Son. Content, Father, let it be so ; charge it all upon me, I am able to discharge it : and though it prove a kind of undoing to me, though it impoverish all my riches, empty all my treasures, (for so indeed it did, 2 Cor. viii. 9. " Though he was rich, yet for our " sakes he became poor1') yet I am content to undertake it. Blush, *' ungrateful believers, O let shame cover your faces ; judge in your- selves now, hath Christ deserved that you should stand with him for trifles, that you should shrink at a few petty difficulties, and complain, this is hard, and that is harsh ? O if you knew the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ in this his wonderful condescension for you, you could not do it.
Use 7. Lastly, How greatly are we all concerned to make it sure to ourselves, that we are of this number which the Father and the Son agreed for before the world was ; that we were comprehended in Christ s engagement and compact with the Father f
Obj. Yea, but you will say, who can know that, there were no witnesses to that agreement.
Sol. Yes, We may know, without ascending into heaven, or prying into unrevealed secrets, that our names were in that cove- nant, if, (1.) You are believers indeed; for all such the Father then gave to Christ, John xvii. 8. " The men that thou gavest me
62 THE FOUNTAIN OF LIFE. SERM. IV.
u (for of them he spake immediately before) they have believed " that thou didst send me." (2.) If you savingly know God in Jesus Christ, such were given him by the Father, John xvii. 6. " I have manifested thy name unto the men thou gavest me." By this they are discriminated from the rest, verse 25. " The world " hath not known thee, but these have known," fyc. (3.) If you are men and women of another world ; John xvii. 16. " They " are not of the world, as I am not of the world." May it be said of you, as of dying men, that you are not men and women for this world, that you are crucified and dead to it, Gal. vi. 14. that you are strangers in it? Heb. xi. 13, 14. (4.) If you keep Christ's word, John xvii. 6. " Thine they were, and thou gavest " them me ; and they have kept thy word." By keeping his word, understand the receiving of the word, in its sanctifying ef- fects and influences into your hearts, and your perseverance in the profession and practice of it to the end, John xvii. 17. " Sanctify " them through thy truth, thy word is truth/1 John xv. 7. " If " ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what " ye will." Blessed and happy is that soul upon which these bles- sed characters appear, which our Lord Jesus hath laid so close to- gether, within the compass of a few verses, in this xvii. chapter of John. These are the persons the Father delivered unto Christ, and he accepted from the Father, in this blessed covenant.
Opens the admirable love of God in giving his own Son
john iii. 16. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, &c.
JL OU have heard of the gracious purpose and design of God, to recover poor sinners to himself by Jesus Christ, and how this de- sign of love was laid and contrived in the covenant of redemption, whereof we last spake.
Now, according to the terms of that covenant, you shall hear from this scripture, how that design was by one degree advanced to- wards its accomplishment, in God's actual giving or parting with his own Son for us : " God so loved the world, that he gave," $c.
The whole precedent context is spent in discovering the nature and necessity of regeneration, and the necessity thereof is in this
THE FOUNTAIN OF LIFE. 63
text urged and inferred from the peculiar respect and eye God had upon believers, in giving Christ for them ; they only reaping all the special and saving benefits and advantages of that gift : " God " so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that u whosoever believeth in him should not perish." In the words are to be considered,
1. The original spring or fountain of our best mercies, the love of God. The love of God is, either benevolent, beneficent, or cora- placential. His benevolent love, is nothing else but his desire and purpose of saving, and doing us good ; so his purpose and grace to Jacob is called love, Rom. ix. 13. " Jacob have I loved ;" but this being before Jacob was, could consist in nothing else but the gra- cious purpose of God towards him. His beneficent love, is his ac- tual doing good to the persons beloved, or his bestowing the ef- fects of his love upon us, according to that purpose. His complex cential love, is nothing else but that delight and satisfaction he finds in beholding the fruits and workings of that grace in us, which he first intended for us, and then actually collated or be- stowed on us. This love of benevolence, is that which I have opened to you, under the former head, God's compact with Christ about us, or his design to save us on the articles and terms therein specified.
The love of beneficence, is that which this scripture speaks of; out of this fountain Christ flowed to us, and both ran into that of complacency; for therefore he both purposed and actually be- stowed Christ on us, that he might everlastingly delight in be- holding the glory and praise of all this reflected on himself, by his redeemed ones. This then is the fountain of our mercies.
2. The mercy flowing out of this fountain, and that is Christ ; The mercy, as he is emphatically called, Luke i. 72. The marrow, kernel, and substance of all other mercies. He gave his* only begotten Son : This was the birth of that love, the like whereunto it never brought forth before, therefore it is expressed with a double emphasis in the text, the one is the particle htm so ; " he so loved the world ;" here is a sic without a sicut : How did he love it? Why, he so loved it; but how much, the tongues of angels cannot declare. And moreover, to enhance the mercy, lie is stiled his only begotten Son : to have given a Son had been wonderful ; but to give his only begotten Son, that is love inex- pressible, unintelligible.
3. The objects of this love, or the persons to whom the eternal
* Hie igitur unigenili nomen. £/x^ar/X0» est ad probandam in nos amor's divini v»?>em>'n- tiam. i. e. This strong epithet, of only begotten, is given in order to heighten tho exceeding greatness of the love of God towards us. Balling, on this place.
6i THE FOUNTAIN OF LIFE. SERM. IV.