This I greedily take hold of, to illustrate and carry on the ground and foundation of the special love he bears to his elect, and as agreeing with what the Scriptures say; both that love is in God, (which no man can deny to be in the nature of God to love, for he loves himself, his Son, &c.,) and that love is the ground of mercy, and, by the same reason, special electing love the ground of mercy in God to sinners. Thus, Eph. 2:4, ‘But God, who is rich in mercy,’ (having in the foregoing verses set forth our sinfulness and misery,) ‘for the great love wherewith he loved us,’ &c. And Aquinas’ tantum in quantum, in made the measure of the great and infinite difference of his love to creatures. There is a common love to men as creatures, so he loves every man and thing he hath made; but where he shews special mercies, as pardon of sin and the like, there is an in quantum, by an how far he loves, as the foundation of that, a special love. But still the question will be, What should be the ground of a special love in God to some, with such an infinite difference of that love from what it is to others in common? Aquinas resolves that, with this further foundation, to be aliquid sui; to make those he specially loves some way his own, and then the consequence of that to be, to look upon their misery as his own; and with that the Scriptures also agree, Isa. 63:9, ‘In all their affliction he was afflicted:’ the like in Exod. 4:31.Thomas Goodwin, “An Exposition of the First Chapter of the Epistle to the Ephesians: Sermon III (Ephesians 1:3),” in The Works of Thomas Goodwin, 12 vols. (Edinburgh: James Nichol, 1861), 1:41–42. Elsewhere Goodwin calls this “common love” a “providential love.” See Thomas Goodwin, “Of the Work of the Holy Ghost in Our Salvation,” in The Works of Thomas Goodwin, 12 vols. (Edinburgh: James Nichol, 1863), 6:180.
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