(3.) Those for whom Christ doth work this deliverance are not as to a simulty of time actually delivered ; they neither enjoy nor are acquainted with any such deliverance until the appointed time be come, but have actual right thereimto, to possess it in due season.
This being the sum and plain intendment of that place, I suppose there will not need any operose endeavour to remove the objections that are laid against it. And therefore, to that before expressed, I say, Christ hath actually and ipso facto pro- cured our deliverance. Hence we have actual right unto it, but not actual posses- sion of it ; and where the difficulty of this should rest I know not. Men may, as oft as they please, create contradictions in their own minds, and entangle them- selves with doubts in the knots which themselves have tied. But, —
2. " Knowledge," saith he, " and posse-sion of a deliverance, are far different things."
(1.) He maketh them so, who plainly intimates that the reason why it is not apprehended is because it is not possessed, and always speaks disjunctively of them.
(2.) Besides, this proposition of the distance of these two is not universally true, as I could easily demonstrate.
3. " Our knowledge, therefore," he adds, " doth not give us possession, so that the similitude fails: for it is the creditor's knowledge and satisfaction that are requi- site to deliverance ; and our creditor was not in a far and strange country, but knew immediately, and could either have made us quickly know, or turned us free before we had knowTi the cause."
(1.) Whether or no, or how far, knowledge gives us possession, I shall not now dispute; only, considering in what sense knowledge is here used, and often in the Scripture, the deliverance also spoken of being such as no small part thereof con- sists in this knowledge, and without it (in the seed at least) is not, I cannot but say that such kind of affirmations in things of this weight are very slender proofs. Yea, farther, whereas the enjoyment of this deliverance is either as to the being of it or to the comfort of it, the latter is given us by this knowledge merely ; the former consists therein mainly, John xvii. 3.
(2.) Similitudes are allowed their grains to make them current; but yet, as our
476 OF THE DEATH OF CHRIST.
creditor's knowledge and satisfaction are required to our deliverance, so not that only but ours also, as to our actual enjojTnent of it. It is true, he could have made us quickly know it; but who hath been his counsellor? This is left to his sovereign and free disposal, our deliverance being purchased, to be made out in the season thereby appointed. But that God could have made us free before we knew the cause, supposing his constitution of the way of salvation, revealed in the blood of Jesus, which lies at the bottom of all these disputes, is a most anti-evangelical assertion, and diametrically opposed to the whole way of God's dealing with sin- ners. But he adds, —
4. " Neither can it be understood how God can so long deny us the possession of heaven, if we had such actual, absolute right so long ago; which seems to me to express a, jus ad rem and in re."
(1.) I love not to inquire into the reason of God's actings, which are '"after the counsel of his own will;" and yet think it not very difficult to conceive how a son is for a season kept as " a servant, though he be lord of all."
(2. ) He speaks as though this deliverance lay all in heaven, whereas it is here 'fully enjoyed on the earth, though not in all the degrees of the fruits thereof.
(3.) If the right whereof we speak were jus in re, I see not well, indeed, how God could keep us from the possession of it, as Mr Baxter says ; a man cannot be kept long from what he hath. But, saith he, —
5. " If he mean a right to future possession, I do not see how right and posses- sion should stand at so many years' distance. To have right to God's favour and possession of that favour seem to me of nearer kin, except he should think that possession of favour is nothing but the knowledge or feeling of it, and that faith justifieth only in foro conscientice. But I will not censure so hardly until I know."
(1.) If at so many years' distance it may not be allowed, he had done well to express at how many it might. For my part, placing this right vxpon the purchase of Christ, as before, and possession in the actual enjoyment of the fruits of that purchase, then referring the distance between them to the good pleasure of God, who had granted and established that right to an enjoyment sub termino, I see no difficulty, no perplexity in this at all.
(2.) That no small portion of favour consists in a 'sense and knowledge of the kindness of God, in its actings terminated upon the conscience, I must believe, whatever Mr Baxter l)e pleased to censure. It is far more facile to give the hardest censures than to answer the easiest arguments.