Answ. 1. Distinguish between God's complacence and benevolence. 2. Between the good that is present, and foreseen good with a present capacity for it.
1. God had a greater benevolence to Jacob than Esau, and to the Israelites than to other nations that were perhaps not much worse. And it is not for our goodness that God decreeth to make us good, or to give us a double proportion of any of those mercies, which he giveth not as Rector, but as Dominus and Benefactor, as an absolute Owner and free Benefactor. And with this love of benevolence he loveth us when we are his enemies, that is, he purposeth to make us good; but this benevolence is but a secondary love and fruit of complacency, joined with the free, unequal distribution of his own.
2. But for complacency, which is love in the first and strictest sense, God so loveth the wicked though elect, no further than they are good and lovely, that is, (1.) As they have the natural goodness of rational creatures: (2.) And as they are capable of all the future service they will do him, and glory they will bring him; (3.) And as his infinite wisdom knoweth it fit to choose them to that service. Or, if the benevolence of election do go before his first complacence in them above others, as being before his foresight that they will serve and love better, yet still this proper love, called complacence, goeth not beyond the worth of the thing loved.
Object. Doth God love us complacentially in Christ, beyond the good that is in us?
Answ. Not beyond our real and relative good, as we are in ourselves, by his grace, and as we are in Christ related to him, and both ways such as demonstrate the divine perfections, and shall love, and glorify, and please him for ever.
So much for the opening of the true nature of love to God, ourselves, and others, and of man's ultimate end, and of the nature of holiness and goodness, and those mysteries of religion which are involved in these points.
[CHAPTER IV.]
SUBORDINATE DIRECTIONS AGAINST THOSE GRAND HEART SINS, WHICH ARE DIRECTLY CONTRARY TO THE LIFE OF GODLINESS AND CHRISTIANITY.
The recital of such sins as the former positive directions do detect, and afford help against.