cast forth her dead The dead shall arise by vertue of this dew the warm animating influence of Christs Resurrection Hence it is as I have hinted before that our Lord calls himself the Resurrection and the Life namely to intimate to us that by the same spirit of holiness whereby he raised himself from the dead he will also quicken their mortal bodies This is a second Connexion which inseparably links in the Resurrection of the Saints with the Resurrection of Christ For surely were it not so the Resurrection of Jesus Christ would signifie no more than the Resurrection of Lazarus or any other of the Saints mentioned Math. 27.52 53. Yea the Resurrection of Christ would not be of so great vertue and influence as the dry bones of the Prophet the very touch whereof raised the dead man 2 King 12.21 which was cast into his Grave Thirdly There is between the Resurrection of Christ Third Connexion of Design and the Resurrection of the Saints at the last day a Connexion of Design The Lord Jesus had a design upon the Saints in his rising again from the Dead and what that was he tells us in the last passionate prayer before his passion John 17.24 Father I will that all those whom thou hast given me be with me that where I am they might be also Therefore Christ arose and ascended that he might come again and awake them out of their Graves and take them home to himself into Mansions of Glory So he comforted his Disciples before his departure Joh. 14.3 If I go and prepare a place for you I will come and receive you unto my self that where I am there you may be also Christ counts not himself full Eph. 1.23 The Head is not compleat without the Members Although I thus sence the words yet I would not be thought to exclude every other meaning as knowing that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies as well quod impletur as quod implet till he hath all his Members with him therefore is the Church called the fullness of him that filleth all things marke it Christ is the fulness of all things and yet the Church is called the fulness of Christ how so Christ is the fulness of the Church as the Head is the fulness of the Members supplying them with Life and Influence and the Church is the fulness of Christ as the Members are the fulness of the Head making of it a compleat and perfect man Christ is the fulness of the Church for internal animation and the Church is the fulness of Christ for external consummation The Church is Christs outward not inward fulness see Jeans on Colos 1.19 page 19. This is then a third inseparable Connexion between Jesus rising again from the Dead and the Saints rising again because without this Christ should loose the very plot and project of his own Resurrection and be defective even in his state of Glory as an Head without his Members This must not be it cannot be And this casts us upon the fourth Connexion Fourth Connexion of Vnion before we are aware of it sc A Connexion of Vnion The Connexion which is between Christ his Resurrection and the Saints Resurrection is that very Connexion which is between him and them namely the Union which is between the Head and Members The wicked rise not by vertue of Christs Resurrection there being no such Vnion between Christ them they are raised by a general power of Christ as a Judge Christ is the Head Eph. 1.22 and the Saints are the Members of his body v. 23. his Mystical body It would not be proper here to discourse largely concerning the nature of this Vnion especially in as much as I shall have occasion to meet with it again in the process of this discourse sufficient to my design it is to shew you how this spiritual Vnion that is between Christ and Believers is one of the * In Nature we see that the Winter Trees which seem to be dead revive again in the Spring because the Body Armes and Graines of the Tree are joyned to the Root where the Sap lies all the Winter and by means of its Conjunction it conveys vegetation to all parts of the Tree Even so our life is hid with Christ in God And in the day of the Resurrection by reason of this mystical Conjunction Divine and quickening Vertue shall stream from Christ to his Elect and cause them to rise again c. Foundations whence the Resurrection of the Saints is necessarily inferr'd upon the Resurrection of Christ himself For if the Head be risen the Members cannot be long behind witness the Word of Christ to his Disciples and in them to all Believers a word more precious than the whole Creation Because I live ye shall live also The Resurrection of the Saints is bound up in the Resurrection of Christ as the effect is bound up in the cause because I live you shall live because Jesus rose again Saints shall rise again Christ is our life and therefore when Christ shall appear we shall appear with him in Glory Can the cause be without the effect can the Head