Nations 3 dly Because a person may be cast out from actual Communion with the whole visible Church and yet remain a disciple of Christ and a true Believer And that this hath been the lot of some of the best servants of God might be made manifest in diverse Instances if it were either necessary or lay now before me 4 Because no adult person especially such as are not sprung of Christian and Covenant-parents either hath or can plead a right of admission into the visible Church of Christ who both doth not live to God and of whose so doing there is not some previous Moral Certainty and Evidence Interest in Christ by Faith is the Foundation of all that Interest which any Man rightfully hath in the Church as a Member of it It is through a Relation and habitude to Him as our Vital Head that we come to be knit together as Members of the same Body So far is our Communion with the Church from being the Fountain and spring of our Holiness that as it s our being Holy that entitles us to the Communion with the Church before God so it is our seeming to be so that entitles us to her communion before Men. So that upon the whole our Authors Gloss of the Churches being understood by the True Vine proving contradictious to it self repugnant to the Reason of Mankind in the measures by which they judg concerning the sense of a Proposition as well as inconsistent with and irreconcileable to the Context and withal Novel I hope he will find few Proselytes to it and fewer Advocates for it And as the Arguments upon which he hath built it are no other than vain and trifling Pretences so the most plausible of them have been already replyed to and the futilousness of the rest shall hereafter if necessity do so require be made manifest I shall shut up this with Dr. Hammonds Paraphrase of the Text whom I suppose none of the Conforming-Clergy will either upbraid with Ignorance or deny him to equal Mr. Sherlock both in the knowledg of Divinity and the Docttrine of the Church of England I am the True Vine and my Father is the Husband Man is thus Glossed by him I am the True Generous Fruit bearing Vine Jer. 22.1 my Blood as the blood of the Grape shall Rejoyce the Heart of God and Man Jud. 9.12 And my Father who hath thus planted me in this World here below hath the whole ordering of all that belong to me and every Branch every Believer every Member of my Mistical Body And accordingly he understands our abiding in the Vine ver 5. to be in the Virtue of Grace communicated from Christ to us Having discharged the Church and the Doctrine of the Gospel from being signified by the Name Christ as that Word and Name denotes the Term to which Believers are united it remains that we declare what is the true import and just meaning of it with respect to the room it hath in the present Question And here by the Name of Christ we understand the person of Christ nor is any thing else intended properly by it in the whole Gospel Supposing that secondarily and in way of Trope it occur sometimes used to imply the Doctrine of the Gospel and may be sometimes to signify the Christian Church yet that primarily and properly it doth not denote the Person of Christ is a blasphemous wild Imagination That Christ is a Person was never denied by any unless it be the Quakers who neither know what the Idea of Person is which they deny him to be nor what themselves intend in the acknowledgment they make of Him The Arrians and Socinians deny the Divinity of his Person the Manichees of old disclaimed the real Manhood of His Person The Nestorians asserted two Persons in him as well as two Natures but that he was a Person some one way or other hath been always granted till a Generation hath of late arisen who neither understand whereof they speak nor what they renounce But the Enquiry is What we mean by the person of Christ to which Believers must be united And this we are obliged the rather to declare our selves about seeing Mr. Sherlock is pleased to Character us as having here out-done all the Metaphysical subtilties of Suarez Pag. 200. First then By the Person of Christ we understand more than his being a meer Man There are a sort of Gentlemen who though they own the Personality of Christ yet they wholly renounce the Divinity of His Person And to give them their due 't is upon the supposition of his being a meer Man that they allow him to be only a Political Head to his Members Nor is this any thing but a just pursuance of their former Principle for not admitting Him to be God 't is impossible that he should be a Head in respect of Vital Influences to any And I wish that among the many Expositions of Scripture-Texts which our Author hath transcribed from them he had not in complyance with them perversely sensed even such places wherein their design is to undermine the Deity of the Son of God I would not be thought to impeach Mr. Sherlock of opposing the God-head of Christ but this I affirm that if his Glosses of Col. 1.19 Col. 2.3 and 2.8 Joh. 14.20 Joh. 1.14 which are the very same that the Socinians impose upon those places be admitted we have some of the main proofs of it wrested out of our hands Secondly Though by the Person of Christ to whom we are United we understand more than a meer man yet we also affirm that he is truly and properly a Man As we do not Un-God him with the Arians and Socinians so neither do we Un-man him with the Marcionites and Manichees As he is truly and Essentially God and not meerly styled so upon the account of his wonderful Conception the Sanctity of His Life His Power of working Miracles His Resurection from the Dead His Rule and Care over the Church and the like so He is as truly and essentially Man having assumed the whole and entire Humane Nature with whatsoever belongs to it as a necessary Affection or Adjunct He had both a true Organical Body and was not a meer Spectrum or Phantasm in the shape and form only of a Man as Marcion and Manes blasphemously imagined and had also a true Humane Rational Soul nor was the Deity meerly instead thereof supplying its Office to the Body as Apollinaris with equal folly and perversness asserted Thirdly We do by the Person of Christ to which we are United intend and understand more than his God-head and Man-hood abstractedly and separately considered And if this be The outdoing all the Metaphysical subtilties of Suarez which our Author Chargeth us with that we have found out a Person for Christ in this sense distinct from his God-head and Man-hood we think not to have done would have been as far from Wit as Truth A deep and mysterious Doctrine
can resolve us how it comes to pass that one part more indiscerptibly cleaves to another than if they were fastned together by Adamantine Chains I see no reason why the Incomprehensibleness of the Manner of our Union with Christ should any ways obstruct or weaken our belief of it having all the assurance that Divine Revelation can give us concerning our being United to Him As we assent to an Evident Object of sense or to that which is plainly demonstrated by Reason though there occurr many things in the manner of their Existence which is Unconceiveable So the Quod sit and reality of our Vnion with Christ being attested by Him who cannot lye it becomes us to embrace it with all steadiness of Belief though we cannot conceive the Quomodo or Manner how it is For my part I have often thought that through God's leaving us pos'd and Non-plust about the most ordinary and certain Phaenomena of Nature he intended to train us up to a Mancipation of our Vnderstandings to Articles of Faith when we were once assured that he had declared them though the difficulties relating to them were Vnaccountable Nor is the manner of the Coherence of the parts of Matter the only difficulty in Nature relating to Union that perplexes and baffâ—'s our Reason but the Mode of the Mystical Incorporation of the Rational Soul with the Humane Body doth every way as much entangle and leave us desperate as the former That man is a kind of Amphibious Creature allied in his Constituent parts both to the Intellectual and Material Worlds and that the several Species of Beings in the Macrocosm are combined in him as in a Systeme Reason as well as Scripture instructs us That we have a Body we are fully assured by its Density Extension Impenetrability and all the adjuncts and affections of Matter and that we have an immaterial Spirit we are demonstratively convinced by its reacting on it self its consciousness of its own Being and Operations not to mention other Mediums whereof we have spoken elsewhere And that these two are United together to make up the composition of Man is as plain from the Influence that the Body hath upon the Soul in many of its perceptions and which the Soul hath upon the Body in the motions of the Spirits Blood withall that ensues and depends thereupon Nor could the affections and adjuncts of the Material Nature nor the Attributes and properties of the Immaterial be indifferently predicated of Man were not the Soul and Body united together in the Unity of Mans person But now how this can be is a knot too hard for Humane Reason to unty How a pure Spirit should be cemented to an earthy Clod or an Immaterial substance coalesce with Bulk is a Riddle that no Hypothesis of Philosophy can resolve us about How this intellective 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 should come to be button'd to this corporeal 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is a mystery the unvailing whereof must be reserved to the Future state For our Indagations about it hitherto do leave us altogether unsatisfied 1 The Aristotelick substantial uniter and cement will not do For besides its repugnancy to Reason that there should be any substantial ingredient in the constitution of man save his Soul and Body the Unition of it self with the Soul supposing it to be Material or with the Body admitting it to be an Incorporeal will remain unintelligible And to affirm it to be of a middle Nature partaking of the Affection and adjuncts of both is that which our Reasonable Faculties will never allow us to subscribe to the Idea's which we have of Body and Spirit having no alliance the one with the other And to style it a substantial Mode is to wrap up repugnancies in its very notion For though all Modes be the modification of substances yet they are Predicamental Accidents And how essential soever thâ—s or that Modification may be to a Body of such a species yet 't is wholly Extrinsecal and Accidental to Matter it self In brief the voluminous Discourses of the Aristotelians both about Union in General and the Union of the Rational Soul to the organical Humane Body in particular resolve themselves either into Idle Tattle and Insignificant Words or obtrude upon us contradictions and Nonsense 2 To preclude all Union betwixt the Soul and Body on supposition that they are not distinct constituent parts of Man is plainly to despair of solving the difficulty For not to dispute whether the Soul and Body may in Philosophick rigor be called parts or whether man with reference to them may be styled a Compositum 't is enough that the one is not the other but that they are different principles and that neither of them considered separately is the Man Though the Soul and Body be perfect substances in themselves and though the Soul can operate in its disjunct state in its separation will be no less a Person than Soul and Body now together are yet there are many Operations belonging to the Soul in this conjunct state of which it is uncapable in the separate and there are many things predicable of the Soul and Body together which cannot be affirm'd of them asunder How close and intimate soever the Union betwixt the Soul and Body be and how great soever their mutual dependences in most of their Operations be upon one another yet not only the intellectual Spirit and the duely organised Matter remain even in their consociation classically different their Essences Affections Operations admitting a diversity as well as a distinction but there are some operations belong to each of them upon which the other hath no Influence For as the Mind is Author of many cogitations and conceptions to which the Body gave no occasion so the Body is the spring and fountain of several Functions over which the Soul hath no Dominion nor any direct Influence They remain as much distinct notwithstanding the Union which intercedes between them as they would have done should we suppose them to have had an existence previous to their confederations or as they shall be after the dissolution of the League between them From all which it may be scientifically concluded that they are distinct and different Principles in mans Constitution But whether thereupon he ought to be called a Compositum or they to be styled parts will be resolved into meer Logomachie chat about Words Though to speak my own mind I see no Cause why Man may not properly enough obtain the appellation of Compositum and the Soul and Body be allowed for Constituent parts Nor Thirdly doth the Cartesian Hypothesis though the most ingenious and best contrived of any hitherto thought upon fully satisfy an inquisitive Mind in the Matter before us Their Hypothesis is briefly this That God in his Infinite sapience chose to create three distinct and different kinds of Beings some purely Material which yet through difference of the Figure Size Number Texture and Modification of
