or of faith, that might determine God to choose them. What good could
he foresee resulting from extreme corruption, and a nature alienated
from him? What could he foresee of good to be done by them, but what
he resolved in his own will, to bestow an ability upon them to bring
forth? His choice of them was to a {b397} holiness, not for a holiness
preceding his determination (Eph. i. 4). He hath chosen us, “that we
might be holy” before him; he ordained us “to good works,” not for them
(Eph. ii. 10). What is a fruit cannot be a moving cause of that whereof
it is a fruit: grace is a stream from the spring of electing love;
the branch is not the cause of the root, but the root of the branch;
nor the stream the cause of the spring, but the spring the cause of
the stream. Good works suppose grace, and a good and right habit in
the person, as rational acts suppose reason. Can any man say that the
rational acts man performs after his creation were a cause why God
created him? This would make creation, and everything else, not so
much an act of his will, as an act of his understanding. God foresaw no
rational act in man, before the act of his will to give him reason; nor
foresees faith in any, before the act of his will determining to give
him faith: “Faith is the gift of God” (Eph. ii. 8). In the salvation
which grows up from this first purpose of God, he regards not the works
we have done, as a principal motive to settle the top‑stone of our
happiness, but his own purpose, and the grace given in Christ; “who
hath saved us, and called us with a holy calling, not according to our
own works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given
to us in Christ, before the world began” (2 Tim. i. 9). The honor of
our salvation cannot be challenged by our works, much less the honor of
the foundation of it. It was a pure gift of grace, without any respect
to any spiritual, much less natural, perfection. Why should the apostle
mention that circumstance, when he speaks of God’s loving Jacob, and
hating Esau, “when neither of them had done good or evil” (Rom. ix. 11),
if there were any foresight of men’s works as the moving cause of his
love or hatred? God regarded not the works of either as the first cause
of his choice, but acted by his own liberty, without respect to any
of their actions which were to be done by them in time. If faith be
the fruit of election, the prescience of faith doth not influence the
electing act of God. It is called “the faith of God’s elect” (Tit. i.
1): “Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the faith of God’s
elect;” _i. e._ settled in this office to bring the elect of God to
faith. If men be chosen by God upon the foresight of faith, or not
chosen till they have faith, they are not so much God’s elect, as God
their elect; they choose God by faith, before God chooseth them by love:
it had not been the faith of God’s elect, _i. e._ of those already
chosen, but the faith of those that were to be chosen by God afterwards.
Election is the cause of faith, and not faith the cause of election;
fire is the cause of heat, and not the heat of fire; the sun is the
cause of the day, and not the day the cause of the rising of the sun.
Men are not chosen because they believe, but they believe because they
are chosen: the apostle did ill, else, to appropriate that to the elect
which they had no more interest in, by virtue of their election, than
the veriest reprobate in the world.[1008] If the foresight of what
works might be done by his creatures was the motive of his choosing
them, why did he not choose the devils to redemption, who could
have done him better service, by the strength of their nature, than
the {b398} whole mass of Adam’s posterity? Well, then, there is no
possible way to lay the original foundation of this act of election and
preterition in anything but the absolute sovereignty of God. Justice or
injustice comes not into consideration in this case. There is no debt
which justice or injustice always respects in its acting: if he had
pleased, he might have chosen all; if he had pleased, he might have
chosen none. It was in his supreme power to have resolved to have left
all Adam’s posterity under the rack of his justice; if he determined to
snatch out any, it was a part of his dominion, but without any injury
to the creatures he leaves under their own guilt. Did he not pass by
the angels, and take man? and, by the same right of dominion, may he
pick out some men from the common mass, and lay aside others to bear
the punishment of their crimes. Are they not all his subjects? all are
his criminals, and may be dealt with at the pleasure of their undoubted
Lord and Sovereign. This is a work of arbitrary power; since he might
have chosen none, or chosen all, as he saw good himself. It is at
the liberty of the artificer to determine his wood or stone to such a
figure, that of a prince, or that of a toad; and his materials have no
right to complain of him, since it lies wholly upon his own liberty.
