Donald John MacLean on John Knox (c.1514–1572), the Gospel Offer, Common Grace, and God’s Universal Love

The Gospel Offer, Common Grace, and God’s Universal Love

Knox’s strong articulation of double predestination was accompanied by a belief in a gospel offer genuinely made to all who hear it, and a love and grace of God that was common to all. He clearly stated that the gospel offer extends beyond the elect.⁹⁶ He noted that the word of God works ‘diversly in the heartes of those to whom it is offered’.⁹⁷ God ‘of his great mercie’ had ‘of late yeares offered againe to the unthankfull world’ the ‘light of salvation’, but instead of being received that light had enflamed the hearts of men with ‘rage and crueltie’.⁹⁸ The reprobate who had grace offered to them ‘oppugned and obstinately refused’ it.⁹⁹ This gospel offer is to be identified with the ‘Generall vocation, by the which the world by some manor of meanes is called to the knowledge of God’. Knox distinguished this ‘generall vocation’ from the ‘vocation of purpose, which apperteineth to God’s children onely’.¹⁰⁰ He acknowledged that while few were ultimately chosen, ‘many are called’.¹⁰¹ Nevertheless, there were qualifications Knox placed on the gospel offer. First, those who were within the visible church heard its teachings and exhortations in a degree those outside the Kirk did not.¹⁰² All within the visible church had the external call to salvation.¹⁰³ Second, and perhaps somewhat inconsistently, Knox appeared to restrict the external call to the penitent. He held the gospel call in Isa. 55 was not to ‘all indifferently’ but only to ‘such as do thirst’.¹⁰⁴ He limited the call to repentance to ‘those that thirst, that hunger, that mourne, that are laden with sinne’.¹⁰⁵ There seems an undeniable tension, even disjunction, between this limitation and his clear teaching that the reprobate despise and reject what is offered to them.¹⁰⁶

Knox ‘constantly denied’ that electing love was common to all.¹⁰⁷ However, he also held that ‘God both blesseth and loveth in bestowing temporall benedictions, upon such as in his eternall counsell he hath rejected, and therefore hateth’.¹⁰⁸ Allied to this was his clear teaching ‘that the most wicked men are participant of God’s mercie in temporall felicitie’.¹⁰⁹ These ‘graces’ and ‘mercies’ which were ‘common to all’ had to be sharply distinguished from the mercy and grace that was shown only to the elect in Christ Jesus, but that was not to deny there was such a category as common grace and mercy.¹¹⁰ These temporal mercies included the restraining operations of God’s Holy Spirit.¹¹¹ Knox argued that grace and mercy were shown to the reprobate for two reasons. The first was for the good of the elect. Common gifts, for example, however they were abused by the reprobate, ultimately produced some benefit for the Church. The second reason was for ‘God’s goodnes to be praised’. That God was good to even his enemies ultimately brought glory to his name.¹¹²

Again, Scottish federal theologians held similar views on these matters. So, for example, Rutherford articulated very clearly his belief in a common grace and a common love of God for all distinct from God’s electing love and grace. He held that ‘it is a state of common grace to be within the visible church’.¹¹³ Simply to be in an external covenant with God was a favour from God, expressive of his common grace and mercy.¹¹⁴ Rutherford also maintained a universal love for all. He believed that God in some sense loved all his rational creatures, ‘yea, even his enemies’.¹¹⁵ One evidence of this love was that God ‘sends the gospel to many reprobates, and invites them to repentance, … with longanimity and forbearance’.¹¹⁶ But this love was not electing love and was not ultimately intended to secure the salvation of any.¹¹⁷

In regard to the gospel offer the federal theologians were, if anything, more expansive than Knox. They clearly held that, in Durham’s words, ‘where the gospel comes, it makes offer of Jesus Christ to all that hear it’.¹¹⁸ Such a belief was reflected in their preaching: ‘we earnestly exhort you … to receive this gospel, to submit to the righteousness of faith, to open to him that is knocking at the door, to yield to him, and to give him the hand, that bygone quarrels may be removed, and taken out of the way.’¹¹⁹ Indeed, while Knox appeared to limit the gospel offer to those who are ‘thirsty’ (Isa. 55.1), James Durham explicitly refused to follow suit. In his own comments on Isaiah he pointed out that God directly invites those ‘without money’ to come; if ‘thirsting’ were required before coming, he reasoned, that would imply the possession of some ‘money’ on the part of the sinner. Thirst, then, was better attributed to those likely to come, rather than identified as a prerequisite to coming.¹²⁰ He noted further that no church could be as devoid of ‘preparations’ for grace as the Church of Laodicea described in Rev. 3, yet it received the full and free gospel offer.¹²¹

