not now controvert whether by the Name Christ the Church may not sometimes be signified All I shall say is this that as the Phrases of Being in Christ engrafted into Christ and United to Christ being one Body with Christ and Brethren in Christ are to be otherwise Understood than meerly to imply Our belonging to that society whereof Christ is the Head and Governour which is the Paraphrase that Mr. Sherlock is pleased to put upon them but shall be afterwards disproved and overthrown so Gal. 3.16 and 1 Cor. 12.12 where of all other places the Church seems with the greatest probability to be signified by the Name Christ ought in my mind to be otherwise interpreted And were that my present business I should think it a matter encumbred with small difficulty to Demonstrate that 't is the Person of Christ not his Church that is immediately primarily intended by that Name in both places And truly even admitting the supposition that there is no other Union betwixt Christ and Believers but meerly a Political I do not see but that Mr. Sherlock might have allowed Christ himself to be intended wheresoever our Union with him is declared spoken of I am sure as his Hypothesis had thereby remained as consistent every way with it self so more reverence had been maintain'd towards the Scripture than there is by justling out Christ and substituting the Church in his room For example when Christ saith of himself I am the true Vine c. Our Author even in pursuance of his own Notion might have allowed him to be so and that Christ spake the Truth though in way of Paraphrase he had subjoyn'd that he was so no otherwise but by the Gospel and upon the account of his Authority over and influence upon the Church by his Doctrine and Laws I am sure the Socinians though through their denying the Divine Person of Christ they renounce all vital influences from him to Believers and disclaim his being other than a Political Head unanimously allow that where Christ says I am the true Vine he mean's himself Though the Honour of being the First-framers and erecters of the Hypothesis of Christs being meerly a Political Head to his Body be due to them yet I should be Injurious to Mr. Sherlock did I deny him the reputation of being the Contriver of this New Dresse and Trim with which he hath adorned it Only 't is attended with this Inconvenience that it is not shapen very agreeably to the place that lay before him and which should have been his measure with what handsomeness soever otherwise it be deckt and set out Whereas Christ saith Joh. 15.5 I am the vine ye are the Branches this must be expounded saith our Author to the same sense with what goes before where Christ speaking of himself saith I am the true Vine The meaning is that Church which is founded on my Gospel is the true Vine I signifies Christ together with his church which is his Body Concerning which Paraphrase I shall only recommend these things to the Consideration of the Reader 1. 'T is inconsistent with it self In one line he affirms the Church to be the true Vine and in the next he tells us that the I of which True Vine is predicated signifies Christ together with his Church yet a few lines after he contends that by I am the True Vine we can Rationally understand nothing but the Church which is founded on the Belief of the Gospel and her being the only True Church which God now owns And accordingly all the four Reasons brought in confirmation of his exposition are wholly calculated to shut Christ out from any share or claim in that Proposition I am the True Vine and to establish the Church for the alone Subject of that Enunciation Now I understand not how these things are reconcileable viz. When Christ speaks in the First Person I he cannot mean this of his own Person but of his Church and yet that I signifies Christ together with his Church pag. 145. 2 'T is altogether Novel For besides that no one Commentator who own 's the Divinity of Christ hath preceded him in it even the Socinians out of whose Mine he hath too frequently digged his Treasure do in this particular stand in opposition to him As to the Manner of our being in this Vine viz. through a Belief of and adhesion to Christs Doctrine our Author hath the Exposition of Schlichtingius to befriend him But I know none of the Socinians that have been so front-less or who have so far steeld their brow as to preclude Christ from being understood here by the True Vine 3. 'T is repugnant to the Universal Reason and sense of Mankind For though there may be Contrasts about the Subject of an Enunciation when the Expression is in the 2 d. or 3 d. Person yet it was never till Mr. Sherlock wrote so much as questioned but that when the Person speaking affirms any thing of himself in the 1 st person he himself is the Subject of that Proposition Christ therefore being the Person speaking saying of himself I am the True Vine 't is both to give him the lye and to contradict the Reason that Mankind is determined by in judging of the Subject of a Proposition to say he is not the True Vine but the Church is so 4. It offers violence to the Harmony of the Context For 1 Though we can easily conceive how a particular Believer may be in the Church yet 't is impossible to a apprehend how the Church can be in a particular Believer And therefore seeing 't is the same Identical I of whom the True Vine is predicated v 1. that in you and in them is affirmed of v. 4 5. either the whole Church must be allowed to be in every Individual Christian which is impossible or else the Church is not signified by the â—â—n either of the places which overthrow's Mr. Sherlocks paraphrase 2 Because no Christian severed from the Vine and its Influences 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is here intended either doth or can bring forth fruit to God but this a person severed or separated from any Visible Church may do and consequently 't is not the Church which by this Metaphorical Term Vine is here meant and understood Now that one living in the fellowship and communion of no Visible Church may yet be a Christian these following Reasons do demonstrate First Because when these words were spoken there was no Church of Christ founded on the belief of the Gospel and yet there were believers 2 ly Because 't is possible for a man to be a Christian where there is no visible Church for him to be united to And unless we should suppose a Number to be converted together we must grant this to have been the case at least for a time of such as first embraced the Faith of the Gospel in Heathen
