A49258:589
A treatise of effectual calling and election In XVI. sermons, on 2 Peter 1.10.…
A treatise of effectual calling and election In XVI. sermons, on 2 Peter 1.10. Wherein a Christian may discern, whether yet he be effectually called and elected. And what course he ought to take that he may attain the assurance thereof. Preached by that faithful servant of Christ, Mr. Christopher Love, late minister of Laurence Jury, London.A treatise of effectual calling and election In XVI. sermons, on 2 Peter 1.10. Wherein a Christian may discern, whether yet he be effectually called and elected. And what course he ought to take that he may attain the assurance thereof. Preached by that faithfull servant of Christ, Mr. Christopher Love, late minister of Laurence Jury, London.
London: printed for John Rothwell, 1655
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
That there is a double Electing. First, a choosing to some peculiar Office. Secondly, there is an electing to grace, life, and glory. Now, when Christ saith, Have I not chosen you twelve? it is meant of his choosing of them to an Office, to the place of an Apostle, to be his disciples. Now it is true, that a man may be chosen to some peculiar Office in the Church of God, and yet be a perishing and damned man; but this phrase hath no relation to the decree of God from eternity, only to a temporal electing of twelve men to a temporal Office, to the Office of an Apostle.
That there is a double Electing. First, a chusing to some peculiar Office. Secondly, there is an electing to grace, life, and glory. Now, when Christ saith, Have I not chosen you twelve? it is meant of his chusing of them to an Office, to the place of an Apostle, to be his disciples. Now it is true, that a man may be chosen to some peculiar Office in the Church of God, and yet be a perishing and damned man; but this phrase hath no relation to the decree of God from eternity, only to a temporal electing of twelve men to a temporal Office, to the Office of an Apostle.
Another Scripture they abuse is, Exod. 32.32. it was Moses prayer, If thou wilt not (saith Moses to God) forgive their sins, then blot my name out of the book of life. Now, say they, the book of life is Gods election: and here Moses prayed, that God would blot his name out of the book of life. Intimating, say they, a man may be elected and written in that book, and yet afterward blotted out and perish.
To which I answer. That this prayer of Moses is only a wish or supposition, as Pauls was, when he wished he were accursed from Christ, for his kindred in the flesh. Now a man may suppose mountains of Gold, and suppose things that never were, nor never shall be in being: bare suppositions put nothing in being; so here, that Moses makes a supposition in a pathetical prayer, this doth no way argue, as if his name could be blotted out of the book of life.