the greatness of his charity. Though he has so much grace and mercy, yet he cannot shew more than the nature and exigence of the opportunity will bear; and so his pleasure doth not swell so high, as otherwise it would do. For little sins, and few sins, are not so fit an object for a grace that would ride in triumph. Free grace is God's darling, which he loves to advance; and it is never more advanced, than when it beautifies the most misshapen souls.

3. Power. The scripture makes conversion a most wonderful work, and resembles it to creation, and the resurrection of Christ from the dead, &c.

(1.) Creation. Conversion simply considered, is concluded by divines to be a greater work than creation for God puts forth more power morally in conversion, than he did physically in creation. The world was created by a word; but many words, and many acts, concur to conversion. The heavens are called the works of God's fingers, Psal. 8.3. But the gospel in the effects of it, is called the arm of the Lord, Isa. 53. 1; men put not their arm to a thing, but when the work requires more strength than the fingers possess. It is the power of God to salvation; and the faith it works is begun, and fulfilled with power, 2 Thess. 1. 11. God created the world of nothing; nothing could not objectively contribute to his design, as matter does to a workman's intent; yet neither doth it oppose him, because it is nothing. As soon as God spake the word, this nothing brings forth sun, moon, stars, earth, trees, flowers, all the garnish of nature out of its barren womb. But sin is actively disobedient, disputes his commands, slights his power, fortifies itself against his entrance upon the heart, gives not up an inch of ground without a contest. There is not only a passive indisposition, but an active opposition. His creating power drew the world out of nothing, but his converting power frames the new creature out of something worse than nothing.

: Conversion is called a Resurrection.

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Naturally there is nothing but darkness and confusion in the soul; we have not the least spark of divine light, no more than the chaos had, when God, who commanded light to shine out of that darkness, 2 Cor. 4. 6, shined in our hearts. To bring a principle of light into the heart, and to set it up in spite of all the opposition that the devil, and a man's own corruption makes, is greater than creation. As the power of the sun is more seen in scattering the thickest mists that triumph over the earth, and mask the face of the heavens, than in melting the small clouds compacted of a few vapours; so it must needs argue a greater strength to root out those great sins that were twisted and inlaid with our very nature, and become as dear to us as our right eye, and right hand, than a few sins, that have taken no deep root. Every man naturally is possessed with a hatred of God, and doth oppose every thing which would restore God to his right and being since the fall, filled with a desire of independency, which is daily strengthened with new recruits, and loath to surrender himself to the power and direction of another: it is a more difficult thing to tame this unruly disposition in man's heart, I say more difficult than to annihilate him, and new create him again. As it is more easy oftentimes for an artificer to make a new piece of work, than to repair and patch up an old one that is out of frame.

2. Resurrection. Conversion simply is so called; Quickened us when we were dead, Eph. 2. 5. And the power that effects it, is the same power that raised Christ from the dead; which was a mighty power, that could remove the stone from the grave, when Christ lay with all the sins of the world upon him, Eph. 1. 19, 20; so the greater the stone is upon them, the greater is God's power to remove it. For if it be the power of God simply to regenerate nature, and put a new law into the heart, and to qualify the will with a new bias to comply with this law, and to make them that could not endure any thoughts of

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grace, not to endure any thoughts of sin; it is a greater power sure to raise a man from that death, wherein he has lain thirty or forty years rotten and putrified in the grave: for if conversion in its own nature be creation and resurrection, this must needs be creation and resurrection with an emphasis.

The more malignant any distemper is, and the more fixed in the vital parts, and complicated with other diseases, and greater is the power in curing it; for a disease is more easily checked at the first invasion, than when it has infected the whole mass of blood, and become chronical; so it is more to pull up a sin, or many sins, that have spread their roots deep, and stood against the shock of many blustering winds of threatenings, than that which is but a twig, and newly planted.

3. Traction or drawing, Drawing implies a strength. If conversion be a traction, then more strength is required to draw one that is bound to a post by great cables, than one that is only tied by a few packthreads; one that has millions of weights upon him, than one that hath but a few pounds.

