A Discourse of the Efficient of Regeneration
Part 1
Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the
flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.—John 1:13.
This evangelist so plainly describes the deity of Christ, and
in so majestic a style, in the beginning of the chapter, that the
accidental view of it in a book lying open by neglect, was
instrumental for the conversion of Junius, that eminent light in
the church, from his atheism.
We shall take our rise only from ver. 9, 'That was the true
light, which lightens every man that comes into the world.' John
Baptist, who, ver. 6, &c., was to bear witness of this light,
was a light by our Saviour's assertion, 'a burning and a shining
light,' John v. 35, but not that 'true light' which was promised,
Isa. xlix. 6, to be 'a light to the Gentiles, and the salvation
of God to the ends of the earth.' The sun is the true light in
the heavens and of the world; not but that other stars are lights
too, but they all receive their light from the sun. Christ is
called the true light, by nature and essence, not by grace and
participation: 1 John v. 20, 'We know him that is true; and we
are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ,' the
natural light and Son of God.
1. True, as opposed to types, which were shadows of this
light.
2. True, as opposed to false. Philosophical lights, though
esteemed so, are but darkness, and ignes fatui, in
comparison of this.
3. True original light, ratione officii, illustrating
the whole world with his light. Whatsoever is light in heaven or
earth, borrows it from the sun; whosoever is enlightened in the
world, derives from him 'which lights every man that comes into
the world.' Some join coming into the world, to lift, and read it
thus, 'He is the light coming into the world, which lights every
man.' The Greek is something ambiguous, and it may be referred to
light, though not so commodiously. But the translation which we
have has been followed in all ages of the church; and is
contended for (the other is contended for? editor) only by those
who deny the deity of our Saviour, or are somewhat affected to
them that do.
How does Christ light every man that comes into the world?
1. Naturally. So Calvin; the world was made by him, and
therefore that which is the beauty of the world, the reason of
man, was made kindled by him. As all the light the world has had
since the creation flows from the sun, so all the knowledge which
sparkles in any man is communicated by Christ, even since the
creation, as he is the wisdom of God, and as mediator, preserving
those broken relics of the fall: Prov. xx. 27, 'The spirit of man
is the candle of the Lord,' lighted and preserved by him. The
light of nature, those common notions of fit and just in men's
consciences, those honest and honourable principles in the hearts
of any, those beams of wisdom in their understanding, though
faint, and like sparkles raked up in ashes, are kept alive by his
mediatory influence, as a necessary foundation for that,
reparation which was intended in his first interposition.
2. Spiritually. So not only the Socinians, but some very
sound, understand it; not that all are actually enlightened, but,
(1.) In regard of power and sufficiency, he has a power to
enlighten every man; able to enlighten, not a few, but every man
in the world, as the sun does not light every man, though it has
a power to do so, and does actually light every man that shuts
not his eyes against it.
(2.) Actually, taking it distributive, not collective;
that whosoever is enlightened in the world, has it
communicated from Christ; as Ps. cxlv. 14, 'The Lord upholds all
that fall, and raises up all those that are bowed down;' as many
as are upheld and raised, are upheld and raised by God' He does
indeed 'shine in darkness,' his light breaks out upon men, but
they are not the better for it, because 'the darkness comprehends
it not'; as when there is but one schoolmaster in a town, we
usually say, he teaches all the boys in the town; not that every
individual boy comes to school, but as many as are taught, are
taught by him. I embrace the former, because the evangelist seems
to begin with his person, as God; his office, as mediator; and
then descends to his incarnation; and it is a sense which puts no
force upon the words. And I suppose that every man is added, to
beat down the proud conceits of the Jews, who regarded the
Gentiles with contempt, as not enjoying the privileges conferred
upon themselves; but the evangelist declares, that what the
Gentiles had in natural light, and what they were to have in
spiritual light, did, and was to come from him, who would
disperse his beams in all nations, ver. 10. And therefore 'he was
in the world,' before his coming in the flesh, in regard of his
virtue and efficacy, by the spreading his beams over the world,
enlightening men in all ages and places with that common light of
nature; he was near to every man; 'in him they lived, and moved,
and had their being;' but the world by their natural wisdom knew
him not, and glorified him not. 'The world was made by him, yet
the world know him not.' Ingratitude has been the constant
portion of the mediator, from the world; they knew him not in
past ages, knew him not in the present age of his coming in the
flesh; they did not acknowledge him with that affection,
reverence, and subjection that was due to him.
He aggravates this contempt of Christ,
1. By the general right be had, 'he came to his own,'
"Eis ta idia", ver. 11, meaning the world, it being put
in the neuter gender. The whole world was his property and his
goods, yet they knew not their owner. In this, worse than the ox
or ass.
2. By the special privileges conferred on those to whom he
first came, and from whom he should have the most welcome
reception; implied in these words, 'and his own,' "hoi
idioi", in the masculine gender, his own people, that had
been his treasure, to whom he had given his law, entrusted with
the covenants and oracles of God, these 'received him not.' His
own, some say, as being peculiarly committed to him, the angel of
the covenant; whereas other nations were committed to angels to
receive laws from them. His own flesh and blood, who expected a
Messiah, to whom he was particularly sent, as being the lost
sheep of the house of Israel. Christ is most rejected where
proffers most kindness. Those of Tyre and Sidon, those of Sodom
and Gomorrah, would not have used him so ill as Capernaum and
Jerusalem, his own people. He descends to show the loss of them
that rejected him, the benefit of those that received him: ver.
12, 'But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become
the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name.'
Where is,
1. The subject: these that received him.
2. The benefit: the dignity of sonship.
3. The manner of conferring this benefit: 'gave them power.'
4. The instrumental cause: 'believe on his name.' Though his
own rejected him, they lost a dignity which was conferred upon
those that received him: he lost not his pains, for he gathered
sons to God out of all parts of the world. 'To as many as
received him.' It was not now peculiar to the Jews, who boasted
of being Abraham's seed, and to have the covenant entailed upon
them to be the people of God. It was now conferred upon those who
were before Lo-ammi and Lo-ruhamah, Hos. ii. 23. It
was nothing but faith on his name that gave men the privilege of
being the sons of God, and this was communicated to Gentiles as
well as Jews. Power: not a power, but a dignity, as the word
properly signifies. Not a power if they would, but a will, for
they were born of the will of God. Faith brings men into a
special relation to God; which faith is more than an assent and
giving credit to God; for to believe on God, to believe on his
name, is a phrase peculiar to Scripture. 'To become the sons of
God;' some understand this of sonship by adoption, but the
following verse gives us light to understand it of a sonship by
regeneration. St Paul uses the word adoption, but St John, both
in his gospel and epistles, speaks more of the new birth, and
sonship by it, than any of the other apostles; 'who were born not
of blood,' or 'of bloods.' He removes all other causes of this,
which men might imagine, and ascribes it wholly to God. This
place is variously interpreted. 'Not of blood.' Not by natural
instinct, says one; not by an illustrious stock. The Jews
imagined themselves holy by their carnal generation from Abraham
in a long train of ancestors. Grace runs not in a blood. It is
not often a flower growing upon every ability; 'not many wise,
not many mighty.' Not hereditary by a mixture of blood. Natural
generation makes men no more regenerate than the rich man in hell
was regenerate by Abraham, his natural ancestor, whom he calls
'father Abraham.' Religious parents propagate corruption, not
regeneration; carnal generation is by nature, not by grace; by
descent from Adam, not by implantation in Christ. Abraham had an
Ishmael, and Isaac an Esau: man begets only a mortal body, but
grace is the fruit of an incorruptible seed. 'Nor of the will of
the flesh.' Not by human election, as Eve judged of Cain that he
should be the Messiah, or Isaac of Esau that he should be heir of
the promise, as the Jews say. Not by a choice of those things
which are necessary, profitable, or delightful to the flesh; not
by a will affected to the flesh, or things of the flesh. Not by
any sensual appetite, whereby men used to adopt one to bear up
their names when they scanted posterity of their own. I would
rather conceive it to be meant of the strength of nature, which
is called flesh in Scripture; not by legal observances,
the ceremonies of the law being called carnal or fleshly
ordinances, Heb. ix. 10. It is not a fruit of nature or
profession. 'Nor of the will of man.' Calvin takes the will of
the flesh and the will of man for one and the same thing, the
apostle using two expressions only to fix it more upon the mind.
I rather fudge it to be meant thus: not by natural principles, or
moral endowments, which are the flower and perfection of man as
man. It is not arbitrary, of the will of man, or the result
naturally of the most religious education. All the power of
regenerate men in the world joined together cannot renew another;
all the industry of man, without the influence of the heavens in
the sun and rain, cannot produce fruit in the earth, no, nor the
moral industry of men grace in the soul; 'but of God,' or the
will of God; his own will: James i. 18, 'Of his own will begot he
us,' exclusive of all other wills mentioned before. It is the
sole efficiency of God; he has the sole hand in it; therefore we
are said to be both begotten and born of him, 1 John v. 18. It is
so purely God's work, that as to the principle he is the sole
agent; and as to the manifestation of it, he is the principal
agent. Not of the will of the flesh, that is only corruption; nor
of the will of man, that at best is but moral nature. But
whatsoever the meaning of those particular expressions is, the
evangelist removes all pretences nature may make to the
efficiency of this regeneration, and ascribes it wholly to God.
1. There is a removal of false causes.
2. A position of the true cause.
(1.) The efficient, God.
(2.) The manner, by an act of his will.
Showing thereby,
[1.] To necessity in him to renew us, no motive but from
himself.
[2.] No merit on our parts. Man cannot merit, say the papists,
before grace, no child can merit his own birth, no man grace.
Doct. 1. Man, in all his capacities, is too weak to produce
the work of regeneration in himself.
It is subjectively in the creature, not efficiently by the
creature, neither ourselves nor any other creature, angels, men,
ordinances.
Doct. 2. God alone is the prime efficient cause of
regeneration.
Doct. 1. For the first. Man, in all his capacities, is too
weak to produce the work of regeneration in himself. This is not
the birth of a darkened wisdom and an enslaved will. We affect a
kind of divinity, and would centre ourselves in our own strength;
therefore it is good to be sensible of our own impotency, that
God may have the glory of his own grace, and we the comfort of it
in a higher principle and higher power than our own. It is not
the bare proposal of grace, and the leaving the will to an
indifferent posture, balanced between good and evil, undetermined
to the one or the other, to incline and determine itself which
way seems best to it. Not one will, in the whole rank of
believers, left to themselves. The evangelist excepts not one man
among them; for as many as received Christ, as many as believed,
were the sons of God, who were born; which believers, every one
that had this faith as the means, and this sonship as the
privilege, were born not of the will of the flesh nor the will of
man.
For the proof of this in general,
1. God challenges this work as his own, excluding the creature
from any share as a cause: Ezek. xxxvi. 25-27, 'I will sprinkle
clean water upon you, I will cleanse you, I will give you a new
heart, I will put a new spirit into you, I will take away the
heart of stone, 1 will give you a heart of flesh, I will put my
Spirit into you.' Here I will no less than seven times.
Nothing is allowed to man in the production of this work in the
least; all that is done by him is the walking in God's statutes
by virtue of this principle. The sanctifying principle, the
actual sanctification, the reception of it by the creature, the
removal of all the obstructions of it, the principle maintaining
it, are not in the least here attributed to the will of man. God
appropriates all to himself. He does not say he would be man's
assistant, as many men do, who tell us only of the assistance of
the gospel, as if God in the gospel expected the first motions of
the will of man to give him a rise for the acting of his grace.
You see here he gives not an inch to the creature. To ascribe the
first work, in any part, to the will of man, is to deprive God of
half his due, to make him but a partner with his creature. The
least of it cannot be transferred to man but the right of God
will be diminished, and the creature go shares with his Creator.
Are we not sufficient of ourselves to do any thing? and are we
sufficient to part stakes with God in this divine work? What
partner was the creature with God in creation? It is the Father's
traction alone, without the hand of free-will. 'None can come,
except the Father, which has sent me, draw them,' John vi. 44.
The mission of the Mediator, and the traction of the creature,
are by the same hand. Our Saviour could not have come unless the
Father had sent him, nor can man come to Christ unless the Father
draw him. What is that which is drawn? The will. The will, then,
is not the agent; it does not draw itself.
2. The titles given to regeneration evidence it. It is a
creation. What creature can give itself a being? It is a putting
in a law and a new heart. What matter can infuse a soul into
itself? It is a new birth. What man did ever beget himself? It is
an opening the heart. What man can do this, who neither has the
key, nor is acquainted with the wards? Not a man knows the heart;
it is deceitful above all things, who can know it?
3. The conveyance of original corruption does in part evidence
it. We have no more interest of our wills in regeneration, than
we had in corruption. This was first received by the will of
Adam, our first head, thence transmitted to us without any actual
consent of our wills in the first transmission; that is conveyed
to us from the second Adam, without any actual consent of our
wills in the first infusion. Yet though the wills of Adam's
posterity are mere passive in the first conveyance of the corrupt
habit from him by generation, yet afterwards they are active in
the approbations of it, and production of the fruits of it. So
the will is merely passive in the first conveyance of the grace
of regeneration, though afterwards it is pleased with it, and
brings forth fruit meet for it.
4. Scripture represents man exceeding weak, and unable to do
any thing spiritually good. 'So then, they that are in the flesh
cannot please God,' Rom. viii. 8. He concludes it by his so
then, as an infallible consequence, from what he had
discoursed before. If, as being in the flesh, they cannot please
God, therefore not in that which is the highest pleasure to God,
a framing themselves to a likeness to him. The very desire and
endeavour of the creature after this, is some pleasure to God, to
see a creature struggling after holiness; but they that are in
the flesh cannot please him. 'Can any good thing come out of
Nazareth?' was said of our Saviour. So may we better say, Can any
good thing come out of the flesh, the enslaved, possessed will of
man? If it be free since it was captivated by sin, who set it
free? Nothing can, but 'the law of the Spirit of life,' Rom.
viii. 2. To be 'sinners,' and to be 'without strength,' is one
and the same thing in the apostle's judgment: Rom. v. 6, 8,
'While we were yet without strength;' afterwards, 'while we were
yet sinners;' he does not say, We are without great strength, but
without strength, such an impotence as is in a dead man. Not like
a man in a swoon, but a man in a grave. God only is almighty, and
man all impotency; God only is all-sufficient, and man
all-indigent. It is impossible we can have a strength of our own,
since our first father was feeble, and conveyed his weakness to
us; by the same reason that it is impossible we can have a
righteousness of our own, since our first father sinned: Isa.
xliii. 26, 27, 'Declare, that thou may be justified. Thy first
father has sinned.'
5. This weakness is universal. Sin has made its sickly
impressions in every faculty. The mind is dark, Eph. iv. 18, he
cannot know, 1 Cor. ii. 14, there is a stoniness in the heart, he
cannot bend, Zech. vii. 12; there is enmity in the will, he
cannot be subject, Rom. viii. 7. As to faith, he cannot believe,
John xii. 89. As to the Spirit, the worker of faith, he cannot
receive; that is, of himself, John xiv. 17; acknowledge Christ he
cannot, 1 Cor. xii. 3. As to practice, he cannot bring forth
fruit, John xv. 4. The unrighteousness introduced by Adam poured
a poison into every faculty, and dispossessed it of its strength,
as well as of its beauty: what else could be expected from any
deadly wound but weakness as well as defilement? The
understanding conceives only such thoughts as are pleasing to the
law of sin; the memory is employed in preserving the dictates and
decrees of it; the imagination full of fancies imprinted by it;
the will wholly submitting to its authority; conscience standing
with fingers in its mouth, for the most part not to speak against
it; the whole man yielding itself and every member to the
commands of it, and undertaking nothing but by its motions, Rom.
vi. 19.
6. To evince it, there is not one regenerate man but in his
first conversion is chiefly sensible of his own insufficiency;
and universal consent is a great argument of the truth of a
proposition; it is a ground of the belief of a deity, it being
the sentiment of all nations. I do not speak of disputes about it
from the pride of reason, but of the inward experience of it in
any heart. What more frequent in the mouths of those that have
some preparations to it by conviction, than I cannot repent, I
cannot believe, I find my heart rotten, and base, and unable to
any thing that is good! There have been instances of those that
would elevate the power of man, and freedom of will in spiritual
things, who have been confuted in their reasonings, and
acknowledged themselves so, when God has come to work savingly
upon them. Indeed, this poverty of spirit, or sense of our own
emptiness, insufficiency, and indigence, is the first gospel
grace wrought in the soul, and stands in the head of all those
noble qualifications in our Saviours sermon, as fitting men for
the kingdom of God: 'Blessed are the poor in spirit; for theirs
is the kingdom of heaven,' Mat. v. 3. And God in the whole
progress of this work keeps believers in a sensibleness of their
own weakness, thereby to preserve them in a continual dependence
on him; and therefore sometimes withdraws his Spirit from them,
and lets them fall, that they may adhere more closely to him, and
less confide in themselves.
2. What kind of impotency or insufficiency is there in the
soul to be the cause of this work?
Ans. 1. It is not a physical weakness for want of faculties.
Understanding we have, but not a spiritual light in it to direct
us; will we have, but no freedom to choose that which is
spiritually good. Though since the fall we have such a free will
left, which pertains to the essential nature of man, yet we have
lost that liberty which belongs to the perfection of human
nature, which was to exercise acts spiritually good and
acceptable to God! Had the faculties been lost, Adam had not been
capable of a promise or command, and consequently of ever sinning
after. In Adam, by creation we were possessed of it. In Adam, by
his corruption, we were stripped of it; we have not lost the
physical but the moral nature of these faculties; not the
faculties themselves, but the moral goodness of them. As the
elementary heat is left in a carcass, which yet is unfit to
exercise any animal action for want of a soul to enliven it; so,
though the faculties remain after this spiritual death, we are
unfit to exert any spiritual action for want of grace to quicken
them. If man wanted faculties, this want would excuse him in his
most extravagant actions: no creature is bound to that which is
simply impossible; nay, without those faculties, he could not act
as a rational creature, and so were utterly incapable of sinning.
Sin has untuned the strings, but did not unstring the soul; the
faculties were still left, but in such a disorder, that the wit
and will of man can no more tune them, than the strings of an
untuned lute can dispose themselves for harmony without a
musician's hand.
2. Neither is it a weakness arising from the greatness of the
object above the faculty. As when an object is unmeet for a man,
because he has no power in him to comply with it; as to
understand the essence of God; this the highest creature in its
own nature cannot do, because God dwells in inaccessible light;
and it is utterly impossible for any thing but God to comprehend
God. If man were required to become an angel, or to rise up and
kiss the sun in the firmament; these were impossible things,
because man wanted a faculty in his primitive nature for such
acts: so if God had commanded Adam to fly without giving him
wings, or to speak without giving him a tongue, he had not been
guilty of sin in not doing it, because it was not disobedience,
for disobedience is only in what a man has a faculty to do; but
to love God, praise him, depend upon him, was in the power of
man's original nature, for they were not above those faculties
God endued him with, but very correspondent and suitable to him.
The objects proposed are in themselves intelligible, credible,
capable to be comprehended.
3. Neither is it a weakness arising from the insufficiency of
external revelation. The means of regeneration are clearly
revealed in the gospel, the sound is gone into all the earth,
Rom. x. 18, and the word of the Lord is an apprehensible object;
it is 'near us, even in our mouths,' Rom. x. 8; 'the commandment
of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes,' Ps. xix. 8. If the
object were hid, the weakness lay not on the part of man, but on
the insufficiency of revelation; as if any thing were revealed to
man in an unknown tongue, there were an insufficiency in the
means of revelation.
But, 4, it is a moral weakness. The disability lies chiefly in
the will, John v. 40; what is there, 'You will not come to me,'
is, ver. 44, 'How can you believe?' You cannot, because
you will not. Carnal lusts prepossess the heart, and make their
party in the will against the things of God; so that inward
propensities to embrace sin, are as great as the outward
temptations to allure to it, whereby the soul is carried down the
stream with a wilful violence. In this respect he is called dead,
though the death be not of the same nature with a natural death;
for such a one has not the natural faculty to raise himself, but
this is an impotency arising from a voluntary obstinacy; yet the
iniquity of a man binds him no less powerfully under this
spiritual captivity, than a natural death and insensibility keeps
men in the grave; and those fetters of perversity they can no
more knock off, than a dead man can raise himself from the grave.
By reason of those bands they are called prisoners, Isa. xiii. 7,
and cannot be delivered without the powerful voice of Christ
commanding and enabling them to go forth: Isa. xlix. 9, 'That
thou must say to the prisoner, Go forth.' The apostle lays the
whole fault of men's not receiving the truth upon their wills: 2
Thess. ii. 10, 'They received not the love of the truth;' they
heard it, they knew it, but they loved not that which courted
them. It is not seated in any defect of the will, as it is a
power of the soul; for then God, who created it, would be charged
with it, and might as well charge beasts to become men, as men to
become gracious. Man, as a creature, had a power to believe and
love God; to resist temptations, avoid sin, and live according to
nature; but man, as corrupted by a habit derived to him from his
first parents, and increased by a custom in sin, cannot believe,
cannot love God, cannot bring himself into a good frame; as a
musician cannot play a lesson when he has the gout in his
fingers. When the eyes are full of adultery, when the heart is
full of evil habits, it 'cannot cease to sin,' it cannot be
gracious, 2 Pet. ii. 14.
Now, these habits are either innate, or contracted and
increased.
(1.) Innate. By nature we have a habit of corruption,
fundamental of all other that grow up in us. Man made a covenant
with sin, contracted a marriage with it; by virtue of this
covenant sin had a full power over him. What the apostle speaks
of the marriage between man and the law, Rom. vii. 1-4, is
applicable to this case. Sin as a husband, by way of covenant,
has a powerful dominion over the will, and binds it as long as
sin lives; and the will has no power to free itself, unless a
higher power make a divorce, or by the death of the husband. This
is the cause of man's obstinacy against any return to God, the
will is held in the cords of sin, Prov. v. 22. The habit has
obtained an absolute sovereignty over it: Hosea v. 4, 'They will
not frame their doings to turn unto their God.' Why? 'For the
spirit of whoredoms is in the midst of them,' that is, in their
hearts. This adulterous or idolatrous habit holds their wills in
chains, and acts them as a man possessed by the devil is acted
according to the pleasure of the devil. The devil speaks in them,
moves in them, and does what he pleases by them. And which binds
the will faster, this habit is not in a natural man by way of a
tyranny, but a voluntary sovereignty on the part of the will, the
will is pleased and tickled with it. As a woman (to use the
similitude of the Holy Ghost in that place) is so overruled by
her affections to other lovers that she cannot think of returning
to her former husband, but her unlawful love plays all its
pranks, and rises with that force against all arguments from
honesty and credit, that it keeps her still in the chains of an
unlawful lust, so this is not a habit which does oppress nature,
or force it against its will, but by its incorporation, and
becoming one with our nature, has quite altered it from that
original rectitude and simplicity wherein God at first framed it.
It is a law of sin, which having razed out the purity of the law
of nature, commands in a greater measure in the stead of it.
Hence it is as natural to man, in his lapsed state, to have
perverse dispositions against God, as it is essential to him to
be rational. And the chariot of that weak remaining reason left
us, is overturned by our distempered passions; and the nobler
part of man is subject to the rule of these, which bear down the
authority both of reason and God too. That one sin of the angels,
howsoever complicated we know not, taking place as a habit in
them, has bound them for ever from rising to do any good, or
disentangling themselves from it, and may perhaps be meant by
those 'chains of darkness' wherein they are reserved and held to
the judgment of the great day, having no will to shake them off,
though they have light enough to see the torment appointed for
them.
(2.) New contracted and increased habits upon this foundation.
Custom turns sin more into another nature, and completes the
first natural disorder. An unrenewed man daily contracts a
greater impotency, by adding strength to this habit, and putting
power into the hands of sin to exercise its tyranny, and
increasing our headstrong natures in their unruliness. It is as
impossible of ourselves to shake off the fetters of custom, as to
suppress the unruliness of nature: Jer. xiii. 23, 'Can an
Ethiopian change his skin? or a leopard his spots? then may you
also do good that are accustomed to do evil.' The prophet speaks
not here of what they were by nature, but what they were by
custom; contracting thereby such a habit of evil, that, like a
chronic disease could not be cured by any ordinary means. But may
he not accustom himself to do good? No, it is as impossible as
for an Ethiopian to change his skin. Those habits draw a man to
delight, and therefore to a necessity, of sinning. The pleasure
of the heart, joined with the sovereignty of sin, are two such
strong cords as cannot be untwisted or cut by the soul itself,
no, not without an overruling grace. It was a simple wound in
Adam, but such as all nature could not care, much less when we
have added a world of putrefaction to it. The stronger the habit,
the greater the impotency. If we could not raze out the stamp of
mere nature upon our wills, how can we raze out the deeper
impressions made by the addition of custom? If Adam, who
committed but one sin, and that in a moment, did not seek to
regain his lost integrity, how can any other man, who by a
multitude of sinful acts has made his habit of a giant-like
stature, completed many parts of wickedness, and scoffed at the
rebukes of conscience?
Let us now see wherein this weakness of our wills to renew
ourselves does appear.
1. In a total moral unfitness for this work. Grace being said
to make us meet for our Master's use, it implies an utter
unfitness for God's use of ourselves before grace. There is a
passive capability, a stump left in nature, but no fitness for
any activity in nature, no fitness in nature for receiving grace,
before grace; there is nothing in us naturally which does suit or
correspond with that which is good in the sight of God. That
which is natural is found more or less in all men; but the
gospel, which is the instrument of regeneration, finds nothing in
the nature of man to comply with the main design of it. There is
indeed some compliance of moral nature with the moral precepts in
the gospel, upon which account it has been commended by some
heathens; but nothing to answer the main intendment of it, which
is faith, the top grace in regeneration. This has nothing to
commend itself to mere nature, nor finds an internal principle in
man that is pleased with it, as other graces do, as love,
meekness, patience, &c. For faith strips a man of all his own
glory, brings himself from himself to live dependently upon
another, and makes him act for another, not for himself; and
therefore meets not with any one principle in man to show it
countenance: 'No good thing dwells in the flesh,' Rom. vii. 18.
There may be some motions lighting there, as a fly upon a man's
face; but they have no settled abode, and spring not up from
nature. If the apostle, who was renewed, found an unfitness in
himself to do that which was good, how great is that unfitness in
a mere natural will, which is wholly under the power of the
flesh, and has no principle in it correspondent to spiritual
truth, to renew itself! If this regeneration had any foundation
in nature, it would be then in most men that hear the gospel,
because there is not a general contradiction in men to those
things which are natural; but since there is no good thing dwells
in any flesh, how can it be fit of itself to be raised into a
conformity to God, which is the highest pitch of the creature's
excellency? The Scripture represents us not as earth, which is
fit to suck in showers from heaven; but as stones, which are only
moistened in the superficies by the rain, but answers not the
intendment of it. Adamants are unfit to receive impressions; and
the best natural heart is no better, like a stone, cold and hard.
The soul with its faculties is like a bird with its wings, but
clogged with lime and clay, unfit to fly. A barren wilderness is
absolutely unfit to make a pleasant and fruitful garden. There is
a contractedness of the heart till God enlarge and open it, and
that in the best nature. Acts xvi. 14, Lydia, it is said,
worshipped God; there was religion in her, yet the Lord opened
her heart for the gospel. Can anything be more indisposed than a
fountain that is always bubbling up poison? So is the heart of
man, Gen. vi. 5. The least imagination rising up in the heart is
evil, and can be no better, since the heart itself is a mass of
venom. If the renewed natures find so much indisposition in the
progress of sanctification, though their sails be filled with
grace, how great must it be where corrupt nature only sits at the
stern! As when Satan came to tempt our Saviour he found nothing
in him, no touchwood in his nature to take fire by a temptation,
so when the Spirit comes, he finds no tinder in man to receive
readily any spark of grace. This unfitness is in the best mere
nature, that seems to have but a drop of corruption: a drop of
water is as unfit to ascend as a greater quantity.
2. There is not only an unfitness, but an unwillingness. A
senseless sluggishness and drowsiness of soul, loath to be moved.
No man does readily hold out his arms to embrace the tenders of
the gospel. What folding of the arms! yet a little more slumber,
a little more sin. Man is a mere darkness before his effectual
calling: 'Who has called us out of darkness,' 1 Peter ii. 9. His
understanding is darkened; the will cannot embrace a thing
offered, unless it have powerful arguments to persuade it of the
goodness of that thing which is offered; which arguments are
modelled in the understanding, but that being darkened, has wrong
notions of divine things, therefore cannot represent them to the
will to be pursued and followed. Adam's running away from God to
hide himself, after the loss of his original righteousness,
discovers how unwilling man is to implore God's favour. How
deplored is the condition of man by sin! since we find not one
prayer put up by Adam, nor can we suppose any till the promise of
recovery was made, though he was sensible of his nakedness, and
haunted by his conscience: 'I was afraid, because I was naked:
and I hid myself,' Gen. iii. 10. He had no mind, no heart, to
turn suppliant unto God; he runs from God, and when God finds him
out, instead of begging pardon by humble prayer, he stands upon
his justification, accuses God to be the cause by giving him the
woman, by whose persuasion he was induced to sin. What glass will
better discover the good will of nature to God than the first
motions after the fall!
3. There is not only an unfitness and unwillingness, but an
affection to something contrary to the gospel. The nature of
outward objects is such, that they attract the sensitive
appetite, corrupted by sin, to prefer them before that which is
more excellent; the heart is forestalled by an inordinate love of
the world, and a pleasure in unrighteousness: 2 Thess. ii. 12,
they 'believed not the truth, but had pleasure in
unrighteousness' ("Eudochesantes"), a singular
pleasure. Where the heart and the devil agree so well, what
liking can there be to God or his will? Where the amity between
sin and the soul is so great, that sin is self, and self is sin,
how can so delightful a friend be discarded, to receive one he
thinks his enemy! This weakness arises from a love to something
different or contrary to what is proposed. When a man is so tied
to that object which he loves that he minds not that contrary
object which is revealed by a fit light, as a man that has his
eyes or his heart fixed upon a fair picture, cannot observe many
things that occur about him; or if he does consider it, he is
taken so much with the things he loves, that he seems to hate the
other; that though he does count it good, yet compared with what
he loved before, he apprehends it as evil, and judges it evil,
merely by the error of his mind,—a practical, affected, and
voluntary ignorance. So though a man may sometimes judge that
there is a goodness in the gospel and the things proposed, yet
his affection to other pleasures, which he prefers before the
gospel, causes him to shake off any thoughts of compliance with
it. Now, all natural men in the irons of sin are not weary but in
love with their fetters, and prize their slavery as if it were
the most glorious liberty.
4. There is not only unfitness, and unwillingness, and a
contrary affection to the gospel, but according to the degrees of
this affection to other things, there is a strong aversion and
enmity to the tenders of the gospel. This enmity is more or less
in the heart of every unrenewed man; though in some it is more
restrained and kept down by education, yet it will appear more or
less upon the approaches of grace, which is contrary to nature.
As a spark as well as a flame will burn, though one has less heat
than the other, there is the same nature, the same seminal
principles in all. The carnal mind, let it be never so well
flourished by education, is enmity to God; and therefore
'unable,' because unwilling, 'to be subject to the law,' Rom.
viii. 7. By nature he is of the devil's party, and has no mind
the castle of his heart should ever come into the hands of the
right owner. It is in every faculty. Not one part of the soul
will make a mutiny within against sin, or take part with God when
he comes to lay siege to it; when he 'stretches out his hands,'
he meets with a 'rebellious and gainsaying people,' Rom. x. 21.
It can converse with anything but God, look with delight upon
anything but that which is the only true object of delight. It
can have no desire to have that law written in his heart whose
characters he hates. All the expressions in the Scripture
denoting the work of grace, import man's distaste of it; it is to
deny self, crucify the flesh. What man has not an aversion to
deny what is dearest to him, his self; to crucify what is
incorporated with him, his Isaac, his flesh? The bent of a
natural heart, and the design of the gospel, which is to lay man
as low as the dust, can never agree. A corrupt heart, and the
propositions of grace, meet together as fire and water, with
hissing. The language of man, at the proposals of the gospel, is
much like that of the devils, 'What have we to do with thee? Art
thou come to destroy us?' Luke iv. 34.
5. This aversion proceeds on to a resistance. No rebels were
ever stouter against their prince than an unrenewed soul against
the Spirit of God: not a moment without arms in his hand; he acts
in defence of sin, and resistance of grace, and combats with the
Spirit as his deadly enemy: 'You always resist the Holy Ghost; as
your fathers did, so do you,' Acts vii. 51. The animosity runs in
the whole blood of nature; neither the breathings of love, nor
the thunderings of threatenings, are listened unto. All natural
men are hewed out of one quarry of stone. The highest rock and
the hardest adamant may be dissolved with less pains than the
heart of man; they all, like a stone, resist the force of the
hammer, and fly back upon it. All the faculties are full of this
resistance: the mind, with stout reasoning, gives a repulse to
grace; the imagination harbours foolish conceits of it; in the
heart, hardness and refusing to hear; in the affections, disgust
and displeasure with God's vans, disaffection to his interest;
the heart is locked, and will not of itself shoot one bolt to let
the King of glory enter. What party is like to be made for God,
by bare nature thus possessed? Nature indeed does what it can,
though it cannot do what it would; for though it resist the
outward means and inward motions, yet it cannot efficaciously
resist the determining grace of God, any more than the matter of
the creation could resist the all-powerful voice of God
commanding it to receive this or that form, or Lazarus resist the
receiving that life Christ conveyed to him by his mighty word.
God finds a contradiction in our wills, and we are not regenerate
because our will has consented to the persuasions of grace; for
that it does not do of itself; but the grace of God disarms our
will of all that is capable to make resistance, and determines it
to accept and rejoice in what is offered. Nature of itself is of
an unyielding temper, and removes not one scale from the eye, nor
any splinter from the stone in the heart; for how can we be the
authors of that which we most resist and labour to destroy?
6. Add to all this, the power of Satan in every natural man,
whose interest lies in enfeebling the creature. The devil, since
his first impression upon Adam, has had the universal possession
of nature, unless any natural man free himself from the rank of
the children of disobedience: Eph. ii. 2, 'The spirit that now
works in the children of disobedience;' where the same word
"enengein" is used for the acting of Satan, and
likewise for the acting of sin, in Rom. vii. 5. as it is for the
acting of the Spirit, Philip. ii. 13. In whom he works as a
spirit as powerfully according to his created strength, as the
Holy Ghost works in the children of obedience. As the Spirit
fills the soul with gracious habits to move freely in God's ways,
so Satan fills the soul (as much as in him lies) with sinful
habits, as so many chains to keep it under his own dominion. He
cannot indeed work immediately upon the will, but he uses all the
skill and power that he has to keep men captive for the
performance of his own pleasure: 2 Tim. ii. 26, 'Who are taken
captive by him at his will,' or for his will, "Eis to
ekeinou thelema". It is in that place a dreadful judgment
which God gives some men up to for opposing the gospel, taking
away his restraints, both from the devil and their own hearts,
but more or less he works in every one that opposes the gospel,
which every unrenewed man under the preaching of the gospel does,
he is the strong man that keeps the palace, Luke xi. 21. Can the
will of man make a surrender of it, at God's demand, in spite of
his governor? What power have we to throw off these shackles he
loads us with? We are as weak in his hand as birds in a fowler's.
What will have we, since we are his willing slaves? The darkness
of nature is never like by its own free motion to disagree with
the prince of darkness, without an overpowering grace, able to
contest with the lord as well as the slave; for by the fall he is
become prince of the lower creation, and holds it in chains too
strong for weakness to break. How great, then, is man's
inability! How unreasonable is it to think that the will of man
possessed with such unfitness, unwillingness, affection to other
things, aversion to the gospel, resistance of it, and in the
devil's net, can of itself do anything towards its recovery, from
that it counts no disease; or to turn to that which it accounts
its burden? If unspotted and sound nature did not preserve Adam
in innocence, how can filthy and craze nature recover us from
corruption? If it did not keep him alive when he was living, how
can it convey life to us when we have not a spark of spiritual
life in us? Man was planted a 'noble vine,' but turned himself
into 'a degenerate plant;' nothing that has decayed can by its
own strength recover itself, because it has lost that strength
whereby it could only preserve itself.
1. Man cannot prepare himself for grace.
2. He cannot produce it.
3. He cannot co-operate with God in the first work.
4. He cannot preserve it.
5. He cannot actuate it.
1. Man cannot prepare himself for the new birth.
I shall premise a few things for the better understanding of
this,
(1.) Man has a subjective capacity for grace above any other
creature in the inferior world; and this is a kind of natural
preparation which other creatures have not. A capacity in regard
of the powers of the soul, though not in respect of the present
disposition of them. A stone or a beast are not capable of habits
of grace, no more than of habits of sin, because they want
rational natures, which are the proper seats of both. Our Saviour
did not raise trees or stones to life, though he had the same
power to do that as he had to raise stones to be children to
Abraham; but he raised them that had bodies prepared, in part,
for a receptacle of a soul. As there is a more immediate
subjective capacity in a man newly dead for the reception of life
upon a new infusion of the soul, because he has all the members
already formed, which is not in one whose body is mouldered into
dust, and has not one member organised fit for the acting of a
rational soul. These faculties have a spring of natural motion in
them, therefore are capable of divine grace to make that motion
regular; as the wheels of a clock out of order retain their
substance and their motion if their weights be wound up, but a
false motion unless the disorder of the spring be mended. Man has
an understanding to know, and, when it is enlightened, to know
God's law; a will to move and run, and, when enlarged by grace,
to run the ways of God's commandments; so that he stands in an
immediate capacity to receive the life of grace upon the breath
and touch of God, which a stone does not, not the most sparkling
jewel any more than the meanest pebble; for in this it is
necessary rational faculties should be put as a foundation of
spiritual motion. Though the soul be thus capable as a subject to
receive the grace of God, yet it is not therefore capable, as an
agent, to prepare itself for it or produce it; as a piece of
marble is potentially capable of being the king's statue, but not
to prepare itself by hewing off its superfluous parts, or to
raise itself into such a figure. If there were not a rational
nature, there were nothing immediately to be wrought upon. If
there be not a wise agent and an omnipotent hand, there were
nothing to work upon it.
(2.) Besides this passive capacity, there are more immediate
preparations. The soul, as rational, is capable to receive the
truths of God; but as the heart is stony, it is incapable to
receive the impressions of those truths. A stone, as it is a
corporeal substance, is capable to receive the drops of rain in
its cavities; but because of its hardness is incapable to suck it
in, and be moistened inwardly thereby, unless it be softened. Wax
has a capacity to receive the impression of the seal, but it must
be made pliable by some external agent to that purpose. The soul
must be beaten down by conviction before it be raised up by
regeneration; there must be some apprehensions of the necessity
of it. Yet sometimes the work of regeneration follows so close
upon the heels of these precious preparations, that both must be
acknowledged to be the work of one and the same hand. Paul on the
sudden was struck down. and in a moment there is both an
acknowledgement of the authority of Christ, and a submission to
his will, when he said, 'Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?'
Acts ix. 6. The preparation of the subject is necessary, but this
preparation may be at the same time with the conveyance of the
divine nature: as a warm seal may both prepare the hard wax, and
convey the image to it, by one and the same touch.
(3.) Though some things which man may do by common grace may
be said in some sort to be preparations, yet they are not
formally so, as that there is an absolute causal connection
between such preparations and regeneration They are not causae
dispositivae of grace, not disposing causes of grace. Grace
is all in a way of reception by the soul, not of action from the
soul. The highest morality in the world is not necessary to the
first infusion of the divine nature. Mary Magdalene was far from
the one, yet received the other. If there were anything in the
subject that was the cause of it, the most tender and softest
dispositions would be wrought upon, and the most intelligent men
would soonest receive the gospel. Though we see them sometimes
renewed, yet many times the roughest tempers are seized upon by
grace; and the most unlikely soils for fructifying God plants his
grace in, wherein there could be no preparations before. It is
not with grace as it is with fire, which gives as much heat to a
stone as to a piece of wood; but the wood is sooner heated than
the stone, because it is naturally disposed, by the softness and
porousness of its parts, to receive the heat. Moral nature seems
to be a preparation for grace; if it be so, it is not a cause
howsoever of grace, for then the most moral person would be
soonest gracious, and more eminently gracious after his renewal,
and none of the rubbish and dregs of the world would ever be made
fit for the heavenly building. There seems to be a fitness in
morality for the receiving special grace, because the violence
and tumultuousness of sin is in some measure appeased, the flame
and sparks of it allayed, and the body of death lies more quiet
in them, and the principles cherished by them bear some testimony
to the holiness of the precepts. But though it seems to set men
at a greater nearness to the kingdom of God, yet with all its own
strength it cannot bring the kingdom of God into the heart,
unless the Spirit opens the lock. Yea, sometimes it sets a man
further from the kingdom of God, as being a great enemy to the
righteousness of the gospel, both imputed and inherent, which is
the crown of the gospel: to imputed, as standing upon a
righteousness of their own, end conceiving no need of any other;
to inherent, as acting their seeming holiness neither upon gospel
principles, nor for gospel ends, but in self-reflections and
self-applauses. What may seem preparations to us in matters of
moral life, may in the root be much distant and vastly asunder
from grace; as a divine of our own illustrates it, two mountains
whose tops seem near together may in the bottom be many miles
asunder. The foundation of that which looks like a preparation
may be laid in the very gall of bitterness; as Simon Magus
desiring the gift of the Holy Ghost, but from the covetousness of
his heart. Other operations upon the soul which seem to be nearer
preparations, as convictions, do not infer grace; for the heart,
as a field, may be ploughed by terrors, and yet not sown by any
good seed. Planting and watering are preparations, but not the
cause of fruit; the increase depends upon God.
(4.) There is no meritorious connection between any
preparation in the creature and regeneration. The Pelagian
opinion was, that by a generous love of virtue we might deserve
the grace of God, and the farther assistance of the Spirit, we
first (say they) put our hearts into the hands of God, that God
may incline them which way he please; and by thus making our
wills depend on God, we merit help from God, and make ourselves
worthy of him. Whether this be the opinion of any now, I know
not. This is to assert, that man gives first to God, and then God
to man in way of requital. What son can merit to be born? What
desert before being? Nothing can be pre-existent in the son which
merits generation by the father. The fair hand of moral nature
more induce God to confer on man the state of grace, than the
deed of conveyance of a manor, fairly drawn, can dispose the lord
to pass it away. In what part of Scripture has God indulged mere
nature with any promise of adding grace upon the improvements of
natural abilities? Whatsoever conditional promise there is,
supposes some grace superior to nature in the subject as the
condition of it. We do not find that God has made himself a
debtor to any preparation of the creature.
But there is no obligation on God by anything that may look
like a preparation in man. For,
[1.] If man can lay any obligation on God, it must be by some
act in all parts his own, for which he is not in the least
obliged to God. Thinking is the lowest step in the ladder of
preparation. It is the first act of the creature in any rational
production, yet this the apostle does remove from man, as in
every part of it his own act: 2 Cor. iii. 5, 'Not that we are
sufficient of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves, but
our sufficiency is of God.' The word signifies reasoning. No
rational act can be done without reasoning; this is not purely
our own. We have no sufficiency of ourselves, as of ourselves,
originally and radically of ourselves, as if we were the author
of that sufficiency, either naturally or meritoriously. And
Calvin observes that the word is not "autarkeia" but
"hikanotes", not a self-ability, but an aptitude or
fitness to any gracious thought. How can we oblige him by any
act, since, in every part of it, it is from him, not from
ourselves? For as thinking is the first requisite, so it is
perpetually requisite to the progress of any rational act, so
that every thought in any act, and the whole progress, wherein
there must be a whole flood of thoughts, is from the sufficiency
of God. We cannot oblige God after grace, much less before, for
when grace is given there must be constant effluxes of grace from
God to maintain it; and the acts of grace in us are but a second
grace of God. How can we then oblige him by that which is not
ours, either in the original or improvement? If when a man has
given to another a rich gift he must also give him power to
preserve it, and wisdom to improve it, the person cannot be said
by his improvement of it to oblige the first donor. What has any
man that he has not received? 1 Cor. iv. 7. The apostle excludes
everything in us from the name of a donation to God. If there be
no one thing but is received from God, then no preparation to
grace but is received from him. The obligation then lies upon the
receiver, not upon the donor. But may we not oblige God by the
improvement of such a gift? The apostle includes everything,
challenges him to name any one thing which was not received,
which will contain improvements as well as preparations. If we
have power to improve it, wisdom to improve it, hearts and
opportunities to improve it, all these are by way of reception
from God.
[2.] If man can lay any obligation upon God, it must be by
some pure, spotless act. This cannot be; no pure act can spring
from man. God has taken an exact survey of the whole world in its
dark and fallen state, and could not, among those multitudes of
acts which spring from the will of man find one piece of beauty,
one particle of the divine image, for he has pronounced this
sentence upon them, with repetition, too, as his infallible
judgment: 'There is none righteous no, not one: they are all gone
out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is
none that does good, no, not one,' Rom. iii. 10-12. The most
refined nature derived from Adam was never found without fault, a
pure virtue is a terra incognita. The productions of
nature are always evil. If not one action be fully good in the
nature of man, what meritoriousness can there be in any
preparation of nature for the grace of God? Can the clearest
virtue that ever was since Adam oblige God to pardon its own
defects, that is, the defects of that very act of virtue? Much
less can it challenge a higher degree of grace to be transmitted
to it.
[3.] If any preparation were our own, and were pure, yet being
natural, how could it oblige God to give a supernatural grace? If
there be anything of meritoriousness, it is only something of the
same kind with the work in a greater degree, but there is no
proportion between natural acts and supernatural grace. There is
no one scripture, or one example, declaring grace to be given as
a reward to mere nature, or any act of nature. God indeed, out of
his infinite righteousness, and equity, and goodness, has
rewarded some moral acts with some worldly advantages, or the
withdrawing some judgments threatened, as Ahab's reprieve from
judgment upon his humiliation, 1 Kings xxi. 27, 29; and the
temporary pardon to Nineveh, upon their submission to the
prophet's threatenings, Jonah iii. 8-10. But what obligation lies
upon God to reward men doing thus with super-additions of grace?
for there is no proportion between such a moral act and so
excellent a reward. Are may as well say that a coal by glowing
and sparkling may merit to become a star; or that the orderly
laying the wood and sacrifice upon the altar might merit the
descent of fire from heaven to kindle it.
[4.] If there was any obligation on God, by any preparations
of nature, then such acts would be always followed with renewing
grace. There would be an obligation on God's righteousness to
bestow it. And if it should be denied, the creature might accuse
God of a failure in justice, because he gave not what was due.
God sure would observe that rule of justice which he prescribes
to man, not to detain the wages of a hireling, no, not for a
night. Were grace a debt upon the works of nature, God were then
obliged not only to pay it, but pay it speedily, it being exact
righteousness so to do. But we see the contrary. Publicans and
harlots are raised and beautified, while pharisees lie buried in
the ruins of nature. These preparations are many times without
perfection. The pangs of conviction resolve sometimes into a
return to the old vomit, and make no progress in a state of life
and grace. The apostle's rule will hold true in the whole compass
of the work, Rom. vi. 11, 'If it be of works, then it is no more
grace.' So much as is ascribed to any work or preparation by the
creature, so much is taken from the glory of grace, and would
make God not the author, but assistant, and that too by
obligation, not by grace.
[5.] From this it follows, that man does not prepare himself
by any act of his will, without the grace of God. What
preparation can he make, who is so powerfully possessed by
corrupted habits, which have got so great an empire over him,
struck their roots to the very bottom of his soul, entrenched
themselves in the works of custom, that if he goes about to pull
up one, his arm shakes and his heart faints? How strongly do
these rooted habits resist the power of grace! How much more
easily do they resist the weakness of nature in confederacy with
them! What is said of the remnant of Jacob as a 'dew from the
Lord,' as 'the showers upon the grass,' that it 'tarries not for
man, nor waits for the sons of men,' Micah v. 7, may be said of
the grace of God, it waits not for the preparations and
dispositions of the creature, but prevents them. It is a pure
gift; though we are active with it, yet we are wholly indisposed
for it. We can no more prepare ourselves to shine as stars in the
world, than a dunghill can to shine as a sun in heaven. What
preparations does God wait for in the heart of an infarct when he
sanctifies it? If 'without Christ we can do nothing,' John xv. 5,
then no preparations without Christ; for they are something, and
very considerable too. There is no foundation to think there
should be any preparation in the creature, as of the creature.
First, The first promise of redemption and regeneration
intimates no such thing in man to either of them: Gen. iii. 15,
'I will put enmity,' &c. The putting enmity into man against
Satan is promised by God as his own work. There was a friendship
struck up, a confederacy made, the devil entertained as a
counsellor; God would now break this league, he only puts enmity
into the heart against Satan: 'It shall bruise thy head,' &c.
The bruising the serpent's head is wholly the act of Christ. It,
not the man or the woman, but the promised seed. As there were no
preparations in the creature to that which Christ acted in the
flesh, so there are no preparations in that creature for what
Christ is to do in his Spirit. He bruised Satan in his flesh upon
the cross without any preparations in the creature; and so he
bruises Satan in the heart, by his Spirit, without any
preparations on the creature's part. For anything I see, had man
in the state of innocence been sensible that his dependency, as
to any good, and motion to good, ought to be upon God, and he to
have waited upon God for his change and confirmation, he might
have stood; but when he would practically assert the liberty of
his own will in a way of indifference to good and evil, he fell.
And by the way, those that assert the freedom of their own will
naturally, without the grace of God, either common or special,
seem to me to justify Adam's first affected independence of God.
Secondly, God is as much in the new creation as he was in the
old. Not only the creation of the matter, but the preparation of
it to receive the form, was from God; neither the matter, nor any
part of it, prepared itself. If nothing prepared itself to be a
creature, how can anything prepare itself to be a gracious
creature, since to be a new creature is more than to be a
creature; and every preparation to be a new creature is more than
any preparation to be a creature? The new creation differs, I
must confess, from the old creation; but it is such a difference
which makes it rather harder than easier.
First, The object of the old creation was nothing, the object
of the new is something; but a thing that has no more active
disposition to receive a new form, than nothing had.
Secondly, The object of the first creation was a simple and
pure privation; the object of the second is a contrary form,
which resists the work of God: there was only an action of
creation in the first, there is an action of destruction in the
second, the destruction of the old form and the creation of a
new. Is it likely that any nature would voluntarily prepare
itself for its own destruction? God in the first creation found
no disposition in the subject to entertain a form, here he finds
a contrary disposition to resist the form.
Thirdly, What preparation had any of those we read of in
Scripture from themselves? What disposition had Paul, when he was
struck down with a heart fuller of actual enmity than he had at
his birth? Did the apostles expect any call from their nets, or
set themselves in a readiness before they heard that call? A
voice from Christ was attended with a divine touch or power upon
their hearts; both the preparation and the motion itself took
birth together. And what preparations are there in Scripture, but
are attributed unto God? If a conviction be thorough and full,
and consequently a preparation, it must refer to that Spirit
which our Saviour asserts to be the principal cause of it, John
xvi. 8, 9, 'When he is come,' that is, the Comforter, 'he will
reprove the world of sin.' It is laid wholly upon this, as the
end of the almighty Spirit's coming, whereby it is not likely men
would be convinced without him. Is there any desire or prayer for
it? Even this, if true, is from the Holy Ghost; 'no man can call
Christ Lord, but by the Holy Ghost,' 1 Cor. xii. 3. Did any of
those our Saviour cured of bodily infirmities, prepare themselves
for that cure? Neither can any man prepare himself for his
spiritual cure.
Fourthly, What thing in all the records of nature ever
prepared itself for a change? All preparations in matter for
receiving any form arise not from the matter itself, but from
some other active principle, or the new form in part introduced,
which by degrees expels the old; as in water, when heat comes in
the place of cold, the preparation is not from the water, but
from the new quality introducing itself. The grace of God is to
the soul as form is to matter. The body is formed in the womb,
for the reception of the soul, but not by the embryo, but by the
formative virtue of the parent, fashioning the parts of the body
to make it a fit lodging for the soul; or, as some think, the
soul itself, as the bee, fashions its own cell; but howsoever it
is not from itself. The preparations of Lazarus to rise were from
the voice of Christ, not from the stinking body of Lazarus. The
nature of all is alike. That one lute is better prepared for an
harmonious touch, is from the musician's skill, not any art of
its own. If one man of the same nature with another be endued
with rich morals, it is from the common grace of God exciting
natural light, and the common notions of fit and just; as the
reason one vine of the same kind brings forth more generous fruit
than another, is from the stronger influence of the sun. All
nature assents to this truth, that nothing does prepare itself
for a change.
Fifthly, If man did prepare himself for grace, it would be a
disparagement to God, it would violate the sovereignty of God. It
would be derogatory to the majesty of God to have his grace
depend upon the conditions and previous preparations in the
creature; it would lay the foundations of grace in a man's self,
and impose a necessity in God to come in with further grace, and
make his actions dependent upon the actings of the creature. The
beginning of faith would be from us, and the supplement from God;
the work of grace would be of him that 'wills and runs,' and not
'of God that shows mercy,' Rom. ix. 16. It would change the whole
tenor of the Scripture, and make conversion not God's drawing of
us, but our traction of God; for he that does dispose himself to
grace, is in some sort the cause of that grace, as he that does
dispose the subject for such a form is in a sort the cause of
that form. If the preparations were from the will of man, man
would begin the noblest work that ever was wrought, and God would
be made no more than an attendant upon the creature's motion;
whereas the very beginning in the will, as well as the
perfection, is ascribed to God: Philip. ii. 13, 'God works in you
both to will and to do of his good pleasure.' God's good pleasure
is the original cause of this work upon the will, not the will's
good pleasure. The work then depending on God's good pleasure,
excludes any dependency on the will of man; it is therefore
called a creation, to show God's independence upon anything as to
this work.
