3. What privileges do I enjoy as one of God's elect ?
[Survey the wheels of a watch, and see how, in all their complicated motions, they accomplish one important end. Thus does all the machinery of the universe, whether more or less connected with men or devils, move in reference to your present and eternal good. Of this you may be assured ; and it may well endear to you the doctrines in the texf^.]
c Rom. viii. 28.
2 Tim. i. 10. JVho hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel.
TO the free and sovereign grace of God must all our blessings be traced. Nothing did we ever merit at his hands, or can we ever merit, but wrath and indignation. From all eternity did God ordain to give us whatever he has bestowed. The gift of a Saviour was the fruit of his eternal love ; as was also the gift of salvation by him. Both the one and the other are the fruit of his eternal counsels : and the appearing of Jesus Christ, as the author of these blessings, was, not the cause, but the result and evi- dence, of purposes already formed, even of " purposes which from all eternity he had purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord^"
But, not to insist on this, I would call your atten- tion simply to the fruits of God's purpose ; and shew you what, in consequence of his eternal counsels, the Lord Jesus Christ has done for us. I will shew,
I. What he has done for us in his own person —
Death had been introduced by sin ; and it reigned over the whole human race\ In the curse denounced against transgression, " In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die," both the body and the soul were alike consigned to death. But from this
a ver. 9, 10. ^ Rom. v. 12, 17. 1 Cor. xv. 22.