Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SERMON III. THE GRACE OF GOD. BY THE KEY. GILBERT TEXXKNT.
And the Lord passed by before him, and proclaimed, The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering.?Exodus zxxiv. 6. The next divine attribute that comes now, according to the order of our text, to be considered, is the grace of G-od.
The Lord is merciful and gracious. There is nothing more frequently mentioned in Scripture, than the grace of God. I shall mention but a few passages, for if I should take notice of all, I must transcribe a great part of the Bible.
To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he has made us accepted in the beloved. Eph. i. 6.
He is gracious and full of compassion. Ps. cxii. 14.
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, be with you all. 2 Cor. xiii. 14. In speaking upon this subject, I purpose I. To explain its nature. II. Show its kinds. III. Mention some considerations, serving to manifest its sovereignty and glory. IV. Consider what is really and seemingly opposed thereto, and then proceed to some improvement. I. I return to consider the first proposed, which was to explain the nature of the grace of God. Now, the word grace signifies something that is free, as was observed in the preceding sermon, and it is taken two ways, either for an attribute of God, which is in God, or for the gift of God, which is from God. In the first sense, the grace of God signifies his free and sovereign benevolence, by which he peculiarly favours and doth good to his creatures, whence God is called gracious, as in our text, i. e. endued with grace; as from his goodness he is called good, and from his justice, just. The gifts of God, which are the effects of the grace that is in him, are metonymically called grace, especially such of th…