The right method for a settled peace of conscience, and spiritual comfort in 32…

Some Antinomian Writers and Preachers you shall meet with, who will persuade you▪ whatsoever sin you fall into, never ⟨p. 377⟩more to question your Justification or Salvation. I have said enough before to prove their doctrine detestable. Their reason is, Because God changeth not as we change, and Justification is never lost. To which I answer, 1. God hated us while we were workers of Iniquity, Psal. 11.5. & 5.5. and was angry with us when we were Children of wrath, Eph. 3.1, 2, 3. And afterward he laid by that Hatred and Wrath: and all this without change. If we cannot reach to apprehend how Gods unchangeableness can stand with the fullest and frequentest expressions of him in Scripture, must we therefore deny what those expressions do contain? As Austin saith, Shall we deny that which is plain, because we cannot reach that which is obscure and difficult? 2. But if these men had well studied the Scriptures, they might have known that the same man that was yesterday Hated as an Enemy, may to Day be Reconciled and loved as a Son, and that without any change in God; even as it falls out within the reach of our Knowledge: For God Ruleth the world by his Laws: They are his Moral Instruments: By them he Condemneth: By them he Justifieth; so far as he is said in this Life, before the Judgement day, to do it (unless there be any other secret act of Justification with him, which man ⟨p. 378⟩is not able now to understand.) The change is therefore in our Relations, and in the Moral Action of the Laws. When we are Unbelievers and Impenitent, we are Related to God as Enemies, Rebels, Unjustified and Unpardoned: being such as Gods Law Condemneth and pronounceth Enemies; and the Law of Grace doth not yet Justify or pardon: and so God is, as it were, in some sense obliged according to that Law which we are under, to deal with us as Enemies by destroying us: And this is Gods Hating, Wrath, &c. When we Repent, Return and Believe, our Relation is changed: The same Law that did Condemn us, is Relaxed and Disabled, and the Law of Grace doth now Acquit us; it Pardoneth us, it Justifieth us; and God by it: And so God is Reconciled to us, when we are such as according to his own Law of Grace, he is, as it were, Obliged to forgive and to do Good to and to use as sons. Is not all this apparently without any change in God!