WILL. Besides the common Acceptation of this Word, to signify that Faculty of Willing, with which we are endued, or of chusing, desiring, and loving; the Word Will is also taken, 1. For the absolute Will of God, which nothing can withstand: For who hath resisted Rom. ix. 19. Gen. l. 19. Isai. xlvi. 10.his Will? 2. For a Will that is not absolute and immutable: As when Jesus Christ desired that the Cup of his Passion might pass from him, if it had been the Will of God. ‘Tis not the Will of God that the Wicked should perish: Matth. xxvi. 39.Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die, saith the Lord God; and not that he Ezek. xviii. 23.should return from his ways, and live? But if he will perish, and will not be converted, God is not obliged to interpose, and to hinder him from it against his Will. 3. The Will is often taken for a Will of Sign or Malac. i. 10. Isai. lxii. 4.Token. For example, ‘tis the Will of God that all Men should love him and obey him, since he has commanded all to love and serve him; yet certain it is, that small is the number of those that discharge these Duties. Besides, there are Divines that teach, that God vouchsafes no favour to Infidels, to whom the Gospel has not been preached, nor to the hardened and reprobate Sinner. We must therefore affirm, that his Will, in respect of them, that they should pay to him their Worship, Love, and Obedience, is, according to these Divines, a mere Will of Token, opposite to the Will which is called the Will of Favour. 4. Divines still distinguish in God an Antecedent Will, by which God wills a thing in general, and without considering it as modified by certain Circumstances; and a consequent Will, by which God wills a thing, considered as modified by all its Circumstances: God wills the Salvation of all Men by an Antecedent Will, but by a Consequent Will he intends only that the Elect shall obtain Salvation.
Isai. lviii. 3. Eccles. xviii. 30. Genesis xlix. 6.5. Will is taken for Love, Approbation and Complacency: Non est mihi voluntas in vobis, I have no pleasure in you. Thou shalt no more be termed forsaken, neither shall thy land any more be termed desolate; but thou shalt be called Hephzi-bah*: Sed vocaberis voluntas* mea in ea.
Matth. vii. 21. Matth. xii. 50.6. Will is put for the proper Will of Man: Wherefore have we fasted, say they, and thou seest not? Because it was in compliance to your own Will and Pleasure: Ecce in die jejunii vestri invenitur voluntas vestra. And Jesus, the Son of Syrach, says, Go not after thy lusts, but refrain thy self from thine appetites: A voluntate tua avertere. Simeon and Levi broke down the Wall of the Shechemites, to gratify their own Will, their Revenge, and Cruelty: In their self-will they digged down a wall.
- To do the Will of God is put for keeping his Law, submitting to his Orders, &c. Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. And again, Whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother.