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SECTION XVI.

Seek ye the Lord while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near. -ISA. lv. 6.

THIS passage of Scripture is no proof of a day of grace, which, if men improve, they may enjoy the favour of God; but if they let it slip, if it is once elapsed, there is no more opportunity of meeting with him.

1. They are an exhortation to public worship, signified by seeking the Lord and calling upon him; the time for which, with the Jews, was on the seventh day of the week, and with us Christians, on the first; these being times in which he might be found, it became the Jews of old, and us now, to attend public ordinances, in expectation of meeting with God; since he has promised his people to be in the midst of them, when they are met together.

2. The words may be so rendered, as that they may be understood of place as well as time; Seek ye the Lord, NY, in his being found, call ye upon him, in his being near, that is, in the place where he is to be found, and in the place where he is fear. Now, though God is everywhere, and in all places, yet, in the Old Testament dispensation, there was a particular place for public worship appointed, where God vouchsafed his presence, and where it was both the duty and interest of his people to attend; and though, under the gospel dispensation, all places are alike, yet where the saints agree to meet together, there God has promised to be in the midst of them; and therefore, there should he be sought and called upon.

3. The words may have a particular regard to Christ's being on earth in the land of Judea; seeing he is spoken of under the name of David, ver. 3, and is promised to be given for a witness to the people, a leader, and commander of the people, ver. 4, and it is prophesied of him, that there should be a large concourse of the Gentiles to him, ver. 5, who are here encouraged, or rather the Jews, to seek unto him, and call upon him, while he was in their land, near unto them; when they had the advantage of his personal presence, ministry, and miracles.

SECTION XVII.

Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.— Isa. lv. 7.

*

I. THESE words are represented as a promise of pardon, on condition of forsaking sinful ways and thoughts and turning to the Lord; which, if not in man's power to perform, is to promise on an impossible condition, and that is, indeed, to promise nothing. To which may be replied,

Whitby, p. 242; ed. 2. 236.

1. That forsaking sin, and turning to the Lord at first conversion, or returning to him after backslidings, which perhaps may be here meant, are not owing to the power of man, but to the efficacious grace of God. None can truly forsake sin, or heartily turn to the Lord, but such who are influenced by the Spirit of God; hence says Ephraim, Turn thou me, and I shall be turned*.

2. That the promise of pardon is free, absolute, and unconditional, not depending on any condition whatever to be performed by men; forsaking sinful ways and thoughts, and returning to the Lord, are not here proposed as conditions of obtaining mercy, and receiving pardon; but the declarations of pardoning grace and mercy here made, are made on purpose to encourage souls sensible of the wickedness of their ways, and unrighteousness of their thoughts, to return to the Lord, who is a God of grace and mercy.

3. Though faith and repentance are not conditions of pardon, nor in the power of man, of himself, to perform; yet as pardon is promised to such who repent, believe, and turn to the Lord, so all such, to whom God makes the promise of pardon, he gives the graces of faith and repentance: hence his promise is not vain, empty, and delusory.

II. It is said +, that "if conversion is wrought only by the unfrustrable operation of God, and man is purely passive in it, vain are the promises of pardon, such as this; for no promises can be means proper to make a dead man live, or to prevail upon a man to act, who must be purely passive." To which I answer,

1. That these words contain no promise to dead men, but a declaration of pardoning grace to sensible sinners; who were wicked and unrighteous in their own apprehensions, being represented as thirsty, ver. 1, seeking after the way of life and salvation; though they took the wrong way, and had their thoughts wrongly turned to spend money for that which is not bread, and their labour for that which satisfieth not, ver. 2, and therefore remained oppressed with a sense of sin; hence they are here encouraged to quit their own way of salvation, and all thoughts of their own righteousness, and alone to seek the Lord for mercy and pardon; since his thoughts were not as their thoughts, nor his ways as their ways.

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2. Admitting them to be a promise of pardon made to dead men; may be thought to be a proper and sufficient means in the hand of God, under the mighty influences of his Spirit and grace, to make dead men live; since the gospel is the power of God unto salvation, the ministration of life, yea, the savour of life unto life; and especially when it is observed what is said in ver. 10, 11. For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater; so shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth, now at this present time delivered, in ver. 7-9: it shall not return unto me void: but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.

* Jer. xxxi. 18. † Whitby, pp. 237, 242; ed. 2. 231, 236. ‡ Rom. i. 16; 2 Cor. ii. 16, and iii. 6.

3. Though man is passive in regeneration, yet he is active in forsaking sin and turning to the Lord. Promises of pardon may, through the grace of God, prevail on such to act in these instances, who have been passive in the work of regeneration; for regeneration antecedes these; forsaking sin, and turning to the Lord, follow upon, and rise from regenerating grace. No man can truly do these, until he is regenerated by the Spirit of God. It follows, then, that men may be prevailed upon, by the promises of pardon, to act, who have been passive in regeneration.

III. It is intimated, that such who are in the Calvinistical way of thinking, say, that God promises pardon and life to the non-elect, on condition of their faith and repentance*: and it is asked, "How can a God of truth and sincerity be said to promise to them pardon and salvation, seriously and in good earnest, who are, by his own act of preterition, infallibly and unfrustrably excluded from it?" I answer, 1. Who the men are that say so, I do not know, and must leave them to defend their own positions, who only are accountable for the consequences of them; for my own part, I utterly deny that there is any promise of pardon made to the non-elect at all, not on any condition whatever. The promise of pardon is a promise of the covenant of grace, and which is made to none but to such who are in that covenant, in which the non-elect have no share; to whom the blessing of pardon belongs, to them only is the promise of it made; the blessing of it only belongs to such for whom Christ died, whose blood was shed for the remission of sin; and these are the elect of God only: and though the gospel declaration of pardon is made in indefinite terms, to every one that believes; the reason is, because to all those who are interested in the covenant of grace, and for whom Christ died, God does, in his own time, give faith and repentance, and along with them forgiveness of sins.

