all and most contrary to the design which by the grace of GOD we are entred on The Apostle therefore commands us to make mortal war upon them and to fight to weaken to kill and to destroy without pity all that we shall perceive in our selves to bear any affection or inclination to them Mortifie therefore saith he your members which are upon the earth c. The LORD please to bless now the voice of His Apostle and sink these words which Himself sometime inspired so deep into our fouls that they may be at this time effectual to our sanctification eradicating those accursed passions out of our hearts which cannot live nor fructifie there without dishonouring the Gospel and depriving us of that heavenly life to which we aspire The speech as you see contains two parts the first of which commands us in general to mortifie our members which are upon the earth The other represents unto us in particular some of these members of our old man which we are to mortifie to wit fornication uncleanness inordinate appetite evil concupiscence and covetousness which saith he is idolatry These are the two heads which the grace of GOD assisting we will consider in this action first the Apostle's general exhortation and then in the second place the vices which he doth by name and expresly give us order to mortifie As to the general exhortation it is conceiv'd in these words Mortifie therefore your members which are on the earth and to comprehend it aright we must consider the meaning of it and the coherence An understanding of the meaning of it does depend upon that clause your members which are upon the earth For there is no one but sees that this term members cannot signifie here as it ordinarily doth the parts of which our body is comâ—osed the hands the arms the feet and the like and as St. Paul useth it 〈◊〉 where when he saith Apply not your members to be instruments of iniquity unto sin Rom. 6.13 If he had had this intention here there would have been no need to add as he doth that these members are upon the earth every one plainly seeing it Besides what he saith in the sequel doth necessarily exclude this sense For he puts uncleanness and covetousness in the rank of those members which he orders us to mortifie things that are not parts of our bodies whereof neither the being nor name doth any way suit with them but indeed vices of our souls in which they properly reside and whence they spread forth themselves over our whole nature defiling and dishonouring it divers waies This addition leaves us no doubt at all but that these vices and others like them together with all filthy and shameful habitudes from whence bad actions proceed which he elsewhere calls the deeds of the body and works of the flesh are directly and precisely those members the mortifying whereof he commands us But you will say how and why doth he call them our members seeing they are not the parts of our nature which are all good and created of GOD but rather the maladies the leprosies and the pests of our nature supervening from without by the venomous breath of the old Serpent and his contagious commerce things that deprave and blast eat out and consume our being so far are they from accomodating it or adorning it or affording it either the benefit or the beauty which the body doth derive from that diversity of members wherewith it is so admirably furnished I answer that this is very true and that vices being the poison and ruine of our true being they cannot be properly called members of it it being evident that a disease is nothing less than one of the members of the body which it afflicteth Yet this for all that hinders not but the Apostle might upon some other account use this similitude and compare the vices of humane nature in the state it now is unto the divers members that constitute our body And for the right understanding of it you may please to remember that it is a form of speaking very common in all languages to compare those things unto a body which are made up of an accumulation or collection of many parts indeed different but nevertheless knit together in some order and having some sequel and dependance of some upon the rest among them whence it comes that we say the body of an Estate of an Army of a Town of a Family An whole wherein is no distinction of parts is called a mass one in which some distinction is to be be observed is termed a body Thence it comes that the Apostle compares that heap of vices and ill inclinations which existing now in all men from their birth goes on growing and gathering strength with age he compares it I say to and gives it the name of a body as you may remember you heard him speak in the precedent chapter where he saith that by our regeneration in JESUS CHRIST we have put off the body of the sins of the flesh This same body of our vices is also often compared to an entire person and called as you know the old man or the old Adam For first it is not one vice alone it 's a vast multitude of them a mass of horrors an hydra of evils a mixture of many poisons an heap of an infinity of ordures a complication of many maladies that do all at once make spoyl of one and the same creature and leave nothing sound nor whole in it from the sole of the foot to the crown of the head to speak with the Prophets but cover it all over with wounds and bruises with putrified and inveterate sores Then again these maladies though all pernicious and mortal are yet different among themselves there 's infidelity superstition distrust hatred or contempt both of GOD and our neighbour love of the flesh and the earth pride cruelty sloth luxury intemperance avarice and a thousand such others For who can so much as name them all And though the confusion that alwaies necessarily follows error and vice be to say true very great among them nevertheless there is some kind of order and sequacity to be observed in them For whereas it is knowledge that should move and guide our nature here it is ignorance that governeth this troop â—â—monsters Blindness is their guide and error their director And whereas in the due constitution of man the will follows the light of the understanding here the will followeth its darkness and embraceth those phantasms which the phrensie of its leader takes for real and solid things And as in the diseases of the body what disorder soever there be a certain order and regularity is nevertheless to be seen in their beginnings their progress and increases nothing coming to pass in them without cause so is it in the sicknesses of the soul they have their accesses their inflammations their returns and their periods that though there be nothing but
a perpetual disorder which displaceth every thing and overturns all yet all hath its certain causes It 's therefore with a great deal of reason and elegance that the Apostle compares this strange convention of so many evils which are so divers and do all work with some sequel and dependance unto a body and each of those vices of which it is composed as covetousness fornication and the like unto the members of a body He calleth them our members because that old man which is made up of them is wholly ours and does invest all the principles of our life from their root and invelope them and mingle so deeply with them that it all in a sort is nothing but corruption and malady this venome infecting all the actions and all the motions of our nature its understanding its affections and passions together with the thoughts words and actions which flow from them so that as our animal and natural life consisteth in the exercising of our members and in their actions in like manner our moral life is all of it nothing but a continual exercising of these vices and of the sins they produce as is to be clearly seen if you consider the lives of profane and unregenerate persons For they are nought else but a continual exercise of vices of ambition of vanity of covetousness of luxury and sensuality as they are addicted more or less to the one or the other of these sins the perpetual running of a foul and muddy stream which a corrupted spring doth daily thrust forth that you cannot observe so much as one of its swellings or rollings exempt from its filthiness And this may suffice for comprehending the reason why the Apostle calls these parts of the old man our members For as to that consideration which some do propose in this matter namely that the members of our bodies having been created of GOD they are not ours but in regard of use and not in regard of their original whereas the members of the old man are ours all manner of waies having been made and formed in us by our own fault and naughtiness and not by the hand of GOD who created man upright and pure man distorting and depraving himself this conceit I say seems to me more subtil than solid For though the matter of it be very true yet it is so wide from the Apostles design in this place that there is little likelyhood he thought upon it when he called the vices here of our corrupt nature our members Without doubt he so doth only because it is in the exercising and acting of these vices that the carnal life of men doth consist For the rest if you remember what we said upon the precedent Text of the death of the old man in us you will not think it strange that the Apostle after having said that we are dead does not yet forbear to exhort us to mortifie the members of this same life which we have put off in JESUS CHRIST For our being dead in this respect doth not import that the life of the flesh is entirely and absolutely extinct in us this will not be effected untill we shall quit it at our leaving of the earth and put on coelestial and spiritual bodies at the day of the resurrection but the Scripture doth thus speak first because JESUS CHRIST hath by His death His resurrection and His ascension into Heaven destroyed and abolished all the causes that gave nutriment and sustenance to the life of the old man and secondly because the old man 〈◊〉 receiv'd his deaths wound in each of us by the faith that ingrafted and incorporated us into JESUS CHRIST so as if we persevere it is not possible that he should recover But this death of His as we said doth not arrive all at once It 's executed by little and little and the exercise of a believer during his stay here below is to busie himself incessantly about it daily to weaken and wound that flesh of his which is already nailed to the cross of his LORD to entinguish by little and little all the life it hath remaining that is to mortifie his members as the Apostle here speaks In this sense you see these two conceptions are so far from having ought that 's contrary or incompatible in them that quite otherwise the one doth evidently and necessarily follow from the other For since we are dead in JESUS CHRIST since the arrest of the death of our old man is past since JESUS CHRIST hath done on His part all that was necessary to execute it since this flesh condemn'd is already fastened to His cross it is evident that it ought to live no longer and that by consequent each of us should incessantly bestirr our selves to put it to death by mortifying its members beating down and weakening their vigour driving deep into them our Saviour's nails and thorns untill they be effectually reduced unto that state of death unto which they were condemned having no more either motion or sentiment or force or life at all in us Lo My Brethren the thing the Apostle means by these words mortifie your members To say it in a word he would have us weaken and extinguish the vices of our old man and put them in such a state of death as hath no more strength nor vigour nor stirring But as this holy man's whole language is full of profound wisdome I am of opinion he thus speaks to give a further blow to those seducers whose error he had been refuting in the fore-going chapter These men to recommend their disciplines gave out that they did not at all spare the body that they had no regard to the satiating of the flesh that they oppos'd its pleasures and humbled and mortified it And you know that this is at this very day the language of those votaries who place Christianity in such exercises They speak of nothing but their mortifications St. Paul therefore doth here correct the vain conceits of this error and sheweth us what true mortification is and that that is worthy of the study and exercise of the faithful It is saith he the members of the old man we are to mortifie and not those of the body It is vices It 's fornication and covetousness and pride that we must quell and kill with blows and not our body And as one of the Prophets sometime said to the superstitious of his age who fasted and afflicted themselves and rent their clothes Rend your hearts and not your garments Joel 2.13 in like manner the Apostle here opposeth the internal mortification of sins as only necessary and truly worthy of a Christian unto the external mortification of the body unto which error did and still doth tye up its self For in truth to what purpose is it to beat a man's breast and rend his back while sin mean time reigneth in his heart To what purpose is it to afflict the members of this body while the members of the