Just as Scottish federal theologians did not go beyond Knox in their teachings on reprobation, so they articulated a gospel offer, a common love and a grace that extended beyond the elect, and which was no less expansive than it was in Knox’s doctrine. Here again there is no evidence of a betrayal of his teachings or a hardening of earlier (Knoxian) predestinarian doctrine into something reprehensible and incompatible with his thought.
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96. Macleod correctly notes that ‘Knox … regarded the Free Offer as an axiom’. Macleod, ‘Dr T. F. Torrance and Scottish Theology’, p. 58. See also McDonald, John Knox, p. 100.
97. Knox, Works, vol. 5, p. 21.
98. Ibid., p. 23.
99. Ibid., p. 42. See also pp. 45, 71, 164–5, 260, 330, 401.
100. Ibid., p. 117.
101. Ibid., p. 128. Knox simply responds to the charge that God, by outwardly calling to salvation those whom he does not intend to save, acts hypocritically by calling it an ‘impudent lie’ (p. 128).
102. Ibid., p. 270.
103. Ibid., p. 285.
104. Ibid., p. 118.
105. Ibid., p. 404.
106. This is perhaps the only ground for justification of [Richard] Kyle’s exaggerated assertion [in “The Concept of Predestination in the Thought of John Knox,” WTJ 46.1 (Spring 1984): 53–77] that Knox was ‘by no means consistent with himself ’ in On Predestination; Kyle, ‘The Concept of Predestination’, p. 56.
107. Knox, Works, vol. 5, p. 61.
108. Ibid., pp. 284–5. For other, slightly more oblique references to God’s universal love, see pp. 58, 151, 270–1. Thus it is incorrect to say without clarification, as Kyle does, that Knox ‘denied God loved all human beings’; Kyle, ‘The Concept of Predestination’, p. 66.
109. Ibid., p. 86. See also pp. 86–7, 257. Ultimately the reprobate’s despising of the common grace and mercy of God undergirds the judgement of God on the reprobate. However, far from diminishing the reality of that goodness, it is only because genuine goodness, mercy and grace were shown to them that their condemnation is justly increased. See ibid., p. 262.
110. Ibid., p. 87.
111. Ibid., p. 255.
112. Ibid., p. 258.
113. Samuel Rutherford, The Covenant of Life Opened (Edinburgh: Andrew Anderson, 1655), p. 107.
114. Ibid., pp. 107, 340. He explicitly includes here ‘all within the Visible Church, whether Elect or Reprobate’.
115. Samuel Rutherford, Christ Dying and Drawing Sinners to Himself (repr., Edinburgh: T. Lumisden and J. Robertson, 1727), p. 550.
116. Ibid., p. 550.
117. Ibid., p. 550.
118. James Durham, Christ Crucified Or the Marrow of the Gospel in Seventy-Two Sermons on the Fifty-Third Chapter of Isaiah (Chris Coldwell, ed.; Dallas: Naphtali Press, 2001), p. 122.
119. Ibid., pp. 100–1.
120. Ibid., p. 80.
121. Ibid., p. 80.

Donald John MacLean, “Knox Versus the Knoxians? Predestination in John Knox and Seventeenth-Century Federal Theology,” in Reformed Orthodoxy in Scotland: Essays on Scottish Theology 1560–1775, ed. Aaron Clay Denlinger (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015), 22–24.

Donald MacLean on the Term “Offer” in James Durham (1622–1658)

The Term “Offer”

From Carstairs’s quotation immediately above, it is already clear that Durham and his contemporaries were content with the terminology of “gospel offer.” There is little room for doubt or debate as to whether Reformed theology used the term “offer.”⁵⁰ The area for examination, then, is not simply whether the Reformed used the term “offer,” but what they meant when they spoke of the “free offer of the gospel.”

