(4.) It stirs up, provokes, and draws out into action, every thing that is free, noble, ingenuous, filial, and of a heavenly descent, in the saints of God. Thus, —
394 DOCTRINE OF THE SAINTS' TERSEVERANCE. [CHAP.
[1.] It strengtliens their faith in God and in Jesus Christ; which is tlie bottom of all acceptable obedience whatsoever, all that which proceedeth from any other root being but a product of labouring in the fire, which in the end will consume both root and branch. That which prevails upon and draws out the soul to faith and believing, I mean as it is peculiar to the gospel and justifying, — that is, as it is in God as a Father, and in the Lord Christ as a Mediator, — is the discovery of the good- will of God to the soul in Christ, and his de- sign to advance his glory thereby. I speak not of the formal cause of faith in general, but of the peculiar motive to faith and believing in the sense before mentioned. So our Saviour ffivinjj the command in general to his disciples, John xiv. 1, " Ye believe in God, believe also in me," in the whole ensuing chapter provokes them to it with gracious discoveries of the good-will of God, — his Father's and his own good-will towards them. And, indeed, propose what other con- siderations ye will, provoke the soul by all the fear and dread of hell, and the most dismal representation of the wrath to come, until it be convinced of this, it will never take one step towards God in Christ. Now, "our adversaries themselves being judges," the doc- trine we have had under consideration abounds above all others with the discoveries of the good-will and kindness of God to poor sinners; yea, the great crime that is laid to the charge of it is that it extends it too far. It doth not only assert that God freely "be- gins the good work in them," but that he will also powerfully "per- fect it to the day of Jesus Christ." It assures the souls of the poor saints of God that he who "looked upon them in their blood, and said unto them Live, when no eye pitied them, who quickened them when they were dead in trespasses and in sins, begetting them of his own will by the word of truth, that they should be a kind of first-fruits to himself, washing them in the blood of his Son," and delivering them from the old tyrant Satan, — that he will not now leave them to themselves and to the counsel of their own hands, to stand or fall according as they shall of themselves and by them- selves be able to withstand opposition and seduction; but that he will keep them in his own hand, giving them such constant supplies of his grace and Spirit as that, in the Tise of means, they shall wait upon him to the end ; and that howsoever or whensoever, by the power of temptation and surprisals of corruptions, they are carried aside from him, he will " heal their backslidings, and love them freely," and though they change every day, yet "he changeth not, and therefore they are not consumed." And hereby, I say, it con- firms and strengthens their faith in God as a Father in Jesus Christ, taking everlasting care of them.
[2.] Of their love there is the same reason. God's love to us is of his free grace; he loves us because so it seems good to him. Our
X.] THE IMPROVEMENT OF THE DOCTMNIC 395
love to liim is purely ingenerated by his love to us, and carried on and increased by farther revelations of his desirableness and excel- lency to our souls: "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us" first. There is no creature in the least guilty of sin that can put forth any acceptable act of love towards God, but what is purely drawn out upon the apprehension of his love and loveli- ness in his grace and mercy. A man, I confess, may love God when he hath no sense of his love to him in particular; but it must all be built upon an apprehension of his love to sinners, though he may come short in the application. It is the "terror of the Lord " that causes us to "persuade" others, but it is the "love of Christ that constraineth us" to live to him. She loved much to whom much was forgiven. Look, then, the more abundant discoveries are made of the loveliness and desirableness [of God] in the riches of his grace, the more effectual is the sole and only motive we have to love him with that filial, chaste, holy love, that he requires.
For the love of God to his saints, our doctrine of their perseve- rance sets it forth with the greatest advantage for the endearment of their souls, to draw out their streams of love to God; especially doth it give it its glory in three things: —
1st. In its f7'eedom. It sets forth the love of God to his saints as that which they have no way in the least deserved, as hath been manifested from Isa. xlviii. 8, 9, 11, liv. 9, 10. As he "first loved them, not because they were better than others, being by nature children of wrath, and lying in their blood, when he said to them Live, quickening them when they were dead in trespasses and sins;" so he doth not continue his love to them, nor purpose so to do, because he foresees that they will so and so walk with him in holi- ness and uprightness (for he foresees no such thing in them, but what he himself purposeth effectually to work upon the account of his loving them), but he resolves to do it merely upon the account of his own grace. He neither resolves to continue his love to them on condition that they be so and so holy, at random, and with \m- certainty of the event, but freely, that they may and shall be so. And this is the glory of love, the most orient pearl in the crown of it, Eph. i. 4. It is not mercenary, nor self- ended, nor deserved ; but, as a spring and fountain, freely vents and pours out itself upon its own account. And what ingenuous, truly noble, heavenly-descended heart can hold out against the power of this love? It is effectually consti'aining to all manner of suitable returns. Let the soul but put itself into the actual contemplation of the love of God, as it lies re- presented in this property of it, every way free, undeserved, the great love of God to a poor worm, a sinner, a nothing, and it cannot but be wrought to a serious admiration of it, and delight in it, and be pained and straitened, until it make some suitable returns