affection for the order and welfare and contentment of your neighbours if you take pleasure in their societie if you love the exercise of pietie and other vertues if you desire to conserve your souls in repose and your bodies in health obey the Apostle's command pull up and put away choler out of your hearts Suffer not so dangerous a guest to lodge within you the parent of quarels and debates the enemie of peace the cause of hostilities and murthers the pest of families and estates the storm of the soul the poison of the understanding the blinding of reason the abhorrence of GOD and men the ruine and hell of those whom it possesseth Never tell me that you cannot resist the tyrannie of your cholerick temper or that you did not begin first to be angry but it was an injury from your neighbour that kindled your wrath and you should pass for a man of no spirit if you suffered an affront without emotion and resentment These are but pretext and vain excuses which cannot hide the shame of your fault For as for nature it sorceth no man to wrath On the contrary it loveth sweetness and tranquility and it would be a strange thing that we could not be men without having the eagerness and the transports of animals If the Creator had given you choler He hath also given you flegm to temper it and reason to govern it and the word and Spirit of His Son to mortifie it And as for offences received from your neighbour the producing of them is no justification of your passion it 's a telling us the story and occasion of it Why then do you imagine that the LORD never forbids you to be angry but then only when no body gives you cause If your neighbour doth well to be angry with you why are you troubled at it And if he does ill why do you imitate him His having begun is so far from justifying you that I doubt this very thing will aggravate your crime For he that casts himself into an evil into which he saw another fall seems less excusable than he His example wherein you might have seen the hideousness of this passion should have kept you from it And as to the judgement of men if they be wise they will never impute it to you for faint-heartedness that you have overcome your own animositie since it 's in this properly that the highest point of magnanimitie consisteth it being clear that the weakest persons of all as children and such as resemble them are also ordinarily the most turbulent and cholerick and that true generositie is less subject to be moved and perturbed But if the opinion of the vicious or ignorant doth afright you sure you have not yet profited much in the School of CHRIST where the first lesson is to despise the fantasies and maxims of the world that we may rest in the laws and will of GOD. Lay me then aside all these nullities of excuse and sedulouslie form your selves unto that sweetness and benignitie which GOD requires Shun all occasions of anger and repell them when they occurr And for the winning of this ground upon your self and the being alwaies master of your own spirits descend into your selves and consider well the meannesse of your nature and its little worth that this body which makes so much noise is for substance nothing but dust and ashes that this breath which animates it is a spirit 't is true but full of ignorance and vanity and which is worse covered with crimes worthy of hell if GOD should judge you in rigour Discharge your selves of that vain opinion of your nobilitie of your riches of your power of your abilities which puffs you up so much For to say true all this is but a dream and a non-entity Such a consideration would be excellent to keep down the stirring and the boiling of your choler which ariseth most times from nothing but our presumption For esteeming our selves too highly it seems to us that no man can offend us but it is high treason and that a daring to attaque us is some kind of impietie But on the other hand let us also judge of our neighbours with more equitie and reason and think that in the sight of GOD they are as much or it may be more than we they are the workmanship of His hand the pourtraicts of His image the redeemed of His CHRIST and the denisons of His Paradise as well as we If we look'd upon our selves and them in this manner we should not be so easily or so vehemently troubled at the offences they do us Then again we should lift up our eyes higher and meditate the Providence of GOD and take all the outrages that are done us as chastisements or trials which beside us by His order It was this consideration that restrained David's anger on that just occasion for it which Shimci's insolency gave him It is the LORD said he who said unto him 2 Sam. 16.10 curse David A brave speech an holy declaration If we conform unto it all the occasions of perturbation which men give us will be so many exercises for us of patience and humility If they revile us we shall bless them If they outrage us we shall bear with them If they contemn us and abase us we shall put our selves yet lower and when they call us worthless people we shall add yea we are but dung and silth If they reproach us with poverty or ignorance we shall say in surplusage that we are but worms conceived and born in sin This would be a profiting by their outrages and a making other mens furie the subject of our vertue and matter of our praise It would be also of use for the forming of us unto meckness and patience to have still before our eyes the patience and meckness of a Moses of a David of a Jeremy of a St. Stephen and above all of our LORD and Saviour Who when He was reviled reviled not again Pet. 2.23 and when He suffered threatned not leaving us this glorious pattern that we might follow His steps We should too propose unto our selves the example of GOD Himself Who is infinite goodness and love Who beareth His creatures blaspheamings and instead of crushing them causeth His Sun to shine on them and watereth their lands with His rain inviting them so graciously to repentance Which would you rather be the disciples of this supreamest LORD and of His Son and of His Saints or of those miserable vassals of sin whom the evil spirit doth possess And this again should sweeten our resentments toward those that offend us even the remembring that it is Satan who inspires into them all the evil they say of us or do to us They are but his instruments Mean time we fasten upon them as if they were authors of the outrage doing in this particular as dogs who bite the stone that struck them and touch not the person that threw it The
us This is the mysterie of the bread we there break and of the cup we there bless in remembrance and for the communicating of that sacred body which was broken for us and of that divine blood which was shed for the remission of our sins Let us carefully improve a doctrine so necessary and which is so diligently inculcated on us in the word and in the Sacraments of our LORD referring it to our edification and comfort Learn we from it first the horrour of sin a spot so black as could not be washed out but by the blood of JESUS CHRIST That remission of it might be given us it was necessary the Father should deliver up His dear Son to dye and the Son give His blood the preciousest jewel of the universe a thousand times more worth than heaven and earth and all the glory of them From this meditation conceive a just hatred against Sin since it is so abominable in the eyes of this Soveraign LORD on whose communion alone depends all your bliss shun it and pluck it out of your Consciences and your hearts As for sins already committed seek the remission of them in the blood of CHRIST Give your selves no rest till you have found it till you have obtained grace till it be exemplified in your souls by the hand and seal of the Holy Ghost Lay by the pretended satisfactions and merits of men Have no recourse but to the righteousness of JESUS CHRIST which alone is able to cover our shame and render us acceptable to GOD. But having once obtained pardon for the time passed return not into it for the future When sin shall present it self to you repell it couragiously opposing to all its temptations this holy and healthsome consideration It 's my Master 's the murtherer of the LORD of glory It 's the accursed Serpent that separated man from GOD that put enmity between Heaven and earth that sowed misery and death in the world and obliged the Father to deliver up His Son to the sufferings of the Cross GOD forbid I should take into my bosome so cruel so deadly an enemy But from this same source we may also draw unspeakable consolation against the gnawing guilt of sin and the troubles of Conscience For since it 's by the blood of the Son of GOD that we have been redeemed what cause is there to doubt but that our remission is assured The superstitious hath reason to be in continual affright since man in whom he puts his confidence is but vanity The propitiatory I present you Faithful soul is not the blood of a man or of an Angel creatures finite and incapable of sustaining the eternal burnings of the wrath of the Almighty It is the blood of GOD's own Son who also is Himself GOD blessed for ever It 's a blood of infinite value and truly capable of counter-poising and bearing down the infinite demerit of your crimes Come then sinner whoever you be Come with assurance How foul soever your transgessions be this blood will cleanse them away How ardent soever the displeasure of GOD against you be this blood will quench it Only bedew your soul with it Make an aspersion of it on your hearts with a lively faith and you shall no more need to fear the word of the executioner of the avenges of GOD. But Faithful Brethren having thus assured your Conscience by the meditation of this divine blood of our LORD admire ye also His infinite love which He so clearly sheweth us and confirmeth to us This King of Glory hath so loved you that when your sins could not be pardoned without the effusion of His blood He would dye upon a Cross rather than see you perish in Hell He poured out His blood to keep in yours and did undergo the curse of GOD that you might partake in His blessings O great and incomprehensible love the singular miracle of Heaven which ravishest men and Angels What should we fear henceforth since this great GOD hath so loved us Who shall condemn us since He is our surety Who shall accuse us since He is our Advocate He hath given us His own blood What can He any longer refuse to bestow on us He hath laid down His soul for us how much more will He grant us all other things that may be necessary for our salvation But as this thought doth comfort us so ought it to sanctifie us Of what Hells shall not we be worthy if we love not a LORD who hath so passionately loved us If we obey not His commandments who hath blotted out our sins If for this precious blood which He hath given us we do not render to Him ours and consecrate to His glory a life which He hath redeemed by the offering up of His own in sacrifice for our salvation And after an example of so ravishing goodness how can we be ill affected to any man Christians GOD hath forgiven you a thousand and a thousand most-enormous sins how have you the heart to deny your neighbour the pardon of one slight offence He hath given you His blood you that were His enemy How can you refuse a small almes to him that is your Brother and that upon the account both of nature and grace Let the goodness of the LORD JESUS mollifie the hardness of your heart let the vertue of His blood melt your bowels into sweetness into charity and into love both toward Him and towards His members Discharge you this very day at His table of all the bitter passions of your flesh Put off there pride hatred and envy and clothe you there with His humility and His gentleness Do him new homage and give Him oath to be never any others but His alone presenting your selves with deepest respect before this Throne of His grace Remember both at this time and ever after that blood by which He hath obtained Redemption for you that is the remission of your sins This blood is the peace of Heaven and of earth This blood hath brought us out of Hell and opened Paradise unto us It hath delivered us from death and given us life This blood hath blotted out the sentence of our curse that stood registred in the Law of GOD it hath stopped the mouth of our accusers and pacified our Judge This blood hath effected a renovation of the world It hath quickned the dead and animated the dust and changed our mortal flesh into a celestial and divine nature Dear Brethren GOD forbid we should tread under foot a thing so holy or account such precious blood profane or common Let us reverence it and receive it into our hearts with an ardent devotion And may it display its admirable efficacy in them causing the royal image of GOD even holiness and righteousness to flourish there to the glory of the LORD and our own consolation and salvation Amen THE VII SERMON COL I. Ver. XV. Vers XV. Who is the image of the invisible GOD the first-born of every