4. It is the only miracle Christ hath left standing in the world, and declares him more to be Christ than any thing. When John sent to know what he was, Luke 7. 20, he returns no other account but a list of his miracles; and that which brings up the reer as the greatest, is, the poor, ivayyeλíčovтai, are evangelized. It is not to be taken actively, of the preaching of the gospel; but passively, they were wrought upon by the gospel, and became an evangelized people, transformed into the mould of it. For else it would bear no analogy to the other miracles. The deaf heard, and the dead were raised; they had not only exhortations to hear, but the effects were wrought upon them. So these words import not only the preaching of the gospel to them, but the powerful operation of the gospel in them. It is not so great a work to raise many thousands killed in a

Glory of God's Wisdom.

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battle, as to evangelize one dead soul. It is a miracle of power to transförin a ravenous wolf into a gentle lamb, a furious lion into a meek dove, a nasty sink into a clear fountain, a stinking weed into a fragrant rose, a toad or viper into a man endued with rational faculties and moral endowments; and so to transform a filthy swine into a king and priest unto God. In conquests of this nature does divine power appear glorious. It is some strength to polish a rough stone taken out of the quarry, and hew it into the statue of a great prince; but more to make this statue a living man. Worse stones than these doth God make children, not only to Abraham, but to himself, even the Gentiles, who were accounted stones by the Jews, and are called stones in scripture for the worshipping idols.

*

What power must that be, which can stop the tide. of the sea, and make it suddenly recoil back? What vast power must that be, that can change a black cloud into a glorious sun? This, and more doth God do in conversion. He doth not only take smooth pieces of the softest matter, but the ruggedest timber full of knots, to plane and shew both his strength and art upon.

4. Wisdom. The work of grace being a new creation, is not only an act of God's power, but of his wisdom; as the natural creation was. As he did in contriving the platform of grace, and in bringing Christ upon the stage, so also in particular distributions of it, he acts according to counsel, and that infinite too, even the counsel of his own will, Eph. 1. 11. The apostle having discoursed before, ver. 9, of God's making known the mystery of his will in and through Christ and ver. 11, of the dispensation of this grace, in bestowing an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him, who works all things according to the counsel of his own will: he doth not say, God predestinated us according to the coun

* Grot. Matt. 3. 9.

sel of his own will, but refers it to all he had said before, viz. of his making known the mystery of Christ, and their obtaining an inheritance. And ver. 8, speaking before of the pardon of sin in the blood of Christ, according to the riches of God's grace, wherein, saith he, he hath abounded towards us in all wisdom: as there was abundance of grace set apart, to be dealt out, so there was abundance of wisdom, even all God's wisdom, employed in the distribution of it. The restoring of God's image requires at least as much wisdom, as the first creating of it. And the application of redemption, and bestowing of pardoning and converting grace, is as much an act of God's prudence, as the contrivance of it was of his counsel.

Grace, or a gracious man in respect of his grace, is called God's workmanship, Eph. 2. 10, roinua, not pyor; work of his art, as well as strength; and operation of his mind as well as his hand. His poem, not, barely a work of omnipotency, but an intellectual spark. A new creature is a curious piece of divine art, fashioned by God's wisdom, to set forth the praise of the framer; as a poem is by a man's reason and fancy, to publish the wit and parts of the composer. It is a great skill of an artificer, with a mixture of a few sands and ashes, by his breath to blow up such a clear and diaphanous body as glass,, and frame several vessels of it for several uses. not barely his breath that does it, for other men have breath as well as he; but it is breath managed by art. And is it not a marvellous skill in God, to make a miry soul so pure and chrystalline on, a sudden; to endue an irrational creature with a divine nature, and by a powerful word to frame so beautiful a model as a new creature is?

It is

The more intricate and knotty any business is, the more eminent is a man's ability in effecting it. The more desperate the wound is, the more honourable is the chirurgeon's ability in the cure. Christ's healing a soul that is come to the last gasp, and given over by