Owen - Houston-Packer Collection BX9315 .O8 1721

i 26 LA 'Declaration of the Glorious M Y STE R Y and pleafure. But on a fuppofition that he would fo make them; they muff be Made for his glory. Thefe two forts thus created, he placed in feveralhabitations prepared for them, fuìtable unto their natures, and thepre- fent duties required of them ; the angels in heaven above, and ¡men on earth below. Sin firfl invaded the nature ofangels, and caft innumerable mul- titudes ofthem out of their primitive condition. Hereby they loft their capacity of and right unto that enjoyment of God, which their nature was prepared and made meet for. Neither would God everreftore them thereunto. And in the inftance of dealing with them, when he feared them not, but flut them up in chains of everlafiing darknefs unto the judge- ment ofthe great day, he manifefted how righteous it was to leave finning apoftate creatures in everlafting mifery. Ifany thing of relief be provided for any of them, it is a meer effectgQf fovereign grace and wifdom, where- unto God was no way obliged. Hlltvbeit the whole angelical nature that was created in a capacity for the eternal enjoyment of God, perished non Nor doth itfeem confinent with the wifdom and goodnefs of God, that the whole entire fpecies or kind of creatures made capableof glory in the eternal enjoymentofhim, should at once immediately be excluded from in That fuch a thing fhould fall out as it were accidentally without divinepro- vifron and difpofal, would argue a defect in wifdom, and á pofhbility óf a furprizal into the lofs of the whole glory he deigned in the creation ofall things. And tohaveit a meer effeft of divine ordination and difpofil, is as little confiftent with his goodnefs. Wherefore the fame nature which finned andperifhed in the angels that fell, abideth in the enjoyment of God, in thofe myriads of bleffed fpirits, which, left not their full ha- bitation. The nature of man was in like manner made capable of the eternal en- joyment of God. This was the end for which it was created, unto the glory of him by whom it was made. For it became the divine wifdom and goodnefs, togive unto every thing an operation and end fuited unto its capacity. And thefe in this race of intelleftual creatures, were to live unto God, and tocome unto theeternal enjoymentof him. This operation and end their nature being capable of they being fuited unto it, unto them it was deigned. But fin entred them alfo ; we alfo finned and came fhort of the glory of God. The enquiry hereon is, Whether it became the divine goodnefs and wifdom that this whole nature in all that were par- takers of it fhould fail and come fiore of that end for which alone it was made of God. For whereas the angels'food in their primitive condition every one inhis own individual perfon, the fin of fome did not prejudice others, who didnotfinadlually themfelves. But thewhole race of mankind flood all in one common head and hate; from whom they were to be edu- ced and derived by natural generation. The fin and aponafyof that one perfon was the fin and aponafy of us all. Inhim all tinned and died. Wherefore unlefs there be a recovery made of them, or offomefrom among them, that whole fpecies of intelleflual nature, the whole kind of it, in all its individuals, which was made capable of doing the will of God, fo as to comeunto the eternal fruition of him, muff be eternally loft and ex- cluded from it. This we may fay became not the wifdom and goodnefs of God, no more than it would have done to have .fuffered the whole angelical nature in all its individuals to have perished for ever. No cre- ated undemanding could have been able to difcern the glory of God in fuch a difpenfation, whereby it would have had no glory. That the whole nature in all the individualsof it, which was framed by the power of God out of nothing, and made what it was for this very end, that it might

RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=