Sixthly, Where should this preparation begin? in what part of
the soul? Shall it begin in the understanding? That has lost the
reins whereby it governed the lower parts of the soul. Nothing is
more discomposed in its acts than that faculty. It is well
compared to a charioteer or coachman fallen from his box, and his
feet entangled in the reins of the horses, which hurry him about.
The sensitive appetite, like a wild horse, has got the bit
between his teeth, runs about, and draws the understanding after
it. Indeed a charioteer that has lost the government of his
horses endeavours to remedy that violence; he cries out, makes
all resistance, has a will to help himself; but the understanding
is so far from resisting, that it takes pleasure in the disorder
of the passions; it prompts the will to follow them, and this is
properly to be a servant to sin. Shall it begin in the appetite?
How can that incline to range itself to the order of reason? It
has no reason itself; it submits not to the laws of reason; it
has got the mastery of it, and has prescription for its dominion,
of a long standing, ever since the fall. The dominion of sin is
in the understanding, will, appetite, whence all of them are
called flesh, so that all the motions of the soul depending upon
them, the slavery must needs be voluntary. Therefore neither the
understanding conceives, nor the will wills, nor the appetite
desires, anything against themselves; how, then, should the will,
which is captivated by a corrupt understanding and disorderly
affections, recover itself, when it must necessarily be under the
guidance of one of these jailers? Suppose the understanding were
illuminated, are those evil habits in the will corrected barely
by the illumination of the understanding? If they are corrected,
why does not the will always follow the dictate of the
understanding? But, alas! those evil habits determine the will to
evil, as good habits determine it to good; for it is the nature
of habits to incline the faculties to those things which are
suitable to the nature of those habits; therefore as long as it
remains under the command of those evil inclinations, it is
impossible it should pass from evil to good. But that the will
has evil inclinations, appears by the Scripture calling the whole
man flesh; else corruption would not be universally seated in the
soul, but only accidental in the will, from the darkness of the
understanding. But certainly, as Adam in innocence had an
habitual holy disposition in his will, so man, in his fall, has a
corrupt inclination in his will, an habitual quality, whereby he
drinks iniquity like water, Job xv. 16. What power of the will
can take those cords off, which hold it prisoner, whereby it must
be prepared for a free motion?
To evidence this further, we shall consider,
1. That man does not naturally, neither can, understand the
new birth.
2. He cannot desire it. Understanding and desire are necessary
preparations to any rational change a creature can make in
itself.
1. Man cannot understand it. This is necessary to a change.
Whatsoever is done by the will, must be done by the impulse of
some other faculty. Sensitive appetite cannot instruct the will
to this work. Sense is not capable of reason, much less of
religion, though it be the portal to both. The will can never be
moved to any good thing, unless the mind propound it as good and
amiable. The act of thinking must precede the act of believing,
for we cannot believe without thinking of what we believe. It is
less to think than understand. If we cannot, then, do that which
is less in the preparation, we cannot do that which is greater,
especially when it is impossible to will without thinking; and
thinking is a necessary means to willing. He that cannot prepare
himself for a good thought, how can he prepare himself for a
gracious habit? What ability have we to the act of faith, when we
have no ability to any thought of faith? We cannot by the
strength of nature understand it, if we consider,
(1.) The first blot caused by sin was upon the understanding.
Man was first deceived by the sophistical reasonings of the
serpent. The first effect of sin was to spread a thick darkness
upon Adam's understanding. Though the whole house, and every beam
of it, fell together, yet this faculty was first unfastened, and
brought all the rest to ruin. As soon as ever he ceased from
glorifying God as God, a darkness was brought upon his foolish
heart: Rom. i. 21, 'When they knew God, they glorified him not as
God, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish
heart was darkened,' where the apostle describes the state of man
in corrupt nature after his fall. Folly first in the heart to
desire the forbidden fruit, and then darkness came upon the
understanding. Their "dialogismoi", their reasonings,
became empty and contradictory; their primitive light departed,
and darkness, as a privation, took place. What true motion can
there be in the will, when there was so thick an obscurity in the
understanding? Where there is but a false knowledge in the mind,
there can be no true motion in the will. There must then be a
restoration of this light, before there can be any preparation to
a good act of the will. Adam recovered not this light by his own
strength, no, nor by the outward declaration of the gospel in the
promise; for no outward object proposed to the understanding
confers any power upon the faculty. How can it then be recovered
by our strength, since we have rather added to the scales than
diminished them? For,
(2.) There is a darkness transmitted from him to the
understanding of every man by nature. The light is darkened in
the heaven of the soul, the more spiritual part of the mind, Isa.
v. 30, as the prophet speaks in another case. Our understandings
are so closed up with the thick slime of sin, that we cannot see
the beauty of gospel truths; 'darkness comprehends not the
light,' John i. 5. Though the light of the sun did shine a
thousand times brighter than it does, and strike upon the face
and eyelids of a man with the greatest glory, yet if there be a
spot upon the apple of his eye, if he scants a seeing faculty, he
can apprehend nothing of it. Hence the apostle prays for the
illumination of the understanding of the Ephesians, chap. i. 17,
18, and that they might have 'a spirit of wisdom and revelation
in the knowledge of God.' And our Saviour tells them that they
'must be taught of God,' John vi. 45, by an internal teaching of
the Spirit, as well as by himself in an oral instruction. What a
thick cloud was upon Nicodemus his mind, when he discoursed with
him about regeneration, who was the ablest teacher to illustrate
it to his fancy and understanding! It is not such a darkness as
if he might understand the mysteries of heaven, if he would exert
the strength of his own reason. This would be only as a man
shutting his eyes who had a visive faculty; but it is such a
darkness as cannot be expelled by flesh and blood, or anything
arising from it: 'Flesh and blood,' says our Saviour to Peter,
'has not revealed it unto thee, but my, Father which is in
heaven,' Mat. xvi. 17. Flesh and blood includes everything in
opposition to God. Our Saviour had externally owned himself, in
the face of the Jews, to be the Messiah, the Son of God; but
besides this, there was an inward illumination granted to Peter,
for the apprehending and embracing so great a truth. There is not
only a darkness upon the minds of those who have no outward
revelation of the will of God in Christ, but upon those who are
in the midst of the sunbeams: Deut. xxix., 'Yet the Lord has not
given you an heart to perceive, and eyes to see, and ears to
hear, unto this day.' They wanted not the beams. No people in the
world had the ordinances of God besides them; but they wanted an
organ fitted to receive and use them, which was not in their
power, but is mentioned as the gift of God. God promises to make
his people to know his ways. What needs that, if they could know
them without him? We have indeed the light of the gospel, we have
also a faculty, but without an eye disposed for the light, Ye
enjoy no benefit by it. Now who ever heard that darkness could
prepare itself for its own expulsion? It cannot comprehend the
light, much less prepare for the reception of it. Now who ever
heard of one born blind, in a capacity to prepare himself for
sight? We are blind in naturals, much more in spirituals. The
most polished reasons among the heathens, both for knowledge in
naturals and prudence in civil affairs, coated, and with all
their wisdom knew not God.
(3.) There is an unsuitableness and a contrariety in the mind
of man to the gospel, which is the instrument of regeneration.
There is a mighty distance between the spiritual object and the
natural faculty. The understanding, though never so well
furnished with natural stuff, is but natural, and flesh; the
object is supernatural and spiritual; therefore the richest mere
nature can no more attain to the knowledge of spiritual things,
than the clearest sense can attain to the knowledge of rational.
Though every man 'by nature has the things contained in the law,'
Rom. ii. 14, 15, yet no man has by nature the things contained in
the gospel. The gospel has not the same advantage in the hearts
of men as the law hash, for it finds nothing of kin to it. Though
a natural heart has some broken pieces of the law of God
deposited in it, yet there is not the least syllable of Christ or
regeneration written in the mind by the hand of nature. The
understanding therefore naturally cannot prepare itself for the
reception of the gospel, because it has not any principle in it
which suits the doctrine of it. It seems a ridiculous thing to
the wisest carnalist, who receives not the things of God,
because, out of the pride of natural wisdom, he counts them
foolishness, 1 Cor. ii. 14. Hence not many wise are renewed in
their minds. Had the gospel truth been as agreeable to reason as
the other common notions imprinted in man, it would have been
preserved in the world longer than it was, since, without
question, Adam did communicate to his posterity the notion of a
redeemer, which did soon die among them, because not consonant to
that reason they had derived by nature from Adam. It was a
knowledge given to Adam by revelation, not imprinted in his
nature by creation. Besides, there is a contrariety in the mind
to the truth of the gospel. As we say of liberty, so of enmity.
Though it be formally in the will, yet it is radically in the
understanding. The mind is the seat of those hostile principles
which act the will against God, Rom. viii. 7. The mind of man
regards the things of God as unpleasant, and an intolerable yoke
and hard bridle. Let light, the most excellent thing in the
world, glare upon a man that has sore eyes, he will turn away
from it, or shut his eyes against it; for though he understands
the worth of it, yet it has a quality offensive to him. So is the
gospel to those notions settled in the distempered mind. Men give
not credit to the declarations of the gospel; 'Who has believed
our report?' has been the voice of God's messengers in all ages,
Isa. liii. 1. No man, unless known by all never to speak truth,
but is more believed than the God of infallible and unerring
truth! What principles, then, are there in the understanding to
prepare it for the reception of that which is so contrary to its
ancient inmates?
(4.) Besides this, the natural levity of the understanding
does incapacitate it to prepare itself. It is with the
understanding as with a line, the farther it is stretched out the
weaker and more wavering it is. So is the understanding, being at
a distance from God. How do vain thoughts intrude into the mind!
No man can keep a door locked against them. We feel them rushing
upon us while we endeavour to avoid them. We are confounded and
overwhelmed by them, and drawn to things against our own
resolutions. Man has not the command of his own heart, so much as
to think steadily of a divine object. How can he then prepare his
own heart, when he cannot without grace fix in any holy
meditation which is necessary for the renewal of it, since
nothing is more discomposed in its acts than the mind of man,
which is always dancing about, like cork in the water, or
feathers in the air? Whence should come any preparation to good
orders but by some supernatural ballast, to establish it from
fluctuating? This disease every man is sensible of, and
whatsoever disease is inherent in nature cannot be cured by any
preparations by that nature which is wholly overgrown with it.
(5.) Hence it follows that a natural mind has no right notion
of grace. To the right notion of a thing is required
suitableness, pleasure, and a fixedness of the mind upon it. A
natural mind wants all these. How can it then prepare itself for
that which it has no knowledge of? And without knowledge it
cannot commend it to the will. The apostle asserts a plain cannot
in this business: 1 Cor. ii. 14, 'He cannot know them, because
they are spiritually discerned.' Being destitute of the Spirit,
they cannot discern the things of the Spirit. Sense can discern
things sensibly, not rationally. Reason can discern things
rationally, but not spiritually. The light whereby a natural man
judges of the things of the gospel is a star-light or a
moonlight, which gives not a distinct view of the object. The
evil disposition must be removed from the mind, before the object
be entertained according to its worth. As if any natural object
have such excellent qualities in it, that if it be embraced it
will draw the will and affections after it; yet if the mind be
ill-disposed, and does not judge of the object according to the
merit of it, it will refuse it. Offer a man gold who understands
not the worth of gold, it will not allure him. Man with his eyes
is spiritually blind, and with his ears is spiritually deaf. So
God calls the Gentiles, which were to be brought to Christ for a
restitution of their eyes: Isa. xliii. 8, 'Bring forth the blind
people that have eyes, and the deaf that have ears.' Such can no
more judge of the excellency of spiritual things than a blind man
can have regular conceptions of colours, or a deaf man of the
excellency of music. If 'no man can call Jesus Lord, but by the
Holy Ghost,' 1 Cor. xii. 8; if no man can have a magnificent
conception and speech of Christ, but by the Spirit giving him
both that conception and utterance, he cannot have a notion of
the formation of Christ in the heart without the gift and
impression of the same hand. What preparations, then, can arise
from nature, when the mind can have no conception of Christ but
by the Spirit of God?
Well, then, to conclude this. What preparations can there be
in nature, since we cannot understand the things of God, when yet
we have more clearness in our understanding to see them than we
have force in our wills to love them and embrace them? It is in
the understanding that the common notions, which are the grounds
of knowledge, are deposited. There is less of ignorance in our
understanding than of enmity in our will. The eye can see further
than the arm can reach. If therefore we cannot think or
understand, by all that help of common notions, without the grace
of God, hove can we then prepare our wills for it, to comply with
it, and renew that faculty which is chiefly possessed with a
contrariety to it?
2. As we cannot understand it, so we cannot naturally desire
it. What is not spiritually discerned cannot spiritually be
desired. Not but that according to those unformed conceptions
which men have of it by common grace, there may be some weak
velleities, but they are wishings without a will, not desires
according to the value of the thing. Mercy first breathed on our
first parents, before they breathed after that. The first motion
came from God. So soon were they turned obstinate enemies against
their Creator, without any thoughts of turning supplicants,
though they had not lost the conceptions of their late integrity.
which if they had, they had been wholly insensible, without any
trouble of conscience. What desires can we naturally, then, have
for it, who have far weaker conceptions of that happiness than
they had immediately alter they lost it? We cannot desire what we
do not apprehend. A beast cannot desire to be a man, because he
has no conceptions of the excellency of the human nature above
his own. No nature can ever affect that which is contrary to it.
Do flesh can ever desire its own crucifixion. If we seek, we
shall find; if we ask, we shall receive, but who first touches
the heart to seek or to ask? If we cannot think a good thought of
ourselves, how can we think so good a thought as a desire of
regeneration? To say, then, we can desire the new creation of
ourselves, without some kind of grace, is to assert another
doctrine than what the apostle Paul asserted to those already
regenerate. The first will, which is the necessary spring of all
actions, is wrought by God, Philip. ii. 13. The frame of man's
will and desire stands to another point: John viii. 44, 'The
lusts of your father you will do.' The best renewed man 'knows
not what to pray for as he ought,' without the instruction of the
Spirit, Rom. viii. 26. We cannot give our hearts a lift to
heaven, or breathe out an unutterable groan, without the help of
an infinite Spirit. The root of man's affections groves downward,
not upward. What breathings can be expected in a soul choked up
with sin? There was no motion of the church till 'the hand of her
beloved was put in by the hole of the door,' and made a motion in
her bowels, Cant. v. 4. The church owed no obligation to her free
will and her own predispositions. There is not a smoke in the
heart to heaven without a spark first from heaven; not a step
till God enlarges the heart. Velleities are from common grace,
under the preaching, of the word, fervent and saving desires are
from special grace, by the hand of the Spirit. So that there are
no preparations from nature to this, since both our apprehensions
of it and desires of it spring not out of that stock.
The second main thing is this, As man cannot prepare himself
for it, so he does not produce and work it in himself. This is
evident from the former. If he cannot make any preparation, which
is the less, he cannot cause any actual production of it, which
is the greater.
But to evidence it more, let us spend some time in this.
As it does not depend upon the will of man in the preparation,
so neither in the production.
I shall evidence it, first, by arguments drawn from the
consideration of God.
If this work depended upon the will of man, as the first cause
in the production, it would deprive God,
1. Of his sovereign independence. If man's will were the first
cause of regeneration, God would not be the supreme independent
cause in the noblest of his works. This work is nobler than
creation in respect of the price paid for it. The world was made
without the death of anything to purchase the creation of it. But
the divine image is not restored without the death of the Son of
God, every line in this new image being drawn with his blood. Is
there anything happens in the world but by the conduct and
efficacy of his providence? Do all the motions of the heavens,
the productions of' creatures, the universal events of nature,
depend upon the will, power, and wisdom of God? And shall the
soul, the most excellent of the lover creatures, bearing the
characters of God's wisdom and goodness upon it (the acts of the
soul in the way of religion, being the noblest acts it can
produce), be left wholly to itself in the production and
management of these? Shall God, the supreme cause in everything
else, be an inferior and secondary cause in this affair? It is
'not he that plants, nor he that waters, but God that gives the
increase,' 1 Cor. iii. 7. God is the first cause, upon whom man
depends in all kind of actions, much more in supernatural
actions, chiefly in the understanding and will, upon which
faculties no creature can have any intrinsic influence to cause
them to exercise their vital acts. If the will of man were the
first cause, God would be an attendant to the creature in the
noblest works. God would not then be the first mover, but man.
The will willing would then be the cause of God's working, not
God's working the cause of the will's willing and choice. God's
working would be consequent upon the will, and so the effect of
the will's free motion. Man would then be the dispositiva causa
in relation to God. It would make God the second cause, and
represent him expecting the beck, and the preparations of man,
before he did exert any act. It would make God to will that which
man wills, and make God to will that which man may reject. It
would follow that God concurs not to regeneration by way of
sovereignty, but by way of concomitance. It would not be a
victorious but a precarious grace, which is against the whole
tenor of the Scripture, which represents God as holding in his
hands the first links of all second causes: Rom. xi. 36, 'For of
him, and through him, and to him, are all things.' He is the
first governor of all the wills and powers of the creatures, the
first cause of all motions. He orders all, without being ordered
by any. Now this is below the majesty of God, to be conducted in
his motion by the will of the creature, to have the purposes of
his goodness brought into act by an uncertain and slippery cause.
How can it be conceived that God should put his hand to the more
ignoble works of nature, and turn over the noblest work of the
new creation to the airy will of the creature.
To conclude; God must either be precedent in his operation to
the act of the will, or follow it. If precedent, we have what we
would, if subsequent, then God is a mere attendant upon the
motions of the creature, and a servant to wait upon man. This is
to advance free will to the throne of God and depress God to the
footstool of will; this is to deify the creature, by placing the
crown of the sovereign independence of God on the head of free
will.
2. It puts a blot upon the wisdom of God. If God expects the
determination of the will of man, whether he shall act or no,
then God is disposed by the will of man to the intention of his
end. But it is very inconsistent with that unfathomable and
unerring wisdom, to have the attainment of his end depend upon an
agent wherein nothing is wrapped up but folly and madness,
Eccles. ix. 3. This is to make his power depend upon weakness,
and his gracious ends towards his creature hang upon the
extravagancies of one distracted, which no wise man would be
guilty of. Is God in all things else a God of power and wisdom,
working all things in number, weight, and measure, springing up
every motion in the lower world, by an unblameable counsel? And
shall he leave the forming of the image of his Son, wherein his
wisdom is most seen, to the slight irregular will of man, which
has neither weight nor measure in itself? This would make the
immutable counsel of God depend upon the mutability of the
creature; which would be inconsistent with the wisdom of man, who
chooses the firmest means he can for the conduct of his designs;
for if man wills this day, then God wills, if man reject it the
next day, then he rejects that which God wills. So God's will
most be at uncertainty, according to the will of man. How shall
his counsel stand upon so tottering a bottom? How shall he do all
his pleasure if it were a mere dependent upon the pleasure of the
creature, contrary to what he is pleased positively to assert:
Isa. xlvi. 10, 'My counsel shall stand, I will do all my
pleasure.' The apostle does couch these into arguments together:
Eph. i. 11, 'Who works all things according to the counsel of is
own will;' he argues (1) from the power of God, 'who works all
things', whereby our own works, and power, are excluded, and God
asserted to be the supreme cause of everything, in an efficacious
and energetical manner, as the word "energein"
signifies. (2.) From his wisdom, 'according to the counsel of his
own will,' wisely and justly, and therefore not according to
ours, wherein there is nothing but folly and evil. This excludes
all our own wills in the first work. Now, to assert that this
beautiful image were brought forth upon the stage of the heart by
the will of man, as the first cause, would destroy God's
prerogative, and represent his operations under the conduct of
our own counsel and will, not of his own. Certainly if there be a
secret and wise Spirit of providence, running through the whole
world to preserve his honour in his works, as certainly there is,
the most honourable declaration of them in the heart cannot be
thought to be left to the conduct of wild and hare-brained
nature.
3. If the will of man were the prime cause of regeneration, it
would deprive God of his foreknowledge and prescience; it would
make that foreknowledge, which is certain and infallible, merely
contingent. For if the will of man were wholly left to its own
determination, the motions of the will were doubtful and
uncertain, till the will does determine itself; and so God's
knowledge of them would be uncertain, for it is clear, that from
a thing wholly uncertain, there cannot arise a certain knowledge.
Therefore, God could not be said certainly to foreknow the
conversion of man, if the efficacy of grace depended upon so
contingent a cause as the liberty of man's will; for then it
might not be, as well as be; the will might not embrace it, and
so the knowledge of God be but merely conjectural,—a
knowledge unworthy of a deity, which must be supposed to be
omniscient; a knowledge depending upon a peradventure, or at
best, it is but a very likely it will be so. This would be
a debasing the deity to an opinionative knowledge, which could
not be certain, because depending upon so undetermined and
wavering a cause. God cannot know this or that man's regeneration
from eternity but he must see it infallibly in himself willing
it, or in the causes of it, irresistibly producing it. But if the
efficacy of grace depends upon the will, then God does not
certainly determine the regeneration of man. And for God to
foreknow that which he himself has not determined, and when
nothing in the creature, nor anything in the circumstances, does
determine it, is to make God see that (as one says) which neither
in the creature nor in himself is to be seen.
Obj. Some may object, How does God come to foreknow sin, for
that depends upon the liberty of the will?
Ans. It would be too long to inquire into this, I shall only
at present say this, it is certain God does foresee every sin,
otherwise the evil acts of men could not be predicted. Our
Saviour could not then have foreknown what the scribes and
priests would do to him, as he does foretell: Mat. xvi. 21,
'Christ began to tell them how many things he was to suffer of
the chief priests and scribes.' And since God cannot fail in his
predictions, but they will certainly come to pass, the hearts of
the Jews could do no other thing, supposing the prediction, than
what Christ does here foretell, for their wicked wills would
certainly determine themselves that way. And God, by a
concurrence of causes which he had linked together in his hand,
orders things so, that meeting with the corruption in their
wills, their wills determine themselves to such actions there
foretold; yet is not God therefore the author of sin. For sin
being no positive thing, cannot have an efficient, but a deficient
cause; and God determines the withdrawing of his common grace,
and the ordering of such and such circumstances, and so did
foresee how a free creature, with that corruption in his heart,
would determine himself in such occasions, when involved in such
circumstances. But now in the work of regeneration, outward
circumstances cannot cause any determination of the will, because
those outward circumstances of grace meet with nothing in the
heart full of corruption, to take part with them, which outward
circumstances of sin do. Therefore since there can be no
foresight of God in this case, depending upon the concurrence of
outward circumstances, unless there were something in the heart
which did suit them, the determination of the will cannot proceed
from them, but from God himself, willing and determining the will
by a positive influx of his grace. The determination of the will
to sin comes from within, from its natural corruption concurring
with such occasions, which, joining together, determine the will
to it. Therefore God foresees what a free creature will do; but
there being no principle in the will by nature to correspond with
any gracious external circumstances, it cannot determine itself
to grace, because it wants a principle of determination within
itself, the corrupt habits determining it quite otherwise. Sin
proceeds not so much from the liberty as the captivity of the
will; and God knowing the corrupt frame, can foresee what man in
such a frame will do upon occasion; as we may easily resolve that
an habitual drunkard will be drunk when he has sensual objects
placed before him.
4. Another consideration is this: to make the will of man the
efficient of his regeneration, is to make the truth of God a
great uncertainty.
(1.) First, In the covenant he made with Christ. If his having
a seed depended upon the will of man, the promise of God to give
him a seed might be null and void; for at least it must be
granted possible, that not one man under heaven would have
accepted of his terms; and then his coming to save had been in
vain, because there was a possibility that not one man would have
embraced the salvation offered. Since the number of rejecters of
him is greater than the number of receivers, it is likely the
less number, if left to their own wills, would have followed the
greater, since the prevalence of evil examples above good ones is
every day evident. It had not been, then, 'the pleasure of the
Lord shall prosper in his hand,' Isa. liii. 10, 11, but the
pleasure of man shall prosper in the hand of the will of man.
The great resolve of God, the priesthood of Christ, the design of
drawing a generation of persons out of the world to praise him,
had hung upon a mere haphazard and a maybe, if it had depended
only on man's will; and God should have waited the leisure of
free will, to see whether the most glorious design that ever was
laid should prosper, and whether he should have been a God of
truth, or a liar to his Son. Though our Saviour had laid the
foundation of our redemption in his own most precious blood, yet
he must have depended on our will for the fruits of his purchase;
it had been a great uncertainty whether he had seen one grain of
fruit for all his expense. He might have been a king without one
subject, or the destruction of one potent enemy he came to
conquer, not one sin subdued, not one devil cast out of any son.
This might have been; for though by God he was made a king, yet
according to the other assertion, it depended on the will of man
whether he should have one subject to own his authority; and, if
so, God had been very unwise to enter into covenant with him, and
Christ very unwise to come upon such grand uncertainties at the
best, when it was a question whether any one person should have
enjoyed the fruits of his death. How can it enter into any man's
heart, that so great a contrivance as the sending of Christ to be
the means of salvation, with such great promises to see the
fruits of his death in a seed to serve him, should depend in the
main fruits and effects of it on any thing undetermined by the
will of God; that so great a weight should hang upon so thin a
thread as the will of man?
(2.) In the promises he makes to men. How could God promise
that so absolutely as he does, Ezek. xxxvi. 26, 'A new heart will
I give you,' if this work did depend upon the will of man, which
might frustrate the truth of God in his promise? And when God
knew there was no principle in their hearts that could rise
higher than to shame and confusion, not to so excellent a work as
regeneration, as is intimated, ver. 32, 'Not for your sakes do I
do this: be ashamed and confounded for your own ways, O house of
Israel,' what reason was there for God to depress them to
confusion, if they had had power to renew themselves? If this
promise of God depended not upon any thing in them in the first
making, it could not depend upon any thing in them in the full
performance of it. We must either make God a liar, or unwise, or
remove any efficiency in the will of man as the first cause. What
blasphemy would it be to say, that God was so unwise as to
promise that which depended upon the power of another, whether it
should be wrought or no; that God could not be certainly true to
his word, unless freewill assisted him!
5. It despoils God of his worship, in those two great parts of
it, prayer and praise.
(1.) Prayer. With what face can any solicit God for that
grace, which he conceives to be in his own power to have when he
will? It is a mocking of him to desire that strength of him,
which he has given us already, inherent in our nature. If it were
the work of our wills, it would require only the excitation of
them, not any application to God. Who begs for what he has? Who
desires an alms that has thousands in his purse? As prayer would
be a vain thing in any man that should deny a providence
overruling the affairs of the world, so it would be as vain a
thing to call upon God for grace, if the whole affair of
regeneration were left to the conduct of man's will. The end of
God's making promises of a new hearts and a new spirit, is to be
inquired after to do it for us, Ezek. xxxvi. 26, 37. The natural
consequent, then, of asserting the power of our own wills, is not
to call upon God, but direct our desires to another cause, to
solicit our own wills, not God. It would not be, then, according
to the language of the church, 'Turn thou us, O Lord, and we
shall be turned;' 'Draw me, and I will run after thee,' Lam. v.
21, Cant. i. 4, but, I will turn to thee, and then shalt thou be
turned to me; I will run after thee, and draw thee to myself. The
royal authority, and power of God, and his glory in granting, is
the foundation of prayer; therefore the Lord's prayer is
concluded with this, as an argument to move God to grant what is
asked, 'Thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory;' that is,
thou art rich and powerful, and hast all sorts of blessings to
bestow. With what face can any one go to God with these words in
his mouth, when he ascribes the kingdom, power, and glory, in so
great a work, to his own will? We can never pray in confidence to
God for it, for all confidence is wrought by a consideration of
the will of him we pray to, to accomplish what we desire, and of
his power to effect it. What confidence, then, can we have in his
will particularly to work it for us, if we conceive he has left
it to our hands, as the proper work of our own wills? This was
the ground of our Saviour's supplications, with strong cryings
and tears, that 'God was able to save him,' Heb. v. 7: able
naturally, in respect of his power, able morally, in respect of
his truth to his promise. If God were careless in this concern,
and had cast off all from his own hands, on the hand of free
will, God might well say to and man, as he did to Moses, 'Why
criest thou unto me? Speak to the children of Israel that they go
forward,' Exod. xiv. 15. Why cry you to me? You may do it
yourselves. Go forward with your own wills. The natural language
of man to God would not be, Lord, let thy kingdom come, thy will
be done, give me a new heart; but, I will have thy kingdom come,
I will have thy will be done, I will procure myself a new heart,
I will change my heart of stone into a heart of flesh.
(2.) Praise. It does deprive God of this part of his worship
also, praise even for his greatest blessings. If our own wills
did produce this work, the greatest cause of glorying would be,
not in God, but in ourselves. We have as little ground to praise
God, if it be our own work, as we have to pray to him for it. All
that can be said is, that we have ground to praise him for the
means of regeneration; and this is no more ground than they have
that are not regenerate under the enjoyment of the same means. If
a man could give himself a natural being without God, he could be
his own creator, his own foundation; so if he could give himself
a spiritual being without the grace of God, he would be a god to
himself; for in this case he would really do more to his
conversion than God. If God offer grace equally to all, and the
pliableness of one man's will to receive it above another were
from himself, he would then owe an obligation to himself, but no
more to God than the other that rejected it owes. The apostle, by
asking the question, 'Who Has made thee to differ? And what hast
thou that thou did not receive?' 1 Cor. iv. 7 (though it be meant
of a difference of gifts, yet it is argumentum a minori),
clearly implies, that what difference there was between them and
others, was not of their own planting, nor grew up from the stock
of nature. But if regeneration be wrought by a man's own will, it
is not God that makes the difference, therefore the glory does
not belong to him. He is the author of a general call, therefore
the glory of that pertains to him, it is true; but yet as much
from the damned that have lived under the gospel, as from the
glorified saints in heaven, because the special entertainment of
this call was not from the efficacy of God's grace, but the
liberty of man's will; for, according to this assertion, the love
of God would be equal both to the damned and saved, and would not
shine with a fairer lustre in heaven than it does in hell. The
apostle wishes the Philippians to 'work out their salvation with
fear and trembling,' and encourages them by this argument,
because God is the author of all that good which they do. If the
determination of the will, then, is from itself, is it not a
brave ground to glory in ourselves? How shall any man give God
the glory of his salvation? If it be said, God did enlighten
their understandings by the preaching of the gospel, this is an
illumination common to all; and the reason some believe and
others not, is not from the gift of God, but from themselves; how
can we give God a peculiar praise for that wherein there is no
difference between the best and the worst of men? But the apostle
says, God gives us to will, that is, the operation of our will,
and not only the illumination of the understanding; therefore,
that our wills do terminate in that which is good, we hold of
God; the apostle does not say, God has given us power to will,
but produced the will in us, and that of his good pleasure. If,
therefore, God work no more in one than in another, there is no
place for God's good pleasure, because there is no difference.
Let us see with what kind of language the praise of God would be
clothed, according to the doctrine of free will. A renewed man
may say thus: Lord, I give thee thanks, that thou hast conferred
upon me a supernatural grace; but thou did also give as much
grace to my neighbour, but I added something to that which thou
did supernaturally give me; and though I received no more than he
did receive from thee, yet I did more than he, since he remains
in his sin, and I am regenerate; therefore I have no more
obligation to thee and the grace, than he that believes not; for,
Lord, thou did not make me differ from the other, because he had
equal gifts with me; but I made myself to differ, because I
superadded my own velle to thy divine assistance. How much
of the glory of God would be pared off by such a half-witted
praise as this! How low would be the acclamations of glorified
saints in heaven! What foundation of pride in the creature,
contrary to the intendment of the gospel, which is chiefly to
humble man, if man were the cause of the most excellent work in
himself! It would write vanity in a great measure upon that
excellent exhortation of the apostle, 'Let him that glories,
glory in the Lord,' 1 Cor. i. 31, since there would be a bottom
for flesh to glory in his presence, contrary to the design of God
in his works, ver. 29, which is, 'that no flesh should glory in
his presence.'
Arg. 2. The second sort of arguments is drawn from the nature
and state of man.
1. In creation. Man did not create himself; to be a new
creature is more than to be a creature. As man contributed
nothing to nature, so neither can he contribute anything to
grace, any more than a passive capacity in respect of faculties,
which yet are the gift of God to him, nothing of his own
acquisition. The soul, though framed with all its faculties, is
as little able to engrave the image of God upon itself, as the
body of Adam, formed with all its parts and members, was able to
infuse a living soul into itself; there is no reason therefore to
attribute our creation to God, and regeneration, the glory and
excellency of a creature, to ourselves. I know such similitudes
ought not to be strained too high; yet when this doctrine agrees
with other parts of Scripture, we may form an argument from this
metaphor of creation whereby regeneration is expressed in
Scripture. It is confessed by most, if not all, that no creature,
not an angel, can be an instrument in the very act of creation of
another thing, much less the chief efficient of its own creation,
for creation is an act of omnipotence, and an incommunicable
property of the Deity, not to be delegated to any creature. The
creation of man, in a state of such perfection as to be endued
with the image of God, was a greater work than simply the
creation of his body or the essential faculties of his soul, yea,
greater than the creation of the whole world, because the
attributes of God did more lively appear in him, and particularly
his holiness. The restoration then of this righteousness to man,
after it is lost, is a greater work than the first creation of
his body and soul, it being the same thing with the conferring at
first his original rectitude upon him. If man therefore could
create this in his own soul after it is lost, he would do a
greater work than simply the creation of a world. Surely there is
as much power and wisdom required to the new creating
righteousness in the heart, after it is perished, as there was in
the placing it there at first; and then it will follow that none
can new create it but an infinite wisdom, power, and holiness. If
man therefore can create it in itself, he must have a wisdom,
power, and holiness equal to that of God his first creator, for
what could not be done by any creature at the first conferring
it, but it was necessary that it should be a work of infinite
power, cannot be done by a less power non, because the work is
every whit as great; and no less power is requisite to a second
creation of a thing after it is perished, than was necessary to
the first creation of it, since this power of creation cannot be
derived to any creature. As when life is gone from a fly, and the
body of it dried and shrivelled up, all will grant that the
restoring life to this fly must be done by an omnipotent power.
The case is the same with us by nature, spiritual life, upon the
fall, was wholly fled, no good thing dwells in our flesh, Rom.
vii. 18, not one thing spiritually good, that which is born of
the flesh is flesh, wholly flesh in every part of it. If the
making a living fly or worm is above the power of nature, much
more the creating of so glorious a fabric as grace in the soul.
Man might as well have implanted the divine image in his soul at
first, as restore it after it was lost. To ascribe such a power
to man to raise himself is a greater power than Adam had by
creation, because to restore a man's self from death to life is
greater than to preserve the vital principle he has already, and
act naturally from it.
2. In the state of innocence. Let us consider man in that, and
it will appear he is unable to renew himself. If man did not keep
himself up, with so great a stock of natural rectitude in
paradise, how can he recover himself and that stock after it is
lost? 'Man in his best estate is vanity; all Adam is all vanity.'
In the estate of pure nature, he is vanity in respect of his
mutability, much more vanity then in his fallen state, from the
experience of which Adam rightly called his second son Abel,
vanity, Hebel, the word used here. How soon did the breath
of the serpent melt the impression upon him! And if he did not by
his innocent will preserve that purity which he had received, how
can he by his corrupt will recover that purity which he has lost?
If Adam had had a will to preserve, he might have stood, but in
losing his will he lost his power; if he did not maintain his
will in his rectitude, nor (as some say) could not without the
grace of God, how can he, by the mere force of his own will,
restore that lost rectitude to himself? If an universal integrity
stood in need of grace to preserve it, an universal depravation
stands in need of a more vigorous force than that of our will to
eject it. If Adam, who had no disorders in nature to rectify, did
not stand by his own will, it is not likely that we, who have
strong habits to conquer, can be restored by the strength of our
own wills. What nature did not do when it was sound, it is not
likely to do a greater thing when it is wounded. We cannot now
have more power than Adam had in innocence; but he was not then
endued with a power to regenerate himself if he should fall, but
death was pronounced, both spiritual and eternal. If temptations
corrupted him, and if he, being in a good condition, did not
maintain himself in it, but pass from a good condition to a bad,
how can we, by the only liberty of our will, pass into a good
one? Are temptations less powerful now than before? Is the devil
less vigilant to take all occasions to subvert us? Suppose our
wills were not so evil as they are, would it not be more easy for
the enemy to draw the will to himself, when it is unresolved
between two parts, when the guide of it is so easy clouded, than
it was to draw Adam's will to evil from that good to which he
might readily have determined himself? Adam had the greatest
advantages human nature, in a natural way, was capable of; he was
created with a fullness of reason. But how long do we converse
with sense, which fastens upon temptations, before we come to a
use of reason! After we are come to some smatterings of reason,
and a growth in it, as we think, what whisperings and impulses to
sin do we feel! What an easiness to embrace incentives, a
deafness to contrary admonitions! What languishing, velleities,
and palsy desires at best, for that which is good; a mighty mist
and darkness upon our understandings, irresolution in our wills?
How can we with all these fetters be able of ourselves to put
ourselves into a better state, and act against nature, which is
impossible any creature can do but by a superior power!
8. Consider man also in the state of corruption.
(1.) If the will of man by nature were the cause of
regeneration, it would follow that corruption were a cause of
regeneration. 'The imagination of the heart of man is only evil,
and that continually,' Gen. vi. 6. That which is evil, therefore,
cannot be the cause of that which is man's greatest happiness.
All actions are according to those innate qualities and habits
which the agent has; all corrupted things act no otherwise than
corruptly, because every act has no more in it than what the
principle, which is the spring of the action, conveys to it. If
the heart, then, be wicked, it cannot do anything but what is
wicked, and a wicked act can never be the foundation of
regeneration. If a corrupt man, as corrupt, can be the cause of
regeneration, then he can act graciously, not only without a
gracious habit, but by and from a corrupt habit. If the acts are
corrupt, the product of them must be corrupt, for man, in
renewing himself, must act either as corrupt or good. If as good,
then he was renewed before he set about the renewing himself. The
question will then be the same, How came he by that restoration
to goodness? If as corrupt, then corruption is the spring of the
noblest happiness of the creature. It would then follow that a
man can perform acts of life before he lives; that vital acts may
be exerted by dead principles; that sanctification can grow up
from an unsanctified root; and that the will, with its old
corruption, can be the cause of its elevation to another state,
and that the old creature can perform a new creature's act before
it be a new creature. Then a carnal mind, while it is carnal, may
be subject to the law of God, which the Scriptures say it cannot
be, Rom. viii. 7. Then those that are in the flesh may please God
in an high manner, by the renewing themselves. This would be more
strange than if we should see a crab-tree bring forth
pomegranates; a corrupt tree would then bring forth good fruit,
and that the highest fruit, contrary to our Saviour's assertion,
Mat. vii. 18. It would follow that the stony heart would be the
cause of the fleshly, and so an effect would rise from a cause
quite contrary to it, and the complying principle in man be
wrought by the resisting principle. It is as much as if the fire
should cool, and the water burn, by their own innate qualities.
If the will of man corrupted be the cause of principles of grace,
then the old creature brings forth the new. The image of the
devil is the cause of producing the divine nature, and hell the
cause of an heavenly principle. It would follow that an act of
one kind can be produced by an habit of a contrary nature, and
that a man can act graciously before he be gracious. Before
grace, no action is essentially good, because there wants a
gracious principle, whence it must receive its denomination as
good. One act, then, of corrupted man, or a multitude of acts,
cannot be the cause of grace, because they all centre in that
denomination of evil. How the acts of the will, whereof not one
can be called good till the will has a good principle, can
produce so noble a work and habit as grace is, is not easily
intelligible. Our being engrafted into the good olive tree is
contrary to nature, Rom. xi. 24. Nature cannot naturally
contribute to that which is opposite to it. We are wild by
nature, our new implantation is contrary to nature. A good
nature, therefore, cannot be the natural effect of a wild nature.
(2.) Since corruption, the power of man is mighty weak in
naturals and morals, much more certainly in spirituals.
[1.] In naturals. No natural body that lies under a grievous
disease can repair itself by its own power without some external
assistance. A wounded member must be beholding to oils and plants
for a cure. No man can cast out a disease when he will. He may be
sick when he will, by eating that which is contrary to nature;
but the cure does not depend upon his will, but upon physic.
Outward medicines must recover that which he lost by his own
wilfulness. The will indeed is conditio sine qua non; there
must be a will to use the means, or a man must be forced to use
them, as we deal with madmen and children which are unwilling to
take physic. But who ever heard of a man that could cure himself
by his own will without the application of medicines? How can the
soul then be restored to its vital integrity, by its own force?
How can it change its own temper without some superior power
operating upon nature? 'Man is like a wild ass's colt,' Job xi.
12. What wild creature ever tamed itself? If any say that the
will of man, by the use of outward ordinances, can cure itself,
it is answered, Those ordinances are operative, not in a physical
but moral way, and therefore such an efficiency as is in plants
and drugs cannot be expected from them. There must be an
operation of our own wills to make them efficacious. But what
shall cure the will where the disease principally lies, and the
love of the disease is seated? Who shall remove the beloved
inclination from the will? Can nature cast out nature, or Satan
cast out Satan? What can make us willing? When we are made
willing, the cure is half wrought, as, when a madman is willing
to be cured of his infirmity, you can hardly count him any longer
mad. The evil principles in the will will never aim at their own
destruction. If this work of regeneration were only the curing of
a man that were sick or wounded, it could not be done by the
power of man's will, but by the application of some external
medicine, though nature did concur with it. But it is not a
sickness but a death, therefore cannot come under the influence
of' the will of man in the first work. Shall a man have more
power to cure his soul of mortal sins, than to cure his body of
mortal wounds?
[2.] In morals. Whence comes that intemperance, incontinence,
luxury, which overflows mankind, who are carried to those things
which impair health, even in meats and drinks, against the
reluctance of reason, whose will is led not by reason but
appetite, and choose not like men but beasts, under the notion of
pleasant and lustful? Is not this from the will conducted by
appetite? The temperance and continence opposite to this is not
in Scripture counted part of the extraction of nature, but the
gift of God: 1 Cor. vii. 7, 'But every man has his proper gift of
God, one after this manner, another after that,' speaking of
continence. That which is God's gift is not merely the fruit of
human will; for in the apostle's language they seem to be
opposed, viz., to be from God, and from ourselves; to be God's
gift, and yet our own. In Eph. ii. 8 there is a plain antithesis,
'Not of yourselves: it is the gift of God.' It is the same
expression of that moral virtue of continence as it is of the
divine grace of faith; 'it is the gift of God.' We are nothing in
morals without God, no more than a beam is when the sun is
clouded or withdraws its light. Shall we, then, allow a greater
power to man in spiritual things than the Scripture does in
morals? Shall the one be the gift of God, and the greater the
acquisition of nature? Cannot the clay form itself into a vessel
of moral honour? Shall it, then, be able to form itself into a
vessel of grace? If we are not intrinsically sufficient of
ourselves to exercise a morel act, since our natures are so
overgrown with corruption, we are less sufficient of ourselves to
exercise a supernatural act without a divine motion. Can anything
assume an higher nature than what it originally has? Man has
assumed a lower nature than that wherein he was created, which no
creature besides him in this lower world has. Since he has
brutified himself, and cannot moralise himself without common
grace, how can he advance himself into a participation of the
divine nature without special grace? How can man, so habitually
evil, ascend up to an higher nature?
[3.] In this corrupt state of man, any one sin beloved will
hold a man down from coming to God. It is impossible for a man,
wedded in his heart to his riches, and bemired in earthly
confidences, to enter into a renewed gospel state. 'How hard is
it,' says our Saviour, 'for them that trust in riches, to enter
into the kingdom of God!' Mark x. 24, 25. This one corruption
commanding in the heart, will hinder any resurrection by the
power of nature, for on man's part Christ pronounces it
impossible for such an one to enter into the kingdom of God, ver.
27, that is, into a gospel-state; and that upon the score of this
single sin, which only appeared at this time in that young man.
The like he pronounces of another sin, that of ambition: John v.
44, 'How can ye believe, which receive honour one of another?'
That one fancy of the Jews, of a temporal conquering Messiah, did
so possess their brains, that it barred the door against all the
power of our Saviour's miracles; and the bare objective proposal
of him, though unanswerable by reason, could not remove this
rooted fancy. One sin in the will, has more power than any
imagination in the fancy. When Adam disfigured his nature by one
sin, he had no strength to recover himself, though his
righteousness was but very lately fled from him. We need not
question his recovery of it, had it been in the power of his will
to will it, and the power of his nature to regain it. If one sin,
then, in the will, is a bar against the power of nature, what are
all those lusts which swarm in the heart of man, and swell up
this lake of natural venom in the soul? If one fetter stakes down
a man to an impotency and impossibility, how great is man's
weakness under all those fetters which every day he loads himself
with! One string about a bird's leg will keep it from flying
away, much more many.
Arg. 3. Another sort of considerations, is from the state of
man under the gospel.
1. If regeneration depended on the will of man, what is the
reason more do not receive the gospel than are seen by us to
receive it? If the faculty of believing were given to all, then
all would believe upon the promulgation of the gospel, because
the gospel is 'the power of God to salvation,' Rom. i. 16. If it
be the power of God in the outward preaching of it, then all
would believe. If all do not believe, then some other secret
power attends it, which makes it efficacious in one, not in
another; it is 'to them that are saved' only, 'the power of God,'
1 Cor. i. 18; to others, though of great reason, foolishness. If
the strength of arguments be the cause in one, what is the reason
those arguments have not force upon another? What is that which
makes the difference? All men have reason; and what is common
reason does conduct all men more or less. If men could open the
eyes of their mind to understand the excellency of gospel
proposals, what is the reason that among those great multitudes
to whom it is preached, so few in all ages have embraced it,
though the things proposed are in themselves desirable, and suit
so well, in respect of the blessedness promised, to the natural
desire of man for happiness! When it was preached by the
apostles! it was edged with miracles, attended with a remarkable
holiness, yet they complained that few received their report.
When in that age, and succeeding ages, men have been so far from
receiving it, that they have scoffed at it, persecuted with all
their fury the professors of it. It has been thus despised, not
only by the meanest and blindest sort of people, but by men of
the most elevated understanding among the heathen philosophers,
that could pierce into the depths of nature; and by the Jews too,
who had the Messiah promised to them, expected him about that
time, had so many prophesies deciphering him, which all met with
their accomplishment in his person; who were also amazed at the
miracles he wrought in his life, and those which accompanied his
death. Does not all this show the natural blindness of man, that
there is need of some higher power to open his eyes, besides the
objective proposal, that he may acknowledge the excellency of
those things which are presented to him? Do we not find men ready
to acknowledge reason upon other accounts, to be wrought into
warm affections by pathetical speeches? Why are they not as ready
in this, if it were in the power of their own understandings and
wills? Do we not find the wills of men averse from it, though in
their consciences they approve of the doctrines of it? What is
the reason a man is renewed at one time, and not before, when he
has heard the same arguments inculcated many a time? Many drops
would not work it before, and one drop works it not in an
instant. Is it from the power of reason in man? What reason is
there, then, that he should be mastered by one reason now, who
was not mastered by the same reason, and many more as strong,
formerly? Whence comes that light into the mind? What is the
reason such a man was not regenerate before, when he has in some
fits meditated upon former arguments, and afterwards one effects
it, by a secret insinuation, without any previous meditation, and
a sudden turn of the will is wrought? Can this be supposed to be
from the will principally? Rather from some divine spirit
spreading itself over the soul, and opening the passages of it
which were before shut. That place, Mat. xi. 21, where our
Saviour speaks of the Tyrians and Sidonians, if the gospel had
been preached to them, they would have repented in sackcloth and
ashes, does not prove the power of man to renew himself, but that
they would have testified some outward humiliation, as Ahab did
at the threatening of Elijah; or rather, Christ exaggerates the
hardness of the Jews' hearts in comparing them with the Tyrians
in a hyperbolical manner of expression; as we do when we reproach
a man for unmercifulness, we say, Had I entreated a Turk or
barbarian as much, I should have bent him; not that we commend
the humanity of the Turks, but aggravate the cruelty of those we
have to do with. The proposal of an object is not sufficient
without the inspiration of a will, whereby that concupiscence
which masters that faculty may be overpowered.
2. If regeneration were the fruit of man's will, what is the
reason that men convinced by the preaching of the gospel, and
under great terrors too, find themselves unable to turn to God?
What is the reason they are not presently renewed? Would they be
torn with such horrors, and bear about them such racks in their
consciences? Would they fill heaven and earth with complaints,
were it in their own power to make themselves such as God
commands them to be? If this were found in the more ignorant sort
of people, the reason then might be charged upon their want of
knowledge; but men of great wits and insight are filled with
those complaints when God begins to rebuke them. And such as have
a great deal of grace, as David, when God charges sin upon him:
Ps. li. 10, 'Create in me a clean heart; renew in me a right
spirit;' why should they solicit God for renewing grace, were it
in the power of their own hand? Would any that fear God, as David
did, mock him at such a rate, as to desire that of him which they
are able to do without him? Were there a natural power in man to
turn himself, why did not Judas, after his conscience lashed him,
go to his Master's knees to desire pardon, rather than to the
gibbet? He had long experience of the merciful disposition of his
Master; had not grace given him to incline his will to such an
act; yet Peter was turned after his denial of his Master, was
there anything more by nature in him than in Judas? Or did Peter
do that by the strength of his own will, which Judas did not do?
No, the Scripture assures us, it was from the prevalence of
Christ's prayer, a secret influence from Christ's look, stirring
up that grace that was already in his heart; he might else have
gone out cursing his Master as long as he had lived: 'No man can
come to me, except the Father draw him,' says our Saviour; though
he be convinced, there must be the Father's traction as well as
conviction to complete the work. All drawing implies a
resistance, or at least a heaviness and indisposition in the
thing so drawn, to come of itself. There is much difference
between the proposal of the object, and the cause of our
entertaining it. The object is the final cause which puts us upon
motion; the object moves the will as an end, but it gives no
power to move. If a man hear of an alms to be distributed at such
a place, and he knows he stands in need of it, and has a desire
to go to receive it, this knowledge of the necessity of it will
not give him legs to go, if he be lame and unable to go; and he
that does go to receive the alms, the desire to receive the alms
puts him upon motion; but the intention of receiving the alms was
not the efficient cause of that motion. If he had not had
strength in him from some other cause than the alms, he could
never have gone. Our motion to God must proceed from some higher
cause than barely the proposal of the object, and a conviction by
it.
4. Argument is drawn from the condition of the regenerate
themselves. They are not able to rid themselves of the remainders
of sin, much less can natural men of the body of sin. From the
impotency after grace, we may rationally conclude a greater
weakness in a natural man that has not one spark of grace within,
to be blown up from any breathing of grace from without. The
flesh lusts against the spirit in a regenerate man; how peaceably
does it enjoy its dominion in a natural man, where there is no
spirit to control it, and lust against it? Regenerate men 'cannot
do the good they would,' and they 'do the evil which they hate,'
Rom. vii. 16, 19, though they have a law of grace in their mind,
set up in contradiction to the law of sin in their members. How
can a natural man then, do so good a thing as the renewal of
himself, and the destruction of his sin, who has no will to the
one nor hatred of the other, who has the law of sin flourishing
in him, and delights to read the characters of it and perform the
wills of the flesh! If there be such an inability in a renewed
man, who has a relish of God and the goodness of the law, who has
sin in part mortified, and cast out of the mind, to the members
and suburbs, how much greater must the inability and resistance
be when there is nothing but opposing flesh! What need the
apostle issue out such heavy complaints: 'O wretched man that I
am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?' Rom. vii.
24, if he had power in his own hands to free himself from this
oppressing sin? If Paul, a living tree in God's garden, having
both the root and sap of grace, be so wretched, so weak and
unable to free himself from those suckers, how wretched then is a
dead rotten stake, which has no spiritual root! How can he free
himself from a total spiritual death, when this great apostle
could not free himself from a partial spiritual death by all that
stock of grace already received? If a good man finds it so
laborious a task to engage against the relics of nature, and
manage an open hostility against the wounded force of his sensual
appetite, much more is it a difficult task for a natural man to
row against the stream of unbroken nature, when the natural
resistance is in its hill strength, and the bent of nature
standing point-blank against God. If a well-built and well-rigged
ship, with her sails spread, can only lie floating upon the
waves, and make no way till a fresh wind fills the sails, surely
the rough timber that lies upon the ground can never fit and
frame itself into a stately vessel.
5. It is against the whole order which God has set in the
world, for any thing to be the cause of itself, or of a higher
rank of being than what it has by nature. No effect is nobler
than its cause; grace is more noble than nature. A seal cannot
convey and other image than what is stamped upon itself, and no
further than its own dimensions; neither can nature stamp
anything of grace upon the soul, because it has no such image
engraver on it by God. Nature, though never so perfect in its own
kind, can never produce a thing of higher perfection than itself;
a plant can never produce a beast, nor a beast a man, nor a man
an angel. No natural quality can be changed in any subject by
itself, but by the introduction of some other quality superior to
it. The fire can never freeze while it is fire; water cannot part
with its coldness without some superior acting upon it; and can
those that are naturally bad ever become spiritually good but by
an almighty power? No nature can exceed its own bounds, because
nothing can exceed itself in acting. Whatsoever a natural man
does is but natural, and can never amount to grace, without a
change of nature and addition of a divine virtue. If any thing
could rise above its own sphere, it would be stronger than
itself. Nothing can never make itself something; the best apostle
counts himself no better,—2 Cor. xii. 11, 'I am
nothing,'—and entitles grace the sole benefactor of all his
spiritual good, 2 Cor. xv. 10. What thing ever gave itself its
own shape? Every piece of art is brought into figure by the
workman, not by itself. Conformity to Christ is a fruit of the
election of God, not first of the choice of our own wills. Rom.
viii. 29, 'Whom he did foreknow he also did predestinate to be
conformed to the image of his Son.' The first link of the chain
in the providential and in the gracious administration is in the
hands of God. Hence in Scripture the gracious works in the soul
run in the passive for the most part: 'Ye are justified, ye are
sanctified;' not you justify or sanctify yourselves; though
sanctification and purging and working out salvation is ascribed
to them that have received grace and life, as acting afterwards
for such ends, and producing such effects by the strength of
grace received from God, and grace accompanying that first grace
in its acts.