and believing that the Son of GOD is another person than the Father let us confess that His Divine nature is the same with that of the Father that is to say that He is one only and the same GOD with Him blessed for ever since without this the doctrine of the Apostle that JESVS CHRIST is the image of GOD cannot be fully and firmly established But let us now consider how and why he here termeth GOD the Father whose image JESUS CHRIST is invisible Sure the Divine nature is spiritual as our LORD said to the woman of Samaria that GOD is a spirit And every spiritual nature is invisible it being clear that the eye seeth no objects but such as are corporeal such as have some figure and colour and do cast forth from them some kind of species into the air and into other diaphanous and transparent bodies through which they gliding with incredible swiftness come to strike our senses things these that have none of them any place in spiritual and immaterial substances For this cause Moses when He would yer-while teach the Israelites that GOD had nothing gross or material in His essence nothing that might be represented by the workmanship of the pencil or the chizel in visible images doth expresly remonstrate to them that on the day He manifested Himself giving them the Law upon Mount Sinai Deut. 4.12 Deut. 4.15 16. they heard indeed a voice speaking but saw no likeness at all beside that voice Whence he concludeth that they should take good heed they made no graven image or likeness representing any kind of thing no effigies of any form whatsoever to be of religious use to them as a pourtrait of GOD as most Nations then did and to this day still do This truth is clear and undoubted nor was it ever contested but by the Anthropomorphites who attributed to GOD an humane body and members an extravagancy long since condemned and abolished in all Christendome But the Apostle here terming GOD invisible doth not meerly intend that neither our eyes nor our other senses can apprehend the form of His nature He signifieth also that our very understandings cannot comprehend it and that it is hidden from all our conceptions For it is frequent in Scripture to put seeing for knowing and to signifie the apprehensions and conceptions of the mind by the names of the senses of the body And it is thus we must take what the Apostle saith elsewhere that GOD the King of ages 1 Tim. 6.16 is invisible and in another place that He dwelleth in inaccessible light and that no man hath seen nor can see Him The Angels themselves how high soever their understanding be above ours yet cannot comprehend the true form and nature of this supream and most glorious Majesty because His essence is infinite and no finite subsistence is capable of conceiving an infinite being And therefore the Seraphim Isa 6.2 in Isaiah standing before GOD covered their faces with two of their wings to testifie that they could not bear the splendour of His glory I grant that through His grace we do know something of His nature and it 's this the Scripture meaneth when it saith of Moses and other believers that they saw and beheld Him more or less according to the divers degrees of the knowledge He gave them of Himself the highest of which degrees will be that we shall attain unto in the Kingdom of Heaven and the Holy GHOST to express it to us 1 Joh. 3.2 1 Cor. 12.12 sayeth that we shall see GOD as He is that we shall see Him face to face and know Him as we were known But how fair and clear and excellent soever all this knowledge be which faithful men and holy Angels have of GOD either in this world or in the other it is not to speak strictly a seeing that is an apprehension which reacheth and conceiveth the true and proper form of it's object so as this remains still firm that GOD to speak properly is invisible But why doth the Apostle ascribe this quality unto GOD the Father particularly in this place Dear Brethren he doth it very pertinently and thereby sheweth us how it is by JESUS CHRIST His Son that GOD hath manifested Himself to us For there is a secret opposition between the word image and invisible GOD is invisible saith the Apostle but JESVS CHRIST is the image of Him This eternal Father hath a nature so sublime and so impenetrable by any sense of ours that without this His image which shines forth in His Son neither men nor Angels would have known ought of Him He had remained eternally veiled up in that inaccessible light in which He dwelleth without being known of any but Himself But now He hath vouchsafed to manifest unto us that which may be known of Him by this eternal and most perfect image of His person that is to say by His Son For first it is by Him He made the world the Theatre of His wonders And it 's by Him also He conserveth it and governeth it in so admirable a manner It is to Him likewise that we must refer the revelations of GOD under the Old Testament It 's the Son as most of the ancient Doctors of the Church have very well observed that appeared unto Abraham and the rest of the Patriarchs that led Israel through the wilderness and inspired its Prophets But the Apostle in this passage hath respect particularly and propery to the manifestation of GOD in the fulness of time when his eternal and essential image did discover all His glory to the Jews first and afterwards to the other Nations of the world rendring it of invisible as it was in it self visible in that flesh which He vested Himself with in the Blessed Virgins womb It was then properly that the Son appeared before our eyes as He is in reality from all eternity the image of the invisible GOD the resplendency of His glory and the engraven mark of His person For the office of an image is to represent that to us which it is the figure of Now it was principally in this last manifestation that the Son made us see all the wonders of His Father the abysses of His justice and of His mercy the depths of His wisdom and His infinite power which the world knew not before The Creatures of this universe do shew us only the edges as it were and the footsteps and the bigger lincaments of them JESUS CHRIST hath unfolded and laid open to our view the whole substance and form of them The world and the Law it self were but imperfect draughts and obscure shadows JESUS CHRIST is that enlivened image in which the Majesty the nature and the goodness of GOD do appear with all their fulness But it is high time now to come to the other point wherein the Apostle having compared JESUS CHRIST with GOD His Father of whom he is the image considereth Him with respect to the
if the Heavens and the Elements and the Winds and the Meteors and the Plants things deaf and dumb and inanimate do preach and celebrate the wonders of their LORD all of them obeying His voyce and faithfully serving His designs what will our ingratitude be if with these senses and this excellent reason He hath given us we alone of all His creatures should cross His counsels and dishonor His Name instead of glorifying it The glory He requireth of us is only that we walk in His Commandments that we abound in good and holy works that we depart from all evil and live in such manner as may oblige our neighbours to acknowledge that this JESUS whom we serve is truly a great GOD. Acquit we us then faithfully of these duties and assure our selves that if we advance His glory He will provide for our bliss and guard us from all that opposeth the same For since all things Celestial and Terrestrial visible and invisible were created and do still subsist by Him there is nothing in the whole world that should make us afraid All the Armies of Heaven of the Elements and of Nature are in our Masters pay and neither war nor work but for His interests and by His order These very Thrones these Principalities these Powers and these Dominions which He hath exalted above all His other creatures do not employ the mightiness and the glory of their nature but for Him and for those that fear Him They are ministring Spirits sent forth to serve for their sakes that shall receive the inheritance of Salvation They keep us in all our ways They defend us in life they assist us at death and convey us up into the bosom of our true Abraham Let us live in assurance under the protection of so good and so great a LORD that we may one day receive at His hand blissful Immortality the great and last Donative His Benignity conferreth To Him with the Father and the Holy Spirit the true GOD blessed over all things be for ever Honor Glory and Praise Amen THE IX SERMON COL I. Ver. XVIII Vers XVIII And it is He who is the head of the body of the Church and who is the beginning and the first-born from the dead to the end He might have the first place in all things IT is not without just cause Beloved Brethren that the Apostle St. Paul speaking of the union of JESUS CHRIST and His Church which was represented at the beginning of the world Eph. 5.32 by the marriage of Adam and Eve doth pronounce it aloud to be a great secret For in effect there is nothing in this mysterie which way soever you take it but is very great and worthy the admiration of men and Angels First if you weigh the thing it self is it not wonderful strange and unheard of in the world that the Creator should unite Himself with the creature The LORD of glory with worms The King of Heaven with dust and ashes The Saint of Saints with sinners Then again if you consider the foundation of this Union what can be conceived of a more ravishing nature than the birth and the death of the Son of GOD upon which this Divine alliaâ—â—e was contracted this mystical Spouse having had so vehement a passion for the Church that to make her His He made Himself a man like us and shed out all His blood upon a Cross If you contemplate the form and manner of this Union it is so strict and intimate that it perfectly mingleth together the parties whom it doth unite and makes them one only body one flesh and one Spirit joyning both their persons and their affairs and in such manner confounding their interests that JESUS CHRIST is wholly His Churches and the Church wholly Her CHRIST's The firmness of this Union is no less admirable being such as all the powers of the Earth of Hell or of Heaven are not able to dissolve it and whereas Nature hath bound nothing in the whole Universe but time doth lose it in the end the sacred clasps of this the Churches eternal Union with her LORD shall never be undone either in this world or in that which is to come by any of those innumerable ages that shall roul forth Finally if you respect the effects of it what can be mentioned of more glorious and saving import than the fruits this Union doth produce It filleth our understanding with light it purifies our affections it sanctifies our hearts it keepeth the peace of GOD