hich is expressed as the character of the redeemed in this
verse. It is exponed as the great point or part of the redemption itself
by the apostle, Rom. xi. "The Redeemer shall come to Sion, and shall turn
away ungodliness from Jacob." And so his end was not only to be a partaker
of our nature, but to make us partakers of the divine nature, and
therefore the Father, out of his love to this business, promised to send
his Spirit to dwell in our hearts, to make the word sound in our mouths
and ears, and the Spirit to work in our hearts, and this exaltation of
sinners to the participation of the Holy Spirit, together with Christ's
humiliation to partake of our flesh, makes up the full distance, and
bringeth Christ and his church to that holy patient impatience, and
longing for the day when it shall be solemnized in heaven. The Spirit
within us says, Come, and the bride says, Come. Even so come, Lord Jesus.
And he waits for nothing, but the completing and adorning of all the rest,
that there may be one jubilee for all and for ever. Now I wish we could
understand the absolute and free tenor of God's covenant. There is much
controversy speculative about the condition of the covenant, about the
promises, whether absolute or conditional; and there is too much practical
debate in perplexed consciences about this, how to find something in
themselves to fit and fashion them for the redemption. But truly, if we
would not disjoin and dismember the truth of God, but take it all entirely
as one great design of love and mercy revealed to sinners, and so conjoin
the promises of the covenant into one bundle, we would certainly find that
it hath the voice of Jacob, though it seem to have the hand of Esau; we
find an absolute, most free and unconditioned sense, when there is a
conditional strain and shadow of words in some places. The truth is, the
turning of souls from ungodliness is not properly a condition exacted from
us, as a promise to be performed in us, and the chiefest part of Christ's
redemption; and though some abuse the grace of God, and turn it into
wantonness and liberty, yet certainly, this doctrine, that makes the
greatest part of the glad news of the gospel to be redemption from sin,
and the pouring out of the Spirit, is the greatest persuasive to a godly
conversation, and the most deadly enemy to all ungodliness.

I thought to have spoken more of that third thing I proponed,(302) but
take it in a word. This was always propon