Works of Abraham Booth Vol.1 - SAMPLE

The Works of Abraham Booth: Volume 1
vouchsafement [i.e. the bestowing] of spiritual and eternal
blessings to the guilty and the unworthy” (88). He explains that
God’s grace is “eternal,” “divinely free,” and “infinitely rich.”
Booth personifies grace as a queen throughout his work; a
sovereign who conquers sin, death, and ruin, and powerfully
works to lead her subjects to everlasting joy.
Chapters three through eight essentially walk the reader
through Booth’s ordo salutus, to demonstrate how grace reigns
from beginning to end. He starts with election, which he also
calls “distinguishing grace.” This chapter is an utter repudiation
of Booth’s earlier General Baptist convictions and offers a
powerful exposition of Reformed theology. He tells us that in
election, “our Sovereign” first chose Christ, and then chose a
special people to be under his headship in a single, spiritual
body. Election is an act of grace because the elect contribute
nothing to God’s choice. Grace “never affords her smiles to
any because they are worthy,” Booth writes. “She ennobles
none because they are better than others. So to do would be
quite inconsistent with her amiable character; would be utterly
subversive to her grand design” (107).
In subsequent chapters Booth demonstrates the reign of
grace in the sinner’s effectual calling (which he equates with
regeneration), then their pardon and justification. “Pardon is a
blessing of superlative worth,” he says, “because absolutely
necessary to present peace and future salvation. Without it, no
individual of Adam’s race can be happy” (169). Justification,
which subsumes pardon, is “a judicial, but gracious act of God;
by which a sinner is absolved from the guilt of sin, is freed
from condemnation, and has a right to eternal life adjudged,
merely for the sake of our Lord’s obedience, which is imputed
to him, and received by faith” (209-10). It is an act of grace
x