in them it changeth slaves of Devils into Children of the most High it transformeth Earth into Heaven and instead of that death and curse which we deserved it giveth us eternity and glory For 't is from it alone that all those Divine graces do flow down which we enjoy in this world and all the advantages and felicities we hope for in the other It need be no wonder therefore that the Scripture doth make use of so many different resemblances to figure out to us so excellent and so rich a subject there being to be found no one so accomplished as might singly suffice to represent us all the marveils of it For this cause it borroweth to express this same one all the unions that nature or art or humane society doth afford us comparing it sometimes to the Union of a Vine with its branches or of an Olive with the graffs that are set into its slock sometimes to the knitting of a Foundation with the building which it beareth or of a corner stone with the two walls which it binds together sometimes to the conjunction of a Prince with His subjects or of an elder brother with the younger or of an husband with his wife But among all these sacred pictures of our union with the LORD there is hardly any more proper or more genuine than the two similitudes which the LORD my Brethren now sets before you the one in those words of His Apostle which we have read to you and the other on that sacred Table whither you are invited to the feast of His Lamb. The first is drawn from the natural union of the head with its members and the second from the union of bread and drink with the bodies which are nourished thereby By reason of the one CHRIST is our head and we His body By reason of the other He is called our bread our meat and our drink and we the creatures whom He feedeth and quickneth And though in other respects these two images be very different yet in this particular they agree that they excellently represent to us both our union with the LORD and the life which is thence derived to us it being clear that as well the head as the food doth each of them give life to the bodies with which they are united This hath induced me to believe that the meditation of this Text will be useful for the Sacrament of the LORD's Supper for which we prepare our selves since for the main
it sets before our eyes though under a different resemblance that same mysterie of our union with the LORD which is represented and communicated to us at His holy Table For the Apostle to accomplish his design and fully shew us the infinite excellence and dignity of JESUS CHRIST our Saviour after He hath told us what He is in regard of the Father namely the image of the invisible GOD and what in regard of the works of the first Creation to wit the first-born that is the Prince and Master of all the Creatures as having created them all made and formed them from the very lowest to the highest of them the Apostle I say after this dispatched considers Him finally in regard of the new Creatures that be that is to say the Church and informs us that He is the head thereof and the Church His body and for the greater illustration of it adds moreover that He is the beginning and the first-born from the dead whence he deduceth this conclusion that so He hath the first place in all things These are the three points which we purpose the Grace of GOD assisting to treat of in this action for the exposition of this Text and your edification The first that JESVS CHRIST is the head of the body of the Church The second that He is the beginning and the first-born from the dead and the third and last that He hath the first place in all things As for the first of these three points it is not here alone that the Apostle calleth JESUS CHRIST the head of the Church He useth the same language in diverse other places of His Epistles as in that he writes to the Ephesians Eph. 1.22 23. where he saith that the Father hath set His Son above all things to be head of the Church which is His body the fulness of Him that filleth all in all and elsewhere again that CHRIST is the head from whom the whole body fitly joyned together Eph. 4.15 16. and compacted by that which every joint supplyeth according to the effectual working in the measure of every part maketh encrease of the body unto the edifying of it self in love And a little after in this Chapter of our Text we shall find him repeating that the Church is the body of CHRIST and in the first to the Corinthians Col. 1.24 speaking to the faithful You are saith he the body of CHRIST and members each one on his part In truth it is a figure very common in all languages to call him the Head of a Society who guideth and governeth it or who at least possesseth the first place in it As you see that every one calls a King the Head of His Estate and a General the Head of the Army wherein he commandeth and those the Heads of their Regiments or Companies who have the leading of them Whence comes our vulgar word Captain which according to its derivation signifies nought else but the Head The master of an houshold is in like manner termed the Head of it and so in all other societies of what nature soever they be But this manner of speaking is exceedingly familiar with the Hebrews as you may see in very many places of the Old Testament where every thing that hath the first place whether iâ— be for its authority or for its excellency or even for its birth and meer precedency in time is called the head of other things of the same kind And the reason of this figure is evident For the head standing highest of all the parts of the body of man and having the conduct of it because it is the seat of the eyes and other senses upon which the directing of our life dependeth the name thereof is very justy used to signifie by way of similitude whatsoever holdeth the first place in any society and which consequently hath in this respect a manifest resemblance of the Head properly so called It need not therefore be thought strange that this holy Apostle makes use of this figure to express the superiority the dignity and imperial power which JESUS CHRIST hath over the Church saying that He is the Head thereof And sure if there be a superiour in the whole universe who may and ought to be called head of the society which is under him JESUS CHRIST doth merit it infinitely beyond any other there being none at all in whom the reasons and respects which are necessary for the founding of this appellation are so clearly found as in Him For all the qualities actions and functions proper to the head of the body of man which give it its name and dignity JESUS CHRIST hath and doth exercise them much more nobly and magnificently than any General in reference to His army or any Monarch in reference to His State The first and most known office which the head doth the members is that it directs and guides them in their operations and governs their motion and their rest by the light of its eyes and the perceptions of its other senses Now Princes and Captains have some shadow of this perfection in that they discover and observe and sent at distance the things that concern those bodies over which they preside watching and viewing all that respects their interests while their people mean time quietly labour each of them in his own employment But JESUS CHRIST doth these offices to His Church much better and more perfectly For it 's in Him that all the light of this mystical body doth reside He considereth not only its interests in general He knoweth all that concerneth the least of His members He never slumbereth nor sleepeth He hath eyes and senses alwayes open He seeth all the parts of this His State and discerneth the posture and disposition of all that is its friend or foe be it neerer hand or further off He charily preserves it by this Providence of His governing it so prudently that there is no danger from which He doth not deliver it nor any difficulty but He surmounteth it It is He that ordereth His people warrs and over-ruleth their fights and dispenseth their truces and will one day give them an entire and eternal peace The second duty the Head performs to the body is that it influxeth into all the members of it all the motion and sensation that they have by means of the animal spirits which from the head as from their spring do spread themselves through the whole body flowing in the nerves as in so many channels which nature hath cut out and laid forth for the maintaining of this communication And I acknowledge that the authority and powers which a Prince distributeth into all the parts of His State and which cause His subjects to act diversly each one according to the degree they receive thereof I acknowledge I say this is a very good resemblance of the way of the heads governing the body But it is far beneath what we find in the LORD JESUS His conduct
elected and imploy'd to compass it or the love of the Son who for our welfare spared not his own blood Sinner approach the Throne of GOD with boldness He is no longer environed with flames and Lightning flashes He is full of grace and clemency Fear not His indignation or His severity Peace is made Your Rebellions are expiated your sins are purged GOD requires nothing of you but Faith and Repentance His Justice is contented and doubt not but the satisfaction it hath received is sufficient He that made it for you is the Well-beloved of the Father the Lord of glory in whom all fulness dwelleth You will find abundantly in Him all the good things that are necessary for your felicity the light of wisdom to dissipate your darkness and illuminate your understandings unto a perfect knowledge of Divine things a righteousness most compleat and of proof every way to justifie and exempt you from the Curse of the Law and to open the entrance of the Tribunal of GOD to you A most efficacious Sanctification to mortifie the lusts of your flesh and fill you with Charity Honesty and Purity And a most plentiful Redemption to deliver you from death and from all the evils that have connexion with it and put you in Eternal possession of Immortality Make your advantage of this Divine Well of Life Give no ear to them that call you any otherwhere You are happy enough if you possess the LORD JESUS He is the only Prince of Salvation the Way the Truth and the Life And as for Creatures whether Earthly or Heavenly fear them not If you are JESUS CHRIST's they shall do you no evil He hath reconcil'd them all to you He hath taken out of them all the will and all the power they had to hurt you They desire your good and secretly favour you owning you for their Friends and Allies Heaven looks down on you in peace and calleth you up into its holy place The Angels bless you and direct all your ways This Earth will hold you no longer than your common LORD shall judge expedient for His own glory and your salvation But if this general peace which you have now with GOD and the World do rejoyce you the means by which it was procured should no less ravish you even that blood of CHRIST shed out upon a Cross the grand Miracle of GOD the price of your Liberty the Salvation and the Glory of the Universe What and how ardent was that love which gave so rich and so admirable a Ransom for you What will He deny you who hath not kept back His own blood from you who to make you happy abhorred not a Cross the most infamous of all punishments who to raise you up to the most eminent Contentments underwent the extremest Dolours the lowest disgrace to bring you unto highest glory the Malidiction of GOD to communicate to you His Benediction O over-happy Christians if you could discern your blisses Where is the anguish of Spirit or the trouble of Conscience or the loss or the suffering or the reproach which the meditation of this love should not consolate Who shall condemn us since the Son of GOD dyed to merit our Absolution Who shall accuse us since His Blood and His Cross defend us Who shall take from us the Benevolence of the Father since He hath obtain'd it for us and conserves it towards us Who shall pluck out of our hands a life He hath given us a Salvation that He hath so dearly bought But dear Brethren these considerations which open to us so rich a Source of Consolation oblige us also to a singular Sanctification For how great will be the hardness of our hearts if these great evidences which