An answer to the discourse of Mr. William Sherlock, touching the knowledge of Christ,…

There is a double love in God:¹ A love of complacence, whereby he delights in his own Holy Image in the Creature, where ever he finds it; And a love of Benevolence, whereby he designs to bestow good things on his Creatures: The first, points at goodness in the Creature; the other, is the great origen of all good things in the Creature. The first, Issues out of the perfect sanctity of his Nature; The other, proceeds according to his Sovereign will and pleasure. But then, saith the Author, God loves for no reason, or without reason. To which I answer, Gods ⟨p. 577⟩love of Benevolence is no Caecus impetus, there is summa ratio in it, it is irradiated with infinite wisdom; but the reason of it is not in the Creature, but in himself only: God would redeem fallen Men not Angels; but surely the reason was not in the Creature, for then all the Grace, Mercy, and Freedom of God in that work vanishes: The whole of it must proceed from the Nature of God, as it respects something in the Creature, and by consequence it could not fall out otherwise, because God cannot deny his Nature. After the Fall it is strange how God did sever, and pick out some to himself out of the rest of Mankind.² Ex Adami liberis tantùm Sethus, ex hujus stirpe Noachus, ex Nochi Filiis Semus, ex illius posteritate Abramus; ac postremò ex numerosâ Abrami sobole unus Isacus placuit electusque est: Cujus Familia Ecclesiae nomen at que dignitatem ineffabili ratione, velut per successionem, sibi vindicaret, caeterae gentes tanquam prophanae, spretaeque à numine sunt. So the learned Cunaeus: And it will be an hard thing to find a reason in the Creature for such a strange separation: God chose and set his love upon his Children of Israel, above all People in the Earth, ⟨p. 578⟩he severed them from all other Nations unto himself; and was the reason in the Creature? No surely; they must not so much as say or mutter in their heart, That they had the Land for their righteousness, Deut. 9.4. No, God tells them, that they were a stiff-necked People, vers. 6. but he chose and loved them, because he loved them,