brought into a Continuity and as the meat which we eat being concocted in the Stomach that Laboratory of Nature doth incorporate it self with the previous Corpuscular Particles which constitute our Organical Body without the coexistency of two or more of them in one and the same Individual place which is that we style penetration of Dimensions So I see not but that a Hypostatical Union of Christ with Believers might be easily defended if Penetration of Dimensions were all the inconvenience it were liable to Tertullian who thought God Corporeal as did also the Anthropomorphites and the Audiani little dream'd tha◠a Personal Union could not be maintain'd without Penetration of Dimensions forasmuch as he believed the Incarnation of the Son of God and the Hypostatical Union of the Humane Nature to the Eternal 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And though the Opinion of the Corporeity of God hath not only been condemned by the Ancient Church as an Heresie but rationally refuted and demonstrated to be both blasphemous absurd yet I do not remember that amongst all the Arguments levied against it that this of Penetration of Dimensions through the Personal Union of the Humane Nature with the Word is so much as mentioned Though some of the Primitive Fathers as well as the Heteticks styled Luciferiani held the soul to be Material yet they never imagined that through being united to the grosser Matter of which the Humane Body is fram'd that any penetration of Dimensions ensued nor is this Medium mustered against them by any that have accosted and baffled their opinion There are some odd Stories in Authors worthy of Credit which seem to import a Personal Union betwixt two created Intellectual Beings and yet I do suppose that no man unless it be Mr. Sherlock will thence infer a penetration of Dimensions One is in Buchanan's History of Scotland where he tells us of a Monster which from the middle downward having but one Body had from thence upward two and that what ever impression was made upon the lower parts excited a perception in both alike but that one only was affected by assaults made upon them where their Members and Organs were distinct Now this together with their frequent quarrelling with one another seems to argue that they had two distinct souls and different formal Principles of perception and operation and yet that they were personally United seeing both every impulse upon the leggs and thighs was perceived by each of them and also because the inferior parts were under the influence of the one Head as well as of the other An instance something parallel to this we have in Voetius de Creatione where he tells us of a young man whom thousands in Holland saw who besides a Head which he had in its due and natural place had another prominent and jetting out from his Belly and that these two Heads were inhabited and actuated by distinct souls as appeared by the contrary perturbations and opposite passions which sometimes even to their falling out with one another display'd themselves in them In fine though we both disclaim all Personal Union of Christ with Believers and abhor the ascribing any such thing to sinful Worms as Identity with the Holy One of God yet I do not see that the opposing it by a Medium drawn from Penetration of Dimensions is either solid or pungent § 10. They who instruct us in the arranging Discourses do not only advise that in our Ratiocinations the stronger Reasons ought to succeed and support the weaker and our Velites precede our Triarij but that those things which perplex our progress though they do not directly oppose it should be first removed before we address to that which is either more difficult to be established or more particularly contradicted and gain-said And accordingly having proceeded hitherto in the best Method and by the most Regular steps I could and discharged the Notion of Believers Union with Christ from all such things as have no room in the Formal Idea of it we are next to apply our selves to the consideration of these things which though they some way or other enter its conception yet they neither adequately declare it nor are the Immediate foundations of that Mystical Union betwixt Christ and Christians whose Quality and Complexion we are enquiring into And the first thing which here falls under our prospect is that though there be a Legal Union betwixt Christ and Believers yet a Legal Union alone will not sustain the weight of all the Scripture-expressions which declare the mystery of our coherence with our Blessed Redeemer A Legal Union I not only grant but assert only I say that the whole of a Believers Union with Christ is not comprehended in it Two things then I am to prove 1. That there is such an Union between the Lord Jesus Christ and the Elect of God as may be styled a Legal Union 2. That this is not all the Union which intercedes between Him and Believers 1. Christians may be said in a Law sense to be One with Jesus Christ. This I account my self obliged to justifie because Mr. Sherlock by endeavouring to invalidate the Media upon which it is built hath not only undermined but in effect denyed it Now it is not by any Act Convention Appointment or Designation of ours that Christ comes to be constituted our Delegate Agent Representative or Surrogate We had neither any power over the Son of God to substitute or interpose Him in our room nor over the everlasting Father to oblige Him to accept any satisfaction from him or to admit that His sufferings should be effectual to Redeem us Yea having lost Gods Image and forfeited his Favour we were so far from being thoughtfull how to recover either the one or the other that Despair in our selves and Enmity against God were the Natural Attendants of our Sin and Misery The Law Union between the Redeemer and us is the Emergency and result of a Federal Pact between the Father and the Son The Blessed Trinity having resolved to manifest the glory of Immense Wisdom and Infinite Mercy in the recovering Lapsed Man from Sin and Wrath the Father by an act of Soveraign choyce and unconceivable Love invites the Son to interpose between the Law and us and the Son by the like Love and Complacential Election condescends to do so Though the exuberant fulness of God supersede all thoughts of any real accession to Him in any of His perfections yet in this great transaction towards Man we must conceive Him not only acting in consistency with the Honour of his Attributes but to the declaration of the Glory of all his properties Man having shaken off his dependency upon God by transgressing the Law of Creation Gods Rectorship over him which is Regulated by his Wisedom Holiness Veracity and the Eternal Rectitude and Righteousness of his Nature would not allow that he should be received into Favour but in such a way and by such means
Agent that can deprive him of his Being 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He only hath Immortality 1 Tim. 6.16 All things owing their Existence to him there is both a Power and a Right resident in him of depriving them should he judg it fit of their Beings Whatsoever is derived from his Power and Bounty he may take away at his pleasure Yet I reckon it absurd to think that he doth annihilate our Souls it being contrary to the Method which he observes in other parts of the Universe No substance yet ever perished Under all the Mutations that Matter undergoes by which this and that Individual body comes to be destroy'd there is not so much as one single Atome lost 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 No substantial Entity is totally destroyed saith the Philosopher Non perit in tanto quicquid mihi credite mundo Ovid. By the Immortality of the soul then we mean no more but that it includes no principles in its self by which it can be brought to decay And this it derives from it being Immaterial No spiritual substance is capable of that dissolution which a Body is lyable to and suffers For seeing Material subjects come to be corrupted only by a separation of their conjoyned parts The Soul being Immaterial and so void of parts is in danger of no such dissolution Now in discoursing the Immortality of the Soul I think fit in the beginning to discharge my self from an exception or two which though hugely insisted on by those who will have the soul to be meerly corporeal and consequently corruptible yet are in themselves absurd and irrational The first is this that there is no such thing in the World as an Incorporeal Being and that Existence is not to be affirmed of any thing but what is perceivable by sense and that we cannot have assurance that any thing is but what we have ocularly beheld To which I reply 1 That they miserably beg the question which they ought to prove They have not been able to assign any contradiction that lyes against an Incorpoâ—eal Being more than against a Corporeal 2. Their Objection doth equally militate against the Being of God as against the Immaterial Nature of the Soul For if God be at all he is Incorporeal a Corporeal God being pregnant with Contradictions 3. We are not to require more proof of any thing than it is capable of According to the diversity of Objects we are furnished with distinct faculties in order to the perception of them and there are different lights in which they are seen Who questions the being of Sounds Odours c. because they are not discerned by the same Organical Faculty that Colours are To require that an Immaterial should fall under the perception of sight is to demand that an Immaterial should be a Material There are Innumerable things whereof we have the most convincing Certainty and yet they were never the Objects of Sense No man ever saw a Thought and yet we are fully assured that we have Thoughts How many things do the Gentlemen that make this exception believe which yet they never saw 4 Though Incorporeal Beings be not Immediately perceived by sense yet through diverse of their operations which affect our Sensitive Organs we have a mediate assurance of their Existence by our very Senses The second exception is taken from the inexplicableness of Union betwixt a Material and an Immaterial There is no Cement say they by which the one can be knit to the other Incorporeals are of a penetrating Nature and consequently cannot take hold of Matter so as to make a Whole consisting of two constituent parts so vastly different To this I answer 1. That there is nothing more Unreasonable than wholly to question the Existence of things because we do not Understand the Modes according to which they Exist To discharge a Cause out of the precincts of Being because we cannot give a reason of all its particular effects ought to be justly reckon'd amongst the greatest of absurdities Whatsoever is prov'd by Reason we are firmly to believe it though there may be many things in the Theory of it that are wholly inconceivable While we have all imaginable assurance of the conjunction of the soul with the body and that the soul cannot be corporeal our Faith ought no ways to be weakned though we know not the Physical way of their coalition and how they come to be United 2. There is as much difficulty in apprehending the connexion of one part of Matter with another as in Understanding the Incorporation of the Soul with the Body and yet no man questions but that there are bodies in which the particles of matter are united I hope to make it appear Châ—pt 3d. that there is not any Hypothesis of Philosophy yet extant by which the Union of the parts of Matter in contâ—nuous Bodies can be solved and yet we are very well assured they are connected together A 3d. Exception is raiâ—ed from the Sympathy that is betwixt the Soul and the Body from which they would conclude an Identity of Nature between them To which I briefly return to these things 1. There are many cases in which our Souls are affected without the least impression either from bodily Objects without us or any previous excitation of the Spirituous Blood within us For not to mention the impression which the Soul receives from the consideration of things purely Spiritual and Divine which do no ways immediately affect the Body all the Influence imaginable which they have upon it proceeding primarily from the mind it self and its dominion over the Animal Spirits I shall only name Troubles of Conscience which arise only from Moral Causes and the exercise of our Reasons about what we have done I may add that there are many cases wherein the Soul and Body seem to have no Communion with one another and that not only in Ecstasies when the Soul is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in a manner for a season separated from the Body but even in other Hence men upon the borders of Grave when without strength vigor or pulse yet even then they have their thoughts more refined and their understandings more spritely than at other times And which is more strange are so little affrighted at death though they fully understand it that they lay down the Body with the same compoâ—edness and more delight than if they were only putting off their Cloaths Nor are they only persons tired with the miseries of the World that do so bâ—t such many times who have enjoyed all the delight that this earthly state can afford 2. We find our Souls frequently determining themselves in way of chusing and refusing contrary to the provocations of sense and the cravings of the bodily Appetite Though our Intellectual Faculties have a perception of sensual Delights yet they often chuse both that which is contrary to fleshly pleasures and which no Corporeal Faculty is able so much as once to apprehend
