29 / 652
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,
they
were 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
chose
certain
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
plain
Propositions
:
Proposition
I.
"
There
is
a
manifest
difference
be-
tween the
children 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