Page:A Treatise of the Covenant of Grace (John Ball).djvu/260

 248 life and salvation. This is manifest, in that the Lord doth earnestly againe and againe call upon impenitent and obstinate sinners to repent and believe, protesting that he desires not their death, but rather that they should repent and live, when yet in his just and dreadfull judgement he hardeneth their hearts for their perversenesse and rebellion, that they cannot repent. But in respect of the good pleasure of God not to give them grace to repent and believe, which of his rich mercy he gives to others, who have abused what they received no lesse, perhaps more then they, the end is to manifest his justice in them, for the contempt of his grace. For what God doth command, intreat, perswade and promise, that he doth will as he doth command, intreat, perswade and promise it. But as God doth justly denie that grace to one, which of his free love he vouchsafeth unto another, so he willeth to manifest his justice in the one sort, and the riches of his grace in the other.

Lastly, Some object, that they that are invited must either have Christ, he not dying for them, or misse of Christ though they repented, whereof the former would argue mutability, that Christ should die for men, and not die for them, and the latter would be a breach of promise. A conceit not much unlike, drove Socinus to denie the prescience of God, because whencesoever this prescience commeth, it is altogether certaine, and from that is necessarily gathered an antecedent necessity of all things which are done. ''Socin. Praelect. cap.'' 8. And in the same forme and manner a man may reason from the prescience of God, if God approve the repentance and faith of them, whom he doth certainly foreknow to have no portion or benefit by the death of Christ, then either if they repent they shall have no benefit, which is contrary to his promise, or if they have benefit, then is God deceived, neither of which can be admitted without blasphemie.

And the answer to both these cavils is one, that certaine it is Christ died for them that believe, and whosoever believeth in him truly and unfainedly, shall have benefit by his death: but we need not, we cannot say, Christ died for them for whom he died not, or that God is changeable: For it is as sure and true, that they will not repent and believe for whom Christ died not. The connexion is good, if the reprobate doe repent and believe unfainedly they