As we have proved that man by his own strength cannot renew
himself, let us see whether he can do it by his additional
capacities.
1. Man, by the help of instituted privileges, does not produce
this work of regeneration in himself, without a supernatural
grace attending them. Ordinances cannot renew a man, but the arm
of God, which does manage them, edges them into efficacy, as the
arm that wields the sword gives the blow. Means are the showers
of heaven, but they can no more make the heart fruitful till some
gracious principles be put in, than the beams of the sun, the
dews of heaven, and the water pots of the clouds, can make a
barren ground bring forth flowers, without a change of the nature
of the soil, and new roots planted in it. All the spectacles in
the world cannot cure a man's eyes, he must have a visible
faculty to make use of them. Our faculty must be cured before we
can exercise it about objects or use means proper to that
faculty. All persuasions will not prevail with a dead man; the
fairest discourses, the most undeniable arguments, the most
moving rhetoric will not stir or affect him, till God take away
the stone from the grave and raise him to life. The report of the
prophets will do no good without the revelation of God's arm,
Isa. liii. 1, because all those things do not work in a physical
way, as drugs and plasters, which attain their end without any
active concurrence of the patient, but in a moral way; the will
therefore and nature must first be charged before those can do
any good. You can never by all your teachings teach a sheep to
provide for winter, as an ant does, because it has no such
instinct in its nature. If any thing were like to work upon a
man, the most stupendous miracles were most likely to produce
such an effect upon the reasons of men; yet those supernatural
demonstrations without a man only cannot make him believe a
truth. Miracles are a demonstration to the eye as well as
preaching to the ear; though they be confessed to be above the
strength of nature, yet all the spectators of them are not
believers: John xii. 37, 'But though he had done so many miracles
before them, yet they believed not.' Many of those that saw our
Saviour's works did not believe his doctrine; nay, they
irrationally ascribed them to the devil, when they could find no
reason in the nature of them to charge them upon such a score.
The raising Lazarus from the dead was as high a miracle as ever
was wrought yet, though many of them believed, yet others did
not, but accused him to the pharisees, who thereupon more
vigorously took counsel to put him to death, John xi. 45, 46, 47,
53, though they acknowledged that he did many miracles. They had
reason as well as others; the miracles were undeniable, as being
acted before many witnesses; the natural force of them upon all
reasons was equal, the considerations arising from them
unanswerable. There were evil habits in the will, not removed by
grace, which resisted the unanswerable reason of the miracles.
What made the difference between them and those that believed?
Why did not the wills of the enemies follow the undeniable
reason, as well as the wills of others? Miracles may astonish
men, but cannot convert them without a divine touch upon the
heart. 1 Kings xviii. 39, the people were astonished by that
wonderful miracle of fire falling from heaven and consuming the
sacrifice, and licking up the water in the trench; and some
reverential resolutions were produced in them: they fell upon
their faces and said, 'The Lord he is God;' they showed their
zeal in taking Baal's prophets, and helping, or at least
suffering, Elijah to slay them; yet those people revolted to
idolatry, and continued so till their captivity. The easiness of
faith upon the apparition and instruction of one risen from the
dead was the opinion of one of the damned: Luke xvi. 80, 'If one
went to them from the dead, they will repent;' but this opinion
was contradicted by Abraham, ver. 31, who positively asserts, 'If
they did not hear Moses and the prophets, they would not be
persuaded though one rose from the dead.' If their wills were
obstinate against the means God had appointed for their
conversion, the same wills so corrupted would be as obstinate
against the highest sort of miracles. If that, then, which is
above the hand of nature to act, and bears the character of
omnipotence upon the breasts of it, does not work upon men's
hearts and wills of themselves, surely nature itself cannot turn
the heart to God.
The two great dispensations of God are law and gospel; neither
of these can of themselves work this.
(1.) The law. The law will instruct, not heal. It acquaints us
with our duty, not our remedy; it irritates sin, not allays it;
it exasperates our venom, but does not tame it; though it shows
man his miserable condition, yet a man by it does not gain one
drop of repentance. It tells us what we should do, but corrects
not the enmity of our nature whereby we may do it. The apostle
takes notice of the enmity of man to the law: Rom. v. 6, 7, 'Yet
enemies', 'yet sinners.' That yet may refer to what he had
spoken of the law in the chapter before. Though men had had so
much time from the fall to recover themselves, and had so many
advantages by the law and the ceremonies of it, yet all those
years spent from the foundation of the world had produced no
other effect than the weakening of them; as creatures that are
wounded, by their strugglings waste their own strength. Yet
sinners, till this time sinners, whereby the load of sin which
lay upon the world was made more heavy by the continual addition
made to those heaps. The offence did rather abound by the law
than was diminished: Rom. v. 20, 'The law was given that sin
might abound.' Though it made a clear discovery of the will of
God, yet it rather aggravated sin; it added no power to perform
that will. The motions of sin were exasperated by it, ex
accidenti, and brought forth fruit unto death; all the means
by the law for the repressing of sin did rather inflame it. Sin
could not be overcome by it, because the law was 'weak through
the flesh;' that is, had not so much power as sin had; it was
like a little water put upon fire, which did rather enrage than
quell it: Rom. vii. 8, 9, 'Sin revived' when the law came, it had
a new life, and the apostle found himself utterly unable to
overpower it. There were, ver. 5, 'motions of sin,'
"pathemata", not only a power in sin, but an enraged
power, which adds to the strength of a person, 'sin slew him:
taking occasion by the commandment,' ver. 10, and a dead man is
wholly at the disposing of his conquerors. The law was 'holy,' it
had an impression of God's holiness upon it, Rom. vii. 12-14,
there was also equity and convenience in it, it was 'just and
good,' and though these were considerations enough to spur men on
to rid themselves of this tyrant sin, yet they could not, they
had not strength enough to do it; though it was holy, just, and
good, yet it was not strong enough to rescue them; and the reason
of it, the apostle lays upon the difference in the nature of
both: ver. 14, 'We know that the law is spiritual, but I am
carnal, sold under sin;' there was an enmity in his nature to it,
and therefore he must lie under the power of it till a mighty
deliverer stepped in to conquer it. Do we find any better effect
of the ceremonial law, which was the gospel in a mask, and which
was the instrument of all the regenerations among the Jews? How
few do we find renewed among them under that means which they
enjoyed solely, and no other nation in the world partners with
them in it! How frequent were their revolts, and rebellions, and
idolatries, inconsistent with regeneration, we may read in Joshua
and Judges. The inefficaciousness of means appears evidently in
that nation which had greater advantages than any in the world
besides; the covenants, sacrifices, oracles of God, warnings by
prophets, yet so frequently overgrown with idolatry from the time
of their coming out of Egypt to the Babylonish captivity; and ten
tribes wholly cashiered for it.
(2.) The gospel. Though the veil of ceremonies be taken off
from it, and it appears open faced, yet till the veil be taken
off the understandings of men, it will produce little fruit among
them, 2 Cor. iii. 14. The gospel is plain, but only to him that
understands, Prov. viii. 9, as the sun is clear, but only to him
that has an eye to see it. The gospel itself cannot remove the
blindness from the mind. The proposal of the object works no
alteration in the faculty, without some acting on the faculty
itself. The beams of the sun shining upon a blind man make no
alteration in him. The Jews, to whom the gospel was preached by
our Saviour himself, could not believe, because God blinded their
eyes, &c., John xii. 39, 40. There must be a supernatural
power, besides the proposal of the object, to take away this
blindness and hardness which is the obstruction to the work of
the gospel. Though the Son of God is come, and the gospel be
preached, yet the understanding whereby we know is given us by
him: 1 John v. 20, 'And we know that the Son of God is come, and
has given us an understanding, that we may know him that is
true;' the light of the gospel shines upon all, but all have not
an eye given them to see it, and a will given them to embrace it.
The mere doctrine of it does not regenerate any man; some have
tasted of the heavenly gift, that is, have had some understanding
of Christ, who is the heavenly gift, the Son given to us, Isa.
ix. 6, and are partakers of some common illumination of the Holy
Ghost, yet are not regenerate. Was not the gospel preached to the
Jews, even by the mouth of our Saviour whom they crucified? And
was it not preached to the Gentiles by the mouths of those
apostles whom they persecuted? Were there not proposals that
suited the natural desires of men for happiness, yet did not many
that seemed to receive it, receive it not in the love of it? If
God himself should appear to us in the likeness of a man, and
preach to us as he did to Adam, it he did not overpower our
hearts with an inward grace, he would do us no good at all by his
declarations. We do not read of any work immediately upon Adam at
the promulgation of the gospel by God himself, though it appears
that afterwards there was, by his instructing his sons to
sacrifice, and his expectations of a Messiah. But we certainly
know that our Saviour, God manifested in the flesh, declared the
gospel in his own person, and found no success but where he
touched the heart inwardly by the grace of his Spirit. All mere
outward declarations are but suasions, and mere suasion cannot
change and cure a disease or habit in nature. You may exhort an
Ethiopian to turn himself white, or a lame man to go; but the
most pathetical exhortations cannot procure such an effect
without a greater power than that of the tongue to cure nature;
you may as well think to raise a dead man by blowing in his mouth
with a pair of bellows. Judas had enjoyed the best means that
ever were, yet went out of the world unrenewed; and the thief
upon the cross, who never perhaps was in any good company in his
life till he came to the cross, nor ever heard Christ speak
before, was renewed by the grace of God in the last hour.
2. Neither can a man renew himself by all his moral works,
before faith. Our calling is not according to our works, but
'according to God's own purpose and grace,' 2 Tim. i. 9. Paul,
before his conversion, was 'blameless as to the righteousness of
the law,' Philip. iii. 6, yet this was loss; a bar rather to
regeneration, than a means to further it. For all this legal
comeliness he ranks himself, before his conversion, in the number
of the dead: Eph. ii. 5, 'When we were dead in sins;' not you,
but we, putting himself into the register of the dead.
Whatsoever works a man can morally do before faith, cannot be the
cause of spiritual life; they are not vital operations; if they
were, they were then the effects of life, not the cause; the
Scripture makes them the effects of grace: 'created to good
works,' Eph. ii. 10. What is an effect cannot be the cause. The
best works before grace are but a refined sensuality, they arise
from self-love, centre in self-satisfaction, are therefore works
of a different strain from those of grace, which are referred to
a higher end, and to God's well-pleasing. In all works before
grace there is no resignation of the soul to God in obedience; no
self-denial of what stands in opposition to God in the heart; no
clear view of the evil of sin; no sound humiliation under the
corruption of nature; no inward purification of the heart, but
only a diligence in an external polishing. All those acts cannot
produce an habit of a different kind from them. Let a man be
stilted up with the highest natural excellency; let him be taller
by the head and shoulders than all his neighbours in morality,
those no more confer life upon him than the setting a statue upon
an high pinnacle, near the beams of the sun, inspires it with a
principle of motion. The increasing the perfection of one species
can never mount the thing so increased to the perfection of
another species. If you could vastly increase the heat of fire,
you could never make it ascend to the perfection of a star. If
you could increase mere moral works to the highest pitch they are
capable of, they can never make you gracious, because grace is
another species, and the nature of them must be changed to make
them of another kind. All the moral actions in the world will
never make our hearts, of themselves, of another kind than moral.
Works make not the heart good, but a good heart makes the works
good. It is not our walking in God's statutes materially, which
procures us a new heart, but a new heart is in order before
walking in God's statutes, Ezek. xxxvi. 27. Our regeneration is
no more wrought by works of our own than our justification. The
rule of the apostle will hold good in this, as well as in the
other: Rom. xi. 6, 'If it be of grace, it is not of works;
otherwise grace is no more grace;' and faith is 'the gift of God,
not of works, lest any man should boast,' Eph. ii. 9. And the
apostle, Titus iii. 5, opposes the 'renewing of the Holy Ghost'
to 'works of righteousness.' He excludes works from being the
cause of salvation; and would they not be the cause of salvation,
if they were the cause of the necessary condition of salvation?
Prop. 3. As man cannot prepare himself to this work, nor
produce it, so he cannot co-operate with God in the first
production of it. We are no more co-workers with God in the first
regeneration, than we were joint purchasers with Christ in
redemption. The conversion of the will to God is a voluntary act;
but the regeneration of the will, or the planting new habits in
the will, whereby it is enabled to turn to God, is without any
concurrence of the will. Therefore, say some, we are active in primo
actu, but not in primo actus; or we are active in actu
exercito, but not in actu signato. Some say, the habit
of faith is never created separate from an act, as the trees at
the creation of the world were created with ripe fruit on them;
but the tree, with the power of bearing fruit, and the fruit
itself, were created at one and the same time by God. Yet though
the habit be not separate at first from the act, yet there is no
co-operation of the creature to the infusion of that habit, but
there is to the act immediately flowing from that habit; for
either that act of grace is voluntary or involuntary. If
involuntary, it is not a gracious act; if voluntary, it must
needs be; since the tone of the will is changed, then the
creature concurs in that act; for the act of believing and
repenting is the act of the creature. It is not God that repents
and believes in us; but we repent and believe by virtue of that
power which God has given us. In the first act, therefore, there
is a concurrence of the creature; otherwise the creature could
not be said to repent and believe, but something in the creature,
without or against the will of the creature. But in the first
power of believing and repenting, God is the sole agent. Jesus
Christ is the sun that heals our natures, Mal. iv. 2; the rain
that moistens our hearts: Ps. lxxii. 6, 'He shall come down like
rain upon the mown grass.' What co-operation is there in the
earth with the sun to the production of flowers, but by the
softness it has received from the rain? It would else be parched
up, and its fruits wither. The Holy Ghost does by his own power
make us good trees; but we afterwards, by virtue of that power,
work together with him, in bringing forth good fruit. Yet this is
also a subordinate, not a co-ordinate working; rather a
sub-operation than a co-operation.
1. The state wherein man is at his first renewal excludes any
co-working with God. The description the apostle gives of a state
of nature excludes all co-operation of the creature in the first
renewal: Titus iii. 3, 'For we ourselves were sometimes foolish,
disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living
in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another.' And Eph.
ii. 2, 3, 'Among whom we all had our conversations in time past,
in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh
and of the mind.' Every man is naturally taken up in the
fulfilling the desires of the flesh; not only the Gentiles, to
whom Paul writes, but himself; for he puts himself and the rest
of the Jews in the number. In the second verse it was 'ye
walked;' in ver. 3, it is 'we all;' and in Titus iii. 3, 'we
ourselves.' We who had the oracles of God, that had greater
privileges than others, were carried out with as strong an impetus
naturally, till grace stopped the tide, and after stopping,
turned it against nature. When the mind was thus prepossessed,
and the will made the lusts of the flesh its work and trade,
there was no likelihood of any co-operation with God in
fulfilling his desires, till the bent of the heart was changed
from the flesh and its principles. The heart is stone before
grace. No stone can co-operate with any that would turn it into
flesh, since it has no seed, causes, or principles of any fleshly
nature in it. Since we are overwhelmed by the rubbish of our
corrupted estate, we can no more co-operate to the removal of it,
than a man buried under the ruins of a fallen house can
contribute to the removal of that great weight that lies upon
him. Neither would a man in that state help such a work, because
his lusts are pleasures; he serves his lusts, which are pleasures
as well as lusts, and therefore served with delight. There is
naturally in man a greater resistance against the work of grace,
than there is in the natural coldness of water against the heat
of the fire, which yet penetrates into all parts of the water.
2. Regeneration is a new principle. What operation can there
be before a principle of action? All co-operation supposes some
principle of working; as actus secundus supposes actum
primum. But a man, before his first regeneration, is blind in
his mind, perverse in his will, rebellious in his affections,
unable to know the truth, unable to do good, dead in sin. If he
does co-operate with God before the habit be settled, then we can
act before we have a power to act. We can please God in taking
his part, and joining issue with him, before we have a gracious
principle; which is contrary to the Scripture, which tells us we
are first begotten of God before we can keep ourselves, or exert
one act for the bettering ourselves: 1 John v. 18, 'He that is
begotten of God keeps himself.' The preservation of ourselves,
and every act tending thereto, follows the infusion of the first
principle. And the apostle Paul implies, that God works in us to
will before we work: Philip. ii. 12, 13, 'Work out your own
salvation with fear and trembling; for God works in you both to
will and to do,' &c. The apostle supposes not any operation
in them before, because he supposes not their working without
God's giving them a will, the act of volition. The working of the
creature supposes some divine work first upon the will. Did the
dust of the ground, whereof Adam's body was formed, co-work with
God in figuring it into a body? or does the body contribute any
more than a passive receptivity to the infusion of the rational
soul? Lazarus did not concur with Christ till his powerful voice
infused life and strength into him. His rising and walking was
from a power conveyed, wherein Christ did work; but there was no
co-working in him in the conveyance of that power. We do not say
that a man co-works with the sun in enlightening a room, because
he opens the shuts which barred out the light; the opening
whereof is no cause of the sun's shining, but a conditio sine
qua non. But do we so much in the first renewal? It is God
alone who darts his beams, and opens our hearts too, to admit it:
Acts xvi. 14, it is said, 'the Lord opened Lydia's heart.' The
will cannot concur in the actual infusion of a gracious
principle, because it has no spark in itself by nature, suitable
to that principle which is bringing it into the soul itself. The
shining of God into the soul is compared to the chasing away that
darkness which at the first creation was over the face of the
deep: 2 Cor. iv. 6, 'For God, who commanded the light to shine
out of darkness, has shined in our hearts, to give the light of
the knowledge of the glory of God.' What co-working was there in
that darkness to remove itself, but a necessity upon it to obey
the command of God who had the sovereign power over his own
works? If the creature did co-work with God at first, it could no
more be said to be dead than a man asleep may be said to be dead;
and grace were only an awakening, not an enlivening.
3. If there were any co-working of the will with God in the
first infusion of grace, God would not be so much the author of
grace as he is of nature in any other creature. The creature
would share with him in the first principle of its action, which
no creature in the world can be said to do. It would rather be a
concourse of God than a creation; but all the terms whereby God
sets forth himself in the work of regeneration import more than a
bare concourse or a co-operation with the creature: ' I will take
away the heart of stone; I will write my law in their hearts; I
will put my Spirit into them,' are loftier expressions than are
used to signify a co-working only. He appropriates the whole work
to himself, without interesting the creature in any active
concurrence, any more than at his creation.
4. If the will of man did co-work with God in regeneration, it
would then share part of the glory of God. The whole glory would
not belong to God, which he challenges to himself in Scripture.
He were then but an half Saviour, an half new creator. We should
be in joint commission with him, by the power of our own wills,
in the first motion. If creation and resurrection are acts of an
almighty power, man co-operating with him in the very act of
creation and resurrection would partake with God's almightyness,
and in some sort be co-equal with him, and a joint partner with
God in a work which required almightyness for the effecting it.
Surely since the same power which raised Christ from the dead
works first in every believer for his spiritual resurrection, he
contributes no more to it than the body of Christ in the grave
did to its resurrection, which was a work not of his humanity,
but divinity. Plucking out of the power of Satan is an effect of
the power of grace, and God's gift, 2 Tim. ii. 25, 20. God first
'gives repentance, that they may recover themselves out of the
snare of the devil.' A slave, whose hands and feet are laden with
fetters, can contribute nothing to his deliverance but a will and
desire to be delivered; nor that, if he be in love with his
fetters, which is the case of every one of us by nature, who are
as fond to be in the devil's custody as he is to have us. What
co-operation can there be in this ease? Whatsoever is an act of
mercy, and an act of truth in God, he is to have the sole praise
of; it does not in any sort belong to the creature. The psalmist
emphatically excludes man from it: Ps. cxv. 1, 'Not unto us, O
Lord, not to us, but unto the name give glory, for thy mercy, and
for thy truth's sake.' Not unto us, twice repeated, but to
thy name give glory. Do believers beg of God the giving
glory to himself, and not unto them; and will they contradict
their prayers, by sharing the praise with God? This is expressed
for deliverances. Much less does any praise and glory belong to
the creature for the most excellent deliverance of all, from the
power of sin, Satan, and death.
5. How can men co-work with God in the first regeneration,
when they must needs acknowledge that in the progress of it they
are oftener hinderers than furtherers of it? If God did not work
more strongly in us than the best of us do in ourselves, and
breathe a willingness into our wills, after regeneration, we
should come short of salvation for all the first stock. How often
do the best complain of their disability! Is it not frequent in
the mouths of Christians in all ages as well as of Paul: Rom.
vii. 18, 'To will is present with me, but how to perform that
which is good I find not'? How easily are our purposes shaken,
and our strength staggers! Can we then co-operate with God, when
we have no purpose, no strength? Let every man's experience speak
for himself, how apt he is to check the motions of the Spirit; to
let our Saviour stand and knock, and not open. What strugglings
of the body of death! What indispositions in an holy course! Is
there not often a kind of rustiness of soul, cold damps in
spiritual duties? What faint hands in any holy work! What ebbs
and floods, ups and downs in his heart! What feeble knees in his
walk! What hung-down heads in laying hold of Christ in repeated
acts of faith! What frequent returns of spiritual lethargies! And
all this after habitual grace. If our co-operations with God
after grace received, are but a remove from non-acting, next
neighbours to no working at all, we must conclude it to be worse
with man before grace was settled in the soul, and that there was
no active concurrence with it in any manner of acting; otherwise
there would be as much co-operation before the implantation of
habitual grace as after, which is hard to be imagined, that a man
should be no stronger with grace received than under the want of
it.
Prop. 4. Man by his own strength cannot actuate grace after it
is received. To what purpose did the saints of old pray to
quicken them, if they stood not in as much need of exciting grace
from God as of renewing grace: Ps lxxx. 18, 'Quicken us, and we
will call upon thy name;' Ps. cxix. 25, 27 and many places in
that psalm. The new creature is little better than an infant in
the best, and cannot go unless God bear it in his arms, as he
speaks of Ephraim, Hosea xi. 1, 3. They cannot move unless led by
the Spirit. The child has a principle of motion in it, but cannot
go without the assistance of the nurse; nor the soul, without the
assistance of God, actuate that principle of grace. Habitual
grace is the instrument, not the principal agent. A sword, though
it has an edge, cuts nothing till it be moved by some strong arm.
The first principle of the motion of grace resides in God.
Purification in its progress is attributed to faith as an
instrument, but to God as a principal agent. It is said, Acts xv.
8, 9, 'God gave them the Holy Ghost, as he did to us, and put no
difference between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith.'
Yet the will of man concurs in this actuating of faith, as a
subordinate cause: 1 John iii. 3, a man is said to 'purify
himself by hope.' A well-rigged soul, with its habit of grace
spread, as well as a ship with its sails, must wait the leisure
of the wind before it move. Paul acknowledges his acting for the
service of God to be not from himself principally: 1 Cor. xv. 10,
'Yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.' It was the
grace of God used me as an instrument; the glory must not stick
to my fingers; it was the grace of God with me, affording
strength and help to that grace which was in me. If this
concourse of God be necessary in all natural actions, it is much
more in the spiritual frame of the soul to keep it up, and to
keep it acting. It is not we that work to will and to do, but God
works to will and to do. It is to be considered that the apostle
writes to them that are in a state of grace, exhorting them to a
progress in salvation depending upon God, who worlds the after
will and the alter doing, as well as the first will and
compliance with the grace of God. Do we not find renewed men not
able, with all the grace they have, to quicken themselves
sometimes in duty? What is the reason they lie spiritless before
God, often with breathings, sighs, and groans for quickening, and
it is far from them? They stir themselves up, meditate, summon up
all the powerful considerations they can, yet find themselves
empty of a spiritual vigour. Surely there is some principal power
wanting to spirit their grace, and make them leap in duty; some
invisible strength has withdrawn itself, which did before conduct
and breathe upon them, and fill their souls with a divine fire.
They find it not in the power of the hand of their own will to
actuate and quicken the grace they have, much less is it in the
power of any man's hand to renew himself. The work of grace is
not only a traction at the first, but a continual traction, as
conservation is a continual creation: 'Draw me, and we will run
after thee,' Cant. i. 4. The church there speaks it as
regenerate, desiring a continual traction from God, as the first
ground of her race after Christ. Life she had, for she promises
to run; yet this race she could not begin nor continue, without
traction from God.
Prop. 5. Man cannot by the power of his own will preserve
grace in himself. Our Saviour's prayer to his Father, John xvii.
11, 15, to 'keep them,' imports, that they were too weak to keep
themselves: 'Unless the Lord keep the city, in vain does the
watchman wake,' Ps. cxxvii. 1. Unless God preserve the soul, all
the watchfulness of habitual grace will be to little purpose. All
creatures, if God hide his face, are troubled, Ps. civ. 29, much
more the new creature, whose strength does more necessarily
depend upon God, because of its powerful opposites. Were it not
for the assisting grace of God, the unruly lusts in our hearts
would soon bear down habitual grace in the best. How many
temptations are prevented which we cannot foresee! How many
corruptions are restrained, which the best grace cannot fully
conquer! How is the tide and torrent of these waters beaten back,
which otherwise would go over our heads! The poor will of Adam
preserved him not against a temptation, when he had no indwelling
corruption to betray him; nor did the will of the angels, who had
no temptation, keep them from forsaking their habitation. How can
any renewed man, alive with all his grace, merely by the strength
of his own will, keep himself from sinking down in the lake of
his old corruption? He that would ask the fallen angels in the
midst of their torments, what was the reason of their fall, would
receive no other answer but that their strength was unsuccessful,
because it depended upon their own will. The knowledge of the
gospel and evangelical impressions are never like to keep up
without the Holy Ghost: 2 Tim. i. 14, 'That good thing which was
committed unto thee, keep, by the Holy Ghost,' not by thine own
strength. It we cannot keep a form of sound words, which, as it
is knowledge, is more agreeable to the natural appetite of man,
without the Holy Ghost, much less can we preserve grace in us,
which is more stomached by corrupt nature. Neither are good
frames like to be preserved in us without God's keeping: 1 Chron.
xxix. 18, 'keep this in the imagination of the thoughts of the
heart of thy people.' Our hearts will not let any good motion
sink into them, unless God give a pondus to his own
motion. If, then, regenerate men are unable of themselves to
actuate and preserve grace received, much more inability is there
in a natural man to gain that which he has not a
spark of in his own nature, but an enmity to.
Quest. But, do you divest man of all power, all freedom of
will? Is he able to do nothing in order to regeneration?
Ans. We do not divest man of all power; therefore, before we
consider what power belongs to man, we may consider,
(1.) Man simply in his fall. So man lost all his natural
ability by his first sin, and was the meritorious cause of his
losing supernatural grace, which God by a judicial act removed
from him, and in this state man had no ability unto anything
morally good. Nothing was due to Adam but the state of the
devils, who have no affection to anything morally good, but
always do that which is in its own nature evil, and always sin
with evil intentions. Adam would have been thus, had the
threatening, according to the tenor of it, been executed; there
had been no common affections, no more light in his understanding
than what might have served for his torment, as wicked men, after
death, are deprived in a judicial way of that light in their
minds, those velleities and good motions which sometime hovered
in them, those affections which were here exercised now and then
towards God. The sentence given against Adam is then pronounced
against them, and they laid under the final execution of it,
which was to die the death: Gen. ii. 17, 'Thou shalt surely die,'
a death of all morality, all affections to anything that has the
resemblance of goodness. It might be a prediction of what would
be in course, as well as what would be inflicted in way of
judicial recompense. None of these things can be looked for in
Adam, or any of his posterity, as fallen; not a grain of life, or
anything tending that way, was due to him, but only death.
(2.) Man is to be considered as respited from the present
suffering this sentence by the intervention of Christ; whereby he
is put into another way of probation. So those common notions in
our understandings, and common motions in our wills and
affections, so far as they have anything of moral goodness, are a
new gift to our natures by virtue of the mediation of Christ. In
which sense he may be said to 'taste death for every man,' Heb.
ii. 9, and be 'a propitiation for the sins of the whole world.'
By virtue of which promised death, some sparks of moral goodness
are preserved in man. Thus his 'life was the light of men;' and
he is 'The light that lightens every man that comes into the
world,' which sets the candle of the Lord in the spirit of man
a-burning and sparkling, John i. 9, and upholds all things by his
mediatory as well as divine power, Heb. i. 3, which else would
have sunk into the abyss. By virtue of this mediation, some power
is given back to man, as a new donation, yet not so much as that
he is able by it to regenerate himself; and whatsoever power man
has, is originally from this cause, and grows not up from the
stock of nature, but from common grace.
Which common grace is either,
[l.] More general, to all men. Whereby those divine sparks in
their understandings, and whatsoever is morally praiseworthy in
them, is kept up by the grace of God, which was the cause that
Christ tasted death for every man: Heb. ii. 9, 'That he by the
grace of God should taste death for every man;' whereby the
apostle seems to intimate, that by this grace, and this death of
Christ, any remainders of that honour and glory wherewith God
crowned man at first are kept upon his head; as will appear, if
you consider the eighth Psalm, whence the apostle cites the words
which are the ground of his discourse of the death of Christ.
[2.] More particular common grace, to men under the preaching
of the gospel. Which grace men 'turn into wantonness' or
lasciviousness, Jude 4. Grace they had, or the gospel of grace,
but the wantonness of their nature prevailed against the
intimations of grace to them. Besides this common grace, there is
a more special grace to the regenerate, the more peculiar fruit
of Christ's mediation and death for them. All this, and
whatsoever else you can conceive that has but a face of
comeliness in man, is not the birth of fallen nature abstracted
from this mediation. Therefore when the Gentiles are said to 'do
by nature the things contained in the law,' it is not to be
understood of nature merely as fallen, for that could do no such
thing; but of nature in this new state of probation, by the
interposition of Christ the mediator, whose powerful word upheld
all things, and kept up those broken fragments of the two tables
of law, though dark and obscure. And considering God's design of
setting forth the gospel to the world, there was a necessity of
those relics, both in the understanding, and affections, and
desire for happiness, to render men capable of receiving the
gospel, and those inexcusable that would reject it. So that by
this mediation of Christ, the state of mankind is different since
the fall from that of the evil angels or devils. For man has,
just, a power of doing that which is in its own nature good;
secondly, a power of doing good with a good intention; not indeed
supremely for the glory of God, but for the good of his country,
the good of his neighbours, the good of the world, which was
necessary for the soldering together human societies, so that
sometimes even in sins man has good intentions. Whereas the devil
does always that which in its own nature is evil, and always sins
with evil intentions. Without this mediation, every man had been
as very a slave to sin as the devil; though he be naturally a
slave to sin, yet not in that full measure the devil is, unless
left in a judicial manner by God upon high provocations.
There is then a liberty of will in man; and some power there
is left in man. And here I shall show,
1. What kind of liberty this is.
2. That there is some liberty in man.
3. How far the power of man by common grace does extend.
Quest. First, what kind of liberty this is.
Ans. 1. The essential liberty of the will remains. Liberty is
of the essence of the will, and cannot be taken away without
extinction of the nature of man; it is free from compulsion,
otherwise it were a not-will, which liberty does not
consist in a choice of good or evil. For even under this
depravation it cannot choose evil qua malum, as such. It
can choose nothing but what appears to it under the notion of
good; though it many times embraces that which is materially
evil, yet the formal consideration upon which it embraces it is
as good, either in reality or in appearance; as the sight in
every colour sees light. And when it is carried out to that which
is really evil, and only apparently good, it is by force of those
habits in the understanding, which make it give a false judgment;
or, by the power of the sensitive appetite, which hurries it on
to the object proposed, but always it respects in its motion
everything as good, either an honest, pleasant, or profitable
good.
Ans. 2. Though the essential liberty of the will remains, yet
the rectitude whereby it might have been free only to that which
was really good is lost. Man by creation had a freedom of will to
choose that which was really good, yet had a mutability, and
could choose evil; and by choosing evil rather than good, sank
his posterity into this depraved liberty which now remains.
Though since the fall man is preserved in his natural freedom,
and cannot be forced, yet he has not a power to will well,
because that righteous principle whereby he did will well is
departed from him; yet because the essential freedom due to his
nature remains, whatsoever he wills he wills freely, so that
though something the will wills may be materially good, yet it
wills that good in an ill manner, for being overcome naturally by
sin man can do nothing but according to that law which sin, as a
master that has conquered him, imposes upon him: 2 Peter ii. 19,
'They themselves are the servants of corruption: for of whom a
man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage.' And of
all men in a state of nature, though under common grace, the
apostle pronounces, Rom. iii. 11, that 'there is none that seeks
after God;' that is, in any thing they do, though never so good,
they seek not God but themselves. 'There is no fear of God,' no
respect to God 'before their eyes,' ver. 18, whence it comes to
pass, that by reason of this dominion of sin nothing can be done
well. Hence man is said to be dead; not that the life which does
constitute the nature of the soul is taken away, but that which
renders it fit for performing actions pleasing to God; for such a
life does consist, not in the nature of the soul or will, but in
that habitual integrity which was in man by creation. As the body
when it is dead does not cease to be a body, but ceases to be
animated, by the separation of the soul from it, so the soul may
be truly said to be dead, though the power of the soul be not
taken away. If the spiritual rectitude in that power which did
constitute it spiritually living be departed, by the removal of
this righteousness, the will is not free to spiritual things,
though it be to natural. It is 'free among the dead,' as the
psalmist speaks of himself; Ps. lxxxviii. 5; free to dead works,
not to living; to this or that dead work, to any work within the
verge of sinning, as a bird in a large cage may skip this way and
that way by its natural spontaneous motion, but still within the
cage.
Ans. 3. Therefore, though man has lost this liberty to good,
he retains a freedom to the commission of sin, under the
necessity of sinning. This freedom is a power of choice and
election of a thing, which differs from that spontaneity which is
in beasts, who act by instinct, without any reasoning in the
case, because they want a reasoning power. Though man be under a
necessity of sinning, yet it is not a necessity of constraint,
but a necessity of immutability, which is consistent with
liberty, though the other be not. A creature may be unchangeably
carried to good or evil, and yet be free in both: to good, as the
angels and glorified saints cannot will to sin, because their
wills are immutably determined to good. They cannot but praise
and love God, yet they freely do both, and our Saviour did freely
do that good which he could not but do by reason of his
hypostatical union, otherwise he could not have merited, for all
merit requires the concurrence of the will. To evil; the devils
cannot will to do good, because their wills are unchangeably
determined to evil, yet they sin as freely as if there were no
immutable necessity upon them. So man cannot but naturally sin in
all that he does yet he is not constrained to sin, but sins as
freely and voluntarily as if there were no necessity upon his
nature to corruption,—as freely as if God had not foreseen
that he would do so. Man sins with as great a pleasure as if he
were wholly independent upon the providence of God, and the more
a man is delighted with sin, the greater freedom there is in it.
Hence the Scripture lays sin upon the choice of man: Isa. lxvi.
3, 4, 'They have chosen their own ways, and their soul delights
in their abominations.' They have their own ways, that is, ways
proper to corrupt man; but they chose them and delighted in them.
Man is voluntary under his depravation, free in his aversion from
God, a free necessity, a delightful immutability. The will cannot
be compelled to will that which it would not, or not to will that
which it would. Then sin arises from a settled habit, the freer
is a man in his sin; and though he cannot act otherwise than
according to that habit, yet his actions are most voluntary,
because he is the cause of that habit which he acquired by evil
acts, and by succeeding acts testifies his approbation of it.
2. That there is some liberty in man, some power in man. Not
indeed such a power as the Jews thought man had naturally, of
exercising himself about anything that God should reveal, without
the infusion of a new power, to enable him to act that which God
required by supernatural revelation. Some power and liberty must
be allowed,
(1.) To clear the justice of God. No just man will punish
another for not doing that which was simply and physically
impossible; and 'shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?'
It is a good speech of Austin, If there were not the grace of
God, how could the world be saved? If there were not free will,
how could the world be judged? If man were divested of all kind
of liberty, he might have some excuse for himself; but since the
Scripture pronounces men without excuse, Rom. i. 20, some power
must be granted to clear the equity of God's justice. No man sins
in that which he is under an inevitable constraint to do, and so
would be unjustly punished. It does not appear that God does
condemn any man simply for not being regenerate, but for not
using the means appointed to such an end, for not avoiding those
sins which hindered his regeneration, and which might have been
avoided by him if he would, though indeed every unregenerate man
will be condemned. The pouring out the wrath of God upon man is
principally for those sins which they might have refrained, and
had sufficient reason against: Eph. v. 6, for 'because of these
things,' that is, for those gross sins which they might have
avoided, mentioned ver. 5, 'comes the wrath of God upon the
children of disobedience,' "apeithias"; men that would
not be persuaded, which obstinacy was in their will. As these are
the causes of God's wrath, so these will be alleged as the
principal reasons of the last sentence. And our Saviour in his
last judgment does not charge men with their unregeneracy, but
with their omissions of what they might have done, and that
easily; and commissions which they might have avoided, Mat. xxv.
41-43, with their not feeding his members when they were hungry,
&c., which were things as much in their power as anything in
the world. And the reason Christ renders of the sentence passed
upon men, to depart from him, was their working of iniquity: Mat.
vii. 23, 'Depart from me, you that work iniquity,' that work it
voluntarily, and work that you might have forborne. Though
unregeneracy does exclude a man from heaven, as a condition
without which a man cannot come there, yet nothing of this is
mentioned in the last sentence. If man had a firm will to turn to
God, and had not then a power conferred upon him to turn, I know
not what to say; but man has no will to turn, yea, he has no will
to do those things which he might do. Supposing man has a power
to avoid such and such sins, he is justly punished for not making
use of that power. Nay, supposing he had no power to avoid them,
yet if his will be set to that sin he is justly condemned, not
for want of power, but for the delight his will took in it. From
which delight in it, it may be gathered that if he had had a
power to have shunned it, he would not have shunned it. If a man
be assaulted by murderers that will cut his throat, if he will
not use his power against them, but take a pleasure in having his
throat cut, is not this man a self-murderer, both in the judgment
of God and man? Let me use another illustration, since the end of
all our preaching should be to humble man and clear God. If a man
be cast out of an high tower, and be pleased with his fall, would
he not be justly worthy of it, and to be neglected by men, not
because he did not help himself in his fall, for that was not in
his own power, but because he was mightily pleased and contented
with his fall, and with such a pleasure, that if he had been able
to have helped himself he would not? So though man be fallen in
Adam, yet when he comes to discern between good and evil, he
commits the evil with pleasure. So that supposing he had no power
to avoid sins, yet he is worthy of punishment because he does it
delightfully. Whence it may be concluded, if he had had power to
avoid it, he would not, because his will is so malignant.
(2.) Without some liberty in the will, free from necessity of
compulsion, man would not be capable of sin, nor of moral
goodness. No human law does impute that for a vice, or a virtue,
to which a man is carried by constraint, without any power to
avoid. Where anything is done without a will, it is not an human
action. Beasts therefore are not capable of sin, because they
want reason and will. If man had not liberty of will, he would be
as a beast, which has only a spontaneous power of motion without
reason. Sin could not be charged upon man, as God does all along:
Ps. xcv. 10, 'It is a people that do err in their hearts;' and
Ps. cxix. 21, 'Thou hast rebuked the proud that are cursed, which
do err from thy commandments.' It had been no error in them, if
they had not done it voluntarily. The erring from God's
commandments arises from pride of heart, they had not else
deserved a rebuke. Who would chide a clock for going wrong, which
has no voluntary motion? Man without a liberty of will could not
be the author of his own actions, and sin could no more be
imputed to him, than the irregular motion of a watch can be
imputed to the watch itself, but rather to the workman or
governor of it. Without a voluntary power, man would be as all
engine, moved only with springs, and human laws, which punish any
crime, would be as ridiculous as Xerxes' whipping the sea,
because it would not stop its tide. Neither were any praise due
to man for any moral virtue, no more than praise is due to a
lifeless picture for being so beautiful, or to the limner's
pencil for making it so: the praise is due to the artist, not to
the instrument.
(3.) Without some liberty and power of motion in the will, all
the reason of man, and those notions in the understanding, left
by the virtue of Christ's mediatory interposition, would be to no
purpose. The reason why men do err is because they do not take
right ways of judging according to those means they have: 'Ye
err,' says our Saviour, 'not knowing the Scripture, nor the power
of God,' Mat. xxii. 29. They have a faculty of judgment, and
means whereby to judge, which would prevent errors. There is
therefore some suitable power in man to follow the judgment of
reason, if he will. He would be in vain endowed with that power
of reasoning, if there were not a power of motion in some measure
suitable to that reason. The authority of judging in the
understanding would be wholly insignificant; all debates about
any object proposed would be to no end, if the will had not a
liberty to follow that judgment. How can God make appeals to men
as he does, if they had not a power of judging that they ought to
have done otherwise, and might have done otherwise than they did?
Though man has not a sufficient light left in his nature for
salvation, yet he has such a light of reason in him to which he
might be more faithful in his motions than he is, otherwise the
apostle could not have argued from that light the heathens had to
their conviction, as he does, Rom. i. 19-21, &c., and
manifests their unfaithfulness to that truth which God had
manifested to them, and manifested in them in their nature. Most
sins do arise from the neglect of being guided by that light
which is in men.
(4.) The glory of God's wisdom in the government of the world
would not have been so conspicuous, if some liberty had not been
allowed to the will. It is no great matter to keep in order an
inanimate thing, as a clock that must obey a necessity; God would
have been but like a good clock-keeper only, as ones says. But
how much does it make for the wisdom of God, to make the free
motions of his creature, the various humours in the will of man,
centre at last in his own glory, contrary to the will and design
of the creature, that they have their natural motions, their
voluntary motions, and God superintends over them, and moves them
according to his own will regularly, according to their nature,
without crossing them? 'The determinate counsel of God,' in the
death of our Saviour, and the free will of Pilate and the Jews,
meet in the same point: God acting wisely, graciously, justly;
their wills acting freely and naturally, reduced, without injury
to their nature, to the due point of God's will.
Quest. 3. The third question, How far does the power of man by
common grace extend?
Ans. As in a body deprived of the soul there is some power of
growth left in the hair and nails, so some power is left in the
soul, though it be spiritually dead. As a regenerate man by
special grace has a power of doing that which is spiritually
good, so a natural man by common grace has a power of doing
things morally good, if he will. God keeps the key of
regenerating grace in his own hands, and unlocks what hearts he
pleases, and brings in a vital spirit into whom he pleases; but
there is by common grace an ability in men to do more than they
do, but that they harbour, cherish, and increase those vicious
inclinations in their own souls. But let it be remembered that
this power is not to be abstracted from God's common grace, as
the power of a renewed man after grace is not to be abstracted
from special grace, nor the natural powers of motion to the
actual motion, not to be abstracted from God's general
providential concourse.
(1.) Man has a power by common grace to avoid many sins: I
say, a power by common grace; for sometime, upon the neglecting
the conduct of natural light, God pulls up the sluice of his
restraining grace, lets out the torrent of their natural
corruption upon them, which forcibly hurries them to all kind of
wickedness; as it is said, Rom. vii. 24, 26, 'Wherefore God also
gave them up to uncleanness, through the lusts of their own
hearts; for this cause God gave them up to vile affections.'
Therefore, and for this cause, that is, for going contrary to
that natural light they had, God let the lusts of their own
hearts, which he had restrained, have their full swing against
them. In this case sin can no more be avoided, than a man can
stop a torrent.
Again; though a man, as he is in a state of nature, cannot but
do evil, yet he is not necessitated to this or that kind of sin,
but he may avoid this or that pro hic and nunc in
particular, though he cannot in general; as a man who has the
liberty of walking where he pleases in a prison, he may choose
whether he will come into this or that walk within the liberty of
the prison; but let him move which way he will, he is a prisoner
still.
Quest. If it be said, if a man has power to avoid this or that
sin, why may he not avoid all?
Ans. I answer, If he had power to avoid all, he would be
restored to the state of Adam. But the reason is this, the power
to avoid this or that particular sin arises from a particular
cause, the natural subjection of appetite to reason, the
lightness of temptation; or if the temptation be more vehement,
the stirring up reason and pressing considerations against it;
but the power to shun all sin depends upon the subordination of
the faculties one to another, in the due order of their creation,
and an universal subjection of them to God. Though a man, by a
careful watch, may withstand a particular temptation, yet as long
as he is alienated from God, and has corrupt habits in him, which
are prone to sinful acts, he will one time or other, by some
sudden temptation, be carried out according to his natural
inclination, before he is able to premeditate, and set reason on
work. And sometimes the motions to sin come in such troops, that
he cannot stir up his force against all, so that while he is
combating against one, another comes behind and surprises him. As
another Romanist illustrates it, a vessel has three holes to leak
at; a man with two hands may stop two of them, which he will, but
the third will remain open of necessity. None will say that the
devil can avoid all sin in general, and become holy for the
future, because his will is determined to sin, but this or that
individual act of sin he may; for he may choose whether he will
assault this man or that with such a temptation, or whether at
this time or another. As if two commands were given to the good
angels, and it be left to their wills whether they will do that
or the other, though they cannot but do good, because their wills
are so determined, yet they have a liberty to choose which
command they will at present follow. And the reason of this is
this: there is no physical necessity upon a man to this or that
sin, as there is that the fire should burn. Lusts only offer
themselves; they have no force upon a man, but be his own will;
they have no authority from God to compel him; then God should be
the author of sin. Satan can give no commission to them to break
open our hearts; and though he be a strong adversary, he cannot
break them open. If the door be open, it is our own act. Is there
any necessity upon a man to run into this or that infectious
company, or drink brimful cups, till he has drowned both his
reason and sentiments of morality? Has he not power to quell many
incentives to sin? Show me that man in the world that, upon
serious consideration, would say, it is utterly impossible for
him to avoid this or that particular sin when he is tempted to
it. What men do in this case, they do willing, though a strong
temptation may be the first motive of it. It is said, Hos. v. 11,
'Ephraim willingly walked after the commandment,' though the
first motive to it was the command of their prince Jeroboam.
To evidence this, let me do it by some queries, which may both
satisfy that we divest not man of all power, and prevent the ill
use men may make of this doctrine, to encourage sluggishness.
1. Cannot you avoid this or that foreseen occasion of sin?
Cannot he that knows how prone he is to overthrow his reason when
the wine sparkles in the glass, avoid coming within the sight of
it? What force is there upon his legs to go, or his hands to take
the cup? Can we not starve those affections we have to this or
that particular sin, by neglecting the means to feed them? If a
man stood by with a drawn sword to stab you if you went into such
a place, could you not forbear going in? What is the reason?
Fear. And why might not a natural fear of God, heightened by
consideration, be of as much force with you as the fear of man,
unless atheism has swallowed up all sentiments of a Deity? Do you
not rather wish for opportunities, and court a temptation? put
you heads out of the window, with Sisera's mother; why is the
chariot of the devil so long a coming? It is said, Prov. xxi. 10,
'The soul of the wicked desires evil.'
2. Have you not a power to avoid gross sins? Is there any
force upon men, to open, sensual sins? Have they not a power to
abstain from fleshly lusts? Has not the will a commanding power
over the members? What hinders it from exercising that power? The
members are not forced, but they are 'yielded up' by consent of
the will to sin, Rom. vi. 19. Had not Achan as much natural power
to forbear taking the wedge of gold and the Babylonish garment,
as the rest of that vast number of the Israelites? Not one of
their hands touched any of the spoil. Had he not as much power as
any of them to have restrained his hands, though he could not
quench his covetousness? The law of nature tells us, we ought not
to do that to another which we would not have done to ourselves.
Have we not as much power to observe this as the Gentiles, who
did by nature the things contained in the law? Why may not a
man's will command his tongue to speak that which is true, as
well as that which is false? Is there not power to control it
from speaking blasphemy, and belching out cursed oaths? Cannot
you command the hand to forbear striking another wrongfully? Has
not a murderer power to keep his sword in his scabbard, as well
as to sheath it in his neighbour's bowels? Can any man say, that
there was one gross sin in the whole coarse of his life, but he
had a power to avoid it if he would? Forbearance of gross sin
consists in a naked omission and a not acting, which is far more
easy than a positive acting, and every man has a power to suspend
his own act.
3. Did you never resist a temptation to a particular sin? Why
may you not then resist it afterward if you will, since the same
common grace attends you? If the will be disengaged one moment
from a sin under a great temptation, why not another moment from
sin, under a less temptation? No temptation can overpower your
strength, unless the will freely shake hands with it: Acts v. 3,
'Why has Satan filled thy heart, to lie to the Holy Ghost?' His
meaning is not, why Satan has done it, for Ananias could not
render a reason of that; but why did thou suffer Satan to fill
thy heart? If you have given a cheek to Satan before, is it not
as easy to say again, 'Get thee behind me, Satan'?
4. Have you not power to shun many inward sins? Man, where he
has least power, yet he has some, viz. over his thoughts. We
cannot, indeed, hinder the first risings and motions of them,
which will steam up from the corrupt fumes and lake whether he
will or no; but cannot we hinder the progress of them? Is there
not a power to check the delight in them if we will, or divert
our thoughts another way, not listen to their suggestions, and
hold no inward converse with them? Though you cannot hinder their
intrusion, may you not hinder their lodging? 'How long shall vain
thoughts lodge within you?' Jer. iv. 14. Sure we have a power by
common grace to forbear any conference with the motions of flesh
and blood.
5. When you do sin, had you not many assistances against it,
which if you had hearkened to, you might have avoided it? Were
there not previous dissuasions from that inward monitor,
conscience? When sin has been enticing you on one hand, and
conscience warning you on the other, have you not more willingly
listened unto the pleasant reasoning of sin, than the wholesome
admonitions of conscience? Can you not as well listen to what
conscience as to what sin does propose? But have you not wilfully
scorned its judgment? Have you not raged against it with a
confidence in sin (which is the case of the foolish sinner, Prov.
xiv. 16, 'The fool rages, and is confident'), and would 'not
consider any of the ways of God' it minded you of, Job xxxiv. 27,
and gave no more regard to its sober dictates, or its louder
pressings, than you have to the barking of little curs in the
street? Why could you not, with those assistances, have avoided
that particular act of sin? The fault was clearly in your wills.
Can you not rather choose a cup of wine, than a cup of poison?
clear streams, than muddy waters? Besides those assistances, you
might have had more, if under the batteries of temptation you had
sought to heaven for them. Might you not, then, have avoided this
or that sin, when you had such assistances, and might have had
more?
6. Have you not avoided sin upon less accounts and
considerations? The heathen philosopher could observe, that men
may live better than they do. The wrestlers and champions in the
Olympic games lived most temperately and continently during that
time, to be more fit for the gaining the prize. May not rational
considerations do as much, if excited in your minds, as an
ambitious desire of honour and affection to victory did in them?
Had not Saul a power to withdraw his hand from the unrighteous
persecution of David before, as well as when he was sensible of
David's kindness in sparing his life when he might have killed
him? A drunkard under the disease and pain caused by his sin, can
forbear his cups; does his disease confer any power upon him more
than he had before? No; why could he not then have forborne his
drunken revellings? Can men be restrained from some sins by the
eye of a man, the presence of a child? What power do their eyes
confer upon them? They only excite that which they had before.
Cannot men forbear a sinful act for a sum of money if it were
proffered them or in the presence of a king, who is said to
'scatter away evil with his eyes,' Prov. xx. 8, or in a visible
and imminent danger? If a gibbet or a stake were set before men,
that they should be immediately executed if they did not forbear
such a sinful action, or if they did not go to hear a sermon; can
any be so foolish, to think that the glister of gold, the penalty
of the law, the sight of a gibbet, should confer a power upon you
which you were not before possessed with? It is not then the want
of power to avoid sin, but the want of will.
7. Why does conscience check any man after the commission of
sin, if it were not in his power to avoid it? All those actions
which fall under the cognisance and check of conscience, are
actions in our own power, and within the verge of our wills. For
the pain of conscience is of another kind than that pain or grief
which is raised by those accidents we could not avoid. It arises
from the liberty of the will, and galls the soul when it
considers, that that which it has done was in its power to be
done otherwise. This is the common language of men upon the
regrets of conscience: I might have done otherwise, I was warned
by my friends; I slighted their warnings, I had resolutions to
the contrary, but I stifled them. All men have laid the fault
upon themselves, and what is universal consent has a truth in it;
the consciences of all men would not gall them for that which
they had no power to decline. Indeed, if men wore necessitated to
sin, they could not be tormented in hell, for the torment there
is conscience acting rationally, and reflecting upon them for
their wilfulness in the world. If man had not a power to refuse
sin, conscience would have no ground for any such reflections to
rack and torment them. And it is observable, that natural men,
somewhat awakened upon a deathbed, are not so racked by their
consciences simply for not being regenerate, as for not avoiding
those sins which were hindrances, and not using those means which
were appointments of God for such an end, because those were in
their power; but they wilfully embraced the one, and as wilfully
refused the other.
Prop. 2. Man has a power, by common grace, to do many more
good actions (actions materially good) than he does. Evangelical
works we cannot do without union to Christ, so himself says,
'Without me you can do nothing,' John xv. 5; nothing according to
the order of the gospel, nothing spiritually, nothing acceptably,
because no such fruits can arise, where faith, the root of such
works, is wanting. Though man be much crippled in regard of
morals, yet he is not wholly dead to them, as he is to
spirituals. A man may 'break off his sins by (moral)
righteousness, and his iniquity by showing mercy to the poor;' by
taking off the yoke of oppression, and restoring of what he has
rifled, which counsel Daniel gives to Nebuchadnezzar, chap. iv.
