" First, That the exhortations whereby the saints are exhorted to perseverance are no means by which the promises of perseverance made, as our adversaries suppose, to them are accomplished or effected, is thus clearly evinced : Whatsoever is a means for the bring- ing of any thing to pass ought not to contain any thing in it repug- nant or contrary unto that which is intended to be brought to pass by it, for means ought to be subordinate to their ends, not repugnant; but the Scripture exhortations unto perseverance contain that which is repugnant to the promises of perseverance, if supposed such as our adversaries suppose them to be: therefore they can by no means effect those promises. The minor is evident by the light of this con- sideration. Such exhortations as these to the saints, ' Take heed lest at any time there be an evil heart of unbelief in you, lest you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin, lest you fall from grace, lest you receive the grace of God in vain, lest you fall from your own steadfastness,' in their native and proper tendency import a danger, and serve to raise a fear in men lest the danger imported should come upon them ; whereas such promises as these, made unto the same persons, and that not conditionally, as is supposed, that there shall never be a heart of unbelief in them, that they shall never be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin, that they shall never fall away from the grace of God, exclude all danger or possibility of
438 DOCTRINE OF THE SAlNTS' PERSEVERANCE. [CHAP.
falling away, and tend directly to prevent or extinguish all fear in men of any such danger: therefore, such exhortations are in their nature and genuine import contrary to such promises in theirs, and consequently can be no means of bringing them to pass/'
Ans. 1. Exhortations are not so properly the means whereby the promises are accomplished as the means whereby the things men- tioned in the promises are wrought, God by and through them stm'ing up those graces which he promises to work, continue, and to increase in his saints.
2. ''Exhortations divine" must be so apprehended as to be sub- servient to an end, in respect of God foreknown and determined. It is true, we exhort men (or may) to those things of whose event we are wholly uncertain ; but to God this cannot be ascribed. He doth foreknow and hath fore-determined the end and issue that every one of his exhortations shall have ; and therefore such a nature, and no other, is to be ascribed to them as is consistent with and subservient to a determined end.
3. To the confirmation of his minor proposition the answer is easy, from the consideration, first, of the end of the exhortations insisted on unto perseverance, and then of the promises of perseverance them- selves, which are no way inconsistent therewith. For the first, I say, those exhortations, " Take heed lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief," and the like, are not given to ingenerate a fear of falling away (which is a thing in itself evil and opposite unto that stead- fastness of faith and full assurance which we should press unto, so far is it from any act of faithful obedience that God should aim to work in the hearts of his, and apply means thereunto), but only to beget a holy care and diligence in them to whom they are made or given for the using of the means appointed of God for the avoiding of the evil threatened to follow upon a neglect of them ; which directly fjxlls in and sweetly conspires with the end and use of the promises of per- severance by us urged and insisted upon. Nothing is imported b}'' them but only the connection that is between the things mentioned in them, as unbelief and rejection from God. This God aims at in those exhortations, in their particular respect unto believers, that by them they may be stirred up to the use of those means which he hath appointed for them, id be by them preserved in the grace and mercy which he hath infallibly promised to continue to them. And, —
4. The end of the promises of perseverance on which we have insisted being their " mixing with faith," to establish the souls of the saints in believing the kindness and faithfulness of God in his covenant in Jesus Christ, they do not take away nor prevent all fear of perishing, and so, consequently, not that fear in any mca.sure which stirs them up so to the use of means that they may not perish, but only are effectual for their deliverance out of those dangers
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whicli are apt and able of themselves to destroy them; as our Sa- viour himself prays for them, John xvii. 15, "I pray not that thou should est take them out of the world" (where, whilst they are, they will be sure to meet with dangers and perplexities enough), " but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil,'' wherewith they must reckon to be exercised. There is not, then, the least contrariety or diverse aspect between the assurance of faith about the end which the promises tend unto, and the care and godly fear about the means instituted and appointed with respect to the end which exhortations do beget, and will, notwithstanding those promises.