► Use 2. To press you to glorify grace. This is the glory God expects from you : Eph. i. 6, ' To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made you accepted in the beloved.' If an artificer show you a curious piece of workmanship, he expects to be praised for his skill. A wrestler that hath foiled his adversary expects to be praised for his strength, not for his beauty: that is not a proper praise. A king in his royal gifts expects to be praised for his magnificence. So suitably the Lord who doth all things freely, and according to the motion of his own will, expects to be praised for his grace ; therefore you should be always echoing out, ' Grace ! grace ! ' Zech. iv. 7, and admiring the dispensations of God's love. It is a sure sign a man hath received no
48 SERMONS UPON TITUS 11. 11-14. [SeR. I.
benefit by grace if his lieart be not stirred up to praise grace. Cer- tainly he that is a partaker of it must needs be most affected with it. Let us see a Uttle what cause we have to praise God, above the angels, and above other men.
1. Above the angels. I do not mean the bad angels, with whom God entered not into treaty , he dealeth with them in justice, not in grace; but even the good angels. In some respects we have more cause to bless God than even the good angels. Thankfulness and gratitude looks to the freeness and graciousuess of the gift rather than the greatness of it ; it looks not to the benefit so much as the good- will of the giver. It is true God hath been exceeding good and bountiful to the angels, in creating them out of nothing, that they are the courtiers of heaven ; but mark how good and gracious he is to us above them. The angels never offended him, but he is bountiful and gracious to us, notwithstanding the demerits of our sin ; his wronged justice interposed and put in a bar, yet grace breaks out, and is manifested to us un- worthy creatures. There was nothing that hindered God from doing good to the angels. A holy God hath a blessed, righteous, holy crea- ture ; but justice must be satisfied as to us ; we are a generation of sinful men, the wretched children of apostatising Adam. We had forsaken God and cast him off, which the angels never did, that had a long experience of God's goodness and bounty. The very angels wonder at the grace showed to us, especially at that by which justice is satisfied : 1 Peter i. 12, ' Which tinners the anfrels desire to look into.'
2. Above other men. There is a common and inferior sort of grace, which is made known to all the world. The whole earth is full of his goodness, but this grace that bringeth salvation, that is peculiar to the elect, to a few poor base creatures in themselves, a little handful whom God hath chosen out of the world . John xiv. 22, ' How is it that thou wouldst manifest thyself unto us, and not unto the world ? ' Free grace doth pick and choose : and how ? It chooseth out things that are in themselves of no account. Look, as when God chose a sac- rifice for himself, the lion was not oflered, but the lamb and the dove; so God hath chosen not those that are accounted gods, but a few des- picable creatures. Free grace many times chooseth the worst, that all the glory might be of God. If a man might clioose trees for building, he would not choose crooked ones, but those that are straight and fittest for his use and purpose. But when God comes to look among the sons of men, many times he chooseth the most crabbed pieces, and calls them with a holy calling, according to the purpose of his grace. It is a wonder sometimes to see how grace makes the difference between two persons involved in the same guilt. Justice can make no separation ; when men are in a like case, they must look for the same judgment ; but grace makes a great separation. Many of God's elect are as deep in sin as these now in hell, yet God makes a difference. Both the good and bad thief were involved in the same condemnation, yet one is taken into paradise, and the other went unto his own place. Thus praise and glorify grace.
Hath appeared unto all men. — The word eire^dvrj, appeared, signifies it is broken out of a sudden, liJ^e a star, or like a light that was not
VeR. 11.] SERMONS UPON TITUS II. 11-14. 49
seen before ; and so it refers to the late manifestation of the gospel in the apostle's days. Now on a sudden it broke out. So Luke i. 78, 79, ' Through the tender mercy of our God, whereby the day-spring from on high bath visited us, to give light to them that sit in darkness, and in the shadow of death.' It is meant of the breaking out of the gospel, as the day doth after a dark night ; so here the word cTrecpdvT) implieth the same.