They must have little sense of their own vileness, and God’s infinite
excellency above them by right of creation, that will contend that God
hath a lesser right over his creatures than an artificer over his wood
or stone. If it were at his liberty whether to redeem man, or send
Christ upon such an undertaking, it is as much at his liberty, and the
prerogative is to be allowed him, what person he will resolve to make
capable of enjoying the fruits of that redemption. One man was as fit a
subject for mercy as another, as they all lay in their original guilt:
why would not Divine mercy cast its eye upon this man, as well as upon
his neighbor? There was no cause in the creature, but all in God; it
must be resolved into his own will: yet not into a will without wisdom.
God did not choose hand over head, and act by mere will, without
reason and understanding; an Infinite Wisdom is far from such a kind of
procedure; but the reason of God is inscrutable to us, unless we could
understand God as well as he understands himself; the whole ground lies
in God himself, no part of it in the creature; “not in him that wills,
nor in him that runs, but in God that shows mercy” (Rom. ix. 15, 16).
Since God hath revealed no other cause than his will, we can resolve
it into no other than his sovereign empire over all creatures. It is
not without a stop to our curiosity, that in the same place where God
asserts the absolute sovereignty of his mercy to Moses, he tells him he
could not see his face: “I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious;”
and he said, “Thou canst not see my face” (Exod. xxxiii. 19, 20):
the rays of his infinite wisdom are too bright and dazzling for our
weakness. The apostle acknowledged not only a wisdom in this proceeding,
but a riches and treasure of wisdom; not only that, but a depth and
vastness of those riches of wisdom; but was unable to give us an
inventory and scheme of it (Rom. xi. 33). The secrets of his counsels
are too deep for us to wade into; in attempting to know the reason of
those acts, we should find ourselves swallowed up into a bottomless
gulf: though {b399} the understanding be above our capacity, yet the
admiration of his authority and submission to it are not. “We should
cast ourselves down at his feet, with a full resignation of ourselves
to his sovereign pleasure.”[1009] This is a more comely carriage in a
Christian than all the contentious endeavors to measure God by our line.
2. In bestowing grace where he pleases. God in conversion and pardon
works not as a natural agent, putting forth strength to the utmost,
which God must do, if he did renew man naturally, as the sun shines,
and the fire burns, which always act, _ad extremum virium_, unless
a cloud interpose to eclipse the one, and water to extinguish the
other. But God acts as a voluntary agent, which can freely exert
his power when he please, and suspend it when he please. Though God
be necessarily good, yet he is not necessitated to manifest all the
treasures of his goodness to every subject; he hath power to distil his
dews upon one part, and not upon another. If he were necessitated to
express his goodness without a liberty, no thanks were due to him.
Who thanks the sun for shining on him, or the fire for warming him?
None; because they are necessary agents, and can do no other. What is
the reason he did not reach out his hand to keep all the angels from
sinking, as well as some, or recover them when they were sunk? What is
the reason he engrafts one man into the true Vine, and lets the other
remain a wild olive? Why is not the efficacy of the Spirit always
linked with the motions of the Spirit? Why does he not mould the heart
into a gospel frame when he fills the ear with a gospel sound? Why
doth he strike off the chains from some, and tear the veil from the
heart, while he leaves others under their natural slavery and Egyptian
darkness? Why do some lie under the bands of death, while another is
raised to a spiritual life? What reason is there for all this but his
absolute will? The apostle resolves the question, if the question be
asked, why he begets one and not another? Not from the will of the
creature, but “his own will,” is the determination of one (James i.
18). Why doth he work in one “to will and to do,” and not in another?
Because of “his good pleasure,” is the answer of another (Phil. ii. 13).
He could as well new create every one, as he at first created them,
and make grace as universal as nature and reason, but it is not his
pleasure so to do.
