extravagant humour in God to distinguish Men to be saved or damned only for believing or not believing in Christ But may we not think it as extravagant in us to distinguish our selves to have or not have a thousand pounds a Year only for sealing or not sealing a Deed Should we not call our selves Fools for refusing to put forth our hands to a piece of Parchment and take it off again to get an Estate by And yet we think our selves wise in refusing Eternal Life because we may have it upon such easy Terms For tho from the positive words of this Prescription the sealing and executing this Covenant of Eternal Life by Man without more saying or doing gives him as perfect a Title to Eternal Life as the sealing of a Deed among Men can make to the Lands contained in it Yet from the negative words of the Prescription there can be no Title to this Eternal Life without the complyance with this Ceremony For if Man can have any other Title to Eternal Life than according to this Covenant this Covenant don't give him a Title to it No Deed gives Man a Title that leaves any part of the Title at large out of the Deed. If the Grantor reserves any of the Title to himself then the Grantee hath no perfect Title But God hath excepted nothing out of this Covenant but his own Personal Life For when it is said That he hath put all things under him it is manifest that he is excepted who hath put all things under him Wherefore all the other parts of Eternal Life are subject to this way of Life by Jesus Christ And hence all other attempts for Heaven are accounted Sin He that entereth not in by the Door but climbeth up some other way is a Thief and a Robber and comes for to steal And having thus opened this Covenant First I put it upon the Profession of Divinity to deny one word of the Fact as I have repeated it Next I challenge the Science of the Law to shew such another Title as this And then I defy the Logicians to deny my Argument Of which this is the Abstract That the Law delivered to Adam before the Fall is the Original Cause of Death in the World That this Law is taken away by the Death of Christ That therefore the Legal Power of Death is gone And I am so far from thinking this Covenant of Eternal Life to be an Allusion to the forms of Title amongst Men that I rather adore it as the Precedent for them all from which our imperfect Forms are taken Believing with that great Apostle That the things on Earth are but the Patterns of things in the Heavens where the Originals are kept BVT why then doth Death remain in the World Why because Man knows not the way of Life The way of Life they have not known Or as I said at the beginning that Death maintains its dominion over us by our fear of it Having no other right to remain with us but because our Faith is not yet come to us When the Son of Man comes shall he find Faith upon the Earth Man is a Beast of Burden that knows not his own strength in the virtue of the Death and the Power of the Resurrection of Christ Which Ignorance doth not proceed from want of Revelation of the Truth but from our neglect to study and inaptitude to believe it O Fools and slow of heart to believe all that the Prophets have spoken Unbelief don't go by reason or dint of Argument but is a sort of Melancholy-madness by which if we once fancy our selves bound it hath the same effect upon us as if we really were so It is like the noise of War heard in the Camp of the Syrians which made them fly when no one pursued Or like that possession of fear which still kept the besieged within the Garison tho the Enemy had left the Field Death is like Satan who appears to none but them that are afraid of him Resist the Devil and he will fly from you Or like Tyrants and saucy Pedagogues whose former Cruelties render them terrible to those who have been under their lash after they are freed from it Because Death had once dominion over us we think it hath and must have it still And this I find within my self that tho I can't deny one Word I have said in Fact or Argument yet I can't maintain my belief of it without making it more familiar to my understanding by turning it up and down in my thoughts and ruminating upon some proceedings already made upon it in the World Some Specimens whereof I 'll present to the Reader The Motto of the Religion of the World is as I have said Mors janua Vitae Death is the Gate of Life Now I say if we do by this mean the Death of Christ then we are in the right But if by this we mean our own Death then we are in the wrong The Death of Christ was necessary for him and us both because the Covenant of Life would not take effect but by his Death which in the Covenant hath two Capacities 1st As it was the consideration upon which the Covenant was made 2dly As it was the Ceremony by which it was executed But all this being over and done the Death of Man is wholly useless and serves to no intent or purpose in order to Eternal Life nor ever did And could we distinguish between the change of our State and the change of our Persons and Places this Doctrine would be more plain to us By State I always mean Title so that when I say a Man is in the State of Life I mean he is by Law intituled to live and when I say he is in the state of Death I mean he is by Law appointed to die Now a Man may change his State without change of his Person or Place Christ by his Death and Resurrection did pass under an invisible change of his State by being discharged from that Law of Death to which he stood before subjected by his Birth and being translated into that Law of Life which he gained by his Resurrection Which tho it were only a legal or invisible Translation he was thereby as safe from Death as he is now being ascended and sitting at the right Hand of God And yet his Person remained here unchanged Behold my Hands and my Feet that it is I my self These were Marks of Honour that could not be counterfeit And that some did not know him is said to be from their Unbelief or that their Eyes were holden that they should not know him But tho this change of his State in an instant did not work so sudden an alteration in his Person yet it did intitle his Person to a change for the better which Title he had not before his Death Christ was as perfect in his Nature and his Principles before Death as he was afterwards and yet he could not then
