First, In regard of God, whose great design is to have his people a holy people. This is enough to oblige, yea, to provoke every Christian to promote what God hath so strongly set upon his heart to effect. He deserves to be cashiered that endeavours not to pursue what his general declares to be his design. And he to have his name blotted out of Christ's muster-roll, whose heart stands not on tip-toe ready to march, yea, to run on his designs. It is an honourable epitaph which JPaul sets on the memory of David long be- fore deceased, Acts xiii. 36, that he ' in his own generation served the will of God ;' he made it the business of his life to carry on God's designs. And all gracious hearts, touched with the same loadstone of God's love, stand to the same point. All the private ends of a sincere soul are swallowed up in this, that he may do 'the will of God in his generation.' This he heartily prays for, 'Thy will be done ;' this is his study, to find what is the 'good and ac- ceptable will of God,' which is the very cause why he loves the Bible above all other books of the world beside, because in none but that can he find what is the mind and will of God concerning him. Now I shall endeavour to shew, that this is the great design of God, to have his people holy. It runs like a silver thread through all God's other designs.
Section I.- — First, It appears in his very decrees, which, so far as they are printed and exposed to our view in the Scripture, we may safely look into. What was God driving at in his electing some out of the liunp of mankind ? Was it only their impunity he desired, that, while others were left to swim in torment and misery, they should only be exempted from that infelicity ? No sure ; the apostle will tell us more, Eph. i. 4 : ' He hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy.' Mark, not because he foresaw that they would be of themselves holy, but that they should be holy ; this was that God resolved he would make them to be. As if some curious workman, seeing a forest, growing upon his own ground, of trees, all alike, not one better than another, should mark some above all the rest, and set them apart in his thoughts, as resolving to make some rare pieces of workman- ship of them. Thus God chose some out of the lump of mankind, whom he set apart for this pui-pose, to carve his own image upon them, which con- sists in righteousness and true holiness ; a piece of such rare workmanship, which, when God hath finished, and shall shew it to men and angels, will appear to exceed the fabric of heaven and earth itself.
Section II. — Secondly, It was his design in sending his Son into the world. It coidd be no small occasion that broiight him hither. God wants not servants to go on his ordinary errands. The glorious angels, who behold his face continually, are ready to fly wherever he sends them. But here God had a work to do of such importance, that he would put trust not in his servants, but his Son alone to accomplish. Now what God's design was in this great work will appear by knowing what Christ was, for they were, both Father and Son, agreed, what should be done before he came upon the stage of action. See therefore the very bottom of Christ's heart in this his great undertaking opened, Titus ii. 14 : 'He gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people,- zealous of good works.' Had man kept his primitive righteousness, Christ's pain and pains had been spared. It was man's lost holiness he came to recover. It had not been an entei-prise
THE BREASTPLATE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 29^