interpretation, he dieth, the emission, or dart cometh, meaning the flood : Enoch, being a prophet, foretelleth this his son should die, and then the flood should be emitted ; and therefore our days, as Methu- selah's were, are appointed and set ; in like manner God inspired Noah's father with a name, which foretold the restoring of the earth from that curse,* even from Adam, all along due to it, from the flood ; and for the giving both the earth, and a new world of inhabitants, rest in it again, by that Noah, who was then bom unto him : thus Gen. v. 29. And this being foretold of him at his birth, ' when he had done neither good nor evil' (as in the case of Jacob's election out of grace, and Esau's rejection, the apostle argues), doth plainly argue it was God's free grace towards him, which had separated him from the womb hereunto, and no righteousness at all of his ; and out of the same grace still continued towards him, now when he acquaints him with his pur- pose to bring the flood, he teUs him he would deliver him out of it ; and that
* I might at large give an interpretation of his father Lamech's prophecy of him, and shew how he was declared an exact type of Christ to follow. The founder of the new world, the church, the remover of the curse, by being himself made a curse ; the easer of our toil, and all sorts of miseries we labour under, and giver to us of rest, Mat. xi., Heb. iv.
Chap. IV.J of election. 47
it was his sole grace, borne to him from the first, that was the cause and designer of that his salvation, * thou hast found grace in my sight,' and there- with utters a covenant, obliging himself so to do. And though God mentions the grace, or righteousness, that was in Noah also, yet as that which that free grace which had been in God's heart towards him from his birth, yea, from everlasting, had wrought in him, to make him meet for that mercy and deliverance. Yea, and further, to testify he knew him by name, and had ordained him out of pure grace unto this, he gave him a name, that in the letters inverted bore the stamp and impress of the grace of God (as was before observed) ; even as at the Baptist's birth, he by a wise disposement ordered him a name, signifying in the indirect placing of the letters, grace, shewing that he was out of that grace separated from the womb unto his work, &c., as Noah here had been.
[4.] And, fourthly, this was done (as I added) with a discrimination or dif- ference put between Noah and the rest of the world, out of special grace to him ; and election, or choice, which is to single one out from others, always supposeth a leaving out of others ; and the occasion whereupon it comes in, is with a hut ; * But Noah found grace,' &c., which is spoken even whilst on the other hand God just afore had told him, in the verse afore, ' I will destroy man whom I have created from off the earth,' ver. 17 ; and then, at the 18th verse, ' But with thee will I establish my covenant.' He is at his hut again ; thereby denoting the same discriminating grace of election, as if he had said. But icith thee (singling thee forth personally, and by name, from the rest of the world) / ivill establish my covenant (that is, make this as a sure and stable covenant with thee : as afterwards David speaketh of God's cove- nant of grace with him, 2 Sam. xxiii. 5) ; ii-hich I do not with others. So then, do but join ver. 8, * But Noah found grace,' &c., together with the words of ver. 18, * But with thee will I establish my covenant ;' and then you have, 1, grace declared to be the foundation or spring of this covenant, ver. 18 ; and, 2, that covenant itself declared to be stable and irrevocably firm from out of the same grace, ' I will establish,' &c. ; and, 3, all put together rising up to this, as if he had plainly styled it, the covenant of grace. Thus it was to Noah's own person ; yea, and such a covenant as we usually describe the covenant of grace to be, proceeding from election grace at first, and continued stable and firm out of the same, as we have before in Noah's example explained it.
And, that it was the covenant of grace unto Noah's person, and proposed in him as a pattern and example to us, who were after to believe, there is further reason for it. If the same covenant, as it was afterwards estated upon Abraham and David, are so to be understood (as generally we acknow- ledge), then surely the first covenant that under that title and notion God did promulgate to mankind, and whereof grace by name was the foundation, established with this man ; a man of as great holiness and acceptation with God as any of them were, for which you may take the judgment of God himself, who ranks him in the head of the first three (I allude to David's) worthies of the Old Testament, Ezek. xiv. 14 ; a man perfect in his gene- ration, and singled forth of an whole world destroyed before his face, unto which he had been the preacher of righteousness, the ' righteousness of faith,' whereby men are to be saved in all ages, and thereby condemning them for neglecting and refusing that salvation, Heb. xi. 7, even to hell, 1 Pet. iii. ; and further, the beginner and founder of a new world ; and, in that respect, a type of the second Adam, yea, and the father of him, namely, Christ according to the flesh, yea, and with him of all the elect, whether Jews or Gentiles, that after succeeded ; then surely, I say, this covenant was to