asked his Disciples if they would leave him they asked him again Whither shall we go Thou hast the words of Etetnal Life which no one else pretends to Now if these words of his are words only then was he an Impostor and his Doctrine is false But if this Assertion of himself be true That Man by him may live for ever Then all our Attempts beneath this are mean and cowardly as counting our selves unworthy of Eternal Life The Objection made against him when he affirmed it was The Custom of the World to the contrary Abraham is dead and the Prophets are dead whom makest thou thy self to be And I am not unaware that this Custom of the World to die hath gained such a prevalency over our minds by prepossessing us of the necessity of Death that it stands ready to swallow my Argument whole without digesting it For if the custom of Bondage derived upon Man but for a few Generations doth so enure him to subjection that he thinks it Jure divino and all attempts against it to be Rebellion How much more may I expect that this attempt against Death which hath had so much a longer possession over Man will be accounted madness But as a learned Man said That the Pride of Women comes from the baseness of Men and the courage of Cowards from others more Cowards So I may say That the Dominion of Death is supported by our fear of it by which it hath bullied the World to this day And therefore before I fall upon the direct proof of my Argument I 'll offer an answer to the Custom of the World against me Custom it self without a Reason for it is an Argument only to Fools Nor can the Life or Death of one Man be assigned as the cause of the Life or Death of another unless the same thing happen to them both Abraham is dead and the Prophets are dead What then Why Abraham died of Age as the Folk call it he gave up the Ghost being an old Man and full of Years And the Prophets were many of them knock'd on the head Ye have stoned the Prophets Must it therefore follow that either of these Deaths must happen to me or that because they died of one death I must die of another Suppose my Mother died in Childbed must I therefore do so too Or that my Father was hang'd must I therefore be drown'd Abraham is dead and the Prophets are dead What then Why Abraham had a Son of his own begetting at a hundred years old upon a Woman of ninety had an Army of Men born in his own House Flocks and Herds without number and a whole Country of his own to feed them in And the Prophets were Favorites of Heaven could raise the Dead and kill the Living Must therefore any of these Gifts happen to me Why then if I must not partake with Abraham and the Prophets in their Blessings why must I partake with them in their Deaths Nor did Abraham die because the Prophets died nor did the Prophets die because Abraham died Then if their Deaths had no effects upon one another Why should they have any effect upon me And as the Life or Death of one Man is no cause of the Life or Death of another so the multitude of Examples don't alter the case The Life or Death of all the World except one Man can be no cause of the Life or Death of that one Man Almost this very case once happen'd in the World when the Flood destroyed all but eight Persons and yet this was no Argument that those eight must be drowned too nor was the preservation of them any Argument for the preservation of the rest We have heard of a hundred thousand Men slain in Battel and yet this was no Argument for the death of any other Man who was not slain in it Wherefore the custom of the World to die is no Argument one way or other But because I know that Custom it self is admitted as an evidence of Title upon presumption that this Custom had once a reasonable Commencement and that this Reason doth continue therefore it is incumbent upon me to answer this Custom by shewing The Time and Reason of its Commencement And that this Reason is determined Which if I do shew then the bare Custom of the World to die ought no longer to be admitted as a Title against Life First then I do admit the Custom or Possession of Death over the World to be as followeth viz. That Death did reign from Adam to Moses by an uninterrupted possession over all Men Women and Children created or born except one Breach made upon it in that time by Enoch And hath reigned from Moses unto this day by the like uninterrupted possession except one other Breach made upon it in this time by Elijah And this is as strong a Possession as can be alledged against me To answer this I must shew That this Custom or Possession of Death had a reasonable Commencement which was the Original of it To avoid this Possession I must shew That this Reason is determined and that therefore this Possession ought to be no longer admitted as a Title against Life The Religion of the World now is That Man is born to die But from the beginning it was not so for Man was made to live God made not Death till Man brought it upon himself by his delinquency