398 DIRECTIONS FOR GETTING AND KEEPING Some Antinomian writers and preachers you shall meet with, who will persuade you, whatsoever sins you fall into, never more to question your justification or salvation. I have said enough before to prove their dóctrine detestable. Their reason is because God changeth not aswe change,and justification is never lost. To which I answer, 1. God hated us while we were workers of ini- quity ; Psal. xi. 5. v. 5. ; and was angry with us when we were children of wrath; Ephes. 1-3.; and afterwards he laid by that hatred and wrath ; and all this without change. If we cannot reach to apprehend how God's unchangeableness can stand with the fullest and most frequent expressions of him in Scripture, must we therefore deny what those expressions do contain ? As Austin saith, 'Shall we deny that which is plain, because we cannot reach that which is obscure and. difficult ?' 2. But if these men had well studied the Scriptures, they might have known that the same man that was yesterday bated as ánenemy, may to-day be reconciled and loved as a son, and that without any change in God ; even as it falls out within the réach ofour knowledge ; for God ruleth the world by his laws; they are his moral instruments; by them he condemneth ; by them he justifieth, so far as he is said in this life, before the judgment day, to do it, (unless there be anyother secret act of justificationwith him, which man is not able now to under- stand.) The change is therefore in our relations, and in the moral actions of the laws. When we are unbelievers, and impenitent, we are related to God as enemies, rebels, unjustified and unpardoned ; being such as God's law condemneth and pronounccth enemies, and the law of grace doth not yet justify or pardon ; and so God is, as it were, in some sense obliged, according to that law which we are under, to deal with us as enemies, by destroying us ; and this is God's hating, wrath, &c. When we repent, return, and believe, our relation is changed ; the same law that did condemn us, is re- laxed and disabled, and the lawof grace doth now acquit us; it pardoneth us, it justifieth us, and God by it ; and so God is recon- ciled to us, when we are such as, according to his own law ofgrace, he is, as it were, obliged to forgive and to do good to, and to use as sons. Is not all this apparently without any change in God ? Cannot he make a law that shall change its moral action according to the change of the actions or inclinationsof sinners ? And this without any change in Good ? And so, ifit shouldbe that a justi- fied man should fall fromGod, from Christ, from sincere faith or obedience, the law would condemn him again, and the law of grace would justify him no more, (in that state,) and all this without any change in God. 3. If this Antinomian argument would prove any thing, it would prove justification before, and so without Christ's satisfaction, because there is no change in God. 4. The very
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