EERM. tI.) GOD'S ELECTION OF MEN IN JESUS CHRIST. 19 made children and heirs. Without entering nicely into all the meanings of these words, chosen in him, I shall content myself at present in general to say, that when they were first chosen to be made holy and heirs of hea- ven, theywere committed to the care of Christ, to have all this grace fulfilled in them, and these blessings con- veyed to them. Having said thus much with relation to the text, I shall immediately apply myself to the two great branches of the subject appointed me, and which are both expressed in the words : I. That God, before he made the world, chose some persons of his own free grace to become his children, or to be made holy and happy. H. That God from the beginning appointed his Son Jesus Christ to be the medium, of exercising all this grace, and gave his chosen people to the care of his Son, to make them partakers of thèse blessings. Let us consider each of these heads more at large. First, God chosecertain persons of his own free grace, before the foundation of the world, to be made holy and happy. This I shall endeavour to prove briefly in four plainPropositions : Proposition I. " There is a manifest difference be- tween thechildren of men in this world." Some of them are holy and religious, they fear God and worship him, they appear to be the children of God, for they imitate his holiness, they love and obey him, they practise virtue and goodness in this life, and are aspiring to the bless- edness of heaven ; while the rest go on to indulge their vicious appetites and passions, to pursue earthly things as their chief good, and are walking evidently in the road of sin to misery and destruction. I need not cite scriptures to prove this point: our daily observation abundantly confirms it. Proposition II. This difference between men, or this distinction of the righteous from the wicked is not as- cribed in scripture, originally and supremely, " to the will and power of man, as the cause of it, but to the will and power of God, and to his Spirit working in them." I (lo not deny that the natural powers of man, his understanding, and his will concur to make this dif- ference, but it is under the original influence and opera- tion of God. 1 Cor. iv. 7, " Who maketh thee to dif c
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