GOD hath given us of His love do not affect us if they kindle not in us an ardent affection towards a GOD who hath so loved us a sacred and inviolable respect towards a Redeemer who hath done so much for us He hath reconciled and reunited all things in Him both Terrestrial and Celestial Let us live then henceforth in such sort as may answer this happy alliance Let us no more afflict heaven no more scandalize the earth by the impurity of our deportments Let us labour in conjunction with all the Creatures for the service and to glory of our common LORD Imitate we the purity the zeal and the obsequiousness of those Celestial Spirits into whose Society we are entred by the benefit of this Reconciliation Let us be cloathed as they are with a beautiful and pleasing light Our lot is to be one day like them in Immortality let us be so for the present in Sanctity Our peace is made with GOD. Let us not make war upon Him any more He hath pardoned us all the exorbitancies and rage of our Rebellion never turn we to any of them again He will be our good LORD and gracious Master Be we His faithful Subjects and obedient Servants Let the Blood of CHRIST wipe away both our guilt and our filth Fasten we our old man to His Cross Let the nails that there pierced His flesh pierce also the members of ours Let the Cross that made Him dye make to dye all our lusts and extinguish by little and little in us that earthly carnal and vicious life which we derive from the first Adam to regenerate and raise us up again with the second unto a new an holy and spiritual life worthy of that Blood by which he He hath purchas'd it for us and of that Spirit by whom He hath communicated the beginnings of it to us and of that Sanctuary of Immortality where He will fully finish it one day to His own glory and our eternal blessedness Amen THE XI SERMON COL I. Ver. XXI XXII Vers XXI And you who were somtime estranged from Him and who were His enemies in your understanding in wicked works XXII Yet now hath He reconciled in the body of His flesh by death to render you holy and without spot and unreprovable before Him DEar Brethren It was long since observed by Philosophers and we still find it by experience that general things do move the spirits of men very little The cause is that being naturally glewed up too close every one to his particular interests they mind only that which toucheth the same and are not sollicitous about a common concern till they are made some way smartly sensible that themselves have part in it The ministers of the Church therefore should not content themselves with proposing the maxims of heavenly doctrine in gross and in general only to the souls whose edification is committed to them that they may get hold of them and produce some good effect upon them they must apply to them in particular each of those Divine verities St. Paul whose example should serve for a rule to all the true servants of GOD takes this course in divers places of His Epistles and particularly in the Text we have now read you For
dying of CHRIST in His body and His brandings in His flesh Whence appears to note it by the way how absurd the belief of Purgatory is which makes the faithful to suffer not in the flesh but in the Spirit and extendeth their afflictions and pains beyon the days of their flesh in which nevertheless the Apostle teacheth us that their sufferings are compleated Thus you see what the sense of his words is and how much reason he had to rejoyce in his sufferings First because they were the afflictions of JESUS CHRIST the Prince of life and the author of our salvation Secondly Because they were dispensed by the order and the will of GOD. Thirdly because they made up the last part of the Apostles task being the going on and the remainder of the conflicts which he had to sustain And lastly because they contained an illustrious evidence of his gratitude towards the LORD and rendered him conform to His holy image in that as JESUS had suffered for his salvation he also suffered in his order for the glory of his gracious Master But he addeth yet another reason that sweetned likewise the bitterness of his sufferings to him and made him to find joy amid the horror of them It is that he suffered them for the body of the LORD which is His Church He had already said that he suffered for the Colossians as we have explained it Now he extendeth the fruit of his afflictions further saying that they are of use to the whole Church And to shew us how much weight this consideration should have to make his sufferings pleasant to him he gives the Church the highest and the most glorious appellation that can be attributed to any creatures calling it the body of CHRIST For what more illustrious and more precious subject can we suffer for than the body of the Son of GOD the King of ages the Father of eternity We have already treated of it at another time upon the eighteenth verse of this Chapter and shewed how and in what sense the Church is the body of CHRIST neither will we repeat ought of it for the present But his affirming that he fills up these afflictions for the Church is true and appeareth so to be in two respects First inasmuch as the Church was the occasion and indeed the cause of his sufferings For it was the service he did it in preaching the Gospel in instructing and comforting it in founding it and setling it in the faith that had provoked the Jews against him and involved him in the afflictions which did beset him As if a Princes servant zealous for his Masters glory and for the weal of his affairs should therethrough fall into some disaster he might say it was for him and his Estate that he shed his blood and lay a prisoner in his enemies hands Secondly S. Pauls afflictions were for the Church because he suffered them for the edification and consolation of the Church This was the scope of his patience and the design of His constancy It 's to the Church that all the fruit of these fair and illustrious examples of the Apostles vertue did redound He himself explains it to be thus elsewhere If we be afflicted saith he to the faithful it is for your consolation and salvation which is effected in enduring the same afflictions which we also suffer where you see that the fruit which the faithful reaped from these afflictions consisted in this that by the vertue of his example they were confirmed in the Gospel were rejoyced and comforted and fortified for the like combats And in the Epistle to the Philippians treating of the same bond Phil. 1.12 13 14. that he speaks of in this place I would ye should know saith he that the things which have betided me have fallen out rather to the greater furtherance of the Gospel So that my bonds in CHRIST have been noted in all the Palace and in all other places And many of the brethren in the LORD waxing confident by my bonds are much more bold to speak the word without fear Lo how his sufferings were for the Church in that they encouraged the Preachers and enkindled in the hearts of the faithful people the zeal of the house of GOD and in those without an inquisitiveness about the Gospel for which he was a prisoner This great man's preaching had never sparkled as it did it had never afforded the world and the Church so much edification and consolation if it had not been accompanied with sufferings sealed with his blood and confirmed by his wonderful patience amid the continual persecutions that were raised against him The conflicts of other servants of GOD have the same effect Their blood is the seed of the Church It 's from their sufferings that it springeth up It 's by them that it groweth and gathereth strength It 's the patience of these Divine Warriours that converted the world that conquered the nations unto JESUS CHRIST and planted His cross and His Gospel every where even in the most rebellious spirits Surely since the Church received so much profit from the Apostles afflictions it 's with good reason he affirms here that he filleth up the remainder of them for it And in this sence we must understand it when he saith elsewhere 2 Tim. 1.10 that he suffereth all things for the elects sake This may suffice for the proposal of the truth which is perspicuous and simple and obvious But the Error of our adversaries compelleth us to lengthen this discourse Not that they deny the exposition which we have produced For how could they do that without renouncing the doctrine of the Gospel and the confession of Christians in all ages But granting that the Apostles afflictions were for the Church in the sense we have expounded it they add that they were so further in another sense that is to say in that by undergoing them he satisfied for the sins of other believers and by this means did contribute to the greatning and enriching of the Churches treasury of satisfactions out of which the Bishop of Rome to whom the custody of it is committed makes largess from time to time as he judgeth meet for the expiating of the sins of penitents and hence hath risen the use of indulgences which is become so common in our dayes But first what kind of proof is this To shew that the Saints have satisfied Divine justice for the sins of other believers they alledge that S. Paul writeth I fill up the rest of the afflictions of CHRIST for His Church I answer his meaning is for edifying and comforting of the Church They acknowledge what I answer and only add that the Apostles sufferings do serve also for the expiating the sins of the Church and to fill the exchequer of its pretended satisfactions In conscience is this disputing Is it not a pronouncing of dictates after their own phantasie Is not this a presupposing of their opinion and no proving it It
the importance of this duty Beware saith he lest any man make prey of you He could not more to the life or with greater elegancy express the danger of such as stand not on their guard than by this word which signifies properly to carry away the booty that a man hath taken It is not without cause saith he that I give you order to use all your abilities and to defend your selves against Error with utmost vigilancy For no small matter depends upon it It is as much as your souls your selves and the noblest part of your beeing your understandings your affections your heart comes to The Wolves and the Thieves against whom men watch with so much care do aim only at their Sheep or their Purse Those against whom I animate you aim at your Persons An Enemy against whom Cities and States do set guards doth threaten only their Goods or their Lives at most He against whom I require your watching seeketh your souls and the share they have in eternity You are the Workmanship and the Jewel of the LORD of Glory You will be a prey to Satan and his Ministers if you fall into their snares They will not be content with having taken you they will bring you into bondage and the redeemed of JESUS CHRIST whose liberty he hath bought at the price of his Divine Blood will become slaves of men and which is worse of Devils Good GOD how piercing was the eye of that Heavenly Spirit which guided the Pen of this Apostle How clearly did it see the nature and the qualities of all the things whereof he speaketh Observe how Error â—iumpheth over those whom it infecteth See the Trophies it sets up of their spoils the Fâ—tters wherewith it loadeth those whom it seduceth the yoke which it puts upon their neeks and the captivity into which it brings them and you with confess that the eâ—lects of its false and damnable conquests could not pâ—ssibly be more truly and more naturally represented to us than by saying as S. Paul doth here that it makes a prey of Christians or carries them away as booty For Error is ever insolent and whereas Preachers of the Truth do serve those whom they teach and stile themselves their Ministers as this Apostle heretofore did the Teachers of Falshood usurp dominion over those whom they have corrupted and vaunt that they are their Judges their Masters and their Lords S Paul noted it long since of the seducers of the Corinthians who as he saith 2 Cor. 11.20 enslaved them devoured them and exalted themselves over them and smote them on the face that is did put all kind of indignities upon them And the false Teachers among the Galatians Gal. 6.13 he saith did glory in the flesh of their miserable discriples They are