anishment out of the paradise of God,) that shall attract
its heart to it, and move it to a compliance with it? When the poor
sinner that hath been made to pant after a Saviour, and hath been
pursued to the very ports of the city of refuge by the avenger of blood,
the justice of God, hath tasted and seen how good God is, and felt the
sweetness of free love in a crucified Christ, and seen the beauty and
glory of the mystery of his free grace, suitably answering and
overcoming the mystery of its sin and misery; O what a complacency hath
he therein, and in the way of gospel salvation, wherein free grace is
seen to overflow all banks, to the eternal praise of the God of all
grace. How saltless and unsavoury will the most cunningly-devised and
patched-together mode of salvation be, that men, studying the perversion
of the gospel, and seeking the ruin of souls with all their skill,
industry, and learning, are setting off with forced rhetoric, and the
artifice of words of man's wisdom, and with the plausible advantages of
a pretended sanctity, and of strong grounds and motives unto diligence
and painfulness, to a very denying and renouncing Christian liberty,
when once it is observed, how it entrencheth upon, and darkeneth lustre,
or diminisheth the glory of free grace, and hath the least tendency to
the setting of the crown on the creature's head, in whole or in part?
The least perception, that hereby the sinner's song, "ascribing
blessing, honour, glory, and power unto him that was slain, and hath
redeemed them to God by his blood, out of every kindred, and tongue, and
people, and nation; and hath made them, unto their God, kings and
priests," shall be marred, will be enough to render that device
detestable, and convince the soul, that it is not the gospel of the
grace of God and of Christ, but rather the mystery of iniquity. What a
peculiar savouriness doth the humbled believer find in the doctrine of
the true gospel-grace, and the more that he be thereby made nothing, and
Christ made all; that he in his highest attainments be debased, and
Christ exalted; that his most lovely peacock feathers be laid, and the
crown flourish on Christ's head; that he be laid flat, without one foot
to stand upon, and Christ the only supporter and carrier of him to
glory; that he be as dead without life, and Christ live in him, the more
lovely, the more beautiful, the more desirable and acceptable is it unto
him. O what a complacency hath the gr