live and the Members remain dead Yea can the Saints life live and they themselves continue in a state of death This is an happy contradiction a blessed impossibility Oh write this comfortable word upon your hearts Christians Christ is our life Christ is your Life and the Life of your Christian Relations and as sure as Christ as risen they shall rise and because he lives those Members of his for whom you weep and bleed as dead shall live also with him Surely if the Devil and all the powers of darkness were not able to keep Christ in the Grave neither shall they be able to hold one of his Members there for ever Hence you shall find the holy Apostle disputing from the Resurrection of Christ to the Resurrection of Christians If Christ rose from the Dead 1 Cor. 15.12 how say some that there is no Resurrection of the Dead and back again from the Resurrection of Christians ver 13. to the Resurrection of Christ if there be no Resurrection of the Dead then Christ is not risen Indeed the form of words is Negative but the sense is Affirmative and for the greater assurance it is repeated over and over in the following verses backward and forward as Convertibles grant one and ye grant the other deny one and ye deny the other And the result is this But now is Christ risen from the Dead ver 20. and become the first Fruits of them that sleep Christ is risen Christ rose as the first fruits in which the whole Harvest is considered and risen as our first Fruits as a pledge and part of the whole Harvest for if the first Fruits be holy the Lump is also holy if the first Fruits be laid up safe in Gods Barns the whole Harvest shall in due time be
MOVNT PISGAH OR A PROSPECT OF HEAVEN BEING An Exposition on the Fourth Chapter of The First Epistle of St. Paul to the Thessalonians from the 13 th verse to the end of the Chapter Divided into Three Parts By THO. CASE Somtimes Student in Christ-Church Oxon and Minister of the Gospel 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Naz. Orat. LONDON Printed by Thomas Milbourn for Dorman Newman at the Chirurgions Arms in Little-Brittain near the Lame-Hospital 1670. TO THE Honourable and his much Honoured Son-in-Law Sr. ROBERT BOOTH Knight Lord Chief Justice of the Common-Pleas in Ireland Grace Mercy and Peace Dear Sir THese Meditations presented to you were first intended for a diversion to your and my sorrrow Conceived by the death of that Excellent Child your First-born your Benjamin but his Precious Mother's Ben-oni for she brought him forth not with the hazard only but with the loss of her own Life his Birth was her Death from which very moment of time You were pleased to concredit his Education to his tender Grand-Mother your Pious Mother and my Self a Depositum than which there could nothing have been more Sacred to us in the world I am sure we were as tender of it as of our own Lives yea verily our Lives were bound up in the Child's Life â—er 31.20 He was indeed Natus deliciarum a Delectable Child in whom Nature and Grace seemed to be at a strife which should excel in her workmanship and as he grew in age so he grew in sweetness of disposition and in all Natural and Moral Endowments of which his Age was capable yea he out-grew his Age and was alwayes before-hand with his Education Imbibing instruction faster then we durst rationally infuse it for fear of hurting the tender Vessel So that he seemed to be a Man before his Childhood was expired As many Loved him as knew him and were in dispute with themselves whether such Maturity did Prophesie an Eximious Life or an Immature Death I must confess whether my infirmity or no I know not I was often offended at the mention of the latter as too boldly intrenching upon God's Prerogative But such it seems was the Divine Decree so it proved His work was done betimes and ours about him afore we thought of it and while we said of him in our hearts as once Lamech said of his Son Noah Gen. 5.29 This Child shall Comfort us he shall live with us God said Nay he shall leave you and shall live with me for before he was Eleaven years old God snatch't him out of our Tuition and removed him into an Higher Form where he should learn no more by the sight of the eye and hearing of the ear which are subject to mistake but by clear and perfect Vision where he knows more than we could teach him yea able to teach us what we are not capable to understand while we see but in a glass darkly he is seeing Face to Face Oh could I but write what he is able to dictate concerning the Facial Vision which I am now with fear and trembling but peeping into what a rare Exposition should I publish to the world upon the present Context before us such as Eye never Read nor Ear ever Heard nor can ever enter into the heart of man until we enter into that Light where he is where his intellectual Eye is married to the Sun of