blind that do not at this day observe the self-same thing in the carriage of those men that reign over all the multitude whom they have deceived and rear up lofty Trophies of every poor soul that they have made prey of Dear Brethren if you love the liberty which the LORD JESUS hath purchased for you if you abhor the servitude of men if you desire the fruit of the one which is immortality and detest perdition the inevitable sequel of the other in the name of GOD take heed that no man make prey of you The Doctrine of truth is enclosed within the LORD's sheepfold Abide there if you would be in safety Stray you thence but ever so little and you will fall into the hands of Wolves and Robbers Hearken not unto their babble Be not taken with their countenance Let any thing among them that may promise fair be suspected of you since their seeking only is to withdraw you from the simplicity of the Gospel Now the Apostle points at three things here which he adviseth us to take heed of in particular namely The vain deceit of Philosophy The traditions of men and The rudiments of the world Because these were the three sources from which those false Apostles that then attempted the Colossians drew all the heads of their Doctrine and the means which they used to colour it and give it that vain lustre which was needful for the beguiling of the simple and unlearned For Col. 2.23 as we shall see more particularly in the sequel of this Chapter they enjoined the worshipping of Angels a matter they had taken in all likelihood out of the Sinks of the Platonick Philosophers who storied divers things of these higher spirits and of their interposition and mediation between GOD and us for the purifying of us and the rendring us capable of supream happiness as we see even at this day in those remains which we have of their Writings Again Col. 2.23 they introduced divers voluntary devotions which did not spare the flesh and seem'd full of humility but were indeed only traditions of men without any foundation in the word of GOD. Finally it is also evident that they pressed the observation of days and the distinction of meats according to the ordinances of the Mosaical Law which are likewise stiled Elements of the World Now though these three points do particularly respect the false Teachers at Coloss yet they are common well-nigh to all such as ever set themselves to alter and sophisticate the Gospel the most part of their impostures having issued from one of these three springs We will consider them therefore briefly and distinctly by the will of God and after them the character or mark which S. Paul giveth them to wit that these things are not after CHRIST Among these things of which we are to beware he gives the first place to Philosophy It 's name is very honourable Philosophy if you weigh the word signifying the love and pursuit of wisdom But the corruptness of those men that gave their Profession this name among the Grecians did disgrace so worthy a term and made it to be the name of a Tool of Error and Imposture rather than of an Instrument of Science and Truth For the common sort of those that stiled themselves Philosophers amused themselves altogether in vain Speculations in a trade of subtilty and syllogizing and in endless disputes that yeelded men no true profit They thought they had attained the End of their profession when they had got a faculty to speak of all matters with some colour and probability so as to dazle the eyes of the ignorant and win the admiration of the half-witted This vanity rendred them odious first among the Pagans themselves where they went among the people for extravagant persons and were in little better esteem among the greater part of the better sort And for as much as of all Professions scarce any did more fiercely oppose the Gospel of our Saviour thence it came to pass that the first Christians also conceiv'd a very ill opinion of them which encreas'd when it did appear that Hereticks did ordinanarily fetch from these mens Forges the Arms
upon them So in Grace if we may take leave to compare the mysteries thereof with natural things JESUS CHRIST the true Sun of righteousness hath not only in himself all the fulness of the Deity dwelling there bodily He also communicateth his fulness to all the souls of men that look on him and do move and live in his communion He filleth them with his abundance and clotheth them with his light changing them into his Image and of dim and dark lumps as they were originally in themselves making them so many Starrs and lightsome bodies Now if you take the Apostle's word here in another manner as importing that we have been made compleat in JESUS CHRIST the sense will still be very pertinent For besides that we being naked of all perfections meet for our nature the saying that we have been made compleat in CHRIST will excellently well express his Grace as signifying that it is he who hath fill'd up our breaches and repaired in us what the other Adam had ruined by giving us all that we wanted Besides this I say this term will also very aptly answer to that title which the Apostle gave a little before to the Ceremonies of Moses's Law where he called them the rudiments of the world that is the beginnings the first and plainest Lessons of Piety Heb. 7.19 Gal. 4. such as consequently were unable to bring to perfection as he saith expresly in another place by reason whereof he stileth the time of the Law the infancy of the Church that is the age of its imperfection Opposing therefore JESUS CHRIST unto the Law in this respect he now saith that we are compleat in Him and that for good reason in as much as He hath the body whereas the Law had but the shadow He hath fulness whereas the Law had but some small parcel of the requisites of our salvation For the same cause he elsewhere calleth the Ceremonies of it weak and poor or beggarly elements Gal. 4 9. As for the Law saith he it did but begin with us and only draw some slight and dark lineament upon us of that true form which GOD did purpose to imprint whereas JESUS CHRIST hath finish'd us In Him it is we have that perfection that entire body that truth and fulness whereof the Law had but the beginning the shadow and figure Hereby now this holy man deals those seducers whom he hath undertaken an handsom blow discovering the foolishness of their design who would still oblige persons to the Ceremonies of the Law that were made compleat in JESUS CHRIST an attempt no less ridiculous than if one should put a man to his ABC again who had received the last tincture of highest erudition in the University pretending that he could not be throughly intelligent and accomplish'd except he still daily studied the rudiments and plainest lessons of Children But that which follows in the Apostle's words namely that JESUS CHRIST is the Head of all principality and power is adjoined to prevent another error of those men's who as we shall hereafter hear did teach the worshipping and serving of Angels pretending it necessary we should address our selves to them as to Spirits capable of interceding with GOD for us and of obtaining by their interposal with that Supreamest Majesty those graces and perfections which we need S. Paul doth shew in these few words the vanity of this false doctrine For since the LORD JESUS is the Head of Angels who sees not but that we have most abundantly in Him whatsoever these people could expect from them and that possessing JESUS CHRIST as we do by faith in His Gospel we have no need to run to Angels who depend upon Him and have nought but what is found much more richly in their Head As if a man that doth possess a Prince's Son would yet needs make use of the favour and interpositions of his servants with him Members have neither motion nor sensation nor life but the same is much more abundantly in their Head Subjects and Servants possess nothing but the Prince can far better and far more easily communicate it to us than any one of them Since JESUS CHRIST is the Head and Prince of Angels it is clear that having Him we want nothing of all that which the Angels can give us From the same ground appeareth further the impiety of the error of these Seducers For since the Angels are subject unto JESUS CHRIST it is evident by the light of Scripture that no one can give them that religious worship which these people attribute to them without becoming guilty of idolatry the greatest and sensiblest outrage that man can do to his Creator For no Christian can be ignorant but that GOD throughout his whole word doth forbid us to serve any creature how high and excellent soever it be religious worship being an homage which belongs to the Divine Nature and cannot be performed without sacriledg to any other As for other things I presume you all know that they are the Angels whom the Apostle means by these principalities and powers of which he speaks as we formerly explained it Col. 1.16 upon the precedent Chapter He saith that JESUS CHRIST is their Head that is their Lord. And this quality belongeth to Him not only as He is the Eternal Son of the Father of the same essence and power with Him who having created them at the beginning and continuing to preserve them by His Goodness and Might is by all kind of right their true Master and natural Lord but also as He is the CHRIST and Mediator For since He in this relation and under this quality hath been constituted the Lord of all things both superior Phil. 2.10 inferior and intermediate having in consequence of His humiliation receiv'd such a Name as is above every name and unto which every knee boweth both of those that are in Heaven and that are on Earth and that are under the Earth it is evident that in this sense He hath dominion and empire over Angels 1 Pet. 3.22 as well as others And thus also S. Peter expresly teacheth us saying that Angels and Authorities and Powers have been made subject to Him For this cause these Spirits are often called the Angels of CHRIST as in S. Matthew Matt. 13.41 24.31 Rev. 1.1 and 22.16 The Son of Man shall send his Angels and in the Apocalypse where S. John saith that JESUS CHRIST sent him by his Angel the things that were revealed to him and in the same Book I JESVS saith the LORD have sent mine Angel Only we must observe that the L. JESUS is not called Head of the Angels in the same manner and sense as He is stiled Head of His Church The former Title signifieth only the Empire and Lordship which he hath over the Angels The second signifieth further the union He hath with His faithful ones who were saved and redeemed by the merit of His Death and are animated