(1.) It is not from want of strength in himself. The power of God is
unquestionably able to strike off the chains of unbelief from all; he
could surmount the obstinacy of every child of wrath, and inspire every
son of Adam with faith as well as Adam himself. He wants not a virtue
superior to the greatest resistance of his creature; a victorious
beam of light might be shot into their understandings, and a flood of
grace might overspread their wills with one word of his mouth, without
putting forth the utmost of his power. What hindrance could there be in
any created spirit, which cannot be easily pierced into and new moulded
by the Father of spirits? Yet he only breathes this efficacious virtue
into some, and leaves others under that insensibility and hardness
which they love, and suffer them to continue in their benighting
ignorance, and consume themselves {b400} in the embraces of their
dear, though deceitful Delilahs. He could have conquered the resistance
of the Jews, as well as chased away the darkness and ignorance of
the Gentiles. No doubt but he could overpower the heart of the most
malicious devil, as well as that of the simplest and weakest man.
But the breath of the Almighty Spirit is in his own power, to breathe
“where he lists” (John iii. 8). It is at his liberty whether he will
give to any the feelings of the invincible efficacy of his grace; he
did not want strength to have kept man as firm as a rock against the
temptation of Satan, and poured in such fortifying grace, as to have
made him impregnable against the powers of hell, as well as he did
secure the standing of the angels against the sedition of their fellows:
but it was his will to permit it to be otherwise.
(2.) Nor is it from any prerogative in the creature. He converts not
any for their natural perfection, because he seizeth upon the most
ignorant; nor for their moral perfection, because he converts the most
sinful; nor for their civil perfection, because he turns the most
despicable.
[1.] Not for their natural perfection of knowledge. He opened the
minds and hearts of the more ignorant. Were the nature of the Gentiles
better manured than that of the Jews, or did the tapers of their
understandings burn clearer? No; the one were skilled in the prophecies
of the Messiah, and might have compared the predictions they owned with
the actions and sufferings of Christ, which they were spectators of. He
let alone those that had expectations of the Messiah, and expectations
about the time of Christ’s appearance, both grounded upon the oracles
wherewith he had entrusted them. The Gentiles were unacquainted
with the prophets, and therefore destitute of the expectations of
the Messiah (Eph. ii. 12): they were “without Christ;” without any
revelation of Christ, because “aliens from the commonwealth of Israel,
and strangers to the covenant of promise, having no hope, and without
God in the world,” without any knowledge of God, or promises of Christ.
The Jews might sooner, in a way of reason, have been wrought upon than
the Gentiles, who were ignorant of the prophets, by whose writings they
might have examined the truth of the apostles’ declarations. Thus are
they refused that were the kindred of Christ, according to the flesh,
and the Gentiles, that were at a greater distance from him, brought
in by God; thus he catcheth not at the subtle and mighty devils, who
had an original in spiritual nature more like to him, but at weak and
simple man.
[2.] Not for any moral perfection, because he converts the most
sinful: the Gentiles, steeped in idolatry and superstition. He sowed
more faith among the Romans than in Jerusalem; more faith in a city
that was the common sewer of all the idolatry of the nations conquered
by them, than in that city which had so signally been owned by him,
and had not practised any idolatry since the Babylonish captivity.
He planted saintship at Corinth, a place notorious for the infamous
worship of Venus, a superstition attended with the grossest uncleanness;
at Ephesus, that presented the whole world with a cup of fornication in
their temple of Diana; among the Colossians, {b401} votaries to Cybele
in a manner of worship attended with beastly and lascivious ceremonies.
And what character had the Cretians from one of their own poets,
mentioned by the apostle to Titus, whom he had placed among them to
further the progress of the gospel, but the vilest and most abominable?
(Titus i. 12): “liars,” not to be credited; “evil beasts,” not to be
associated with; “slow bellies,” fit for no service. What prerogative
was there in the nature of such putrefaction? as much as in that of a
toad to be elevated to the dignity of an angel. What steam from such
dunghills could be welcome to him, and move him to cast his eye on them,
and sweeten them from heaven? What treasures of worth were here to open
the treasures of his grace! Were such filthy snuffs fit of themselves
to be kindled by, and become a lodging for, a gospel beam? What
invitements could he have from lying, beastliness, gluttony, but only
from his own sovereignty? By this he plucked firebrands out of the fire,
while he left straighter and more comely sticks to consume to ashes.
[3.] Not for any civil perfection, because he turns the most despicable.