Adam stood as fair for Life as Death and fairer too because he was in the actual possession of Life as Tenant thereof at the Will of God and had an opportunity to have made that Title perpetual by the Tree of Life which stood before him with the Tree of Knowledg of Good and Evil. And here 't is observable how the same act of Man is made the condition both of his Life and Death Put forth thy hand and pull and eat and die Or Put forth thy hand and pull and eat and live for ever So little doth God esteem the Work of Man in order to his own Salvation The Lord Bacon descanting upon the Fall of Man expresses it thus That Man made a total defection from God presuming to imagine that the Commandments and Prohibitions of God were not the Rules of Good and Evil but that Good and Evil had their own Principles and beginnings and that Man lusted after the knowledg of those imagined Beginnings to the end to depend no more upon God's Will revealed but upon himself and his own Light as a God than which there could not be a Sin more opposite to the whole Law of God For 't is not to be conceived that there was any physical Virtue in either of these Trees whereby to cause Life or Death But God having sanctified them by those two different Names he was obliged to make good his own Characters of them by commanding the whole Creation to act in such a manner as that Man should feel the Effects of this Word according to which of
And this was the Case of Christ He being of the Jewish Nation was accused of Blasphemy which was Death by their Law but being not so by the Roman Law the Priests were at a loss how to get a formal Sentence against him And therefore when Pilate first demanded of them his Accusation they gave for Answer Were he not a Malefactor we would not have delivered him unto thee expecting to have had him condemned upon their Honour having indeed brought him in such a pickle as would have half hang'd any Man upon the view But we know Pilate's Reply to that and to their Accusation when they offer'd it And considering in the sequel of the History the Warning sent to Pilate by a Message from Heaven his own Inclinations to obey it and the former Affections of the People towards him who had their Election to redeem him against a common Rogue it seem'd impossible that he should have been executed Who can assign the Cause why Herod and Pilate Jews and Romans Priests and People who were each at odds with one another in other matters should all fall in together to condemn innocent Blood That the most exact Worshipper of God should be accused for a Blasphemer That he that refused to be a King should be arraign'd for a Traitor Such was the Death of Christ without a Precedent without a Name without a Reason without a Cause They hated me without a Cause But they were all against him because God was against him And this he told Pilate without which he declared he would not have surrender'd himself Wot ye not that I can even now call to my Heavenly Father and he shall send me more than twelve Legions of Angels but how then shall the Scripture be fulfilled His Hands were bound and his Feet were in the Stocks that he was not at liberty to defend himself being fallen under that Law which necessitated him to die And thus his Death is exclaim'd as equally miraculous with his Birth He was wonderful in his Death like Moses And who can declare his Generation All other Causes of Death are but second Causes which may or may not happen and against which a Man may make his defence But this general Law of Death is a Flail against which there is no defence for if one Execution don't reach us another will they that remain of the Pestilence shall the Sword devour and they that escape the Sword shall be consum'd with Famine Whatever is the immediate Cause is but the Executioner to the first Command It was Joab that set Vriah in the Front of the Battel and the Ammonites that slew him but it was David that kill'd him Thou hast killed Uriah the Hittite and hast slain him with the Sword of the Children of Ammon And having thus shewn how this Law which was the Commencement of the Possession of Death over the World did descend and fall upon Christ and was the cause of his Death It is next incumbent upon me to shew That this Law is taken away by his Death and consequently that the long Possession of Death over the World can be no longer a Title against Life But when I say this Law is taken away I don't mean that the words of it are taken away for they remain with us to this day and being matter of Record must remain for ever But that it is satisfied by other matter of Record by which the force of it is gone And I call that Law taken away which is satisfied Law satisfied is no Law as a Debt satisfied is no Debt Now the specifick Demand of the Law was Death And the Death of a Man And the Death of Man made under the Law And therefore Christ to qualify himself for this Undertaking became Man in the manner and form beforementioned for had he assumed the Human Nature by any other entrance into it he had not come under the Law and therefore could not have been put to answer it For what the Law says it says to them that are under it And hence the Genealogy of Christ is a fundamental part of eternal Life For Christ had visited the World once before under the Name of Melchisedeck but not then making his entrance by a Father or Mother but assuming the Humanity immediately like the appearances of Angels the Law could not reach him for want of a legal Genealogy from Adam by which it might attaint him and therefore he then returned to Heaven without hurt as several appearances of Angels in the forms of Men