the New Testament were then but fore-told and promised not fully and clearly revealed as now by their accomplishment they have been by means whereof it was meet that during all that time they should be exercis'd in the observing of these typical rites and held in and kept under the Pedagogie of Moses until the fulness of time according to the Apostle's Doctrine in the Epistle to the Galatians Now that JESUS CHRIST hath openly exhibited the very body of truth and fully brought to light all the causes and motives of true sanctification these exercises of the Church's infancy are no longer seasonable and they that still stick to them are no less ridiculous than he that would still keep up the centries of a vault or the models of a building even after the Fabrick is finish'd and brought to its perfection or retain under a School-master's Ferule and in the restraints of childhood a man grown up and come to ripeness of years This is that we had to say for the exposition of this Text. It remaineth for a conclusion that we extract those instructions and consolations which if we meditate on it attentively it will afford us First Since the Apostle assureth us that we are compleat in CHRIST you see how vain those mens pretensions are who set forth certain rules of perfection as they call them beyond the Gospel Let us content our selves with our LORD's fulness and seek our perfection in him alone And instead of amusing our selves about the inventions of men embrace and practise CHRIST's Discipline advancing daily towards the utmost degree of perfectness For we may not flatter our selves with an imagination that a man may nevertheless appertain to him though he lead an wholly vicious and corrupt life S. Paul here protesteth plainly to us that all such as are in him are made compleat Whence it necessarily follows that such as are not compleat are without his communion and by consequence should not promise themselves any share in his salvation it being prepared for those only that are in him If this Doctrine do trouble us let us impute it to our vices and our loosness and taking once this truth to heart with all our might endeavour after that perfection which is in JESUS CHRIST accounting that without it we cannot possess either his grace in this world or his glory in the world to come I well know that to speak absolutely no one is perfect and that if we compare our condition on earth with that in heaven all our perfections are but weaknesses Yet it is true that JESUS CHRIST doth even in this life in some sense compleat his faithful ones and this perfection which he giveth them is not a vain name or an imagination It 's a thing and a most real truth it is a piety and charity sincere and free and without hypocrisie which though it sometimes fail doth notwithstanding produce true fruits and works quite different from those of Worldlings and Hypocrites according to what our LORD said even that if your righteousness do not exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees you shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven Object not that you are yet on earth and that perfection is not to be found but in heaven and that to live as an Angel one should be without a body It is not the perfection of Heaven that we demand of you The LORD will not reject you for having not had in this life the transcendent brightness of the next But though a child be not obliged to conduct his life with as much prudence and reason as a man of years it doth not follow that he hath licence to live without rule and in the debanches and disorders of slaves Every Age hath its bounds and its measures and its perfection Our childhood here below must not be without discipline under the pretence that it is not come to full growth Christians I complain not that there are defects in your knowledg and practice which have no place in Heaven but that there are in you vices which ought to have no place on earth I blame you not for that there is a great difference between you and Angels but that there is none between you and worldly men I require not what is above the strength of your age but what is worthy of your profession and doth not at all exceed your light I beseech you only to labour as much for JESUS CHRIST as the children of this generation do for the interests of their lusts This doth not exceed the capacity of our nature since you see what the servants of sin do and it s necessarily your duty except you imagine that we owe less to JESUS CHRIST than Worldlings do to their foolish and vain passions The first piece of that compleatness which we have in him is this Divine Circumcision which is not made with hand but by the efficacy of his Spirit Without it we can have neither place in the communion of his people nor right to his Inheritance It 's a Circumcision of which we may truly say that every soul that shall not have receiv'd it shall be cut off from his people The Apostle shews us wherein it consists to wit in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh JESUS CHRIST hath put the sword in our hand that 's necessary to cut away this wretched flesh namely his sacred word wherein he discovers the horridness of sin and infernal venom of vices and the vanity and iniquity of all the lusts of the flesh He hath shew'd us the perdition which they that serve it fall into and hath put it to death on his Cross and buried it in his Sepulcher He hath spread before our eyes the wonders of GOD's love and the eternity of the Kingdom appointed for faithful servants He hath given us rules and examples of this part of our sanctification in his Gospel and in his life and offereth us the lights and consolations of his Spirit to lead us in this work Grasp we then this Divine Knife of his Gospel Thrust it hardily in to our hearts and cut out thence all the impurity of the vices that are there Let us rid our selves of them and cast them behind us Exterminate all the productions of the flesh as execrable things Leave not one of them in our selves Having subdued Avarice combat Ambition Pluck out Luxury and all its passions from our inward parts Root up Hatred and Wrath and Cruelty and spare the life of none of these Monsters Let us not rest until we have cleansed our hearts of all this cursed brood For it is not enough to have cut off some of them One sole Enemy abiding in our bosome is able to destroy us The body of the sins of the flesh must be put off saith the Apostle and not one or two of its sins only I confess the labour is hard but it is necessary and that at all times for it is the
heretofore took the care to make those draughts is Author of the verities they represented and that the body doth descend from the same Heaven that at first did make the shadows of it to be seen I pass by for this time the Lamb and the Sacrifices and the aspersions and expiations and all the Levitical Priesthood a true delineation of our grand Victime offer'd for the salvation of the world and of that eternal righteousness which His bloud hath procured for us and other like things which cannot but with extreme difficulty be mainteined nor accorded with the ways of the ordinary wisdom of GOD save by acknowledging and receiving as veritable what the Apostle doth here teach us and is evident enough of it self namely that all this was heretofore ordained for the prefiguring of CHRIST I will only speak a few words of the distinction of meats and dayes The Apostle opens the mystery of it elsewhere For as to observance of meats giving us order in the Epistle to the Corinthians 1 Cor. 5.8 to keep the feast of our Passoever not with the old leaven of naughtines and wickedness but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth doth he not clearly shew us that abstinence from leavened bread observ'd by the first people was a Picture of the Innocence and sanctity of the second and that by consequence it 's to the same we must referr the distinction of other legal meats the beasts which were forbidden them representing by the characters of their natural qualities those moral imperfections that is those vices and corrupt affections from which our lives ought to be exempted As for example abstinence from Swines flesh which was an abomination to them did signifie that the people of the Messiah should have no commerce with those uncleannesses and ordures of deportment wherein men of the world notably represented by the genius of this animal do wallow And when the same Apostle telleth us that we should keep our feast in truth and sincerity and in another place Hebr. 4 9. that there remaineth unto us a Sabbath or a rest doth he not shew us again that the old feasts of Israel were shadows of ours even of that feast which the Messiah hath procured and appointed for the faithful and which doth consist in two things the one that they do absteine from the works of sin and of the flesh the common works of men and the other that they do celebrate a rest in GOD with eternal joy Now that the body of these shadows is in JESUS CHRIST is evident For innocency sanctity abstinence from sin joy and immortality do well in Him fully There it is and no other where that the truth the example and pattern the doctrine and all the cause of them are to be found together with an almighty Spirit of light which alone is capable of producing these divine things in every one of us Whereby you see it is so far from being consequent upon these distinctions having been heretofore ordeined of GOD that we ought now to observe them still that on the contrary it is to be concluded we may insist no longer on them For since they were appointed in the quality of shadows until CHRIST should be revealed who sees not but that now when CHRIST hath been fully manifested it would be meer folly in us to adhere unto them still even as if seeing and having in hand the very body of a thing we should busy our selves in following after and embracing the shadow of it Precisely such was the extravagancy of these false Teachers who are here noted by S. Saul and such also is the errour of all those who upon the like pretences intermedle with the imposing of laws upon Christians concerning usage of or abstinence from such things as are in their nature indifferent And it is in this matter for one that our adversaries of Rome are infinitly to blame who notwithstanding the reason of the things themselves and the so clear doctrine of this great Apostle both in this place and in many other have made and constituted a no less number of laws about the distinction of dayes and meats then were among the Jews themselves They have marked more then half of the dayes of the year some with black and others with white I call marked with black those which they have devoted to the sadness of fasts and abstinences as all the Fridayes and Saturdayes of the year the Ember weeks the Rogation-dayes the Advent the Eves and Lent I mean by marked with white those which they consecrate to joy as that great throng of Holy-dayes which they disperse through all the fower seasons JESUS CHRIST the Father of eternity hath made His Disciples free from the laws of time raising them up above the Heavens which do make and measure it But these men put them in subjection to dayes and months and reduce them under the yoke of the Jews and make their piety depend upon the Almanack If they do not exactly observe all the dayes of the year if they fast not one day if they eat not on another if on one they don't do penance if they make not mirth on another though upon the former they should have cause to rejoyce in GOD and upon the latter to afflict themselves for their sins or their sufferings they commit a mortal sin though they did it without contempt or scandal Was there ever a discipline less reasonable or more contrary to the doctrine of S. Paul who would not have Christians condemned for the distinction of a Festival-day of a new Moon or of the Sabbaths who reprehends the Galatians for their observing-dayes and months and times and years Gal. 4.11 Rom. 14 6. and counts it for a weakness in faith to esteem one day above another Neither may it be replyed here that we also do discriminate Sundayes and Easter and Christmas and Pentecoste We observe them for orders sake not for Religion for the Polity of the Church and not upon scruples of devotion For what a confusion would there be if we had no dayes appointed for the assembling of the faithful It 's for our mutual edification and not for the worth and value of the dayes themselves that we observe them and as an Ancient said not that the day on which we do assemble is more holy or more glorious S. Hieâ—ome l. 2. Comment in Ep. ad Gal. To. 9. p 314. then another but because what day soever we assemble it 's a consolation to us to behold our selves all jointly employed in holy exercises For the main to us all dayes are equal as uniform parts of the same time which flow on by the order of one and the same LORD all of them and are all employable to His glory but the necessity and infirmity of this poor life doth constrain us of force to divide and part them out for divers uses If it be thus O adversaries that you discriminate-dayes I shall