He elevates not nature to grace upon the account of wealth, honor, or
any civil station in the world: he dispenseth not ordinarily those
treasures to those that the mistaken world foolishly admire and dote
upon (1 Cor. i. 26); “Not many mighty, not many noble:” a purple robe
is not usually decked with this jewel; he takes more of mouldy clay
than refined dust to cast into his image, and lodges his treasures more
in the earthly vessels than in the world’s golden ones; he gives out
his richest doles to those that are the scorn and reproach of the world.
Should he impart his grace most to those that abound in wealth or honor,
it had been some foundation for a conception that he had been moved by
those vulgarly esteemed excellencies to indulge them more than others.
But such a conceit languisheth when we behold the subjects of his grace
as void originally of any allurements, as they are full of provocations.
Hereby he declares himself free from all created engagements, and that
he is not led by any external motives in the object.
[4.] It is not from any obligation which lies upon him. He is indebted
to none: disobliged by all. No man deserves from him any act of grace,
but every man deserves what the most deplorable are left to suffer.
He is obliged by the children of wrath to nothing else but showers of
wrath; owes no more a debt to fallen man, than to fallen devils, to
restore them to their first station by a superlative grace. How was he
more bound to restore them, than he was to preserve them; to catch them
after they fell, than to put a bar in the way of their falling? God,
as a sovereign, gave laws to men, and a strength sufficient to keep
those laws. What obligation is there upon God to repair that strength
man wilfully lost, and extract him out of that condition into which he
voluntarily plunged himself? What if man sinned by temptation, which
is a reason alleged by some, might not many of the devils do so too?
Though there was a first of them that sinned without a temptation,
yet many of them might be seduced into rebellion by the ringleader.
Upon that account he is no more bound to give grace to all men, than
to devils. {b402} If he promised life upon obedience, he threatened
death upon transgression. By man’s disobedience God is quit of his
promise, and owes nothing but punishment upon the violation of his law.
Indeed man may pretend to a claim of sufficient strength from him by
creation, as God is the author of nature, and he had it; but since he
hath extinguished it by his sin, he cannot in the least pretend any
obligation on God for a new strength. If it be a “peradventure” whether
he will “give repentance,” as it is 2 Tim. ii. 25, there is no tie
in the case; a tie would put it beyond a peradventure with a God that
never forfeited his obligation. No husbandman thinks himself obliged
to bestow cost and pains, manure and tillage, upon one field more than
another; though the nature of the ground may require more, yet he is at
his liberty whether he will expend more upon one than another.[1010] He
may let it lie fallow as long as he please. God is less obliged to till
and prune his creatures, than man is obliged to his field or trees.
If a king proclaim a pardon to a company of rebels, upon the condition
of each of them paying such a sum of money; their estates before were
capable of satisfying the condition, but their rebellion hath reduced
them to an indigent condition; the proclamation itself is an act of
grace, the condition required is not impossible in itself: the prince,
out of a tenderness to some, sends them that sum of money, he hath
by his proclamation obliged them to pay, and thereby enabled them to
answer the condition he requires; the first he doth by a sovereign
authority, the second he doth by a sovereign bounty. He was obliged to
neither of them; punishment was a debt due to all of them; if he would
remit it upon condition, he did relax his sovereign right; and if he
would by his largess make any of them capable to fulfil the condition,
by sending them presently a sufficient sum to pay the fine, he acted as
proprietor of his own goods, to dispose of them in such a quantity to
those to whom he was not obliged to bestow a mite.
