3. God's propriety perceived, will help to satisfy us of his love and care of us: and will help us to trust him in every danger; and so take off our inordinate fear, and anxieties, and caring for ourselves.[95] The apostle proveth Christ's love to his church from his propriety, Eph. v. 29, "No man ever yet hated his own flesh." God is not regardless of his own. As we take care of our cattle, to preserve them, and provide for them, more than they do for themselves, for they are more ours than their own; so God is more concerned in the welfare of his children, than they are themselves, they being more his than their own. Why are we afraid of the wrath and cruelty of man? Will God be mindless and negligent of his own? Why are we over-careful and distrustful of his providence? Will he not take care of his own, and make provision for them? "God, even our own God, shall bless us," Psal. lxvii. 6. God's interest in his church, and cause, and servants, is an argument which we may plead with him in prayer, 1 Chron. xvii. 21, 22, and with which we may greatly encourage our confidence: Isa. xlviii. 9, 11, "For my name's sake will I defer mine anger, and for my praise will I refrain for thee, that I cut thee not off. For mine own sake, even for mine own sake, will I do it: for how should my name be polluted? and I will not give my glory to another." Isa. xliii. 1, 2, "But now, thus saith the Lord that created thee, O Jacob, and he that formed thee, O Israel; Fear not: for I have redeemed thee; I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine. When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee," &c. If God should neglect our interest, he will not neglect his own.
4. God's propriety in us discerned, doth so much aggravate our sin against him, that it should greatly restrain us, and further our humiliation and recovery when we are fallen: Lev. xx. 26, "Ye shall be holy unto me: for I the Lord am holy, and have severed you from other people, that ye should be mine." Ezek. xvi. 8, "I sware unto thee, and entered into a covenant with thee, and thou becamest mine, saith the Lord," when he is aggravating Jerusalem's sin. 1 Cor. vi. 19, 20, "Ye are not your own: for ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's." Justice requireth, that every one have his own.
5. It should silence all murmurings and repinings against the providence of God, to consider that we are his own. Doth he afflict you? and are you not his own? Doth he kill you? are you not his own? As a Ruler, he will show you reason enough for it in your sins; but as your absolute Lord and Owner, he need not give you any other reason than that he may do with his own as he list. It is not possible that he can do any wrong to that which is absolutely his own. If he deny you health, or wealth, or friends, or take them from you; he denieth you, or taketh from you, nothing but his own. Indeed, as a Governor and a Father, he hath secured the faithful of eternal life: otherwise, as their Owner, he could not have wronged them, if he had made the most innocent as miserable as he is capable to be. Do you labour, and beat, and kill your cattle, because they are your own (by an imperfect propriety)? and dare you grudge at God for afflicting his own, when their consciences tell them, that they have deserved it and much more?
[Sidenote: Sins against God's dominion.]
And that you may not think that you have resigned yourselves to God entirely, when you do but hypocritically profess it, observe: 1. That man is not thus resigned to God, that thinketh any service too much for God, that he can do. 2. Nor he that thinketh any cost too great for God that he is called to undergo. 3. Nor he that thinketh that all is won (of his time, or wealth, or pleasure, or any thing) which he can save or steal from God: for all is lost that God hath not. 4. Nor he that must needs be the disposer of himself, and his condition and affairs, and God must humour him, and accommodate his providence to his carnal interest and will, or else he cannot bear it, or think well of it. 5. Remember that all that is bestowed in sin upon God's enemies, is used against him, and not as his own. 6. And that he that hideth his talent, or useth it not at all, cannot be said to use it for God. Both idleness and alienating the gifts of God, are a robbing him of his own.