27. Though a sick man cannot do all the acts of a sound man till
he be perfectly cured, yet he has some power of acting some
things like a sound man, remaining with his disease. The young
man in the Gospel (yet out of Christ) morally kept the law; so
may men under the gospel keep the outward and material part of
the precept. There are not only some common notions left since
the tall, but also some seeds of moral righteousness in the
nature of man. The Gentiles did not only, by nature, in part
restored, know the things written in the law, but they did by
nature do them, Rom. id. 14; upon this stock they bore many
excellent fruits. What patience, chastity, contempt of the
pleasures of the world! What affections to their country, and
bowels of compassion to men in misery! And what devotion in the
external worship of their gods, according to their light, were
exemplary in them, though only under the conduct of nature! And
these works, though they were not according to the exactness of
the law, and failed also in the manner of them, and could not
please God for want of faith, yet so far as they were agreeable
to the law of nature, and in regard of the materiality of them,
were not offensive to God. This moral righteousness of theirs was
only external, and rather an image of righteousness than a true
one. Abimelech had a natural integrity, which God acknowledges to
be in him, and did arise from his moral nature, though he also
appropriates to himself the restraint of Abimelech, and his
concurrence with an approbation of that moral integrity: Gen. xx.
6, 'I know that thou did this in the integrity of thy heart: for
I also withheld thee from sinning against me, therefore suffered
I thee not to touch her;' "lo netaticha", I gave thee
not up to touch her. If men did nourish a moral integrity, which
they might do, God would concur with them to preserve them from
many crimes. If those which were only under the guidance of
natural light had so much power to do many moral acts by a common
grace, is man's power less under the gospel, whereby they have an
addition of a greater light to this natural? If man was able to
do so much by the light of nature, there can be no inability
brought upon him under the light of the gospel, unless men, by
their sluggishness and obstinacy, provoke God judicially to
deprive them of that power, and withdraw his hand from them, and
so give them up to all kind of wickedness, as it is the dreadful
case of many in these days. Man may keep the law of nature better
than he does, and for not keeping that he is condemned.
Prop. 3. Men have a power to attend upon the outward means God
has appointed for regeneration. Though man cannot renew himself,
yet he has a natural power to attend upon the means God has
afforded. Though a man has not power to cure his own disease or
heal his wound, yet he has power to advise with others, and use
the best medicines for his recovery. There is not an outward duty
a renewed man does, but a natural man has power externally to do
it; though what is essentially good in all parts, cannot be done
without special grace, yet what is externally good may be done by
the assistance of common grace. Have you not passions, fear,
love, desire, grief? Why cannot you exercise them about other
objects than ordinarily they are employed about? Why can you not
make hell the object of your fears, and heaven the object of your
desire? Why might not Esau have wept for his sins, as well as for
the loss of the blessing? Might he not have changed the object if
he would? Why may we not exercise our inward affections more in
our attendance on God? Is not a little excuse sufficient to put
off from duty, a great excuse not sufficient to keep you from
committing sin? Great business must be laid aside for sin, not
the least laid aside for God. Every little thing is a lion in the
way then. Do you not many times rack your minds to invent pleas
for neglect of duty? Why can you not set them on work to consider
reasons to move you to service? Have we not power to be more
serious in the use of means than we are? We can be so when some
affliction presses us, or conscience gnaws us. Neither of these
furnishes us with a new power. Conscience is like the law,
acquaints us with our duty, but gives us no strength. The charge
God brines against Ephraim was, that he 'would not frame his
doings to turn towards God,' Hosea v. 4; he would entertain no
thoughts, not one action that had the least prospect towards
repentance, he would use no means for that end, or have a look
that way. If a man will not do what is in his power, it is a sign
he will not be renewed. Can he pretend to a desire to live, who
will not eat, and endeavour to prevent foreseen dangers? Or can
he pretend to a desire to build, that will not use materials when
he may?
There are two great means: hearing the word, and prayer.
(1.) Hearing the word. Have not men power to go to hear the
word, to hear a sermon, as well as to see a play? Have they any
shackles upon their feet, that they cannot carry them to a place
of worship as well as to a place of vanity and sin? Can you not
as well read the Scripture as a romance? Has not the will a
despotic power over the members of the body? How came Herod to
have more natural power to hear the word, and to hear it 'with
pleasure,' Mark vi. 20, than other men have? May you not strive
against diversions, resist carnal affection, rouse up your souls
from their laziness, and endeavour to close with the word? How
smilingly would God look upon such endeavours? If men do not, it
is out of a natural sluggishness and enmity of will, not for want
of power if they would. Men do not what they might. Certainly he
does no more desire regeneration who neglects and despises the
great instrument of it, than he can be said to desire his own
preservation, who neglects medicines proper for the cure of his
disease.
(2.) Prayer. I do not mean a spiritual prayer, which is by the
special assistance and indwelling of the Holy Ghost, but of a
natural prayer by common instinct; such a one as the apostle puts
Simon Magus upon, who he knew was destitute of any air of the
Spirit to breathe out, as being 'in the gall of bitterness and
bond of iniquity,' Acts viii. 22, 23, yet supposes him to have a
power in some manner to express his desires to God; or such a
power that was common in heathens, upon any distress to run to
their altars, and fill their temples with cries to their gods.
You cannot pray in the Holy Ghost, but you may send up natural
and rational cries to God. Did not Jonah's mariners cry every man
to his god? Have you not as much power to cry to the true God as
the heathens to false ones? There is the natural prayer of those
mariners, as well as the natural integrity of Abimelech, which
was not a new-covenant integrity. Can you not be as devout as the
publican, and cry, with more seriousness of affection than
generally men do, 'Lord, be merciful to me a sinner'? When men
are upon a death-bed, ready to take their leave of the world,
they can then cry. It is not their death-bed inspires them with
power, more than they had before, but they have more mind, and
see a greater necessity of crying to God. They have more power in
the time of their health, by how much the habit of sin wanted
that strength which has been acquired by a continuance of acts
till the time of their sickness; for the fewer sins have been
committed, the less is the power impaired. Though God has kept
other things in his hand, yet he has given us a power of begging,
we will use it as a means to obtain them. Can you not kneel down
before God, and implore his assistance? Can you not acknowledge
before him that it is impossible for you to change yourself, but
that your eyes are upon his grace; that you cannot attain by your
own strength a spiritual heart; that you will seek nowhere else
for it but from his hand; and that you will not be at rest till
he has put in his hand and dropped upon your hearts? Can you not
thus cry out, Oh that I were a renewed person! as well as cry
out, Oh that I were rich and honourable in the world! Had Paul a
new tongue when he cried out, 'Who shall deliver me from the body
of this death?' Was it not the same member wherein he had
breathed out threatenings against the disciples?
Prop. 4. Man has a power to exercise consideration. He has
seminals of jus and aequum, and a power of judging
according to them: Luke xii. 57 'Yea, why even of yourselves
judge you not what is right?' Our Saviour checks them for not
making use of their natural power; in the searching their own
consciences, and judging their own acts, as well as they did in
discerning the face of the sky, and what weather would follow.
There is a power of consideration in a rebellious heart; for God
acknowledges it in a rebellious nation: Ezek. xii. 3, 'It may be
they will consider, though they be a rebellious house.'
1. Can you not reflect upon yourselves? Every man has a
reflexive faculty; otherwise he is not a man. Reflection is the
peculiar privilege of a rational creature, without which he is
not rational. The Pharisees could reflect upon themselves, and
say, 'Are we blind also?' John ix. 40. Can you not then take a
survey of your past lives; cast up the accounts of your souls, as
well as your books? Can you not view your particular crimes, with
the aggravations attending them? Yea, you can, if you would. Can
you not look back upon the means you have neglected, the love you
have slighted, and the light you have shut your eyes against? As
long as a man has reason, he may use his reason in these things
as well as in others. Why may he not reflect upon himself in
spiritual concerns, as well as civil affairs in the world? Cannot
he, by comparing the face of his soul with the glass of the word,
understand his own state, and by self-reflection come to an
understanding of his own lost condition and weakness?
2. Can you not consider the word? Cannot your reasons be
employed about the objects the word offers, as well as the
objects the world offers? Though you cannot act spiritually in
the duties of religion, can you not act rationally in them, as
men? Are you endued with a rational soul, to consider the
proposals of worldly affairs and concerns, and can you not
exercise the same power in considering the proposal made to you
by the gospel? The gospel is not only spiritual, but rational. As
long as you have a thinking faculty, can you not consider what
the reasonable meaning of it is? Though you have not a spiritual
taste, you have a rational understanding; why may it not be
busied about one object as well as another? The natural
repentance of the Ninevites at Jonah's preaching, implied the
consideration of his threatening sermon. Why is there not a power
in you to think of what is proposed to you out of the word, as
well as you can think of what you read of a mathematical or
philosophical book, or some history? The power is the same in
both, the faculty the same. As the object proposed adds no power
to the faculty, so it takes away no power the faculty already
has. Surely man is not such a block or stone, but he may turn
these things over and over, press them upon his own soul, which
may make way for the sensibleness of his state, and putting the
will out of its sinful indifference. What any natural man has
done, that may all under the same means do, if they will. Why may
not the veriest wretch among us humble himself at the hearing of
the word, as well as wicked Ahab? 1 Kings xxi. 27, 29, 'When Ahab
heard these words, he rent his clothes. Seest thou how Ahab
humbles himself?' He discovered an external humiliation, after
the consideration of the threatening denounced by the prophet.
3. Can you not cherish, by consideration, those motions which
are put into you? There is not a man but the Spirit strives with,
one time or other, Gen vi. 3. Has not man a power to approve any
good counsel given him, if he will? Have you not had some
supernatural motions lifting you up towards God, and pressing
obligations upon you, to walk more circumspectly? Why might you
not have cherished them, as well as smothered them? Why could you
not have considered the tendency of them, as well as have
considered how to divert and drown them, by engaging in some
sensual dust? Was the power of consideration lost? No; you could
not then have cast about in your minds, by what means you should
be rid of them, or how you should resist them. Have you not
wilfully rejected them, even when consideration has been revived
at a sermon? And yet you did industriously let that good motion
die for want of blowing up the spark, by following on the
consideration which was raised upon its feet. When you have
'begun well, who did hinder you' from a further obedience? 'This
persuasion comes not of him that calls you,' Gal. v. 7, 8. There
was no necessity upon you, to fortify yourselves in your
corrupted habits against the attempts of the Spirit. Could you
not as well have fallen down before the throne of grace, to have
begged grace to second them, as kicked at them, and spurned them
away? Was it want of power to do otherwise? or was it not rather
your own obstinate wilfulness? Since I appeal to you, whether
your own consciences have not tugged at you, and spurred you on
at such seasons, why could you not then beg of God, that such a
good motion might not have departed out of your coasts? Because a
man cannot renew himself, therefore to lie down in sluggishness
is not the design of this doctrine.
4. Can you not consider those notions you have be natural
light? Man has a conscience which minds him of moral good, and
pulls him from evil. No man can deprive himself of these. It will
check in those things wherein others commend us, and commend us
in those things wherein others accuse us. May we not observe the
motions of conscience within us? May we not consider the charge
it brings against us for any act committed, so as to avoid the
like for the future; and the excusations of conscience, in
commending us, so as to do the like acts for the future? As we
have a law without us, which we may consider, so we have a
conscience within us, which witnesses to the equity of the law,
accusing us for what we do contrary to it, and excusing us for
what we do in observance of it, Rom. ii. 15; and this in man's
corrupt state. Cannot man then observe the dictates of
conscience? Can he not find out the sense of this law in his
mind, though it be much blurred? Cannot he act like a man, in
following the dictates of this rational principle, as well as
like a beast follow the allurements of sense? No rational
principle in man puts him upon evil, but upon moral good;
whatsoever draws him from good, or puts him upon evil, are
principles common to him with one brute or other, profit,
pleasure, honour, all which are found in some beast or other. Why
may not a man then consider the rational reports of his own
conscience, as well as the brutish whisperings of sense? But does
not man endeavour to shuffle off his conscience, and is mighty
jolly when it keeps silence, or when he can stop its mouth with
an excuse? Do not men wilfully choke the sentiments of it, and
keep the truth deposited in their souls, in unrighteousness, Rom.
i. 18; and like the scorner, 'hear not its rebukes,' Prov. xiii.
1? Whatsoever man has by the relics of natural light, he may
think of. He knows by nature there is a God; he knows something
of his attributes, and of his law; may not those be his morning
thoughts? Is he not stirred up sometimes to contemplate on them?
May he not do it at other times, since this common grace is
always with him, and leaves him not till he leaves valuing and
embracing its divine assistances? Let it be remembered, that in
all this which man may do, the power is to be ascribed to common
grace through a mediator, keeping up by his interposition the
pillars of the earth, and preserving some relics of natural
light, and the seeds of moral righteousness in man, not in the
least to be ascribed to bare nature; and that man's corrupt will,
stuffed with sinful habits, is the cause he makes no use of this
power.
Quest. 2. If we have not an ability to renew ourselves, why
does God command us to do so? And why does God make promises to
men if they will turn? Is not this a cruelty? as if a man should
command another to run a race, and promise to reward him if he
did, and yet bind him with fetters that he cannot run? Both the
command would be unjust and the promise ridiculous.
Ans. In general. God may command, and his command does not
signify a present ability in man.
(1.) He may command, because we have faculties suited to the
command in respect of their substance. For the death of a sinner
was not a physical death, but a moral. Man lost not his
faculties, but the rectitude of them; he lost the purity of his
sight, the integrity of his will, but not the understanding and
will itself.
(2.) God's command does not signify a present moral ability to
perform it. God's command, which acquaints us with our present
duty, is no argument of a present power; for if a command
signified more than the duty man owes, it signified more than a
command in its own nature could signify. Gods command to us to
renew ourselves implies no more an ability inherent in the
creature to do so than Christ's voice to putrefying Lazarus,
'Lazarus arise, come forth,' John xi. 43, implied a power in
Lazarus to raise himself, or his speech to the palsied cripple,
'Arise, take up thy bed,' implied a power in himself to do it
himself before a supernatural conveyance of it. Do not men exhort
every day to sobriety those that have contracted a profound habit
of drunkenness and lust, that philosophy does acknowledge it is
not possible for them to abstain from; yet no man accuses those
that exhort them of impertinence, nor those that chastise them of
injustice. God's commands are not the measures of our strength,
but the rule of our duty, and do not teach us what we are, but
what we should be.
But to clear this more particularly:
God may command, though man has not a present moral ability to
renew himself. For
[1.] First, Man once had a power to do whatsoever God would
command him; he had a power to cleave to God. He had not else, in
justice, been capable of any such injunction; there had been
ground of a complaint and charge against God, if man had been
created defective in any of those abilities necessary for his
obedience to this command. The command is just; God would not
else have imposed it, because of his righteousness, and every
man's conscience testifies that it is highly just he should
honour God, love God, and cleave to God. If it were just, then
man was capable to perform this command, for man, as a rational
creature, is capable of a law, and cannot be governed otherwise;
and no law could be given so proper for him as to stand right to
his Creator. Since, therefore, the law was just in itself, and
since God did justly impose it, man was certainly created by God
in a capacity to observe it. No question but God, who furnished
other creatures with an ability to attain their several ends, and
perform the orders God had set them in at the creation, was no
less indulgent to man. He that was not deficient to the lower
creatures would not be deficient to the noblest of his sublunary
works. He would have been worse in his rank, without a sufficient
stock, than other creatures were in theirs. There would not have
been a physical goodness and perfection suitable to his station
in the world, and his excellency above other creatures. How could
God then have pronounced him good, among the rest of his works,
if there had been in his creation a natural inability to answer
the end of his creation? If God had created man in such a state
that he could not do righteously, and yet commanded him to do
righteously, and, because he did not, punish him, he would have
been unjust; as if a man should command another to reach a thing
too high for him, and that when his hands were tied behind him,
and because he did not, beat him. This would have been the case
had not man had power at first to do righteously. Had man
preserved himself in that created state, no just command of God
(and it was impossible any unjust command should have proceeded
from infinite righteousness) would have been too hard and too
high for him.
[2.] God did not deprive man of this ability. Man was not
stripped of his original righteousness by God, for man had lost
it before ever God spake to him, or passed any sentence upon him
after his fall: Gen. iii. 10, 'I was naked.' If God had taken it
away without any offence of Adam, he might have expostulated the
case. It had been alike unjust, as if God had never given him
power at first to observe the command he enjoined him. It would
have been unreasonable to require that of man which God himself
had made impossible. But God did not take away man's original
righteousness. If God had taken it away before man's fall, then
man was unrighteous before he fell, and God, taking it away from
him while he was perfect, had made him, of an holy and righteous
man, unholy and profane; as he that deprives a malefactor of his
sight, for his demerit, makes him of seeing blind. If God took it
away after he spake to Adam in the garden, it would then follow
that Adam was righteous after his fall till God deprived him of
it, and so was innocent while he was sinful, and strong while he
was weak. God did not take it away from him before, but had told
him that the loss of it would be the natural consequent of his
eating the forbidden fruit, Gen. ii. 17, nor after for after we
find only temporal punishments threatened. God indeed did
judicially deny him the restoration of it, which, as a governor
and a judge, he might justly do, resolving to govern him in
another manner than before. So that it would be an unjust
imputation on God to say, God cut off man's legs, and then
commanded him to run, and come to him. What if God did foresee
that man would fall; was God therefore the cause of his fall?
God's prescience, though it is infallible, is not the cause of a
thing, no more than our foreknowledge that the sun will rise
to-morrow morning is a cause of rising of it.
[3.] Therefore, since God did not deprive man of it, it
follows that man lost it himself, and not barely lost it, but
cast it away. He did voluntarily by an inordinate intention of
will, cast away this original perfection, and fell a-hunting
after his own 'inventions', Eccles. vii. 29. He did not stick to
that command God had given him, nor implore God s assistance of
him, as by
His natural ability he might have done. He consulted not with
his command upon the temptation, but was very willing to cast off
that righteousness wherewith God had endowed him, for an affected
godhead. Man readily swallowed the bait; he did not debate the
business with Eve, 'She gave to her husband with her, and he did
eat,' Gen. iii. 6. So that the fault
was wholly in himself, and his present state voluntarily
contracted, for though the devil tempted him, yet he had no power
to force him. He was easily overcome by him, for it was not a
repeated temptation, but a surrender at the first parley.
[4.] Therefore God's right of commanding, and man's obligation
of returning and cleaving to God, remains firm. God's right still
remains. God gave him a portion to manage, though man prodigally
spent it. God may challenge his own. Cannot a master justly
challenge that commodity he sent his servant with money to buy,
though he spent it in drunkenness and gaming? God gave Adam a
sufficient stock; he trifled it away. Must God's right suffer for
his folly, and man's crime deprive God of his power to command?
The obligation to God is natural, therefore indelible; the
corruption of the creature cannot render this first obligation
void. Righteousness is a debt the creature, as a rational
creature, owes to God, and cannot refuse the payment of it
without a crime. Who deprived him of the power of paying?
Himself. Should this voluntary embezzlement prejudice God's right
of exacting that which the creature cannot be excused from? A
debtor, who cannot pay, remains under the obligation of paying.
The receipt of a sum of money brings him into the relation of a
debtor, and not his ability to pay what he has received. Such a
doctrine would free all men who were unable to pay from being
debtors, though the sums they owed were never so vast. That judge
would be unjust that would excuse a prodigal debtor, because he
could not pay when sued by his creditor. No doubt but the devils
are bound to serve God, and love him, though by their revolt they
have lost the will to obey him. If, because we have no present
power, our obligation to turn to God and obey him ceased, there
would be no sin in the world, and consequently no judgments. Who
will say, that if a prince had such rebellious subjects that
there were little hopes to reclaim them, he should be therefore
bound not to command them to return to their duty and obedience?
If it be reasonable in a prince, whose rights are limited, shall
it not be reasonable in God to exact it, who has an unbounded
right over his creature? Either God must keep up his law or
abrogate it, or, which is all one, let it lie in the dust. His
holiness obliges him to keep up his law; to abrogate it,
therefore, would be against his holiness. To declare a
willingness that his creature should not love him, should not
obey him, would be to declare that which is unjust, because love
is a just debt to an amiable object and the chief good, and
obedience to a sovereign Lord. Must God change his holiness
because man has changed his estate? The obligation of man
remaining perpetual, the right of God to demand remains perpetual
too, notwithstanding the creature's casting himself into an
insolvent condition. If man still owes this duty to God, why may
not God exact his right of man? Much more may God call for a
right use of those means and gifts he has, as a benefactor,
bestowed upon man since his fall. No man will deny this right to
God upon serious thoughts. These new gifts and means were given
him not only for himself, but for his Lord, to improve for his
glory. God may justly require the right use of those moral
principles and evangelical means for the ends for which he
appointed them.
[5.] It will appear more reasonable, because God demands no
more, nay not so much as he required of Adam in innocence. It is
but obedientia redintegrata, a return in part to
that perfect boldness which was inherent in man, and to that
obedience in part which was in a great measure due to God. As
when a prince demands the return of rebels, he demands a
restoration of that subjection which they paid him before. God
required a perfect obedience in the first covenant, he requires
not so much in the second, so that for want of it a creature
shall be cast off; but a sincere obedience is required, though
not in degree perfect. Adam had a fundamental power in him to
perform that obedience which is required, in faith and
repentance, the two great parts of regeneration. Faith is nothing
but an embracing and accepting of Christ the mediator. Adam had a
power of believing and accepting Christ for his head, had he been
proposed to him in paradise, as the mediator of consistency and
confirmation, and the vinculum of holding him for ever
close to God. Had not Adam a power to accept him under this
notion, as well as the good angels have accepted him for their
head, and worship him as mediator; that is, pay him an obedience
as mediator when he comes into the world, Heb. i. 6. Had he not a
fundamental power to grieve, though since sin was extraneous to a
state of innocence, he could not have exercised that grief for
himself, repentance being extraneous to obedience, and unmeet for
him in a sinless state? Suppose God had commanded him to grieve
for the sins of the fallen angels, Adam having this passion in
his nature, might have done it. He might have known what sin was
in them, and might have grieved for the dishonour of God by them;
even as our Saviour did grieve for the sins of others, Mark iii.
5, who knew no sin himself. And in grieving for his own sin,
there was only a change of the object.
[6.] It is yet more reasonable if we consider, that every
natural man thinks he has a power to renew himself, and turn to
God when he will practically, though not all of them notionally.
What reason then has man to quarrel with God, and accuse him of
demanding that which he thinks he can give to God, and will not
at present, but take his own time to do it, when he sees it fit?
This practical opinion runs in the reins of every natural man
under the gospel, as well as in the heathens, which appears by
the general wilful delays of men about their eternal concerns, by
their vows and resolutions upon the blows of conscience of
reforming their lives, and becoming new men without having
recourse to the grace of God, or taking any notice of him in
their resolves. This I think is a clear case. 'Yet a little more
sleep,' says a man, that thinks he can rise time enough when he
will, and despatch his business in a moment, Prov. vi. 10. With
what face can man accuse God of not giving him power, when he
thinks he has power enough himself? or be angry with God for
demanding his debt, when he thinks himself in a solvent
condition? No man will blame another for requiring that of his
servant, which his servant boasts he has power in himself to do.
The Israelites thought so when they said, Exod. xxiv. 3, 'All the
words which the Lord has said we will do,' without any
applications to the grace of God to enable them. All men are like
Israel in this; only the regenerate are most sensible of their
own impotence, and scarce any man else.
[7.] From all this it follows, that God is not bound to give
grace to any; and where he does bestow it, it is an act of his
sovereign pleasure. If God has given man power, and never took it
away, but it was cast away by man, therefore God's right is not
prejudiced, but he may justly demand of man what once he gave him
power to do, especially since it is less than what man at first
owed him; and when man thinks he has power to pay him, it will
evidently follow, that God is not bound to give any new power. If
God were bound to give a new power to accept of the gospel, he
were then unjust not to confer it; if he be not bound, it is of
mere grace that he bestows it. God proposes pardon to all upon
such conditions, but he is not bound to give the condition to
any; he commands all to renew their obedience to him, but he is
not bound to renew any one person. He gives the command to turn,
as a lawgiver and governor; he gives the grace to some to turn,
as a benefactor. It is grace therefore, not debt. When God
confers it, it is an act of his compassionate mercy; when he
denies it, it is an act of his just sovereignty. He may, if he
please, 'suffer all nations to walk in their own ways,' Acts xiv.
16. Yet if he please to propose the means of grace to any, the
very knowledge of those mysteries of heaven is a peculiar gift,
as well as the outward proposal: Matt. xiii. 11, 'To you it is
given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them
it is not given.' If we improve reason to the highest, God is not
obliged to give us grace, no more than if a beast improved sense
to the highest, he were bound to give him reason. Though if there
could be a man found in any age of the world, who did improve
reason to the utmost of his power, I would not doubt God's giving
him the addition of supernatural grace, out of the largeness of
his bounty, though still there is no obligation upon God, because
man does no more than his duty.
And that God does not give grace to all to whom the means are
offered, and yet does command them to turn, and promise to
receive them;—
(1.) It does not entrench upon his sincerity in his proposals.
His proposals are serious, though he knows man will not receive
them without an over-powering grace; and though he be resolved
not to give the assistance of his grace to every one under those
means, but leave them to the liberty of their own wills. The
gospel is to be considered as a command ordering men to believe,
or as a promise alluring men to be renewed, by representing to
them the happiness of such a state. Consider it as a command, God
is serious in it, though he resolve not to give grace to all to
whom the precept comes, for under this consideration of a command
it is a declaration of man's duty, and a demonstration of God s
sovereign authority. Does God's resolution of not giving grace
weaken the obligation of man to his duty, or diminish God's
authority, or give ground to man to charge him with insincerity?
Consider it as a promise, does it hinder God's seriousness in it
if he resolves not to give the condition of it to all? It is
sufficient to show God's seriousness in it, to declare, that if
men will be regenerate, it will be very pleasing to him; that he
will make good to them what he has promised, that if they be
renewed, he will make good every tittle of the promise to them;
and if they will seek, and ask, and knock, he will not be wanting
to them to assist them.
(2.) It does not disparage his wisdom to command that to man
which he knows man will not do without his grace, and so make
promises to man upon the doing it. If man indeed had not a
faculty naturally fitted for the object, it might entrench upon
God's wisdom to make commands and promises to such a creature as
it would be to command a beast to speak. But man has a faculty to
understand and will, which makes him a man; and there is a
disposition in the understanding and will which consists in an
inclination determined to good or evil, which makes us not to be
men, but good or bad men, whereby we are distinguished from one
another, as by reason and will we are from plants and beasts. Now
the commands and exhortations are suitable to our nature, and
respect not our reason as good or bad, but simply as reason.
These commands presuppose in us a faculty of understanding and
will, and a suitableness between the command and the faculty of a
reasonable creature. This is the reason why God has given to us
his law and gospel, his commands, not because we are good or bad
men, but because we are men endued with reason, which other
creatures want, and therefore are not capable of government by a
command. Our blessed Lord and Saviour did not exhort infants,
though he blessed them, because they were not arrived to the use
of reason, yet he exhorted the Jews, many of whose wills he knew
were not determined to good, and whom he told that they would die
in their sins. And though God had told them, Jer. xiii., that
they could no more change themselves than an Ethiopian could his
skin, yet he expostulates with them why they 'would not be made
clean;' verse 27 'O Jerusalem, wilt thou not be made clean? when
shall it once be?' Because, though they had an ill disposition in
their judgment, yet their judgment remained, whereby to discern
of exhortations if they would. To present a concert of music to a
deaf man that cannot hear the greatest sound were absurd, because
sounds are the object of hearing; but commands and exhortations
are the object, not of this or that good constitution of reason,
but of reason itself.
(3.) Neither does it disagree with his justice. It is so far
from being unjust for God to demand what men are obliged to do,
though he knows that they will not do it, that God would be
unjust to himself if he did not demand it, if he let men trample
upon his rights without demanding restitution of them. If a
prince sets forth edicts to rebels to return, and promise them
pardon upon their returning, though he knows they are
rebelliously bent, that they will not entertain a thought of
coming again under his sceptre, but will still be in arms, and
draw down his wrath upon them, will not all interpret this to be
an act of clemency and goodness in the prince? Neither is God an
acceptor of persons, because he does not give grace unto all; for
may he not do with his own what he please without injustice?
Those to whom we give alms have reason to thank us; those to whom
we give not an alms have no reason to complain; we have gratified
the one, but we have done no wrong to the other. We are all by
nature criminals, deserving death; should God leave us in that
deplorable estate wherein he found us, can we accuse him of
injustice? Those that by grace are snatched out of the pit, have
reason to acknowledge it an admirable favour, as indeed it is;
those that are destitute of grace, and by their own wilful
rejection left to sink to the bottom, cannot impute their
unhappiness to him; for he left them not without witness; he
presented them the word, exhorted them to hearken to him; but,
instead of paying their duty, they fiercely rejected him,
abhorred his exhortations, and gave themselves over to sin and
vice. If a man proclaim by a crier that such that can bring such
a mark shall receive such an alms, he sends this private mark to
some, they come and receive an alms. Had he not power to do what
he pleased with his own, to send his distinguishing token to whom
he pleased? What injustice is done to the other, to whom he sends
not this mark?
We have shown that God may command. Let us see why God does
command, when he knows man has no power to renew himself?
1. The first reason is,
To make us sensible of our impotency. The design of God is not
to signify our power to perform it, but sensibly to affect us
with our inability, that we may be the better prepared for a
remedy; as the moral law was given with such terrifying marks, to
make men despair in themselves, and the ceremonial law annexed to
it, to give some glimpse of a Mediator in whom they might have
strength. And therefore when the Israelites were so affected,
Deut. xviii. 16-18, as to desire not to hear the voice of the
Lord in that manner, nor to see that great fire any more which
attended the law, that they might not die, he commends them for
it: verse 17, 'They have well spoken that which they have
spoken.' God is highly pleased with this sense of their own
inability to answer the terms of the first covenant, since it
makes them fly for help and supply to the prophet of the second
covenant. The cabalists therefore say, that the law was given to
take away the venom of the serpent; that is, not that we should
fulfil the law, but that we might learn how far we were swerved
from the duty we owed to God, and how unable to gain the
happiness we had lost. A conceit of self-sufficiency secretly
lurks in every one of us; we should think ourselves gods to
ourselves if we saw not the picture of our own weakness in the
spirituality of the command. Therefore, though we cannot
ourselves perform this command of regeneration, it is necessary
it should be directed to us, to make us abject in our eyes, and
strip us of all confidence in the flesh, which is the first step
toward a being endued with the Spirit; to make us hang down our
proud plumes, and sink into that despair in ourselves, which is
necessary to the superstructure of a saving faith. It is
necessary the law should be commanded, to make sin appear
exceeding sinful, to give us a true prospect of ourselves in the
glass of the command: the rectitude of it shows us our
crookedness; the holiness of it, our impurity; the justice of it,
our unrighteousness; the goodness of it, our wickedness; and the
spirituality of it, our carnality and fleshliness. God does not
command us (though we have no power) to upbraid and triumph over
us, but to lay us low, and humble us.
2. To make us sensible of the grace of God, and urge us to
have recourse to it. It is necessary that man should understand
the perfection of divine righteousness, and what the condition of
man was before the fall, that thereby he may understand the
necessity of the remedy, and be more willing to come under God's
wing than Adam has to keep under it; but without a sense of his
own weakness man would never come to God. God commands us, not
that he expects we should renew ourselves, for he knows we
cannot; but that being acquainted with our feeble frame, we
should implore his grace to turn us, and have recourse to him,
who delights to be sought unto and depended upon by his creature.
That this command of renewing ourselves, and returning to our due
obedience, is given to this end, is evident by the promise of the
gospel, which did accompany the command, both to encourage and
direct men where to find assistance for the performance of what
the first covenant exacts, and the second accepts. Therefore,
with the commands of the law, there is the promise of a great
prophet to teach them, an ordaining typical sacrifices to relieve
them, and the gospel, under the mask of the ceremonial law,
attended the fiery and impossible commands of the moral. God
might have exacted his right without making any promise, it had
been summum just; but God exacts not his right now, but
with a promise; where there is jus in one, and remissio
juris in the other. And very frequently in the Scripture,
where the command is given to show us our duty, yet a promise is
joined to it, to show that though obedience be our duty, yet
sanctification is God's work, as Lev. xx. 8, 'Ye shall keep my
statutes and do them;' whereupon it immediately follows, 'I am
the Lord which sanctify you.' The precept is to acquaint us with
our duty; the promise, to acquaint us with the sight of a
gracious ability; the precept minds us of our debt, the promise
minds us of the means to pay it: what is required in the precept
is encouraged in the promise. Every precept, being a part of the
law, is to 'shut us up' to faith, and to 'bring us to Christ,'
Gal. iii. 23, 24. God makes us amends; that as he requires of us
what we lost by another's fault, he has provided us a remedy by
another's righteousness, which we never performed; and by his own
Spirit, which we never purchased, if we will but seek it. If God
did work it in us without commanding us to work it ourselves, we
could not have a foundation to make such sensible
acknowledgements of his grace and omnipotent kindness. It is our
work as a due debt; it is God's work as a fruit of his grace;
Isa. xxvi. 12, 'Thou hast wrought all our works in us.' The
promise, therefore, of a new heart and a new spirit, is made
indefinitely; none are aimed in it, nor any excluded, that will
but seek it. And supposing they are predictions rather than
promises, yet they run in the nature of a promise: they are to be
pleaded, for God 'will be inquired after concerning them;' and
the fulfilling of them to the soul is as pleadable as the
fulfilling other prophecies to the church; the grounds of the
plea are the same in both, the truth of God: Ezek. xxxvi. 37,
'Thus says the Lord God, I will yet for this be inquired of by
the house of Israel, to do it for them;' which may reasonably be
concluded to respect the whole antecedent promising discourse of
God.
3. These commands and exhortations are of use to clear the
justice of God upon obstinate sinners. God is a judge, and judges
by law; commands therefore are necessary, because a rational
creature is only governable by law. If God were not a lawgiver,
he could not be a judge; his judicial proceedings depend upon his
legislative power. Men being to be judged by their works, must
have some law as the rule of those works; and his law is no more
than the first law in innocence, that is, to return to obedience
and righteousness. These commands and exhortations are the whips
and scourges of perverse consciences, whereby they are galled
while they obey not the motions of them, and render them
inexcusable and unworthy of mercy in despising the conditions God
requires of them, and make the case of Sodom 'more tolerable in
the day of judgment' than the condition of such men, Mat. xi. 24.
We are apt to bring an unreasonable charge against God of cruelty
and injustice, as though his punishments did not consist with
righteousness. God therefore shows us our duty, and demands it of
us, and it is confessed by us to be our duty; man is therefore
deservedly punished, because he does wilfully cherish the old
nature in him, the fountain of all sin; he has the truth, and he
holds it in possession, but in unrighteousness, therefore the
wrath of God is justly revealed from heaven against that
unrighteousness of his, Rom. i. 18. God calls sinners, though he
knows they will not renew themselves, as men send servants to
demand the possession of a piece of ground, though they know it
will not be delivered to them; but they do it that they may more
conveniently bring their action against such a person that will
not surrender. So upon God's command to men to be renewed, his
justice is more apparent upon their refusal; as he sent Moses to
Pharaoh, though he knew before that Pharaoh would not hearken to
him. This punishment is only accidental to the gospel, it becomes
the savour of death per per accidens, because of the
unbelief of those that reject it; the gospel is designed for the
salvation of men, not for their condemnation. If the corruption
of man produces condemnation to himself, must God abstain from
doing good to the world? There is not a man but abuses the light
of the sun which shines upon him, and the mercies God gives him,
and thereby brings wrath upon himself, and God knows they will do
so; would we have God, therefore, to put out the light of the
sun, and divest the earth of its fruitfulness? Shall God lay
aside his right of commanding, and take away the preaching of the
gospel, and so excellent a thing as the happy revelation of his
gracious promises and exhortations, because many men by their
wilfulness bring the just wrath of God upon them for their
refusal? Will any man accuse our blessed Lord and Saviour, when
ho comes to judgment, that he did them wrong to come and die for
mankind, and cause the news and ends of his death to be
published, and exhort sinners thereupon to believe in him? Surely
men's consciences shall be full of convictions of their own
wilfulness, and the equity of God's justice thereupon.
4. The commands and exhortations are of use to bring men to
God, according to the nature of rational creatures, and also to
keep them with God. Man not having lost his reason, though he has
lost his rectitude, cannot be drawn to God in a rational way but
by cords proper to man; for he is a creature governable only by
laws, and therefore must have laws suited to his nature; and
commands and exhortations are so, for the weakness brought upon
men to answer them is by their own defection. God does not bring
men to him by instinct, as he brought the beasts to Adam, or the
creatures into Noah's ark; such a conversion would not be
reasonable, nor spiritual, nor agreeable to God, no more than the
obedience of the beasts to Noah. God therefore draws men by
commands, and promises, and exhortations thereupon convenient to
the nature of man, accommodated to the rational capacity of the
creature; for man being created after the image of God, ought to
be conducted and governed after another manner then other
creatures. The grace of God therefore working suitably to the
nature of man, cannot be conceived by us in any other way than in
this of commands and exhortations. And when men are renewed, the
commands for perfect regeneration are still incumbent upon them
(though they cannot attain it in this life), to stir up their
hearts to an exercise of that gracious ability they have to walk
in the ways of holiness, and to that end to a reliance on the
grace of God. The promises are given to them to inflame them to a
love of holiness, and to show them where their chief strength
lies; this appears plainly to be the intent of the Spirit of God
in that command and promise, Philip. ii. 12, 13, 'Work out your
own salvation; for it is God that works in you to will and to
do.' He writes to those already regenerate, Work out your
salvation, use your gracious power, and be encouraged by the
assistance God gives you. Use your own power as if there were no
grace to help you in the performance; depend upon the grace of
God which works in you both to will and to do, as if you had no
power at all of any motion in yourselves.
So that to sum up the whole of this later discourse, the
impotence of man does not excuse him.
1. Because the commands of the gospel are not difficult in
themselves to be believed and obeyed. If we were commanded things
that were impossible in their own nature, as to shoot an arrow as
high as the sun, or leap up to the top of the highest mountain at
one start, the very command carries its excuse with it in the
impossibility of the thing enjoined. But the precept of
regeneration and restoring to righteousness is easy to be
comprehended, it is backed with clear and manifest reason, and
proposed with a promise of happiness which is very suitable to
the natural appetite of our souls. To command a thing simply
impossible is not congruous to the wisdom, holiness, and
righteousness of God; it would not be justice, but cruelty. No
wise man will invite another man by any promises to do that which
is simply impossible; no just judge will punish a man for not
observing such a precept; no righteous and merciful person would
impose such a command. But these commands of the gospel are not
impossible in their own nature, but in regard of our perversity
and contumacy. The command of righteousness was possible when
first given, and impossible since by our own folly; impossible in
our voluntary corrupted nature, and by reason of our voluntarily
cherished corruption. The change is not in the nature of the law,
but in the nature of the creature; and what is impossible to
nature is possible to grace, and grace may be sought for the
performance of them.
2. Because we have a foundation in our natures for such
commands, therefore man's weakness does not excuse him. It had
been unjust for God to have commanded Adam in innocence to fly,
and give him no wings; this had been above Adam's natural power,
he could not have done it, though he would fain have obeyed God,
because his nature was destitute of all force for such a command.
It would be strange if God should invite the trees or beasts to
repent, because they have no foundation in their nature to
entertain commands and invitations to obedience and repentance;
for trees have no sense, and beasts have no reason to discern the
difference between good and evil. If God did command a man that
never had eyes to contemplate the sun, man might wonder, since
such a man never had organs for such an action. But God addresses
himself to men that have senses open to objects, and
understandings to know, and wills to move, affections to embrace
objects. These understandings are open to anything but that which
God does command, their wills can will anything but that which
God does propose. The command is proportioned to the natural
faculty, and the natural faculty proportioned to the excellency
of the command. We have affections, as love and desire. In the
command of loving God and loving our neighbour, there is only a
change of the object of our affections required; the faculties
are not weak by nature, but by the viciousness of nature, which
is of our own introduction. It is strange, therefore, that we
should excuse ourselves, and pretend we are not to be blamed,
because God's command is impossible to be observed, when the
defect lies not in the want of a natural foundation, but in our
own giving up ourselves to the flesh and the love of it, and in a
wilful refusal of applying our faculties to their proper objects,
when we can employ those faculties with all vehemence about those
things which have no commerce with the gospel.
3. Because the means God gives are not simply insufficient in
themselves. God does afford men beams of light, he makes clear
discoveries, as it is, Rom. i. 19, 'He has showed it to them,
"efanerose", 'it is manifest in them. He displays in
their hearts some motions of his Spirit, produces some
velleities. The standing of the world under the cries of so many
hideous sins, is a daily sermon of God's kindness and patience in
bearing up the pillars of it, and is a standing exhortation to
repentance; as Rom. ii. 4, 'The forbearance, long-suffering, and
goodness of God leads to repentance.' The object is intelligible:
'The word is near us, in our mouths, in our hearts;' it is
apprehensible in itself, Rom. x. 6, 7. The revelation is as plain
as the surface of the heavens, Ps. xix. 1-3, applied to the
preaching of the gospel. Rom. x. 18. That men are not renewed,
and turned to God, is not for want of a sufficient external
revelation, but from the hardness of the heart; not from any
insufficiency of the means, but the depravity and wickedness of
the soul to whom those means are offered. The commands and means
of the gospel are no more weak in themselves than the law was,
but weak through the flesh, by reason of the inherent corruption
man has fastened in himself, Rom. viii. 3. Would not the
hundredth part of any revelation of some worldly object,
connatural to man's corrupt heart, be sufficient in itself to put
him upon motion to it, and embraces of it? The insufficiency does
both not lie in the external means, for the gospel is an act of
mercy and grace; the call is an act of kindness. It is clear to
man that God offers; it is clear that God will accept, if man
will embrace his counsel; and shall this be said to be
insufficient, because man will reject it?
4. Because this impotence in man is rather a wilfulness than a
simple weakness, therefore man's pretended weakness does not
excuse him from the command. It is not a weakness arising from a
necessity of nature, but an enmity of will, whereby some other
apparent good is beloved above God, and some creature preferred
before him. There is a double impotence, merae infirmitatis, which
is a want of power in the hand, when there is a readiness in the
will to perform, or malignitatis, which is seated in the
will and affections, whereby though a man has a power to perform,
yet he cannot because he will not: he will abhor any return to
God, and will not be whetted by his promise to any endeavour. A
simple impotency deserves pity, for it is a rational excuse, but
an obstinate perversity is so far from an excuse that it is an
aggravation. The deeper the habit of obstinacy, the more
inexcusable the person. What a ridiculous excuse would this be,
to say to God, (1.) that I ought not to be obliged to restore
myself to righteousness, and obey the command of the gospel,
because I am of so perverse a disposition that I will not obey,
and will not be restored; or (2.) that God is bound to restore to
him that will to obey and renew himself, otherwise he is guilty
of no crime. The first would be ridiculous, and both impious.
What hinders any man from being regenerate under the call of the
gospel, but a moral weakness, which consists in an imperious
inclination to evil, and a rooted indisposition in corrupt reason
and will to believe and repent? And here the Scripture lays it
upon the hardness of the heart, Rom. ii. 5, and a rebellious
walking after our own thoughts: Isa. lxv. 2, 'I have spread out
my hands all the day unto a rebellious people, which walk in a
way that was not good, after their own thoughts.' We are impotent
and cannot, because we are rebellious and will not. For since man
has an understanding capable to weigh arguments on both sides,
and see the advantage of the good proposed, and the disadvantage
of the evil tempting, if he does the evil, and refuses the good,
is not the fault clearly in his will? And when by a custom in sin
we ripen the power of our evil habits, we contract an
impossibility of doing the good required, and casting out the
evil forbidden. This does in no sort excuse us, because it is an
inability contracted by ourselves. God himself threatens
punishment to the Israelites, when he confesses that they could
not attain to innocence: Hosea viii. 5, 'My anger is kindled
against them: how long will it be ere they attain to innocence?'
"lo yuchlu"; how long can they not? Purity or
innocence. They had raised such an habit in them, by casting off
voluntarily the thing that is good, ver. 3, that they could not
divest themselves of it, which was so far from excusing them that
it sharpened the anger of God against them.
5. This weakness does not excuse from obedience to this
command, because God denies no man strength to perform what he
commands, if he seek it at his hands. No man can plead that he
would have been regenerate, and turned to God, and could not, for
though we have not power to renew ourselves, yet God is ready to
confer power upon us if we seek it. Where did God ever deny any
man sufficient strength, that did wait upon him in serious and
humble supplications, and conscientiously used the means to
procure it. A man cannot indeed merit grace, or dispose himself
for it, so that it must by a natural necessity come into his
soul, as a form does into matter upon dispositions to it. But if
a man will do what he can do, if he will put no obstacle to
grace, by a course of sin, would not God, out of his infinite
bounty to his creatures, and out of that general love whereby he
would have all men saved, and come to the knowledge of the truth,
give him special grace? Has not our Saviour made a promise in his
first sermon to the multitude, that God 'will give good things to
them that ask him,' with a much more than men give good
gifts to their children, Mat. vii. 11. They were not only his
disciples that he preached that sermon to, but the multitude,
comparing it with Mat. v. 1, and Mat. vii. 28. Has not God
declared, that he 'delights not in the death of a sinner,' Ezek.
xxxiii. 11, and does he not out of his infinite goodness
condescend to beseech us to be reconciled to him? Will not the
same infinite goodness bow itself down to form a new image in
them that use the means to be reconciled and conformed to him, as
much as they can? Has not our blessed Saviour already given a
testimony of his affection to such endeavours, in loving the
young man for his outward observation of the law, Mark x. 21, who
wanted but one thing only to pass him into a gracious state, the
refusal whereof barred him of it? And shall not he have a choicer
affection to those that strive to observe the rules he has left
in his gospel? Will he not be pleased with such motions in his
creatures towards their own happiness? Will he not further that
wherein he delights? Think not therefore to justify yourselves at
the bar of God for your sloth, because you are too weak to renew
yourselves. It will not help you then. The question will then be
asked, Did you ever seriously beg it, as for your lives? Did God
ever desert you when you would fight against sin, when you set
yourselves seriously and dependently on him for grace? God gives
us talents, but by our sloth we embezzle them. It is upon that
score Christ lays it, Mat. xxv. 26, 'Thou wicked and slothful
servant.' God has not promised to furnish you with more talents,
when you improve not the talents you have already;
non-improvement of them cuts oft all pleas men may make against
God upon the account of their impotence. As there never was a
renewed man, but acknowledged his regeneration as a fruit of
God's grace, so there was never any man that can say, he did use
his greatest industry in trading with the talents God entrusted
him with, and God refused him the supply of his special grace. If
you have not a new heart and a heart of flesh, ask your own
hearts whether ever you did seriously inquire of God to do it for
you. God never fails them that diligently seek him.
For the use of this:
1. For information.
(1.) See the strange misery of man by his fall. We cannot be
the authors of strength to our own souls, since we are despoiled
of that vital principle which constituted us spiritually living
in the first creation. How are we sunk many degrees below other
creatures, who always have, and still do answer the ends of their
creation, when we, wretched we, have lost both the will and power
to answer the end of ours? We can understand, will, move, but not
as man in innocence could. In ourselves we are nothing, we have
nothing, can bring forth nothing spiritually good and acceptable
to God; a mere composition of enmity to good and propensity to
evil, of weakness and wickedness, of hell and death; a fardel of
impotence and conceitedness, perversity and inability, every way
miserable unless infinite compassion relieve us. We have no more
freedom than a chained galley slave till Christ redeem us; no
more strength than a putrefied carcass till Christ raise us, an
unlamented hardness, an unregarded obstinacy, an insensible palsy
spread over every part, a dreadful cannot and will not triumphing
in the whole soul. The heart turned into pleasure with its own
wounds and chains is an amazing misery both to good men and
angels, because it is so great, and yet unbewailed to see a man
endued with a soul so rare, even with its crack, that the
heathens thought it to be a particle of God; an understanding
that can peer into heaven, fathom the earth by contemplative
inquisitions, yet cannot strike up a spark of enlightened reason
about everlasting happiness; that that reason, which understands
a worldly interest, should be so blind, so weak, about a heavenly
bliss! A short-sighted mind, that cannot cast a look so high as
to spiritual things, nor rise up in one holy thought without the
grace of God; a perverse will, that cannot commission one
spiritual desire; a weak arm, that cannot strengthen itself to
grasp and hold one spiritual gift; a dry wilderness, that cannot
issue out a tear till God open the fountain of the great deep of
grace to flow in upon it; a hard heart, that relents not under
afflictions on earth, nor could under the flames of hell without
grace! What a woeful thing is it to be miserable, and have no
strength to be happy! to look into a law, and behold it wholly
spiritual, and to reflect upon our souls, and behold them wholly
carnal! Rom. vii. 14, to find a command of regeneration in the
judgment of our own consciences, just for God to impose, good for
us to receive, and an utter inability to square ourselves
according to it!
(2.) See the vast power of sin. It is this that has cast its
infectious roots so deep in our souls, that it is impossible for
us to pluck up this degenerate plant. The first defection from
God was of that nature, that it did per se, of itself,
produce an inability in us, as sickness does in a body, or
disjointing a member does weakness in a man; otherwise man, after
he had sinned, had been found in strength, and had had a power to
do good, till God by punishment had taken away that power, and
inflicted a contrary weakness, which would be very absurd to
affirm. Adam threw off the royal robe of righteousness; and in
all those ages which are run out since, man could not find by all
the inquiries of nature how to put it on again without a
supernatural strength. This sin that has taken hold of us, keeps
us down, that we cannot lift up our heads to divine knowledge, or
reach out our hands to perform any divine precept, it is this has
emptied us of our treasure, stripped us of our strength, made us
as poor as Job upon the dunghill, and as feeble as the cripple at
the pool; and which is worse than this, has not only deprived us
of our health and strength to cure ourselves, but of our will to
be healed by another; and possessed us with such a frenzy that we
are friends to our madness, and enemies to those that would
deliver us from it; we are all possessed with a legion of devils,
that makes us cry out against Christ before we be turned to him,
Mark v. 7. It is this first poison diffusing itself in the heart
of Adam has made us all by nature a generation of vipers, and
infected our very tongues, that we cannot, being evil, speak that
which is good, that is, perfectly and spiritually good, as it is
Mat. xii. 34, 'O generation of vipers, how can you, being evil,
speak good things?' and poisoned our souls at the very root, that
not one grape of grace can grow upon the thorn of nature. All the
coin of our actions bears the impression of the evil treasure in
our hearts, Luke vi. 43-45.
(3.) We may from hence see the groundlessness of any conceits
rising in us, of the power and freedom of our own wills to
anything spiritually good. This conceit reigns in most men's
hearts naturally; it is a legacy left to our natures by the will
of Adam. The not submitting our wills to the will of God, in a
way of humble waiting upon him, is the source of the misery of
mankind; such imaginations will creep up in our hearts, that our
understandings can aspire to all knowledge, our wills spring up
in grace, as naturally as a clear fountain in pure waters. The
cause of such conceits is the ignorance both of the depth and
largeness of the wound original sin has made in all our
faculties. Paul, while a pharisee, without question was of this
mind, and cried up the liberty of the will as much as he cried
down the truth of the Christian religion; he was 'alive without
the law once,' Rom. vii. 9. But when he takes out the lesson of
the sinfulness of natural concupiscence, Rom. vii. 7, the
experience of his slavery, and being sold under sin, grew up with
the notion of the extent of original corruption, and he found
himself a mere dead man, as may be observed in several passages
in Rom. vii. Every man is born with this conceit, since we find
the only peculiar nation God had in the world asserting it in the
whole body of them, in the face of God, Exod. xxiv. 8. When Moses
told them all the words and judgments of the Lord, all the people
answered with one voice, 'All the words which the Lord has said
will we do;' and ver. 7, 'All that the Lord has said will we do,
and be obedient.' Not one man among them duly sensible of natural
slavery, nor making any application to God for grace to keep
them; but as confident of the strength of their mutable wills as
if they had as much power as the first man in innocence. This
vain confidence has its bitter root in the imagination of all
Israel; and that it may not appear to be a sudden and rash
passion, they assert it again more solemnly upon second thoughts:
ver. 7, 'All that the Lord has said will we do, and be obedient.'
[1.] It is a high piece of pride. To boast of a great estate,
when a man has not a farthing in his purse, is very ridiculous,
or for a slave to brag of liberty, with his chains upon his hands
and feet. What a vain self-reflection is it when we are bound
naturally in our sins, as a slave in his shackles, with Satan's
padlock upon us, till the Son make us free indeed! John viii. 36.
It is the very moth of pride which ate out the beauty of Adam's
garment who, whilst he would stand upon his own bottom, laid the
scene of his own ruin; he affected to be his own conductor, and
proved his own cut-throat; and aspiring to an independence on
God, fell down into the dungeon of slavery to, and dependency
upon, Satan. It is a pride like that of Adam, an invasion of
God's property, an affecting to be that by ourselves which we can
only be by Christ; it is an arrogance like that of the Babel
builders, to think by this slime of nature to raise up a
spiritual building as high as heaven. We sin over again more
formally the sin of Adam, by affecting an equality with God.
[2.] It is a disparagement to God. It is an unquestionable
idolatry, and never yet practised, to set up any creature as the
author of the temporal good of the whole world. Is it not more to
set up many thousands of free wills as the authors of the
spiritual good of the creature, to make every man's will an idol?