had done before him But in his coming in the Flesh pursuant to this Covenant of Eternal Life He took not on him the Nature of Angels but the Seed of Abraham And having thus qualified himself to be a Subject to the Law he as such did suffer under it by his Death by which he performed the literal Sentence of the Law In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt die Which yet he might have done and not have given the Law Satisfaction for Millions of Men before him had undergone the literal Sentence of the Law by dying under it and yet the Law was nevertheless dissatisfied with them and others But he declared It is finished before he gave up the Ghost And this is the difference between his Death and ours Man dies under the Execution of the Law before he can give Satisfaction to the Justice of it but this Son of Man gave Satisfaction to the Justice of the Law before the extremity of the Execution could reach him And this he did by the dignity of his Person For this Law was not such a Civil Contract that the Breach of it could be satisfied with Mony But it was a Law of Honour the Breach whereof required personal Satisfaction for the most impudent Affront and the highest Act of Ingratitude to God Men charge God as a Humorist for condemning the whole Race of Mankind for so small an Offence as eating a little forbidden Fruit. But this is their ignorance of the Laws of Honour and Gratitude by which the slighter the thing demanded is the greater the affront in refusing it Had David asked the Inheritance of Nabal's Estate he had render'd himself as odious as Ahab did when he demanded Naboth's Vineyard But his Request being only for some ordinary Provision in common with Sheep-shearers the refusal of it render'd Nabal a Churl not fit to live So Naaman's Servant said to his Master Had the Prophet bid thee do some great thing wouldst thou not have done it How much more when he only saith Wash and be clean Man by his very Creation enter'd into the Labours of God himself without one thought of his own and at the first moment of his being became Lord of the Universe which was adapted to his Enjoyments and Pleasures And God left him in possession of it all upon his parol of Honour only that he would acknowledg it to be held of God and as the Token of this Tenure
Christ seems very peculiar And yet we shall find even this also to be most sutable to the common use of Seals amongst Men. We cause our Seals to be impressed with the most memorable Ensigns of Honour that can be assigned to our Families whereby they may be remember'd every time the Deed is shown And amongst these we esteem those most honourable which are gain'd in the Field with the loss or hazard of our Lives Why then here 's the Son of God thrown down from Heaven in the form of a Man as a Champion against Death and Hell slain in the open field before the Face of Men and Angels in the Quarrel and Defence of his Friends And after that displaying himself again with all his Wounds about him Reach hither thy Finger and behold my Hands and reach hither thy Hand and thrust it into my side Now first I challenge the Hero's to show such Scars of Honour as these And then I defy the Heralds to match it for a Coat of Arms. Such a Champion and such a Cause such a Combat and such a Conquest And therefore of all things in Heaven and Earth God hath chosen out the Blood of Christ to be the Seal of the Covenant of Eternal Life That as often as Man sees the Seal of that Covenant he may remember the fate of that day As often as ye do this do it in remembrance of me The place of the execution of this Covenant was upon Earth which Instance hath put me upon many thoughts by the by The first Notion of a God is that he is equal to himself in all his Attributes and it seemeth Blasphemy in Man of himself to suppose any Inequality in his Maker But God having owned something which he values himself upon more than all the rest Man hath thereby leave so to conceive of him Now he hath magnified his Word above all his Name And in that Word he hath bound himself by an Oath to perform this Covenant Once have I sworn by my Holiness that I will not lie unto David And of all parts of this as well as other Covenants the Sealing is the greatest Solemnity This Covenant then being sealed by God himself upon this Globe of Ground I can't but think that Man is to pass through his greatest Change in the same place But I 'll say no more of that till I have done my Argument 5. The Witnesses to the Execution And these were first accidental and they were the whole World The sound thereof is gone through the whole Earth for this thing was not done in a Corner Secondly The direct Witness and that was himself For this end was I born and for this end came I into the World to bear Witness unto the Truth For as he did not depend upon the Testimony of John to tell the World who he was having a greater Testimony of his own Works so he doth not depend upon Man to witness this Covenant having attested it himself in his own Blood And this is after the manner of Kings Witness our selves because they can't have a greater And like God himself who swears by Himself because he can't swear by a greater 6. The Ceremony by which this Covenant is to be executed by Man This Covenant being thus executed by God himself and attested in the Blood of Christ stands ready to be executed by Man on his part And this is also agreeable to the Forms of Title amongst Men who can take no benefit of a Deed but by acceptance of it We distinguish our Deeds by two Titles 1st An Indenture in which all the Parties must be named 2dly A Deed Roll in which the Parties need not be