Were we constituted of meer Matter all our operations should be produced by a fatal Impulse and in every act we should be under the like Necessity as Matter is when forcibly determined to Motion While we find our selves endowed with a faculty determinative of it self We may rationally infer that the impulses of outward Objects upon the bodily Organs and the continuation of their Motion to the Brain and Heart do only solicite and not force out Assent and that the Soul it self is of an Immaterial Nature 3. All that sympathie which we observe between the Soul and Body ariseth meerly from the close connexion of the one with the other and is necessary both in order to the Souls governing the Body its being engaged to take care of it and provide against its necessities And as a Lutanist loseth not his skill because he cannot play melodiously upon an Instrument whose strâ—ngs are either broken or ill tun'd No more is the Soul prejudiced in her self by bodily Maladies though she be hindred discomposed in her operations through the distemper of those Organical Instruments which she is forced to use That we are too much affected with every passion and irregular motion of the blood and Animal Spirits doth not prove that our Souls are Corporeal or that our irregular actings upon those inordinate motions are the results of fatal Impulses but only shew that we do excite our Intellectual powers to the preventing those violent Motions and the keeping the Body Sedate and to the curbing and restraining them when excited and that we do by sloth neglect suffer our selves to be depressed by those Terrestrial encumbrances and hurried by those Motions which if we were not wanting to our selves we might easily tame and subdue Having free'd our selves from these exceptions we now proceed to the thing it self and in the mentioning the Arguments which offer themselves in Nature to prove the Immoâ—tality of the Soul I shall not insist on that Argument which is so vigorously urged by some Modern as well as Ancient Writers Namely that if the Soul were Corporeal we should not be the same to day that we were yester day We remain the same at sixty Years of Age that we were at twenty though in the mean time we have worn away many bodies and therefore say they there must be something Immaterial in us which is the foundation of this Identity This I shall wave for they who contend for the Corporeity of the Soul will reply that we are no otherwise the same this Year that we were the last than Brutes and Vegtables are Nor shall I press the Argument that is drawn from sensation because what ever is in it for the Immateriality of the sentient and percipient Principle in us concludes in behalf of Brutes that they have the like For the Hypothesis of Des-Cartes that Beasts are meer Machines I look upon it as altogether indefensible But though I decline and wave the using of this Medium for the reason I have now suggested yet I dare not censure it as trifling much less disclaym it as Sophistical These then being lay'd aside there are others to be produced and seeing that whatsoever is Incorporeal is upon the very score of its being so incorruptible and excepted from dissolution also I shall mainly inquire what reasons there are in the Light of Nature whereby we may be induced to believe that our Souls are Immaterial First if the Soul were only a Crasis of the Body it were capable of no other distempers but what arise from the compression or dilatation of matter or from the obstruction and inflamation of Humours while we therefore find it subject to Maladies which spring meerly from Moral causes and which are no more curable by the prescriptions of Physicians than the Stone or Gout are to be removed by a Philosophy Lecture we have sufficient Cause to believe that it is of an incorporeal Nature 2 dly The essences of things are best known by their operations and the best guess we can make of the Nature and Condition of beings is from the quality of their Actions While therefore by contemplating our selves we find that we do elicite actions which exceed the power of matter and the most subtile Motion of Corporeal particles we have all imaginable ground to think that we are possessed of a principle that is Immaterial as well as Intellectual He who considers that there is not one perfect Organ in the Human Body but the parallel of it is to be met with in the Noblest sort of Brute Animals and yet that there are diverse operations performed by men that no Beast whatsoever is capable of doing the like must need apprehend that the Soul is not a Corporeal Faculty nor a contexture of Material parts Here all the Acts of Intellection may be insisted on 1 Acts of simple Apprehension We are endowed with a Faculty that frame 's Notions and Ideas of things which exceed the Sphere of Sense which are no ways capable of sensible Representation nor were the Notions of them conveyed into us by the help of Terrestrial Images Such are the Notions of Immaterial Beings infinite Space the Habitudes of one thing to another Moral Congruities and Incongruities abstract and Universal Natures Proportions of Figures Symmetry of Magnitudes yea the notion of perception it self 2 Acts of judgments whereby we contemplate the several Natures and properties of things compare them in all their respects rank them in their distinct orders and dependencies frame distinctions and divisions of Beings connect and disjoyn Subjects and Predicates and accordingly say that this appertains to the other or it doth not and affirm or deny one thing of another as we observe them to agree or disagree 3 Acts of Ratiocination whereby we infer one thing from another by Syllogisms deduce Consequences of longer or shorter Trayns 4 Acts of Reflection in which the Soul becomes it own Object perceive's that it doth perceive passeth a sentence upon its own judgements which no matter though it be never so fine and howsoever modified and agitated can do 5 Acts of Correcting the Errours and mistakes of Imagination whereby having viewed all the representations of the Senses it compares them together makes a judgement of them forms apprehensions contrary to those which are suggested to us by sensitive Organs rejects the phantasms of Imagination as insufficient Indications of the Truth of External Objects Not that our Senses are deceived for they only declare their own Passions and communicate their Motions to the Brain according to the Impulses which they really receive from ambient Matter but these representations being made without judgment the Soul examines them perceives that it should be deceived should it always pronounce according to the Images conveyed to it by the Senses and accordingly apprehends corrects and determineth contrary to them 6. Acts of Volition whereby it Chuseth and Refuseth by a self-determinating-Power according as things are estimated remaining exempt
their parts come to Multiply into many different species 2 Some purely Immaterial among whom whether there be any specifical difference is pro and con disputed 3 Man a Compositum of both having an Immaterial Intellectual Soul joyned to an Organical Body Now say they God having in his Soveraign pleasure thought Good to form Man such a Creature he hath not only by an Uncontroulable Law confined the Soul to an intimate presence with and constant residence in the Body while it remains a fit receptacle or till he give it a discharge but withall hath made them dependent upon one another in many of their operations And in this mutual dependence of the one upon the other with respect to many of their operations they state the Union betwixt the Soul and Body to consist For through the impressions that are made upon the Organs of Sense there result in the Soul certain perceptions and on the other hand through the Cogitations that arise in the Soul there ensue certain Emotions in the Animal Spirits And thus say they by the Action of each upon the other their passion from one another they are formally united But all this instead of loosing the knot serves only to tye it faster For 1 This mutual dependency as to operation of one upon the other cannot be apprehended but in posteriority of Nature to Union and consequently the Formal Reason of Union cannot consist in it 2 There are cases wherein neither the impressions of outward objects upon the Sensory Nerves beget or excite any perceptions in the Soul which whether it proceed from obstinacy of Mind or intense contemplation alike answers my drift and also cases wherein Cogitations of the Mind make not any sensible impressions upon the Body as in Ecstasies and yet the Union of the Soul and Body remains undissolved which argues that it imports more than either an intimous presence or a dependence between them in point of operation 3 'T is altogether unintelligible how either a Body can act upon a Spirit or a Spirit upon a Body I grant it may be demonstrated that they do so but the manner of doing it or indeed how it can be done is not intelligible That a Tremor begot in the Nerves by the Jogging of particles of Matter upon the sensory Organs should excite cogitations in the Soul or that the Soul by a meer thought should both beget a Motion in the Animal Spirits and determine through what meatus they are to steer their course is a Phaenomenon in the Theory of which we are perfectly non-plust How that which penetrates a Body without giving a Jog to or receiving a shove from it should either impress a Motion upon or receive an impression from it is unconceivable So that to state the Union of the Soul and Body in a reciprocal action upon and passion by and from one another is to fix it in that which surpasseth the Sagacity of our Faculties to conceive how it can be Now if Common Unions of whose reality and Existence we are so well assured be nevertheless with respect to their Nature not only so unknown but unconceivable we may lawfully presume if there lye nothing else against the Immediate Union of Believers with Christ save that it cannot be comprehended that this is no argument why we should immediately renounce the belief of it If we can but once justify that there is such an Union betwixt the blessed Jesus and sincere Christians the incomprehensibleness of the manner of it ought not to discourage our Faith If we can take up with the Evidence of Sense and Reason as to the reality of other Unions whose Modes are as little understood I see no cause why the Veracity of God providing we can produce the Authority of Divine Testimony should not satisfie us as to the reality of the Union though the manner How it is were a question we could not answer § 6. The import of Terms being fixed we are now to make a nearer approach to the matter it self And the first thing that the threed of Reason conducts us here to is this that be the Kind manner of our Union what it please yet it is the person of Christ which we are united to For suppose it to be Political and that the only Vinculum be our owning his Laws yet forasmuch as Christ only personally considered both doth enact them and exact Obedience to them and punish our Rebellion against them our Relation to Him as Subjects doth ultimately respect his Person All the reverence we pay his Laws under the Reduplication as His bears upon the Veneration we pay Himself However he come by his Soveraign Dominion over the Church 't is his Person that it is stated and vested in Whatever room either our Obedience on the one hand or the Gospel of Christ upon the other have in this Relation of Union the Extremes United they cannot be Whether it be by means of our Union only with the Christian Church or by what Copula soever else we are United to Him Yet 't is still to the person of Christ i. e. to Christ himself that we are United Or suppose it to be only a Moral Union an Union in Mind Love Design and Interest a being acted by the same Principles having the same temper and disposition of Spirit yet still 't is between the Person of Christ and the persons of Believers that this Union intercedes For as they through the guidance of sanctified Reason embrace cleave to and with the greatest complacency delight in him so He through their participating of his likeness and haveing his Image imprinted on them loveth and embraceth them In a word all Unions except Natural or Physical are the Relations of Persons to Persons 'T is the Husband and Wife themselves that are ligu'd together by the matrimonial Tie 'T is between the persons of Subjects and the Person of the Prince as clothed with Authority that the Political Nexus consists I cannot therefore but stand surprised to find Mr. Sherlock both endeavoring to disable such Texts of Scripture as are levied in proof of an Union between Believers and the Person of Christ whereof § 4. and impeaching his Brethren that they are not satisfied that Christ and Believers are united unless their Persons be united too For let the Union as to its Quality and manner be what it will suppose an Union by mutual Relations or Affections or common Interest yet it is the Person of Christ and the Persons of Believers that the Habitude and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 lies between Yea this our Author acknowledgeth though all he reap by it is to contradict himself For this is a very plain case says he If Christ and Believers are United their Persons must be united too for the Person of Christ is Christ Himself the Persons of Believers are the Believers themselves and I cannot understand how they can be united without their Persons that is without themselves Nor
