Entrance into the argument from the promises of God, with their stability and his faithfulness in them — The usual exceptions to this argument — A general description of gospel promises — Why and on what account called gospel promises — The description given general, not suited to any single promise — They are free, and that they are so proved, all flowing from the first great promise of giving a Redeemer — How they are discoveries of God’s good-will; how made to sinners — Consequential promises made also to believers — Given in and through Christ in a covenant of grace — Their certainty upon the account of the engagement of the truth and faithfulness of God in them — Of the main matter of these promises, Christ and the Spirit — Of particular promises, all flowing from the same love and grace — Observations on the promises of God, subservient to the end intended — 1. They are all true and faithful; the ground of the assertion — 2. Their accomplishment always certain, not always evident — 3. All conditional promises made good, and how — 4. The promises of perseverance of two sorts — 5. All promises of our abiding with God in faith and obedience absolute — The vanity of imposing conditions on them discovered — 6. Promises of God’s abiding with us not to be separated from promises of our abiding with him — 7. That they do not properly depend on any condition in believers demonstrated — Instances of this assertion given — 8. Making them conditional renders them void as to the ends for which they are given — Given to persons, not to qualifications — The argument from the promises of God stated — Mr G.’s exceptions against the first proposition cleared, and his objections answered — The promises of God always fulfilled — Of the promise made to Paul, Acts xxvii. 24, etc. — Good men make good their promises to the utmost of their abilities — The promise made to Paul absolute and of infallible accomplishment — Of the promise of our Saviour to his disciples, Matt. xix. 28 — Who intended in that promise; not Judas — The accomplishment of the promise — The testimony of Peter Martyr considered — The conclusion of the forementioned objection — The engagement of the faithfulness of God for the accomplishment of his promise, 1 Cor. i. 9; 1 Thess. v. 23, 24; 2 Thess. iii. 3 — The nature of the faithfulness of God, expressed in the foregoing places, inquired into — Perverted by Mr G. — His notion of the faithfulness of God weighed and rejected — What intended in the Scripture by the faithfulness of God — The close of the confirmation of the proposition or the argument proposed from the promises of God — The assumption thereof vindicated — The sense put upon it by Mr G. — The question begged.
The consideration of the promises of God, which are all branches of the forementioned root, all streaming from the fountain of the covenant of grace, is, according to the method proposed, in the next place incumbent on us. The argument for the truth under contest which from hence is afforded and used is by Mr Goodwin termed “The first-born of our strength,” chap. xi. sect. 1, p. 225; and indeed we are content that it may be so accounted, desiring nothing more ancient, nothing more strong, effectual, and powerful, to stay our souls upon, than the promises of that God who cannot lie.1 I shall, for the present, insist only on those which peculiarly assert, and in the name and authority of God confirm, that part of the truth we are peculiarly in demonstration of, — namely, the unchangeable stability of the love and favour of God to believers, in regard whereof he turneth not from them nor forsaketh them upon the account of any such interveniences whatever as he will suffer to be interposed in their communion with him; leaving those wherein he gives assurance upon assurance that he will give out unto them such continual supplies of his Spirit and grace that they shall never depart from him to their due and proper place.
I am not unacquainted with the usual exception that lieth against the demonstration of the truth in hand from the promises of God, to wit, that they are conditional, depending on some things in the persons themselves to whom they are made, upon whose change or alteration they also may be frustrated, and not receive their accomplishment. Whether this plea may be admitted against the particular promises that we shall insist upon will be put upon the trial, when we come to the particular handling of them. For the present, being resolved, by God’s assistance, to pursue the demonstration proposed from them, it may not be amiss, yea, rather it may be very useful, to insist a little upon the promises themselves, their nature and excellency, that we may be the more stirred up to inquire after every truth and sweetness of the love, grace, and kindness (they being the peculiar way chosen of God for the manifestation of his good-will to sinners) that is in them; and I shall do it briefly, that I may proceed with the business of my present intendment.