Page 27 - Absolute Predestination With Observations On The Divine Attributes

to deliver, bless and save His people. Of this, no good works wrought by them
are in any sense the cause. Neither are even the merits of Christ Himself to be
considered as any way moving or exciting this good will of God to His elect,

since the gift of Christ, to be their Mediator and Redeemer, is itself an effect of
this free and eternal favour borne to them by God the Father (John 3.16). His
love towards them arises merely from "the good pleasure of His own will,"

without the least regard to anything ad extra or out of Himself.

(2) The term implies complacency, delight and approbation. With this love God
cannot love even His elect as considered in themselves, because in that view

they are guilty, polluted sinners, but they were, from all eternity, objects of it, as
they stood united to Christ and partakers of His righteousness.

(3) Love implies actual beneficence, which, properly speaking, is nothing else
than the effect or accomplishment of the other two: those are the cause of this.
This actual beneficence respects all blessings, whether of a temporal, spiritual or

eternal nature. Temporal good things are indeed indiscriminately bestowed in a
greater or less degree on all, whether elect or reprobate, but they are given in a
covenant way and as blessings to the elect only, to whom also the other benefits

respecting grace and glory are peculiar. And this love of beneficence, no less
than that of benevolence and complacency, is absolutely free, and irrespective
of any worthiness in man.

II.—When hatred is ascribed to God, it implies (1) a negation of benevolence,
or a resolution not to have mercy on such and such men, nor to endue them with
any of those graces which stand connected with eternal life. So, "Esau have I

hated" (Rom. 9.), i.e., "I did, from all eternity, determine within Myself not to
have mercy on him." The sole cause of which awful negation is not merely the
unworthiness of the persons hated, but the sovereignty and freedom of the

Divine will. (2) It denotes displeasure and dislike, for sinners who are not
interested in Christ cannot but be infinitely displeasing to and loathsome in the
sight of eternal purity. (3) It signifies a positive will to punish and destroy the

reprobate for their sins, of which will, the infliction of misery upon them
hereafter, is but the necessary effect and actual execution.

III.—The term election, that so very frequently occurs in Scripture, is there

taken in a fourfold sense, and most commonly signifies (1) "That eternal,
sovereign, unconditional, particular and immutable act of God where He
selected some from among all mankind and of every nation under heaven to be