An expository comment, doctrinal, controversial, and practical upon the whole first chapter to the…An expository comment, doctrinal, controversal, and practical upon the whole first chapter to the…

These two things premised, let us now consider, What is that grace which ¹the Apostle doth here exalt against all fleshly wisdom. And

These two things premised, let us now consider, What is that grace which ¹the Apostle doth here exalt against all fleshly wisdome. And

1. 1What is that grace the Apostle exalteth against fleshly wisdom. 1. That grace whereby he was converted.

First, As the ground-work of all, there is to be understood, That grace of God, whereby he was called out of that pharisaical estate, and condition of enmity against Christ, to be a faithful and ready servant to him. This wonderful grace of God to him, doth often melt the heart of Paul, he speaketh of it with aggravating particulars, as much as may be. Thus Galat. 1, 15. When it pleased God, who called me by his grace, to reveal his Son in me, &c. And therefore 1 Tim. 1. 15, 16. he acknowledged himself an instance, (Because the chiefest of sinners,) of the long-suffering of Christ. In Paul's conversion there were no preparations, no merits of congruity, there was no docible and fitted dispositions: Insomuch that the adversaries to Gods grace do acknowledge Paul's conversion to be an extraordinary thing. In the midst of his persecuting fury, when God might have struck him dead with thunder and lightnings from Heaven, and so send him quick (as it were) to Hell; God did visit him with his grace, and give him another heart, to his own amazement, and of all those who heard of it. So if you look upon Paul in a single capacity, as a private person in the whole course of his life, he giveth all to the grace of God.