6- SEILMON XLVI. 43 sons of his own free grace to become his children, or to be made holy and happy. II. 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 these blessings. Let us consider each of those 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 hap- py. This I shall endeavour to prove briefly in four plain pro- positions : Proposition I. " There is a manifest difference between 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 blessedness of heaven ; while the rest go on to indulge their vicious appetites and passions, to pur- sue earthly things as their chief good, and are walking evi- dently in the road of sin to misery and destruction. I need not cite scrii>ttsres to prove this point : our daily observation abun- dantly confirmsit. II. This difference between men, or this distinctionof the righteous from the wicked is not ascribed 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 do not deny that the natural powers of man, his understanding, and his will concur to make this difference, but h is under the original influence and operation of God. 1 Cor. iv. i. Who maketh thee to differ `.I What hast thou that thou"host not received? When St. Paul had described the Gentiles as dead in trespasses and sins ; Eph. ii. 1. he ranks himself, in the third verse among the children of wrath bynature, and as walk- ing in the lust of the flesh and the mind, and confesses himself also to have been dead in sin, verse 4. but we are quick- ened, saith he, to a life of holiness, by God who is rich in mercy, verses 4, 5. In themselves they were all without strength ; Rom. v. 6. but they are raised to a spiritual life, by the exceeding greatness of that power which raised Christ Jesus from the dead ; Eph. i. 19, 20. They were in themselves car- nal and sensual, nor could they make themselves spiritual and heavenly ; and therefore they must be born again, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the -will of man, but or God. They must be born of the Spirit ; John i. 13. andchap. ill. 5, 6. that is,` they must have a mighty change pass upon their natures by the operation of theblessed Spirit. In Eph. ii. 8, 9. neither faith nor good works are originally of ourselves ; faith is the gift
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