named but are described by the first Prescription of the Deed As if the Deed begins To all Persons who shall subscribe these presents then every one by his Subscription becomes a Party to take the benefit of all that is contained in that Deed for the Subscribers Now in this Covenant of Eternal Life the Parties are not named but every Man is so described that he is at liberty to make himself a Party to it The words of this Prescripion are 1. Positive He that eateth my Flesh and drinketh my Blood hath Eternal Life 2. Negative Except ye eat the Elesh and drink the Blood of the Son of Man ye have no Life in you Which Prescription doth not respect his Blood as Blood only but as that Blood is made the Seal of this Covenant This Cup is the New Testament in my Blood We don't seal Wax as Wax but as it is annexed to the Deed and made the Seal thereof For the Sealing the same piece of Wax at large separate from the Deed signifies nothing And hence it is not the Wax that sanctifies the Deed but the Deed that sanctifies the Wax For if Lead or any other malleable Substance be annexed to the Deed and impressed with the Seals it is as effectual as if it were Wax And hence Christ himself doth own that it was the Sanction and Mission of God upon him that made him the Redeemer of the World Say ye of him whom God hath sanctified and sent into the World that he blasphemeth because he saith he is the Son of God For him hath God the Father sealed And hence that great Cognomen Christ is added to his proper Name of Jesus And thus the Kings of Israel receiv'd their Sanction by the Anointing of the Prophets The distinction between things Holy and Common Sacred and Civil is the Appointment of God put upon the one and not upon the other The things used in Ceremonies are in themselves indifferent and insignificant but by the Sanction of those Laws by which they are made Ceremonies they become the most necessary and essential Parts of the Law Such were the things used in the Sacrifices of the Mosaical Law foolish and insignificant in themselves but being set in order according to the forms of that Law they became Sanctions to one another The Gold of the Temple the Wood of the Altar and the Flesh of Beasts were all common things till they were used according to the Temple-Laws and then and there the Temple sanctified the Gold and the Altar sanctified the Gift So 't is in our Law a Writing is nothing and Wax is nothing and a Seal is nothing they are but Cyphers in themselves but if the Wax be put to the Writing and the Seal to the Wax this makes the Writing to be a Deed and is the form of a Title Men in their private Stations may argue with one another pro con as long as they please without doing good or hurt But the Ay or No of one of these Men given in a Court of Legislature may turn the Fate of a Kingdom And the more slight and plain these Ceremonies are by which Titles are executed the more sure the Title is that is to come from them because they can neither be mistaken nor forgotten We think it an
this attainment much longer above ground that Time seems to them an Interval of perfect leisure as Alexander's did to him after his Conquest till at last espying Death it self they fall upon it as an Enemy that must be conquered one time or other through Faith in Christ And for this cause there seems a respite of time intended to be allotted to Believers after the first Resurrection and before the Dissolution of the World for perfecting that Faith which they began before their Death and which they could not attain to in the first reach of Life For Death being but a discontinuance of Life wherever Men leave off at their Death they must begin at their Resurrection The Believers already dead are not ascended into the Heavens for David is not ascended into the Heavens Nor shall they ascend after their Resurrection till they have attain'd to this Faith of Translation And by that very Faith they shall be then convinced that if they had had that Faith before they need not have died The Story of Lazarus makes this plain His two Sisters said to Christ that if he had been there their Brother had not died And others that stood by said Could not this Man that opened the Eyes of the blind have even caused that this Man should not have died And Martha said further That whatever Christ would yet ask of God God would give it him By which she declared her Faith to be that Christ could raise her Brother presently Now these People had not these Articles of Faith from any Religion then commonly received amongst them But observing the Miracles Christ had done before they could not beat it out of their heads but that he could have prevented the Death of Lazarus and could then raise him presently Both which were right and rational Conclusions and did form a true Religion in them But when Christ closed in with them upon it and offered to make it good by raising the dead Man presently they all fell to recanting their Faith one cry'd He stinketh and the other He hath been dead four days and thereupon desired him to desist And the reason of the Recantation is evident The common Religion then received amongst them concerning the Resurrection was what we still retain That there will be a Resurrection at the last day And this having gain'd an Impression upon them from the force of Education was too strong for that single Impression which fell upon their Minds from their own Observation only And therefore they thought it safer to renounce their own Faith than the Religion delivered them by their Parents But Christ by doing the thing did convince them that their own Faith and Opinion of him was right And yet