I shall now lay down a few arguments for the superabundant clearing of it, and afterwards answer two or three objections that may be made against it, and so I shall fall upon the next thing.
First. God loves the saints as He loves Jesus Christ; and God loves Jesus Christ with an eternal love; therefore the saints also with the same. "Thou hast loved them as Thou has loved Me" (John 17:23).
Second. That love which is God Himself, must needs be everlasting love; and that is the love wherewith God hath loved His saints in Christ Jesus; therefore His love towards His children in Christ must needs be an everlasting love. There is none dare say that the love of God is mixed with a created mixture; if not, then it must needs be Himself (1 John 4:16). [You must not understand that love in God is a passion as it is in us; but the love of God is the very essence or nature of God].
Third. That love which is always pitched upon us, in an object as
holy as God, must needs be an everlasting love. Now the love of
God was and is pitched upon us, through an object as holy as God
Himself, even our Lord Jesus; therefore it must needs be unchangeable.
Fourth. If He with whom the Covenant of Grace was made, did in every thing and condition do even what the Lord could desire or require of Him, that His love might be extended to us, and that for ever, then His love must needs be an everlasting love, seeing everything required of us was completely accomplished for us by Him; and all this hath our Lord Jesus done, and that most gloriously, even on our behalf; therefore it must needs be a love that lasts for ever and ever.
Fifth. If God hath declared Himself to be the God that changeth not, and hath sworn to be immutable in His promise, then surely He will be unchangeable; and He hath done so; therefore it is impossible for God to lie, and so for His eternal love to be changeable (Heb 6:13-18). Here is an argument of the Spirit's own making! Who can contradict it? If any object, and say, But still it is upon the condition of believing—I answer, The condition also is His own free gift, and not a qualification arising from the stock of nature (Eph 2:8; Phil 1:28,29). So that here is the love unchangeable; here is also the condition given by Him whose love is unchangeable, which may serve yet further for a strong argument that God will have His love unchangeable. Sinner, this is better felt and enjoyed than talked of.
Objection First. But if this love of God be unchangeable in itself, yet it is not unchangeably set upon the saints unless they behave themselves the better. [The first objection].
Answ. As God's love at the first was bestowed upon the saints without anything foreseen by the Lord in them, as done by them, Deuteronomy 9:4-6, so He goeth on with the same, Saying, "I will never leave thee nor forsake thee" (Heb 13:5).
Objection Second. But how cometh it to pass then, that many fall off again from the grace of the Gospel, after a profession of it for some time; some to delusions, and some to their own sins again? [The second objection].
Answ. They are all fallen away, not from the everlasting love of God to them, but from the profession of the love of God to them. Men may profess that God loves them when there is no such matter, and that they are the children of God, when the devil is their father; as it is in John 8:40-44. Therefore they that do finally fall away from a profession of the grace of the Gospel, it is, first, because they are bastards and not sons. Secondly, because as they are not sons, so God suffereth them to fall, to make it appear that they are not sons, not of the household of God—"They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt," mark that, "no doubt," saith he, "they would have continued with us: but they went out," from us, "that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us" (1 John 2:19). And though Hymeneus and Philetus do throw themselves headlong to Hell, "nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are His" (2 Tim 2:17-19).