[2,] It is conveyed by his promise : 1 John ii. 25, ' And this is the promise which he hath promised us, even eternal life.'
o. The parties qualified : ' Those that are sanctified.' The freedom of this gift doth not exclude qualifications. Holy men have a just title to eternal life ; but they do not deserve it ; none but the holy have it, but there is no intrinsic worth in what we do to deserve it, no such meritorious influence as may alter the fi-eeness of it.
Use 1. With faith in Christ you must join holiness. What will encourage us to live a holy life, if this will not? Through many hindrances by the way from the devil, the world, and the flesh, yet thus we tend to eternal life.
Use 2. Acknowledge the freeness of it. It is most worthy of God, though we are every way unworthy of it ; it is the effect, not of our holiness, but the Lord's grace ; none obtain it loithout holiness, yet not for holiness.
Use 3. To show us how happy the children of God are,
[1.] Happy in the Lord whom they serve— God and Jesus Christ.
VeR. 231 SERMONS UPON' EOMAKS VI. 379
[2.] Happy in the reward of their service — eternal life.
[3.] Happy in the manner of their reward — •^dpca-fia, which may be considered in three instances —
(1.) Their destination thereunto by election : Luke xii. 32, ' Fear not, little flock, it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom/
(2.) In our conversion, regeneration, or effectual vocation, the begin- ing of eternal life.
(3.) In our coronation, when tlie full possession of eternal life is given to us. All these are the free gift of God in Jesus Christ, not procured or merited by any special acts depending on man's free will.
SERMONS
EIGHTH CHAPTER OF THE ROMANS
THE EPISTLE DEDICATOEY.
To the Eight Honourable Philip and Ann, the Lord and Lady
Wharton.
The inserting your honours' names in this publication so little needs an apology, that it had much more needed one not to have done it. Your deeply inward affection to the excellent author ; your most singular and just value for his person, ministry, converse, and memory, as they were too great to be fully expressed, so they are to be wholly concealed and buried in silence. Those acts of your beneficence towards him, wherein love is wont, the sincerer it is, always the more to affect privacy, it were a rude violence to offer at disclosing. But its paths in that so long-continued friendly commerce with him, unto which your honours were pleased to condescend, could not be hid. Any eye might observe the frequency of your kind visits, the familiar freedom you gladly allowed him at your house, as at his own home ; and that when the season invited you to your pleasant country recess, it was also the more pleasant to you if his affairs could allow him there to divert and repose himself with you. In the very common and piercing affliction of his death, which entered into the souls of many, none that were not of his nearer relatives had a greater share than your honours, or in the bitter sorrows caused by it. Your part may be hoped to be as peculiarly great in the advantages and consolations which he that bringeth light out of darkness is pleased to attend and follow it. The decease of any such person (besides that it is otherwise also instructive) is a further enforcing repetition and inculcation of a common but very apt and powerful argument, both for the increase of our faith concerning another world, and the diminution of our love to this. To the former purpose, the argument from this topic cannot but be very convictive unto such whom the forelaid serious apprehension of a Deity hath prepared and made capable of it. Unto others, to whose grosser minds that most important and so easily demonstrable thing is doubtful, one may despair anything should be certain that they see not with their eyes. But who that believes this world hath a wise, holy, righteous, merciful ruler, that disposes all things in it, can take notice that the best of men die from age to age as others do, and allow himself to think no differ- ence shall be made hereafter ? And that God should order the collect- ing of so great a treasure in one man ; not to say of general learning and knowledge, but of true goodness, ■»race, sanctity, love to himself, and to men for his sake (his very image, and the lively resemblances of
384 EPISTI.E DEDICATORT,
his own holy and gracious nature) to be for ever buried in the dust ? Or who woukl not rather conclude (as that blessed apostle) that when the world is passing away and the lusts of it, he that doth the will of God (being thus transformed into it) abideth for ever ? 1 John ii. 17.
And for that other purpose, Who that beholds what was of so great value, forsaking our world and caught up into heaven, would not less love an earthly station, and covet to be consorted with the holy assembly above ? Every such assumption ought to diminish with us the retentive power of this world, and sensibly add to the magnetism and attractiveness of heaven. Doth not God expressly teach and prompt us to despise a world, out of which he plucks such excellent ones, plainly judging it not worthy of them ? The general argument to both these purposes, though it hath not more strength in itself from the death of this or that particular person (when we foreknew that such must die) yet hath more emphasis and efficacy upon us, as the instances are repeated ; especially when we have a present occasion to consider the death of some one of great value thoroughly known to us, as this worthy person was to your honours. For it is not then a cold, faint idea we have of such a one's worth (as that is which is begot by remote and more general report) but have a lively remembrance of it as it appeared in numerous vivid instances : and thence do, with the more spirit and assurance, conclude such excellences too great to be for ever lost, or be an eternal prey to death and the grave ; but therefore that he is certainly ascended and gone into a world more suitable to him : whence also the manifold endearments (which were the effects of former very intimate conversation) recur afresh with us, and carry up our hearts after him thither, making us wish and long to be there too.