he did not say that the Religion delivered them by their Parents was wrong For that there will be a Resurrection at the last day in which all they that are not before that time raised shall then arise But what he said by this Text was that this Resurrection at the last day doth not prevent a present Resurrection from Death nor an immediate Translation without Death to them whose Faith is ready to receive it We must all be changed but we need not all die in order to be changed for 't is not Death that works our Change but the Death and Resurrection of Christ which we may pass through without Death Paul was of this Religion that we may be changed without Death We shall not all die but we shall all be chang'd And yet tho he had deliver'd this to be his Faith in general he did not attain to such a particular knowledg of the way and manner of it so as to prevent his own Death And his Confession tells us the reason of his failure That he had not yet attained the Resurrection of the Dead but was pressing after it But tho he was taken away in this pursuit he hath not lost his labour but is got so much nearer to the mark and at his Resurrection will be so far beforehand with them that never studied it He had but a late Conversion and after that was detained in the study of another part of Divinity the confirming the New Testament by the Old and making them answer one another in which he seems to have spent himself and from whence all Students in Divinity after him have stood upon his Shoulders For this is a Point previous to the Faith of Translation and must be learn'd before it in order to it And this his pressing tho he did not attain hath much encouraged me to make this Inquiry being well assured that he would not have thus pursued it had he not apprehended more in it than the vulgar Opinion is about it We don't think our selves fit to deal with one another in Human Affairs till our Age of one and twenty But to deal with our Maker thus offended to counter-plot the Malice of fallen Angels and to rescue our selves from eternal Ruin we are generally as well qualified for before we can speak plain as all our Life-time after Children can say over their Religion at four or five years old and their Parents that taught them can do no more at four or five and fifty For Religion being preach'd to them as a Mystery they are forbid to think of understanding it Graecum est non potest legi The common Creed of the Christian Religion may be learn'd in an hour And one day's Philosophy will teach a Man to die But to know the Virtue of the Death and Power of the Resurrection of Christ is a Science calculated for the study of Men and Angels for ever BUT if Man may be thus chang'd without Death and that it is of no use to him in order to Eternal Life What then is Death Or Whereunto serveth it What is it Why 't is a misfortune fallen upon Man from the beginning and from which he hath not yet dared to attempt his recovery And it serves as a Spectrum to fright us into a little better life than perhaps we should lead without it Tho God hath formed this Covenant of Eternal Life against Death Man still maintains a Covenant with it They have made an Agreement with Death and Hell By way of composition to submit to Death in hopes by that obedience to escape Hell And under this Oath of Allegiance we think our selves bound never to rebel against it The study of Philosophy is to teach Men to die from the Observations of Nature The Profession of Divinity is to inforce this Doctrine from Revelation And the Science of the Law is to settle our civil Affairs pursuant to these Resolutions The old Men are making their last Wills and Testaments And the young are expecting the execution of them by the death of the Testators And thus Mortis ad exemplum totus componitur Orbis Now what one Man dares raise a Faction against the whole World thus constituted under the Political Government of Death Why but if the
of every Man within any Country doth subject him to the Laws of that Country is the Law of all Nations And without these Concessions there could be no Laws because else every Man must have a particular Law delivered him for himself which being a publick Inconvenience cannot be admitted in the nature of Laws And thus this Law of Death fell upon Christ himself as a Descendant from the same common Ancestors Christ had two descents in his Birth One was his natural descent from the Virgin Mary his real Mother The other his legal descent from Joseph his supposed Father But in his Genealogy set down by two Evangelists this legal descent by Joseph is only counted upon without taking any notice of his descent by his Mother's side Because this descent by Joseph was his legitimate descent according to that Law which makes all the Issue of the Woman born during the Coverture to be the Issue of the Husband although it be notoriously known that in Fact it were begotten by another And this is our Law at this day altho the Issue be born but one day after the Espousals And the Canon Law is much stronger for that makes the Issue born of the Woman before Marriage let them be begotten by whom she will unless by a former Husband in Wedlock to be the Issue of the Husband to whom she is afterward married And therefore Christ having such a Father-in-Law as this his descent must be accounted from his Father-in-Law and not from his Mother because all legal descents are accounted from the Father and not from the Mother When the eleven Tribes were polled in the Wilderness of Sinai they gave account of their Pedigrees after their Families by the House of their Fathers without taking any notice of their descent by