2. This passage of Scripture now under consideration, is no promise of pardon to the non-elect; for the words wicked and unrighteous, are not peculiar to them; God's elect are so in their state of nature, and in their own sense and apprehension, when the Spirit of God convinces them. Besides, the persons spoken to, appear from the context, to be such towards whom God's thoughts had been from everlasting, ver. 8, 9; and who were to partake of the blessings of joy and peace for ever, ver. 12, 13.

SECTION XVIII.

Circumcise yourselves to the Lord, and take away the foreskins of your heart, ye men of Judah, and inhabitants of Jerusalem; let my fury come forth like fire, and burn that none can quench it; because of the evil of your doings.-JER. iv. 4.

THESE words, with Deut. x. 16, which express much the same thing, in almost the same words, are thought to disprove man's passiveness *Whitby, p. 243; ed. 2. 237.

and the unfrustrable operation of God in conversion; or that that is God's work alone; which, if true, it is said*, vain are all such commands and exhortations as these: on which, let the following things be observed:

1. That it is questionable whether these figurative expressions are to be understood of internal conversion †, c the first work of it on the soul; since they are directed to backslidi. Israel and Judah; and may not rather design a national repentance ai reformation of them, as God's professing people, that they might be saved with a temporal deliverance from temporal judgments; with which they are threatened throughout this chapter.

2. Admitting that they are to be understood of the internal, spiritual, and saving work of conversion; since he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter, whose praise is not of men, but of God; this sense of the words carries the things expressed by them still farther out of the power of man, and into the hands of God alone; seeing this is the circumcision made without hands §, that is, without the power, help, and assistance of men. Circumcision of the flesh was typical of that of the spirit, and fitly expresses the passiveness of man in it; for as the infant was entirely passive and not active in circumcision, so is man in regeneration and first conversion; not to take any notice of, or insist upon the word on, being of a passive form, and rendered by the Septuagint, Teperμnente, and by the Vulgate Latin, circumcidimini, be ye circumcised.

3. What God here requires, commands, and exhorts unto, he elsewhere promises to do himself, saying; The Lord thy God will circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the Lord thy God, with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live ||; which at once discovers the inability of man, and the necessity of the grace of God; for if man could do this of himself, there would be no need of God's doing it for him: since this is the case, we may say, as Austin did, Domine, da quod jubes, et jube quod vis; Lord, give what thou commandest, and command what thou wilt.

4. Such commands and exhortations are not in vain, supposing man's passiveness in this work of conversion, and the unfrustrable operation of God in it; seeing such exhortations may be useful to convince men of the corruption of their nature; the necessity of a spiritual circumcision, without which there can be no salvation; their own disability, and the need of the power and grace of God to effect it.

*Whitby, pp. 237, 287; ed. 2. 231, 280.

Vid. Remonstr. in Coll. Hag. art. iii. and iv. p. 265. | Deut. xxx. 6.

§ Col. ii. 11.

Rom. ii. 29.

SECTION XIX.

But when the righteous turneth away from his righteousness, and committeth iniquity, and doth according to all the abominations that the wicked man doth, shall he live? all his righteousness that he hath done shall not be mentioned: in his trespass that he hath trespassed, and in his sin that he hath sinned, in them shall he die.-EZEK. Xviii. 24.

THIS scripture is placed at the front of those which are * said “expressly to assert the possibility, that true believers, true penitents, men truly just and righteous, may fall from their righteousness, and die in their iniquity." But,

1. The man here spoken of, is not one truly just and righteous; seeing he is denominated righteous from his own righteousness in which he trusted, and from which he is supposed to turn. Now none are truly, and in an evangelic sense, righteous by their own righteousness; only such are, who are made so by the obedience of Christ; and these never can, nor shall they, turn from this righteousness, which is the righteousness of God, an everlasting one, and is revealed from faith to faith; nor do they commit sin, that is, make a trade of sinning, live in a course of it; much less do they according to all the abominations of the wicked; nor can it be said of them, that their righteousness shall not be mentioned, since it endures for ever; and they, on the account of it, shall be in everlasting remembrance. Nor can they ever die, in the Arminian sense of the phrase here used; for they are justified by Christ's righteousness from all their sins, and therefore shall not die in them; they live by faith on it, and shall never die the second death: there is more virtue in the righteousness of Christ to justify them, than there is in all their sins to condemn them; their justification and glorification are inseparably connected together. Besides, such are the love, care, and power of God, which are engaged on their side, and exercised towards them, that it is impossible they should everlastingly perish.

The man here designed, is one that is outwardly righteous before men; who imagines himself to be so; trusteth to his own righteousness+: concludes, that what he suffered was owing to his father's sin, and not any iniquity of his own; and therefore complains of injustice in God; whose folly, vain opinion of himself, and unrighteous notions of God's providence, are fully and justly exposed in this chapter. The righteousness from which he is denominated righteous, is his own, and not another's, and what he himself hath done, and not what Christ hath done for him; a mere moral righteousness, consisting of some negative holiness, and a few external, moral performances, as appears from ver. 5-9; from such a righteousness a man may turn, commit iniquity, sin and die; but then this is no proof or instance of the apostacy of the saints, of true believers, true penitents, men truly just and righteous.

* Remonstr. in Coll. Hag. art. v. p. 14; Act. Synod. p. 218; Limborch. 1. 5, c. 81, sect. 1, p. 705; Whitby, p. 401; ed. 2. 390, + Ezek. xxxiii. 13.

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