Is the robbing God of the glory of his grace less criminal than
the divesting him of the glory of his outward work? Or are the
works of grace in the soul more inconsiderable than those of
nature? It disparages Gods grace; it makes his grace subsequent,
not preventing; it makes the highest spiritual work to be the
seed of man, not the seed of God. If this conceit takes place in
your hearts, God is like to be without much praise from his
creature. Peter will be no more beholden to God than Judas, Paul
no more than Simon Magus; both had the outward revelation, and so
both owe a praise to God; but what further debt of praise did
Paul owe to God, if his regeneration sprang forth into being by
the power of his own will, without any further contribution from
God than an objective proposal? It takes off the crown of glory
from the head of Christ; for though it will be acknowledged that
he bruised the head of the common serpent by the power of his
death, yet the destruction of the works of the serpent in our
hearts, which is our immediate happiness, was wrought by the seed
of free will. It would be strange that the apostle Paul should be
so over-seen, to give such praise to the grace of God manifested
to him, if he had not been particularly beholden to that for the
turning of his heart. By this God is beholden much to the
creature's will, in being a great cause of keeping up the
interest of God in the world, which had no footing,
notwithstanding his revelation, without the compliance of man's
will, untouched by any supernatural grace. Such a conceit of
man's power seems to envy God the glory of his whole grace. And
such a bitter root of this, I doubt, may be one secret cause that
we are so heart-tied and tongue-tied in the praises of God for
his grace.
[3.] It takes away a great part of the glory of the Spirit's
work in the world. Was his convincing the world of sin and
righteousness only external by the objective proposals of the
word, and fitting the apostles for the propagation of that
convictive revelation? Was he to stand only as a spectator to
behold which way the motion of free will would cast the balance?
Is he to preserve grace in the heart? and is there not more need
of his creating it there, than preserving it after? Is there more
danger of the devil's quenching the flame kindled in the soul,
than there was of its first touch upon the heart? Is he a Spirit
of grace only to propose it, not to work it? The Spirit makes no
verbal proposal of it, that is by man; if an inward proposal
barely by applying it to the understanding, has not man as much
power to do that, as to work it in his will? How can it be a well
of water springing up to eternal life, if it works nothing
efficaciously upon the heart? This secret pride and conceit in
the heart may be a cause we make so few applications to the
Spirit of God, taking little notice of him in our attempts.
[4.] It puts a bar to all evangelical duties. It makes us
cleave to ourselves rather than to God, and presume upon our own
strength rather than rely upon his. The heathens (as Seneca)
asserted, that it was a silly thing for a man to desire that of
heaven which he had power to do without it. Why should we go to
him for renewing grace, when it is in our own power to renew
ourselves? May it not be said to us, as it was in another case,
'Why trouble you the master?' As long as we think we can spin a
righteousness out of our own bowels, we will never go to Christ
for a robe of his weaving, though never so rich. And while we
think we can rear a stately spiritual building by our own skill,
we shall never desire the art of another workman. Our Saviour
would have nothing to do with his fullness, if He stood in no
need of it; and what need had we of it, if we could despatch this
great business of grace ourselves? This secret imagination in the
heart is one cause of the neglect of duties, especially prayer,
or of a slightness and coldness in it.
[5.] This conceit endangers a man's destruction, by
encouraging a delay of using the means necessary to this work in
God's ordinary course. What sensualist would not delay using
means for repentance, who conceits he can repent when he will,
and that to will is in his own power? This makes men think they
have a key to unlock heaven at their pleasure, and have the
command of the treasuries of grace; and therefore are afraid to
attend upon evangelical means, for fear they should be put upon
serious reflections too soon. The common sentiments of men are a
sad evidence of this; you shall hear many acknowledge their
weakness in other things, but not in this; they cannot leave such
a course of sin, they cannot pray with so much affection, yet
their hearts are right, they can repent and believe when they
will, that is in their own power; which makes them sluggish and
careless at the calls of God. But what a folly this is, let
Solomon witness, who sets the fool's cap upon such confidence;
'He that trusts in his own heart is a fool,' Prov. xxviii. 26; it
is to trust in a weathercock that is mutable with every wind of
temptation. To depend upon our wills, is to depend upon the
oldest and the most certain bankrupt in the world, that broke as
soon as it was set up, many ages since, and never recovered
itself. Who told you, therefore, that you can melt the stone
within you at your pleasure? that you can cast the strong man out
of your wills without a stronger than he? But suppose the grounds
were rational, and that you had a power to cure yourselves; the
consequent is very irrational, for that cause to delay it; for
what man in his wits would endure a wound or deformity many
years, because he can heal or beautify himself at his pleasure in
a moment? Take heed therefore of such fancies of your own power
to regenerate yourselves, and upon that account to neglect that
which you have power to do; but imitate Ephraim with all speed,
notwithstanding your cheating imagination, and cry out, 'Turn
thou me, and I shall be turned,' Jer. xxxi. 18.
(4.) It informs us, that regeneration is not wrought merely by
moral suasion, or only by exhortations; then it would principally
be the work of the will of man. Our Saviour had a will to preach
to all in Jerusalem, but he had not a will to quicken all: John
v. 21, 'the Son quickens whom he will;' so that it depended upon
his inward operation, not only upon his outward exhortations. It
is true there is a suasion in the ear by the word, but the
persuasion is in the heart by grace; the suasion in the word may
cause some rational reflections as a moral cause, but no
spiritual motion towards God as a physical cause. Men are not
disputed or exhorted, but created into grace; the proposal of a
good by the understanding is not always embraced by the will,
unless it be a good suitable and connatural to those habits in
the will. Where, therefore, there is no suitable habit planted in
the will, rational reflections in the mind and conscience are not
like to prevail much.
[1.] If it were only by suasion and exhortation, the most
eloquent preaching were like to do most good. Whereas it never
was God's method to found conversion upon the 'words of man's
wisdom,' though 'enticing' in themselves, but upon the
'demonstration and power of the Spirit,' 1 Cor. ii. 4. The most
eloquent preaching would then most fill the gospel nets. And the
reports of that rhetorical prophet Isaiah would have been soon
believed, which were not so, because 'the arm of the Lord was not
(always) revealed with them,' Isa. liii. 1. If any words, as
words, were like to have an edge to cut deep into the soul, they
must be the words of our Saviour; since 'never man' (even in the
judgment of some of his enemies) 'spoke as he spake.' But though
'his lips were full of grace,' Ps. xiv. 2, most of his hearers'
hearts were empty of it under his ministry; not the eloquence and
pressing reasons of Christ, nor the wrath of God revealed from
heaven, can reclaim the heart of man, without the power of grace.
The Pharisees were prouder under Christ's melting bowels, and the
Jews harder under God's wrathful blows, Isa. i. 5; neither
hearing nor feeling will prevail upon hardened souls.
[2.] What bare exhortations can work upon a dead man? Can a
well composed oration, setting out all the advantages of life and
health raise a dead man, or cure a diseased body? You may as well
exhort a blind man to behold the sun, and prevail as much. No man
ever yet imagined, that the strewing a dead body with flowers
would raise it to life; no more can the urging a man, spiritually
dead, with eloquent motives, ever make him to open his eyes and
stand upon his feet. Did our Saviour come out of his grave, or
could he ever have done it, by mere suasion, without the power of
God to raise him? Eph. i. 19, 20. The working of mighty power is
a title too high for the capacity of mere moral exhortations. A
mere suasion does not confer a strength, but suppose it in a man,
for he is only persuaded to use the power which he has already.
[3.] Does not daily experience testify the contrary? Have you
never discoursed with some profane, loose fellow, so pressingly,
that he seemed to be planet-struck at every reasoning, shaken out
of his excuses for his sinful course, yet not shaken out of his
sin; that you might as soon have persuaded the tide at full sea
to retreat, or a lion to change his nature, as have overcome him
by all your arguments. Have you not seen many at a stand in sin,
by the force of some convincing reasons, return again to their
vomit? Have not many tears at command in anything that concerns
themselves, the loss of some estate, or some dear friend, but in
the things of God, in his dishonours, as dry as the parched
earth? That you may almost as soon extract water out of a rock,
as repentance for sin out of their stony hearts. So that it is
not the faint breath of man, or the rational considerations of
the mind are able to do this work, without the mighty pleadings
and powerful operations of that great Paraclete or
Advocate, the Spirit, to alter the temper of the soul.
[4.] There is no likelihood that any man in the world would be
renewed, if it were only by moral suasion. Satan's logic would be
stronger than God's; his arguments would more suit our imagined
interest, and our real enmity against God; his persuasions would
find more kindred in the principles of our minds and habits of
our wills to take fire by him, than the suasory allurements of
God, which will meet with nothing in our hearts but contrariety
to them. The deceitfulness of sin within us, and the subtilty of
Satan without us, both being active as well as persuading
adversaries, would fix us in our rebellion, without a contrary
power, as well active as exhortative, and God would do no more
towards our restoration than Satan does towards our destruction,
since the devil can only propose to us, not by any physical touch
incline our wills. We are wholly inclined to him in our own
natures, in love with the knife that cuts our throats, and too
fond of our shackles ever to knock them off. The will is so
enamoured with its corrupt habit, that were this work left barely
to self will, and no other power employed in it than exhortative,
not one person were every likely to come unto God.
[5.] If it were wrought by suasion, the will would have the
whole praise of the work. For suasion or exhortation is nothing
else but the proposing arguments to the understanding, but the
motion, according to those arguments, is wholly from the will,
which has a power to receive them or refuse them. God, indeed,
would be the first speaker, but not the first agent; God would be
only the assisting cause, as all moral causes are, he would only
assist the motion of the will, not cause it. The motion of the
will is a physical act; if, then, the physical act be from the
will, and God only the moral cause, the will will be the greater
sharer in the work, fo- moral causes are in vain without a
physical effect in those things they work morally upon: as all
the reasoning of one man with another will be to little purpose,
if there be not a physical motion of the will of that person to
comply with the other's reasonings. If, therefore, the reasoning
part be only from God, and physical motion from man, the most
debauched wretch, under the preaching of the gospel, is as much
beholden to God as the highest believer, who had both the same
suasions and exhortations; for though the suasion was from God,
the persuasion was from their own wills. God only made the
revelation, and was afterwards a spectator, not an actor.
(5.) Information. We may draw a conclusion hence whereby to
judge of the truth of doctrines. Man cannot renew himself.
Whatsoever doctrine does depress and humble man and advance the
glory of God, is true, it answers the main design of the gospel,
which all centres in this, that man is to be laid low, and God to
be exalted as the chief cause. It pulls man from his own bottom,
and transfers all the glory man would challenge into the hands of
God; it lays man in the dust at God's footstool. That doctrine
which crosses the main design of the gospel, and encourages pride
in man, is not a spark from heaven: 'No flesh must glory in God's
presence,' 1 Cor. i. 29. The doctrine of justification by works
is thrown down by the apostle with this very argument as a
thunderbolt: Rom. iii. 27, 'Where is boasting then? it is
excluded by faith;' that is, by the doctrine of the gospel,
boasting would be introduced by ascribing regeneration to nature
as much as it is excluded by denying justification by works; the
doctrine of the gospel would contradict itself, to usher in
boasting with one hand whilst it thrust it out with the other.
Our Saviour gave this rule long ago, that the glorifying God is
the evidence of truth in persons: 'He that seeks his glory that
sent him, the same is true,' John vii. 18. By the same reason
also in things and doctrines, and indeed, Christ speaks it in
relation to his doctrine, as appears, verse 16, 17. All truth
gives God the pre-eminence in all gracious works; the first
creation, the progress and top-stone, are the works of this great
Bezaliel, this mighty artifices, both the first draught and the
last line. To confound nature and grace together, is to join the
creature in commission with God, and make them co-heirs in the
glory which is only due to the only wise and almighty Creator.
Use 2 is for exhortation. 1. To the regenerate. If this
doctrine be true,
1. Then ascribe nothing to flesh. (1.) Not to yourselves. No
more praise is due to us than to gold for being melted by the
fire and wrought by the workman into a vessel of honour; it is
due to the skill of the artifices, not to the vessel itself. When
the reparation of human nature was to be wrought by the gospel,
when the crooked should be made straight, and the rough places
plain, then should flesh be as grass, when the Spirit of the Lord
should blow upon it; yea, the people, those that are God's
peculiar ones, by reason of privileges, are grass, Isa. xl. 4, 6,
7, they should be nothing in themselves, that God might be all in
all: the Spirit of God blows upon all their self-confidences. If
God be the God of all grace, what share have our wills in it
then? He calls, he opens the heart, he strengthens, he perfects;
all the grace we have is his 'treasure,' 1 Peter v. 10. He first
delivers from Egypt; preserves in the desert; conducts to a
footing in Canaan. Grace triumphs in the whole work, from Dan to
Beersheba, from the beginning of the work to the end. What glory
can belong to us? We will, it is true, but God gives that will;
we work, but God bestows and stands by that power to work; what
have we then to do with the praise? It is 'in his light we see
light,' Ps. xxxvi. 9. The rays whereby we have a glimpse of him
are not darted from us to him, but from him to us. The light in
the air springs not from itself, but from some other body
enlightening it; how can any good be ascribed to us, where there
is nothing but insufficiency and defect? It is to belie the Lord,
to entitle a work of omnipotence to so infirm a cause, it is
worse than the pharisee, who, in the midst of his boasts of his
own moral righteousness, thought a tribute of praise due to God:
'Lord, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are,' Luke xviii.
11. Shall we entitle God the author of our beings, and ourselves
the creators of our spiritual beings? Is it less to have an
elevation of our faculties, and an animation of them by a new
virtue, than to have simply the faculties themselves? If the
creature be unable of itself to move without a dependence on God
in way of common providence, much more unable is it to move
without dependence on God in a way of supernatural vitality. The
glory of the act is as little due to man as the glory of the
first habit.
Now, 1, review yourselves, consider what you were before
regeneration, what after it; and then, how can you ascribe
anything to yourselves?
(1.) What you were before regeneration. Was not sin as deeply
rooted in you as any other, which made you as incapable to raise
yourselves as the most wicked man in the world? Were you not
prisoners in chains, captives under locks and bolts, when grace
first set up its standard for your recovery? How thick was the
darkness of your minds? how stout the perversity of your wills?
how impetuous the violence of your sinful affections? Did they
not all conspire together to make as stout a resistance against
the work of the gospel as any others? Can you then say, that
because God saw you more inclinable to grace than another, that
he drew you? You were created; did you bring clay enough to
compose the least particle of flesh about you? You are new
created; what part of the new man was formed by your direction?
Did you bring grace enough of yourselves to form one holy
thought, or send out one holy desire? Did your own will single
you out of that multitude of degenerate men of better natures
than yours, left still in their own nothingness? Was it nothing
but your own will that planted you in the nursery of the
invisible church, that made you capable of a divine union? Were
not other men's reasons as strong as yours? the means they
enjoyed greater? their moral disposition sweeter? What was the
reason their wills did not bend themselves as well as yours? What
is the reason they did not hold out their hands to catch this
all-necessary grace? Did this noble birth cost none any pains but
yourselves? Was this goodly fabric reared by your own wills? Look
on it; methinks it is a piece too comely and noble for human
skill.
(2.) What are you since your regeneration? What, do you find
no rebellion of the law in your members against the law of the
mind? Are there not powerful allurements of the flesh? Are your
thoughts always flying up to God, and hovering about him? Are you
always nimble in your praise of him? or not rather lifeless many
times under the breathings of the Spirit? Why are you thus? Did
you first by your own force begin this noble conquest of sin? And
can you not by the same power make a better progress? Did you
breathe a life into yourselves when you had not a spark, and can
you not blow up this spark into a greater liveliness? Surely then
this work was not at first the birth of your own wills. Do you
not yet find some scale and thick matter upon your understandings
that you cannot pick off? some darkness in your minds, as there
is some in the air after it is enlightened? Are there not
obstructions in your wills? no shackles upon the executive power?
Can you not remove that darkness with that great light you have?
nor unlock those fetters by the strength of your habitual grace?
Can then the first powerful entrance of it, the fall of the first
scale from the understanding, be judged to be the work of your
own hands? or the first teeming of your wills with grace to be
the effect of your power? View yourselves well in both states,
and you will find no ground whereon to build so much injustice
towards God, and pride in yourselves, but must needs acknowledge
that God and not yourselves have wrought all your works in you,
Isa. xxvi. 12, not only your temporal advantages, which the
church there means, but your spiritual, and much more spiritual
than temporal.
To stave off any ascribing to yourselves, consider,
[2.] He that ascribes it to his own will has great reason to
question whether he be regenerate or no. He may well doubt
whether he understands or feels what it is, since those in
Scripture who have been most experimented in it, and therefore
are the most competent judges, have most highly magnified the
grace of God, and most deeply vilified themselves; they have
given the glory of it so entirely to God that they have not let a
grain of it stick to their own fingers. Thus David often, 'Thou
hast quickened me.' The apostle Paul owns his effectual call to
be owing to the 'grace of God,' Gal. i. 15, and to an abundant
'grace in Christ,' 1 Tim. i. 14; he was a persecutor, but his
faith and love was from the abundance of the grace of God, and
that in Christ too, not from any thing in nature. Peter is not
behind him in the admiration of it: 1 Peter i. 8, 'Blessed be the
God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, according to his
abundant mercy, has begotten us again.' And it is that the church
in the times of the gospel prophesied of: Ps. c. 8, 'It is he
that has made us, not we ourselves;' made us his people, as it
follows, 'We are his people, and the sheep of his pasture,' 'not
we ourselves.' Whenever the naughtiness of their hearts has been
ready to launch out to self-praise, they have turned the tide
quickly to the grace of God. When Paul had owned grace as the
cause of his spiritual being, 1 Cor. xv. 10, and began to speak
of his labouring more abundantly than they, he flies back in
haste, as one that had gone beyond his line, 'Yet not I, but the
grace of God which was with me;' another, 'Yet not I;' Gal. ii.
20, 'I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me.' There is no
mention of any in Scripture that ever in this case did sacrifice
to their own net.
[3.] If a man be regenerate, such a boasting of himself is
very dangerous. Though it may not rifle you of the new nature,
yet by the just judgment of God, it may cloud the comfort of it.
If such a man be renewed, this pride is but a prologue of some
dark veil to be drawn between him and the light of God's
countenance, between him and the sight of his own grace. A
swelling up in pride presages a sinking down in desertion. If God
be not owned by you to be the God of all grace in you, he will
not own himself to be the God of all comfort to you. Grace
follows humility, and some shrewd shock attends spiritual pride,
it is such an idolatrous robbing God of his glory (whereof he is
most jealous), and giving it to another, that he will not let it
pass without a remark. The clouding of your grace will be the
fruit of the smothering of his glory. For since the main
intendment of the gospel is to humble, God will humble you if any
grace be in you. If the Spirit of grace has breathed upon your
souls to renew you, he will blow upon your grass to consume it,
Isa. xl. 7, he will pull down those proud thoughts and strong
holds, and cause your vain confidences to wither and come to
nothing. Ascribe it not therefore to yourselves; be not so
presumptuous, as, while you allow God to be the author of the
being and motion of a little fly, to cry up your own wills as the
chief cause of grace, a work more excellent than the material
world.
2. Ascribe nothing to instruments, either men or means. It is
not of the will of man, not another's will. Without the
efficacious working of the Spirit, the gospel itself is but as a
dead letter, the Spirit only quickens it. It is not outward
teaching and blowing which of itself will kindle these sparks; an
instrument cannot act without the strength of an agent to manage
it; the chisel forms the stone into a statue, but according to
the skill and strength of the artifices moving it. It is not the
breath of man, and a few words out of his mouth, can produce so
great a work as the new creation; this might be a reason why God
chose so weak an instrument as man to preach the gospel, to
evidence that the great work was not from the weakness of man but
the power of God.
Exhortation 2. Let us be humbled under our own natural
impotence and inability, and keep up this humiliation. There is
danger of the pharisee's pride climbing up into the heart, even
after regeneration. Renewed men have instructions to humility
above other men; their sin may strike them low, because it is the
growth of their own nature; their grace may keep them low,
because it is no plant of their own setting; sin, because it is
originally theirs; grace, because it is originally none of
theirs; it is no beam of their own understanding, no stream from
the fountain of their own will. If we think believingly and
fruitfully of Christ at any time, we cannot but think of our own
weakness, nothing in him but minds us of it; our weakness to obey
the law was the cause of his coming; our weakness to satisfy God
was the cause of his dying; our inability to repair and support
ourselves was the cause of his fullness. His death minds us of
our impotence to redeem ourselves, his grace minds us of our
impotence to renew ourselves. The more we grow up in the new
birth, the more deeply sensible shall we be of our impotence. Oh,
let this text be written in our hearts, 'Not of the will of the
flesh, nor of the will of man.'
3. Resolve nothing in your own strength. The power to believe
and be renewed is a power 'given,' not inbred, Philip. i. 29; our
strength is deposited, not in the cracked cabinet of our own
wills, but in the treasures of Christ. Our purposes are weak
without grace to strengthen them, our resolutions vanishing
without grace to establish them. If we should be left to the
sails of our own faculties, without the breath of the Spirit to
fill them, we should lie wind-bound. The will can never in this
life be so firm but the allurements of the great tempter will
make inroads upon us and overset us, without the special grace of
God to establish and strengthen us. As we are not to do anything
for our own glory, so we are not to do anything in our own
strength. As we must not be our own end, so we must not be our
own principle; the power the best have is but derived, the stream
must know it is but a stream still. The actual exercise of Paul's
ability grew from strength in another hand, 'I can do all things
through Christ strengthening me,' Philip. in. 14; all things by
him, nothing by himself. When the Israelites went out with God,
no sons of Anak, no walls of Jericho, nor chariots of iron could
stand before them. When they trusted in themselves, nothing could
be resisted by them. The devil was certainly none of the lowest
rank of angels; he had a great clearness of gifts, yet he falls
for cleaving to his own will and strength, not to the grace of
God. And Adam, in depending upon himself, lost himself and his
posterity. For us to undertake the government of ourselves is
like a ship without a pilot, to be dashed soon against a rock. To
lean on our own wisdom and will, is to lean on broken reeds,
deceitful supports; self-confidence is the worm of grace, conceit
of a spiritual fullness in ourselves is the way to an emptiness
of spiritual comfort. Self-will and self-wisdom are the great
idols of the soul, and some little images of them are in the
hearts of the best men, which they are ready sometimes to fall
down before and worship; they would oppose temptations
themselves, do duties themselves by the strength of habitual
grace, without regard to the strength of God, the great support
of it.
4. Therefore live dependently upon God. Do you not find how
apt you are to stagger at every temptation; how weak your wills
are to good; how easily your purposes are broken, the thoughts of
God few and distracted, your motions heavy in divine ways? Is
there not, then, need of a constant looking unto God, as they did
upon the brazen serpent, for the healing of our natures, while
the wound remains imperfectly cured? All bodies on the earth,
though they have a principle of motion in themselves, yet
dependently upon the heavenly bodies. If the motions of the
heavens should cease, that all motions in the earth would cease
too is the opinion of philosophers. Without dependence on the
grace of God and fullness of Christ, we sink into weakness and
impotency, as a beam expires into duskiness upon the clouding of
the sun. It is God only can be a 'dew to Israel,' Hosea xiv. 5.
Think not of bringing forth the after-fruits of grace without his
influence, no more than you could plant in yourselves the first
root of grace without his power: the same breath of the Spirit
must blow the fire up as well as kindle it. As by our own wills
we should never turn to God, so without the continuance of
efficacious grace we should quickly start from God. 'As you have
received Christ, so walk in him,' Col. ii. 6. You received him by
faith, walk in him by faith. This is the reason of the different
thrivings of one Christian above another, under the same means.
One endeavours to act upon his own bottom; the other clings to
the vine. Christ knew the things of God by lying in the bosom of
the Father; we come to know and do the things of God by lying in
the bosom of the Son. All natural effects, if taken off from the
influence of their own cause, by which they live and increase,
lose their power and die. The soul separate from God, by
non-exercise of faith, loses its strength, become stiff and
inactive. How often do we return to our wonted coldness, bring
forth lazy fruits, creep like snails in the ways of God, without
the spur of quickening grace! And we want it because we do not
seek it; for though we be armed with the whole armour of God,
helmet, shield, breastplate, yet prayer and supplication must he
added as a mark of' our necessary dependence: Eph. vi. 18,
'Praying always with all prayer and supplication.' Then will the
Spirit endue us with a fresh vigour, confirm our languishing
wills, restrain the flames of natural corruption, and excite the
fear and faith of God in the heart.
2. The second branch of the-exhortation, to those yet in a
natural condition.
1. Endeavour to be sensible of your natural impotence. Be
deeply humbled at the feet of God, strip yourselves (as much as
in you lies) of the conceitedness of reason and pride of will.
Every man is born with high conceits of himself and his own
power; it being a natural evil, should cost us the deeper
humiliations. Consider yourselves by nature under the dominion of
sin, the demerit of wrath, the curse of the law, the hatred of
God, and a feebleness to help yourselves in this wretched
condition. View yourselves often in the glass of the law, bring
the spiritual word and the carnal heart together, and behold the
beauty of the one and deformity of the other; let all the nasty
corners of the heart come under the examination of that purity,
and then let the carnal mind hang down at the thoughts of your
inability to frame yourselves according to a spiritual law. The
view of our natural condition cannot work regeneration in us, but
it is some kind of preparation towards it. 'The law is a
schoolmaster to drive to Christ,' Gal. iii. 24. It works not this
grace, but it fires a man out of himself, shows him how much he
differs from the holiness of God, and is an occasion for casting
about and looking after some remedy, whereby he may be made like
to God, and of earnest crying for the showers of grace. Be
sensible also of your contrariety to the grace of God, our
wilfulness against it is worse than our emptiness of it. God
'will teach the humble his ways,' Ps. xxv. 9. those that are
sensible of their own insufficiency to guide themselves.
2. Make use of the power you have. Man (as has been sheen) has
some power by those restored relics of nature. There is no plea
therefore to lie snorting upon a bed of sluggishness. We must not
expect a divine assistance will fly to us from heaven while we
play the sluggards. Though God does rouse up some on the sudden,
before and previous act of their wills, yet we must not expect
God will use the same methods to all. Our own power must be
stirred up and exerted as much as may be. To be faithful in a
little is the way to be made ruler over much. Though the top of
nature cannot merit grace, yet if nature struggles to come to the
top it may find an invisible hand helping it up step by step. The
damnation of most men will not be for the fault of their first
parents, but for the abuse of their own power, the perverseness
of their wills, and neglect of what they might have done towards
the seeking of God. Though Moses had a promise of victory over
Amalek, yet Joshua must fight, and the Israelites stand to their
arms. God saves not men in ways encouraging their laziness. 'The
sluggard desires and has nothing, but the soul of the diligent
shall be made fat,' Prov. viii. 4. The sluggard has nothing but
lazy wishes, not active endeavours. If it be not worth the
having, why do you desire it? If it be worth the desiring, why
not worth the seeking?
(1.) Avoid those sins you have power to avoid. Every sin,
though never so little, does increase our weakness, as every
wound does the distemper of the body. It makes us weigh down
towards the centre of sin. Every grain cast into the scale makes
it the more unable to rise. As a virtue which is risen to that
height that it cannot degenerate into vice is most worthy of
praise, so the vice that possesses the soul so deeply as to
incapacitate it to the doing good, being contracted by ourselves,
is the more worthy of wrath.
(2.) Use the means appointed by God. Though we are torches
which cannot light ourselves, yet we may bring ourselves to the
word, which may both melt and kindle us. Though the giving rain
and the increasing the fruits of the earth be from God, yet no
man ever held ploughing, and sowing, and pruning unnecessary. The
work of grace is the work of the Spirit, who is a 'wind which
blows where it lists,' John iii. 8. But may we not wait for those
gales? May we not spread our sails and watch for the successful
breathings? How do you know but whilst you are waiting upon God
in an humble posture, God may unlock your hearts, and pour in the
treasures of his grace? Acts x. 44, 'While Peter yet spake these
words, the Holy Ghost fell on all them which heard the word.' It
you will not harden your hearts today, God may soften your hearts
today: Heb. iii. 16, 'Today, if you will hear his voice.' These
are the times wherein God parleys with the soul, and inclines it
to the happy surrender. Though the power is God's, as the water
is the fountain's, yet he has appointed the channels of his
ordinances through which to convey it: 'Ministers by whom you
believed,' 1 Cor. iii. 5. The gospel begets instrumentally, God
principally 1 Cor. iv. 15. God calls by the gospel, 2 Thess. ii.
14. As God is the governor of the world, yet it is by instruments
and second causes, which he clasps together to bring about his
own designs. He that does not use these means may fear that God
will never work savingly upon him, for it is an utter refusing
any acceptance of this grace, or anything tending to it. This is
to be peremptory, never to do ourselves any good, or receive any
from God. In despising the means, you despise the goodness of
God. As God gave up the heathens to themselves, because they were
'unthankful,' Rom. i. 21, for that light of nature and means
which they had, so if we use the means of the gospel with
thankfulness to God, God may give himself up to us. But by
neglect of them we take the larger strides to destruction, and
the same dreadful sentence may be pronounced against us as
against them in Ezek. xxiv. 13, 'Because I have purged thee,'
that is, offered thee means whereby thou might have been purged,
'and thou was not purged, thou shalt not be purged from thy
filthiness any more; but in thy filthiness thou shalt die.' The
using the means afforded by God has a common illumination, and a
'taste of the heavenly gift' attending it, Heb. vi. 4.
[1.] Use the means fervently, with as much ardour as
you set upon anything of worldly concern; do it with all your
might, since the eternal blessedness of your soul depends upon
it: Eccles. ix. 10, 'Whatsoever thy hand finds to do, do it with
thy might.' Stir up your souls to hear and meditate, as David
does to bless: Ps. ciii. 1, 2, 'Bless the Lord, O my soul; and
all that is within me, bless his holy name.' Employ all your
faculties in this useful work; bring your hearts as near to the
word as you can, screw up your affections to what you meditate
upon, check your hearts when they begin to rove. Consider your
own particular case in anything you hear; and let the word be as
a delightful picture in the view of your minds continually; let
every evangelical object excite your inbred affections.
[2.] Use the means dependently. Objective proposals are
not useless, because God has ordained them; though they are not
always successful, unless God does influence them. The means do
not work naturally, as a plaster cures a wound, or a hatchet
cleaves wood; nor necessarily, as fire burns; for then they
should produce the same effects in all, as fire does in
combustible matter; but as God pleases to accompany them with his
grace, and edge them with efficacy, they must be used with an eye
to God, building with one hand, and wrestling with God with the
other. Men speed best in ordinances as they strive in prayer.
There are promises to plead before you come to hear: Exod. xx.
24, 'In all places where I record my name, I will come unto thee,
and bless thee.' The promise was made to the whole nation of
Israel, the visible church, therefore pleadable by every one of
them; and fix it upon your hearts, that as the death of Christ
only takes away the guilt of sin, so the grace of Christ only
takes away the life of sin, and the death of nature.
[3.] Pray earnestly. Entreat God to send his grace; beg
of him to issue out a divine force, and a quickening power, to
enlighten your minds, incline your wills. Lie at his feet, groan,
wait till this work be wrought in your soul. How do you know, but
while you are looking up to God, God may come down to you? Can a
man be wounded, and not cry for plasters? Can he be shipwrecked
and not cry out for some vessel to relieve him? Let such a voice
frequently issue from you, 'What shall I do to be saved?' Is
there no balm for a wounded soul, no hope for a distressed
sinner, no city of refuge for one pursued by wrath and vengeance?
Do you pray for daily bread? Why do you not for special grace?
Are there no rational pleas you can urge? Is there not a fullness
of arguments in the word? Why do you not then use those arguments
God has put into your hands? Why do you not spread his own word
before him? Put him in mind how his thoughts were busy about the
work of redemption, and that the regeneration you desire of him
was the great end of that, and a thing pleasing to him? Why do
you not reason with God, to what purpose he sent his Spirit into
the world, but to do this work in the hearts of men which you are
now soliciting him for; and that you come not to beg any alms of
him, but what he freely offers himself? You may daily read such
arguments in the word, where a revelation is made of them; you
may daily plead them: if you do not, it is not your cannot,
but your will not. Cry out of the blind eyes you cannot
upscale, the iron sinew you cannot bend, the false heart that
will not go right, and the fallen nature which cannot reach so
high as a holy thought. Surely God will not be deaf to the
natural prayers of his rational creatures put up to him with a
natural integrity, no more than he is to the cries of animals, to
the voice of the lion seeking for his prey, into whose mouth he
puts, by his providence, what may satisfy it. God gives the
Spirit to them that ask him; not to the idle, lazy, and peevish
resister of him and his grace. If you have power to regenerate
yourselves, why do you not do it? If you have not, why do you not
seek it? Is the way of heaven shut to you; or rather, do you not
shut your own hearts against it? Have you sought it earnestly,
and can you say God denies it you? No man can say so; there is a
promise for it: James iv. 8, 'Draw near to God, and ho will draw
near to you;' he speaks it to sinners, as it follows, 'Cleanse
your hands, you sinners.' You can pray for other mercies, why not
principally for this particular determination of your wills to
God, above all other things? Lord, give me to will and to do.
Never leave off praying till God has crowned your petitions with
success; and be encouraged to seek to him, whose great business
in the world was to destroy the works of the devil, whose
principal work was the spiritual death of man. If you have such
earnest desires in your souls, that you would rather have it than
the whole world, and esteem it above all worldly wealth or
honours, be of good comfort, some of the rubbish of nature is
removed; the steams of such desires shall be welcome to God, and
the Spirit's commission shall be renewed to breathe further upon
your souls. Desire as vehement as hunger and thirst shall be
satisfied, if our blessed Saviour's promise be true, who never
deceived any, or broke his word: Mat. v. 6, 'Blessed are they
that hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be
filled.' A fullness attends a sense of emptiness, accompanied
with hungering desires. But I am afraid few people put up their
petitions to God for it; that I may say, as Daniel of his nation,
'all this evil' of unrighteousness and sin is 'come upon us' by
our depraved natures; 'yet made we not our prayer before the Lord
our God, that we might turn from our iniquities, and understand
thy truth,' Dan. ix. 13.
[4.] Nourish every motion and desire you find in your hearts
towards it. Have you not sometimes motions to go to the throne of
grace, and beg renewing grace of God? Do you not find such tugs
and pulls in your consciences? Is there not something within you
spurs you on? Kick not against it, nor resist it, no, nor smother
any spark of an honest desire in your hearts; be constant
observers of lessons, your natural consciences, or whatever any
other principle set you. Natural notions are not so blotted, but
they remain legible; would men be more inward with themselves,
than abroad with the objects of sense, which draw their minds
from pondering that decalogue written in their souls. There is
not the most wicked man under the gospel, but has sometimes more
bright irradiations in his conscience than at other times, but
they are damped by a noisome sensuality; he has some velleities
and heavings, some strugglings against the solicitations of
unrighteousness, some assents upon the presenting of virtue; for
as grace is not always so powerful in a good man as to stifle
temptation, so neither is corruption so powerful in a wicked man
as always to beat back those motions to good which rise up in his
soul, whether he will or no. As the law of the mind is not always
so sovereign in a gracious man, but that it is affronted by the
law of the members, so neither is the law of the members so
absolute in a wicked man, but that it is somewhat checked by the
law of nature in the mind. Are there not upon hearing the word,
or reflecting upon yourselves, some wishings, some inward
velleities which partake of reason, and the nature of that
faculty which represents the necessity of it to you? As there is
some kind of weak knowledge left in us since the fall, there is
also something of a weak desire. Cannot these desires be improved
and represented to God? Why is not the grace of God fulfilled in
you? Because you persevere not in these desires, you quench the
sparks of the Spirit, and willingly give admission to Satan to
chase them out. Shut not your eyes then against any light, either
without or within you, which may provoke God to withdraw this
grace from you. How do you know but, upon using the means,
praying earnestly, observing inward motions, God may give you an
actual regeneration? The neglect of these is a just reason for
God to refuse you any further gift; and may take off all things
which you may think to bring against him in your own defence. The
use of them has been beneficial to many, and no example can ever
be brought, that God has condemned any that conscientiously used
the means of salvation. Therefore I say again, if any man use the
means, pray earnestly for this grace, observe the motions of the
Spirit in him, he will not want a superadded grace from an
infinitely good, tender, and merciful God.
End of part 1 of A Discourse of the Efficient of
Regeneration.
A Discourse of the Efficient of Regeneration
Part 2
Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the
flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.—John 1:13.
Two doctrines were raised from these words.
1. That man, in all his capacities, is too weak to produce the
work of regeneration in himself.
This I have despatched, and now proceed to the
2nd Doct. God alone is the prime efficient cause of
regeneration.
It is subjectively in the creature, efficiently from God.
Ezekiel's dry bones met not together of their own accord, Ezek.
xxxvii. 5, 6, or by chance, but were gathered by God, and
inspired with life; and not only the last act of life, but the
whole formation of them in every part, he does particularly own
as the act of his own power. And doing every part of it by
degrees, they should know, by that admirable work upon them, that
he was God: 'I will cause breath to enter into you, and you shall
live. And I will lay sinews upon you, and will bring flesh upon
you, and cover you with skin; and you shall live, and you shall
know that I am the Lord.' This work does as much discover the
glory of his deity, and speaks him God in a more illustrious
manner than the creation of the world. We know him to be the Lord
Jehovah by his creation of the world; but a clearer knowledge of
him in his power is added by his regeneration of the soul. The
sinews, flesh, skin, all the preparations to grace, are from God,
as all the preparations of that mass of clay for the breath of
life in Adam were from the power of God, as well as the living
soul itself. Most do understand it of the recovery of the Jews
from the captivity of Babylon; but certainly it has a higher
import, and respects the time of the gospel, and the renewing of
life in the soul of all the Israel of God. (1.) Because the
prophecy extends further than the two tribes captivated in
Babylon; for, verse 11, the bones are said to be 'the whole house
of Israel,' who despaired of ever seeing and good, complaining
that their bones were dried: ver. 11, 'Our hope is lost, we are
cut off for our parts.' Which could not be rationally the
complaint of the Jews, who had a promise that, after seventy
years' captivity, they should return, and therefore their case
was not so desperate. (2.) Because, verse 14, he speaks of
'putting his Spirit into them;' meaning thereby that work he had
spoken of in the former chapter, Ezek. xxxvi. 7, which certainly,
being a covenant of grace, respected the times of the gospel. If
it be said that it is meant of forming the church, it must also
be meant of forming every member of it, since the least member of
Adam was formed by God, as well as the whole body. Certainly, if
renewed men, after some great falls, having still the root of
habitual grace in them, cry to God, out of a sense of their own
insufficiency, for the creating a clean heart, as David does, Ps.
li. 10, 'Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right
spirit within me;' if he then, who had this root remaining, and
had some sparks which presently were blown up upon Nathan's
speech to him, cries out for a new creation, what need has he
then of an almighty breath who has not any warm ashes of grace or
any one string of a spiritual root in his soul! Whatsoever,
therefore, is holy, good, and spiritual in us, we owe to the
new-creating grace of God. All graces are his
"charismata", his free donatives, over and above his
common largeness to nature, a present from his infinite
liberality.
I shall show,
I. That God is the efficient.
II. That it is necessary he should be so.
III. From what principles in God it flows.
IV. How God does it.
V. The use of it.
I. That God is the efficient.
(1.) In the first promise, Gen. iii. 15, 'I will put enmity,'
&c. In which promise is included the whole work of
redemption, and new creating man under another head, with another
nature, which should not comply with the designs of Satan, or
gratify the great enemy of God and mankind by unravelling the
work of God, and subjecting himself to misery. It was necessary
to our happiness that the league between Stan and us should be
broken, that we should turn to God, hate the works of the devil,
and join with the interest which Satan endeavoured to overthrow.
And God promises that he would do it; he challenges it as his own
work: 'I will put enmity;' he leaves it not to men or angels to
begin hostility. Every one, therefore, that is at a true variance
with Satan is 'God's workmanship, created in Christ,' by a second
creation, as well as he was created to a natural life in Adam by
the first creation, and 'created to good works, that he may walk
in them', Eph. ii. 10. That is, is fashioned by God to walk in
ways contrary to those of Satan, which is the greatest enmity we
can express to the devil, who envied God a service from the
holiness of Adam's nature. And Satan having made that conquest,
and gained man to be his friend, it is not easy to conceive how
any lower power could unfasten this knot, and set them at
variance, since the devil had both wit enough to humour man and
strength enough to keep him.
(2.) In the times of the gospel. No less than seven times I
will he does affix to his promise of the covenant, as has
been observed before, Ezek. xxxvi. 25-27. What seed was left to
keep up the name of God among the Jews was of his begetting: Rom.
ix. 29, 'Except the Lord of Sabaoth had left us a seed,' cited
out of Isa. i. 9. Their standing was not their act, but God's:
and 1 Kings xix. 18, 'I have left me seven thousand, all the
knees that have not bowed to Baal.' Others were left to
themselves; these were signally wrought upon by his grace. Others
are but instruments; God is the principal agent in all the seed
of the church scattered in the whole earth: Hosea ii. 23, 'I will
sow her to me in the earth,' alluding to the name Jezreel, which
signifies the seed of God. If ever the sons of Japheth 'dwell in
the tents of Shem,' it must be by God's 'persuasion,' Gen. ix.
27. The word rendered enlarge signifies to allure. The
Spirit of grace is of God's effusion, Zech. xii. 10; it is God's
pouring out a Spirit of grace on them before their looking up to
God. (Where, by the way, observe a signal testimony of the deity
of Christ; 'They shall look upon me whom they have pierced;' he
that pours upon them the Spirit of grace is he whom they pierced,
which was the Lord Jehovah, verse 8; for where in your Bibles
Lord is written in great letters, the Hebrew word there is Jehovah;
the highest name of God is here attributed to Christ.) And even
in the last times he will still be the only agent in it. When God
speaks of the Jews' dispersion, under which they are at this day,
he owns this work upon their hearts at last to be an act of his
own power and of covenant mercy: Deut. xxx. 6, 'The Lord thy God
will circumcise thy heart,' &c., which some of the Jews
understand of the time of the Messiah. God will challenge this
work as his own right to the end of the world.
2. Christ appropriates it to God, and acknowledges it to
depend only upon his will. Had any other cause been in
conjunction with God, our Saviour would not have deprived it of
its due praise, nor with so much thankfulness and amazement
admired the gracious pleasure of his Father as he did,—Mat.
xi. 25, 'At that time Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, O
Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these
things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto
babes: even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy
sight,'—at that time, after he had been discoursing of the
judgments upon them for their refusal of the gospel, worse than
Sodom and Gomorrah. It was God's pleasure not to reveal it to
them, and God's justice to punish them for refusal, because they
wilfully refused it. The outward teaching was to all in the
ministry of Christ, the inward revelation only to few according
to the good pleasure of God. Christ was the outward teacher, but
God the inward inspirer. That others are not renewed by him is
not because he cannot, for he is Lord of heaven and earth, but
because he will renew some and not others. Our Saviour refers it
here only to the good pleasure of God; he had erred much in
ascribing it to God, if he had had the assistance of any other
cause. Why this part of the clay he had created was formed into
the body of Adam and not another, had no other cause but his
pleasure; why this part of corrupted Adam is formed into a
temple, a divine image, and not another, can be ascribed to no
other but the same cause. He that formed Adam in the earthly
paradise, forms every believer in the church, the spiritual
paradise, and neither has a co-worker nor motive without himself.
3. The Scripture everywhere appropriates it to God. They are
therefore called his saints, Ps. xxxiv. 9, as being sanctified by
him as well as belonging to him, 'his people,' 'the branch of his
planting', 'the work of his hands,' peculiarly his, as being
created for his glory, 'that I may be glorified,' Isa. lx. 21.
Their fitness by grace for glory is the work of his hands. The
vessels of wrath are fitted for destruction, not by God, but by
themselves, Rom. ix. 22. But the vessels of mercy are prepared by
him, ver. 23, 'He had before prepared unto glory.' Adam lost
himself, but whosoever of his posterity are recovered are
'wrought by God for glory,' 1 Cor. v. 5. It is observable that
the apostle ascribes this in the whole frame of it to God: 1 Cor.
i. 30, 'But of him are you in Christ Jesus, who of God is made
unto us wisdom, righteousness,' &c., because he would remove
all cause of boasting in the creature. He did not only set forth
Christ at first as a principle of righteousness, and redemption,
and sanctification, but engrafted in him, whosoever is in him,
for the enjoyment of those privileges, and made him not only in
general to the world, but to us, in the particular
application, a principle of sanctification as well as
righteousness. Union with Christ, engrafting in him, new
creation, putting into another state, are all purely the work of
God. He has no sharer in it. As Christ trod the winepress alone
in the work of redemption, so God engrafts men alone into this
vine. As Christ was the sole worker of redemption, so is God the
sole worker of regeneration. In him we are created, but solely by
God's skill; Christ the vine, and believers the branches, the one
planted and the other engrafted by the same husbandman, John xv.
1, 2; he only planted and dressed Christ for us, he only plants
and dresses us in Christ. It is 'by his own will,' not any other,
that 'he begot us,' James i. 18. 'Of his own will,' his own good
pleasure was the motive, his own strength the efficient. Hence he
is called 'the Father of spirits,' Heb. xii. 9, not so much (as
some interpret it, and that most probably) as he is the Father of
souls by creation, as by regeneration, which adds a greater
strength to the apostle's argument for submission to him and
patience under his strokes. He keeps in his own hand the keys of
the heart, no less than the key of the womb, which was always
acknowledged to be in the hands of God. It is with this
prerogative of God that Jacob silences Rachel, when she so
impatiently cried out for children, as if she had a resolution to
kill herself if she had them not, with this, 'Am I in God's
stead?' Gen. xxx. 1, 2. He only opens the womb of the soul as
well as that of the body, impregnates it with grace, and brings
forth the fruit of holy actions, as Philo in his allegory
descants upon the place. The Jews perhaps meant no less in that
saying in their Cabala, Abraham had not had Isaac if a letter of
the name of God had not been added to his name; the power of God,
a letter of his name, must go to regeneration. It is appropriated
to none but God in Scripture: to the whole Trinity, without the
conjunction of any creature, to the Father as the author,
therefore called 'Our Father;' to Christ, as the pattern; to the
Spirit, as the inspirer of that grace whereby we are made the
sons of God. The very heathen have acknowledged this, some
philosophers have affirmed, that the great virtue, wherein they
placed the happiness of man, could not be had but by the favour
of God, and all thought their heroes to be born of their gods.
And the Scripture affirms that,
(1.) All preparations to this work, as well as the work
itself, are of God. The removing indispositions, and the putting
in good inclinations, is the work of the same hand; the taking
away the heart of stone, as well as the giving a heart of flesh.
He removes the rubbish as well as rears the building; razes out
the old stamp and imprints a new; destroys sin, which is called
the old man, and restores the new by the quickening of the
Spirit. The preparations of the dust of the ground to become a
human body, had the same author as the divine soul wherewith he
was inspired.
(2.) All the parts of the new creature are of God. Faith,
which is the principal part of it, is 'the faith of the operation
of God,' Col. ii. 12; not but that love and other graces are
wrought by God, but in this grace, which is a constitutive part
of the new creature, God comes in with a greater irradiation upon
the soul, because it has not one fragment or point in nature to
stand upon, carnal reason and mere moral righteousness being
enemies to it, whereas all other graces are but the rectifying
the passions, and setting them upon right objects. Yet all these,
too, own him as the author. Our knowledge of God is a light
growing from his knowledge of us; 'we know God' because we 'are
known of him.' Gal. iv. 9. The elective act of our wills is but a
fruit of his choice of us: John xv. 16, 'You have not chosen me,
but I have chosen you;' our willing of him is a birth of his
willing us, our love a spark kindled by his love to us. God first
calls us my people, before any of us call him my God,
Hosea ii. 23. The moon shines not upon the sun till it be first
illuminated by it. God first shines upon us before we can reflect
upon him; he calls us before we can speak to him in his own
dialect; our coming is an effect of his drawing, and our power of
coming an effect of his quickening. Every member in Adam was a
fruit of his power, as well as the whole body; every line drawn
in the new creature is done by his pencil as well as the whole
frame.
(3.) The acts of the new creature. God does not only give us
the habit of faith, but the act of faith: Philip. i. 29, 'Unto
you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe, but
also to suffer for his sake.' By believing is meant the act of
believing, as by suffering is meant not only the power of
suffering, but actual suffering; as the fruits upon the trees at
the first creation were created as well as the tree which had a
power to bear. The very attention of Lydia to the gospel preached
by Paul was wrought by God, as well as the opening of her heart,
Acts xvi. 14. Our walking in his statutes is a fruit of his
grace, as well as the putting in his Spirit to enable us
thereunto. The very act of motion is made by the head and heart,
if there he a failing of spirits there, if any obstruction that
they cannot reach the indigent part, the motion ceases. David
acknowledged God his continual strength in his holy pursuits, 'My
soul follows hard after thee,' Ps. lxiii. 8. But what was the
cause? 'Thy right hand upholds me.' His life and power issued out
from the right hand of God. The graces of God's people stand in
need of the irradiations of God, like the Urim and Thummim,
before any counsel could be given by them.
(4.) The continuance both of the power and acts are from God.
Habitual grace is called the 'fear of the Lord' put into the
soul; the continuance of it is by his constant sustentation, it
is that we may not depart from him Jer. xxxii. 40, 'from upon
him,' from leaning upon him, or believing in him, as the word
"me'alaw" imports. If that fear put in did once depart
from us, we should no longer cleave to God; we stick to him only
because he ties us to himself, and cannot be continually with him
unless he 'holds us by his right hand,' Ps. lxxiii. 23. The grace
that is wrought, as well as the gospel which instrumentally
wrought it, is 'kept by the Holy Ghost,' 2 Tim. i. 14; he begins
every good work, and he performs it. He was the sole active cause
in the creation of the faculties, and the principal cause in
preserving them; he is the sole cause of the elevation of the
faculties, and the preservation of them in that elevated state.
As the virtue of the loadstone is not only the cause of the first
attraction of the steel, but of its constant adhesion, therefore
it is said: 1 Cor. i. 21, that 'God does establish us,' not has
done, to note the continual influence of his grace upon us. It
was the dropping of the two olive trees that constantly fed the
lamps in the candlesticks, Zech. iv. 2, 8. Take this new birth in
all the denominations of it, it is altogether ascribed to God. As
it is a call out of the world, God is the herald, 2 Tim. i. 9; as
it is a creation, God is the creator Eph. ii. 10; as it is a
resurrection, God is the quickener, Eph. ii. 5; as it is a new
birth, God is the begetter, 1 Peter i. 3; as it is a new heart,
God is the framer, Ezek. xxxvi. 26; as it is a law in the heart,
God is the penman, Jer. xxxi. 33; as it is a translation out of
Satan's kingdom, and making us denizens of the kingdom of Christ,
God is the translator, Col. i. 13; as it is a coming to Christ,
God is the drawer, John vi. 44; as it is a turning to God, God is
the attracter.
II. The second thing; it is necessary God should be the
efficient of regeneration. He is, or none.
In regard of God.
1. As he is the first cause of all things. He is the creator
of the lowest worm, and the highest angel; the glimmering
perfections of the least fly, as well as the more glittering
eminencies of the angelical nature, are distinct beams from that
fountain of light and power. Shall not he then be the cause of
the divine motions of the will, as well as of the natural motions
of the creatures? Every perfection in a rational creature, or any
other, supposes that perfection to be somewhere essentially;
every impression supposes a stamp that made it, every stream a
fountain from whence it sprang, every beam a sun, or some lucid
body from whence it darts. Whence should this gracious work then
be derived? Not from nature, which is contrary to it; not from
Satan, who is destroyed by it. It must be then from God, since it
must have some stable and perfect cause. He who was the cause of
all the grace in the head is also the cause of all the grace in
the members. The same sun that enlightens the heavens enlightens
the earth. The grace that Christ had was 'the gift of God,' John
iii. 34, much more must it be his gift to us, though we had souls
as capacious as his. If the head derived not his grace to
himself, the members cannot; for Christ being a creature, in
regard of his humanity, must necessarily be dependent; for to
make any creature independent upon God is to advance it above the
degree of a creature-state, and make it God's fellow, yea, to
have a godhead in itself, as being the first principle of its own
being. To say any creature can move to God, without being moved
by God, or live without his influence, is to make the creature
independent on God in its operations; and if it be independent in
its operations, it would be so consequently in its essence,
besides, if it be not created by him, it may subsist without him,
it stands in no need of his quickening. The believers in
Scripture were very unadvised then to pray to God for his
quickening and establishing grace, if he were not the enlivener
and author of it. His power works in preservation as well as
creation, John v. 17, and whatsoever is dependent on him in
preservation is dependent on him in creation and the first
framing. And if it does not depend upon him in preservation, it
is not his creature, but it is a god. All creatures have a
dependence upon something immediately superior to then. The moon
receives her light and chief beauty from the sun, which else
would be but a dusky body; the earth its influence from the
heavens. In artificial things the little wheels in a watch depend
upon the greater, that upon the string (spring?), that in its
motion upon the hand that winds it up. The higher any creature
is, the more immediately it depends upon God in its production;
the waters brought forth the fish, but God himself formed man.
