aven,
even upon the account of free grace, will have such a special, lovely,
desirable, and glorious lustre, O bow should grace be prized by us now!
How should the gospel of the grace of God be prized by us! What an
antipathy to glory, as now prepared and dressed up for sinful man, must
they shew, whose whole wits and parts are busied to darken the glory of
that grace, which God would have shining in the gospel; and who are at
so much pains and labour to dress up another gospel, (though the apostle
hath told us, Gal. i. 7, that there is not another,) wherein
gospel-grace must stand by, and law-grace take the throne, that so man
may sacrifice to his own net, and burn incense to his own drag, and may,
at most, be grace's debtor in part; and yet no way may the saved man
account himself more grace's debtor, than the man was who wilfully
destroyed himself in not performing of the conditions; for grace, as the
new gospellers, or rather gospel-spillers mean and say, did equally to
both frame the conditions, make known to the contrivance, and tender the
conditional peace and salvation. But as to the difference betwixt Paul
and Judas, it was Paul that made himself to differ, and not the free
grace of God determining the heart of Paul by grace to a closing with
and accepting of the bargain. It was not grace that wrought in him both
to will and to do. It was he, and not the grace of God in him; what is
more contradictory to the gospel of the grace of God? And yet vain man
will not condescend to the free grace of God. Pelagianism and
Arminianism needeth not put a man to much study, and to the reading of
many books, to the end it may be learned, (though the patrons hereof
labour hot in the very fires, to make their notions hang together, and
to give them such a lustre of unsanctified and corrupt reason, as may be
taking with such as know no other conduct in the matters of God,) for
naturally we all are born Pelagians and Arminians. These tenets are
deeply engraven in the heart of every son of fallen Adam. What serious
servant of God findeth not this, in his dealing with souls, whom he is
labouring to bring into the way of the gospel? Yea, what Christian is
there, who hath acquaintance with his own heart, and is observing its
biasses, and corrupt inclinations, that is not made to cry out, O
wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from these dregs of
Pelagianism, Arminianism, and Jesuitism, which I find yet within my
soul? Hence,