234 DOCTKINE OF THE SAINTS' PERSEVERANCE. [CHAP.
the promise of any one. We, indeed, often alter our resolutions, and the promise that is gone out of our mouths, and that perhaps righteously, upon some such change of things as we could not fore- see, nor ought to have supposed, when we entered into our engage- ments. No such thing can be ascribed unto Him who knows all things, with their circumstances, that can possibly come to pass, and hath determined what shall so do, and therefore will not engage in any promise that he knows something which he foresaw would follow after would cause him to alter. It were a ludicrous thing in any son of man to make a solemn promise of any thing to another, if he particularly knew that in an hour some such thing would happen as should enforce him to change and alter that promise which he had so solemnly entered into. And shall we ascribe such an action to Him before whom all things are open and naked? Shall he be thought solemnly to engage himself to do or accomplish any thing which yet not only he will not do, but also at that instant hath those things in his eye and under his consideration for which he will not so do as he promiseth, and determined before that he would not so do ? If this be not unworthy the infinite goodness, wisdom, and faithfulness of God, I know not what can or may be ascribed unto him that is. Yea, the truth and veracity of God in his promises cannot be denied him without denying him his deity, or asserted without the certain accomplishment of what he hath promised.
2. There are sundry things relating to the accomplishment of jiro- mises, as to times, seasons, persons, ways, etc., wherein we have been in the dark, and yet the promises concerning them be fully accomplished. The rejection of the Jews supplies us with an in- stance pregnant with this objection. The apostle tells us that witli many this objection did arise on that account: "If the Jews be re- jected, then the promises of God to them do fail," Rom. iii. 3. He lays down and answers this objection, discovering that fallacy therein by a distinction. " They are not," saith he, " all Israel which are of Israel," cha]). ix. 6 ; as if he had said, " There is a twofold Israel, an Israel after the flesh only, and an Israel after the flesh and Spirit also." Unto these latter were the promises made ; and therefore they who look on the former only think it faileth, whereas indeed it holdeth to its full accomplishment. So he disputes again, chap. xi. 7. I say, then, we may be in the dark as to many circumstances of the fulfilling of promises, when yet they have received a most exact ac- complishment.
3. All the conditional promises of God are exactly true, and shall be most faithfully made good by accomplishment as to that wherein their being as promises doth consist, as far as they are declarative of God's purpose and intendment. This is that which, as I said before, some object, " Many of the promises of God are conditional, and
v.] THE PROMISES OF GOD. 235
their truth must needs depend upon the accomplishment of the con- dition mentioned in them; if that be not fulfilled, then they also must fail, and be of none effect." I say, then, that even the condi- tional promises of God are absolutely made good. The truth of any promise consists in this, that that whereof it speaks answers the affir- mation itself For instance, " He that believeth shall be saved." This promise doth not primarily affirm that any one shall be saved, and notwithstanding it no one might so be; but only this it affirms, that there is an infallible connection between faith and salvation, and therein is the promise most true, whether any one believe or no. Briefly, conditional promises are either simply declarative of the will of God in fixing an exact correspondency between a condition men- tioned and required in them and the thing promised by them, in which case they have an unchangeable and infallible verity in them- selves, as there is in all the promises of the moral law to this day, for he that keeps the commandments shall live; or they are also the discoveries of the good-iuill of God, his intendments and purposes, that whereof they make mention being not the condition whereon his purposes are suspended, but the way and means whereby the thing promised is to be accomplished ; and in the latter acceptation alone are they, in the business in hand, our concernment.
4. That the promises concerning perseverance (as hath been often intimated) are of two sorts; — the first, of the continuance of the favour of God to us, which respects our justification ; the other, of the continuance of our obedience unto God, which respects our sanctification. Let us consider both of them, and begin with the latter: —
(1.) Of them I say, then, they are all absolute, not one of them conditional (so as to be suspended as to their accomplishment on any conditions), nor can be. The truth of God in them hath not its efficiency and accomplishment by establishing the relation that is between one thing and another, or the connection that is between duty and reward, as it is in conditional promises that are purely and merely so; but enforceth the exact fulfilling of the thing promised, and that with respect unto, and for the preservation of, the glory of that excellency of God, " He cannot lie." Let it be considered what that condition or those conditions be, or may be, on which promises of this nature should be suspended, and the truth of the former as- sertion will evidently appear. That God hath promised unto be- lievers that they shall for ever abide with him in the obedience of the covenant unto the end shall afterward be proved by a cloud of witnesses. What, now, is the condition whereon this promise doth depend? " It is," says Mr Goodwin, " that they perform their duty, that they suffer not themselves to be seduced, nor willingly cast off the yoke of Christ." But what doth this amount unto? Is it not thus