their Mothers side And so did they of the Tribe of Levi who were numbered after them Wherefore I say the business of the Evangelists being to shew such a descent in Christ by which the Curse of the Law might fall upon him in his Birth they must shew a descent upon which the Law might operate For as this is a Law all Proceedings thereupon are according to Law And hence it is observable that his being born of a Virgin espoused and not of a single Virgin was not accidental but designed For as it was necessary that he should be born of a pure Virgin to preserve his Nature from the defilements of the Humanity so it was necessary that he should be born of a Virgin espoused to derive upon himself the Curse of the Law by a legal Father For which purpose it was necessary that the Birth of Christ should in the terms of the Evangelist be on this wise and no otherwise And as this peculiar Genealogy of Christ was not accidental but designed the quality of his descent was so too There are mutual courtesies and civilities used amongst Equals but he that accepteth Riches or Honour from another doth thereby acknowledg him to be his Superior for the lesser is blessed of the greater Wherefore when Abraham had rescued the Plunder taken from the Sodomites he permitted the young Men that fought with him to eat and drink of the Provisions and his three Confederates that assisted him to take their Portion of the Goods but for his own part taking himself to be as good a Man as the then King of Sodom he scorned to accept from him the value of a Shoe Latchet lest it should be said he made Abraham rich So tho Christ in the days of his flesh behaved himself with all the freedom of Conversation The Son of Man came eating and drinking and when little Zacheus climb'd up a Tree to see him he frankly invited himself to dine with him Yet knowing himself to be the Son of God he neither could nor would receive any Dignity from Man I receive not Honour from Man And thus knowing his real descent to be from Above I am from Above it was equal to him to be reputed the Son of a King or a Carpenter But he rather chose the latter because being himself a King I am a King he would not accept his immediate descent from another King lest it should be said that that made him King David often vaunted of him as his descendant to come twice fourteen Generations before he was born And Abraham rejoiced to see his day But he was so far from valuing himself upon these great Ancestors one a King and the other a King's Fellow that he rather seemed to disown them Before Abraham was I am If David called me Lord how am I his Son He made no other use of his Royal Pedigree but to convey by them a corrupted descent from Adam who standing attainted of Treason against Heaven Christ himself under this Attainder was baptized in his own Blood to restore the rest of Mankind into the glorious Liberty of the Sons of God For Christ himself thus falling under the Law became as guilty of the breach of it as any common Man notwithstanding his personal Holiness For we are none of us guilty of this Sin in Fact but only by construction of Law in the Article of our Birth which falls upon us before we know Good or Evil and so it did upon the Humanity of Christ And this Law thus falling upon him was as just a cause of his Death as it is of ours Nor can his Death be assigned to any other cause but this This Death of Christ was the most unlikely thing that ever happen'd in the World His Disciples could not believe it till they saw it He did not die of Age being about thirty three at his Death He did not die of natural Infirmity having the power of Health by which he preserved his own and restored others He did not die in Battel For his Kingdom was not of this World else would his Servants have fought that he should not have been delivered unto the Jews He did not die by any sudden Accident the Angels having charge over him lest he should dash his foot against a stone He did not murder himself but made all his Efforts to escape the greatest of which was his asking his Life of God Nor was he murdered by others because there was a form of Law in doing it And yet he was not executed by Law because there was no Law then in being by which he could be executed for the Crime of which he stood accused The time that Christ lived in the World was after the destruction of the Jewish Monarchy and during the continuance of the Roman Conquest under which the Jewish Nation being then Subjects were permitted the exercise of their Religion and Priesthood but not of the Civil Power which they had while their Monarchy was in being So that if a Jew had committed any Offence against the Jewish Law which was not an Offence against the Roman Law he was liable to no other Punishment than the Censure of the Jewish Church
