Thirdly, Who is this true believer that will be more than a con- queror? The victory is sometimes ascribed to faith, 1 John v. 4, 5 ; sometimes to love : Rom. viii. 35, ' What shall separate us from the love of Christ ? ' Love is not only taken passively, for the love where- with Christ loveth us, but actively, for the love wherewith we love Christ. I can exclude neither, for the success is here ascribed in the text to Christ's love to us ; but there, our love to Christ must be under- stood also, for ' what shall separate us from the love of God ? ' Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword ? Tribulation is not wont to draw God from loving us, but to draw us from loving of God. And in the text, it is said, ' We are conquerors,' not God is a conqueror. It is we are assaulted, not Christ, and it is our love which the temptation striketh at. Both
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must be included. Christ hath hold of a believer iu the arms of his love, and a believer hath hold of Christ, 1 John iv. 14. Well then, it is faith ; but ' faith worketh by love,' Gal. v. 6. Christ is rather held by the heart than the hand only. Go to them that make a religion of their opinions, and you will find no such effect. If they have a faith, it is that that never went deeper than their brains and their fancies ; but where Christ dwelleth in the heart by faith, there he remaiuetli con- stantly, Eph. iii. 17, and fiitteth not thence ; he resideth as in hi.s strong citadel and castle. A christian, because be loveth Christ, he will not leave him ; as a sinner will not leave his lusts and worldly profits because he loveth them. Faith reports the great love of Christ, what he hath done to pacify God, to bring home the sinner ; what in a way of satisfaction, what in a way of conversion ; therefore a christian is loth to leave Christ, who hath so loved his soul, and whom his soul so loveth. A bare belief is only in the head, which is but the entrance into the inwards of the soul ; it is the heart is Christ's castle and citadel ; a superficial bare assent may let him go, but it is faith work- ing by love that produceth this close adherence.
Fourthly, I come now, in the fourth place, to the reasons why more than conquerors.
1. On God's part.
2. On the believer's part.
1. On God's part. The keeping of the saints is partly a matter of power, and partly a matter of care. Now, if God take the charge of us, surely we must be kept ; for God is invincible in his power, and unchangeable in the purposes of his love ; or, which is all one, Christ is mighty to save, and ready to save : Isa. Ixiii. 1, ' I that speak in righteousness am mighty to save.'
[1.] He is in God's hand, and Christ's hand : John x. 28, 29, ' I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any pluck them out of my hand : my Father is greater than all, and none is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand.' They may have many shakings and tossings, as to their spiritual condition, yet their final perseverance, till they come to eternal life, is certain. Surely God and Christ are invincibles ; no other creature hath any power but what God gave them at first, and consequently may be taken away at God's pleasure, and is limited by him in the meantime. Therefore, though in themselves they might fail, and be left for ever, yet his power and everlasting arm is able to sustain them ; therefore nothing is to be feared if God desert us not ; they are in his hand, that is, under his powerful protection. You will say. While they keep close to God, nothing shall ruin them ; but God hath undertaken that : Jer. xxxii. 40, ' He will put his fear into their hearts, that they shall never depart from him.' The whole business of our salvation, and all the conditions of it, are in God's hand. God, seeing how man had wasted that stock of grace which he had put into his hands before the fall, resolveth to provide for him in time to come, to keep his heart and will in his own hand, and to guide it by his Spirit, that he might not hazard his estate any more, or be cheated of it by Satan. In man's jestitution after the fall, his estate is impaired with respect to the per- fection of it in this present life. He is bruised in his heel with divers
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temptations and slips into sin ; but it is much better in regard of the firmness of it. Man having power in his own hands, lost it quickly, therefore now his whole salvation is in God's hands ; both end and way and means, and all that conduceth thereunto : Col. iii. 3, ' Our life is hid with Christ in God ; ' not only in point of obscurity, but security ; not left any longer to our own keeping ; it is in safe hands.