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Love's pedigree. Or A discourse showing the grace of love in a believer to…Love's pedigree. Or A discourse shewing the grace of love in a believer to…
Love's pedigree. Or A discourse showing the grace of love in a believer to be of a divine original delivered in a sermon preached at the lecture in Boston, Febr. 29. 1699[/]1700. / By S. Willard, teacher of a church there. ; [Two lines from James]Love's pedigree. Or A discourse shewing the grace of love in a believer to be of a divine original delivered in a sermon preached at the lecture in Boston, Febr. 29. 1699[/]1700. / By S. Willard, teacher of a church there. ; [Two lines from James]
printed by B. Green, 1700
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.
USE. II.
This tells us that Gods Electing love could not be founded on the prevision of any thing in the Creature. We are here acquainted with the Absolute Sovereignty of God in this affair. If Gods love be the first cause of all Grace and Good to us, it must needs then be it self Independent, for that is an inseparable property of a Supreme Cause. If Gods love produceth all that is good in the Creature, it is then impossible that the goodness of the Creature should produce that love to it. To limit Gods special love which he bears unto any, unto something foreseen in the Subject, is to make something in us that did precede that, and that did not derive from it as the Efficient of it; which is to invert the order of Causes, and put the second being in the place of the first. God could not foresee any thing lovely in us, but upon his own purpose to confer it upon us, ⟨p. 26⟩on which the futurity of it depended; and therefore this foresight could not cause his love, but must needs flow from it. He bestowed this gift on us because he loved us, Rev. 1.5. Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins, in his blood.
This tells us that Gods Electing love could not be founded on the prevision of any thing in the Creature. We are here acquainted with the Absolute Sovereignty of God in this affair. If Gods love be the first cause of all Grace and Good to us, it must needs then be it self Independent, for that is an inseparable property of a Supream Cause. If Gods love produceth all that is good in the Creature, it is then impossible that the goodness of the Creature should produce that love to it. To limit Gods special love which he bears unto any, unto something foreseen in the Subject, is to make something in us that did precede that, and that did not derive from it as the Efficient of it; which is to invert the order of Causes, and put the second being in the place of the first. God could not foresee any thing lovely in us, but upon his own purpose to confer it upon us,