To save sinners, it is as necessary to apply as it was to provide the plan of salvation. To prepare and provide a plan of salvation without applying it would have been a vain thing. It must be applied, as well as provided, by an infinite Person. Men will not accept or make use of it, though it be prepared;1 and God, foreseeing this from eternity, in decreeing, in his eternal love, the salvation of sinners, not only appointed his Son to provide a full salvation for them, but also, in the same eternal plan, appointed the Holy Spirit to apply it; that none of the objects of his love should perish for want of applying any more than for want of preparing and providing it.2 The Spirit is an infinite Person, and loves the objects of the divine mercy as much as the Father and the Son do, and is equally faithful to fulfil the work given him to do in the eternal covenant.3
1 John 3:3, 5; 5:40; 6:44; 8:24; Luke 13:3. 2 Jer. 31:33-34; Ezek. 11:19-20; 36:25-27; John 6:37; Luke 15:4-10; Phil. 2:13. 3 John 16:7-9, 14; Rom. 15:13, 30; 1 Cor. 2:10; Isa. 63:10; Jer. 31:3; Eph. 4:30; 2 Thess. 2:13; Rev. 22:17.
