262 DOCTRINE OF THE SAINTS' PERSEVERANCE. [CHAP.
it would be impossible they should once imagine that of itself it is apt to draw the spirits of men into a neglect and contempt of God.
(2.) As the e7id of God, intended in giving that assurance, to the effecting whereof it is exceedingly operative and effectual. So you have it, Luke i. 74, 75. This is the intendment of God in confirm- ing his oath and promise unto us, "That he may grant unto us, that we being delivered out of the hand of our enemies might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness all the days of our lives."
Now, though these forementioned, with many other texts of Scrip- ture, are plain, evident, and full to the business we have in hand, yet the adversaries of this tnith having their hands so full with them that are commonly urged that they cannot attend unto them, I shall not need to spend time in their vindication from exceptions which none that I know have as yet brought in against them (though, upon their principles, they might possibly be invented), but shall leave them to be mixed with faith, according as God by his Spirit shall set them home upon the souls of them who do consider them.
The whole of Ps. cxxv. might, in the next place, be brought in to give testimony to the truth in hand. I shall only take a proof from the first two verses of it : " They that trust in the Lord shall be as mount Zion, which cannot be removed, but abideth for ever. As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the Lord is round about his people from henceforth even for ever." Whereunto answereth that of Ps. xxxvii. 28, " The Lord loveth judgment, and forsaketh not his saints; they are preserved for ever;" as also Deut. xxxiii. 3, " Yea, he loveth his people; all his saints are in thy hand." In the verses named, I shall a little fix upon two things conducing to our purpose, which are evidently contained in them: —
1. A promise of God's everlasting presence with his saints, be- lievers, them that trust in him, and their steadfastness thereupon : " They shall be as mount Zion, which cannot be removed ; " and that because " the Lord is round about them," and that '•' for ever."
2. An allusive comparison of both these, both their stability and God's presence with them, given for the encouragement of weak be- lievers, with special regard to the days wherein the promise was first made, which actually also belongs to them on whom the ends of the world are fallen. The psalmist bids them, as it were, lift up their eyes, and look upon mount Zion and the hills that were round about Jerusalem, and tells them that God will as certainly and assuredly continue with them and give them establishment as those hills and mountains which they beheld round about abide in their places; so that it shall be as impossible for all the powers of hell to remove them out of the favour of God as for a man to pluck up mount Zion by the roots, or to overturn the foundations of the mountains that stand round about Jerusalem. It is true, the Holy Ghost hath special
VI.] PARTICULAR PROMISES ILLUSTRATED 263
regard to the oppositions and temptations that they were to undergo from men, but bears also an equal regard to all other means of se^oa- rating them from their God. It would be a matter of small consola- tion unto them that men should not prevail over them for ever, if in the meantime there be other more close and powerful adversaries, who may cast them down with a perpetual destruction. Some few considerations of the intendment of the place will serve for the en- forcing of our argiiment from this portion of Scripture : —
1. That which is here promised the saints is a perpetual preserva- tion of them in that condition wherein they are ; both on the part of God, "he is round about them from henceforth even for ever;" and on their parts, " they shall not be removed," — that is, from the state and condition of acceptation with him wherein they are sup- posed to be, — but abide for ever, and continue therein immovable unto the end. It is, I say, a plain promise of their continuance in that condition wherein they are, with their safety from thence, and not a promise of some other good thing provided that they continue in that condition. Their being compared to mountains and their stability, which consists in their being and continuing so, will admit no other sense. As mount Zion abides in its condition, so shall they; and as the mountains about Jerusalem continue, so doth the Lord his presence unto them.
2. That expression which is used, verse 2, is weighty and full to this purpose, " The Lord is round about his people from henceforth even for ever." What can be spoken more fully, more pathetically? Can any expression of men so set forth the truth which we have in hand? The Lord is round about them, not to save them from this or that incursion, but from all; not from one or two evils, but from every one whereby they are or may be assaulted. He is with them, and round about them on every side, that no evil shall come nigh them. It is a most full expression of universal preservation, or of God s keeping his saints in his love and favour, upon all accounts whatso- ever; and that not for a season only, but it is "henceforth," from his giving this promise unto their souls in particular, and their receiving of it in all generations, according to their appointed times, " even for ever."