can any one else understand it that I know of only I wonder why then it is imputed to us as a Crime That we are not satisfied that Christ and Believers are United unless their Persons be United too But as Mr. Sherlocks Book is pregnant with Contradictions so perhaps he hath found out an Art of justifying the Truth of Repugnant Propositions And though hereby he subvert the Foundations of Science and thwart the Universal Reason of Mankind yet I will not say that he is herein singular For besides those mentioned by Aristotle who maintain'd that one and the same thing might at the same time be and not be and besides that Burgersdicius Schulerus and some others have fancied a Medium betwixt Ens and Non ens There is a certain Carmelite stiled Franciscus Bonae Spei who will have both the parts of a contradiction if it be only in reference to matters of Faith to be susceptive of Truth And indeed if our Author be not acquainted with him 't is pitty but that he should as well upon the account already mentioned as divers others I could suggest particularly because he will find him a man of confidence hugely addicted to novelty one who loves to be invalidating the Evidences which the prime Articles of Faith are built upon § 7. Having established this General viz. that 't is the Person of Christ to which we are United the next enquiry is concerning the Nature quality and manner of the Union of Christians to him And it being here as in most cases which relate not simply to the Existence of things but to the Modes how they exist easier to refute false notions than to establish true I shall therefore observe the Method of declaring First what it is not wherein if I prove successfull I shall either obtain further light to the defining what it is or else manifest the unnecessariness of determining positively about it First then it consists not meerly in Christ's assuming our Nature A specifical oneness there is betwixt Him and us upon that account but all Mankind being equally thus related to him it cannot import the whole of that special Oneness which intercedes between him sincere Christians Now when I say that Christ did partake of our Nature I do not mean that he possessed the Individual Nature of this or that Man much less that he assumed any Universal Nature that is Identically the same in all and every Man for that as Damascenus says would not have been assumptio but fictio but what I aim at is this that as man consists of two essential constituent parts a Rational Soul and a Body thus and thus Organized so the son of God assumed both a Reasonable Soul and a true Organical Body fram'd and made of the substance of the Virgin who was lineally sprung from Adam the first and common original of all Mankind So that there is an oneness of Similitude which is all that intervenes amongst men between Christ and us but as for an Oneness of Identity it imply's a contradiction and should any assert it they are to be reckoned for obtruders of repugnancies under the pretence of sacred Mysteries upon the Faith of Mankind The Son of God through the designation and Authoritative disposal of the Father by the Immediate Efficiency of the Holy Ghost having assumed our intire Nature into Union with his Divine Person became thereby related to us in a cognation and alliance which he is not to the Angels And upon this affinity doth the whole of his Mediatory Interposure and our Interest in what he hath done and suffered bear God in order to the reconciling Man to himself by the obedience and Sacrifice of a Mediatour did first espouse our Nature to the Person of his So that was to be so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Greg. Nyss. i. contra Eun. Hereby he became adapted to his Office and qualified for his Work Without this conjunction by the espousing our Nature he could neither have been a Priest ordained for men Heb. 5.1 Nor have atoned God by the Oblation of himself as an expiatory Sacrifice Heb. 8.3 Heb. 10.5 6 7 8 9 10. He behoved to partake of the Humane Nature in common with men before he could either be capable of the Sacerdotal Office wherein he was to act for men with and towards God or before he could be provided of a Sacrifice to offer His agreement with us in one common Nature is the basis of all his fitness to undertake on our behalf of the equity of the accruement of the benefits derived to us thereby 'T is this cognation alliance and propinquity of Nature that qualified Christ to be our Surrogate and to have our sins imputed to Him and which gives us our first capacity of having the Obedience of his Life and Sacrifice of his death either formally or in the effects of them imputed to us Precluding this God could not in consistency with his Wisedom Holiness Justice and Truth have exalted the glory of his Mercy in our Justification and Forgiveness nor could the Son of God have been Inaugurated unto the Mediatory Kingdome or had a right to those Dignities Priviledges and Honours which emerge and result from thence Now although upon the assuming our Nature into Union with the Person of the Son of God the Essences Properties and Operations of both Natures be preserved distinct and entire being united as the Ancients speak 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 without confusion conversion division or separation Yet through that conjunction which they are brought into Christ becomes as it were a Compositum of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and Humane Nature And accordingly the Ancients style the Person of Christ 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 say the Fathers of the Second Constantinopolitan Council Maximus the Martyr doth not scruple the calling the Divine and Humane Natures parts of which Christ consists 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And as our Nature is highly dignified and exalted by its being taken into Union with the Second Person of the Trinity so a certain Relation of Oneness results thereupon between Christ and us The Apostle himself Heb. 2.11 say's that we are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of one i. e. as I suppose 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of one Blood or partakers of the same common Nature which is the foundation of that Alliance of Brother-hood he speaks of in the next Words And so the 14. v. which seems to be exegetical of this plainly carrie's it forasmuch then as the Children are partakers of flesh and Blood he also himself likewise took part of the same The Ancients as well as Moderns style this a Natural Union And indeed Christ thus is so far one with us as the participating of the same com-Nature amounts to He is both 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of one and the same Mass of Humane Nature with us and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of one and the same Blood being sprung from one and the same
false if there be any incontestable Principles of Reason or True Maximes of Philosophy For to omit at present that 't is Repugnant to Metaphysical and Physical Axioms that Accidents should exist without a subject or that there should be Whiteness and nothing white Sweetness and nothing sweet that one Body should be penetrated by another when we find every Material substance irresistibly to defend its self from coexistence in the same place with another that is Corporeal that one the same Being should be entirely at one and the same time in distant places which is to be distant from it self yea that it should be there with contradictory adjuncts that the Sign and thing signified or Relate and Correlate should be the same I say to pass these by as having been a thousand times urged against the Papists and nothing replyed but what renders their Folly and Extravagance the greater and more remarkable I shall only say that Transubstantiation is inconsistent with the first Principles of Logick 1. No Enunciation is true but upon the account of Congruity to its Object and the previous existence of the Object according to what is affirmed of or denyed concerning it is that which grounds the verity of the Enunciation If therefore the Sacramental Elements be not the Body and Blood of Christ antecedently to the words of Consecration the Enunciation by which the Priest affirms the one to be the other must necessarily be false 2. Every Enunciation supposeth a previous Act and judgment of the Mind of which it is Manifestative for the End of words is to indicate Conceptions Unless therefore previously to consecration the Bread be judged to be the real Flesh of Christ no one can truly assert that it is so 3. In every true Enunciation the subject may by Conversion become the predicate as is evident by an induction of all propositions in the World while therefore the Body of Christ cannot in a proper and Physical sense be said to be Bread no more can Bread in a proper sense be said to be the Body of Christ. 4. No Disparate can be truly affirmed in casu recto of another that interfering with the Nature of opposites Bread and the Body of Christ therefore being Disparates the one cannot in a proper sense be predicated of the other 5. No real positive Attribute or predicate can be affirmed of a subject which is not for non entis nulla sunt attributa And therefore if the Bread be annihilated as indeed it must be unless instead of allowing Christ to have only one Body and that formed of the substance of the Virgin we should hold that he hath many Bodies and those formed of Material Particles distinct from what he was fram'd of in the Womb of the Virgin Our Saviour spake very illogically in asserting concerning that which it is not at all that it is his Body I shall wave what might be further added to this purpose only conclude it with this brief remarque That if Principles of Reason obtain so far in Things purely Supernatural as that there can be no repugnance betwixt the one and the other they ought more especially to have so much place in those things which Grace borrows and transports from Nature for its Use. Secondly When we say that there is nothing in Religion which is truly repugnant to Principles of Reason we do not by Principles of Reason understand all that this or that sort of men vote and receive for such The Universal Reason of Man-kind is of great Moment but mistaken Philosophy and false Notions of things which this and that Man admit for theorem's of Reason are of very small importance Men being mislead by their Senses Affections Interests and Imaginations do many times mingle errours and false conceits with the Genuine Dictates of their Minds and then appeal to them as the Principles of Truth and Reason when they are indeed nothâ—ng else but the vain Images of our fancies and the conclusions of Ignorance and mistake Though Reason in the Abstract and those inbâ—ed notices implanted in our Souls which upon the first exercise of our Faculties command an Assent be all consistent wâ—th the Mysteries of Faith yet Reason in the Concrete and as it exists in this and that man being weak maim'd imperfect and extremely remote from a full and just comprehension of things we do accordingly find many Articles of Revelation to have been little befriended by Axioms and principles of vulgar Philosophy But this proceeds from the Corruption of Reason its being vitiated by Lusts byassed by Interests perverted by Education darkned by Passions enthralled by Prejudice rather than from Reason it self and is to be ascribed not to the Light of Reason but to the Darkness that envelop's it It hath been usual for men according to the School they have been bred in to expound and judg of Religion in Analogy to the principles they have suckt in from thence By this means hath Religion been embased through mens subjecting the Examen and conduct of it to mistaken Philosophy He that would examine an Article of Faith by a Proposition of Reason must be careful that his Measure be just and true and not deceitful and fallacious No man ought to distrust an Article of Religion for its being against a proposition which we take to be true only because we were taught it The Prejudice done to Religion by mistaken Philosophy ought not to be dissembled and I shall therefore crave a little liberty here to unfold it And not to insist on the ill Influence that the Phenician and Chaldaick Philosophy had on the Judaick Theology though it be of easie proof that their Planetary Deities and their Teraphims sprung from thence Nor to do any more but mention that the chief Errours of the Pharisees Sadduces and Esseans took their rise from the Grecian Philosophy their Dogm's being a mixture of Pythagorean Platonick Stoick and Epicurean Notions I shall rather observe that the chiefest Errours that have infested the Christian Church arose from a mingling Gentile Philosophy with the Doctrine of the Gospel Both Irenaeus and Tertullian affirm the Errors of the Gnosticks to have sprung from the Platonick Ideas Though I think it not improbable but that their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 took their birth from Pythagoreanism The Aeons of the Valentinians if we will believe Tertullian were also â—orrowed from the Idea's of Plato but if any shall judge that they were rather derived from Hesiod I shall not contend seeing the Ancient Poets were not only the Ethnick Theologues but their chief Philosophers Epiphanius tells us that the Heresies of the Marcionites came out of the School of Plato Theodoret inform's us that Sabellius became a Heretick by his obstinacy in Plato's Doctrine Tatian being deeply tinctur'd with Platonism became thereupon Head of the Eucratists if you will give Credit to Baronius Holstenius hath shown us how the Manichean principles were fram'd from
