Since God hath ' avouched us to be his peculiar people,' Deut. xxvi. 18, let us avouch him, and since he hath passed his word for us, let us pass om* words for him that we will be his, and stand for him, and to our power advance his cause. Thus David out of an enlarged spirit saith, ' Thou art my God, and I will praise thee ; thou art my God, and I will exalt thee,' Ps. cxix. 28. Whatsoever we engage for God, we are sure to be gainers by. The true Christian is the wisest merchant, and makes the best ad- venture. He may stay long, but is sure of a safe and a rich return. A godly man is most wise for himself. We enter on religion, upon these terms, to part with ourselves, and all, when God shall call for it.
§ II. God much rejoiceth in sinners converted, as monuments of his mercy, and because the remembrance of their former sins whets them on to be more earnest in his service, especially after they have felt the sense of God's love. They even bm-n with a holy desii'e of honouring him, whom before they dishonoured, and stand not upon doing or suffeiiing anything for him , but cheerfully embrace all occasions of expressing obedience . * God hath more work fi'om them than from others ; why then should any be discouraged ?
Neither is it sins after our conversion, that nullify this claim of God to be ours. For this is the grand difference betwixt the two covenants, that now God wiU be merciful to our sins, ' if our hearts by faith be sprinkled with the blood of Christ,' Heb. x. 22. Though one sin was enough to bring condemnation, yet the free gift of grace in Christ is of many offences unto justification. And we have a sui'e ground for this, for the righteous- ness of Christ is God's righteousness, and God will thus glorify it, that it shall stand good to those that by faith apply it against their daily sins, even till at once we cease both to live and sin. For this very end was the Son of God willingly ' made sin,' Gal. iii. 18, that we might be freed from the same. And if all our sins laid upon Christ could not take away God's love from him, shall they take away God's love from us, when by Christ's blood our souls are purged from them ?
O mercy of all mercies, that when we were once his, and gave away our- selves for nothing, and so became neither his nor our own, that then he would vouchsafe to become ours, and make us his by such a way, as all the angels in heaven stand wondering at; even his Son, not only taking our nature and miserable condition, but our sin upon him, that that being done
* Ex ipso dolore suo compuncti, inardcscunt amore Dei. Damna prtcccdentia liicris se(pentibus compensaut. — 6V(?y[or^].
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away, we might through Christ have boldness with God as ours, who is now in heaven appearing there for us, until he bring us home to himself, and presents us to his Father for his for ever !
Think not then only that we are God's and he ours, but from what love and by what glorious means this was brought to pass. What can possibly disable this claim, when God for this end hath founded a covenant of peace so strongly in Christ, that sin itself cannot disannul it ? Christ was there- fore manifest, ' that he might destroy this greatest work of the de^dl,' 1 John iii. 5, 8. Forgiveness of sins now is one chiefpartof our portion in God. It is good therefore not to pore and plod so much upon sin and vileness by it, as to forget that mercy that rejoiceth over judgment. If we once be God's, though we ' di'ink this deadly poison, it shall not hurt us,' Mark xvi. 18. God will make a medicine, an antidote of it ; and for all other evils, the fruit of them is by God's sanctifying the same, the taking away sin out of our natures ; so that lesser evils are sent to take away the greater. If God could not over-rule evils to his own ends, he would never suffer them.
§ III. I have stood the longer upon this, because it is the one thimf need- ful, Luke X. 42 ; the one thing we should desire, that this one God, in whom and from whom is all good, should be ours. All promises of all good in the new covenant, spring first from this, that God ' will be ours, and we shall be his,' Jer. xxxii. 38. \Vhat can we have more ? and what is in the world less that will content us long, or stand us in any stead, especially at that time when all must be taken from us ? Let us put up aU our desires for all things we stand in need of, in this right we have to God in Christ, who hath brought God and us together. He can deny us no- thing, that hath not denied us himself. If he be moved from hence to do us good, that we are his, let us be moved to fetch all good from him, on the same right that he is ours.