[5.] It must therefore be an act of his mere sovereignty. This can only
sit arbitrator in every gracious act. Why did he give grace to Abel and
not to Cain, since they both lay in the same womb, and equally derived
from their parents a taint in their nature; but that he would show a
standing example of his sovereignty to the future ages of the world
in the first posterity of man? Why did he give grace to Abraham, and
separate him from his idolatrous kindred, to dignify him to be the
root of the Messiah? Why did he confine his promise to Isaac, and not
extend it to Ishmael, the seed of the same Abraham by Hagar, or to
the children he had by Keturah after Sarah’s death? What reason can be
alleged for this but his sovereign will? Why did he not give the fallen
angels a moment of repentance after their sin, but condemned them to
irrevocable pains? Is it not as free for him to give grace to whom he
please, as create what worlds he please; to form this corrupted clay
into his own image, as to take such a parcel of dust from all the rest
of the creation whereof to compact Adam’s body? Hath he not as much
jurisdiction over the sinful mass of his creatures in a new creation,
as he had over the chaos in the old? And what reason can be rendered,
{b403} of his advancing this part of matter to the nobler dignity of a
star, and leaving that other part to make up the dark body of the earth;
to compact one part into a glorious sun, and another part into a hard
rock, but his royal prerogative? What is the reason a prince subjects
one malefactor to punishment, and lifts up another to a place of trust
and profit? that Pharaoh honored the butler with an attendance on his
person, and remitted the baker to the hands of the executioner? It was
his pleasure. And is not as great right due to God, as is allowed to
the worms of the earth? What is the reason he hardens a Pharaoh, by
a denying him that grace which should mollify him, and allows it to
another? It is because he will. “Whom he will he hardens” (Rom. ix. 18).
Hath not man the liberty to pull up the sluice, and let the water run
into what part of the ground he pleases? What is the reason some have
not a heart to understand the beauty of his ways? Because the Lord doth
not give it them (Deut. xxix. 4). Why doth he not give all his converts
an equal measure of his sanctifying grace? some have mites and some
have treasures. Why doth he give his grace to some sooner, to some
later? some are inspired in their infancy, others not till a full age,
and after; some not till they have fallen into some gross sin, as Paul;
some betimes, that they may do him service: others later, as the thief
upon the cross, and presently snatcheth them out of the world? Some are
weaker, some stronger in nature, some more beautiful and lovely, others
more uncomely and sluggish. It is so in supernaturals. What reason is
there for this, but his own will? This is instead of all that can be
assigned on the part of God. He is the free disposer of his own goods,
and as a Father may give a greater portion to one child than to another.
And what reason of complaint is there against God? may not a toad
complain that God did not make it a man, and give it a portion of
reason? or a fly complain that God did not make it an angel, and give
it a garment of light; had they but any spark of understanding; as well
as man complain that God did not give him grace as well as another?
Unless he sincerely desired it, and then was denied it, he might
complain of God, though not as a sovereign, yet as a promiser of grace
to them that ask it. God doth not render his sovereignty formidable; he
shuts not up his throne of grace from any that seek him; he invites man;
his arms are open, and the sceptre stretched out; and no man continues
under the arrest of his lusts, but he that is unwilling to be otherwise,
and such a one hath no reason to complain of God.
3. His sovereignty is manifest in disposing the means of grace to some,
not to all. He hath caused the sun to shine bright in one place, while
he hath left others benighted and deluded by the devil’s oracles. Why
do the evangelical dews fall in this or that place, and not in another?
Why was the gospel published in Rome so soon, and not in Tartary? Why
hath it been extinguished in some places, as soon almost as it had been
kindled in them? Why hath one place been honored with the beams of it
in one age, and been covered with darkness the next? One country hath
been made a sphere for this star, that directs to Christ, to move
in; and afterwards it hath been taken away, and placed in another;
sometimes {b404} more clearly it hath shone, sometimes more darkly, in
the same place; what is the reason of this? It is true something of it
may be referred to the justice of God, but much more to the sovereignty
of God. That the gospel is published later, and not sooner, the apostle
tell us is “according to the commandment of the everlasting God” (Rom.
xvi. 26).
(1.) The means of grace, after the families from Adam became distinct,
were never granted to all the world. After that fatal breach in Adam’s
family by the death of Abel, and Cain’s separation, we read not of
the means of grace continued among Cain’s posterity; it seems to be
continued in Adam’s sole family, and not published in societies till
the time of Seth. “Then began men to call upon the name of the Lord”
(Gen. iv. 26). It was continued in that family till the deluge, which
was 1523 years after the creation, according to some, or 1656 years,
according to others. After that, when the world degenerated, it was
communicated to Abraham, and settled in the posterity that descended
from Jacob; though he left not the world without a witness of himself,
and some sprinklings of revelations in other parts, as appears by the
Book of Job, and the discourses of his friends.