imports an Unitive action exerted either towards both or at least one of the Extremes to be united In the Second it denotes the effect or product of the unitive Action in the Extreme or Extrem's towards which it was put forth And in the Third it signifies a State of Oneness emerging upon the whole betwixt the Exrreme's Something Analogous to all these occurs in most if not in all Unions properly so called And this is what I shall offer in reference to the fixing of the general Notion of Union But whereas now upon the one Hand the unintelligibleness of the Union of Believers with the Person of Christ is that which our Author chiefly pleads as the Motive and Inducement of disclaiming it being as he phraseth it a Riddle and Mystery which no body can understand And whereas upon the other Hand he tells us That there is nothing more easy to be understood than our Union and Communion with Christ and that it had certainly continued so had not some men undertook to explain it I must crave leave in the First place to ask him whether he will renounce every other Union the manner and Mode of which he cannot intelligibly unfold and then Secondly Whether there be any danger or absurdity in supposing this Union which the Apostle styles a Mystery Eph. 5.32 to be as incomprehensible as the connexion betwixt the parts of Matter in a continuous Body or the Union betwixt the rational Soul and the Humane Body And seeing the finding our selves non-plust in the explicating common Unions may serve to teach us modesty in our Intellectual converse with Unions of a sublimer Nature and the haveing our Reasons baffled by the obvious Phaenomena of Nature may possess us with a Reverence towards Objects of Faith I shall a little discourse the unaccountableness of the Quality and manner of other Unions Sense as well as Reason convince us of the Cohesion of the parts of Matter in a continuous Body yet when we arrive to enquire how they come to be connected our Understandings hang their Wings and force us at least so far to subscribe to the Pyrrhonian 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Incomprehension Though we be fully ascertain'd of the continuity of one part of matter with another yet by what glue or cement they come to be lock't together no Hypothesis hitherto erected can resolve us Some despairing to unty the knot endeavour to cut it And therefore deny all parts in any Bulk till they are made by Division But First That cannot be supposed Divisible in which there are not antecedent parts into which it may be divided To affirm That to be Divisible into parts which hath no parts at all is the first-born of Absurdities They may as well say that a thing may be separated from it self as that there may be a separation made where there were not previous parts 2. To imagine Bulk without distinct parts going to the Composition of it is a plain Contradiction Continuum in its very idea is nothing but a coalition of plurality of parts 3. If they be not parts antecedently to Separation they were never so because after Disunion each of them is an entire Suppositum or Bluk 4. Contradictory predicates may be affirmed of them while in composition and therefore they must be distinct parts for different wholes they are not But to dismiss this Opinion which doth not resolve the difficulty but destroy the subject of it Others 2 ly betake themselves to indivisible continuant points which as they assert distinct from the constituent parts so they affirm one part to be clasp'd and button'd to another by them But those Peripatetick fooleries of Continuative and Terminative Points distinct from ingredient Compositive parts deserve rather to be hissed off the Philosophick Stage than to be Calmly and Rationally refuted Nor will I be so prodigal of Time or words as to muster an Argument against them save that were they admitted we are still at a loss how they themselves come to be connected with their Contiguous parts or how one part can be knit and fastned by them to another without penetration or the coexistence of more Materials than one in the same place And notwithstanding what a late Learned Person hath said I still judg Penetration not only a greater absurdity than Inaâ—ity but the rudest Non-sense and boldest contradiction that can obtrude it self upon the Rational Mind Others 3 dly have recourse to Hooks and fork'd Corners and will have one part of Matter to be held fast by another through an involution of their Angles But 1 the Coherence of the parts of these Harpaginous Nooks will still remain lyable to the same difficulty And to retreat to new Angles by which the parts of the first hooks are knit together is only to avoid the Objection but not to solve it And our Reason instead of being satisfied comes only to be lost in an Infinite Circle Yea the very allowing an infinite progress without conducting us to something where our understandings can at last acquiesce is not only to renounce the Name of Philosophers but to destroy the End of Philosophy 2 It will still remain of difficult conception how the first Indivisibles whereof according to the Hypothesis beforementioned every Bulk is originally constituted compounded do hang together For though those Atoms which are the Immediate Ingredients of the composition of Bodies should be allowed to consist of parts yet Originally they consist of and are in our conceptions of them ultimately resolved into Mathematical Indivisibles and concerning the indiscerptible Cohesion of them there is no satisfaction afforded by the present Hypothesis Now if the coherence of the parts of Atoms and Minute Bodies be once refunded into the force and Quality of Nature I see not why the continuity of the parts of more bulky compounds should not be ascribed to the same principle Nor 4. doth the Hypothesis of Des-Cartes of the parts of Matter being lock't together meerly by Juxtaposition Rest adjust it self to our Reason or Sense in this Matter For 1 there may be juxta-position and Rest where there is no continuity as in a heap of stones or wheat as well as in two polished Marbles that lye contiguous to one another 2 There may be Motion where is no dissolution of the cohesion of parts as is evident even to Sense in viscous fluids the like might be demonstrated not only of Solids that are Tensile and Ductile but of others also 3 There are degrees of cohesion the parts of Matter being more indiscerptibly clasp'd together in some Bodies than in others whereas there are no degrees of Intenseness in Rest the least Motion being repugnant to it Now upon the whole if our assent to the Continuity and Adhesion of one part of Matter to another remain firm and unshaken notwithstanding the difficulties that encounter us about the Manner of it And though there be not yet any Philosophick Hypothesis that
common Root or Stock though not in the same manner that we are Christ and we are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of Alliance and Consanguinity together which as it speaks infinite condescension love and Grace in him seeing 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 se exinanivit he emptied himself which respects the Essential condition of the Humane Nature assumed by the Son of God and not meerly the poverty which in that Nature he submitted to so it declares the Dignity that our Nature is exalted to being in the Person of the Redeemer taken into association with the Divine Nature And as from the Conjunction of the two Natures together in the Person of Christ there ariseth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a communication of properties between them which is real as to the ascription of the affections of each Nature to the Person though it be but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 verbal as to the predication of the properties of one Nature concerning the other so through the advancement of our Nature into Union with the Son of God there are some rays of Honour reflected upon and some priviledges that may be affirmed of us that the Angels themselves are not susceptive of Yet this is not the Union we are enquiring after for 1 in this respect all Mankind can plead the same propinquity to Christ. The worst as well as the best of men may enter their claim to this Relation of Oneness with him For though the Apostle affirm that he took on him the Seed of Abraham yet the meaning is not that some are precluded affinity with him in the Humane Nature while others are Dignified with that Alliance but the sense of the place is only this that according to the Flesh he came of the Lineage of Abraham the promise having been made to him that in his seed should all the Nations of the Earth be blessed Gen. 12.3 2 Were this the whole import of the Union of Believers with Christ that he and they partake of one common Nature the Oneness betwixt one Man another were greater than the Oneness betwixt Christ and the Faithful which directly opposeth the account the Scripture gives of it the intendment of the many Metaphors by which it is represented Now that it should be so is plain Because the resemblance betwixt one Man and another obtains not only in the essentials of Humane Nature but in the defilements and sinful infirmities of it nor is there any thing in the person of this or that man whereof something parallel is not in the Person of every one else but to imagine such an Universal resemblance between Christ and us is both to overthrow the Divinity of his Person and to supplant the purity of his Humane Nature Though our Blessed Saviour hath assumed our Nature in its essential constituent parts together with all the Natural sinless infirmities that accompany it yet besides His being infinitely distant from all likeness to us upon the account of the Divinity of his Person there is a vast dissimilitude even with respect to the Humane Nature as it is in Him free from all tincture of impurity and concomitancy of culpable imperfections and as it is in us defiled with and debased by sin § 8. As our Union with Christ is of a sublimer importance than meerly to denote that the same Humane Nature was in Him which is in us so what that is which over and above our participating of one common specifical Nature it doth imply is a Theme worthy of our further search And the Popish Notion concerning it is that which presents first to our examen Though the Romanists do not wholly disclaim a spiritual Union betwixt Christ and sincere Believers yet they principally insist on a Mixture of his Bodily substance with ours They will have our Union with Him to consist in our partaking of the Animated and Living Body of Christ by manducation or Carnal and Corporeal feeding on him And this Union they will have obtain'd by means of the Eucharist wherein instead of feeding at all on Bread and Wine they contend that in a Carnal manner we eat the Body and drink the Blood of Christ. That the Sacrament of the Lords Supper is an eminent Symbol of our Union and Communion with Christ yea that hereby our Union and Communion with Him are in a special though Spiritual manner promoted and maintained we readily grant And accordingly we with all chearfulness acknowledge a Real presence of Christ in the Sacrament The Truth of the Real Presence hath been always believed and is so still though as to the manner of it there have been for many Conturies and yet are fierce digladiations in the World The Lutherans will have Christ present one way namely that though there be not a destruction of the Elements and a substitution of the Body and Blood of Christ in their room yet they will have Christ Bodily present with the Elements though hid and concealed under them and this they express by Consubstantiation The Papists plead for a presence of another kind viz. that the Elements being wholly destroyed either by Annihilation or Transmutation into the Body and Blood of Christ he alone is Corporeally Locally and Physically present and this they style Transubstantiation There have been others who have also asserted Bodily Presence but after a manner different from both the former for holding the Elements to continue undestroyed or unchanged they fancied them to become united to the Body and Blood of Christ and to make one and the same Body and Blood by a kind of Hypostatical Union and this may be called Impanation And although there be at this day and always hath been a great number of Christians to whose Reason none of these ways can adjust themselves yet they all confess a presence that is Real though they will have it to be after a spiritual kind and manner All these four ways of presence are Real each in its kind and order Nor do I know any save the Socinians and some Arminians but that in some sense or other allow a Real presence Indeed Socinus and the Men of that Tribe will admit the Lord's Supper to be only a Commemoration of Christ's Death but will by no means have it either to seal or exhibit any thing to the Believing Receiver That it is Commemorative and Symbolical of the Body of Christ as Broken and of his Blood as shed they have our astipulation but that it is besides both an Instituted seal of the Conditional Covenant ascertaining all the mercies of it to such as faithfully Communicate and in whom the Gospel Conditions are found and also truly exhibiting of Christ and his Grace to the Believing soul we strenuously affirm This the Apostle declares by calling the Cup of Blessing the Communion of the Blood of Christ and the Bread the Communion of the Body of Christ 1 Cor. 10.16 This the very Nature of the Ordinance doth likewise confirm for in every Sacrament there must be not