48 OF ELECTION. [BoOK I.
himself the covenant of grace, as well as unto any of them, and promulged to him, as the father and head, as on behalf of the elect his sons, to proceed out of him ; as theirs also was in them to their children.
If it be said, that this covenant respected only the temporal salvation of Noah in the ark,
Besides, that it may be answered, that so did the covenant declared to David (in the first delivery of it, in 2 Sam. vii. from ver. 12, and so on) speak but of his house, and establishing of his kingdom to his seed ; whilst yet his own salvation (2 Sam. xxiii. 5, 'God made with me a covenant, and this is all my salvation') and the salvation of the elect through Christ, was intended therein ; so here, it may also be replied, that the word grace, as it is spoken of God, and to express his grace, is too deep a word to be bestowed only upon a mere temporal salvation ; but only used where the eternal grace and love of God is the fountain of it. The favour God bore even to Adam in innocency is nowhere so far ennobled as to be styled grace ; nor are the gifts in temporaries termed grace, though they be called ' spi- ritual gifts,' in their kind, and freely given to the rebellious also.
But, besides such returns as these to this objection, that which will make the answer complete, is the consideration of the second branch afore pro- posed, namely,
(2.) That Noah's covenant, over and besides its being to his person the cove- nant of grace, and he an example thereof to us therein ; that also both that covenant afore the flood for his temporal salvation in the ark. Gen. 6th and 7th chapters, and that other after the flood, Gen. ix., were figurative or pro- phetic types in God's intention of eternal salvation, unto himself, and the elect of his posterity to come, especially under the New Testament.
When this is joined and added to the former, and proved that it was the covenant of grace to Noah's person, &c., makes not only the answer to the objection sufficiently complete, but also will prove a foundation to the main things to be built up in this following discourse.
This position, the apostle Peter doth in terminis affirm, in his 1st Epistle 3d chap. ver. 20, 21, ' God waited in the days of Noah, whilst the ark was a-preparing, wherein few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water. The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us.' It is express, that the salvation of him and his sons was intended as a figure, and a figure that did bear a likeness, or parallel in it, unto our everlasting salva- tion, and the things thereof. And further, that it was not only to Noah himself a figure of his own everlasting salvation, as figuring forth to him thereby that God would save his soul eternally, but prefiguring that salva- tion which is now revealed unto us (as his words are) and therefore prophetic of ours ; for what under the Old Testament is called a figure, or a type of things of the gospel, that did God and his Spirit intend by that as a sha- dow, to signify and foretell a substantial reality of those things to come under the New, in the truth and verity of them ; for so in the like case the apostle warrants us to understand: Heb. ix. 8, 9, 11, ' The Holy Ghost signifying thereby,' says he, ver. 8, &c., * they being a figure for the time then present,' as ver. 9, * of good things to come ;' so ver. 11, namely, those good things under the gospel, and the same must hold here in this ; for the apostle as expressly calls it a figure here as therein those mentioned.
