11. Excellency. Grace hath a preparatory excellency in it; it prepares and fits for glory. Glory is the highest peg of our fe- licity, it transcends all our thoughts ; glory can have no hyperbole. Now grace tunes and fits the soul for glory, 2 Pet. i. 3. " Who hath called us to glory and virtue." Virtue leads to glory. First you cleanse the vessel, and then pour in wine. God doth first cleanse us by his grace, and then pour in the wine of glory ; the silver link of grace draws the golden link of glory after it : in- deed grace ditfers little from glory ; grace is glory in the bud, and glory is grace in the flower. In short, glory is nothing else but grace commencing and taking its degrees.
12. Excellency. Grace hath an abiding excellency; temporal things are for a season, but grace hath eternity stamped upon it, it is called durable riches, Prov. viii. 18. Other riches take wings and fly from us; grace takes wings and flies with us to heaven. Some tell us of falling away from grace; I grant seeming grace may be lost; a blazing comet will spend and evaporate; na.y, saving grace may fail in the degree, it may suff"er an eclipse, it may lose all its sweet fruit of joy and peace; but still there is sap in the vine, and "the seed of God remains," 1 John iii. 4. Grace is a blossom of eternity; 1 John ii. 27. "The anointing that abides;" colours laid in oil are durable; those hearts which are laid in oil, and have the anointing of God, hold their colours, and endure for ever: grace is compared to a "river of the water of life," John vii. 38. Tliis river can never be dried up, for the Spirit of God is the spring that feeds it. Grace is not like a lease which soon expires; so the Pelagians would make it; to-day a believer, to-morrow an unbeliever; to-day justified, to-morrow unjustified; this would be like a lease soon run out; but God settles grace on the saints
THE BEAUTY OF GRACE.
'Gl
OS an inheritance, and he will see that the entail shall never be cut off. He who hath true grace, can no more fall away than the angels, which are fixed stiirs in their heavenly orbs.
The arguments to prove the perpetuation of grace are :
1. God's election; this I ground upon Rom. viii. 29, 30. "Whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate." Predestination is the grand cause of the saints' preservation; God chooseth as well to salvation as to faith, 2 Thess. ii. 13. What shall make God's election void?
2. The power of God, 1 Pet. i. 5. "We are kept by the power of God through faith imto salvation." I deny not but grace in itself may perish, (our grace is no better coin than Adam's,) but grace in God's keeping cannot; the saints' graces of themselves may break as glasses, but these glasses in the hand of God never break.
3. God's solemn engagement; the Lord hath passed it under hand and seal; he hath given bond for .the saints' perseverance, Jer. xxxii. 40. " I will make an everlastinaf cove- nant with them, that I will not turn away from them, and they shall not depart from me." A believer's charter is confirmed under the broad seal of heaven; and if grace doth not endure to eternity, it is either because God wants power to make good what he hath decreed, or truth to make good what he hath promised; either of which to assert were blasphemy.
Besides all this, Jesus Christ our blessed high priest, who hath the golden plate on his forehead, appears in the court; and as he poured out blood on the cross, so he pours forth piavers in heaven for the saints' perse- verance, Heb. vii. 2.'). "He ever liveth to make intercession for them." And Christ is not only a priest, but a son; therefore likely to prevail; and which puts the matter out of doubt, what Christ prays for as he is man, he hath power to give as he is God, John xvii. 24. "Father, I will:" "Father," there he prays as man; "I will," there he gives as God.
So that grace is an abiding thing; Christ- ians, you may lose your friends, your estates, your lives, but you shall never lose your
grace. Those who hold falling away from grace, woidd make a believer wear Cain's mark, which was a continual shaking and trembling in his flesh; they would spill a Christian's cordial, and break a link of the chain of salvation.
2. Use. Trial: let us try whether our grace be true; there is something looks like grace which is not. Chrysostom saith the devil hath a counterfeit chain to all the graces, and he would deceive us with it. Lapidaries have ways to try their precious stones; let us try our grace by a Scripture touchstone: the painted Christian shall have a painted paradise.
L The truth of grace is seen by a dis- placency and antipathy against sin, Psal. cxix. 104. "I hate every false way:" grace sets itself against complexion sins, Psal. xviii. 23. and against the sins of the times, Rev. ii. 2.