Righteousness and his naked will is swimming and bathing it self in Rivers of pleasures for ever This may be indeed what these papers wished to be and that is all a perfumed Handkerchief to wipe off tears from your eyes and fill your Soul with joy Your loss is his infinite gain It was a satisfaction good enough for an Ethnic who when one brought him the tidings of his Eldest Son's death was able to reply Scio me genuisse mortalem Your Comfort may express it self in a higher straine Scio me genuisse Immortalem for though Nature did not make him Immortal by his Generation Grace hath made him Immortal by his Regeneration So that all that you and I have to do is but to breathe after that Perfection of which through Grace I am humbly confident he is already possest Let us so run that we may obtain As for my self so many deaths have been rushing in upon me deep calling unto deep as have not only retarded the birth of these Conceptions but threatned their burial in the same Womb which Conceived them which is the just cause they have stuck so long in the Birth But since it hath pleased the Living God to let me live to see the travail of my Soul though miserably mangled in the Birth by unskilful hands Such as they are Dear Son I dedicate them to your Name to be as an Absolom's-Pillar until God may raise up a Living-Monument in the room of that which he hath removed And because this may be too weak and obscure let me provoke you Sir to erect to your self a Monument that may be worthy of you Let your own Life be a Name to you when you are dead a Name better than of Sons and Daughters by filling that Honourable Station wherein God hath fixed you and all your other Relations with such Fruitfulness Wisdome and Fidelity that all that know you may rise up and call you blessed yea that your Name may be as a sweet Perfume to Posterity Live your own Life and your Son 's too As for me I cannot long Survive having so often received in my selfe the Sentence of Death 2 Cor. 1.9 Psal 90.10 I have lived already one full Age of man and am nowin the third year of my LABOVR AND SORROW and it is little I can do for God I must Decrease but may you Increase yet pray for me that I may live much in a little time and that my self and your Aged Mother may like those Trees of God Psal 92.14 15. bring forth more fruit in old age then in the beginning to shew that the Lord is upright c. Farewell Honoured Son and God All-Mighty make you amends for the loane which you have lent to God if not in the Stream yet in the Fountain He Bless you and make you a Blessing So prayeth Your Faithful and most Affectionate Father-in-Law THOMAS CASE To my Worthy Son-in-Law WILLIAM HAWES Dr. in Physick AND To M ris ELIZABETH HAWES his Vertuous Consort Grace Mercy and Peace Dear Son and Daughter IT is not certainly without some special design of Providence that these Meditations which were conceived upon the death of your hopeful Nephew the only Son of your Elder Brother Sir Robert Booth now in Ireland should not by reason of those distempers which have ever since pursued me uncessantly as you to your trouble know be able to come to the Birth until this time when our sorrows are doubled in the death of your precious Child Martin Hawes your First-born Possibly as we may rationally
work of the Lord for as much as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord faithful is he that hath called you who also will do it Heaven will make amends for all Fourthly 4th Ground Gods morcy Such a supposed cessation of Heavens glory is totally inconsistent with the mercy and goodness of God that man of God holy David begins his Psalm of thanksgiving in this lower Quire of Saints with this strain Oh give thanks unto the Lord Psal 136.1 for he is good for his mercy endureth for ever And having begun in that strain he can sing no other tune all the Psalm over it is as it were the burden of the Song For his mercy endureth for ever And shall we imagine he is now turning his Hallelujahs to a lower key in that celestial Quire to Him that sitteth upon the Throne and to the Lamb No Quicquid in Deo Deut. Rom. 9.23 mercy in God is not a moral or mortal vertue but an essential Attribute God himself eternal Mercy in God hath been from eternity and shall be to eternity it can no more out live its objects the vessels of merey prepared unto glory than it can cease to be mercy God is the Father of mercies and mercy can never go childless God must exercise the infiniteness of his mercy extensive to all eternity as well as intensive above all dimensions Fifthly 5. Attribute Omnipotence The omnipotence of God doth gratifie his mercy in this design for while mercy poureth in this strong liquor of the Lords joy immeasurably into the vessels of glory omnipotence doth support and strengthen those vessels that they split not with their own fulness