being a doctrine of so great importance, be not indifferent about it. Put yourself on the trial touching your interest in it and bring forth your evidences for it. Observe what are the properties of God's elect, and see if they stand on your side. Practical Discourses
Election is absolute. In this are two things of great import— irrevocableness and independency. The decree is irrevocable on God's part, and independent as to human performances. The Lord will not go back from His to save His people, nor shall their unworthiness or averseness make void or hinder His most gracious intendment. And hence those various expressions of the same thing— namely, predestinate, ordain, prepare, appoint—have nothing subjoined that is like a conditional. There is, indeed, a kind of conditions, or rather qualifications, that must and always do precede the final completement of election, as "repentance towards God, and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ," which, therefore, may be called conditionals of salvation, but not so to election.
I knew a man who, when he came under convictions, endeavored with all his might to stifle them. His convictions grew stronger, and he hardened himself against them. He saw their tendency but was so opposite to it that he resolved, in express terms, he would not be a Puritan, whatever came of it. To the church he must go, his master would have it so. But this was his wont—to loll over the seat with his fingers in both his ears. Here general or conditional grace was surely nonplussed. But a chosen vessel must not be so lost. Now steps in electing grace, and by a casual slip of his elbows drew out the stoppers and sent in a word from the pulpit, which, like fire from heaven, melted his heart and cast it in a new mold. Surely in this the Lord did not wait for the man's compliance or improvements; His word was not originated thence nor dependent thereon.
Did [Christ] make His soul an offering for sin to procure men a liberty of sinning? Or was Christ crucified that the body of sin might remain unmortified—yea, get ground and be the more rampant upon it? Is this your kindness to your Friend, to be so in love with His enemies, the spear and the nails that pierced Him, that you will spend and be spent for the service of your lusts? He died that those He died for might live. Live to whom? Not to themselves, but to Him that died for them.