First, The glory of God, they say, is exceedingly exalted by it; his good-will and kindness towards men abundantly manifested in this enlargement of its ex- tent ; and his free grace, by others restrained, set out with a powerful endearment. This they say ; which is, in effect, " All things will be well when God is contented with that portion of glory which is of our assigning." The princes of the earth account it their greatest wisdom to varnish over their favours, and to set out with a full mouth what they have done with half a hand ; but will it be acceptable to lie for God, by extending his bounty beyond the marks and eternal bounds fixed to it in his word ? Change first a hair of your own heads, or add a cubit to your own statures, before you come in with an addition of glory, not owned by him. to the Almighty. But so, for the most part, is it with corrupted nature in all such mysterious things; discovering the baseness and vileness thereof If God be ap- prehended to l)e as large in grace as that is in offence (I mean in re.'^pect of par- ticular offenilcrs, for in rcsjiect of his he is larger), though it be free, and he hath proclaimed to all that he may do what he will with his own, giving no account of his matters, all shall l)e well, — he is gracious, merciful, etc ; but if once the Scripture is conceived to hold out his sovereignty and free distinguishing grace, suited in its dispensation to iiis own purpose according to election, he is " immanis, truculentus, diabolo, Tiberio tetrior (horresco referens)." The learned know well where to find this language, and I will not be instrumental to propagate their blasphemies to others. " Si dcus homini non placuerit, deus non erit," said Ter-
1 Pcrs. Sat. i. 2.
TO THE READER, ' 153
tullian of the heathen deities; and shall it be so with us? God forbid ! This pi-ide is inbred;' it is a part of our corrujjtion to defend it. If we maintain, then, the glory of God, let us speak in his own language, or be for ever silent. That is glorious in him which he ascribes unto himself. Our inventions, though never so splendid in our own eyes, are unto him an abomination, a striving to pvill him down from his eternal excellency, to make him altogether like unto us. God Avould never allow that the will of the creature should be the measure of his honour. The obedience of paradise was to have been regulated. God's prescrip- tion hath been the bottom of his acceptation of any duty ever since he had a creature to worship him. The very heathen knew that that service alone was wel- come to God which himself reqviired, and that glory owned which himself had revealed that he would appear glorious in it. Hence, as Epimenides ^ advised the Athenians in a time of danger to sacrifice 0£<S -rpna-wovn, "to him to whom it was meet and due," — which gave occasion to the altar which Paul saw bearing the super- scription of 'A.y\iairrM &i^, " To the unknown God," — so Socrates tells us in Plato,^ that every god will be worshipped 'tu (/.dxiaTo. ulrM dfiiTx,ovTt rpovM, "in that way which pleaseth best his own mind;" and in Christianity, Hierome sets it down for a rule, that " honos prseter mandatum est dedecus," God is dishonoured by that honour which is ascribed to him beyond his own prescription : and one wittily on the second commandment, " Non imago, non simulachrum damnatur, sed non facies tibi." Assigning to God any thing by him not assumed is a making to our- selves, a deifying of our own imaginations. Let all men, then, cease squaring the glory of God by their own corrupted principles and more corrupted persuasions. The word alone is to be arbitrator in the things of God ; which also I hope will \appear, by the following treatise, to hold out nothing in the matter in hand con- bi-ary to those natural notions of God and his goodness Avhich in the sad ruins of inaocency have been retained. On these grounds we affirm, that all that glory of GoO which is pretended to be asserted by the general ransom, however it may seem glorious to purblind nature, is indeed a sinful flourish, for the obscuring of that glorjf wherein God is delighted.
Secoiidly, It is strongly pretended that the worth and value of the satisfac- tion of Christ, by the opposite opinion limited to a few, are exceedingly magnified in this' extvjnding of them to all ; vs'hen, besides what Avas said before unto human extending of the things of God beyond the bounds by himself fixed unto them, the merit of the death of Christ, consisting in its own internal worth and sufficiency, with that obligation which, by his obedience unto death, was put upon the justice of God for its application unto them for whom he died, is quite enervated and overthrown by it, made of no account, and such as never produced of itself ab- solutely the least good to any particular soul : which is so fidly manifested in the following treatise, as I cannot but desire the reader's sincere consideration of it, it being a matter of no small importance.