In considering this, the first thing that needs to be defined is what exactly is being offered in the gospel? In summary, Durham stated that “Christ Jesus Himself, and His benefits” is what is offered.⁵¹ That is, all the Son had done to redeem sinners is offered in the gospel: “This good and gracious bargain that is made between the Father and the Son, which is wholly mercy, is brought to the market and exposed to sale on exceedingly easy and condescending terms, and that to bankrupt sinners.”⁵² To expand on this: “peace and pardon, grace and glory, even all good things [are] offered to you freely!”⁵³ Or to phrase it differently, “Tell me, what is it that you would have? Is it remission of sins? ’Tis here. Would you have the covenant and promises? Here they are: Is it Christ Himself that you would have.… Here He is. Or would you have heaven and be eternally happy? ’Tis also here.”⁵⁴ So Christ Jesus and all that He has done for the salvation of His people and the fruits of His death are offered in the gospel. The position outlined above is expressed by John Murray as follows: “It is Christ in all the glory of his person and in all the perfection of his finished work whom God offers in the gospel.”⁵⁵

Having seen what is offered, namely Jesus Christ and His benefits, it is now important to define what Durham meant by “offer.” Is it true that, as has been claimed, we should understand “offer” simply in the sense of “present or set forth,”⁵⁶ or does “offer” mean something more than simply a presentation of facts? Is it true that the Reformed in the seventeenth century used offero, and its cognates, simply to denote “present”? This is the assertion of Raymond Blacketer who posits that oblato should not be translated as “offer” but as “present” or “exhibit” and that this accords with sixteenth- and seventeeth-century Reformed usage.⁵⁷ This assertion has been called into question by Scott Clark who argues that “the semantic range of ‘offero,’ as it is used by the orthodox, is closer to ‘invitation’ than ‘demand.’”⁵⁸ What of Durham — how does he define the term? And does his definition support the historical definitions of Blacketer or Clark? It is certainly true that, for Durham, Christ is presented and set forth in the gospel, but it is evident from the images he used to explain and define “offer” that, for him, it is not simply equivalent to “present” or “set forth.”

One of the most common images Durham uses to define “offer” is that of wooing and beseeching. He explains that “[t]he offer of the gospel…is set down under the expression of wooing…and supposes a marriage, and a bridegroom, that is by his friends wooing and suiting in marriage.”⁵⁹ So, in understanding what the gospel offer is, it is appropriate to think of a man trying to persuade the woman he loves to marry him. This image, of course, carries with it more than a simple presentation of facts. It would be an absurdity for a man to try and win the affections of a woman simply by presenting a few facts about himself. No, the image carries with it the idea of an attempt to win the girl by earnest persuasion. And so it is with the gospel where Christ “doth beseech and entreat, etc. that thereby hearts may be induced to submit cheerfully to Him.”⁶⁰ We can “[c]onsider further how our Lord Jesus seeks and presses for this satisfaction from you; he sends forth his friends and ambassadors, to woo in his name, and to beseech you to be reconciled.… He pleads so much and so often, and entreats every one in particular when he is so very serious in beseeching and entreating, it should, no doubt, make us more willing to grant him what he seeks.”⁶¹ From this one image alone it is clear that to “offer” is, for Durham, more than a presentation of facts.

Another common image in Durham to explain what he means by “offer” is inviting. Durham comments that “[t]he offer of this gospel…is set out under the expression of inviting to a feast; and hearers of the gospel are called to come to Christ, as strangers or guests are called to come to a wedding.”⁶² He also states that “the gospel comes to invite men to the wedding.”⁶³ Particularly significant in considering the dispute over the meaning of the word offer is Durham’s denial that the gospel is simply a proclamation. He states that the gospel “not only proclaims, but invites; and doubles the invitation to come. It not only invites, but puts the invitation so home that people must either make the price…and buy or refuse the bargain.… [It] cries, ‘Come, buy! Come and enter the covenant freely.’ And this it does by a frank offer, by earnest and persuasive inviting, and by the easy conditions that it proposes the bargain on.”⁶⁴ So it appears that the contention that by “offer” Reformed theology simply meant proclamation or presentation is inadequate, for the gospel “not only proclaims but invites.”