2. As he is the promiser of it. The divine promise is only
fulfilled by a divine operation, it is necessary then for the
honour of his truth to be the performer of it. All his promises
concerning this matter run in that strain, I will: Hosea ii. 19,
'I will betroth thee to me for ever; I will betroth thee to me in
righteousness, in judgment, in loving-kindness, and in mercy: I
will even betroth thee unto me in faithfulness; and thou shalt
know the Lord.' The Lord promises by this of knowing him all
gracious works upon the soul, regeneration, faith, &c., for
this knowledge is an effect of the covenant which God promises in
that great copy of it: Jer. xxxi. 34, 'They shall all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest.' It is not a simple
abstracted knowledge, for so the devils know God, and Christ
crucified, but such a knowledge that implies faith and love, and
a new frame of soul. It is necessary his power should make good
what his goodness has promised. It was not necessary any word of
promise should go out of his mouth, there was no engagement upon
God to do it, but it is necessary this promise should be
performed; though he were free before he promised, yet he is not
free after he has promised, because his truth engages him to
perform it, and perform it as his own act, as much as his mercy
moved him to promise it as his own act. As mercy made it, so his
mercy is as pressing for the performance, and there comes in a
superadded obligation from that of his truth over and above his
mercy, to perform it in the same manner he promised it, and in
all the circumstances of it. So that, supposing (which cannot be
supposed) that his mercy should repent of making it, he would not
be true if he did not perform it; besides, it consists not with
his truth not to perform that by himself which he has promised by
himself, nor with his wisdom to leave that to an uncertain cause
at the best, and, further, a cause utterly unable (as every
creature is) to produce that which he had promised to do with his
own hand, as the cleansing the soul, pouring clean water upon it,
pouring out a spirit of grace, writing the law in the heart,
which imply his own act principally in this affair, in
concurrence with the means he has ordained to that end. The
performance of God's promise is as infallible as the cause that
made the promise. No power can perform that for another which he
promises himself to do; for the thing itself may be done by
another, yet not being done by the party promising to do it, it
is not truly done, and in conformity to the promise made. If it
were possible then to be done by any but a divine hand, it would
not be done truly, because God promises it as his own act, and
therefore the working it must be his own act in conformity to his
truth.
3. As he has the foreknowledge of all things. It is necessary
God should foreknow everything future, and that shall come to
pass. This is a perfection necessarily belonging to God; and to
imagine the contrary is to frame an unworthy notion of God, and
infinitely below the great creator and governor of the world. He
therefore wills everything, for if he foreknew anything before he
willed it in itself, or in its necessary causes, he foreknow
nothing. If he did not will it, how can it come to pass?
Therefore he did not foreknow that it would come to pass. If he
did foreknow it, then he willed it, otherwise his foreknowledge
depended upon an uncertain cause, and he might have judged that
to come to pass which never might; unless the cause be determined
by God, it is merely contingent. He willing therefore a work of
grace in such and such persons, did foreknow that it would be
wrought, because he did will that it should be, and his working
is done by an act of his will: Rom. viii. 29, 'Whom he did
foreknow, he did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his
Son.' The foreknowledge of God being stable and infallible, and
being in this case a foreknowledge of what makes highly for the
glory of all his attributes, can have no dependence upon an
uncertain and fallible cause, but upon a cause as stable as his
foreknowledge, which is his will, himself. His foreknowledge of
this is not a foreknowledge of it in any created cause, but in
himself as the cause; because, as it will appear further, no
created cause could accomplish it.
In regard of the subject of this new birth.
1 In regard of the subject simply considered, the heart and
will of man, none can cork upon it but God, or have any intrinsic
influence to cause it to exercise its vital acts. Angels, though
of a very vast power, cannot work immediately upon the heart and
will of another creature, to incline and change it, by an
immediate touch. All that they can do towards any moving the
will, is by presenting some external objects, or stirring up the
inward sensitive appetite to some passion, as anger, desire;
whereby the will is inclined to will something. But the stirring
up those natural affections in an unregenerate man, can never
incline his will to good; for being the affections of the flesh,
they are to be crucified. Angels also may enlighten the
understanding, not immediately, but by presenting similitudes of
sensible things, and confirming them in the fancy; but to remove
one ill habit from the will or incline it to any good, is not in
their power. God gave an angel power to purge the prophet's lips
with a coal from the altar, Isa. vi. 6, 7, but that was done in a
vision, and a symbol or sign only that his uncleanness was
removed. A coal could have no virtue in it to purge spiritual
pollutions from the spirit of a man. Neither can man change the
will; men by allurements or threats may change, or rather suspend
the action of another, as a father that threatens to disinherit
his son; or a magistrate that threatens to punish a subject for
his debauchery, may cause a change in the actions of such
persons; but the heart stands still to the same sinful points,
and may be vicious under a fair disguise. He only that made the
will, can incline and 'turn it as the rivers of waters; the heart
of the king is in the hands of the Lord,' Prov. xxi. 1, and so is
every man's heart kept in the hands of him that created it, both
cabinet and key. No man knows the heart, no, the heart itself
knows not everything which is in it. God knows all the wards in
the heart, and knows how to move it. If a man could turn the
heart of another, it could only be in one or two points; it
cannot be conceived how he should alter the whole frame of it,
make it quite another thing than it was before. The spirit of man
being 'the candle of the Lord,' Prov. xx. 27, not to give light
to him, but lighted by him, can only when it is out be
re-lighted, and, when it burns dim, be snuffed by the same hand.
Or, suppose for the present he could do this, it must be with
much pains and labour, many exhortations and wise management of
him upon several occasions. But to do this by a word, in a trice,
to put a law into the heart in a moment, and give the hidden man
of the heart possession of the will, that a man knows not himself
how he came to be changed, this whole work bears the mark and
stamp of God in the forehead of it. Men may propose arguments to
another, and he may understand them if he has a capacity, but no
man can ever make another have a capacity who is naturally
incapable; it is God only can make the heart capable of
understanding, he only can put a new instinct into it, and make
it of another bent; it is he that renews the spirit of the mind
to enable it to understand what he does propose, and elevates the
faculty to apprehend the reason of it.
2. In regard of the subject, extremely ill qualified. Can any
question the divinity of the work, when stones are made children
to Abraham; when waters of repentance are drawn out of a hard
rock, Aaron's dry rod made to bud and blossom, and bring forth
fruit, Num. vii. 8, when souls deeply allied to the kingdom of
darkness are translated into the kingdom of light? To see habits
strengthened by custom, in a consumption, and hearts filled with
multitudes of idols in several shapes, casting them out with
indignation, and flourishing with new springing graces, it is too
great a miracle to be wrought by the hand of any creature. Could
anything but the arm of the Lord change the temper of the thief
upon the cross, to advance further in the space of an hour in the
kingdom of God, than all the apostles had done in the three
years' converse with their Master; to confess him, when one of
the most eminent of them had denied him; to be more knowing in an
instant, than they had been in a long time; and acknowledge his
spiritual kingdom, when they even after his resurrection, and
just before his ascension, expected a temporal one? Acts i. 6,
'Wilt thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?' If a
Socrates, or a Cato, or those braver lights among the heathen,
were turned to God, the interest of God in the work might upon
some seeming ground be questioned; but when the leviathans in
sin, drunkards, extortioners, adulterers, men guilty of the
greatest contempt of God and the light of nature, in whom lust
had kept a peaceable possession in its empire for many years, are
thoroughly changed, who can doubt but that such must indeed be
'washed and sanctified by the Spirit of our God'? 1 Cor. vi. 11.
What can this be but the will of God, since their hearts were so
delightfully filled with evil, that they had no room nor love for
any holy thought? It is not conceivable that where sin has made
such a rout, and cut and slashed all morality in pieces, things
should he set in order there, but by a power stronger both than
sin and the law, from whence sin derives its strength. It is no
less than a divine miracle to renew an habituated sinner.
(3.) In regard of the nature of this new birth. It is a change
of nature; a nature where there was as little of spiritual good
as there was of being in nothing before the creation. It is a
change of stone into flesh; a heart that like a stone has a
hardness and settledness of sinful parts, a strong resistance
against any instrument, an incorporation of sin and lust with its
nature. Where the heart and sin, self and sin, are cordially one
and the same, none can change such a nature but the God of all
grace, who has all grace to contest with all the power of old
Adam. No man can change the nature of the meanest creature in the
world; he may tame them, bring them to part with some of their
wildness, but he cannot transform them. If no man can transform
the lowest creature from one nature to another, much less can any
but God transform man into another nature.
This nature is changed in every believer; for it is impossible
a man should stand bent to Christ, with his old nature
predominant in him, any more than a pebble can be attracted by a
loadstone, till it put on the nature of steel. An unrighteous
nature cannot act righteously, it must therefore be a God, who is
above nature, that can clothe the soul with a new nature, and
incline it to God and goodness in its operations. Now to see a
lump of vice become a model of virtue; for one that drank in
iniquity like water, to change that sinful thirst for another for
righteousness; to crucify his darling flesh; to be weary of the
poison he loved for the purity he hated; to embrace the gospel
terms, which not his passion but his nature abhorred; to change
his hating of duty to a free-will offering of it; to make him
cease from a loathing the obligations of the law, to a longing to
come up to the exactness of it; to count it a burden to have the
thoughts at a distance from God, when before it was a burden to
have one serious thought fixed on him, speaks a supernatural
grace transcendently attractive and powerfully operative. Heavy
elements do not ascend against their own nature, unless they be
drawn by some superior force. To see a soul neighed down to the
earth, to be lifted up to heaven, must point us to a greater than
created strength that caused the elevation. These acts are
supernatural, and cannot be done by a natural cause; that is,
against the order of working in all things, for then the effect,
as an effect, would be more noble than its cause.
(4.) In regard of the suddenness of it. Peter and Andrew were
called when they thought of nothing but their nets; and Paul
changed by a word or two, who before was not only unwilling, but
rebellious. Some have gone into a church wolves, and returned
lambs. This change comes upon some that never dreamt of it, and
has snatched them out of the arms of hell; upon others who have
resisted with all their might any motion that way, and were never
greater enemies to any, than to those that would check their
sinful pleasures with such admonitions, and yet these have been
on the sudden surprised. What ground is there to ascribe any of
this, but to a divine work? Many have dropped in unto a sermon
with no intention to stay, who have felt God's hook in their
souls; have leaped like fish out of their element for a while,
and God has caught them in his hand. Have you never heard of some
who have gone to make sport with a convincing sermon, or to
satisfy lust with unclean glances, who have been made prisoners
by grace before their return? This quickness of the soul in
coming to Christ was promised to be the fruit of the gospel:
Hosea iii. 5, 'They shall fear the Lord and his goodness,' when
they should 'seek the Lord and David their king.' The word
"pachad" signifies not only to fear, but to hasten;
both significations may be joined together in the sense of the
verse. They shall make haste to fear the Lord and his goodness;
surely the power that performs it, is the same with the goodness
which promised it. Thus some of the disciples have followed
Christ at the first call, and moved readily to him, as iron to
the loadstone. For a man that was at a great distance from God,
and any affection to him, to be filled on the sudden with a warm
love and zeal for him, when nothing of interest could engage him
(and sometimes it has been with loss of friends, estate, yea,
life too), is as great a discovery of a divine hand, as if a fly
were changed into the shape and spirit of a hero; because a
spiritual change is more admirable than a natural; and the more
by how much the enmity, which was greater, is driven out, for a
choice affection to rise up in its stead. The season when such a
work is wrought is more significant of a divine force, when men
have been in the heat and strength of the pursuit of their sinful
pleasures, being then torn out of the embracements of lust with
an outstretched arm of God.
(5.) In regard of the excellency of the new birth. Is it
reasonable to think that the image of God should be wrought by
any other hand than the hand of God, or the divine nature be
begotten by anything but the divine Spirit? Since none but man
can beget a child in his own likeness, none but God can impart to
a soul the divine nature. It is not a change only into the image
of God with slight colours, an image drawn as with charcoal; but
a glorious image even in the rough draught, which grows up into
greater beauty by the addition of brighter colours. 'Changed,'
says the apostle, 2 Cor. iii. 18, 'into the same image from glory
to glory;' glory in the first lineaments as well as glory in the
last lines. Is it not too beautiful then, even in the first
draught, to be wrought by any pencil but a divine? It is next to
the formation of Christ, for it is an initial conformity to him.
God is the fountain of all our good things. If 'every good and
perfect gift comes from him,' James i. 17, shall not the best of
beings be the author of the best of works? If believers are
'light in the Lord,' Eph. v. 8, they are no less light from him
and by him who is the 'Father of lights.' It is a 'heavenly
calling,' Heb. iii. 1, therefore a heavenly birth. The new heart,
the spiritual house wherein God dwells, as well as in the
heavens, was not made with a less power and skill than the earth,
which is his footstool, or the heaven, which is his throne. If
none be able to make God a footstool, much less a throne, as
Jerusalem, the church, is called in the times of the gospel, Jer.
iii. 17. (The embroideries and ornaments of the material
tabernacle were not made by common art, but by a Bezaleel
inspired by the Spirit of God, Exod. xxxi. 3); can any but
himself rear up a temple for the God of heaven to dwell in? 1
Cor. iii. 9. Or is the spiritual house of God fit to be made by
and but by that God that dwells in it? It was according to the
image of God that we were first created; it is according to the
image of Christ that we are new created, Rom. viii. 29. Who
understands the image of the Son but the Father? Who knows the
Father but the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal him? The
new creature, according to the copy, can only be wrought by him
to whom the copy is only visible. It is for the honour of God to
allow him to be the framer of all creatures in the rank of
beings. Is it not a dishonour to him not to acknowledge him the
framer of the new creature in the rank of spiritual beings, since
the later is more excellent than the treasures of the earth or
the stars of heaven, than body or soul; since the image of God
consists not so much in the substance of the soul as in a
likeness to God in a holy nature? Eph. iv. 24. To be a righteous
regenerate man is more excellent than to be a man; the most
glorious effect, then, must have the most glorious cause. One
beam of this divine image is too excellent to be the workmanship
of any but a divine hand. The very first regenerate thought, to
the last dropping off of impurity, is from the same hand. The
first drawing us from sin, much more the stripping us of it, is
more admirable than the drawing us out of nothing.
(6.) The end of regeneration manifests it to be the work of
God. It is to display his goodness. Since this was the end of God
in the first creation, it is much more his end in the second.
What creature can display God's goodness for him, or give him the
glory of it, without first receiving it? Goodness must first be
communicated to us, before it can be displayed or reflected by
us. The light that is reflected back upon the sun by any earthly
body beams first from the sun itself. Both the subject and the
end are put together in Isa. xliii. 20, 21, 'The beasts of the
field shall honour me, the dragons and the owls: because I give
waters in the wilderness, to give drink to my people, my chosen.
This people have I formed for myself; they shall show forth my
praise.' The Gentiles shall have the gospel, who are beasts of
the field for wildness, dragons for the poison of their nature,
owls for their blindness and darkness. The waters of the gospel
shall flow to them to give drink to their souls. This people have
I formed for myself. Even beasts, dragons, owls, if formed for
himself, they could not be formed but by himself, who only
understands what is fit for his own praise. How can such
incapable subjects be formed for such high ends, without a
supernatural power? So in Isa. lx. 21, 'The branch of my
planting, the work of my hands, that I may be glorified.' Planted
by God, that God might be glorified by them. As God only is the
proper judge of what may glorify him, so he is the sole author of
what is fitted to glorify him. Nothing lower than the goodness of
God can instil into us such a goodness as to be made meet to
praise, serve, and love him; such a holiness as may fit us to be
partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light, and enjoy
him for ever. As infinite wisdom formed us in Adam, and moulded
us with his own hand to be a model of his perfection, so are we
no less his workmanship in Christ by a second creation to good
works, which, as they are ordained by the will of God, so they
are wrought in us by the skill and power of God; what is ordained
positively by him and for him is wrought by him. The whole world
consists but of two men and their offspring the first man, Adam,
the second man, Christ; both they, and all in them, created by
God. It is a forming a creature for himself for his own delight.
What delight can God take in anything but himself, and what is
like himself? Man in his best estate is vanity. As his being is,
so are his operations. Vanity, and the operations flowing from
thence, are no fit object for the delight of an infinite
excellency and wisdom. What pleasure can he have in those things
which are not wrought by his own finger? Who knows how to dress
anything savoury and pleasant to God but his own grace? Can a
finite thing touch an infinite being to enjoy him without the
operation of an infinite virtue? Can God delight in anything
principally but himself, as he is infinitely good; or in other
things but as they come nearest to that goodness? Whatsoever has
a resemblance to a superior being must be brought forth into that
likeness by something superior to itself.
Now since the ends of this work are so high as to fit us for
his praise, his delight, and a fruition of him; since it is to
bring the interest of God into the soul, set him up highest in
the heart who before was trampled under our feet, enthrone him as
king in the soul, cause us to oppose all that opposes him,
cherish everything that is agreeable to him, this must be his
work or the work of none.
(7.) The weakness of the means manifests it to be the work of
God. How could it be possible that such weak means, that were
used at the first plantation of the gospel, should have that
transcendent success in the hearts of men without a divine power?
That a doctrine attended with the cross, resisted by devils with
all their subtilty, by the flesh with all its lusts, the world
with all its flatteries, the wise with all their craft, the
mighty with all their power, should be imprinted upon the hearts
of men; a doctrine preached by mean men, without any worldly
help, without learning, eloquence, craft, or human prudence,
without the force, favour, or friendship of men, should get place
in men's hearts without a divine inspiration, cannot well be
imagined. If it be said there were miracles attending it, which
wrought upon the minds of men, it is true; but what little force
they had in our Saviour's time the Scripture informs us, when
they were ascribed to Beelzebub, the prince of devils. Though
miracles did attend it after the ascension of our Saviour, yet
the apostle ascribes not so much to them as the means, as he does
to the 'foolishness of preaching, ' it was that which was the
'power of God,' 1 Cor. i. 18; it was that 'whereto God saved them
that believe,' 1 Cor. i. 21. But the greatest change that ever
was wrought at one time was at the first descent of the Spirit,
by a plain discourse of Peter, Acts ii., extolling a crucified
God before those that had lately taken away his life, those that
had seen him die, a doctrine which would find no footing in their
reasons, filled with prejudice against him, and had expectations
of a temporal kingdom by him. Must not this change be ascribed to
a higher hand, which removed their rooted prejudices and vain
hopes, and brought so many as three thousand over at once? If
there be 'diversities of operations, it is the same God that
works all in all,' 1 Cor. xii. 6. He conveys this 'treasure in
earthen vessels, that the power might appear to be of God, and
not of men,' 2 Cor. iv. 7. Such weak means as earthen vessels
cannot work such miraculous changes. Therefore perhaps it was
that the preaching of Christ in his humiliation had so little
success attending it, that nothing should be ascribed to the word
itself, but to the power of God in it. To evidence that success
depended on the good pleasure of God, who would not make his
preaching in person so successful as that in his Spirit, which
appears by Christ's thanksgiving to his Father for revealing
these things to babes, and not to the wise: 'Even so, Father, for
so it seemed good in thy sight,' Luke x. 21. Have you never heard
of changes wrought in the spirits of men against their worldly
interest, when they have been made the scorn of their friends,
and a reproach to their neighbours? Can the weakness of means
write a law so deep in the heart, that neither sly allurements
nor blustering temptations can raze out; that a law of a day's
standing in the heart should be able to mate the powers of hell,
the cavils of the flesh, and discouragements from the world, when
there are no unanswerable miracles now to seal the gospel, and
second the proposals of it with amazement in the minds of men?
The weakness of the means, and the greatness of the difficulties,
speaks it not only to be the finger but the arm of God, which
causes the triumphs of the foolishness of preaching. When the
proposal crosses the interest of the flesh, restrains the beloved
pleasure, teaches a man the necessity of the contempt of the
world, and that men should exchange their pride for humility, the
pleasure of sin for a life of holiness; for a man not only to
cease to love his vice, but extremely to hate it; to have divine
flights, when before he could not have a divine thought; to put
off earthly affections for heavenly, and all this by the
foolishness of preaching, it is an argument of a divine power,
rather than any inherent strength in the means themselves.
(3.) The differences in the changes of men evidence this to be
the work of God, and that it is from some power superior to the
means which are used. As God puts a difference between men in
regard of their understandings, revealing that to one man which
he does not to another, so he puts a difference between men in
regard of their wills, working upon some and not upon others,
working upon some that have known less, and not working upon some
that have known more, some embracing it, and others rejecting it.
We may see,
[1.] The difference of this change in men under the same
means. One is struck at a sermon, when multitudes return
unshaken. Why is not the case equal in all, if it were from the
power of the word? How successful is Peter's discourse, closely
accusing the Jews of the murdering of their Lord and Saviour,
which is the occasion of pricking three thousand hearts? Yet
Stephen using the same method, and close application of the same
doctrine, Acts vii. 62, had not one convert upon record. While
Peter's hearers were pricked in their hearts, these gnashed with
their teeth, ver. 54. The corruption of the former was drawn out
by the pricking of their souls, the malice of the latter
exasperated by the cut of their hearts. What reason can be
rendered of so different an event from one and the same means in
several hands, but the overruling pleasure of God? The reasons
were the same, set off with the same human power; the hearers
were many of the same nation, brought up in the reading of the
prophets, full of the expectations of a Messiah; they had both
reasons and natural desires for happiness, as well as the other,
yet the one are turned lambs, and the others worse lions than
before; the bloody fury of the one is calmed, and the mad rage of
the other is increased. The grace of God wrought powerfully in
the one, and lighted not upon the other. Two are grinding at the
same mill of ordinances, one is taken and another is left. Man
breathes into the ears, and God into what heart he pleases.
[2.] The differences in the changes of men under less means.
One is changed by weaker means, another remains in his
unregeneracy under means in themselves more powerful and likely;
some are wrought upon by whispers, when others are stiff under
thunders. The Ninevites by one single sermon from a prophet are
moved to repentance; the Capernaites, by many admonitions from a
greater than all the prophets, seconded with miracles, are not a
jot persuaded; some remain refractory under great blasts, while
others bend at lighter breathings. One man may be more acute than
another, of a more apprehensive reason; yet this man remains
obstinate, whilst another becomes pliable. Whence does this
difference arise, but from the will of God drawing the one, and
reusing the other to the conduct of his own will, since both will
acknowledge what they are advised to, to be their interest, to be
true in itself, necessary for their good, yet their affections
and entertainment are not the same? Some of those Jews who had
heard the doctrine of Christ, seen the purity of his life and the
power of his miracles, admired his wisdom, yet crucified his
person; they expected a Messiah, yet contemned him when he came;
when the poor thief who, perhaps, had never seen one miracle, nor
heard one sermon of our Saviour, believes in him, acknowledges
him to be the Son of God, whom he saw condemned to the same death
with himself, and dies a regenerate man under great
disadvantages. A figure (says one) of all the elect, who shall
only be saved by grace, and a clear testimony of an outstretched
arm of grace. Those that our blessed Saviour admonished only as a
doctor and teacher were unmoved, none stirred but those he
wrought upon as a creator.
[3.] Difference of the success of the same means in different
places. How various was the success of the apostles in several
parts of their circuits! Paul finds a great door of faith opened
at Corinth, and in Macedonia, and his nets empty at Athens;
multitudes flocking in at one place, and few at another. He is
entertained at Corinth, stoned at Lystra, Acts xiv. 19, in danger
of his life at Jerusalem, while the Galatians were so affected
with the gospel, that they could have 'pulled out their eyes' for
him. The apostle was the same person in all places; the gospel
was the same, and had a like power in itself; men had the same
reasons, they were all fragments from the lump of Adam: the
difference must be then from the influence of the divine Spirit,
who rained down his grace in one place and not in another; on one
heart, and not on another; who left darkness in Egypt, while he
diffused light in Goshen.
[4.] Difference in the same person. What is the reason that a
man believes at one time under the proposal of weak arguments,
and not at another under stronger? It is not ex parte objecti,
for that was more visible and credible in itself, when attended
by strong arguments, than when accompanied with weaker. Perhaps
God has stricken a man's conscience before, and he has undone
that work, shaken off those convictions; he has contended with
his maker, and mustered up the power of nature against the alarms
of conscience; struggled like a wild bull in a net, and broke it,
and blunted those darts which stuck in his soul; he has
afterwards been screwed up again, and the arrow shot so deep,
that with all his pulling he could not draw it out. What but a
divine hand holds it in, in spite of all the former triumphs of
nature? How come convictions at last to be fixed upon men, which
many a time before did but flutter about the soul, and were soon
chased away? And God by such a method keeps up the honour of his
grace in men after regeneration, and teaches them the constant
acknowledgement of his power in the whole management. Do we not
daily find that the same reasonings and considerations which
quicken us at one time in the ways of God stir us not at another,
no more than a child can a millstone; that we are quickened by
the same word at one time, under which we were dull and stupid at
another; and the same truth is deliciously swallowed by us, which
seemed unsavoury at another, because God edges it with a secret
virtue at one time more than another? Hereby God would mind us to
own him as the author of all our grace, the second grace as well
as the first. Upon all these considerations this can be no other
than the work of God. Can a corrupt creature elevate himself from
a state of being hated by God, to a state of being delighted in
by him? Satan's work none can judge it to be; the destroyer of
mankind would never be the restorer; the most malicious enemy to
God would never contribute to the rearing a temple to God in the
soul, who has usurped God's worship in all parts of the world.
Good angels could never do it, they wonder at it; the wisdom of
God in thus creating all things in Jesus Christ is made known to
them by it, Eph. iii. 9, 10. They never ascribed it to
themselves; if they did, they could never have been good, their
goodness consisting in praising of God, and giving him his due.
Good men never did it; the first planters of the gospel (whereby
it is wrought) always gave God the praise of it, and acknowledged
both their own action, and the success, to be the effect of the
grace of God, and upon every occasion admired it, Acts xi. 21,
23. It was 'the hand of the Lord' and 'the grace of God.'
III. The third general head, from what principles in God it
flows, or what perfections of God are eminent in this work of
regeneration. What is observable in the forming Christ in the
womb of the virgin, is observable in the forming Christ in the
heart of a believer: grace to choose her to be the holy vessel;
sovereignty to pitch upon her rather than any other of the
lineage of David; truth to his promise in forming him in the womb
of a virgin, and one of the house of David; wisdom and power in
the formation of him in a virgin's womb, above the power of
nature; mercy bears the first sway as the motive of the decree,
but in a way of sovereignty to call out some, and not others;
truth to himself obliges, after sovereign mercy had made the
resolution; wisdom steps in to contrive the best way to
accomplish what mercy had moved, and sovereignty had decreed;
holiness rises up as the pattern; and power rides out for the
execution. Mercy moves, sovereignty decrees, truth obliges,
wisdom counsels, holiness regulates, power executes.
1. Mercy and goodness is a principal perfection of God,
illustrious in this work. 'Born not of the will of man, but of
God,' of the will of his mercy. Plato thought that heroes were
born "ex erotos Theon", from the love of God; divine
love brings forth an heroic Christian into the world; all outward
mercies are streams of God's goodness, but those are but trifles
if compared with this. There is as much of God in imparting the
holiness of his nature as in imputing the righteousness of his
soul. We are justified by Christ, quickened by grace, saved by
grace; grace is the womb of every spiritual blessing. To be
delivered from places and company wherein we have occasions and
temptations to sin, is an act which God owns as the fruit of his
mercy: 'I brought thee out of the land of Ur of the Chaldees,'
Gen. xv. 7, an idolatrous place; it is a greater fruit of his
goodness to be delivered from a nature which is the seed-plot of
sin. 'He heals our backslidden nature,' because he 'loves us
freely.' It is therefore called grace, which is not only goodness
and mercy, but goodness with a more beautiful varnish and
ornamental dress.
(1.) Therefore in this take notice of the peculiarity of
mercy. Such a goodness that not one fallen angel ever had, or
ever shall have a mite of; neither did mercy excite one good
thought in God of new polishing any of those rebellious
creatures; mercy cast no eye upon them, but justice left them to
their malicious obstinacy. That the rivers of living water should
refuse to run in such a channel, or flow out of such a belly, to
run in the heart of a man more muddy! As peculiar grace pitched
upon the very flesh of Christ, to be limited to the second
person, so the like grace pitches upon this or that particular
soul, to be united to the body of Christ. That singular love
which chose Christ for the head, chose some men in him to be his
members: 'Chosen us in him,' Eph. i. 4. And the anointing which
is upon the head is poured out by such a peculiarity of love upon
the members, not only by an act of his power as God, but by an
act of appropriated goodness, thy God, Heb. i. 9. God anoints his
fellows with that holy gracious unction, as their God, not only
as God; for anointing him as the head, under that particular
consideration, he anoints also his fellows, his members, under
the same consideration too, because he is as well their God, the
God of the members, as well as the God of the head, for they are
his fellows in that unction; the difference lies in the greater
portion of grace given to the human nature of Christ. And the
apostle Peter, 1 Peter i. 3, intimates in his thanksgiving to
God, that God begot us as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ:
'Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,' the
paternal affection he bears to Christ being the ground of the
regeneration of his people; the paternal affection first pitching
upon Christ, then upon others in him. Indeed, it is a peculiar
affection. In his mercy to the world, he acts as a rector or
governor, in that relation he proposes laws, makes offers of
peace, urges them in his word, strives with men by his Spirit,
enduing men with reason, and deals with them as rational
creatures; he uses affections and mercies, which might soften
their hearts, did they not wilfully indulge themselves in their
hardness. This is his rectoral mercy, or his mercy as a governor,
and as much as his relation of a governor can oblige him to. If
men will not change their lives, is God bound as a governor to
force them to it, or not rather to punish them for it? But in
regeneration there is a choicer affection, whereby, besides the
relation of a governor, he puts on that of a father, and makes an
inward and thorough change in some which he has chosen into the
relation of children. As a father, who cannot persuade his son
lying under a mortal distemper to take that physic which is
necessary for saving his life, will compel him to it, open his
month, and pour it in; but as he is a governor of his servant, he
will provide it for him, and propose it to him. To do thus is
kindness to his servant, though he does not manifest so peculiar
an affection as he does to his son. God governs men as he is the
author of nature; he renews men as he is the author of grace; he
is the lawgiver and governor; it does not follow that where he is
so he should be the new creator too; this is a peculiar
indulgence.
(2.) As there is a peculiarity of mercy, so there is the
largeness of his mercy and goodness in this work. It was his
goodness to create us, but a full sea of goodness made us new
creatures: 1 Peter i. 3, 'Who according to his abundant mercy has
begotten us again to 'a lively hope,' "kata to polu autou
eleos". His own mercy, without any other motive; much mercy,
without any parsimony, not an act of ordinary goodness, but the
deepest bowels of kindness, an everlasting spring of goodness, an
exuberance of goodness. The choice love he bears to them in
election cannot be without some real act; it is a vain love that
does not operate; one great part of affection is to imitate the
party beloved; but since that is unworthy of God to imitate a
corrupt creature, he performs the other act of love, which is to
assimilate us to himself, and bring us into a state of imitation
of him, endowing us with principles of resemblance to him. It is
abundant mercy to love them; it is much more goodness to render
them worthy of his love, and inspire them with those qualities,
as effects of his love of benevolence, which may be an occasion
of his love of complacency. Worldly mercies do many times, yea,
for the most part (if you view the whole globe of the earth)
consist with his hatred, but this is a beam from a clear sun. At
best other benefits are but the mercies of his hand, this of his
heart. In those he makes men like others of a higher rank, in
this like himself.
[1.] It is a goodness greater than that in creation. It is
more an act of kindness to reform that which is deformed, than to
form it at the beginning, because it is more to have a happy than
a simple being. To repair what is decayed is a testimony of
greater goodness than at first to raise it. Creation is
terminated to the good of a mutable nature, regeneration is
terminated to a supernatural good, and partaking of the divine
nature. The creation was an emanation of his goodness, never
entitled the work of his grace. Man's first uprightness was an
impress of God; his second uprightness is far more pleasing to
him, as being the fruit of his Son's death, wherein all his
attributes are more highly glorified. It is a regeneration 'by
the resurrection of Christ,' 1 Peter i. 3; that being the
perfection of it, includes his death, which is the foundation of
it, as the perfection of a thing includes the beginning. God
pronounced all the structures of the first creation good, but not
with those magnificent titles of his delighting in it, forming it
for himself, that it might show forth his praise, which
expressions testify a greater efflux of his goodness in this
second creation. Nor did Christ ever say his delight was in that,
or in that one man Adam, but in the sons of men, of apostate
Adam, as to be redeemed and renewed by him after their apostasy:
Prov. viii. 31, 'My delights were with the sons of men.' What
sons of men? The exhortation, ver. 32, intimates it, those that
are his children renewed by him that hearken to him and keep his
ways. God pronounced it good, but not his treasure, his portion,
his inheritance, his segullah, his house, his diadem. All
those things which he made, even the noblest heaven, as well as
the lowest earth, he overlooks and speaks slightly of them: Isa.
lxvi. 1, 2, 'All those things has my hand made, and all those
things have been,' &c., to fix his eyes, "avit",
upon a contrite spirit, a renewed nature. He speaks of them as
things passed away, and is intent only upon the new creation;
values it above heaven and earth, and all the ceremonial worship.
What is the object of his greatest estimation partakes of a
greater efflux of his goodness to make it so. And the apostle
Peter aggrandises this abundant mercy in regeneration, from the
term, 'unto a lively hope;' not such an uncertain hope as Adam
had when he was fullest of his mutable uprightness; a living
hope, "elpida dzosan", that grows up more and more into
life, till it comes to an inheritance that fades not away as
Adam's did. Surely there is more of bowels in the Spirit's
brooding over a sinful soul, to bring forth this beautiful frame,
than in brooding over the confused mass to bring forth a world.
[2.] All the grace and goodness God has is employed in it. In
the creation you cannot say, all the goodness of God was
displayed, as not all his power nor all his wisdom: for as to his
power he might have made millions of worlds inconceivably more
beautiful and more wisely contrived; for though there be no
defect of wisdom and power, yet neither of those attributes were
exerted to that height that they might have been. So for his
goodness, he might have made millions of more angels and men than
he did create, with as (and more) illustrious natures; for a man
may conceive something more than God has displayed in the
creation, as to the extensiveness of his perfections at least.
But in this God has displayed, as it may seem, the utmost of his
grace, for no man or angel can conceive a higher grace than what
God shows in this, of beginning in man a likeness to himself, and
perfecting it hereafter to as high a pitch as a creature is
capable of. Therefore called 'unsearchable riches of Christ,'
Eph. hi. 7. A further good cannot be imagined or found out than
what is there displayed. Therefore the apostle Peter speaks of
God as effectually calling us into his eternal glory by Christ,
under the title of ' the God of all grace,' 1 Peter v. 10, which
calling includes all preparation for glory. All grace does not
less fit us for it, than call us to it, there is more of grace in
fitting us for it than barely in calling us to it; and the call
itself has more of grace in it than the giving the possession of
that inheritance you are called unto. It is not so high a favour
in a prince actually to set his royal bride in the throne with
him, as to call her to and prepare her for so high a dignity. To
prepare a soul for it by regeneration is an act of pure grace; to
give it after a preparation for it, is an act of truth as well as
grace; nothing obliged him to the first, his promise binds him to
the latter. What if I should say, this renewing of us, and
subduing our sins in us, is a greater act of grace than a bare
remission! Micah vii. 18, 19, seems to favour it. To pardon us is
an act of his delightful mercy; but to subdue our iniquities is
an act of his most tender compassion. Mercy is there joined with
pardon, and compassion with subduing And the latter expression,
'Thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea,' may
refer to both those acts of grace, against the guilt and filth of
sin.
[3.] The freeness of his mercy is manifest in it. It is as
free as election: Eph. i. 3, 4, 'Who has blessed us with all
spiritual blessings' (of which regeneration is none of the
meanest), 'according as he has chosen us in him', "kathos
exelexato". It is as free in the stream as it is in the
fountain. Jesus Christ is as freely formed in us, as we were
freely chosen in him, as freely, quoad nos, as to
us, not in regard of Christ, who merited the former though not
the latter. It is his own mercy, 1 Peter i. 3, 'his own will,'
James i. 18, not moved by any other, as we do many things by the
will of others when our own are not free, in which are mixed
acts. It is in regard of this freeness called grace. Supposing
God would create man, and for such an end as to enjoy
blessedness, he could not create him otherwise than with a
universal rectitude, because, had God created him with a temper
contrary to his law, he had been the author of his sin. Some
therefore call not the righteousness of Adam grace, because it
was a perfection due to his nature upon his creation. But there
was no necessity upon God to bestow new creating grace, after he
had stripped himself of the righteousness of his first creation.
And also supposing God will restore man to that end from which he
fell, and refit him for that blessedness, he cannot fit him
otherwise than by restoring him to that righteousness, as a means
of attaining that blessedness. Yet both these are free, because
the original foundation of both is free. God might choose whether
he would create man when he was nothing, and choose whether he
would restore man when he was fallen. Yet there is more freedom
in this latter than in the former, in regard of the measures of
the new created righteousness, and in regard of the immutability
of it, in regard also of demerit. Adam's dust, before creation,
as it could merit nothing, so it had an advantage above us that
it could not lie under demerit. But we, after the fall, are in a
state of damnation, children of wrath, so that regeneration is
not a creating us from nothing, but recovering us from a state
worse than nothing. In regard that man was miserable, he was
capable of mercy; but as he was a criminal, he was an object of
severity. That is free mercy to renew any man by grace, when he
might have damned him by justice, to work him for glory when he
had wrought himself for damnation. The apostle therefore excludes
all works whatsoever from any meritoriousness in this case: Titus
iii. 5, 'Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but
according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of
regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost.' I say, he excludes
all works, because not one work, as good, was in being before the
renewal of the soul, for so verse 3 plainly implies, when he
concludes all men, himself too, in a state incapable of doing
anything that was good; the honour of his truth indeed excites
him to perfect it, but his grace only, without any other motive,
moves him to bestow it. All the grace you have in regeneration
sprung only from this; the righteousness you are arrayed with,
the flames of love in your hearts, the flights of your faith,
cost you nothing, they were all the births of love. Goodness
decreed all when you were nothing, grace formed all when you were
worse than nothing, your faith is 'the faith of God's elect,'
Titus i. 1. New creatures were chosen to faith by grace, and by
the same grace was faith formed in the womb of the soul; electing
grace preceded, renewing grace followed, the stream cannot be
merited when the spring was free. Regeneration is an accessory to
election. No man can merit the principle, therefore not the
accessory.
2. As mercy and goodness, so the sovereignty of God is
illustrious in this work. 'Of God,' in the text, is 'of the will
of God.' The covenant runs in a royal style: 'I will put my
Spirit into them; I will give a heart of flesh,' of my own free
motion and good pleasure, like the patents of princes. God
reserves this in his own power, to give to whom he pleases;
Cameron says, that faith, which is a great constitutive part of
regeneration, was not purchased meritoriously by Christ's death;
and though Christ does give us faith as well as repentance, yet
he does that, not as considered as a satisfier of God's justice
in his death, but as God's commissioner in his exaltation, being
empowered by God to give the conditions upon which they agreed
together in the first compact about the work of mediation, unto
all those that God had given him to satisfy for. Whether this
opinion be well grounded or no, I will not determine; yet the
making it depend solely upon election, and to be given as a fruit
of election, that hereby we may be partakers of Christ, makes it
more fully depend upon the sovereignty of God. God renews when he
pleases. 'The wind blows where it lists,' John iii. 8. To some he
affords means, to others not; he deals not with every nation as
he dealt with Israel. In some, he works by means; to others, he
gives only the means without any inward work; it is his pleasure
that he works upon any one to will, his good pleasure that he
gives to and one to do: Philip. ii. 13, 'of his good pleasure.'
Some hear the word, others the Spirit in the word; some feel the
striking of the air upon their ear, others the stamp of the
Spirit upon their hearts. Who chose this rough stone to hew and
polish, and let others lie in the quarry? Who frames this for a
statue, a representation of himself, and leaves another upon the
pavement? What does all this result from, but his sovereign
pleasure?
(1.) No ultimate reason can be rendered for this distinction,
but God's sovereignty. We can render an immediate reason of some
actions of God: why the heavens are round, because that is the
most capacious figure, and fittest for motion; why the sun is the
centre of the world, as some think, because it may, at a
convenient distance, enlighten the stars above, and quicken the
things below; why our hearts are in the midst of our bodies,
because they may more commodiously afford heat to all the
members; so also, why God loved Adam, because he saw his own
image in him; why he sends judgments upon the world, because of
sin; why he saves believers and condemns unbelievers, because
they receive the grace of Christ, those reject it. We have not
recourse immediately to God's will for a reason; the nature of
the things themselves affords us one, obvious to us. But no
reason can be rendered of other actions of God but his good
pleasure. Why he chose Abraham above other men, and delivered him
from Ur of the Chaldees; why Israel above other nations, since
all other men and nations descended from Adam and Noah, and they
were in their natures equally corrupt with others; they were not
in themselves better than others, nor other nations worse than
they; so in Esau and Jacob, why the elder should serve the
younger, since they both issued from the same parents, lay in the
same womb, were equally depraved in their nature, had original
sin equally conveyed to them by their parents: no reason can be
rendered but the will of God. So, if it be asked, why men are
condemned, because they do not believe. Why do they not believe?
Because they will not. God has given them means and faculties. If
you ask, why God did not give them grace to believe and turn
their wills, no other answer can be given but because he will
not. It is his free will to choose some and not others. Election
is put upon his pleasure: Eph. i. 5, 'Predestinated according to
the good pleasure of his will;' and the making known the mystery
of his will is put upon his pleasure: Eph. i. 9, 'Having made
known unto us the mystery of his will according to his good
pleasure.' As God regards us absolutely, it is rather mercy than
his good pleasure. Why has he changed our wills? Because he loved
us, and bare good will to us in his everlasting purpose, to which
he was incited by his own mercy. But if we compare ourselves with
others, and ask, why he renews this man and not that, then it is
rather an act of the sovereign liberty of his will, for there
cannot be the result of any reason from any thing else; he
pitches his compassion where and upon whom he pleases. The
apostle joins mercy and this sovereignty of his will together:
Rom. ix. 15, 'I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy; and I
will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.' He is so
absolute a sovereign, that he will give no account of these
matters but his own good pleasure. Why he renews any man is
merely voluntary; why he saves renewed men is just; why he
justifies those that believe is justice to Christ and mercy to
them; but why he bestows faith on any is merely the good pleasure
of his will. The pharisees believed not, because they were not of
Christ's sheep, John x. 26; that is, they were not given to
Christ by the Father, as is intimated, verse 29. And the
prosperity of those which are given to Christ is resolved wholly
into the pleasure of God: 'The pleasure of the Lord shall prosper
in his hand,' Isa. liii. 10. In all our searches into the cause
of this, we must rest in his sovereign pleasure; our Saviour
himself renders this only as a reason of his distinguishing
mercy, wherein himself does, and therefore we must, acquiesce:
Mat. xi. 27, 'Even so, Father, for so it pleased thee.'
(2.) We may well do so, because he is no debtor to any man in
the way of grace. There is nothing due to man but death; that is
his wages; the other is a gift: Rom. vi. 23, 'To you it is given
to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, to them it is not
given,' Mat. xiii. 11. Who shall control him in the disposal of
his own goods? 'Who shall say unto him, What dost thou?' Grace is
his own treasure; if he gives the riches of it to any, it is his
pleasure; if he will not bestow a mite on any man, it is no
wrong; 'if any man has given to him, it shall be recompensed to
him again,' Rom. xi. 35. It is not unjust with God to deny every
man grace; it is not then unjust to deny a great part of men this
grace: 'Who has enjoined him his way?' says Job; or, 'Who can
say, Thou hast wrought iniquity?' Job xxxvi. 23. He is not to be
taught by man how to govern the world, neither can any man justly
blame him, if they judge aright of his actions. Though every man
is bound to endeavour the conversion of others, and every good
man has so much charity that he would turn all to righteousness
if he could, and though the love of God is infinitely greater
than man's, it cannot be argued from thence that therefore God
should renew every man. This charity in man is a debt he owes to
his neighbour by communion of blood, upon which the law of
charity is founded, which obliges him to endeavour the happiness
and welfare of his neighbour; but God is free from the
engagements of any law, but the liberty of his own will; he is
under no government but his own; he has none superior, none equal
with him, to enjoin him his way, and to prescribe him rules and
methods. If he gives any favour to man, it is his pleasure; if
man improves it well, God is not indebted to him, and obliged to
give him more, no more than a father is bound to give his son a
new stock, because he has improved well the first he has
entrusted him with; it depends only upon his pleasure.
(3.) God's proceedings in this case do wholly declare it. In
the first gift of his people to Christ, he acted like a God
greater than all in a way of super-eminent sovereignty: 'My
Father which gave them me is greater than all', John x. 29. He
acts as a potter with his clay; he softens one heart, and leaves
another to its natural hardness. He converts Paul a persecutor,
but none of the other pharisees who spurred him on in that fury
and commissioned him to it; he snatches some from the
embracements of lust, while he suffers others to run their race
to hell. David, by grace, is made a man after God's own heart,
and Saul left to be a man after his own will; some he changes in
the heat of their pursuit of sinful pleasures, others he wounds
to death by his judgments. The reason of the latter is deserved
justice; the reason of the other is undeserved pleasure. He
chooses the mean things of the world to be highest in his favour,
and passes over those that the world esteems most excellent. 'Not
many wise, not many mighty,' is his sovereign method. The amiable
endowments esteemed by the men of the world have no influence
upon him. He acts in this way with his own people; he gives
sometimes to will, when he does not give presently to do; he
distributes greater measures of grace to one than to another; he
sometimes excites them by his grace, sometimes lets them lie as
logs before him, that he may be owned by them to be a free agent.
And further, it must needs be thus, because God does not work in
regeneration as a natural agent, and put forth his strength to
the utmost; as the sun shines, and the fire burns, ad extremum
virium, unless a cloud interpose to hinder the one, or water
quench the other, but as an arbitrary agent, who exerts his power
according to his own will, and withholds it according to his
pleasure. For there are two acts of his sovereign will: one
whereby he does command men to do their duty, promises rewards,
and threatens punishment, but the subject is to be disposed to do
God's will of precept. Here comes in another act of his
sovereignty, whereby he wills the disposing such and such hearts
to the accepting of his grace, and does will not to give others
that grace, but leave them to themselves. This we see practised
by God almost in every day's experience.
3. The truth of God is apparent in this work. Truth to his own
purpose: 1 Tim. i. 9, 'Who has called us with a holy calling,
according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in
Jesus Christ before the world began.' Sovereignty first singles
this or that man out; and truth to that firm and immutable
counsel, and that resolve in his own mind, steps in to excite his
holiness, wisdom, and power, to make every such person conformed
to the image of his Son. It was not from any truth respecting any
condition annexed to any promise he had made which he might find
in the creature, for the apostle plainly excludes it, 'not
according to our work'; for what motion can our work in a state
of nature cause in God but that of anger and aversion arising
from truth to his threatening, the condition whereof is fulfilled
by us, but not one mite of good fruit that could as a condition
challenge this great work at the hands of the truth of God by
virtue of his promise. His truth to his threatening would have
raised up thoughts of destroying men; his truth to his purpose
carried on his design of effectually calling them. It is not an
engagement of truth to his creature, but of truth to himself. So
that if you ask why he has Peter, Paul, and others, since many
better conditioned than they have rejected the gospel, the answer
is, because he had so purposed in himself; and he is faithful,
and cannot deny his own counsel, for that were to deny himself,
and that eternal idea in his own mind: 2 Tim. ii. 13, 'He is
faithful, and cannot deny himself,' in regard of his purpose, in
regard of his absolute promise. Truth to his promise; his promise
to his Son, for so Titus i. 2 is principally to be understood:
'In hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised
before the world began.' There was a donation of some made to
Christ, and a donation of grace to Christ for them, deposited in
his hands as a treasure to be dispensed to every one of them in
their proper time. His truth comes in upon this double donative:
a donative of grace to them in Christ, before the world began,
which would be but as a useless rusty treasure, if not bestowed
upon those for whom it was entrusted in his hands; a donative of
some, according to this purpose, to Christ, whose death, and
resurrection, and purchase, would be ineffectual, if those thus
given were not in time engrafted in him, and renewed by him, to
be made partakers of all that which he purchased and preserved
for them. Jesus Christ was to have a seed by covenant, a people
to be conformed to his image. The issue then of forming a people
for his seed, is the effect of God's truth to Christ. And
consequent to this antecedent purpose in himself, and promise to
Christ, he gives him an order to bring in those that were thus
designed to be his sheep, which he calls his sheep by right of
donation, before they were renewed: my sheep, by right of gift
from my Father, mine by right of purchase at my death, mine by
right of possession at their effectual call, these I must bring
in; not I may, but I must; and they shall hear my voice: John x.
16, 'Other sheep I have; them also I must bring, and they shall
hear my voice;' not they may, but they shall be inclined to
comply with my word and call. Satan and their own lusts shall not
hinder them from coming unto me, but they shall be overruled by a
powerful Spirit. So that there is truth to his purpose, truth to
his promise to Christ' truth to the depositum in Christ's
hands, truth to his word published, that he would give a new
heart. So that whatsoever heart his work is wrought in, it is a
manifest effect of the truth of God to himself and his Christ.
The gift of grace, in possession, is a necessary consequent of
that gift of it, in purpose, before the world began.
4. The wisdom of God appears in this work. The secrets of
wisdom shine forth in the great concerns of the soul in Christ,
who is made wisdom principally to us in our sanctification, as
well as righteousness and redemption. Wisdom in the imputation of
righteousness, in the draught of sanctification, and in the
perfection of it in a complete redemption; wisdom, like thread,
runs through every part of the web. The new birth is the great
wisdom of the creature; by this he becomes wise, since the
Scripture entitles all fools without it. The inspiration of this
wisdom can own no other but divine wisdom for the author. It is
his own wisdom; for 'Who has been his counsellor?' Rom. xi. 34.
He works all things according to the counsel of his own will,
freely, wisely; a work of his will, a work of his understanding:
Eph. i. 11, 12, 'Who works all things according to the counsel of
his own will, that we should be to the praise of his glory,' that
the glory of the Father may shine out in us. If all things are
thus wrought with the choicest counsel, much more the rarest work
of God in the world. If all things are wrought with counsel,
because he will have a praise from them, much more that from
whence he expects to gather the greatest crop of glory. The
bringing us to trust in Christ is for the praise of his glory; a
glory redounds to him, because there is nothing of our own in it,
but all his; a farther glory redounds to him, because it is in
the wisest manner. It is to the praise and the glory of his
goodness in the act of his will; to the praise of the glory of
his wisdom in the act of his counsel. There was a mystery of
wisdom in the first secretion and singling out this or that
person; a revelation of wisdom in the preparations to it, and
formation of it. If there be much of his counsel in the minute
passages of his providence in the lowest creatures, which are the
subjects of that providence, much more must there be in the
framing the soul to be a living monument of his glory. It is not
a new moulding the outward case of the body, but the inward jewel
wrapped up from the view of men; the spirit of the mind, which,
being more excellent, requires more of skill for the new forming
of it.
(1.) The nature of the new birth declares it to be an effect
of his wisdom. It is a building a divine temple, a spiritual
tabernacle, for his own residence: 'ye are God's building,' 1
Cor. iii. 9. Strength will not build a house without art to
contrive and proportion the materials; skill is the chief
requisite of an architect. The highest pieces of art come from
the most excellent idea in the creature. The beautiful fabric of
grace is modelled by the wisest idea in God; that which is
glorious in the erection, supposes excellent skill in the
contrivance. Every renewed man is a 'lively stone:' 1 Pet. ii. a,
'Ye also as lively stones,' every one of you polished and carved
by the wise Creator for an everlasting statue. It is he that has
'wrought us to the self-same thing,' 2 Cor. v. 6,
"katergasamenos"; polished us and curiously wrought us,
who were rough stones, covered with the rubbish of sin. As a wise
builder, he lays the foundation in sound habits, whereon to raise
a superstructure of gracious actions. The counterpart in the
heart is no less a fruit of his wisdom than the law in the tables
of stone; wisdom in the first framing the law, wisdom also in the
deep imprinting of it. That which enlightens the eyes, and makes
wise to salvation, can be entitled to no other original cause
than divine wisdom. The soul is a rational work of God. Surely,
then, that which is the soul of the soul, the glory of the
creature, the preparation for happiness, more pleasing to God
than the brightest nature, than the natural frame of the highest
soul, that which is the pleasure and delight, must be the fruit,
too, of infinite wisdom. Bare effects of power are not the
immediate objects of God's special delight.
(2.) The means of it declare it to be a fruit of his wisdom.
Christ the exemplar has the treasures of wisdom; grace copied
from it is part of those treasures. The gospel, the instrument,
is 'the wisdom of God,' as well as 'the power of God,' 1 Cor. ii.
7. Divine skill framed the model, reared the building, no less
sows the seed in the heart. What did partake of wisdom in the
contrivance, progress, all the parts and methods of it, partakes
of the same in the inward operations of it upon the soul.
(3.) The manner of it speaks it to be so. In regard of the
enemies he has to deal with, there must be prudence to
countermine the deep and unsearchable plots of the powers of
darkness. As there is the strength of sin within, the might of
Satan without, as fit subjects for his power, so there are the
stratagems of Satan, the subtleties and deceits of the flesh, as
a fit occasion for his almighty skill against hellish policy. In
regard also of his working upon the soul, he works upon those
that are so contrary to his design without imposing upon their
faculties; he moves them according to their physical nature,
though contrary to their moral nature; he makes us do willingly
what we would not; he so tunes the strings that they speak out
willingly what naturally they are most unfit for. The Spirit acts
wisely in the revealing to us the knowledge of Christ, as Eph. i.
17, 'The spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of
him,' which may note the manner of his acting in the revelation,
which is the first work of the soul, as well as the effect it
does produce, though I suppose the effect is principally meant.
Some question the wisdom of God in acting so upon the will as not
to lease it to its own indifference in this change. What reason
is there to question his wisdom? Do not the angels in heaven
admire God's wisdom as well as his grace, who has immutably fixed
them to that which is good? Do they question the wisdom of God
for so happy a confirmation of them against that indifference
which destroyed some of their fellows by creation? But is there
not an evident art in this work, to make the will willing that
had no affection to this change; to fit the key so to all the
wards that not one is disordered; to move us contrary to our
corrupt reason, yet bring us to that pass to acknowledge we had
reason to be so moved; to move our faculties one by another as
wheels in a watch; to present spiritual things with such an
evident light as engages our understandings to believe that which
they would not believe before, and our wills to embrace that
which our affections gainsay? It must therefore be a fruit of
divine skill since it is a fruit of divine teaching, John vi. 45.
(4.) There is a greater wisdom in it than in the creation of
the world. The higher the work rises, the more of skill appears.
