Page 75 - Absolute Predestination With Observations On The Divine Attributes

VII.—Hence arises a seventh argument for the preaching of predestination,
namely, that by it we may be excited to the practice of universal godliness. The
knowledge of God's love to you will make you an ardent lover of God, and the
more love you have to God, the more will you excel in all the duties and offices

of love. Add to this that the Scripture view of predestination includes the means
as well as the end. Christian predestinarians are for keeping together what God
hath joined. He who is for attaining the end without going to it through the

means is a self-deluding enthusiast. He, on the other hand, who carefully and
conscientiously uses the means of salvation as steps to the end is the true
Calvinist.

Now, eternal life being that to which the elect are ultimately destined, faith (the
effect of saving grace) and sanctification (the effect of faith) are blessings to

which the elect are intermediately appointed. "According as He hath chosen us
in Him, before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without
blame before Him in love" (Eph. 1.4). "We are His workmanship, created in
Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should

walk in them" (Eph. 2.10). "Knowing, brethren beloved, your election of God...
and ye became followers of us and of the Lord" (1 Thess. 1.4,6). "God hath
chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the

truth" (2 Thess. 2.13). "Elect, according to the foreknowledge [or ancient love]
of God the Father through sanctification of the Spirit unto obedience" (1 Peter
1.2). Nor is salvation (the appointed end of election) at all the less secure in

itself (but the more so) for standing necessarily connected with the intervening
means, seeing both these and that are inseparably joined, in order to the certain
accomplishment of that through these. It only demonstrates that without

regeneration of the heart and purity of life, the elect themselves are not led to
heaven. But, then, it is incontestable from the whole current of Scripture that
these intermediate blessings shall most infallibly be vouchsafed to every elect
person, in virtue of God's absolute covenant and through the effectual agency of

His Almighty Spirit. Internal sanctification constitutes our meetness for the
kingdom to which we were predestinated, and a course of external righteousness
is one of the grand evidences by which we make our election sure to our own

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present comfort and apprehension of it.

VIII.—Unless predestination be preached, we shall want one great inducement
to the exercise of brotherly kindness and charity. When a converted person is
assured, on one hand, that all whom God hath predestinated to eternal life shall

infallibly enjoy that eternal life to which they are chosen, and, on the other