Durham also frequently uses the image of selling to convey the meaning of “offer.” “The offer of the gospel is…set out often under the similitude or expression of a market where all the wares are laid forth on the stand.”⁶⁵ Another example of this is Durham stating “that there is a good and excellent bargain to be had in the gospel, and on very good and easy terms. ’Tis a market day, and indeed it would be a pity that such wares should be brought to the market and that few or none should buy; that Christ should (so to speak) open his pack and sell no wares. Therefore let me…persuade you readily and presently to embrace the offer of this richest bargain.”⁶⁶ Again, considering this image, it would be generally agreed that it would be a poor salesman who simply declared facts about what he was trying to sell. Indeed, the very image of selling contains the idea of a willingness to sell and great effort to ensure that there is a sale.

This, then, is Durham’s understanding of “offer”— not simply a presentation of facts, not simply a command but wooing, beseeching, inviting, and selling.⁶⁷ Clark and Daniel presented the understanding which best accords with the theology of Durham.
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50. Curt Daniel observes: “It cannot be debated that the word was employed with all regularity throughout the Puritan era.” Curt Daniel, “Hyper-Calvinism and John Gill” (Ph.D. diss., University of Edinburgh, 1983), 398.
51. Durham, Revelation, 271.
52. Durham, Unsearchable Riches, 144.
53. Ibid., 155.
54. Durham, Unsearchable Riches, 333.
55. Murray, “Free Offer,” in Collected Writings, 4:132.
56. Hanko, History, 89.
57. Blacketer, “Three Points,” 44–45.
58. Clark, “Janus,” in VanDrunen, The Pattern of Sound Doctrine, 169. Curt Daniel rejects arguments, similar to Blacketer’s, put forward by Herman Hoeksema in reference to the definition of offer. See Daniel, “John Gill,” 398.
59. Durham, Christ Crucified, 80.
60. Durham, Revelation, 272.
61. Durham, Christ Crucified, 475–476.
62. Ibid., 80.
63. Ibid., 213.
64. Durham, Unsearchable Riches, 151 (emphasis added).
65. Durham, Christ Crucified, 80.
66. Durham, Unsearchable Riches, 152.
67. So David Silversides is correct to note that the “term ‘offer’ did not mean merely to ‘exhibit’ or ‘present’ in a manner bereft of the connotation of an overture addressed personally to the hearers for their acceptance” (Silversides, The Free Offer, 65).

Donald John MacLean, "James Durham (1622–1658) and the Free Offer of the Gospel," Puritan Reformed Journal 2:1 (January 2010): 101–104. This paper is "is an amended version of a lecture given at the Inverness branch of the Scottish Reformation Society in November 2008" (ibid., 92n1). Dr. MacLean blogs at the James Durham Thesis. The subject of his doctoral thesis is, “Reformed Thought and the Free Offer of the Gospel: With Special Reference to  The Westminster Confession of Faith and James Durham (1622–1658),” which is available for free download at EthOs (click). Vandehoeck & Rupprecht will soon publish MacLean's dissertation under the title James Durham and the Gospel Offer in Its Seventeenth-Century Context.

James Durham bio:
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Donald MacLean on the Sincerity of the Gospel Offer in James Durham (1622-1658)

Is the Gospel Offer Sincere?

Having considered so far that God earnestly invites all the hearers of the gospel to come to Christ, the question naturally arises as to the sincerity of the gospel offer. That is, does God want all hearers of the gospel offer to accept Christ, or to express it differently and starkly, does God desire the salvation of all hearers of the gospel? This is an important theological question and Professor John Murray states: “It would appear that the real point in dispute in connection with the free offer of the gospel is whether it can properly be said that God desires the salvation of all men.”¹⁰⁶