If that salvation, then, in the ark was a figure of that gospel salvation now, then Noah's covenant out of special grace (in compare to the world) for that salvation of him and his sons, was in like manner intended for a figure of that covenant for our salvation under the gospel ; yea, and also of that discrimination of grace, which was the foundation of Noah's covenant. And,
Chap. IV.j of election. 49
moreover, this must have been the figure also of a far more transcending grace, to be the foundation of our covenant, proportionably in an excelling glory of it, unto what the greatness of our salvation bears (as being the effect thereof as the cause) in compare with that temporal salvation of Noah's ; and that grace of ours is no other than that ' exceeding riches of grace' our gospel so extols, Eph. 1st and 2d chap. These all are of a like com- mensuration and elevation in this their kind and proportions, as an everlast- ing covenant, an everlasting salvation, proceeding from an everlasting grace and love. And then that which was the sole outward means of Noah's salvation, the ark, must have, it being a figure in this round, a super-excelling outward means answerably thereunto ; as the sole means prefigured, and that is Christ, the mediator of that covenant, in whom alone we are gra- ciously accepted, and who is the author of that eternal salvation. These all hang together (as we say) on one string ; are all connexed, coherent, and inseparable, covenant and salvation : ' Thou hast made a covenant with me,' saith David, ' sure and stedftist, and this is all my salvation,' 2 Sam. xxiii. ; and grace and salvation joined : ' By grace ye are saved,' said twice over, Eph. ii. But you have them all joined, even Christ our ark, and all use and universal suffrage of all the prophets that have been since the world began : Luke i. 69-73, ' And hath raised up an horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David, as he spake by the mouth of his holy pro- phets, which have been since the world began ; that we should be saved from our enemies, and from the hand of all that hate us ; to perform the mercy promised to our fathers, and to remember his holy covenant, the oath which he sware to our father Abraham ;' yea, and I may say, w^iich in the figure he sware to Noah too. And my argument for this is fetched, not from the real inseparable connexing and hanging together of the things themselves ; and that therefore if but one of them be set forth in the type, the other must be, by consequence, and from the conjunction of the things themselves in the verity itself, be supposed also to exist. This argument, though it might hold (I say) to prove the existence of those other things that are so connexed together, yet might prove an argument that would fail us, if we should go about to argue from the type itself ; for then the things argued must be also found to have a lineament of similitude in the typing of it forth in the type itself. Now no one type also is in all things a complete representation of the w^hole substance of all that are connexed with, and appertain to, the thing signified in the t3'pe. And therefore it was, that God hath drawn and painted out the things of the gospel in so many several pictures, that one might foreshadow more specially the resemblance of one thing, another of some other. Yet this I will affirm concerning this type of Noah's, that this one of Noah, as it is instanced in by our apostle Peter, hath the likeness of as many, and specially of all those four we have insisted on (which are the main studs and substantial of our salvation), as perhaps will be found in any other single instance of any type whatever. Our apostle in that place terms our gospel salvation not barely figure, ruro;, but avTirwro;, a like figure (as we translate it) ; a correspondent figure (as others). TU'-rog, a figure, imports a likeness, but avrlrvrov, a like likeness;* that is, an
* " AvtI in composition doth enhance the signification of that which it ig com- pounded with. As Xur^ov signifies a price, avrlXvr^ov imports a full and adequate price, every way answering ; it speaks equivalency, and when it is added to the like- ness, that is, in a fif^ure to the thing figured, or, e contra, in a thing figured unto a figure, it imports somewhat more than what is ordinary and common between things of that nature ; that is, than is between other usual figures and things figured in comparison unto this. And if it be said that the word here, avr/Vurov, is applied
VOL. IX. D
50 , OF ELECTION. [BoOK I.
