glorycloud's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- the vindications of God's dishonors by the affronts of His grace "7. You shall have no cause to blame the pure justice of angry Lamb, the Judge of the world, if when you cry, "Lord, Lord," He is as deaf to your dreadful cries as you were to His calls; if He does not know you so as to save you when you did not know Him so as to serve Him. This will justify the direful last sentence, "Go, ye cursed," and clear your eternal stripes from the charge of cruelty. when you have willingly abused the infinite love of the Son of God. Grace was offered to you, but you would not be healed nor reformed; you destroyed yourselves. It is divine justice that the wickedness of the wicked in due penalty should be upon him (Ezekiel 18:20). Wicked gospellers even put fury into a gracious God, and necessitate Him to gain the reputation of His holiness out their damnation. It becomes the natural justice of His majesty to be the Avenger of willful unbelief who is not the Author of it. The Holy One of Israel is provoked (Isaiah 1:4). The holiness of God is read in the characteristics of those temporal, spiritual, and eternal judgments that He executes on the impenitent world. It is just that the heaviest of punishments should be the vindications of God's dishonors by the affronts of His grace, and that upon a threefold account: First, it is just that the heaviest punishments should be the vindications of God's dishonors for the ungrateful and voluntary high indignities that vain, loose hearts and lives put upon God's grace. Wisdom has sent out her maidens to invite sinners to be saints (Proverbs 9:3-4), and to sit down at her heavenly table (verse 5) of all-sufficient, satisfying, saving provisions. Wisdom comes with persuasions, denunciations, and admonitions to accept the call, but the loose guests either do not come at all, or else, unprepared, they surfeit on good food and turn it into ill humors. The offended King of heaven has sent out His heralds of arms to proclaim peace and mercy on the most righteous terms; but stout rebels will not resign their hearts up to Christ. Rather they keep them strongly garrisoned for lust and the devil; and this the success the calls of God's grace meet with. Satan and Christ both knock at the soul for entrance. It is opened to Satan and locked to Christ. And shall obstinate, unprofitable hearers blame God under their everlasting smart, when they have not much despised their ministers as they have despised Jesus Christ? Shall loose, unreformed children, who despised their godly wooing and warning parents, cry out of injustice under eternal wrath, when they did not so much abuse their holy invitations as much as God's? It was His Spirit that made gracious offers by religious fathers and mothers to gainsaying children. Conscience will give testimony that God graciously called forward, willful sinners to be pardoned, not to abide under condemnation; to become saints, not remain sinners; to be free, not continue as captives; to obtain a blessing, not to lie under the curse, and to be saved in mortifying the deeds of the body, not to be ruined by cruel mercy and indulgences to corrupt nature, the worst of enemies." pg. 25, 26 'The Abuse of God's Grace' by Nicolas Claget (1610-1663) 8:52 p.m. - 2021-09-28 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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