What does Durham make of this question? Does he teach that God desires the salvation of all men? It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that Durham would answer this question in the affirmative¹⁰⁷ given his comments: “God the Father, and the King’s Son the Bridegroom, are not only content and willing, but very desirous to have sinners come to the marriage. They would fain (to speak with reverence) have poor souls espoused to Christ.”¹⁰⁸ This teaching is not simply one isolated slip of the tongue in preaching, as Durham elsewhere notes, “As our Lord Jesus Christ has purchased this redemption and remission, so he is most willingly desirous, and pressing that sinners to whom it is offered should make use of his righteousness and of the purchase made thereby, to the end that they may have remission of sins and eternal life.… He is (to speak with reverence) passionately desirous that sinners should endeavour on ground to be sure of it in themselves. Therefore he…makes offer of it, and strongly confirms it to all who embrace it.”¹⁰⁹ Again commenting on the verse, “Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out” (John 6:37), Durham states:

“The word is doubled in the original: ‘I will not, not [cast him out]’”; to show the holy passion of our Lord’s desire and His exceeding great willingness to have sinners close with Him. In Isaiah 45, salvation is promised even to a look: “Look unto me, all ye ends of the earth, and be saved.”¹¹⁰ Indeed, he can go so far as to say that “I do not know a truth of the gospel that has more confirmations than this has, that Christ the Mediator is very willing and desirous that sinners close with him, and get the good of his purchase.”¹¹¹

Durham is clear that to deny the serious and sincere nature of the gospel is not appropriate: “To have a gracious offer from God, and to fear at it, as if He were not in earnest, is very unbecoming the gospel. Whenever He pipes, it becomes us well to dance, and to believe and credit Him when He speaks fair and comfortably.”¹¹²

Allied to this, Durham speaks of the willingness of God to save sinners, as the following extract demonstrates:

Christ the Bridegroom and His Father are very willing to have the match made up and the marriage completed.… The evidences of His willingness are many…as, that He has made the feast…and prepared so for it, and given Himself to bring it about, and keeps up the offer and proclamation of marriage even after it is slighted…the Father and the Son are most heartily willing; therefore they expostulate when this marriage is refused, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered you, but ye would not!” (Matt. 23:37). “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, if thou, even thou, hadst known in this thy day the things that belong to thy peace!” (Luke 19:42). All these sad complaints, that Israel would not hearken to His voice, and His people would have none of Him (Ps. 81:11), that He came to His own, and His own received Him not (John 1:11), and that they will not come to Him that they might have life (John 5:40), make out His willingness abundantly and undeniably.¹¹³

In noting Durham’s teaching on the desire of God that hearers would accept the gospel offer, it is not appropriate to understand him as simply using indefinite terms (such as “sinners”) and by these terms meaning “the elect.” Aside from the strange inconsistency this would create with Durham’s own definition of the gospel offer as a particular invitation to every individual hearer (how could a particular invitation be indefinite in its object?), Durham clearly affirms the willingness of God to save everyone who hears the gospel: “This word we now preach, nay, these stones shall bear witness against you that our Lord Jesus was willing to save you and every one of you.”¹¹⁴

To quote Professor John Murray again: “In other words, the gospel is not simply an offer or invitation but also implies that God delights that those to whom the offer comes would enjoy what is offered in all its fullness.”¹¹⁵

Connected to this is Durham’s teaching that the gospel offer is an expression of God’s common grace: “(2 Cor. 6:1) We beseech you (he says) that ye receive not this grace in vain; which is not meant of saving grace, but of the gracious offer of grace and reconciliation through him.”¹¹⁶ And again, “Why will God have Christ in the offer of the gospel brought so near the hearers of it?… Because it serves to commend the grace and love of God in Christ Jesus. When the invitation is so broad, that it is to all, it speaks of the royalty of the feast, upon which ground (2 Cor. 6:1) it is called grace, the offer is so large and wide.”¹¹⁷