Moses was the Mediator and Minister of it the religion or service of the Jews because that people made profession of it the elements or rudiments of the world because it contained but the Alphabet and the first and lowest lessons of piety and was affixed for the most part to the corporeal things of this world But that it was ever called the religion or service of Angels we read not And as for that which those people do alledge out of â—â—â— Epistle to the Galatians namely Gal. 3.19 Heb. 2.2 that the Law was ordained by Angels in the hand of a Mediator and its being called in the Epistle to the Hebrews the word spoken by Angels this I say doth not justifie their pretention at all For in these two places the Apostle does declare only the service which the Angels did to GOD when He gave the Decalogue upon Sinai where these heavenly Ministers accompanied Him and ordered all the Pomp of that admirable manifestation of His forming the lightnings and the thunders wherewith the Mountain did resound elevating in the air the smoke and darkness which covered it shaking its foundations and making all of it to tremble and distinguishing the thunders into those articulate words which the mouth of GOD it self pronounced So far did the operation of Angels extend and no further For as to the rest it was GOD that spake in His own Person I am said He at the beginning the LORD thy GOD and that gave and uttered all the other precepts which the Israelites heard so as the Law or the religion which He then established might well be termed the religion or the service of GOD. But it would be an evident injuring of His Majesty to call it the religion or the service of Angels since it was given neither in their persons nor by their mediation Besides though it were otherwise in this particular yet it is clear that this title would be proper to the Decalogue only and not reach that part of the Law which is called Ceremonial in the establishing whereof the Angels did not intervene at all GOD having delivered it immediately to Moses and Moses to the Israelites and yet it would be this precisely that S. Paul should understand here if His purpose were to speak of the Mosaical Law as our adversaries believe Since then this name The religion of Angels can no way belong unto it it must of necessity be asserted that it is not the Law of Moses that the Apostle means in these words But his design and the thread of his discourse is no less opposite to this gloss than his words For first having already refuted what the Seducers took from the Law of Moses in the verse immediately foregoing in these words Let no man condemn you in meat or in drink or in the distinction of feasts or of new Moons or of Sabbaths which are shadows of things to come whereof the body is in CHRIST having I say so magnificently deposited this for what cause or to what purpose should he go repeating the same again How should the Apostle be capable of such vain babling Let us say then that the errour he rejects here is diverse from that which he condemed just afore That which he condemned afore is the observation of the Jewish law or religion certainly then this is not the thing meant in this place Besides that which he addeth can no way refer unto it Let no man saith he master it over you by humility of spirit and the service of Angels intruding into things he hath not seen Where the Apostle evidently sheweth that the service of Angels enjoyned by the Seducers was founded upon hidden things and such as they could have no knowledge of either by their own reason or by Scripture whereas the Jewish Ceremonies are so clearly and so distinctly explained in the books of Moses that there is not a man but may see them there Lastly the Apostle shews us at the beginning of this discourse that these Seducers had drawn some of their observances from Philosophy which will not find place if by the service of Angels you understand the Jewish religion which as all know was delivered by Moses and not by the Philosophers 〈◊〉 p. 910. For whereas our adversaries understand the discourses of the Jews by the vain deceit of Philosophy this is absurd and rediculous in the highest degree it being evident that the Jewish Doctors are sometimes called Sages 1 Cor. 1.20 and their science wisdom as when S. Paul saith Where is the wise GOD hath made foolish the wisdom of the world But never are they called Philosophers or their Doctrine Philosophy These names being every where constantly referred to the learned men of Greece and of the Heathen and unto their Doctrine Be it then concluded in fine that the Apostle means here by the religion or service of Angels not the religion delivered to the Jews by Moses but the worship and invocation and service which these Seducers would have men address unto Angels under pretext of humility they having drawn this abuse out of the Greek Philosophers in whose Books it is still found to this day Plato one of the chief of them writing expresly that service must be done to the Daemons so called they the Angels as holding a middle place between the GODS and men and serving us for Interpreters to the Divine Nature and all his School hath â—ver thus hold and practised as doth appear by the works of the latest of his disciples And this abuse was common among all the heathen They founded it too just as the Seducers here taxed by the Apostle did and as our Adversaries do upon pretended humility of Spirit Aâ—b os p. 1807. c. 4.5 as we understand by an ancient commentary upon the Epistle to the Romans published under the name of S. Ambrose The Author speaking of the Heathen of his time sayes They are wont to make a miserable excause saying that by means of them that is of the petty Deities they served they might go to GOD as men come to a Prince by means of His Counsellors of State and His Masters of Requests But saith he a little after men go to a King by means of His Officers because after all a King is a man that knoweth not whom he may trust with His estate whereas GOD is ignorant of nothing and knoweth the disposition and actions and capacity of all men so as to obtain His favour we want not the suffrages of an Interposer there needs but a devout soul Such a one He will surely hear wheresoever he speaks to Him It 's from the sinks of this Philosophy of the World that the Seducers here opposed by the Apostle had drawn their pretended humility and their serving of Angels And our Adversaries well perceiving that for the main it cannot be denyed but such was the doctrine here condemned by the Apostle do advance another phancy of theirs telling us that in his
universal and eternal and that no Age nor Climat can dispense with men for them or exempt the Violaters of them from that righteous curse they threaten let us faithfully obey this holy and sacred order which the Apostle hath given Hearken we not to the vain glosses and frivolous distinctions by which humane subtilty endeavours to elude it and colour over its own abuses Observe we sincerely what this great Minister of JESUS CHRIST enjoyneth us He forbiddeth us to Worship Angels in point of Religion There is no reason that either the eloquence or the subtilty either the splendor or the power of men much less their pleasure and usurped domineering should have more efficacy upon us than this Heavenly Authothority And praised be GOD for that He hath given us the courage to obey His Apostle in this particular and to put away the Worshipping of Angels and men from among us notwithstanding the strong contradiction of flesh and blood Let us abide firm in this resolution Let us adore none but GOD since there is none adorable but He. It 's just that He alone should be served among us since it is He alone who hath created and redeemed us But Beloved remember I beseech you that rightly to render Him His due glory it is not sufficient to have renounced the errour of those ancient Phrygians whom the Apostle here opposeth and of our Adversaries of Rome to wit the adoration of Angels and men departed There must also be banishing of all strange service all Idolizing of any thing whatever For if GOD cannot suffer those who serve Angels and deceased Saints that is the most excellent natures that be and such as have the image of the Deity most clearly resplendent in them how much less will He endure those that adore Gold and Silver the excrements of the earth or their own belly the shamefullest and most infamous of all idols or the flesh which is but a vain and perishing figure or the grandeurs of the world which are but exhalations And we that have renounced the first fort of these false services how can we be excusable if we retain and exercise the second Now would to GOD we were as free from the one as we are from the other But it must be confessed to our shame these latter kind of Idols have still a great many Devoto's and Servitors among us That avarice which S. Paul calls an Idolatry is but too much exercised among us the flesh and vanity are here publickly served Wretched men where is your judgement You do not serve the Angels of Heaven and you serve the mettals of the earth You do not adore Spirits made perfect and you do adore profane flesh Neither the light of the Sun nor the brightness of the Moon hath been able to seduce your hearts and you have suffered your selves to be seduced by the glittering of Gold and Silver the false Sol and Luna of the Chymists You have put your hope in Gold and said unto fine Gold Thou art my confidence You that have disdained to put your confidence in Saints The belly with shame and horrour do I utter it the belly is your GOD yours who have made this glorious promise to have none but the Eternal only for your GOD How can you hope that the LORD should suffer you to give Him such Monsters for companions He who is so jealous of His glory that He cannot suffer the Angels themselves to be associated with Him Dear Brethren I pray let us deceive our selves no longer Let us once for all put clean away all these false services and exterminating every Idol from among us adore and serve none but GOD alone Let Him have the entire possession of our whole hearts let Him reign and exercise an absolue dominion in them governing all the sentiments and motions of them at His will that after having constantly adored Him in Spirit and in truth we may one day receive from His holy faithful hand the Crown of Glory and Eternity which He hath purchased for us by the merit of His only Son our LORD JESUS CHRIST To whom with Him and the Holy Spirit the true and only GOD blessed for ever be honour and praise unto Ages of Ages Amen THE XXIX SERMON COL II. Vers XVIII XIX Vers XVIII Let no man Master it over you at his pleasure by humility of Spirit and the service of Angels intruding into things he hath not seen beeing rashly puffed up with the sense of his flesh XIX And not holding the head from which the whole body being furnished and fitly knit together by joints and bands encreaseth with the encrease of GOD. DEAR Brethren The same pride that destroyed the first man at the begining is the cause of the ruine of such of his posterity as do perish For if you heed it well you will see that that 's the thing which maketh them despise or mis-embrace the CHRIST of GOD in whom alone stands our salvation It was pride that kept the Jews from embracing this singular gift of Heaven because saith S. John they lov'd the praise of men even as our LORD reproached them saying How can you believe seeing you seek honour one of another And S. Paul expresly informs us that the proud phancy they had to establish their own righteousness was the cause they submitted not to the righteousness of GOD. It was likewise pride that blinded the minds of the Gentiles so as they saw not the wonderful things of the Gospel of JESUS CHRIST The haughty opinion they had of their own vain wisdome induced them to disdain the wisdom of GOD and to account the Cross of His Son foolishness though it be an inexhaustible treasury of sapience Again in fine it is pride that hath seminated among Christians themselves all the heresies that have grown up into any request since the Churches nativity to this hour Ignorance animated with presumption hath brought them all forth and bred them up For if the unhappy workers that divulged them had kept to the doctrine of GOD and not lash'd out beyond what He hath revealed in His word if the vain fierceness of their Spirit had not emboldned them to enterprise things above the reach of men they would never have thought upon corrupting Religion with their falsly-subtil inventions It would have remained pure throughout and sincere to this day and such as the Ministers of our LORD and Saviour deliver'd it at first to their Disciples by word and writing But their pride mis-leading them did induce them to attempt things above their capacity and adore and spread abroad their presumptuous imaginations as true secrets of GOD. The Apostle informs us in this Text that this was the origine in particular of those errors and false services which certain Seducers went about to introduce at that time among Christians We heard in the last exercise upon this subject what their errour was namely that under colour of a false humility of Spirit they taught