It is a divine art to make man to live the life of plants in his
growth, the life of beasts in his sense, the life of angels in
his mind; more it is then to make him live the life of God in his
grace. Man in his body partakes of earth, in his soul of heaven,
in his grace of the heaven of heavens, of the God of heaven. The
grace in the new birth is nearer the likeness of God than the
figure of men in the first birth. God therefore does more observe
the numbers and measures in the second creation than he did in
the first. Man was the most excellent piece in the lower
creation, therefore more of art in the framing of him than in the
whole celestial and elementary world. The glorious bodies of sun,
moon, and stars had not such marks upon them. The nearer
resemblance anything has to God, the more of wisdom as well as
power is signified in the make of it.
(5.) The holiness of God is seen in this work. The day of
God's power breaks not upon us in the change of our wills,
without his appearance in 'the beauties of holiness,' Ps. cx. 3.
The Spirit is called a spirit of holiness, not only as he is the
efficient, but as he is the pattern, and like fire transforms
into his own nature; for that which is born of the Spirit is
spirit. The law in the tables of stone was an image; the law in
the heart is an extract of God's holiness. Our first creation in
a mutable state was according to his own image, Gen. i. 26. Our
second creation is more exactly like him, in a gracious
immutability. The holiness in Christ's human nature was an effect
of the holiness of God; the holiness we have then in resemblance
to Christ, must be a fruit of the same perfection. If we are
renewed according to his image, it must be according to his
holiness. To be merciful and just, is to have a moral image; to
be holy, is to have a divine. The apostle intimates this in his
exhortation, we must be holy in serving him, because he was holy
in calling us: 1 Peter i. 16, 'As he which has called you is
holy, so be ye holy,' &c. In this respect, God calls himself,
not only a holy one, but the holy one of Israel: Isa. xliii. 15,
'I am the Lord your holy one, the creator of Israel, your king.'
He is not only holy in himself, but displays his holiness in
them, by an act of a new creation. By creator is not
meant, his being the creator of them, as he is of all, even of
wicked men and devils; but implies a peculiar relation to them,
as distinguished from others. He is the creator of devils, holy
in his actions towards devils, but not their holy one by
any inward renovation, or consecrating them to himself, as he is
the holy one of Israel. As he is a God in covenant, he is our
God, therefore our God as he is a holy God, as well as he is a
powerful God, communicating the one as well as the other in a
covenant way, therefore the prophet Habakkuk joins them both
together, 'O Lord my God, my holy one,' Hab. i. 12. His holiness
is no less necessary for the felicity of his people, than his
mercy and power. What happiness could his mercy move, his wisdom
contrive, or his power effect, without the communication of his
holiness? Mercy could not of itself fit a man for it, nor power
give a man possession of it, without holiness attiring him with
all those graces which prepare him for it. God, as sovereign,
chose us; as merciful, pardons us; as wise, guides us; as
powerful, protects us; as true, makes good his promises to us;
but as holy, cleanses us from our old habits, makes us vessels of
honour, filled with the savoury and delicious fruits of his
Spirit, his pleasant things. The implantation of grace in the
heart, is no less an effect of his holiness, than the
preservation of it is, which our Saviour intimates, when in his
petition for it he gives his Father rather the title of holy,
than of any other attribute: John xvii. 11, 'Holy Father, keep
through thy own name.'
6. The power of God appears in this work. 'Since the world
began was it not heard that any man opened the eyes of one that
was born blind,' John ix. 32; neither was it ever heard that any
man could open the understanding of one that was born dark.
Everything that pertains to life and godliness, of which
regeneration is not the meanest, is the work of divine power: 2
Peter i. 3, 'According as his divine power has given to us all
things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge
of him who has called us to glory and virtue;' glory and virtue,
by a hendiadis, for a glorious virtue; and the apostle
adds, that this calling was an effect of a glorious power; it is
not "eis", but "dia", through glory
and virtue; the same preposition "dia", which, as
joined with knowledge, is translated through; as much as
to say, through a glorious virtue or power, both
"agete" and virtus, signifying valour and
strength in their several languages. When God hardens a man, he
only withdraws his grace. But a divine virtue is necessary for
the cure of our hereditary disease. There is no great force
required to cut a dead man, but to raise him requires an
extraordinary power. We may as well deny this work to be a new
creation, a resurrection, as deny it to be an act of divine
power. There is a word that calls; there is also a power to work:
1 Thes. i. 5. 'Our gospel came not unto you in word only, but
also in power, and in the Holy Ghost;' that is, the power of the
Holy Ghost. There was not only grace in the word, to woo, but the
power of the Holy Ghost in it, to overcome the heart. There is
not only an act of an almighty Spirit, but an act of his
almightyness. The hand of the Lord created the world, 'the
heavens are the work of his fingers,' Ps. viii. 3; but grace is
the work of 'his arms,' Isa. liii. 1. It may be said of the first
grace in the new birth, as it was of Reuben, Gen. xlix. 3, it is
his 'might, the beginning of his strength, and the excellency of
his power.' Though ministerial gifts were as excellent as Paul's,
whose preaching was with demonstration and power, and who knew
the readiest ways to men's hearts, if a man ever did, yet 'the
excellency of the power was of God;' and when he brandished his
spiritual weapons, they were only 'mighty through God,' 2 Cor. x.
4. Though the declaration was his, yet the working was Christ's,
Rom. xv. 18; none of his people are willing, till the day of his
power, Ps. cx. 3.
(1.) It is as great, yea, greater power, than that put forth
in creation. It is as great; it is the introduction of another
form, not in a way of any action or fashion, but in such a manner
as was in the creation, that is, by the mighty operation of God;
otherwise it could not be called a new creature though it might
be called a new thing. You call not that which is made by the art
or power of man, as a watch, a clock, a house, a new creature;
for there is nothing of creation in them, but art and industry,
setting the pieces of matter, created to their hands, together in
such a form or figure. But this is called a new creature, not so
much in regard of the newness of the thing, but in regard of the
power that wrought it, and the manner of working it, being the
same with that of creation. And being termed so, it implies the
exerting an efficacious power; for creation is not brought by a
cessation of action (which would be in God, if the will were only
the cause of it) but the employment of an active virtue. God does
not hold his hand in his bosom, but spreads it open, and applies
it to an efficacious action. Since it is a new creation, it
implies a creator, and a creative power, creation cannot be
without both. It is a greater power expended in regeneration than
in creation; more power morally in this, than physically in that.
One word created the world; many words are combined for the new
preparation of the heart. It is easier to make a thousand
glasses, than to set together one that is dashed in pieces. It is
easier with God to make a world (quoad nos, as to our
conception, for all things are alike easy with God), and create
thousands of men with his image, as bright as Adam's, than to
bring that into form which is so miserably defaced.
[1.] First, In regard of the subject, sin has turned man into
a beast, and omnipotence only can turn a bestial man into
angelical and divine. There is a less distance between the least
dust and the glorious God, than there is between the holy God and
an impure sinner; sin and grace are more contrary to one another,
than aliquid and nihil, something and nothing. A
straw may with less power be made a star, than a corrupted sinner
be made a saint. In creation, God was only to put in nature, here
he is to 'put off' one that is strong, and to bring in another
altogether strange and new, it is hard to bring a man off from
his old stock, and as hard to make him nakedly to trust Christ.
It is more difficult to make a man leave his sin, than to change
his opinion, since men are more in love with habitual wickedness
than with any opinion whatsoever. In regard of the indisposedness
of the soul. There is some foundation for a natural religion,
there being general notions of God and his attributes, which
would administer some conclusions that he was to be feared and
reverenced; and according to these notions many cheeks of
conscience, which would induce men to some moral behaviour
towards God. But in the setting our hearts right to God, and
creating them in a mediator, there was not the least dust in
nature to build upon. In the creating of Adam's body, there was
some pre-existent matter, the dust of the ground, whereof his
body has by a divine power made and organised; but we meet with
no pre-existent matter for the formation of the soul, which made
him a rational creature; that indeed was the breath of God, not
engendered by any concurring cause in nature. There is no
pre-existent matter in the creature, of which this image is
formed, though there be a pre-existent subject to receive the
impression of it; it is not the rearing anything upon the
foundation of nature, but introducing a nature wholly new, which
speaks almightyness. In regard of the contradiction in the
subject. The stream of man's natural reason, the principles, of
self, whereby he is guided, run counter to it, there is a pride
of reason which will not stoop to the gospel, which in man's
wisdom is counted foolishness. Man is an untamed heifer, a wild
ass that snuffs up the wind, full of hatred to the ways of God,
guided by gigantic lusts, which make as great a resistance as a
mountain of brass; stoutness of heart, strong prejudices against
the law of God, fierceness of affection, drinking iniquity like
water, universal madness, resisting the spirit, hare-brained
imaginations; frowardness in the will, forwardness to evil,
perversity against good; can anything, less than an almighty
power, make a universal cure? It is more easy to make men stoop
to some victorious prince, and become his vassals, than to bring
men to a submission to God and his laws, which they entertain
with contempt and scorn. Nothing obeyed God's word in the
creation; though it contributed not to his design, yet it could
not oppose him, it could not swell against him, because it has
nothing. But every sinner is rebellious, disputes God's commands,
fortifies himself against his entrance, gives not up himself
without a contest. This pride is hereditary, it bore sway in the
heart ever since Adam's fall, and has prescription of as long a
standing as the world to plead for possession. What but infinite
power can fling down this pride at the foot of the cross, make
the heart strike its swelling sail to Christ, and become nothing
in itself, that Christ may be all life in him, and all
righteousness to him? It is only possible to God to make a camel,
with this bunch on its back, pass through a needle's eye; no less
than divine power can bring down these armies of opposite
imaginations, which have both multitude and strength (and no man
knows either their number or strength), and the whole frame of
contradiction against the grace of Christ. Our Saviour intimates
this creative power in that thanksgiving to his Father: Matt. xi.
25, 'I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth,' &c.
Christ, in all his addresses to his Father, used attributes and
titles suitable to the business he insisted on. The revelation of
divine knowledge to babes, the moulding their hearts to receive
it, was an act of God as he is Lord of heaven and earth, putting
forth an infinite power in the forming of it. If God were the
author of grace in the hearts of those babes, persons better
disposed, and nearer the kingdom of heaven, as he was Lord of
heaven and earth, then there must be some greater power than that
of the creation of the world put forth to conquer the wise and
prudent, whose wisdom and prudence stands armed in the breaches
of nature to beat off the assaults of the gospel.
[2.] In regard of the opposition of the present possessors.
The chasing out an armed devil, that has kept the palace in peace
so long, must be by a power superior to his own, Luke xi. 21, 22.
This great Goliath has his armour about him, has had long
possession and dearest affections; the impulses of natural
concupiscence take his part; he has his alluring baits, his
pleasing proposals; the world and the flesh are linked with him
in a league to hinder the restoration of the soul to Christ, and
the restoration of God's image to the soul. A threefold cord is
not easily broken. It must be a power superior to those three
great posters in conjunction, that must bind the strong man; and
casting him out, and spoiling his goods, are acts of power, Mat.
xii. 29. Satan is too strong to be easily cast out, and the flesh
loves him too dearly to be easily divorced from him; he is never
like to lay down his arms by persuasions; though all the angels
in heaven should entreat him, he would not give up one foot of
his empire. Nay, though what God does propose has a greater
weight of goodness, pleasure, and profit in itself, than what
those three great impostors can offer, yet, since reason is weak
and mightily corrupted under the conduct of sense, which has an
alliance with Satan's proposals, and first sucks them in, it is
not like to meet with any entertainment, as being against the
interest of the flesh; and the will being backed with two such
powerful seconds, as Satan and the world, to assist it in its
refusals. Indeed, if he that is in the regenerate, were not
greater and more powerful than he that is in the world, they
would not be able to resist his allurements and subtilties, 1
John iv. 4. The triumphs of Christ at his ascension declare his
power in his acquisition; with a strong hand he broke the chain
of sinners, and 'led captivity captive' before he gave gifts to
men, Ps. lxviii. 18. He does the like in giving grace to the
heart; he rides upon his white horse in the power of almighty
grace, when he conquers the enmity in the soul, as well as when
he overcomes the enemies of his church, Rev. vi. 2.
(2.) It is a power as great as that which wrought in the
resurrection of Christ. It is considerable how loftily the
apostle sets it out: Eph. i. 19, 20, 'And what is the exceeding
greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the
working of his mighty power, which he wrought in Christ when he
raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in
heavenly places.' Exceeding greatness of his power,
"huperthallon", with an hyperbole, according to the
working or efficaciousness of his mighty power, noting the
infusion of faith in the soul by a powerful impression,
'according to the working of the might or strength.' One word was
not enough to signify the great power working: it is strength
with a greater edge upon it; as when a man would fetch a mighty
blow, he stirs up all his strength, sets his teeth on edge to
summon all his spirits to assist his arm. The power of God in
creation of nature is never in the whole Scripture set forth so
magnificently as his power in the creation of grace is in this
place. The apostle picks not out any examples of God's power in
his ordinary works, or that power in lesser miracles which
exceeded the power of nature, to illustrate this power by. He
does not say, It is that power whereby we work miracles or speak
with tongues: no; neither is it that power whereby our Saviour
wrought such miracles when he was in the world. It is a more
illustrious power than the giving sight to the blind, speech to
the dumb, hearing to the deaf, yea, or life to a putrefied
carcass, this is an extraordinary power. But yet this gracious
power is higher than all this, for it is as great as that which
wrought the two greatest miracles that ever were acted in the
creation as great as the raising Jesus Christ perfectly dead in
the grave, and having the weight of the sin of the world upon
him, and as great as that power which, after the raising of him,
set him in his human nature at his right hand, above
principalities and powers, above the whole angelical state, as
much as to say, As great as all that power which wrought the
whole scene of the redemption, from the foundation-stone to the
top-stone. It is such an unconquerable power, whereby God brings
about all his decrees which terminated in Christ. Some say this
power is not exercised in the begetting faith, but in the
faithful after faith is begun. It is very strange that a less
power is necessary to beget, than to preserve a thing after it is
brought into being. And the same power is requisite to raise the
heart of the most moral man under heaven out of the grave of
corrupted nature, as well as those that are furthest in their
dispositions from God. As, had not our Saviour had the weight of
the sins of men upon him, had he been dead but an hour or two,
lain in the grave with a little loose or light sand cast upon
him, it would have required infinite power to have restored him
to life. The apostle mentions this in other places, though not so
highly as in this: Rom. vi. 4 'That like as Christ was raised up
by the glory of the Father, even so we should walk in newness of
life.' It must be understood thus. Even so we, being raised up by
the glory of the Father, should walk in newness of life. And it
may be partly the meaning of the apostle Peter, 1 Peter i. 3,
'Who has begotten us to a lively hope by, or through, the
resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,' not only as the
foundation of our hopes, but by a power conformable to that which
raised Christ from the dead. I would only by the way note, that
this infers a higher operation than merely an exhortation and
suasion; for would any man say of a philosopher that had taught
him morality, that he had displayed in him the exceeding
greatness of his power, only upon the account of advising and
counselling him to reform his manners, and live more soberly and
honestly in the world? Our Saviour esteemed this one thing
greater than all the other miracles he wrought, and declared
himself to be the Christ more by this than by any other. When
John sent to know who he was. he returns no other account than
the list of his miracles: 'The blind see, the lame walk, the
lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, to the
poor the gospel is preached,' Luke vii. 20. That which brings up
the rear as the greatest is, 'the poor
"euangelidzontai", are evangelised;' it is not to be
taken actively of the preaching of the gospel, but passively,
that they were wrought upon by the gospel, and became gospelled
people, transformed into the mould of it, else it would bear no
analogy to the other miracles; the deaf hear, and the dead were
raised; they had not exhortations to hear and live, but the
effects were wrought in them; so those words import not only the
preaching of the gospel to them, but the powerful operation of
the gospel in them. This greatest miracle in the catalogue is the
only miracle our Saviour has left in the world since the
cessation of all the rest.
I have insisted the longer upon these perfections in God
apparent in this work.
1. To stir up every renewed person to a thankful frame towards
God, that he should engage his choicest attributes for the good
of a poor creature. To what purpose did the apostle so long and
so highly speak of the power of God in raising them from a
spiritual death, but that they should acknowledge it, and admire
God for it? It cannot but raise high admirations and adorations
of God, to consider how mercy moved for them, sovereignty called
them out, wisdom modelled them, holiness cleansed them, and power
framed them.
2. To stir up deep humility. It is a plain declaration of our
miserable estate by nature, and the difficulty of emerging out of
it, impossible for any creature to effect. Had not God been
infinitely merciful, wise, holy, true, and omnipotent, and put
forth his power to free men from a slavery to sin, not a man had
been able to escape out of it; and these two, admiration of God,
and humiliation of self, are the two great acts of a Christian,
which set all other graces on work. Mercy speaks us very
miserable, wisdom declares us fools, holiness unclean, and power
extremely weak.
3. How mightily will it give a ground to the exercise of
faith! He that is deeply sensible of this work of holiness and
power in him, cannot but trust God upon his deed, as well as
before he did upon his word. As you go to the promises without
you, consider also the counterpart of the promise within you, and
the efficacy of that power which wrought it. You have a ground of
faith within you; the power extends to every one wherein this
work is wrought: 'What is the exceeding greatness of his power to
us-ward who believe;' this the apostle speaks to all the
believing Ephesians.
4. Therefore look much into yourselves by way of examination,
to observe the actions of God's wisdom, holiness, and power
within you. The want of this makes many gracious persons live
disconsolately. Paul was certainly diligent in his observation,
since he speaks so feelingly and experimentally of it. It is the
way to answer Satan's objections, silence unbelieving thoughts,
when you can trace the steps and operations of them in you; it
would make you strive for an increase of this work of
regeneration, that you may feel in yourselves more evidences of
the holiness and power of God.
5. Those that want it may well despair of attaining it by
themselves and their own strength. Divine wisdom and power are
exerted in this work, and men may as well think themselves able
to raise a dead man, yea, Christ from the grave, and set him at
the right hand of God, as do this by their own strength. If we
want an eye or a hand, all the creation cannot furnish us with
either. How can any power but that which is infinite give us an
eye to look to Christ within the veil, and a hand to clasp him in
heaven?
6. It directs men where to seek it, and to seek it earnestly.
At the hands of God, since infinite wisdom, holiness, and power,
are necessary for the production of it. With earnestness, because
it is so transcendent a work, has so many perfections of God
shining in it, that creature-strength and wisdom is utterly
unable to frame and raise it; and with hopes too, if they
earnestly seek it, since God has hereby declared himself
infinitely loving, in the combination of so many attributes for
the effecting of it. Plead, therefore, the glory of God in these
his attributes, and if God give you a heart to seek it, it is a
probable argument he will give you that grace which he has given
you a heart to desire.
IV. Quest. How God does this?
1. This work is secret, and therefore difficult to be
described. The effects are as obvious to a spiritual sense, as
the methods of it obscure to our understandings; secret as the
original of winds, sensible as the sound and bluster of them,
John iii. 8. If a dead man were raised, he would not know the
manner how his soul returned into the body, how it took its
former place, and made up a new union, yet he would know that he
lives and moves. A gracious soul knows that he was carnal, and
now spiritual, blind, and that he now sees. He finds strength
instead of weakness, inclinations to good instead of opposition,
sweetness in the ways of God instead of bitterness. The methods
of grace are obscure as those of nature: Eccles. xi. 5, 'Who
knows the way of the spirit, or how the bones grow in the womb of
her that is with child? even so thou knows not the works of God
who makes all.' The manner of the formation of Christ in the soul
is as undiscernible as the formation of a child, or the manner of
Christ's conception in the womb of the virgin, both which are
fearful and wonderful, as it is said of the first, Ps. cxxxix.
14, 'Who can declare his generation 9' Isa. liii. 8; that is, the
generation of Christ, either in his person or in his people. We
cannot give a satisfactory account of the natural motions of our
souls, how one faculty commands another, how the soul governs the
several parts of the body, what the nature of the action of our
mind is in contemplation and reflection, how our wills move the
spirits in the body, whereby the members are acted in their
motion, and the functions of life performed. Much more
undiscernible are the supernatural methods of the Spirit of God.
We know ourselves heirs to the corruption of the first Adam by
the inbeing of it, the light of the grace of the second Adam
discovers itself in the soul, but the manner of the descent of
either is not easily to he determined. The loadstone's attracting
of iron is the best representation of this work; the soul, like
that, moves sensibly, cleaves strongly to God; but wherein this
virtue consists, how communicated, both in that of nature and
this of spirit, dazzles the eye of reason.
2. Yet this is evident, that it is rational; that is,
congruous to the essential nature of man. God does not deal with
us as beasts, or as creatures destitute of sense, but as
creatures of an intelligent order. Who is there that believes in
Christ in such a manner as heavy things fall to the earth, or
light things fly up to the air, or as beasts run at the beck of
their sensual appetite, without rule or reason? If the Spirit of
God wrought so upon man, this were to lay our faculties asleep,
not to act them, but to act only upon them; this were to invert
the natural order by creation, to raze out the foundations of
virtue, and deny the creature the pleasure of his condition, who,
according to such a manner of operation, could not understand his
own state, no more than a brute can the harmony of music, or the
pleasing variety of colours. But grace perfects our souls,
possesses them with new principles, moves one faculty by another,
like the motions of the wheels in a clock or watch; like the
common course of providence, wherein he orders all affairs
according to the dependence of them one upon another by creation,
without making any inroad upon the natural rights of any
creature, but preserving them entire, unless in some miraculous
action. He diffuses a supernatural virtue into the soul, not to
thwart it in that course of working he appointed it in the
creation, but to move it agreeably to its nature as a rational
being. As the sun conveys a celestial virtue upon the plants,
drawing them forth by its influence according to their several
natures, so the Holy Ghost introduces a supernatural principle
into men, whereby they act as reasonable creatures in a higher
strain. What methods our Saviour used in the first declaration of
the gospel, he uses in the propagation of it in the hearts of
men. The same reason that is used in writing the indenture is
used in writing the counterpart. He might, by his omniscient
wisdom, have found the way to the most secret corner of every
man's heart, and by his power have set up what standard he
pleased in every part of the castle, without proposing the gospel
in the way of miracles and arguments; but he transacts all that
affair in such a manner, that men might be moved in a rational
way to their own happiness. He required a rational belief, as he
gave rational evidences: John x. 37, 'If I do not the works of my
Father, believe me not;' that is, the works that none but one
empowered by God could do. God, that requires of us a reasonable
service, would work upon us by a reasonable operation. God
therefore works by way of a spiritual illumination of the
understanding, in propounding the creature's happiness by
arguments and reasons, and in a way of a spiritual impression
upon the will, moving it sweetly to the embracing that happiness,
and the means to it which he does propose; and indeed without
this work preceding, the motion of the will could never be
regular.
God does this by a double work.
1. Upon the understanding.
2. Upon the will.
1. Upon the understanding. The opening the eyes precedes the
conversion from darkness to light, in God's operation as well as
in the apostles' commission, Acts xxvi. 18. The first appearance
of life, when God raises the soul, is in the clearness and
distinctness of its knowledge of God, Hos. vi 2, 3. And the
apostle, in his exhortation to the Romans, tells them the way for
the transformation of their souls was by the renewing of their
minds: 'Be ye transformed by the renewing of your minds,' Rom.
xii. '2. The light of the sun is seen breaking out at the dawning
at the day, before the heat of the sun be felt. As the action of
our sense is to sensible objects, so is that of our soul to
spiritual. Our eye first sees an object before our hearts desire
it, or our members move to it; so there is an apprehension of the
goodness of the thing proposed, before there be any motion of our
wills to it; so God begins his work in our minds, and terminates
it in our wills. In regard of this, as a state of nature is set
forth under the term of darkness, so a state of grace is often
termed light, that being the first work in the new creation, as
it was the first word of command in the old, 'Let there be
light,' 2 Cor. iv. 6, Col. iii. 10, and is therefore called a
renewing 'in knowledge,' or unto knowledge or acknowledgement,
"anakainoumenon eis epignosin". If you consider the
Scripture, you will find most of the terms whereby this is set
forth to us have relation to the understanding. The gospel itself
is called knowledge, Luke i. 77, wisdom, 1 Cor. i. 30. What
faculty in man is appointed for the apprehending of a science to
gain wisdom, but the understanding? That whereby we receive the
gospel is called 'the spirit of the mind,' 'the eyes of the
understanding' and 'sight,' which is put before believing: John
vi. 40, 'Every one which sees the Son, and believes on him.' The
work of grace is called 'revelation,' Gal. i. 16, 'illumination,'
Eph. i. 18, 'translation from darkness to light,' 'opening the
heart.' The action of our minds being enlightened, is called
'comprehending', Eph. iii. 18, and 'knowledge,' 2 Peter i. 2. All
respect the understanding as the original wheel which God
primarily sets in order, from whence he does influence
secondarily all the other faculties which depend upon its
guidance, God preserving hereby the order which he instituted in
nature. Therefore, when the understanding savingly apprehends the
deformity of sin, the will must needs hate it; when it apprehends
the mercy of God, and the beauty of holiness, the will must needs
love him, and the higher the degrees of this saving illumination
are in the mind, the stronger and firmer are the habits and acts
of grace in the will. This illuminative act of the Spirit is
before, prior natura, the other of inclining the will, for
the understanding is first exercised about the word, as verum,
true, before the will is concerned in it as good. The
understanding takes in the light of the gospel, which, by the
working of the Spirit, is reflected upon the will, whereby it is
changed into the image of Christ, whose gospel it is: 2 Cor. iii.
18, 'Beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, we are
changed into the same image.' The first act is of the mind, which
is the eye of the soul; where the apostle intimates, that the
whole progress, as well as the first change, is wrought in this
manner.
This is wrought,
1. By removing the indisposition and prejudices which
naturally are in the mind. As a wise physician which orders his
medicines for the removing of the principal humour. Chains of
darkness must be broken, films upon the eye must be removed,
which hinder the act of vision; for what the eye is to the body,
that the understanding is to the soul. The darkness of ignorance
is promised in the covenant to be scattered: 'They shall all know
me, from the least to the greatest of them,' Jer. xxxi. 34. This
being a law in the inward parts, the eye must be cleared to read
it, as well as the heart cleansed to obey it. The object being
spiritual, requires a spiritual disposition in the faculty for
the reception of it. This is called in Scripture a giving eyes to
see, and ears to hear, Deut. xxix. 4, and the revealing things
not only by the word, but by the Spirit, 1 Cor. ii. 10, which, in
regard of rectifying the reasons and judgments of men, is called
a 'spirit of judgment,' Isa iv. 4, 'and shall have purged the
blood of Jerusalem from the midst thereof; by the spirit of
judgment. and the spirit of burning:' a spirit of judgment, as it
is light in the understanding, removing the darkness, a spirit of
burning, as it is heat in the heart, thawing the hardness. It
reduces the mind into a right order, and teaches it to judge
between truth and falsehood, between good and evil, the want of
which is the cause of sin; whence sins are called
"agnoemata", Heb. ix. 7, errors, as arising from error
in judgment. Since the mind is hued with fogs, and incapable to
perceive the splendour of divine truths, God acts upon the mind
by an inward virtue, causing the word proposed to be mixed with
an act of faith, which he begets in the soul, whereby it
apprehends the excellency of that state presented to it in the
gospel. As there is a manifestation of his name in the word, so
there is an operation of his grace, an internal teaching by God,
as well as an external by the gospel; the proposal of the word by
man, the opening and fitting the heart by God: John vi. 45,
'Every man that has heard, and has learned of the Father, comes
unto me'. Christ taught all by his ministry, the Father only some
by his Spirit. Learning of God goes before coming to Christ, and
those two acts are plainly distinguished: Isa. vi. 9, 10, 'Hear
and not understand.' The lock of their minds was to be opened, as
well as that of their ears; the prophet's voice could unlock the
one, the Spirit only had the key of the other. Men may enlighten
as moral causes, God only as the efficient cause, to root out the
inward indisposition. The Sprit also removes the prejudices
against Christ as undesirable, against holiness as troublesome,
takes down the strength of corrupt reasonings, pulls down those
idols in the mind and false notions of happiness, out-reasons men
out of their inward thoughts of a happiness in sensual pleasures,
pride of life, mammon of honour or wealth, which are the root of
our spiritual disease, and first to be cured. In this there is a
manifest difference between the working of Satan and the
operation of God; he sets his battery against the affections,
because the entry is there easiest; God breaks in upon the
understanding, which, being the chief fort, will quickly be a
means to reduce the lesser citadels. And when the work begins in
removing the blindness, it is the way to a true conversion; when
it begins only in the affections, it is a prognostic of a quick
starting aside. In an outward exhortation, God acts suitably to
our nature, since we are endued with understanding and will; but
in acting upon us within, he does remedy the vice of our nature.
since our reason and will are corrupted.
(2.) It is wrought by bringing the mind and the object close
together. Sight is produced in a blind man by drawing off the
scales from his eyes, and the recourse of spirits to the eye
necessary for sight; besides this, there must be outward light,
and objects coloured by that light; and from the eye so disposed
within, and the thing discovered without, arises the action of
sight. So from the preparation of the understanding, and the
application of the object, arises this action of spiritual
vision. There is a double opening, one of the gospel, the other
of the understanding; our Saviour did both, he 'opened the
Scriptures,' Luke xxiv. 32, and 'opened their understandings,'
ver. 45, that there might be a mutual entrance, that the word
might dwell in their hearts, and their hearts have admission into
the I ord. The Spirit shows the great things of the gospel to the
soul: John xi. 14, "anangelei", 'He shall receive of
mine, and show it unto you,' not in general, but bring them near
to them, to make them view 'and know the things that are freely
given to them of God,' l Cor. ii. 12, the benefits of the death
and resurrection of Christ. He repeats them again and again, that
there may be an evidence in the mind that they are the royal
gifts of God. There is a knowledge, before this work of the
Spirit, but as of things at a distance. Many know the things
proposed in the gospel, but they know it not as a glorious
gospel, nor see the wonders in this law, till the Spirit brings
that and the faculty close together. As a man may discern a
statue or picture at a distance, but till the eye and the objects
meet close together, it cannot discern the beautiful workmanship
upon them with any affection to them. Not that a man knew
nothing, or knows new reasons of those things which he knew
before; but there is a nearer, and therefore clearer,
representation of them, which is demonstratio ostensiva,
whereby he knows them in another manner than he did before. As a
man may know the promises before, but they were not brought so
near to him as to taste them; taste being an addition to
knowledge, whereby a man knows that sensibly which before he only
knew notionally. It is one thing to know a mechanical instrument,
and another to know it in the operation of it, when it is applied
to its proper use. It is like a man that has his understanding
more cleared by seeing mathematical demonstrations, and lines
drawn, than by all the rules of art in his head.
(3.) By fixing the mind upon the subject so closely presented.
The Spirit settles that light and the object so in the mind, that
it can no more blow it out than puff out the sparklings of a
diamond, or than an artist endued with the habit of some art can
divest himself of his skill. Many men have some convictions of
truth, but flashy and uncertain, and which slip from their minds.
But when the Spirit opens the heart, it holds the object to the
mind, and the mind to the object, starts one holy thought after
another about the truth it has darted in, makes the mind peer
about it, and take notice of every lineament of that truth that
we eye, and those thoughts lie down, rise up, and walk with us.
When Lydia's heart was opened, she 'attended to the things spoken
by Paul,' Acts xvi. 14, her whole heart cleaved to them. In this
respect the Spirit is a remembrancer, making the soul ponder and
and over again with all intenseness of mind the goodness and
truth of those things in the gospel which are brought unto it,
that the heart is, as Paul was, 'bound in spirit to Jerusalem,'
Acts xx. 22. The thoughts of that journey did so haunt him and
follow him, as the shadow does the body, that no arguments of
friends, nor fear of danger, could divert him; the soul is bound
by them, one consideration overtaking another, and all at work
beating upon the mind. Hence consideration is put before
conversion: Ezek. xviii. 28, 'Because he considers and turns away
from all his transgressions.' And it is called the 'engrafted
word,' fastened to the soul as a graft to the stock; when the
heart is opened by the Spirit, the word is inserted in and bound
to it, and at last the heart becomes one with the word, and grows
up with it.
(4.) By bringing the soul to an actual reasoning and discourse
upon the sight of the evidence. God convinces the judgment with
reasons proper to evidence the truth and goodness of what he does
propose, and that with pregnant and prevailing demonstrations,
which give a competent satisfaction; therefore called the
'demonstration of the Spirit and power,' 1 Cor. ii. 4, that is, a
spiritual and powerful demonstration. When the eye is opened, and
the revelation made, and held close and fast to the soul with a
divine demonstration, that this is the only means to elevate him
to a high condition, and at last bring him to a blessed
immortality, the understanding is moved to compare the force of
those arguments, and consequently judges that true which before
it counted false and foolishness, and comes by the help of this
spiritual light to reason spiritually, and spiritually to discern
the proposition made to it. It compares its natural state with
the happy state offered to it, its own ignorance with that light,
its own misery with that mercy. God will not have man, that is so
far above a beast, do anything without reason; for this would be
to do it brutishly, though the thing done were never so good,
When men act as men, they follow the judgment of the best reason
they can. And shall man, that was created a rational creature, be
renewed without reason, when the very work is to advance him to
the true state of a reasonable creature, and his reason is
enlightened by the Spirit, that it may rightly judge of the
demonstrative arguments it offers to him? Is there not as much
reason for the guidance of the will in the highest concern, as
for the conduct of it in affairs of a lower sphere? Man was first
endued with reason, that he might rationally serve God; and his
depraved reason is reformed, that he may rationally return to
God. If, therefore, he act like a man in other things, he does
not surely act like a brute in this; but the Spirit excites that
reason he has enlightened to judge of those excellent things he
does propose, and the strength of the arguments he backs them
with, which are so clear and undeniable that they cannot be
refused by a mind divested of those indispositions which drew out
before a contempt of them. The change in the will being an
election and choice, cannot be made without convincing and
satisfying reasons which induce it to that choice, and justify
the election it has made. That can hardly be called faith, when a
man believes that which he does not think upon the highest reason
was his duty to believe. And indeed what man is there that cannot
allege some reason why he is induced to this or that act? God
moves men by presenting things to the understanding under the
notion of good, honest, profitable; and when the understanding is
enlightened to judge of things in some measure under the same
notion that God proposes them, a man's own reason cannot but upon
a view of them assent unto them, and that assent is followed with
a change, according to the degrees of that illumination, if it be
a saving one. Upon this account that our own reason is excited to
judge of the proposal, our faith can no more be said to be a
human faith, or the work to proceed from our own power, than it
can be said to be sensitive because it comes by hearing; for
though faith depends upon hearing and reasoning, as upon natural
powers, yet the light whereby the faculties are acted is wholly
supernatural, and from the Spirit of God.
(5.) Hence follows a full conviction of the soul. Both the
knowledge of its own misery, and the amiableness of the gospel
offer, whence issues a weariness under the one and desires for
the other. By this enlightening, the soul sees sin in its empire,
God in his wrath, Satan in his tyranny, and the hardness of the
stone within him; he sees the law accusing, sin triumphing,
heaven shut and hell open, God ready to judge him, and his soul
every way deplorable. He sees also in the gospel how Christ has
expiated sin, answered the demands of the law, stills the
clamours of conscience, satisfied the justice of God by bearing
his wrath; hereupon the soul closes with Christ, and is born
again. Here are heaps of sin that cannot be numbered, on the
other side are riches of mercy that cannot be reckoned, there is
sin to damn, here is a Christ to save; heaven and hell, sin and
Christ, damnation and salvation, are presented in their proper
colours, and pressed upon the understanding; which beholds all by
a clear light. And thus, by the illuminative virtue of the
Spirit, the soul is laid at God's foot in a sense of its misery,
and then drawn into Christ's arms by a sense of his grace. This
is wrought by a connective persuasion, for so the word
"elegchein" signifies, John xvi. 8, which causes both a
sight of sin and a sense of righteousness, and produces a full
assent in the understanding.
2. The next faculty wrought upon is the will. The will is
inclined, as well as the understanding enlightened, whereby
spiritual things are approved with a spiritual affection, the
same hand that darts light into the mind, puts heat into the
will. After the act of understanding has preceded in a serious
consideration, and thorough conviction, the act of the will, by
virtue of the same Spirit, follows in a delightful motion to the
object proposed to it; it is conducted by light, and spirited by
love; the understanding hands the object to the will, as
necessary to be embraced, and the arms of the will are opened to
receive it, as the eyes of the mind are to behold it.
For the understanding of this, take these propositions.
Prop. 1. There seems to me to be an immediate supernatural
work upon the will, as well as upon the understanding: not that
the understanding is only enlightened, and the will follows the
dictate of that without any further touch of the Spirit upon it;
but the will, as it is the will, and therefore cannot be forced,
there is need of a moral cause which may determine it according
to its nature, and draw it by the cords of a man. When a master
instructs a youth in his trade, he does it by arguments morally;
when he holds his hand with the instrument in it, and directs the
motion, he acts physically; so does the Spirit exhort us to
spiritual motion, telling us inwardly which is the way, that we
may walk in it, and take our wills by the hand, as it were, and
lead them in the way they are to go. A nurse's tongue and
exhortation is not enough to make a child to go, because of the
weakness of its limbs; nor the light in the understanding
sufficient to move the will, wherein there is an habitual
weakness and contradiction. How did God work up the wills of the
Egyptians to lend their jewels to the Israelites, but by some
immediate touch. Their reason might have furnished them with many
more arguments against it than it could for it. They knew the
Israelites had been highly injured, and that very lately, too;
that they could not but have a deep sense of their oppression,
and intentions of revenge, as far as their power extended. They
knew that the Israelites prepared for flight, and might more than
conjecture that they intended never to return or send their
jewels to them; for what need had they of so many goods barely to
sacrifice in the wilderness? How were their wills thus banded
against so many arguments against this action, and without any
strong reasons to move them to consent to such a desire of the
Israelites? How must this be but by the efficacious power of God,
not forcing their wills, but taming their fierceness, softening
them by a secret instinct, and exciting them to a grant of the
Israelites' request? The apostle says, God 'gives to will.' If
there were not a particular act upon the will, it had better been
said, God gives to understand and know, and man to will and do.
After the evidence set up in the understanding, there is a secret
touch upon the will, opening and enlarging it to run the way that
is proposed in an excellent and charming manner. As the poser of
God raises every part of Christ, so the same power raises every
faculty of the soul; it was also a physical power, since mere
exhortation would never have effected it.
(1.) The Scripture intimates this in the terms whereby it
signifies this work to us, as creation, resurrection,
regeneration, new birth, all which denote some physical operation
distinct in each faculty in the new creation, as there was in the
first; not only the law in the mind to direct, but the heart of
flesh to comply, is God's act. The fleshy heart is wrought by
him, as well as the knowledge of the mind lighted by him. In
generation something is removed, another thing introduced; in
regeneration then of the will, there is consonant to that an
eradication of corrupt habits, and an implantation of gracious
ones. It is called a 'giving a heart,' a 'circumcision of the
heart to love God,' Deut. xxx. 6. Love is an act of the will,
though it supposes a knowledge of the amiable oldest in the
understanding. If faith be principally in the will, as I think it
is, as to consent; and the words leaning, resting, coming
rather note an act of the will than an act of the understanding;
there is then an operation of God upon the subject, viz. the
will, in the implanting of it.
(2.) The will is corrupted as well as the understanding. The
works of the flesh issue from both; if the corruption were only
in the understanding, then that being removed, the will would be
regenerated. As in a watch, if the fault be only in one wheel,
that being mended, the whole frame is rectified; but if there be
a flaw in all, the mending of one, though the principal one,
which moves the rest, will not set every wheel right, without a
particular application of art to restore them to their due frame.
Was not original righteousness subjectively in the will as well
as in the mind? Did not a stoutness in the will succeed in the
place of that righteousness, as well as darkness in the place of
light? Must not there then be a habit of mollifying grace
bestowed upon the one as well as a habit of enlightening truth
set up in the other; an inclination to good in the will, and an
aversion from evil, as well as the knowledge of both? The corrupt
proneness in the will is the cause that it is easily excited to
evil by the persuasion of the devil and the world; and is there
not need of an inward rectitude in the will to bias it to a free
embracing and close adherence to the good proposed to it by God,
that his grace may be efficacious in every part? This work is a
quickening a man under a universal spiritual death; the will was
dead, as well as the mind dark, which must have life instead of
its deadness, as the other has light instead of its darkness; and
if they be two distinct faculties, then there are two distinct
acts of the Spirit, though they depend one upon another. There is
no less power requisite to make us spiritually willing than to
make us spiritually knowing, since the corrupt habits in our
wills are rather stronger than the prejudices in our
understandings; therefore there seems to be a distinct act in
removing the resistance from the one as well as expelling the
darkness from the other. As the Spirit takes away the wisdom that
was sensual, earthly, and devilish, so it divests the will of
that disposition whereby it was enamoured on that devilish wisdom
of the flesh, and makes it willing to cut off the right hand and
right eye, to deny sin, which is the very self, and engage in an
irreconcilable quarrel against all that which engrossed its
choicest affections..
(3.) If the understanding has such a power, by virtue of its
illumination, without an act also of the Spirit upon the will,
and a particular application of the understanding to the will,
and the will to the understanding, why did not Adam's will follow
his understanding? His understanding was clear, without darkness;
his affections first made the rebellion; sense was the leader,
and the will the follower. Eve's understanding was not silent
under the temptation of Satan, her knowledge was actuated in that
speech, 'God has said, You shall not eat of it, neither shall you
touch it, lest you die,' Gen. iii. 3. She cites the word, her
understanding must needs concur with it, unless it were corrupted
and darkened before the fall. Where lay the resistance? In the
affections, and the will which sided with them. Why may not the
will, possessed with those evil habits, resist the understanding
imperfectly restored to its primitive light, as well as Adam's
will did where there was no scale or film upon the eye of his
soul? And likely his affections had kept their due order, if the
will had preserved its due dependence upon reason, and its
sovereignty over the sensitive part. Do we not find that our
wills are oftener in contradiction to the true sentiments of our
understanding, and in conjunction with the affections, than in a
due subordination to the one and commanding over the other? Is it
not frequently seen that men of much light, knowledge, and gifts
of reason, answer not the end of that illumination, and are
without a will to turn to God? Besides, since corruption came in
by the way of the affections, when the understanding was clear,
how can regeneration of the will come in by the illumination of
the understanding, without a particular operation upon the will
and affections? If it be said, the will follows the dictate of
the understanding, why did it not so in Adam? If we were
perfectly restored, as Adam was in innocence, without the grace
of God in our wills, as well as light in our understandings, we
were not like to keep up in due order.
(4.) God in his other creatures gives not only a light and
fancy in nature, but endues them with such principles that
incline them to their motion, as connatural to them. Why then,
shall we not think, since the will is an habitual power, that
when the will is moved to supernatural ends, it is endued with
such a supernatural habit, whereby it may be sweetly and readily
moved to the chief good as its proper object? Are there not
corrupt habits in the will, which the Scripture calls 'lusts,'
and 'the works of the flesh,' Gal. v. 19-21, which the Spirit
mortifies as well as those of the mind? Why not, then, gracious
habits set up in the room of the other in this faculty as well as
in the other?
(5.) If there were not a physical operation and habits in the
will, what would become of infants, who cannot in that state be
renewed without such a kind of working? They are not capable of
moral exhortation, we cannot conceive any other way the Spirit
has to work upon them, but by such a physical operation, putting
habits into their wills, whereby they are renewed and sanctified;
they are capable of the habit, though not of the act. We never
find our Saviour spending any exhortations upon infants, but he
took them in his arms and blessed them, and told us that of such
is the kingdom of heaven; and if the kingdom of heaven be of
such, there is some operation upon them different from this
method of working only upon their understanding.
(6.) If there were not some operation of the Spirit upon our
wills, regeneration and conversion would be more our work than
God's. If the Spirit terminates his working only upon the
understanding, and the will be moved by the understanding alone,
without any conjunction of the Spirit in the work upon the will,
then the Spirit does not immediately concur to the chiefest part
of regeneration, but as it illuminates the mind; for the chief
part of renewing grace is in the will; so it would be more our
work than God's, if the moral only were his, and the physical
operation only ours. It was in a less affair than this, wherein
David blessed God for the people's willingness, offering so
freely, acknowledging it indeed the people's act, but by God's
overruling their wills, 1 Chron. xxix. 13, 14.
(7.) God is all in all in glory: 1 Cor. xv. 28, 'When Christ
shall have delivered the kingdom to his Father, God then shall be
all in all,' all in their understandings, all in their wills; he
shall be the immediate cause of all things, and govern and
dispose all things by himself, and for himself; binding the souls
of all the glorified by everlasting ligatures to himself; all in
all to the glorified, all light in their understanding, all love
and delight in their will, objectively, efficiently. What
efficacy he has in glory, shall we deny him in grace in every
particular faculty?
Prop. 2. Yet this work, though immediate, is not compulsive
and by force. It is a contradiction for the will to be moved
unwillingly, any force upon it destroys the nature of it; if it
be forced, it ceases to be will. It is not forced, because it is
according to reason, and the natural motion of the creature; the
understanding proposing, and the will moved to an embracing; the
understanding going before with light, the will following after
with love. The liberty of the will consists in following the
guidance of reason; to have a liberty to go against it, is the
greatest misery of the creature. That is properly constraint,
when we are compelled to work contrary to the natural way of
working; there is no constraint by force, but there is a kind of
a constraint by love, because the Spirit accompanies this
operation with so much efficacy, that instead of that sadness we
should have in a thing we were forced unto, there is an
unspeakable joy and contentment in the soul; it not being
possible to taste so much of the love of God, to be delivered
from so fearful a condemnation, to be brought to so glorious a
hope, without being seized upon with much pleasure and delight.
God changes the inclination of the will, but does not force it
against its inclination; the will, being a rational faculty,
cannot be wrought upon but rationally. Since the main work
consists in faith and love, it is impossible there can be any
force; no man can be forced to believe against his reason, or
love against his will, or desire against his inclination. Belief
is wrought by persuasion; no man can be persuaded by force. It
cannot be conceived, that the will should will against the will.
No man can be happy against his will, all happiness consisting in
a suitableness of the object to the faculty; those things that in
themselves are the greatest pleasures of the world, if they
please not a man, cannot confer any happiness upon him. The
Spirit never works thus, because 'where the Spirit of the Lord
is, there is liberty,' 2 Cor. iii. 17; he destroys not the
liberty, but reduces it to will more nobly than before. Besides,
the liberty of the will does not stand in indifference to this or
that thing, for then the will would lose its liberty every time
it has determined itself to any one thing, because after the
determination it would be no longer indifferent to the other. But
the liberty of the will consists in being carried out according
to the dictate of the practical judgment, and not by a blind
instinct. God does not deal with us as stones and logs, or
slaves, whom the whip makes to do that which they hate in their
hearts; but conducts us in ways agreeable to our nature; he
calls, saying, 'Seek you my face;' and inclines the will to
answer, 'Thy face, Lord, I will seek,' Ps. xxvoo. 8. That God who
knows how to make a will with a principle of freedom, knows how
to work upon the will, without entrenching upon, or altering the
essential privilege he bestowed upon it; he that formed us, as a
potter does his vessel, knows very well the handles whereby he
may take hold of us, without making any breach in our nature.
Prop. 3. It is free and gentle. A constraint, not by force,
but love, which is not an extrinsic force, but intrinsic and
pleasant to the will; he bends the creature so, that at the very
instant wherein the will is savingly wrought upon, it
delightfully consents to its own happiness; he draws by the cords
of a man, and by a secret touch upon the will makes it willing to
be drawn, and moves it upon its own hinges. It is sweet and
alluring; the Spirit of grace is called 'the oil of gladness;' it
is a delightful and ready motion which it causes in the will, it
is a sweet efficacy, and an efficacious sweetness. At what time
God does savingly work upon the will, to draw the soul from sin
and the world to himself, it does with the greatest willingness,
freedom, and delight follow after God, turn to him, close with
him, and cleave to him, with all the heart, and with purpose
never to depart from him: Cant. i. 4, 'Draw me, and we will run
alter thee.' Drawing signifies the efficacious power of grace;
running signifies the delightful motion of grace; the will is
drawn, as if it would not come; it comes, as if it were not
drawn. His grace is so sweet and so strong, that he neither
wrongs the liberty of his creature, nor does prejudice his
absolute power. As God moves necessary causes, necessarily;
contingent causes, contingently; so he moves free agents freely,
without offering violence to their natures. The Spirit glides
into the heart by the sweet illapses of grace, and victoriously
allures the soul: Hosea ii. 14, 'I will allure her, and speak to
her heart;' not by crossing, but changing the inclination, by the
all-conquering and alluring charms of love, as a man does that
person whom he intends for his spouse; for to that he alludes,
because in the latter part of the chapter, he speaks of the
consummation of his marriage with the church: ver. 16, 'In that
day thou shalt call me Ishi.' In what day? In the day that he
should allure her, and speak to her heart. God puts on the
deportment of a lover in changing the frame of the will. The
Spirit is as one that leads the way into truth (the Spirit 'shall
guide you, "hodegesei", into all truth,' John xvi. 13);
not drags; he opens the heart, not by a forcible entry, but as a
key that fits every ward in the lock. The attraction of the will
is much like that of iron by the loadstone, which had no motion
of itself till the powerful emissions of the loadstone's virtue
reached it, and then it seems to move with a kind of
voluntariness; there is no force used, but a delicious virtue
emitted
which does, as it were, both persuade and enable it to join
itself to its beloved attracter. There is a secret virtue
communicated by God, which, as soon as it touches the soul, puts
life and delightful motion into it, which before lay like a log.
It embraces Christ as its portion, and passes a decree that it
will keep his words: Ps. cxix. 67, 'Thou art my portion, O Lord.
I have said that I will keep thy words.'
Prop. 4. It is insuperably victorious. What the mouth of God
speaks, what his will purposes, his hand does fulfil, 1 Kings
viii. 24. It is not a faint and languishing impression, but a
reviving, sprightly, and victorious touch. As the demonstration
of the Spirit is clear and undeniable, so the power of the Spirit
is sweet and irresistible; both are joined, 1 Cor. ii. 4. An
inexpressible sweetness allures the soul, and an unconquerable
power draws the soul; there are clear demonstrations, charming
persuasions, and invincible efficacy combined together in the
work. He leaves not the will in indifference. If God were the
author of faith only by putting the will into an indifference,
though it be determined by its own proper liberty, why may not he
also be said to be the author of unbelief, if by the same liberty
of this indifference it be determined to reject the gospel? For
in the same manner God is author of one motion of the will as
well as of the other, if he does no more than leave the will in
an aequilibrium. This irresistibleness takes not away the
liberty of the will. Our Saviour's obedience was free and
voluntary, yet necessary and irresistible. He could not sin in
regard of the hypostatical union, yet he had a greater aversion
to sin than all the angels in heaven. Is not God freely and
voluntarily good, yet necessarily so? He cannot be otherwise than
good, he will not be otherwise than good. So the will is
irresistibly drawn, and yet does freely come to its own
happiness. The soul is brought over to God, and adheres to him,
not by a necessity of compulsion, but of immutability. As the
angels necessarily obey God, not by compulsion, but from an
immutable love. A sinner is necessarily a servant to sin, a
regenerate man necessarily a servant to God; both by a kind of
necessity of nature. Our main business, then, is to see what new
enlightenings there are in our minds by the Spirit in the gospel,
what tastes and relishes we have of divine truths, how our wills
are allured to a sincere and close compliance with the proposals
of God in the gospel, what vigour is in them. This is God's
method, to work first upon the understanding, then upon the will.
That work which begins first in the affections, without light
dawning and breaking in upon the mind, and growing up by
consideration and inquiries into the gospel is to be suspected,
and is not like to be durable.
This is the Scripture method, and every regenerate person may
find it more or less in himself.
V. The use is,
1. For instruction.
(1.) If God alone be the author and efficient of the new
birth, then it does instruct us how insufficient a good education
of itself is to produce this work in the soul, and how unfit to
be rested on, without a further work. I doubt many may rest upon
a religious education, without searching and inquiring into
themselves what further work of God has been wrought upon them.
God has entrusted parents with a power of instructing their
children, but reserves the power of renewing grace to himself. If
parents may set the object before them, God only can give them a
spiritual eye to discern it; if they may inform the
understanding, a divine touch only can bend the will; if they may
lay the wood of spiritual lessons together, yet the fire to
kindle them in the heart, and consume the lusts, must descend
from heaven. Education may correct, but not extirpate the
malignity of nature; good instruction, meeting with an orderly
constitution, may sow the seeds of moral virtue, and restrain
natural corruption, but not weed that out of our nature, or plant
the root of grace, any more than the skilful management of a
beast can change its natural inclination, though it may curb it.
The folly bound up in the heart of a child is too strong for the
wisdom of man, and is wholly to be expelled by the wisdom which
comes down from heaven, set up in the heart by Christ, who is the
wisdom of the Father. The little stars of precepts glittering in
the mind, cannot make the young plants sprout up with their heads
towards heaven, without the influence of the sun. Christ, the Sun
of righteousness, fixed in the soul by the Spirit, can do more
than all the stars of moral instructions in the world. Timothy
had as religious instruction from his religious mother and
grandmother as any in the world, both being believers, 2 Tim. i.
5, yet Paul calls him his 'own son in the faith,' 1 Tim. i. 2, as
having 'begotten him in the gospel.' Those instructions did not
beget him, though they might facilitate the evangelical work
which was wrought by the gospel in Paul's ministry. Therefore the
apostle manifestly distinguishes between instructors and fathers:
1 Cor. in 15, 'Though you have ten thousand instructors in
Christ, yet have you not many fathers: for in Christ Jesus I have
begotten you through the gospel.' He distinguishes their
instructions from Christ, the efficient cause, and himself
through the gospel, the instrumental cause. Yet such instruction
is not to be neglected when children are capable; God may set
home that by the gospel, which has been sucked in in younger
years. Men may as well turn their backs upon the hearing the
word, because it is insufficient without the operation of the
almighty grace. Instruction and prayer should go hand in hand
together; but take heed of resting upon a good education.