However, having noted all this, it is important to clarify in what sense Durham spoke of God’s desire for the salvation of the hearers of the gospel and of His willingness to save all. Central to this is Durham’s distinction between the secret will and the revealed will of God.¹¹⁸ Basing his thoughts on John 6:39–40, he states that here we “have two wills to say so.”¹¹⁹ Verse 39 (“This is the Father’s will that sent me that of all that he hath given me I should lose nothing”) refers to “the secret paction [contract] of redemption” while verse 40 (“And this is the will of him that sent me, that everyone that seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life”), refers to “the revealed will, pointing to our duty.”¹²⁰ The secret will is not to be “searched into at the firsthand” but rather “his revealed will belongs to you, and that is to see that you believe.”¹²¹ This revealed will shows what is “pleasing and delightsome” to God — indeed, what God “commands, calls for and approves” cannot be conceived of, but as “pleasing to God.”¹²² It is only in the sense of this revealed will that we can speak of God’s will to save all gospel hearers. As Durham argues, “if the Lord’s willing of men (at least men that are under His ordinances) to be saved be thus understood, as including only the duty that God layeth upon men, and the connection that He hath made between it and Salvation in His word, it may be admitted: but if it be extended to any antecedent will in God Himself, distinct from that which is called His revealed will, this place and such like will give no ground for such an assertion [a universal saving will].”¹²³ Durham rejected any “assertion of the Lord’s having a will and desire of the salvation of all men, besides His signifying of what is acceptable to Him as considered in itself by His Word.”¹²⁴ This also shows that when Durham spoke of God’s desire to save all, he was relating this to the revealed will.¹²⁵ Similarly, in discussing common grace, Durham draws a sharp distinction between saving and common grace, arguing that while common grace is indeed wrought by the Spirit, the difference between the two is “in kind” and not simply “in degree.”¹²⁶

____________________
106. Murray, “Free Offer,” in Collected Writings, 4:113.
107. For the sense in which this is the case, see the further discussion below.
108. Durham, Unsearchable Riches, 44.
109. Ibid., 313–314.
110. Ibid., 329.
111. Ibid., 325. So Durham would confirm Ken Stebbins’ belief that the language of God’s desire for the salvation of all hearers of the gospel has been “used by nearly all reformed theologians from Calvin down to the present day” (Stebbins, Christ Freely Offered, 20).
112. Ibid., 96.
113. Ibid., 55. Again, the similarity of the textual basis here with those used by John Murray in The Free Offer of the Gospel is evident.
114. Ibid., 333 [emphasis added].
115. Murray, “Free Offer” in Collected Writings, 4:114.
116. Durham, Christ Crucified, 79.
117. Ibid., 83.
118. Von Rohr called this distinction a “fundamental factor in Puritan theology itself” and described the difference as follows, “On the one hand there is God’s commanding and forbidding will.… It is the will of God as known in God’s word, the will that prescribes and promises.… It is thus the known will, the will of the conditional covenant, the revealed will of God.… On the other hand there is the will of God’s good pleasure.… This is the predestinating will, the will of God’s private purpose. It is the will of the absolute covenant.… It is the secret or the hidden will of God” (Von Rohr, The Covenant of Grace, 130).
119. Durham, Christ Crucified, 233. Durham also uses these verses to make the same point in Unsearchable Riches, 78.
120. Ibid., 233.
121. Ibid., 233–234.
122. Ibid., 427.
123. Durham, Revelation, 214. In the context here, Durham states he would rather speak of God’s revealed will that all men repent, rather than that all men be saved. However, this statement, occurring again in a polemic against those in the Reformed tradition who were positing universal aspects to Christ’s atonement and God’s saving will, does not seem to have been borne out in Durham’s own sermons.
124. Ibid., 268.
125. R.A. Finlayson’s words, although originally reflecting on the position of Calvin, capture this well: “It would seem clear that God wills with genuine desire what He does not will by executive purpose. This has led theologians to make use of the two terms, the decretive will and the preceptive will of God, or His secret and revealed will.… The position could thus be more clearly put as meaning that God desires all men to be righteous in character and life and to use the means He has appointed to that end. It is in harmony with the revealed will of God that without the use of means appointed by Him the end shall not be attained. As a holy God, the Creator commands all His moral creatures to be holy, and He cannot be conceived as in any way obstructing their pursuit of holiness by His decree” (R. A. Finlayson, “Calvin’s Doctrine of God” in Able Ministers of the New Testament [Papers read at the Puritan and Reformed Studies Conference, 1964], 16).
126. Durham, Revelation, 158.

Donald John MacLean, "James Durham (1622–1658) and the Free Offer of the Gospel," Puritan Reformed Journal 2:1 (January 2010), 112-116. This paper is "is an amended version of a lecture given at the Inverness branch of the Scottish Reformation Society in November 2008." Ibid., 92n1. Dr. MacLean blogs at the James Durham Thesis. The subject of his doctoral thesis is, “Reformed Thought and the Free Offer of the Gospel: With Special Reference to  The Westminster Confession of Faith and James Durham (1622-1658),” which is available to download for free at EthOs (click). Vandehoeck & Rupprecht will soon publish MacLean's dissertation under the title James Durham and the Gospel Offer in Its Seventeenth-Century Context.

