OF GOD-REDEEMER. 267 not that we might absolutely, immediately, or, ipso facto, be fully delivered, or that any man should, ab ipsa hostia, from the very sacrifice as made, have a right to the great benefits of .personal, plenary reconciliation, and remission, and everlasting life; but that the necessity of perishing through the dissatisfaction of justice for the alone offenses against the law of works being removed from mankind, they might all be delivered up to him as proprietary and rector, that he might rule them as his redeemed ones, and make for them such new laws of grace, for the conveyances of his ben- efits, as might demonstrate the wisdom and mercy of our Redeem- er, and be most suitable to his ends. The world is now morally dead in sin, though naturally alive. Christ hath redeemed them, but will cure them by the actual conveyance of the benefits of redemption, or not at all. He hath undertaken to this end him- self to be their physician,,to cure all that -will come to him and take him so to be, and trust him and obey him in the application of his medicines. He bath erected an hospital, his church, to this end, and commanded all to come into this ark. Those that are far distant he first commandeth to come nearer, and those that are near he inviteth to come in. Too many do refuse, and perish in their refusal. He will not suffer all to do so, but mercifully boweth the wills of his elect, and, by an insuperable, powerful drawing, compels them to come in. You may see, then, that here is a novum jus, et dominii, et imperil, a new right of propriety and rule, founded on the new bottom of redemption; but that this doth not destroy the old, which was founded on creation ; but it is in the very nature and use of it an emendative addition. Redemp- tion is to mend the creature, not of any defect that was left in the creation, but from the ruin which came by' our defacing transgres- sion. The law of grace upon this redemption is superadded to the law ofnature given on the creation ; not to amend any imper- fections in that law, but to save the sinner from its insufferable penalty bydissolving its obligation of him thereto ; and thus, in its nature and use, it is a remedying law. And so you may see that Christ is now the owner, and, by right, the governor of the whole world, on the title of redemption, as God before was, and still is, on the title of creation. 3. By this you may also perceive in what sense we are not our own. In the strictest sense, there is no proprietary, or absolute Lord, in the world, but God. No man can say this is fully and strictly mine. God gives us, indeed, whatever we enjoy ; but his giving is not as man's. We part with our propriety in that which we give, but Godgives nothing so. His giving to us makes it not the less his own. As a man giveth his goods to his neighbor todispose offor his use, or instruments tohis servant todo his work
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