that he would only forbear one Common Tree for it seems to be no more till it became otherwise by his eating of it Withal telling him that if he did eat of it his Life should go for it Not that God thought his Life satisfaction but it was all the Satisfaction God could have of him it was rather a Resentment of the Affront than any Satisfaction for it By which God shew'd that if Man had had more than his Life to give God would have had it of him And therefore to signify the height of this Resentment God raises Man from the Dead to demand further Satisfaction of him Death is a commitment to the Prison of the Grave till the Judgment of the great Day and then the grand Habeas Corpus will issue to the Earth and to the Sea to give up their Dead to remove the Bodies with the cause of their Commitment And as these Causes shall appear they shall either be released or else sentenced to the common Goal of Hell there to remain until Satisfaction Such was the Resentment of despised Love and yet this was a Resentment without Malice For as God maintained his Resentment under all his Love so he maintained his Love under all his Resentment For his Love being a Love of Kindness flowing from the generosity of his own Nature could not be diminished by any Art of Man And yet his Honour being concerned to maintain the Truth of his Word he could not falsify that to gratify his own Affection And thus he bore the Passion of his own Law till he had found out a Salvo for his Honour by that Son of Man who gave him Satisfaction all at once by the dignity of his Person Personal Satisfactions by the Laws of Honour are esteemed sufficient or not sufficient according to the equality or inequality between the Persons who give and take the Affront Therefore God to vindicate his Honour thus affronted was oblig'd to find out a Person for that purpose equal to himself who was affronted The invention of which is called the manifold Wisdom of God The Invention it self being the highest Expression of the deepest Love And the Execution of this Invention in the Death of Christ being the deepest Resentment of the highest Affront Which Death of Christ did nevertheless surmount all the Demands made upon him For as much as his Person was superiour in dignity to the Human Nature so much the Satisfaction by his Death surmounted the Offence of Man And thus I say this Law being fulfilled and over satisfied by Christ in his Death was and is taken away so that there was no such Law in being against him after his Resurrection He was made under the Law by his Birth but he did not arise under it having taken it away by his Death And having thus taken away the Law by his Death the Life regained by him in his Resurrection was by Conquest He met with no quarter from God nor Man God would not save him from Death tho he ask'd him and therefore he rescued himself from it He pray'd to be preserv'd from Death before it came upon him but he craved no Aid against the Power of it towards his Resurrection Destroy this Body and I will raise it in three days Die he knew he must but rise he knew he could And the reason of his Resurrection was because Death could hold him no longer For it was not possible that he should be held any longer of it And this he did not in contradiction to the Will of God For God having executed the Law upon him by his Death he did not oppose him in his Resurrection And therefore tho he could not come down from the Cross because the Will of God was then against him yet he could arise from the dead because the Will of God did not then oppose him And so God leaving him to himself he conquered Death By which according to all the Laws of Conquest the Law of Death is taken away For by the Laws of Conquest the Laws of the conquered are ipso facto taken away by the very Conquest and all Records and Writings that remain of them are of no more force than waste Paper The Law of Death as I have said remains in words and will remain for ever but it had no more force against Christ after his Resurrection than if it had never been made And from hence the Title of Christ to Eternal Life is become absolute By absolute I mean discharged from all Tenure or Condition and consequently from all Forfeiture And this is the Title of Conquerors who hold of none but themselves because they receive their Right from none but their Arms. And is in opposition to the first Title of Life delivered to Adam which was held by Tenure as being received from God and being so held it became forfeited to him of whom it was held according to the Laws of Tenure But Christ receiving his Life in his Resurrection from none but himself I lay down my Life of my self and I take it up again it is now his own without Tenure and therefore is absolute and cannot be forfeited And as his Title to Life is thus become absolute by Conquest So the duration of it is become Eternal by being annexed to the Person of the Godhead A Man may have an absolute Title and yet that Title may be but for a time Life is called Temporal or Eternal according to the Persons or Things to which it is annexed or united The Life of Vegetables and Animals is called a Temporal Life because it is annexed to things which have a Temporal Duration And thus according to our Laws whatever is annexed to the Person of a Man is adjudged to have continuance during his Life So that if Land be convey'd to a Man indefinitely without naming any time how long he shall hold it he has without more saying an Estate for Life because his Estate is annexed to his Person which is said to have continuance for his Life And hence the Life of Christ regained by the Conquest of his Resurrection being annexed to the Person of his Godhead which is eternal doth thereby become Eternal Life for the Life of God and Eternal Life are synonymous Terms And thus Christ ever since his Resurrection did and doth stand seized of an absolute and indefezible Estate of Eternal Life without any Tenure or Condition or other matter or thing to change or determine it for ever And I had reason thus to assert the Title of Christ at large Because this is the Title by and under which I am going to affirm my Argument and to claim Eternal Life for my self and all the World Had Christ thus become Man and died and rose again all voluntarily to try an Experiment he had only saved his own Life and left all the World to shift for themselves But this would have been Knight-Errantry in tempting God against which he hath sufficiently declared himself And