VI.] PARTICULAR PROMISES ILLUSTRATED. 273
tliem, but mixing them with itself, and there will be undoubtedly found the improvement before mentioned for the carrying on of god- liness and gospel obedience in the hearts of believers. But this I shall have occasion to speak to more afterward.
Hos. ii. 19, 20, is pertinent also to the same purpose: "I will be- troth thee unto me for ever; yea, I will betroth thee unto me in righteousness, and in judgment, and in loving-kindness, and in mercies. I will even betroth thee unto me in faithfulness : and thou shalt know the Lord." The words themselves as they lie in the text do directly confirm our assertion. The relation whereinto God here expresseth that he will and doth take his people is one of the most near and eminent which he affordeth to them, a conjugal relation, — he is and will be their husband ; which is as high an ex- pression of the covenant betwixt God and his saints as any that is or can be used. Of all covenants that are between sundry persons, that which is between man and wife is the strongest and most inviolable. So is this covenant expressed Isa. liv. 5, "Thy Maker is thine hus- band ; the Lord of hosts is his name." And this relation he afifirmeth shall continue for ever, upon the account of those properties of his which are ene^ao-ed in this his gracious undertakinof to take them to himself therein. He doth it "in righteousness, and in judgment, and in loving-kindness, and in mercies, and in faithfulness." So that if there be not something in the context or words adjoining that shall with a high hand turn us aside from the first, immediate, open, and full sense of these words, the case is undoubtedly concluded in them. This, then, we shall consider, and therefore must look a little back into the general design of the whole chapter, for the evasion of " qualifications " will not here serve ; God betrothed persons, not qua- lifications.
There are two parts of the chapter: — L That from the beginning to verse 14 containeth a most fearful and dreadful commination and threatening of the judgments of the Lord against the whole church and commonwealth of the Jews, for their apostasy, idolatry, and re- bellion against him. It is not an affiiction or a trial, or some lesser desolation, that God here threateneth them withal, but utter de- struction and rejection as to all church and political state. He will leave them neither substance nor ornament, state nor worship, de- scribing the condition which came upon them at their rejection of the Lord Jesus Christ. Left they must be as in the day that God first looked on them, — poor, naked, in their blood, unpitied, formed neither into church-state nor commonwealth. "So will I make them," saith the Lord. And this dispensation of God the prophet expresseth with great dread and terror to the end of verse 13.
2, The second part of the chapter is taken up and spent, from verse 14 to the end, in heavenly and gracious promises of the con-
YOL. XL 18
274 DOCTRINE OF THE SAINTS' PERSEVERANCE. [CHAP.
version of the true Israelites, the seed according to the promise of God, of the renovation of the covenant with them, and blessing them ■with all spiritual blessings in Jesus Christ unto the end. And hereof there are these four parts: —
(1.) A heavenly promise of their conversion by the gospel; which he demonstratetli and setteth out by comparing the spiritual deliv- erance therein to the deliverance which they had by a high hand from Egypt, verses 14, 15.
(2.) The delivery of them so converted from idolatry, false worship, and all those ways whereby God was provoked to cast off their fore- fathers, attended by their obedience in close walking with God for ever, verses 16, 17.
(3.) The quietness and ijeace which they shall enjoy, being called and purged from their sins before mentioned ; which the Lord ex- pressetli by his making a covenant with the whole creation in their behalf, verse IS,
(4.) A discovery of the fountain of the mercies before mentioned, with those also which afterward are insisted on, to wit, the everlast- ing covenant of grace, through which God will with all faithfulness and mercy take them to himself, verses 19, 20, to the end.
Before we farther open these particulars, some objections must be removed that are laid to pi event the inference intended from these words, ghap. xi. sect. 8, p. 229. It is objected, —
1. "The promise of the betrothing here specified is made unto the entire body and nation of the Jews, as well unbelievers as be- lievers, as appeareth by the carriage of the chapter throughout."
Ans. The " carriage of the chapter throughout" is a weak proof of this assertion, and no doubt fixed on for want of particular in- stances to give any light unto it. Neither doth the " carriage of the chapter throughout" intimate any such thing in the least, but expressly manifesteth the contrary. It is universal desolation and utter rejection that is assigned as the portion of unbelievers as such all along this chapter. This promise is made to them whom " God allureth into the wilderness, and there speaketh comfortably to them;" which, what it doth import, shall be afterward considered. Yea, and which is more, the words of verse 23, which run on in the same tenor with the promises particularly insisted on, and beyond all exception are spoken to and of the same persons, are applied by the apostle Paul, not to the whole nation of the Jews, idolaters and unbelievers, but to them that were brought in unto the Lord Christ, and obtained the righteousness of faith, Avhen the rest were hardened, Rom. ix. 26. From verse 24 to verse 2.9, the apostle, by sundry in- stances from the scriptures of the Old Testament, manifesteth that it was a remnant of Israel " according to the election of grace" to whom the promise was made: "To us, whom God hath called, not to the