BOOK 2. FROM ETERNITY.
CHAPTER 1.
2.1.4. The Project.
The Project.
The project to save souls is diversly laid down by dissenting brethren. Some give it in thus, 1. That there should be a Mediator and Redeemer unto mankind, considered as fallen in the state of sin. 2. That all such should be received into favour as shall repent, and believe, and persevere unto the end. 3. That sufficient and necessary means of grace should be offered and administered unto all men without exception. 4. That certain singular persons should be saved, whom God foresaw would repent, and believe, and persevere. This way is justly opposed by others, who deny God's acts and intention to be in the same order as we see them in production. In order of material existing it is granted that Christ is revealed, promised and exhibited after sin, and that we repent, believe, persevere before we are saved; but in order of God's intention Christ is before sin, and salvation before repentance, faith, perseverance. The apostle reckoned the order in which things exist thus, 1. The world. 2. You the elect. 3. Christ. 4. God, 1 Cor. iii. 22, 23. But he gives us to understand the order of intention thus; as first, God intends his own glory, then Christ, then the elect, then the world. Certainly it is an hard thing to marshal the eternal emanent acts of the divine understanding, or will into first, second, third, fourth; all God's projects are like himself; who is iota simul et perfect a possema sui, a whole and perfect possession of himself together and at once; so as in him considered there is no prius nor posierius in any of his acts; but considered in effects, or in respect of us, one thing may be said to be first, second, or third in nature, time, and being before, or after another. And thus in respect of us, we say the end must be in nature before the means to the end; now the permission of the fall, repentance, faith, perseverance are used by God as means to bring some to salvation; God therefore doth first project our salvation, and then the means; and both the end and the means are the product of God's election or predestination. Here then is the project, that God will glorify his grace, and to this end he will predestinate Christ, and in Christ he will choose some of the sons of men to salvation, whom, notwithstanding sin, he will make holy and without blame before him in love, Eph. i. 4. This project, or plot, or design of God will be further enlarged in the next passage, viz. his counsels.