[2.] The apostle holds out this very method of the dispensation of grace : Rom. viii. 32, " He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things ?"
First, Christ is given /or us, then to us, then with him (he having the pre-emi- nence in all things) all things ; and this being, also, for him, Phil. i. 29, he is cer- tainly in the order of nature given in the first place. He being made ours, " we receive the atonement by him," Rom. v. 11.
How Christ is said to be received by faith, if he be ours before believing, is easily resolved. Christ is ours before and after believing in a different sense. He who is made ours in an act of God's love, that for him we may have I'aith, may be found and made ours in a promise of reconciliation by believing.
I offer [suggest], also, whether absolution from the guilt of sin and obligation unto death, though not as terminated in the conscience for complete justification, do not precede our actual believing; for what is that love of God which through Christ is effectual to bestow fiiith upon the unbelieving? and how can so great love, in the actual exercise of it, producing the most distinguishing mercies, consist with any such act of God's will as at the same instant should bind that person under the guilt of sin ?
Perhaps, also, this may be the justification of the ungodly, mentioned Rom. iv. 5, God's absolving a sinner in heaven, by accounting Christ unto him, and then be- stowing him upon him, and for his sake enduing him with faith to believe.
That we should be blessed with all spiritual blessings in Christ, and yet Christ not be ours in a peculiar manner before the l)estowing of those blessings on us, is somewhat strange. Yea, he must be our Christ before it is given to us for him to believe ; why else is it not given to all others so to do ? I speak not of the supreme distinguishing cause, Matt. xi. 25, 26, but of the proximate procuring cause, which is the blood of Christ. Neither yet do I hence assert complete justi- fication to be before beheving. Absolution in heaven, and justification, differ as part and whole.
Again ; absolution may be considered either as a pure act of the will of God in itself, or as it is received, believed, apprehended, in and by the soul of the guilty. For absolution in the first sense, it is evident it must precede believing ; as a dis- charge from the effects of anger naturally precedes all collation of any fruits of love, such as is faith.
But if God account Christ unto, and bestow him upon, a sinner before believ- ing, and upon that account absolve him from the obligation unto de^h and hell, which for sin he lies under, what wants this of complete justification?
Much every way.
1. It wants that act of pardoning mercy on the part of God which is to bo terminated and completed in the conscience of the sinner; this lies in the promise.
2. It wants the heart's persuasion concerning the truth and goodness of the promise, and the mercy held out in the promise.
3. It wants the soul's rolling itself upon Christ, and receiving of Christ as the author and finisher of that mercy, an all-suflScient Saviour to them that believe.
So that by faith alone we obtain and receive the forgiveness of sin ; for not-
SUNDRY OBJECTIONS REMOVED. 471
withstanding any antecedent act of God concerning us, in and for Christ, we do not actually receive a complete soul-freeing discharge until we believe.
And thus the Lord Christ hath the pre-eminence in all things. He is " the author and finisher of our faith."
This, then, is that which here we assign unto the Lord : Upon the accomplish- ment of the appointed season for the making out the fruits of the death of Christ ixnto them for whom he died, he loves them freely, says to them, "Live;" gives them his Son, and ^^'ith and for him all things; bringing forth the choicest issue of his being reconciled in the blood of Jesus whilst we are enemies, and totally alienated from him.
It will not be requisite at all, as to our purpose in hand, to make particular in- quiry into the state and condition of them towards whom such are the actings of God, as we before described. What it is that gives them the first real alteration of condition and distinguishment from others I have now no occasion to handle.
So far as advantage hath been offered, I have laboured to distinguish aright those things whose confusion and misapprehension lie at the bottom of very many dangerous mistakes : how the foregoing discourse may be accommodated and improved for the removal of those mistakes, I shall leave to the consideration of others.
CHAPTER Xin.
The removal of sundry objections to some things formerly taught about the death of Christ, upon the principles now delivered.
Having fully declared, not only what was my intendment in the expressions so exceedingly mistaken by Mr Baxter, as hath in part already been made manifest, and will instantly more fully appear, I shall now take a view of what is imposed on me as my judgment, and the opposition made thereunto, so far as may be need- ful for the clearing of the one and removing of the other, at least m what they may really concern what I did deliver in the treatise impugned.