it were not else imaginable how created vessels should hold uncreated glory and if the vessâ—l should run out or fail the I quor would be lost Sixthly 6. Attribute Eternity God is eternal and therefore Heaven must be eternal also In Heaven there are no second causes which are obnoxious to contingency or alteration all causes there are resolved into the first being and soveraign cause where they remain fixt and immutable as that immense Being himself and because he liveth eternally they shall so live also The eternity of Gods being layeth the foundation of the eternity of the Saints glory * Rev. 21.23 The Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the Temple of it the Sun that shineth there by day the Moon by night are no part of the first Creation which is to †Mat. 5.18 pass away but the glory of God doth lighten it and the Lamb is the light thereof there shall not be so much as a post of the old fabrick in this new building to infirm or endanger it God alone is the Roof and Foundation of Heaven the very Center and Circumference is God all the Arches and Pillars of Heaven are made of the Tree of life in which no worm can breed which may corrode or consume the Saints mansions no moth is there to fret and eat out the long white robes where with the Saints are adorned nor Thâ—ef to break into the Palace of the great King to steal away their crown from them There is malice enough indeed in that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Angel of the bottomless pit and all his cursed Goal-birds to act such hellish villanies not upon the Saints only but upon God himself even to pull him out of his Throne if they could but thanks be to God they are made fast enough in the lowest Dungeon where they are stak'd down by a perpetual Decree and reserved in â—bains of darkness for ever so that the Saints need not fear that Antichristian brood shall ever break loose to cast in one Granado or Fire-ball into the walls of the new Jerusalem or to break open the gates thereof to disturb their peace In a word the Manna of those upper heavens which is the Angelical food the Saints live on is not subject to breed worms which may corrupt their constitution behold the worm is only in the neather place of darkness and yet neither can that eat out any part of the subject on which it feedeth Oh how sweet would that worm be to the Reprobates if but once in a thousand years it might eat out but a piece of them till they were utterly consumed but wo and alas the worm knows only how to augment but not how to shorten the torments of the damned but as it is a never dying worm it self so is the miserable subject also upon which it feedeth there is fire in hell but it is such only as doth nourish its fuel not diminish it Whence should this be But because the breath of the Lord like a stream of brimstone doth kindle it Isai 30. ult And if the justice of God gives eternity both to the torment of hell and the tormented also to sustain it how much easier and sweeter is it to conceive the shine of Gods face is both the eternity of the blessed in glory and of their bliss aso It is true indeed of the neather heavens it is said they shall perish yea all of them shall wax old as doth a garment as a vesture shalt thou change them and they shall be changed but hath he any where said so of the upper heavens too the seat of the blessed souls the mansion house of the great King Surely no Yea to use those words in an accommodated sense at least saith God Isa 66.22 The new heavens and the new earth shall remain before me However even in contemplating the consummation of these neather heavens the Psalmist hath a savoury But which will save all harmless But thou art the same and thy years shall not fail Behold God is the heaven of his Saints what can put a period to this heaven A seventh Attribute is Love 7. Attribute the Love of God Which way should the glory of the Saints come to be extinguished or so much as eclipsed If such a thing could be it must arise from a cessation of divine love which cannot be supposed Will God grow weary of their company Behold he made them when he brought them into that state of glory as perfect as he would have them be I had well nigh said as perfect as he could make them that they might be a meet Bride for his first-born his only begotten Son and now behold he that hated putting away in the fantastical Jew unless it were in case of adultery will he give the Lambs Wife a Bill of divorce and put her out of doors in whom since her first reception there was never sound the least distoyalty no not in thought but remaineth without spot or wrinkle or any such thing as immaculate as the elect Angels or must they also fare no better than the Angels that kept not their first estate Must all be cast out for ever and heaven stand now as an house to be let without a Tenant