exceeding likeness, as far as a shadow may be supposed to represent a sub- stance ; at least, that there is a more than usual likeness than is found ordinarily in other figures ; if not a nearer, yet that a larger extensive like- ness shall be found in this, if narrowly observed ; the parallel lines of each run along further, and correspond in very many things alike. Now, there- fore, it being thus spoken in respect of similitude or likeness, we might warrantably go by this rule (which in expounding the signification of types, is a good and sure rule), that when and where w^e find a type of the Old Testament applied by the Holy Ghost, to some good thing that was to come under the New, which is the main substance of that type ; yea, and although it prove to be the thing prefigured in the New be instance*^ in, and pointed at, but in some one particular ; yet this warrants our application of other parts wherein a likeness or resemblance doth appear between the figure in the Old and the thing figured, as we find them scattered up and down, though they be not punctually and precisely applied to each of the particulars, between which and the figure the likeness proves to appear. The Holy Ghost pointing us, though but to one parallel, sanctifies all the rest that appear parallel also. This rule holds in expounding parables, and it must needs be safe in expounding types. So then, if Peter had only instanced but in one particular, that the salvation in the ark, &c., was a type of gospel salvation, sealed up in baptism, we might warrantably have made up those other we have mentioned ; as that this ark was the figure of our Christ, as he is applied to us in baptism ; yea, and of whatever else we find to be in baptism touching our salvation, analogous, or bearing resemblance with those passages about Noah's salvation in the ark. We see that the apostle himself makes an application of the very number of persons that were saved in Noah's ark, to have had a significancy in it of the paucity or fewness of the persons who shall find the like special grace under the gospel, to be efi'ectually partakers of salvation, although multitudes shall profess Chris- tianity, and be outwardly partakers of baptism, as in Noah's days there were many that professed themselves to be the sons of God, that perished in the w^aters. Thus our apostle makes use of that small circumstance of the paucity of the persons ; and because our Lord had foretold in his hear- ing, that there be few that find the narrow gate and way that leads to life, Mat. vii. 14, and few that shall be saved, Luke xiii. 23, and that for this cause that few are chosen, in comparison of the many that are called ; especially of the many that go to hell, therefore Peter observeth the few- ness, but of eight persons that were saved in the ark, puts that into his figure, there, of the ark : ' wherein few,' says he, ' that is, eight souls were saved.' He intends not, though retaining the number of eight, the definite number of persons, that is, of eight only, under the gospel to be saved, the number of his fellows, the eleven apostles, exceeding in his view that number ; but he set down few, as indefinitely signified by that eight, then compara- tively to the whole w^orld.
Now, then, to confirm my argument, that the Holy Ghost by Peter's pen, having pointed us to Noah's salvation, and his sons' with him, as that which was the figure of our like, though far super- transcending salvation now under
unto the thing figured, as denoting our baptism, and gospel salvation to be the truth, the substance figured, I answer, that however it is for the likeness, for the near resemblance that is between them, whether it be attributed to the figure or thing figured, it shews that, in respect of mutual similitude, it is given for this respect to the other. For the figure and things figured are relatives, in respect of their like- ness ; and so it comes all to one, with which of the two ccvt'i is compounded ; for in Heb. ix. you have avrlrv^ra applied to the shadows of heavenly things.
Chap. IV.] of election. 51
the gospel, God hath by that one particular instance (if there were no more) sent us to the story of Noah, and therein unto all that concerned that of his salvation in the ark. And therein we finding also not a promise, but a covenant established with Noah for that salvation ; a grace likewise in the heart of God to have been the foundation of that covenant ; an outward means, an ark, the only means that could have been of that salvation, and this wholly of God's inventing, and therein Noah to have been preserved in midst of waters ; and then viewing over the New Testament (and the Old too, so far as pure gospel is up and down manifested therein), we there do find up and down a covenant made, and established with, and for the said salvation (which salvation Peter expressly guides us unto) of God's elect under the gospel ; and an exceeding abundant grace, the original cause and fountain of that salvation and covenant ; and Christ, whom God hath set forth as the only means, or name under and whereby men should be saved from that wrath, that, if found out of him, will full upon all the world. These things, and all these things, being so expressly set out unto our view, both on the one hand in Genesis, and in this conjunction mentioned, and those other, all of them which are the substantial points of our Christian religion, we finding in our gospel as causes of oar salvation, %a^/; avr/ ;/a^/rog, grace for grace, covenant for covenant, salvation for salvation, and an ark for Christ, how shall w^e otherwise but conclude that these are parallels ? Or in Peter's language, as/r/ruca, 'like figures,' the one of the other, for in likeness and resemblance they correspond one to the other.
But we are not put to it for the proof of all this, to proceed by this way of consequential inferences ; for behold they are all the four of them more than impliedly specified and yoked together, in this one text of the apostle Peter ; for as there is Noah's salvation for our gospel salvation, so his ark typifying forth our Christ, and that as expressly ; for his adding as his last words in the verse, ' saved in baptism by the resurrection of Jesus Christ,' is a manifest reference unto and resemblance of the manner how Noah was saved in the ark from out of the waters, and in being carried through the waters safe to land, it still rising up under them as the storms did fall, by parts or by wholesale, upon it, and endangered the overwhelming of it, till at last it arrived safe, and rested on mount Ararat : an exact figure and semblance of Christ in passing through the waters of death, storms of that wrath and curse due to us, poured forth upon him, by and under which it was not possible for him to be holden, as Peter speaks. Acts ii. ; and so Noah received it as Abraham did that of Isaac's delivery, as a figure of the resurrection of his ark Christ, and of all in him.