we are copulated to Him then not only sincere Believers but the most obdurate sinners providing only they receive the Eucharist should be united to Him Admitting the Popish Hypothesis I neither see of what advantage Faith is to one Communicant nor of what damage Infidelity can be to another but that the whole of both their securities depends upon this that their Stomacks be not queasy and that they have a good digestion 'T is but to swallow the consecrated Host and Christ and they are one whether they partake of the Spirit of the new Birth or not Either Pauls assertion of some mens eating damnation to themselves is false or else the Popish Notion of our being united to Christ by the eating of his Flesh under the Species and Accidents of a white Wafer is so and which of these is most likely to deserve that Brand I leave to the umpirage of all Christians 2 Were this the Foundation and Bond of Union betwixt Christ and his Members there should then be none United to Him but such as have first been made partakers of the Eucharist which is so remote from all shadow of Truth that on the contrary none ought to approach the sacred Table but they who are first sincere Christians 'T is true their pretending to be so if their claim cannot be disproved obligeth Ministers to admit them but yet it is only their being so that authoriseth them to come 'T is sincere Love and Gospel-Faith that God prerequires of all his Guests though his Stewards are often necessitated to take up with professions of them Although the Sacraments be necessary necessitate praecepti and cannot be neglected by any without guilt yet they are not so necessary necessitate Medii but that God hath and can communicate his Grace independently upon them 3 Were there no other bond of our Union with Christ save that which the Church of Rome suggests our Cohesion to Christ were a very lubricous thing and not such an indissoluble Ligue as the Scripture reports it For the Foundation of Oneness ceasing the Relation superstructed thereupon must cease also Union can hold no longer than the unition upon which it results and from which it emergeth holds now this according to the Romanists continues no longer than till the Form Figure and other Accidents of the consecrated Wafer dissolve and vanish So that instead of an abiding conjunction with Christ a little time unties the knot and the incorporation of Christians with Him comes to nothing 4 Were our Carnal and Corporal eating the Body of Christ the Medium of betwixt Him and us I do not see but that Mice and Rats c. may come to be united to Him as well as Believers For that these through the Priests neglect or by some accident or other may snatch up swallow down the consecrated Wafer is a thing easily conceivable there are instances enough of it and by consequence all that is necessary to the Relation of Union intervening betwixt Christ and them the Habitude and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it self must ensue also I shall only add upon this occasion that Minutius Felix's argument in disproof of the Heathen Gods doth with equal strength militate against the Corporeal presence of Christ in the Eucharist The Mice Swallows and Crows saith he know better than you Pagans what your Gods are For by gnawing and sitting upon them and being ready to nest in their Mouths if you did not drive them away they know that they have neither sense nor understanding 5 Though I be not forward to concern the Authority of Scripture to confute senseless and irrational Notions reckoning it a condescension to encounter them with Reason and holding it a disparagement put upon the sacred Oracles to call in their Suffrage where Sense alone can give the decision yet I cannot but here observe that our Lord Jesus Christ even there where he most seemingly speaks in Favour of a Carnal eating of his Flesh viz. John 6. hath in words hugely Emphatical said enough to prevent such a Gross stupid and unreasonable Imagination For besides that not a word of that whole discourse relates to feeding upon Christ in the Eucharist as is acknowledged by the most learned of the Roman Writers we have in the preface to it ver 35.40 and in the conclusion of it ver 63. a key afforded us to unlock the whole and to assure that it is not only to be taken in a spiritual sense but that a fleshly eating of the Son of man would conduce nothing to our Good 'T is the Spirit that quickneth the flesh profiteth nothing The words that I speak unto you they are Spirit and they are life § 9. Having declared that whatever the Nature and Quality of our Union with Christ and what ever the Medium by which it is accomplished be that it is the Person of Christ which we are United to and having also declared that it implies something more than a meer participating of the same specifick Humane Nature and having just now manifested that it consists not in a mixture of Christs bodily substance through our eating his Flesh and drinking his Blood in a Carnal and Corporeal Manner with ours The next thing to be disclaim'd from all room and Interest in the Idea of it is its being a Personal Union And this I am the rather obliged to do because Mr. Sherlock with little regard to Truth and as little consistency with himself tells the World That we place all our hopes of Salvation in a personal Union with Christ. A slander so enormous and so void of any colour by which it may be glossed that to what I should impute our Authors charging it upon us I cannot tell Ignorance it cannot be ascribed to seeing Dr. Jacomb whom Mr. Sherlock hath particularly singled out to oppose in this Theme not only barely disclaims but refutes it and seeing our Author himself acknowledgeth else-where that it is only an Union of Persons and not a Personal Union which we plead for p. 198. 293. And to attribute it to a wilful Falsification were to arraign him of a Crime which I would be loath to judge any Man pretending Justice and Honesty much less a Minister of the Gospel guilty of I would rather therefore think it the result of some deduction unduely and illogically drawn from Innocent principles or that he took it up in discourse from some of those who for their diversion throw out accusations against us at adventure than that he either judged it to be held by us in Terminis or that he should fasten it upon us in meer Malice only that he might the better expose us However this in Modesty may be required of him that the next time he writes he would either acquit the Nonconformists from the guilt of this charge or else enforce it by express quotations extracted out of their Books or by lawful Trains of Argumentation from some of their avowed Doctrines
nor others may think themselves imposed upon I shall represent his apprehensions of it in his own words Those Metaphors says he which describe the Relation and Union betwixt Christ and Christians do primarily refer to the Christian Church not to every individual Christian The Union of particular Christians to Christ is by means of their Union to the Christian Church The Church is the Body of Christ and every Christian by being United to this Body becomes a Member of Christ. The Union of particular Christians to Christ consists in their Union to the Christian Church and our Union with the Christian Church is the Medium of our Union to Christ. Those Phrases and Metaphors which represent our Union with Christ signify our visible Society with the Christian Church and our sincere practice of the Christian Religion Now this Union says he between Christ and the Christian Church is a Political Union that is such an Union as is between a Prince and his Subjects Christ is a Spiritual King and all Christians are his Subjects and our Union to Christ consists in our Belief of his Revelations Obedience to his Laws and Subjection to his Authority Fellowship and Communion with God according to the Scripture Notion signifies what we call a Political Union that is that to be in Fellowship with God and Christ signifies to be of that Society which puts us into a peculiar Relation to God This is the account that Mr. Sherlock is pleased to afford us concerning the Union of Believers to Christ and were this a true report and description of it it ceaseth to be Mysterious nor needs the perfect knowledge of it be reserved to the next world or the coming of Elias that I may again usurp our Authors phrase He seems very careful that there should be nothing left Mysteririous in the Christian Religion nor doth the Term Mystical please him being as he tells us a hard word Only I wish that under pretence of wariness and caution there be not any thing in the Gospel acknowledged of arduous conception he did not lay a foundation of going soberly to destroy Christianity Now in the examining Mr. Sherlocks Notion of the Union of Christ with Believers I reckon it necessary before I address to the disproof of what I dislike in his opinion to declare what I own to be true in the matter of a Political Union between Christ and Christians First then That Christ is the Political Head of his Church we readily grant nor is it denyed by any so far as I know that profess themselves Christians The very espousing the Profession of the Christian Religion includes an acknowledgment of Christs being our Supreme Legislatour and Governour and that we are to be subject to his Authority and obedient to his Commands A Right of Erecting Governing and protecting the Church is delegated to and vested in him And as he in the discharge of this Regal Office wherewithal he is entrusted hath enacted Laws appointed Ordinances and ordained Officers for the Government of his Church so we by our submission to them do acknowledg his Authority and make profession of our subjection to him as our Lord and King and therereupon may be said to be related to Him as our Political Head All that own the name of Christians are thus far agreed for though the Papists interpose another immediate ruling Head between Christ and the Catholick Church yet as they acknowledg Christ to be the only Head of Vital Influence to the Church Regenerate so they confess Him to be the only supreme Governing Head of the Universal Church But as their Notion of a Vicarious Political Head over the whole Church is both destitute of all countenance from the Scripture and repugnant to it so no one is capable of enacting Laws for the Universal Church nor of seeing them executed nor hath the Catholick Church ever acknowledged such a constitutive Imperant Head what ever some part of it may have done Upon this account especially we judge the Pope to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Antichrist and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Opposer who exalteth himself above all that is called God or that is worshipped so that he as God sitteth in the Temple of God shewing himself that he is God because he usurpeth the Headship over the Church of Christ as to Legislation Judgment and Execution dispensing with Christs Laws and enacting his own He challengeth a peerage with Jesus Christ as to Legislative Power and Headship over the Universal Church which is no less than to storm his Throne and Usurp his Scepter The claym of the Roman See is great but their Allegations to justifie it are wholly precatious And when Jesus Christ appears to vindicate his Supreme Authority from the invasions which Usurpers have made upon his Dignity the counterfeiting the broad Seal of Heaven and the suborning Scripture to supplant Christs Throne will prove a Crime unanswerable I shall only add in reference to this particular I have been discoursing that no verbal profession of being a Christian unless it be accompanied with a belief of the Revelations and an Obedience to the Laws of Christ can de Jure entitle us amongst his Subjects Secondly As a visible profession of subjection to Christ testified in the belief of what he hath revealed and in the obedience of what he hath commanded is the foundation of this political Union between Christ and his Church so we do hereby become politically united one to another and are denominated Members of Christs Catholick Visible Church For as the Profession of the Gospel in the belief of its Doctrines an avowed subjection to its Laws is the constituent form of the Church as Visible and the formal reason of its obtaining that appellation so all that profess the Invocation of the Name of the Lord Jesus their Lord and ours 1 Cor. 7.2 do hereby belong to Christs Catholick Church Visible and become Politically united as Subjects of the same Legislator and King In the profession of the same Lord Faith and Baptism doth the Union of the Church under the consideration of Catholick and Visible consist and as the Subjects of one and the same Temporal Prince become politically United together by their being in subjection to the Authority of the same supreme civil Ruler and governed by the same Laws so may all Christians be said upon a parallel account to be politically united one with another And here upon the one hand as Christ hath not made our Right to a room and membership in the Catholick Church to depend upon a formal belief of every thing that he hath revealed though every thing that Christ hath revealed ought to be believed when it appears that he hath revealed it so upon the other hand there are some Doctrines the explicite belief of which is necessary to the having a place in the Universal Church a Church being nothing else but