(2.) It instructs us that regeneration does not depend merely
upon the word, if God alone be the efficient cause of it. It
depends upon the inward efficacy of the Spirit. Had it depended
upon the power of the apostles, or the outward demonstration of
that word, they would have converted all that they had preached
to, they would not have suffered any to have remained obstinate
against the gospel: charity would have obliged them to the
exercise of their power; and their power would have made their
charity effectual. As God does seldom work without means, so
means can never work without God. David had the law of God in his
hand, but could not learn it without God's teaching; therefore he
prays, Ps. lxxxvi. 11, 'Teach me thy way, O Lord: I will walk in
thy truth.' And in many places of the 119th Psalm he takes
notice, that all spiritual knowledge comes from God, though in
the way of his precepts: ver. 98 'Thou through thy commandments
hast made me wiser than mine enemies'; and ver. 104, 'Through thy
precepts I get understanding.' While we use the means, our eye
should be upon God. Thomas had his fingers upon our Saviour's
wounds, but his thoughts upon Christ's divinity: 'My Lord, and my
God.' Food maintains the body, but by virtue of the soul
animating it, and enabling it to concoct that food. The Spirit of
God is the soul of the gospel, and of all means, to make them
efficacious; and with this power of the Spirit the weakest means
can effect more than the greatest means without it, which,
indeed, can produce little or nothing. Peter's sermon, Acts ii.,
was but short, but improved by the Spirit to the conversion of
three thousand souls. Means can do nothing of themselves to
change the heart. When the disciples had two ordinances
representing the death of Christ, i. e. the Passover and the
Lord's supper, pride, the great enemy to regeneration, put up its
head above water; they quarrelled 'who should be greatest,' Luke
xxii. 24.
(3.) There is no reason to confide in our own purposes and
resolutions, or any strength of our own, if God alone be the
efficient cause of regeneration; for it depends not upon our
resolves without the grace of God. Satan fears not our vows; he
knows, without grace they are but as light feathers, easily to be
puffed away by him; but sparks, which, without his breath, the
flood of corruption in our souls would extinguish as soon as they
begin to appear. How can our resolves without grace renew us,
when Peter's resolve, with his inherent grace, could not defend
him? who, after his boasting, when certainly he sincerely meant
what he said, fell so shamefully, that he stood in need of a new
conversion. How soon do we, after a transient awakening fall to
nodding in our spiritual sleep? If grace be not present with us
to cure our lethargy, our purposes are as empty sails hoisted by
us, the breath of the Spirit only fills with a full gale for
motion. We can never 'steadfastly look into heaven, and see the
glory of God,' unless we be 'full of the Holy Ghost,' Acts vii.
55. Stephen's eye would have been twinkling, had not the divine
Spirit fixed it. How soon will a slight blast of a temptation
shake a building, which has no other foundation but the moveable
sand of our own purposes, when as slight a temptation shook the
image of God out of Adam with all its brightness, who was built
with God's own hand, with a power also to keep himself! Adam
could not be without purposes of obedience when he heard the
precept, yet with a slender temptation came tumbling to the dust,
and fell as low as hell. A vain confidence in our own resolutions
is so far from being a cause of this spiritual birth, that it is
rather a hindrance, and part of the pride of nature, that must be
demolished, and to be reckoned as one of the eldest things among
these old things that are to pass away. Trust not, therefore, to
yourselves; look up daily for the divine influence; lean not to
your own understanding, though in part enlightened; confide not
in your own wills, though in part inclined to the best things,
pursue nothing in your own strength.
(4.) It is an injury to God to associate any thing with him in
this work, which he challenges as his own production. Would it
not be a disparagement to deny him the sole efficiency in one of
the noblest works of his wisdom and holiness? That he who wrought
the comely fabric of the first creation by his power and wisdom,
without a co-partner, or deputing any of the highest angels to
bring the world into form, should not have the honour of a work
which bears the stamp of a higher wisdom and power than the whole
creation! That he who contrived the models of the little
creatures in the world, should leave this to the foolish
contrivance of any creature! Why should we imagine that the
divine image, upon whom the highest blessedness of the creature
depends, should be of so little value in the judgment of God's
infinite wisdom, as to be turned over from the care of so wise a
workman, to the capriciousness of a light and uncertain will,
more blind and mutable than Fortune the heathen goddess? It is
more (we have heard) to frame so excellent a piece as the new
creature is, out of the rubbish of sin, than to frame the whole
celestial and elementary world out of a rude mass of matter;
since there is a greater gulf to be shot between corruption and
grace than between nothing and the beautiful structure of heaven
and earth; and, therefore, we may less disparage him, in denying
him the title of creator of the world, than that of the creator
of a new heart, since he has promised by his own mouth to do it
with his own hand. The apostle cannot be charged with ignorance,
but knew what he said in that comprehensive thanksgiving for 'all
spiritual blessings in Christ;' if all, then one of the highest,
the new creation, is not intended to be left out of the roll of
spiritual blessings, associating none with God, as the principal,
but Christ as the Mediator, conveying this grace by his Spirit,
according to the orders of the Father: 'Blessed be the God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with all
spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ,' Eph. i. 3.
(5.) See from hence how excellent a thing it is to be born
again, if God be the sole efficient of it! Whatsoever God is the
author of in his ordinary works, is excellent in its kind, they
are all the effects of his will; this is an effect of his
gracious will. Other generations are by the will of man, wherein
the will of God concurs with them; this is solely by the will of
God, without any concurrence of the will of man in the first
work, called therefore by way of excellency, 'the faith of the
operation of God,' Col. ii. 12, not a gift conveyed by angels,
but his Spirit. A grain of grace of God's planting is more worth
than millions of gold of man's getting; a more worthy gift than
all the gold of Ophir, which God gives to men by their industry,
who shall never see his face; but this by his own Spirit in order
to glory. It is a royal gift he reserves in his own hands, to
bestow upon those that were his favourites in his eternal
purposes; it grows not in every man's ground, neither is it sown
in every man's field. The soul is more excellent than the body,
not only in respect of its nature, but in respect of its
immediate author. God is called particularly, 'The Father of
spirits,' not of bodies, though he is so; but in the production
of bodies he acts by the hand of nature, in the production of the
soul by his own hand. In that work he acts by the intervention of
second causes; in this, without. serving himself of any other
efficient cause but his own will. If the soul, as being the only
work of God, is therefore more excellent, then certainly a
new-born soul is more excellent than anything in the world, in
regard God is the author of it in a more peculiar manner, by the
operation of his choicest affections.
(6.) If God be the efficient of regeneration, then there is a
necessity of the influence of God in all the progress of grace.
It is yet imperfect, the same hand that planted it must also
water and dress it. There is a tough sinew left in man's will,
which makes him halt after he has the new name of Israel put upon
him, a weakness of faith, a coldness of love, a faintness of
zeal. What he is the creator of, is nursed by his providence;
what he is the new creator of, is fostered by a succession of
grace. The scripture therefore appropriates all to him: he is the
God that calls us, the God that anoints us, the God that carries
us, the God that establishes us, the God that keeps us, and the
God that perfects us. He is the author of grace in its first
issue, its fruitful sproutings, its delicious ripenings, it
depends upon him in creation, preservation, augmentation, as well
as natural things depend upon him in all their progressive
motions, from one degree to another, as the author of nature.
When nature was most unspotted, grace was necessary to preserve
and fix it in that state. Adam needed the assistance of grace
with the embellishments of nature. The same power that inspires
us with life, inspires us with a perpetual continuation of it. If
the tide that turns the stream of the river desert it, and return
to its own channel, the river will return to its natural current.
Our hearts will decline, our life languish, unless fed by that
supernatural efficacy which did first produce it. The plants
cannot grow merely from their own internal form, nor trees bring
forth their pleasant fruits without the influence of rain and
sun, feeding and hatching their innate spirits, and drawing them
out to make a show of themselves in flowers and fruits; and when
they are brought forth, they stand in need of the same rain to
fill them, the same sun to ripen them.
(7.) If God be the efficient, &c., we see whither we are
to have recourse in all the exigencies of the new creature, to
whom, but to the author of those beginnings of eternal life! God
is all, in all parts of this glorious work: 'The God of all
grace, who has called us into his eternal glory, make you
perfect, strengthen, establish, settle you,' &c., 1 Peter v.
10. There is need of preserving, strengthening, increasing,
quickening, and perfecting grace.
These you need, and these must be sought, and will be had from
the same goodness and power by which you were new born.
[1.] Preserving grace.
First, God only can give it. There is a necessity of it; as
God rears it, so he only can keep it from pining away. Plants
will wither if the rain do not descend; the flame will be
extinguished if fuel be not added. There is as much a necessity
of a constant influence to keep up this new nature, as there is
of the sun to preserve the horizon from that darkness which would
invade it upon the turning its face to other parts of the world.
The perpetual duration of renewing grace is not essential to
grace, for then Adam and the angels had stood by virtue of their
grace, for nothing ever loses its essential property; but it is
by an additional grace, distinct from the first grace wherein our
regeneration does consist, as the preservation of the creatures
in their natural beings is by an act of God, distinct from his
creative act. The first grace God gives now is a bounty to his
creatures, but it is further an obligation upon himself, not as
it is grace, or as it is his own work, for Adam's grace which
failed was brought by his fingers, inspired by his breath, but as
it is a new covenant grace which alters the condition of it.
God's finger wrote the law in the heart, and his breath can only
blow the dust off, that would fill the engraved letters.
Secondly, God will preserve it. Job would argue with God, and
ask him, 'Is it good unto thee that thou should despise the work
of thine hands?' Job x. 3. Is it agreeable to his goodness and
wisdom to slight and neglect the work of his own heart; not a
fruit of his common liberality to the creation, but a choice
fruit of his redeeming love? His common love, as he is the author
of nature, preserves the old creation; much more his special
love, as he is the author of the new nature, will preserve the
new creation. His general goodness made the world, but his
gracious goodness formed the soul; the one is more splendid than
the other, therefore the effect more durable. Mercy compasses the
godly about. Ps. xxxii. 10, like bulwarks that surround a city
for its defence, against the assaults of spiritual enemies. A
higher providence attends man than other creatures, because he is
of a more noble constitution; upon the same account a higher
providence must attend the new creature, as being far more noble
than mere man. God embraces all creatures in his arms with a
common love as creatures, he lays the new begotten ones in his
bosom by a special love. His power too is to be considered. He
will not want a power to preserve that which he did not want
power to new create. The power being the same that raised Christ
from the dead, which raised any from their natural condition,
will have the same issue, since it never suffered Christ to
return to the grave again, neither will it suffer any new born
soul to return to a spiritual death. Every new creature is the
Father's by purpose, and by actual traction; they were his before
they were Christ's. The Father draws them to Christ; and the
power of Christ will be as eminent to preserve them, as the power
of the Father was to draw them. Why were the creatures brought,
by that instinct God put into them, into Noah's ark, but to be
preserved from the destroying deluge? Why did he take pains to
write the law anew in the heart, if be would suffer it to be
dashed out again? If he would not preserve his own work, why did
he not let the soul lie wallowing in its old filthiness, and
forbear the expense of those fresh colours he has new drawn his
image with? It seems to be a greater power to take off all that
load of sin which lay upon you, than to preserve you from having
so great a burden again upon you. It is not reasonable to think
that God should be at so much cost, only to restore man to Adam's
mutable condition, whereby to incur a greater condemnation.
[2.] Strengthening grace. This we need, as well as preserving
grace. It is God that strengthens us in the inward man; by that
strengthening grace the new creature can do all things, without
it nothing. Through him we are more than conquerors over
principalities and powers, Rom. viii. 37, 38. Strength to mount
up to heaven as an eagle, to run our race without weariness, to
walk without fainting, to combat difficulties without sinking
fears, is only to be had by waiting upon the Lord, who is the
fountain whence all these flow, Isa. xl. 31, and by his grace
confers a supernatural fortitude: Isa. xl. 31, 'But they that
wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount
up with wings as eagles they shall run, and not be weary; they
shall walk, and not faint.' Look not therefore for strength in
your new nature; look for it in God, in that Spirit which first
renewed you, since that glorious power is imparted to strengthen
you. which was at first employed to new-create you. This was the
matter of the apostle's prayer for the Colossians, and this
should be ours: Col. i. 9, 11, 'Strengthened with all might,
according to his glorious power.' There is much weakness in us, a
medley of lusts, an army of enemies, but the way is open for us
to that glorious power, to endue us with a new vigour, which
first seized upon us with an insuperable efficacy, our shattered
and weakened sins shall not be able to resist that glorious power
by which they could not stand the shock of when they were in
their full strength. 'God will be a sun and a shield,' Ps.
lxxxiv. 11, a sun to dispel our darkness, a shield to secure us
from darts; a sun against the allurements of the world, defeating
them by a charming light; a shield against the allurements of the
world, overpowering them by an irresistible force; the sun that
gave us life, the shield that secures our strength. The glorious
power which we need in our progress lies in the same arm which
wrought our deliverance, and from thence must be fetched. It is
only by him that we have strength to tread down the wicked one's
temptations; and those fiery darts are made as ashes under the
soles of our feet, Mal. iv. 8.
[3.] We need increasing grace; and that is from God. The
increase depends upon him, as well as the first planting. When we
want it, he is the fountain from whence we must draw it; so did
the disciples, Luke xvii. 5, 'Increase our faith,' or add to us
faith, "prosthes hemin". Every new spring, fresh bud,
spreading blossom, is an addition by his influence. When we have
it, we must acknowledge his sole hand in it, so the apostle did
when he saw the growth of the Thessalonian faith, and the
abounding of their charity: 2 Thes. i. 3, 'We are bound to thank
(eucharistein ofeilomen) God always for you, because that your
faith grows exceedingly.' He did it by obligation: no such tie
had lain upon him had God left them to increase it themselves.
The new fruits you bear is from his new purging, as the first
power to bear was from his planting, John xv. 2. If you would
thrive, it must not be by your own, but by the increases of God;
'God gives the increase,' both in the outward administration and
inward operation of the gospel, 1 Cor. iii. 7. Faith, in every
assent, is conducted by that power which first settled it in the
heart, and without it cannot commence any higher degree. As every
spark of spiritual life is by his kindling, so every sparkling of
that spark is by his blowing. Look for it at God's hands, beg of
him to write that law deeper, which his fingers first engraved in
your hearts. It is God's being 'a dew to Israel' makes him grow
up in beauty as 'the lily and the olive tree,' in strength 'cast
out his roots as the cedars of Lebanon,' Hosea xiv. 5-7. If you
would grow up as calves of the stall, you must lie under the
healing wings of the Sun of righteousness: Mal. iv. 2, 'Unto you
that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with
healing in his wings,' &c. That Sun which by his beams
conveyed into you a spiritual life, can only by the same heat
influence you to a taller growth. Every drop of the knowledge of
his will till you come to be filled, every mite of wisdom and
spiritual understanding, is to be drawn from him only, Col. i. 9,
both the additions of knowledge and the deeper impressions and
lively sproutings of what we know.
[4.] Quickening grace. This also we need. As our life, so the
liveliness and activity of grace depends upon the divine
influence; a divine motion is necessary to elevate our souls to
those actions which are supernatural; our grace depends upon God
in actu secundo, as well as actu primo. As God
first puts a nature into creatures (in the exercise as well as
the being) and then quickens them by his providential concurrence
in those acts suitable to their nature, which acts are therefore
natural to those creatures, so by a gracious concurrence he does
quicken the new nature in the soul to the exerting of gracious
operations, according to that nature he has endued it with. As he
tunes the strings by his skill to fit them for a divine harmony,
so he enlivens them by his touch to make what music he pleases;
every heavenly prayer, every gracious groan, every start of
spiritual affection, is from the Spirit tuning, quickening,
assisting against infirmities and deadness. There must be a
continued drawing to make a continued running. 'Draw us, and we
will run after thee,' Cant. i. 4. It was the church, the gracious
church, the spouse and dove of Christ, yet sensible of her own
inability to quicken her pace to new communion with Christ,
without fresh communications first from him. There is a bias in
the soul to direct it in a right motion; there must be a hand
without to put it upon that motion; Christ must 'put his hand in
at the hole of the door' before a lazy soul, though gracious,
will stir at his call, Cant. v. 3; or as a child, which has a
principle of motion, must be assisted and quickened by the nurse
before it can move a step. Grace is more prevalent to keep us
from sin than excite us to holiness, yet neither can be done by
it without new quickenings; our motion is in him and by him, as
well as our life, spiritually as well as naturally Acts xvii. 28,
'In him we live, move, and have our being;' the old stock must
have continual supply. Without Christ we can do nothing, John xv.
5; without him we cannot have grace in the plant, nor grace in
the fruit. As the soul excites the spirits in the eye to an act
of vision,—if they be not quickened by their governor,
though things be before our eyes they see nothing,—so the
Spirit of God excites, as it were, the spirits of grace to their
particular acts, faith to apprehend and love to work. The
goodness that made the promise guides the hand of the soul to
fasten upon it: Ps. cxix. 49, 'Remember the word unto thy
servant, upon which thou hast caused me to hope.' As God makes
the promises, so he makes the meeting between the soul and the
promise; every motion proceeds from God's touch upon the heart
enlarging it, therefore our dependence must be upon God's grace:
Ps. cxix. 32, 'I will run the way of thy commandments when thou
shalt enlarge my heart.' I will run, not by my own strength, but
by the hand of God enlarging and enlivening my heart. Indeed, if
God did not give to act as well as implant the habit, he would
give no more to us in the new covenant than he gave to Adam in
the old, who had a power to do, but not the act of doing; his
power was from God, but the act of obedience depended upon
himself, and for want of actual obedience he fell. We see whence
we must derive our quickenings; we want them because we expect
them from the new nature in us, not from the author of that
nature, and the concurrence of his grace with it, and depending
upon habitual more than actual grace is the cause of our having
many a slip. We are as dead lumps, notwithstanding all the grace
we have, if God did not cause a free life to spring up in us by
successive breathings.
[5.] Perfecting grace is only from God. He is the finisher of
what he is the author of, Heb. xii. 2, and in our spiritual
warfare supplies us with new recruits, till the combat end in
victory, and the victory in triumph. He will come 'as the former
and the latter rain,' Hosea vi. 3: as the former rain to open the
womb of the earth, and the latter rain to ripen the fruits of the
earth. As he has laid the foundation of mount Zion, so he will
perform the whole work in it; he fulfils the work of faith with
the same power wherewith he begins it, 2 Thes. i. 11. The power
which caused the resurrection of Christ caused his ascension; he
had his forty days upon the earth, after his resurrection, before
he was taken up to glory. There is a continuance of a believer in
the world after his resurrection from a spiritual death, but the
same power which caused his spiritual resurrection will as surely
cause his heavenly ascension. That arm that brought him out of
Egypt will conduct him to the limits of Canaan, the flourishing
pastures of the promised land. Grace is the first gift, glory is
the latter; glory follows upon the heels of grace: 'He will give
grace and glory,' Ps. lxxxiv. 11. Grace to fit for glory, and
glory to reward his own grace; all grace till it ends in glory.
God must be sought and depended on for this; we cannot will our
perfection without grace, as we cannot will our regeneration
without grace; God gives the will, the progressive as well as the
initial will. Then seek only to God, depend upon him only, for
the warmth of his goodness, to bring those chickens to perfection
which he has gathered under his wing; his affections are not
tired, it is a pure disinterested love mingled with no defects;
his wisdom and power is no less able to perfect than his love is
to incite him to it.
Use 2. The second use is of comfort.
Is God the author of regeneration? He that is the God of all
grace is the God of all comfort too. Where he is the one, he will
be the other. As he creates the soul to good works, so he creates
it to heavenly consolations. When God acts as a God of justice
toward sinners, he appears as a terrible God in his punishments;
when he acts towards saints as a God of grace, he appears as a
comforting God, he fills the one with all terrors, prepares the
other for all comforts; he calls you by a new creation into his
eternal glory, and sends therefore some sparkles of glory into
the soul here. Are you born of God? You approach in excellency as
near to Christ as a creature's capacity will admit. Christ was
his natural begotten son, believers his spiritually regenerated
children. Christ is 'the first born,' but 'among many brethren,'
Rom. viii. 29, that Christ 'that sanctifies, and we that are
sanctified, are all of one,' Heb. ii. 11, of one nature, say
some, of one Father, say others; therefore 'he is not ashamed to
call them brethren,' one nature does not so much make us brethren
as one father. Christ was not regenerated, but generated, he
stood not in need of the other, because the first generation
failed not, neither could he, being God, he is the exact image of
his Father's person, and so particularly of all his attributes,
because he partakes of his essence. Believers are the living
images of God's holiness, not partaking of all his attributes,
but of that.
Particularly,
(1.) God will rejoice in his own work. If he rejoiced in the
first planting of his image at the creation, he will no less
rejoice in it at the restoration and with more gladness embrace
the son that is returned from death to life by returning from his
debauched coarse, than that son that remained with him all the
while. Why does he renew the face of the earth by the mission of
his Spirit, but that he may rejoice in his works? 'Thou sends
forth thy Spirit, they are created: and thou renews the face of
the earth. The glory of the Lord shall endure for ever: the Lord
shall rejoice in his works,' Ps. civ. 30, 31. If God shall in
time rejoice in the earth, wherein he had little joy after the
creation of it, and soon repented of his work, he will rejoice in
the noblest work, in the frame of his image, which, next to
Christ, makes all other works of the lower creation pleasant to
him. He 'creates Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a joy,'
and he will rejoice in the new creation of his people, in the
people he has new created, Isa lxv. 18, 19.
(2.) He will destroy all enemies to his own work. How will his
love pierce into every part, and employ his poser in destroying
the enemies of his work; whip buyers and sellers out of his
spiritual temple, cast out all their remaining rubbish; let not
his house be always a den of thieves, that shall rob God of his
glory, and his temple of its beauty! That God that can raise men
five thousand years ago dead as easily as one dead the last
minute, can remove all the bands of corruption, though never so
strong. If he has raised you from death, he will lift you up from
all the remainders of death; the grave-clothes which yet remain
about you, shall be in time untied, as well as the soul unloosed
from the principal bands of death. Though there be in you a '
spirit that lusts to envy,' as well as a spirit that lusts to
love, yet 'God gives more grace,' James iv. 5, a. Lusts will
down, corruptions fall in time before his grace, darkness must
hide its hated head, when that word breaks louder from his lips,
'Let there be light.' The promises of a thorough sanctification
belong to you, as well as the promises of a perfect remission. If
God be the teacher, no matter what the scholar is; if God be the
workman, no matter what the matter is; if God be the guardian, no
matter what the enemies are; nothing is too rugged for his skill,
or too hard for his power.
(3.) He will order all things for the good of his own work.
'They shall not labour in vain; for they are the seed of the
blessed of the Lord,' Isa. lxv. 23. He did not want grace to
restore them, he will not want comforts to support them. Their
very afflictions shall be ordered to preserve the work of his own
heart in them; and while he prunes and cuts, he will purge away
the luxuriant corruptions, that his vine may be more beautiful
and delicious. And if he does chasten you sharply, it is that you
may be nearer 'partakers of his holiness,' Heb. xii. 10.
Use 3. The third use is of exhortation.
1. To the renewed.
(1.) Walk humbly. Swell not big, as if your own power had
procured it, let not pride spread its sails in your souls.
Consider, you are creatures still, though new creatures. As God
put into you whatsoever you have of natural existence, so he has
put into you whatsoever you have of spiritual; you are dust still
by your natural creation, though new formed by the Spirit. There
is nothing of grace, no act of grace, but you receive mediately
or immediately from God. You opened not your own eves, nor thrust
back the lock of your own hearts, nor can call one spark of that
spiritual life you have, your own creature; it moved not at your
beck, obeyed not your orders; it is when God says, Go, that it
goes, and, Do this and that, Settle upon this or that soul, and
it does it. How humble should you be, since grace does nothing in
any but by God's order, not your own. God works in us, we add
nothing to God. The melted wax receives the stamp from the seal,
but the wax adds nothing to the seal. 'What hast thou that thou
hast not received?' 'If thou did receive it, why dost thou boast
as if thou had not received it?' 1 Cor. iv. 7. Grace is God's
communication to you, not yours to yourselves. What is received,
is not your own work, but another's gift; were it desert, we had
reason to boast; but being a gift, we have no reason to grow big.
Lie therefore before him in your own nothingness. Renewing grace
first lighted upon you when you were humble; and grace in its
increase flourishes when the soul is in the same posture.
(2 ) Ascribe all that you are, as renewed creatures, to God.
Ascribe it wholly to him; let self rub off every filing of this
gold from its own fingers. 'Not unto us, not unto us, O Lord, but
unto thy name be the praise,' Ps. cxv. 1. The repetition removes
the glory far from themselves. If praise be comely for an upright
person, it is most comely in the greatest cause that can happen
to him, Ps. xxxiii. 1. Account yourselves therefore nothing, and
God and grace all; and let no shootings be heard in your souls
while God is rearing up the divine temple, but those of Grace!
Grace! Zech. iv. 7, both in the foundation and superstructure,
till he comes to the top stone. Your breathing after God is but
the effect of his breathing after you; the moon has no light of
herself, but what she receives from the sun; nor any creature a
spark of grace, but what is derived from the Father of lights.
God's purity is as the sun, your grace as a beam from that sun,
not primitive in your nature, but derivative from God. Were it
not from grace, Saul had never been Paul, nor Peter a penitent,
nor Mary a convert, nor Zacchaeus a Christian, nor had thou ever
been brought to the sweetness of a spiritual life, or advanced to
the state and comforts of another world. Did you will to run till
mercy moved your wills and spirited the feet of your souls? Your
will, your race, was nothing; God's grace was all, Rom ix. 16.
Was it not his word of command, Let there be life? Was it not his
invincible power battered down the strongholds of sin? Oh
seriously think, O Christian, that dry and desert heart of thine
could never have been mollified and watered by rocky nature, nor
virtue ever bud and blossom in that barren soil, unless the soil
were mended, as well as the plant fixed, by some powerful hand.
Bless God, therefore, since had it not been for him, you had
never been humbled, never been renewed, never reached so high as
a holy desire, or a penitential tear, but lain till this day, and
for ever, bemired in fallen nature.
That you may know what reason you have to bless God with the
highest praises, consider,
[1.] What your obligation is, how great! What good would your
creation have done you since your fall without a new creation by
the same hand? It must have rendered you miserable without this,
and could never have rendered you happy but by the intervention
of this. Without this you might have been his sons and daughters
by creation, and devils by corruption. The heathens were God's
offspring, as they were rational creatures, Acts xvii. 28, and
the devil's children, as they were corrupt creatures. You might
have had the image of God in a glimmering reason, without his
image in a divine holiness. Was it not a greater obligation to
restore that with kinder circumstances which you had wilfully
thrown away, when it was in no wise due to you, than it was at
first to bestow it? There was something like debt at first;
supposing God would create a rational creature, integrity and
innocence was naturally due to it, in regard of the holiness and
wisdom of God, unless he would have been the author of the
creature's sinfulness; but since that voluntary defection, the
restoration was in no sort due, therefore the obligation greater.
If God had created a thousand worlds, and given you the lordship
of them for some millions of years, had this been such a kindness
as to afford you a new nature, whereby you will be eternally
happy in a likeness to God and enjoyment of him? As the work of
redemption, so this of regeneration, darkens the glory of the
work of creation; since more of grace, wisdom, power, holiness,
are the springs of it, the obligation must be far greater; the
difference is as great as between heaven and earth. Will you not
bless God for making you creatures, for recovery from a fit of
sickness? Is the obligation less in delivering you from a
spiritual death? Is not the reason of blessing God greater for
the second creation than the first, since it is the same skill
adorns you with his image in the new creation, which beautified
man with that image at the first?
[2.] Was there not as much unfitness in you as in the worst of
men by nature? Not one good disposition grew upon nature, but all
was the work of preventing grace. Could, then, the iron gates of
your hearts fly open of themselves? Or could any else but a God
break them open? Was not your nature carried as violently to sin
as any, perhaps not into such brutish sins as others, yet more
refined and devilish? If you did not launch out into the grossest
sins, you owe your preservation to restraining grace. That
Socrates was better and wiser than another, was from God, in the
acknowledgement of a heathen, who says he was chosen to virtue,
"Kata tou Theou cheirotonian", by the divine suffrage.
Were your strings better? Sure they were of God's tuning. Man was
not more unfit for a natural being before God created him, than
the best man in the world was for a spiritual being, till God
wrought him with his own finger. Was not the worst in the world
naturally as fit for it as yourselves? Did any better thing dwell
in your flesh than in theirs, to give grace entertainment? Did
not grace at first make its way, conquering, and to conquer, and
not one blow struck by you to facilitate the victory? Nay, were
you not so far from having a grain of grace by nature, that there
was nothing but opposition and rebellion against the Author of
it? Did you not want everything to make you lovely in God's eye?
Nay, did you not hate him while he had a love of benevolence
towards you? And have you not reason to bless him then, that he
would not disdain to look upon you, such an impure and rebellious
creature? Perhaps our case was the same with hers, Hos. ii. 5,
who said, 'I will go after my lovers.' She decreed to follow her
idols, and was resolved not to be reclaimed; but God resolved
otherwise, ver. 6, 7, who would not leave her till he had made
her change her base and unworthy resolution for better: 'She
shall say, I will return, &c.' And was it not a happy
resolution in the divine breast, not to suffer you to run mad and
furiously to bell? What an irrecoverable condition had you been
in if God had not spoken a powerful word, 'Hitherto thou art
gone, but no further shalt thou go!' Were you not once in your
blood, and pitied by no eye, when God said, Live? And can you not
wonder at the mercy of his lips, and raise your notes above an
ordinary strain? Read over the records of the first work upon thy
heart, and see if anything were written there with thy own
finger. The very sense of thy own wretchedness was God's writing
on thy heart; thou was weighed in the balances and found wanting;
lighter than vanity, nothing of thy own to concur with God, but
folly and misery.
[3.] If grace found thee unfit and rebellious, there could
then be nothing of the least desert; and this should make you
cast a wondering eye at the greatness of God's kindness. Man's
voluntary defection, without any violence offered to him, had
rendered him unworthy of any recovery; you did no more deserve it
than the worst devil, who shall never have one line of it drawn
upon him. Not one previous disposition, not one sigh or groan for
it, could be discerned, much less the draught itself. Your true
earnings were nothing but that death you lay under. The unloosing
any band of it, or knocking off any fetter, was merely free
grace. Is there not, then, reason to bless the Lord, when an
undeserved power has been put forth to new create you, when a
deserved power might have buried you for ever under your own
ruins? Suppose you had been the most exact moralists in the
world, the supernatural grace of the new birth could not be
deserved by you, because nothing can be merited but by an act as
excellent as the reward. No man can merit by any act a thing of a
greater value than the act itself; but this grace is of another
order, and far superior to any moral natural work. Indeed, upon
covenant, if a man does such a thing, he shall have such a
reward, the thing promised may be challenged upon the performing
the condition, but cannot be said to be merited, because the act
was inferior to the reward in the true value of it, but this
grace could neither be merited nor challenged at God's hand upon
a condition, since he had made no promise in this kind to give
you a right to such a demand. It is one thing to be capable of
it, another thing to have a just right. A sinner in the state of
sin is capable of being changed, but not capable of having a
right to that change. Well, then, you could never deserve such a
mercy; and will you prize it and bless God for it?
[4 ] Since you did not deserve it, no, nor the proposals of
it, consider what a condition you had been in had God left you to
yourselves, or put your wills only into an indifference. Had it
been by a mere suasion, or a naked proposition of the truth, I
suppose you are so sensible of the mutability of your wills, that
you might well believe you should scarce have complied with God.
Your security at best had been but as good as Adam's, who had his
posse but not his velle. What furious passions and
devils in your souls were set against him! and had you been left
to your own choice, you would not have stirred one foot to follow
his chariot. If you did 'purify your souls in obeying the truth,'
it was 'through the Spirit,' 1 Peter i. 22; and all the faith you
have was from the same fountain, Acts xviii. 27, 'which believed
through grace.' Put it to yourselves: Do you think your hearts
were not so stout, that nothing but divine grace could mollify
them? Do you think there would have been any heat or warmth in
you unless God had kindled the flame? Can you imagine your frozen
hearts would have melted but by a divine breath? It was happy for
you that God would put your wills beyond an indifference, and
deal with you by the same power as he dealt with Christ, not
leaving him or you in a doubtful state between life and death.
How happy was it for you that God would be conqueror, and
surmount your resistance, tame your force, scatter your counsels,
level your mountain, and bring your fierceness under the yoke;
that he would not wait your choice and leisure, but make the
event certain; that he had mercy on you, because he would have
mercy; that he would turn the stream of your hearts by the
overmastering tide of his grace, and overpower the flesh in the
chief parts of your souls, and secure the rational powers of mind
and will for himself! How glad may you be of the loss of that
indifference that secures your happy estate for ever! Who that is
in favour with a prince would not willingly have his will fixed
to please him, and dread nothing more than such an indifference,
whereby he might hate his prince and lose his favour?
[5.] Is there not reason you should bless God, when he has
dealt thus graciously with you, and not with many others in the
world, why any of you should be raised up to a spiritual life,
when you see many others near you stretched out in a spiritual
death; why one upon the same bench and not another; why one
should be gathered with his arm, and another left to the jaws of
the devouring lion, why you should have any choice fruit grow in
any of your hearts, when thorns and briers grow in every hedge?
That God should have afforded you means of regeneration, and not
to most others in the world, is a ground of blessing and praise,
much more that he should afford you the grace of regeneration,
and not to many others under the same means. He has not dealt so
with every nation in giving them the means, Ps. cxlvii. 19; he
has not dealt so with every person in giving them the grace. That
wind that blows where it lists has left other dry bones to remain
dry still, passed by others more civil and of sweeter
conversations; drawn his image in one, and left others to tumble
down to hell in the likeness of Adam, wherein they were born,
overlooked one that was not far from the kingdom of heaven, and
laid hold on another that was many leagues further from Christ.
The Spirit of God only makes this distinction: he will pour out
his grace in Galatia and Macedonia, and not suffer it to be known
in Bithynia: Acts xvi. 6-8, 'And they essayed to go into
Bithynia, but the Spirit suffered them not;' cause it to rain in
one city, on one person, and not on another; call one out of the
grave, and leave others under the bands of death and in the dregs
of human nature. You see your calling, and you may see how
distinguishing it is, 'not many wise after the flesh, not many
mighty,' 1 Cor. i. 26. Can you see this and not bless the caller,
the renewer? A less favour wrought so much upon David's heart
that he would bless God in spite of mocks and scoffs, 2 Sam. vi.
21. Oh rich discriminating grace! Where any are peculiar
monuments of grace, they should have peculiar notes of praise.
What reason can others have to bless God, if such should have no
hearts to bless him for so great a mercy? All are under God's
will of precept, all are under his will of promise, if they
perform that precept; but all are not under his will of purpose,
to give them strength to perform that precept.
[6.] It is to be considered, too, with what pains and patience
God wrought this work in your hearts. You may best know what ado
God had with your hearts before they were thus formed according
to his will. Were they not as clay to the potter, which needed
much tempering before they were fit for use? Did God find that
pliableness in you that the devil found? Had he a cordial welcome
at the first proffer? Do you not remember resistance enough to
make you for ever ashamed that ever you should put the blessed
God to that toil? And yet you know not the thousandth part of
that resistance God knew was lodged in your nature. Do you not
remember how he met you at every turn, hedged up your perverse
way with thorns, before he could be admitted to speak a word to
your heart, how he answered one objection after another, whereby
you would have stifled his work? Can you remember this, and not
admire the mercy that took such pains with so unprofitable a
heart? It is called a resurrection, but it is more. Before the
resurrection of the body, one part of man lives and waits for
reunion though the body be crumbled into very dust; but there is
no life in you naturally: so little in you to take part with God,
that even that which is the glory of man, his mind, and reason,
and wisdom, were in arms against this work, as well as the
sensitive and brutish part, for 'the carnal mind was enmity
against God,' Rom. viii. 7. What was your language to God at
first, but like that of the hellish spirit in the man in Luke iv.
34: 'What have we to do with thee?' Yet he dealt with you as the
sun with the earth, which scatters the mists it sends out to
choke its light, and spreads its warm wings over the face of the
world. So does God, though men offend him with the steams of
their sins, and uncivilly command him to depart from them, yet he
leaves them not till he has made them willing that he should do
them good.
[7.] The work itself requires admiration and blessing in
regard of the excellency of it. It is more admirable than all the
miracles of nature; the whole world can no more compare with it
than a dunghill can equal the worth of a rock of diamonds; all
blessings which make you happy spiritually and eternally are
wrapped up in it. What can God give greater than his own nature?
What are you capable of more than what he has done and will do
upon that foundation? If God had only given thee knowledge, thou
might have been a devil for all that; but the new nature makes
you equal with angels. What man or angel could you be born of
with so great advantage as to be born of God? There is no higher
being to be born of. What can he do more than thus to beget you?
You are new-born according to that image after which his only Son
was eternally begotten; conceived by that Spirit whereby Christ
was conceived in the womb of the blesses Virgin; raised by the
same almighty hand whereby the great pattern of the new birth was
raised from the dead. It is the highest elevation of human nature
to be united to the Son of God, and to be made like to that
glorious image. Greater gifts cannot be than these two, Christ to
descend to partake of human nature, and the creature elevated to
partake of the divine. If you will not loudly bless him for this,
what can God do that shall deserve your praise, since a greater
he cannot confer, more full of the spirits of his favour towards
you?
[8.] May there not be some circumstances in your particular
new birth that may raise your hearts to blessing and praise?
Perhaps thou were 'born in a day,' as his promise is of a nation,
Isa. lxvi. 7, 8, and without those racking pains which attend the
new birth of many. He did not take thee by the throat, nor arrest
thee with legal terrors, but breathed upon thee with a gentle
wind; conceived and formed thee in a little space of time, that
thou were within the prospect of heaven before thou thought
thyself out of the suburbs of hell, and brought thee forth a
man-child before thou didn't imagine thyself to be delivered. Was
it not mercy to renew thee without worrying thee; to melt thee by
a gentle fire of love, not break thee piece-meal by the hammer of
wrath, that thou should scarce discern the lance from the balsam,
and the wound from the plaster? Perhaps he arrested thee in a
full course of sin, in some desperate career, when some plot was
laid for a high piece of wickedness. It had been an act of his
power had thou been brought up in some religious family, tutored
in the ways of religion by a choicer education; but perhaps God
took thee from the very steams of hell, when thou had not one
thought of him, and he might have let thee alone as well as he
did others of thy companions. It had been admirable power to turn
clear water into wine, but more to turn stinking and putrefied
water into a generous wine. Do not the visible characters of
mercy and power in such a case call for more praise at thy hands?
Can any other cause have a pretence to put in for a share in thy
acknowledgements?
[9.] You are not without many examples to move you to this
acknowledgement. Our Saviour himself could not regard the
centurion's faith without astonishment. He wondered at that in
his humanity which he wrought himself by his divinity, Mat. viii.
10. And when Peter professes his faith in him by acknowledging
him to be the Son of God, Christ presently owns his Father as the
author of it: Mat. xvi. 17, 'Flesh and blood has not revealed it
unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.' Angels sang both at
the first and second creation, and shouted for joy when the
corner-stone thereof was laid, Job xxxviii. 6, 7. When they saw
its beautiful order, they then showed themselves to be the sons
of God indeed, in glorifying their Father for his incomparable
works. The second creation being more glorious than the first, is
not celebrated by them with fainter shootings; if God has then
hallelujahs for you, it is fit he should have hallelujahs from
you. If angels speak loud, it is not fit you should speak low; it
is their concern, as they are God's friends and servants; your
concern, as you are his workmanship, of his own carving. The
saints in all ages of the church have led the way in this
acknowledgement. The elders, made kings and priests on earth, in
a conquest of Satan and their own hearts, crowned with a blessed
grace, cast down their crowns at the feet of God Rev. ix. 11,
'For thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are
and were created,' both the present new creation and the old.
'Thou hast loosed my bonds,' Ps. cxvi. 16. What follows? 'I will
offer to thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving.' And God's renewing
David's youth like the eagle's, his changing him into a new man,
says Jerome, is one argument of David's praise, Ps. ciii. 6. Add
to this, heathens have acknowledged it to be the work of God, one
examining the reason why Homer calls virtuous men
"dious", answers. Because goodness was not a work of
art, but "ergon Dios". If divining and mystical
knowledge be "theiai tini epipnoiai", by divine
inspiration, shall we say of virtue it is "ergon technes
thentes", the work of man's art? Where do you find any like
Nebuchadnezzar, gazing upon the divine formation in his own
heart, and proudly crying out, 'Is not this great Babylon which I
have built?' Does such language drop from a David's mouth? No;
but 'thou hast quickened me.' Or from Paul? No, 'by grace I am
what I am.' Every inch, every spark, every joint of the new man
is from grace.
[10.] If you do not acknowledge it to God, and bless him for
it, you may justly suspect you are not born of him. It is the
nature of true grace to reflect back upon God, as it is of a
sunbeam shining upon a wall to reflect back upon the sun.
Blessing God for it, is a character of a renewed man. It is an
evidence of the ruin of the contradiction of nature against God,
when man can strip himself of all, and own God the prime fountain
of what he is and has. If a man boast of his being the cause of a
new birth in himself by any work of his own, it is a shrewd sign
he is not renewed, because by such boasting he crosses the main
end of the gospel, which is to stain the pride of man, and debase
him to the dust from all grounds of glorying in himself. How
jealous was the apostle in this case, and therefore backs his
assertion again and again, that he might beat man's hands off
from fingering anything of God's glory: Eph. ii. 5, 'By grace you
are saved;' again, verse 8, 9, 'and that not of yourselves: it is
the gift of God.' Once again, 'Not of works.' And the reason why
he is thus earnest, was perpetually to discountenance
self-confidence, 'lest any man should boast.' The design of God
in all gospel dispensations, is to pull away the stool whereon
the flesh sits to glory: 1 Cor i. 29-31, 'That no flesh should
glory in his presence.' It would seem strange that the new birth,
a main gospel work, should be wrought without promoting a gospel
end. To have a new birth, and such a flourishing pride, opposite
to the end of it, is a contradiction. If the doctrine of faith
does exclude boasting, as Rom. iii. 27, boasting is 'excluded by
the law of faith,' the grace of faith also will exclude it; where
the new birth is wrought, pride, the great enemy to it, will
surely be captivated. We are then something in and by God, when
we are most nothing in ourselves.
Well, then, be much in the work of praising God, who shined
into thy heart when it was dark, and sealed instruction to thee;
who took away the stony heart, and introduced one of flesh in the
room; who manifested a day of power in the night of your
weakness. Can you, dare you, to ascribe it to yourselves? Let God
then have the praise. It is our fault we are more in complaints
of what we want, than acknowledgements of what we have. Oh, rob
not God of his deity, pretend not yourselves partners with him in
the least of the stock. The more you return the glory of his
grace, the more will he return the comfort of it to you; the more
you give him that glory he is so jealous of, the more he will
give you that grace he is so liberal of.
(3.) A third duty for those that are renewed. Acknowledge God
in all the changes you see in others. Miracles must be regarded.
It is greater for the apostles to act with new hearts than to
speak with new tongues; greater than to stop the sun in its
course, which would set all the world upon an astonished gaze.
Shall any such miraculous work be done in our view, and we stand
only as stupid spectators, and not render to God that glory which
is due to him for his choicest work? As the sight and
consideration of the material creation kept up the notion of the
being of God as creator, so the consideration of his works upon
the souls of men will quicken thy sentiments of God as a new
creator. One is an argument to prove the power of his essence,
the other an argument of the power of his grace. Noah does not
bless them first for that act of filial duty showed to his
father, but blesses God as the author of that modesty Shem had
shown in covering his father's nakedness: Gen. ix. 26, 'Blessed
be the God of Shem.' When a great number were turned to Christ,
Barnabas presently cast up his eye to the grace of God, 'he saw
the grace of God,' Acts xi. 21-23. Let every Lazarus you see
raised from the grave raise up your faith to a higher elevation,
and dress it in a jubilee attire. When you see a new temple
reared to God, own it as the Lord's doing, and let it be
marvellous in your eyes.
(4.) Be content with every condition your new creator shall
cast you into. Discontent at any of God's dispensations does ill
become one whom God has new begotten to a glorious inheritance.
What can he do more than he has done, and what he will do upon
that foundation? All that he acts is to further that which he has
so powerfully and mercifully begun. What son would repine at the
losing a rattle, as long as he is born to a never-fading
inheritance? If grace has put forth a power to new create you, it
will not use that power otherwise than for your good. It may
contradict your carnal desires, not your spiritual interest. Well
may any man be content with the jewel that is left, though the
casket be lost. All things are too light if put into the balance
with the new birth: the dearest husband or wife, the sweetest
children or friends, the most flourishing inheritance; study,
therefore, contentment in the worst condition upon this ground;
you know not how soon you may be put to practise all your skill.
Do you not see the heavens gathering blackness over your heads? A
new birth, that allies us to God as his children, will be of more
force to settle us, than calamities can be to discompose us; for
never was child so dear to an earthly, as a new created soul is
to its heavenly Father.
(5.) Walk worthy of the author of it. A verbal acknowledgement
will signify little without a real imitation of the virtues of
him 'that has called you out of darkness into his marvellous
light,' 1 Peter ii. 9. A holiness is to be expressed by you, like
the holiness of that God who has renewed you. Let no devilish or
brutish carriage be yoked with a divine birth, indeed it cannot;
the bespotting corruption of the world will not agree with the
regeneration of the soul; the stains of the flesh are
inconsistent with the purity of the new nature. Belial and
Christ, God and Satan, are not joint begetters; Satan's impure
breathings upon you should not be admitted to mix with the breath
of God. A new nature by grace must not imitate a brutish nature
by sin; a soul born of God must not be fashioned according to the
world. If you differ from the world in your nature by grace,
differ from the world also in your carriage by holiness. It is
uncomely for one born of God to be taken with the foolish,
flaunting pride of the world, more than the pattern God has set
him; that is, to imitate beasts, not a heavenly Father. The world
is little, nothing, vanity in the eye of God; so should it be in
the eye of a divinely begotten soul. Use the world as travellers
an inn, to lodge, not to dwell in, to accommodate you in your
journey to that Father of whom you were born. Let a heaven-born
nature be attended with heavenly flights, longing for that happy
state wherein nothing but the divine nature shall be seen in
union, as nothing but fire is seen in melted gold.
(6.) Mourn for your imperfections. Give God his due, and
grieve for your defect in paving him his own. The soul in
creation comes pure out of God's hand, but it is poisoned by the
flesh, and the impurity in the sensitive part of man. Though your
grace be from God, yet your imperfections are from yourselves.
The waters that run through sulphur and alum mines flow from the
sea, but the ill taste and scent are communicated by the matter
it mixes with in its passage. God is the author of your faith,
but not of the weakness of your faith; the author of your love,
but not of the coldness of your love; the author of your zeal,
but not of the faintness of your zeal. Chide your hearts,
therefore for your weakness, as Christ did his disciples for
their slowness in faith. 'Rejoice with trembling,' Ps. ii. 11,
rejoice in what you have, and mourn for chat you want and come
short in. Reason you have, since there is too much of the power
of nature remaining with our best grace, so that it may be said
of it, as Lot of Zoar, What grace has enclosed is but a little
one.
Exhort. 2. To those that are not born of God. You see at whose
hands you are to seek it. God was the first contriver of the
gospel, the first preacher of the gospel, the sole artist in any
gospel operation. No man can come except the Father draw him; not
some men, but no man; every man must therefore seek to this great
attracter. It is a vanity of human nature, that every man loves
to be "autodidaktos", his own teacher; and no less a
vanity it is, that every man loves to be
"autogennetos", his own begetter. Men glory in the
knowledge they get without a teacher, and no less glory in any
change they can hammer out without a spiritual Father. As he that
scorns to be taught by another shall surely have a fool to his
tutor, so he that thinks to gain spiritual life by himself, shall
be sure to have death for his quickener. No man would seek life
from death, or light from darkness, and the best natural man is
no better. The glory of the Lord must rise upon us, before we can
rise out of our death in sin: 'Arise, and shine, for thy light is
come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee,' Isa. lx. 1.
(1.) Seek it only at the hands of God. It is not to be had by
outward rules, but divine influence; the streams of life must
come from him, since with him only is the fountain of life: Ps.
xxxvi. 9, 'I will give a heart of flesh;' I alone, without any
other co-ordinate cause, either man or angel. He only has the key
of the heart, as well as that of the womb; confide not in
yourselves. Adam was a root to convey sin and death, but no root
to convey spiritual life. Corruption comes by propagation from
him, grace only by spiritual regeneration from God. Would any
wise man seek for water in a desert, or for grace from himself,
who is naturally a dry wilderness? What toad, naturally full of
poison, ever made himself sweet and wholesome? As Christ was by
the grace of God made partaker of our nature in his incarnation,
so by the same grace only can we be made partakers of his nature
by regeneration. We are naturally weeds; if ever we be flowers in
God's garden, the transformation must be God's act alone.
Seek it of God. But,
[1.] In the use of means, not abating anything of thine own
industry. Seek, while God offers it; hold your mouth under the
fountain while it runs. Moses hewed the tables, but God wrote the
law. God promised David and Gideon victory, but not with their
hands in their pockets, but their arms and armies about them.
Moses must fight with the arms of Israel, but pray to the God of
battles and victory. We must with one hand use the directions God
has given, and lift up the other in spiritual supplication for
success upon them. Therefore let not the doctrine of God's being
the cause of the new birth encourage your laziness and sloth.
This sloth among men Chemnitius thought to be the occasion of
Pelagius his error, who, seeing the laziness of Christians,
thought to correct it by making them think highly of their own
strength; but that was a dangerous extreme.
[2.] Yet let your eye be solely upon God in the use of them,
since all the means in the world cannot do it without him. Unless
God pull up the floodgates, no water of life can stream into the
soul; means can no more of themselves cast out death than the
disciples could cast out some devils; but Christ was able to do
what they could not. All the angels in heaven and men upon earth
have not been able, these almost six thousand years, to make one
fly; yet all the angels and the whole frame of the world were
made by God in six days. Men speak to the sense, God to the
heart; they to the understanding, and God into it; men argue with
the will, and God persuades it. All the clamours of the whole
nation of the Jews, yea, of all the men in the world, would not
have made Lazarus stir out of the grave, had not our Saviour
spoken the word, 'Lazarus, come forth.' How often do the clouds
of heaven drop upon men, yet they still remain as a dry chip,
their stony hearts perhaps moistened with some transient flashy
affections, but not mollified into flesh. Pray therefore to God,
before the use of any means, Lord, breathe life so powerfully
upon me, that I may walk before thee, and never find myself again
in a natural winding-sheet. Let thy voice, Lord, be heard and
felt by me as the voice of thy Son was by Lazarus. To use means
without a seeking to God for his blessing, is to be exercised in
divine institutions with an atheistic spirit. He is an atheist
that expects nourishment from his meat without God's benediction,
and he no less that runs to means without lifting up his heart to
God, thinking to get grace conveyed by the means without God's
operation.
(2.) Direction. Plead much with God from the glorious
attributes he honours in this work. Lord, here is a subject for
thy power to work upon. God made the heavens when there was
nothing but a rude mass; he brought forth the sun, moon, and
stars, with all their glory, out of the barren womb of nothing.
Is thy heart worse than nothing, more contradictory to God than
nothing? It is so. Assume an argument from hence: Lord, here is a
subject for thy power above what was manifested in creation;
there is not a more tough heart in the world than mine; lose not
the opportunity of displaying the greatness of thy power, since
there is scarce a heart more stout and unwieldy than mine is.
Lord, bestow a vital principle upon me; thou did it to the
lifeless body of Adam; thy power will be more magnified in the
breathing upon a lifeless soul of a son and daughter of Adam. In
the same manner plead his wisdom and holiness. Plead also the
enmity thy sin has against him, the wrong it has done him, in
spoiling the creation, changing the end of it, hindering thee
from thy natural duty, and that it is not for the interest of his
glory to let sin bear such a sway and dominion, and usurp his
room in one who would fain be another man.
(3.) Be deeply sensible of the corruption of thy nature; the
want of this is the cause there is so little sense in men and
women of the absolute necessity of the grace of regeneration, and
a change of nature. Therefore labour to see yourselves in a
forlorn condition by spiritual death. Look upon your great fall
as a son of Adam, a slave of Satan, and possessor of a hellish
nature, and at a vast distance from God and happiness.
(4.) Grieve not the Spirit in any of his operations. Quench
not the sparks of the Spirit in any previous preparations and
dispositions to this new birth. Be pliable to his breathings,
hoist up your sails to receive his gales; when he knocks, open
thy heart as wide as may be, push it to the furthest point, that
there may be no remora; let all the house be free for his
triumphant entrance. Since thy strength is too weak for it, beg
of him at such a season to break it open; set upon prayer at such
a season, and leave not till you have prayed your spirits up and
your resistance out. How ungrateful and foolish is it to grieve
that Spirit, who offers to form you into a new birth, and bring
the life and joy of heaven into your heart! This is the only
means to recover the loss you had by the fall of Adam, and
surmount all the misery of it. Seek to him; he that can gather
the dust of your bodies, if blown to the further part of the
world, and knit it together, can overcome the filthy and deadly
noisomeness of your souls; he can make a barren wilderness to
become pools of water, a lump of vanity a garden of pleasure, a
heap of rubbish to sprout up a new-born sun. If you would
therefore be animated with a spirit of life, you must approach
the beams of the sun, and lie under the rich and enlivening
influences of it.
End of part 2 of A Discourse of the Efficient of
Regeneration.