And whereas, here, baptism is said to be the figure of the ark, not Christ, I answer, * Know j^e not' (as Ilom. vi. the apostle Paul speaks) 'that as many as were baptized into Christ, were baptized into the likeness of his resurrection ?' as also of his death first, * that like as Christ was raised up,' &c., so we being planted together in and with him, should after baptism walk in newness of life. So then it is Christ, in whose name we are baptized, and into whom we are implanted, which is the significancy of baptism.
Again, 3dly, that the baptism is made the thing figured, doth as evidently prompt us to the covenant of grace, as included in baptism, and so to have been prefigured therewith ; for what more properly doth baptism serve, or was instituted for, as an end containing in it, than to be the seal of the new covenant of grace, even as circumcision was of the old covenant ? Gen. xvii. And baptism also succeeding in the place and ofiice of it, as Col. ii. tells ; yea, and circumcision was then suddenly* the seal of the covenant of grace, ♦ Qu, ' certainly,' or ' similarly '?— Ed.
52 OF ELECTION. [BoOK I.
to the elect that were then, Rom. iv. 11 compared with Gen. xvii. This will perfectly convince us, that therefore baptism now much more is the seal unto us of that covenant, yea, and the broad seal too of the whole covenant ; that is, of all things that are contained in the covenant, and is therefore administered but once for all ; because it at once comprehendeth all that belongs to the covenant for our salvation. For therein not only the grace of Jesus Christ, the mediator of the covenant, and of our implanting into him, and into his death and resurrection, are represented ; but we are baptized * in the name of the Father, as of the Son,' yea, and also ' in the name of the Holy Ghost.' And therefore ' the love of God the Father,' who is the founder of the covenant, ' and the communion of God the Holy Ghost,' the applier of the covenant, are sealed up unto us, even all of these, and whatever the covenant doth comprehend, and all these things at once. And therefore full well might the apostle (as he doth) tell us, that Noah's salva- tion was the figure of ours ; for in the figuring our baptism, it contained, as in a figure, all these things in it ; all that belong to us now, that is, under the gospel ; both which words he with an inculcation urgeth upon our observation, that we might be deeply apprehensive of the abounding sig- nificancy of this though but one type, how much of our gospel truth's substantial salvation were included in it alone, to the end to engage and set our thoughts a- work, to search out the full mystery thereof at large in all the particulars of it.
This as to Noah's covenant afore his entering into the ark, &c.
There was a covenant (I must not call it another covenant, but yet) a second time renewed with enlargement, and withal said to be 'established' with Noah and his sons af er his and their coming out of the ark, and pro- mulged upon his having ofi'ered up that famous sacrifice in Gen. viii. the last verses. And then in Gen. ix. in the 8th verse, * God spake unto Noah, and his sons with him' (so it runs there unto them as well as to him), * saying. And I, behold, I establish my covenant with you, and your seed after you;' and again, ver. 11, 'And I will establish my covenant with you: neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood ; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth.' This, say I, was the figure of the covenant of grace, to the church of the new testament, that were to be the seed of him and his sons (of which hereafter). And unto the words of this second covenant with Noah more especially, it is that the words of my text in Isaiah relate : ver. 9, * For as I have sworn that the waters of Noah should no more go over the earth; so have I sworn that I will not be wroth with thee, nor rebuke thee;' that is, my everlasting wrath shall never ovei-whelm thee ; for of that wrath, that universal flood, that passed over the rest of mankind, children of wrath, was the figure. "Which words, 'not to destroy the earth,' are found in and do belong to that covenant in Gen. ix., as you will clearly gee if you compare the even now fore-cited words out of verse 11 of Gen. ix. And this covenant God styles here in Isaiah 'the covenant of his peace,' ver. 10; for as that covenant in Genesis viii. ix. chapters was upon Noah's offering that sacrifice and peace-offering in it, chap. viii. 20, with which God professed himself so well pleased as it is said, ' he smelled a sweet savour,' ver. 21, so signifying himself at peace, and atoned with Noah and his sons, and propitious unto the new world they were to be the restorers of (for that was the season God took to express this covenant in). Now, this sacrifice was in the figure, as the former sal- vation in the ark had been (as you heard out of Peter) a figure, &c., of a greater sacrifice than this of Noah's, even of Christ's; with which, and for which, and in the intuition of which, God establisheth this covenant, which
Chap. IV.] of election. 53
he termeth ' the covenant of his peace,' both because he [is] pacified by Christ's sacrifice, * who is our peace,' Col. i. 20, 21. As also because he promiseth peace, his peace to those the elect of mankind, to come out of Noah's sons' loins.
