III.] THE IMMUTABILITY OF THE DIVINE PURPOSES. 149
complishment of his purposes, and you will quickly see that there can be no possible intervenience, upon the account whereof the Lord should not engage his almighty power for their accomplishment. "He is of one mind, and who can turn him?" " He will work, and who shall let it?"
Sixthly, By demonstrating the unreasonableness, folly, and im- possibility, of suspending the acts and purposes of the will of God upon any actings of the creatures soever ; seeing it cannot be done without subjecting eternity to time, the Eirst Cause to the second, the Creator to the creature, the Lord to the servant, disturbing the whole order of beings and operations in the world.
Seventhly, By the removal of all possible or imaginary causes of alteration and change, which will all be resolved into impotency in one kind or other; every alteration being confessedly an imperfec- tion, it cannot follow but from want and weakness. Upon the issue of which discourse, if it might be pursued, these corollaries would ensue : —
First, Conditional promises and threatenings are not declarative of God's purposes concerning persons, but of his moral approbation or rejection of things.
Secondly, There is a wide difference between the change of what is conditionally pronounced as to the things themselves and the change of what is determinately willed, the certainty of whose event is pro- portioned to the immutable acts of the will of God itself
Thirdly, That no purpose of God is conditional, though the things themselves, concerning which his purposes are, are oftentimes condi- tionals one of another.
Fourthly, That conditional purposes concerning perseverance are either impossible, implying contradictions, or ludicrous, even to an unfitness for a stage. But of these and such like, as they occasion- ally fall in, in the ensuing discourse.
II. This foundation being laid, I come to what was secondly pro- posed,— namely, to manifest, by an induction of particular in- stances, the engagement of these absolute and immutable purposes of God as to the preservation of the saints in his favour to the end; and whatsoever is by Mr Goodwin excepted as to the former doc- trine of the decrees and purposes of God, in that part of his treatise which falls under our consideration, shall, in the vindication of the respective places of Scripture to be insisted on, be discussed.
The first particular instance that I shall propose is that eminent place of the apostle, Rom. viii. 28, where you have the truth in hand meted out \into us, full measure, shaken together, and running over. It doth not hang by the side of his discourse, nor is left to be gathered and concluded from other principles and assertions couched therein, but is the main of the apostolical drift and design, it being
150 DOCTRINE OF THE SAINTS* PERSEVERANCE. [cnAP.
proposed by him to make good, upon unquestionable grounds, the assurance he gives believers that " all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose ;" the reason whereof he farther adds in the following words : "For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be con- formed to the image of his Son, that he might be the first-born among many brethren. Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified." What the good aimed at is, for which all things shall work together, and wherein it doth consist;, he manifests in the conclusion of the argument produced to prove his first assertion: Verses 35-39, "Who shall separate us from the love of Chiist? shall tribulation," etc. The good of believers, of them that love God, consists in the enjoyment of Christ and his love. Saith, then, the apostle, " God will so certainly order all things that they shall be preserved in that enjoyment of it where- unto in this life they are already admitted, and borne out through all oppositions to that perfect fruition thereof which they aim at; and this is so unquestionable, that the very things which seem to lie in the way of such an attainment and event shall work together, through the wisdom and love of God, to that end." To make good this consolation, the apostle lays down two grounds or principles from whence the truth of it doth undeniably follow, the one taken from the description of the persons concerning whom he makes it, and the other from the acts of God's grace, and their respective concatenation in reference to those persons.
The persons, he tells you, are those who are "called according to God's purpose." That their calling here mentioned is the effectual call of God, which is answered by faith and obedience, because it consists in the bestowing of them on the persons so called, taking away the heart of stone and giving a heart of flesh, is not only mani- fest from that place which afterward [it] receives in the golden chain of divine graces, between predestination and justification, whereby the one hath infallible influences into the other, but also from that pre- vious description which is given of the same persons, namely, that they love God, which certainly is an issue and fruit of effectual call- ing, as shall afterward be farther argued ; for to that issue are things driven in this controversy, that proofs thereof are become needful.