to evince it though obstinate persons and such as maintain Tenets in despite of evidence to the contrary may not be convinced by them 'T is the Church in its full latitude and extent that is eminently Christs Body and his Spouse and 't is his Body and Spouse that he is conjoyned and marryed to Now for any one to say that he is united to the Church by the vincula that are between him and Individual Believers is to run himself into the absurdity which we commonly call a circle For if the copula of particular Christians to Christ be their Society and Fellowship with the Christian Church and if the vinculum between Christ and the Church be through the cohesion of particular Believers to Christ there is no remedy but that our Author must be entangled in a circle or else there is no such thing in the World as circular defining and discoursing And to say that Christ is united to the Church by the Churches belief of his Revelations and Obedience to his Laws is but instead of loosing the knot to tye it faster For the Church being an Aggregate Body of Believers she can no other ways embrace the Revelations of the Gospel or yield obedience to its commands but in the virtue of what her particular constituent Members do 2. That our Union with Christ even supposing it a meer Political Relation should be by the means of our Union with the Christian Church is repugnant to that conception and idea which we have of the Church For the Church Catholick-Visible and much more particular instituted Churches being nothing else but the Collective Body of Christians it naturally follows that they must in priority of Nature be Christians before they can any ways belong to the Church Now to suppose them Christians I speak of adult persons without their previous owning the Authority of Jesus Christ through a belief of his Doctrines and a professed subjection to his Laws is an absurd and self-contradictious Imagination 3. If the Apostles were immediately United to Christ without any Antecedent Relation to the Christian Church I see no cause why every Individual Christian ought not to be held united to Him in the same manner that they were For the Apostles being united to Christ under the formal consideration of their being Christians and not under the reduplication of their being Apostles it follows by a short and easie train of ratiocination that all who have a right to the denomination of Christians are united by the same Bond and stand in the same immediateness of conjunction with Christ that they were Yea Paul hath said enough to set this beyond all suspect in that speaking of the Body of Christ he reckons the Apostles in the classis of Members with other Believers 1 Cor. 12.27 28. Now that the Apostles were not united to Christ by the Mediation of any Antecedent Relation to the Christian Church but that their Relation of Oneness with Him was immediate there be unanswerable Arguments at hand to demonstrate But I shall only mention one namely there was no Christian Church pre-existent to them into whose Society and Fellowship they could be admitted I have thus far discoursed these things with Mr. Sherlock taking the church for the universal Catholick Visible Church which is the most favourable acceptation to befriend the Notion of our being united to Christ by the means of Union to the Christian Church that 't is capable of And this acceptation of the Church as our communion with it is the Medium and Bond of our Union with Christ Mr. Sherlock finds himself in some cases necessitated to retreat to If says he there be no Visible Society of Christians professing the Faith of â—hrist and living in Communion with each other as it may happen in times of persecution or some great degeneracy of the Church our Union to Christ then consists in an acknowledgment of his Authority and Subjection to his Laws which makes us Members of the Universal Church though there be no particular Church to communicate with Now if the Notion of Union with Christ by the Medium of a previous Interest in the Catholick Visible Church be not defensible much less is it maintainable on the Hypothesis of an Union with a particular Church as the Vinculum and Foundation of it And yet most of our Authors discourse is fram'd in countenance of this namely that Individual Christians are not united to Christ but by means of their Union to some particular Church Hence we are told that we cannot be United to Christ that is cannot own his Authority and Government till we unite our selves to the publick Societies of Christians and submit to the publick Instructions Authority and Discipline of the Church And this is made the motive and ground of our living in the Communion of the Church where Providence hath cast us so long as she submits to the Laws of Christ and acknowledgeth his Authority because as our Author saith this Unites us to Christ. Mr. Sherlock so far as I am able to conjecture was not at leisure to think what was most serviceable to the Hypothesis he had espoused or what was most disserviceable to it All Immediate Union of particular Christians with Christ save by means of their union with the Christian Church he was resolved to deny but in what sense the Church was to be taken by Communion with which we come to be copulated with Jesus Christ he durst not determine At one time 't is by our being Members of the Universal Church at another 't is by our Fellowship with such a Church as is under the conduct of Bishops and Pastors whose Members are in regular subjection to their spiritual Guides and Rulers and live in concord and Unity amongst themselves and in a mutual discharge of all Christian Offices But that Communion with a particular Church cannot be the Medium of a Christians Union with Christ I come under the influence and command of these Reasons to believe 1. There may be some Individual Christians where there is no particular Instituted Church of Christ into which they can be admitted Nor may this only be supposed but there are divers instances in Ecclesiastical story to evince it Yea there can be no particular Church without the pre-existence of Individual Believers seeing it is of such that every particular Church is constituted and formed We may as well build a House without pre-existent Materials as erect a particular Church without Believers to constitute it of There must be living stones of which this Temple of God is built and fram'd The being Saints through the effectual Vocation and renewing of the Holy Ghost is the first ground presupposed by the Apostles in their adscription of the Name and Title of Church to any Nor are the Duties required of those that stand in a particular Church Relation possible to be performed but by such as are sincere Christians 2. Christians in the very
No particular Christian is the Body of Christ but only a Member in his Body Christ is called a Husband but then the whole Church or Society of Christians not every particular Christian is his Spouse as St. Paul tells the Church of Corinth 2 Cor. 11.2 Christ is a Shepherd and the Christian Church is his Flock Joh. 10. For the Relation between a Shepherd and Sheep doth primarily concern the whole Flock Christ is the Rock upon which his Church is built the chief corner stone and the Christian Church a Holy Temple so that all those Metaphors in their first and proper use refer to the whole Society of Christians and are designed to represent the Union between Christ and his Church To this I answer 1. That were this discourse of our Author fram'd into a Syllogism the incongruity between the conclusion and the premises would easily appear For example Christ is the Head of his Church Ergo no particular Believer is united to him but by means of their Uinion with the Church I deny the consequent surely though the King be Immediate Head to the whole Kingdom yet he is also Immediate Head to every Individual person in it Mr. Sherlocks Logick is like that of Chrysippus which men were too dull to understand though they say the Gods would have used it 2. The Church and its Individual Members being of an homogeneous Nature whatsoever is predicated essentially of the whole is equally predicable of every part 3. The Holy Ghost plainly affirms that it is between Christ and the Church as it is between the Head and Members of the same Natural Body And therefore as not only the whole Body hath influence in the disposal of it self and in the discharge of its Functions from the Head but also every particular Member hath influences of life and strength from thence so Christ is not only an Immediate Head of Direction and Rule to the whole Church but to every Individual Believer in it Whatever the Habitude of Pastors Teachers be to their particular Churches to which they are related and to the Members of which these Churches are constituted yet it is to the Word of God as the Rule of conduct by which Christ under the Notion of a Political Head governs his Church that every Individual Believer is to attend 4. Though our Author informs us that he hath almost pored out his eyes in searching the Scripture in order to his being enlightned about this and some other Notions yet I must take leave either to question the matter of Fact or to suspect that his sight was not good before or that his visible Faculty was strangely tinctured For the Apostle whose Authority and Testimony may I hope be allowed to rival Mr. Sherlocks tells us that as the whole Church is Christs Body so we are all Members in particular of Christ 1 Cor. 12.27 and that the whole Body is joyned to Christ by the conjunction which every Member hath with him 1 Cor. 12.12 And that Christ is not only a Husband to the whole Church but that he is so to every Christian appears by this seeing not only the particular Church of Corinth is said to be Espoused to Him 2 Cor. 11.2 but every Individual Believer among the Romans is also represented as Married to him Rom. 7.4 Neither do they only report him to be the Foundation Rock and corner Stone of the Church taken Collectively but likewise in its distributive acceptation 1 Pet. 2.5 Eph. 2.19 20 21 22. Thus having not only defeated the strength and force of his first objection but improved the Medium from which he musters it to subvert the cause in whose defence it was brought I proceed now to the second That the Union of particular Christians with Christ consists in their Union with the Christian Church the Sacraments which our Saviour hath instituted as Symbols of our Union with him are says he a plain demonstration Our first undertaking of Christianity is represented in our Baptism wherein we make a publick profession of our Faith in Christ and it is sufficiently known that Baptism is the Sacrament of our admission into the Christian Church c. Thus the Lords Supper is a Sacrament of Union and signifies the near Conjunction that is between Christ and the Christian Church and the mutual Fellowship of one Christian with another c. For answer whether the Sacraments import any more than a Political Union between Christ and Believers I shall wave till anon and only consider them at present as brought in proof of Christians being united to Christ by means of their Union with the Christian Church And truly if these be the weapons with which Mr. Sherlock thinks to captivate and subdue the minds of men to espouse his Notion he must either only encounter those that court their own Bondage or there will be few found following the Chariot wheels of our Hero Instead of any slaughter he is like to make amongst the Non-conformists by these Forces he only wounds himself and overthrows his own cause by them And first as to the Argument drawn from Baptism I reply these four things 1. Baptism is neither the Medium of our Union with the Catholick Visible Church nor that by which we formally become Members of a particular Instituted Church Not the latter seeing it is not only possible that a Person may be Baptised where there are not enough to form an Instituted particular Church but it may be sometimes found necessary to deny the Priviledg of Membership in an Instituted even to such as have been Baptized Yea before any particular Churches were erected there were Baptised Christians it being of such that the first Christian Churches were constituted Not the Former forasmuch as a Person may be of the Universal Visible Church and yet not be Baptised Nor is this a Chimaerical Imagination for there have been many who partly through want of opportunity to enjoy the Ordinance of Baptism partly upon other Motives though they are not justifiable have denyed themselves the Mercy of the Baptismal Laver and yet to suppose that thereupon they are not Christians is to renounce all exercise of Charity and to involve our selves under the guilt of condemning those whom the Lord hath received 2. Were Baptism as well the Medium as the Symbol of our Union with the Christian Church yet it doth not follow that we are only United to Christ by means of our Union with the Church And the reason is plain seeing none ought to be admitted to Baptism I speak of adult persons but such who are antecedently judged to be Christians Act. 8.37 Now to reckon any one a Christian who doth not before-hand own the Authority of Jesus Christ in the belief of his Doctrines and an avowed subjection to his Laws which is the Bond of our Political Union is no less than a contradiction 3. Our owning the Authority of Christ which is the Vinculum of our Political Union with