James Durham bio:
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James Durham (1622–1658) on God's Desire

God the Father, and the King’s Son the Bridegroom, are not only content and willing, but very desirous to have sinners come to the marriage. They would fain (to speak with reverence) have poor souls espoused to Christ.

James Durham, The Unsearchable Riches of Christ (Repr.; Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria, 2002), 44.

Make no mistake. By "sinners," Durham means all sinners, not merely the elect. He's affirming God's universal saving will in very strong, classically Calvinistic terms.

(HT: Donald J. MacLean)

Update on 3-9-15:

7. Consider further, how our Lord Jesus seeks, and presses for this satisfaction from you; he sends forth his friends and ambassadors, to woo in his name, and to beseech you to be reconciled, and told you, that it will not be thousands of rams, nor your first-born, that will do the business, but that ye must humble yourselves, and walk with God, which necessarily supposeth the use-making of Christ: if there had not been such sin, in not improving his satisfaction, but when he pleads so much, and so often for this, and entreats every one in particular to satisfy him, saying, as it were, let me see of the travail of my soul, let me have this much satisfaction for all my sufferings, that ye will make use of my righteousness; and when he is so very serious, in beseeching and entreating, it should, no doubt make us more willing to grant him what he seeks. 8. Ye should look upon this, not only as a discourse in the general to sinners, but ye should also look on it, as addressed to every one of you in particular; and therefore remember, that ye will all be called to give an account of this matter, and it will be asked you, what became of such and such an offer of grace, and whether ye gave him the satisfaction that he called for, or no: According to that word, Acts xvii. 31. 'He hath appointed a day, wherein he will judge the world in righteousness, by that man whom he hath ordained, whereof he hath given assurance to all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead.' He would have judged the world through Christ had not come; but he will have a day wherein he will call all the hearers of the gospel to an account, especially as to this, to wit, what welcome they have given to Christ; and seeing such a day is coming, when people will be called to an account, what use they made of him, with what face will many come before him, when it shall be told them, that he craved no more satisfaction from them, for all that he suffered, but that they would have improved his sufferings for their own good, and that yet they would not satisfy him so much? Doth not this say, that there is need, that we should look well what what fruit there is of his sufferings, that there may be more than if he had not suffered at all.

James Durham, Christ Crucified: Or, the Marrow of the Gospel, 2 vols. (Glasgow: Printed by Alex Adam, for John Johnston, in the Caltoun of Glasgow, 1792), 2:224–225.

The Fifth Observation was, that Christ the Bridegroom and his Father are very willing to have the match made up and the marriage completed, therefore doth he send forth his servants with a strict commission, not only to tell sinners that all things are ready, but to bid them come to the Marriage: yea he not only wills them to tell them that all things are ready, & to invite, but to Compel them (as Luke hath it chap. 14.23.) to come in: to stir them up and press them to it: to threaten them if they come not, and to accept of no refusal or nay-say: the evidences of his willingness are many, which I will not now insist upon: as that he hath made the feast, and such a feast, and prepared so for it, and given himself to bring it about, and keeps up the offer and Proclamation of the Marriage, even after it is slighted: all these and many more tell plainly that the Father and Son are most heartily willing: therefore they expostulate when this Marriage is refused, O! Jerusalem, Jerusalem how often would I have gathered you, but you would not: Matt. 23. O! Jerusalem, Jerusalem, if thou even thou, hadst known in this thy day the things that belong to thy peace; Luk. 19. All these sad complaints, that Israel would not hearken to his voice, and his people would have none of him, Psal. 81.7. That he came to his own and his own received him not, Joh. 1.11. And that they will not come to him that they might have life. Joh. 5.4 make out his willingness abundantly and undenyably.

James Durham, The Unsearchable Riches of Christ (Edinburgh, Printed by the Heirs and Successors of Andrew Anderson, Printer to his Most Excellent Majesty, 1696), 56–57.

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