And that Christ's sacrifice was figured out by that of Noah's, the apostle hath discoursed; whilst in speaking of Christ's, he useth the very words wherewith God's acceptance of Noah's is expressed by: Eph. v. 2, * And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us, an ofiering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour;' which latter are the very words in Genesis. And besides it is certain that, unless God had smelt so fiir ofl" aforehand this sacrifice of Christ's that was to come, the smoke of beasts sacrificed had but an unsavoury scent in God's nostrils as well as man's ; but the smell and savour thereof (though so long afore) per- fumed this of Noah, and went up into the nostrils of Jehovah.
Bat not only Christ's sacrifice is thus in these speeches pointed at by the apostle, as signified in Noah's (and a covenant was then, and at all times, used to be ratified by a sacrifice, Ps. 1. 5, Heb. ix. 18, 20, and so on); but furthermore, as touching our covenant of grace, it is evident that when God himself did most solemnly proclaim and set forth that covenant as to come in the days of the new testament, that he hath likewise recourse unto like words and passages, taken out and borrowed from that latter covenant of Noah, thereby to express that new covenant of grace by, and confirm the stability of it to us ; which is a consideration of some moment to our subject afore us. There are three chapters in Jeremiah following one another, wherein this covenant of grace is set by, and professedly handled, by way of prophecy, so as nowhere else the like in the Old Testament: first, chap, xxxi. ver. 33, 34, ' But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel,' thus speaking with difierence from the old covenant then more in \iew, and it is his new gospel covenant, the same which, Heb. viii., the apostle citeth, as that *to write the law in their hearts,' &c., as you may read in those verses. Now, to confirm to them this covenant, he adds in that place, ver. 35, ' Thus saith the Lord, which giveth the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night, which divideth the sea when the waves thereof roar ; The Lord of hosts is his name;' where what our translation reads, 'which divideth the sea,' &c., our English Annotation out of the Hebrew renders, which ' stilleth or raaketh quiet the sea,' or 'settleth the sea when the waves thereof roar;' that is, (as they) do keep the sea within compass, and make it rest within its bounds. The tendency of this to my present purpose you will perceive when I have added what in the other chapters we find to follow. Then again in the 32d chapter, God rehearseth more pieces that belong to the same covenant of grace : ver. 38-40, * And they shall be my people, and I will be their God : and I mil give them one heart, and one way, that they may fear me for ever, for the good of them, and of their children after them: and I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from them, to do them good; but I will put my fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from me ;' though promised to begin upon his elect people that were to return from Babel to their own land, as the rest of that chapter shews ; for the covenant of grace had a secret efiicacy to the elect in the old testament as well as in the new. Then, thirdly, in the 33d chapter God receiveth * other particulars belonging to the same covenant, and that as they were more evidently to be performed in the days of the new testament; for to those days do the words of the 15th verse refer (which * Qu. * revieweth ' ?— Ed.
54 OF ELECTION. [BoOK I.
comes in amongst the midst of those promises in that chapter) : ' In those days, and at that time, will I cause the Branch of righteousness to grow up unto David ; and he shall execute judgment and righteousness in the land ;' and verse 16, 'In those days shall Judah be saved, and Jerusalem shall dwell safely : and this is the name wherewith