we contend for he could not have chosen Terms more plain full and Emphatical to declare it than those by which he hath expressed it in the foregoing places And the same subtilties that are used to persuade the World that what we alledg is not the true meaning of them would equally serve to pervert their sense were that the intendment of the Holy Ghost in them which we affirm There are two passages which I reckon eminently manifestative of the Intimate Conjunction that is between Christ and Christians which I shall at this time borrow some Light from and reflect some upon in reference to the Matter before us The first is that of Paul Heb. 3.14 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 For we are made partakers of Christ if we hold the beginning of ou◠confidence stedfast unto the End I know that Modern Interpreters do generally suppose the name Christ to be taken here Metonymically viz. for the benefit of Christs Mediation but I judg that the Apostle intends a great deal more by our partaking of Christ than meerly so The Syriack renders it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 We are mingled i. e. united to Christ. Chrysostom paraphraseth it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 What is it to be partakers of Christ He and we are made One He the Head we the Body Coheirs and Incorporated with Him And accordingly he makes the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the beginning of our confidence to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Faith by which says he 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 We are begotten and consubstantiated with him i. e. intimately and truly United to Him That an Union with Christ by some tye and ligature beyond what a bare owning of his Authority denotes is here intended in our 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Being made partakers of Christ the use of the Verb 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by the same Apostle from whence the Noun 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 comes induceth me to believe When Paul would express Christs participating of the Humane Nature or of Flesh and Blood he doth it in this phrase 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which seems clearly to conduct us to the meaning of the expression 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which we are now upon As he became no otherwise 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but by the assumption of our Nature into Union with his Divine person so we do no otherwise become 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but by participation of the same spirit that inhabited the Humane Nature of Christ which is the Bond and Medium of that Union which we plead for between Christ and Christians The other expression which I judg declarative of a higher Union between Christ and us than what a Political Relation doth imply is his being styled our Life Life is said to be in Christ not only formally as in its subject but causally as in its fountain Nor is he only called the Word of Life and the Prince of Life but he is expresly said to be our Life Col. 3.4 And Paul witnesseth of himself that he lived through Christs living in Him Gal. 2.20 Now that he should be styled our Life meerly with reference to his bringing Life and Immortality to light in the Gospel is too jejune a sense to sustain the weight of the Phrase I do not deny but that the Gospel is the Word of Life and that it is so styled in the Scripture Nor do I bring into debate Christs being in a proper and eminent sense the alone Author as well as the Subject of it Only I affirm that the making his revealing the Gospel which discovers the Glad Tidings of Life and the Terms of it to be the only reason of the Appellation given to him which we are now discoursing is to impose a Notion upon the expression which is too scanty and narrow to answer the Majesty and Grandeur of it And as the Context even to any who do but superficially view it will not admit this to be its full import so the Apostles expression of Christs living in him which seems a commentary and paraphrase upon it doth plainly overthrow this from being the sense of it Nor will it suffice to say that he is our Life in a Moral sense because our Life of Grace here and of Glory hereafter are owing to the Sacrafice of his Death as their procuring cause 'T is true that both our Holiness and Happiness respect Christs Meritorious Life and Death as their price but yet this neither comes up to the Loftiness nor exhausts the fulness of that expression He is our Life much less is there any thing in this Gloss that bears affinity to his living in us The only sense which bears a proportion to the Words is this That as Natural life proceeds from and must be ascribed to the Soul as its spring principle so all spiritual Life is owing to Christ as immediately acting us by his quickning Spirit Of our selves saith the Learned Bishop Reynolds we are without strength without love without life no power no liking no possibility to do good nor any principle of Holiness or Obedience in us 'T is Christ that strengthens us that wins us that quickens us by his Spirit to his Service Christ is the Principle and Fountain of Holiness as the Head is of sense or motion And this he maketh to be one eminent part of the meaning of that place He that hath the Son hath Life 1 Joh. 5.12 though Mr. Sherlock is not only pleased to tell us that it signifies no such thing but treats those who do so paraphrase it with words full of contempt and scorn But to resume what I was upon forasmuch as no Vital Principle doth or can operate but as it is united to the subject that is to be quickned by it Christ being then the Principle of our spiritual life there must be an Union of Christ with us as the spring and foundation of his Influence upon us No one thing can be supposed the principle and source of life to another without admitting a previous Union between them The third and last Argument whereby Mr. Sherlocks Hypothesis of a Political Union may be combated and if I mistake not utterly defeated is levied from the Vinculum and Bond by which the Scripture reports Christ and Believers to be copulated and brought into cohesion one with another As every Union implies such a Relation in the virtue whereof there resulteth an Oneness between the connected Extremes so as the Nature and Quality of the Unitive Principle or Cement is such is the Genius of the Union it self and of the oneness that thereupon emergeth Now by consulting the Scripture which alone ought to regulate and bound our conceptions in the Matter before us we find the Spirit to be the Vital Ligature of the conjunction and coherence that is between Christ and Christians The very Spirit that resides in Christ being communicated to us we do thereby in a secret but sublime and real manner become knit and ligu'd
q. 5. and they will satisfie them This is all that I shall offer at present in opposition to Mr. Sherlocks Hypothesis nor should I have said so much but that it is here where we have his most Heroick adventures and where he seems all along to speak as strutting and standing on his tiptoes 'T is here that he flings down the Gantlet to all the World and treads the Stage with no less state and majesty than as if he intended to erect lasting Trophies to himself for having baffled the received Opinion of the whole Christian Church And 't is here that most particularly I have accepted his Challenge and bid him battel on his ground and at his own weapons and as to the issue of the Encounter I leave it to the Reader to pronounce betwixt him and me This I do affirm that as I have not declined him in any thing where he seem'd to argue like a Man and a Schollar so I must beg his pardon if in some things I have forborn him and given back forasmuch as I was not willing to be under the temptation of exposing him too much And upon this very inducement I thought once to have overlookt his Argument taken from the Nature of the Sacraments which he brings in proof that all the Union between Christ and Christians is meerly political but upon second thoughts I am resolved to say something to it least by being left in the way it should put some to a stand though it should put none to a retreat We have already encountered the same forces in another field and being defeated there there is the less likelyhood of their standing it long out here As we have disabled this Medium from serving our Author against the Immediate Union of Christ with Believers so we will now venture to see what strength is in it against the common Opinion of the Christian Church about the Nature quality of the Union that is between Him and them Now I take it for granted says he that there can be no better way to understand the Nature of our Union with Christ than to consider the Nature of those Sacraments which were designed as the Instruments and signs of our Union with Him and if we will take that account the Scripture gives of them all the Union they signifie is a publick and visible profession of our Faith in Christ and subjection to Him as our Lord and Saviour and a sincere conformity of our hearts and lives to the Nature and Life of Christ. Thus Baptism is a publick profession of the Christian Religion that we believe the Gospel of Christ own his Authority and submit to his Government And the Lords Supper is a Federal Rite which answers to the Feasts or Sacrifices under the Law whereby we renew our Covenant with the Lord and vow obedience and subjection to him c. For answer Baptism and the Lords Supper being Ordinances instituted by Christ in a Habitude to the whole tenour of the New Covenant as it mutually obligeth both on Gods part and outs accordingly they may be considered either as they respect us or as they respect God who hath instituted and ordained them As they respect us they are both Symbols of our Profession and solemn engagements upon us to Duty As they respect God who hath appointed them they are representations of the mercies of the Covenant and Ratifying seals of it But to speak a little particularly to each of them First to Baptism Baptism as it is the outward way and means of our Initiation into the Lord Jesus Christ and of our matriculation into the Catholick Visible Church so it is the great representation of the inward washing of Regeneration and of our being renewed by the Holy Ghost The effusion of the Spirit being often likened to the pouring forth of water See Isa. 44.3 4 5. Ezek. 36.25 26 27. Joh. 3.5 Joh. 7.38 Heb. 10.22 So in Baptism it is most excellently signified and represented The Spirit saith Dr. Patrick is very well signified by water for as that cleanseth purifieth from filth so the Spirit of God is the sanctifier of Gods people purging and cleansing their hearts from all impurities Now the Spirit being no otherwise the spring and principle of all our Sanctification but as he is the Bond and Vinculum of our mystical Union with Christ out of whose fulness we receive all the Grace which we are made partakers of therefore Baptism being a representation of the effusion of the Spirit it is also an adumbration of the Union which we plead for 2ly As to the Lords Supper As the Lords Supper is a visible Symbol and Badg of our abiding in Christ into whom by Baptism we were Initiated and an obligation to all the Duties of growth and progress in Christianity so it is really exhibitive of Christ to us and a representation of our Spiritual Union with Him As the Bread and Wine could not in any congruity of speech be called the Body and Blood of Christ if they were not exhibitive of them so our eating his Flesh and drinking his Blood in a Sacramental sense can signifie no less than our being spiritually incorporated with him The Cup of Blessing saith the Apostle which we bless is it not the Communion of the Body of Christ 1 Cor. 10.16 And as by one Spirit we are Baptized into one Body so we are all made to drink into one spirit 1 Cor. 12.13 Our very Author tells us not aware that thereby he overthrows his whole Hypothesis that the Lords Supper is a spiritual feeding on Christ an eating his Flesh and drinking his Blood which signifies the most intimate Union with him that we are Flesh of his Flesh and Bone of his Bone Eph. 5.30 The Apostle in the place that Mr. Sherlock refers to doth in way of illustration of the Union between Christ and Christians allude to the Oneness which was between Adam and Eve Now that was greater than the Oneness between any other Husband or Wife in the World for she was not only of the same specifick Nature with Him and knit to him in a Matrimonial tye by God himself but she was extracted and formed out of his very Body and so is the fitter Symbol of the Intimate Union that is between Christ and Believers And thus I hope I have not only wrested this weapon out of Mr. Sherlocks hand but struck through his cause with it § 13. It being acknowledged on all sides that there is an Union between Christ and sincere Christians and it being now declared and made manifest what it is not I might here wind up without proceeding any further or undertaking to assign the true and just Notion of it Nor is Religion exposed by our affirming some of its Mysteries to be incomprehensible Our Reason fails us when we attempt to give an account of our selves and the obvious phaenomena of Nature and therefore we may well allow it unable to