Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1861 edition. Excerpt: ... things; and as things are framed and fashioned, so they must frame their counsels; but with God it is otherwise, he frameth things according to the counsel of his own will, he adviseth with none: ' Who hath been his counsellor?' Rom. rL 34. In the third place, it is called the counsel of his own will, to shew that in casting whatsoever he meaneth to do, his will hath the supreme stroke. Still you shall find it in the Scripture, that all is attributed to his will; and observe the phrase here, it is not called the will of his counsel, but it is called rather the counsel of his will, --it is the observation of Catherinus and Musculus upon the place, --to shew the difference between man's will and God's. The law of man's will is still to be determined by the understanding, so that the will of a man is the will of his counsel. My brethren, when God considered whether he would make a world or no, the consultation was not whether it was best to make it or not to make it. Why 1 Because there was no best to God to do the one or the other; there is the greatest reason for it that can be, for it was all one to him whether he did it or no. What caused him then to do it? What did cast it? It was his will. His will setteth his counsel so to work, as it were, to do it the best way; but it is not his will being determined by his counsel as judging it best, for it was neither better one way nor other for God, for he standeth in need of no creature. So that in Scripture you have election attributed to his will, ' He hath mercy on whom he will;' you have creation attributed to his will, 'By thy will all things were created, ' Rev. iv. 11. But now, though his will had the casting of it clearly, and therein lieth the sovereignty and liberty of the will of God