nor others may think themselves imposed upon I shall represent his apprehensions of it in his own words Those Metaphors says he which describe the Relation and Union betwixt Christ and Christians do primarily refer to the Christian Church not to every individual Christian The Union of particular Christians to Christ is by means of their Union to the Christian Church The Church is the Body of Christ and every Christian by being United to this Body becomes a Member of Christ. The Union of particular Christians to Christ consists in their Union to the Christian Church and our Union with the Christian Church is the Medium of our Union to Christ. Those Phrases and Metaphors which represent our Union with Christ signify our visible Society with the Christian Church and our sincere practice of the Christian Religion Now this Union says he between Christ and the Christian Church is a Political Union that is such an Union as is between a Prince and his Subjects Christ is a Spiritual King and all Christians are his Subjects and our Union to Christ consists in our Belief of his Revelations Obedience to his Laws and Subjection to his Authority Fellowship and Communion with God according to the Scripture Notion signifies what we call a Political Union that is that to be in Fellowship with God and Christ signifies to be of that Society which puts us into a peculiar Relation to God This is the account that Mr. Sherlock is pleased to afford us concerning the Union of Believers to Christ and were this a true report and description of it it ceaseth to be Mysterious nor needs the perfect knowledge of it be reserved to the next world or the coming of Elias that I may again usurp our Authors phrase He seems very careful that there should be nothing left Mysteririous in the Christian Religion nor doth the Term Mystical please him being as he tells us a hard word Only I wish that under pretence of wariness and caution there be not any thing in the Gospel acknowledged of arduous conception he did not lay a foundation of going soberly to destroy Christianity Now in the examining Mr. Sherlocks Notion of the Union of Christ with Believers I reckon it necessary before I address to the disproof of what I dislike in his opinion to declare what I own to be true in the matter of a Political Union between Christ and Christians First then That Christ is the Political Head of his Church we readily grant nor is it denyed by any so far as I know that profess themselves Christians The very espousing the Profession of the Christian Religion includes an acknowledgment of Christs being our Supreme Legislatour and Governour and that we are to be subject to his Authority and obedient to his Commands A Right of Erecting Governing and protecting the Church is delegated to and vested in him And as he in the discharge of this Regal Office wherewithal he is entrusted hath enacted Laws appointed Ordinances and ordained Officers for the Government of his Church so we by our submission to them do acknowledg his Authority and make profession of our subjection to him as our Lord and King and therereupon may be said to be related to Him as our Political Head All that own the name of Christians are thus far agreed for though the Papists interpose another immediate ruling Head between Christ and the Catholick Church yet as they acknowledg Christ to be the only Head of Vital Influence to the Church Regenerate so they confess Him to be the only supreme Governing Head of the Universal Church But as their Notion of a Vicarious Political Head over the whole Church is both destitute of all countenance from the Scripture and repugnant to it so no one is capable of enacting Laws for the Universal Church nor of seeing them executed nor hath the Catholick Church ever acknowledged such a constitutive Imperant Head what ever some part of it may have done Upon this account especially we judge the Pope to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Antichrist and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Opposer who exalteth himself above all that is called God or that is worshipped so that he as God sitteth in the Temple of God shewing himself that he is God because he usurpeth the Headship over the Church of Christ as to Legislation Judgment and Execution dispensing with Christs Laws and enacting his own He challengeth a peerage with Jesus Christ as to Legislative Power and Headship over the Universal Church which is no less than to storm his Throne and Usurp his Scepter The claym of the Roman See is great but their Allegations to justifie it are wholly precatious And when Jesus Christ appears to vindicate his Supreme Authority from the invasions which Usurpers have made upon his Dignity the counterfeiting the broad Seal of Heaven and the suborning Scripture to supplant Christs Throne will prove a Crime unanswerable I shall only add in reference to this particular I have been discoursing that no verbal profession of being a Christian unless it be accompanied with a belief of the Revelations and an Obedience to the Laws of Christ can de Jure entitle us amongst his Subjects Secondly As a visible profession of subjection to Christ testified in the belief of what he hath revealed and in the obedience of what he hath commanded is the foundation of this political Union between Christ and his Church so we do hereby become politically united one to another and are denominated Members of Christs Catholick Visible Church For as the Profession of the Gospel in the belief of its Doctrines an avowed subjection to its Laws is the constituent form of the Church as Visible and the formal reason of its obtaining that appellation so all that profess the Invocation of the Name of the Lord Jesus their Lord and ours 1 Cor. 7.2 do hereby belong to Christs Catholick Church Visible and become Politically united as Subjects of the same Legislator and King In the profession of the same Lord Faith and Baptism doth the Union of the Church under the consideration of Catholick and Visible consist and as the Subjects of one and the same Temporal Prince become politically United together by their being in subjection to the Authority of the same supreme civil Ruler and governed by the same Laws so may all Christians be said upon a parallel account to be politically united one with another And here upon the one hand as Christ hath not made our Right to a room and membership in the Catholick Church to depend upon a formal belief of every thing that he hath revealed though every thing that Christ hath revealed ought to be believed when it appears that he hath revealed it so upon the other hand there are some Doctrines the explicite belief of which is necessary to the having a place in the Universal Church a Church being nothing else but
No particular Christian is the Body of Christ but only a Member in his Body Christ is called a Husband but then the whole Church or Society of Christians not every particular Christian is his Spouse as St. Paul tells the Church of Corinth 2 Cor. 11.2 Christ is a Shepherd and the Christian Church is his Flock Joh. 10. For the Relation between a Shepherd and Sheep doth primarily concern the whole Flock Christ is the Rock upon which his Church is built the chief corner stone and the Christian Church a Holy Temple so that all those Metaphors in their first and proper use refer to the whole Society of Christians and are designed to represent the Union between Christ and his Church To this I answer 1. That were this discourse of our Author fram'd into a Syllogism the incongruity between the conclusion and the premises would easily appear For example Christ is the Head of his Church Ergo no particular Believer is united to him but by means of their Uinion with the Church I deny the consequent surely though the King be Immediate Head to the whole Kingdom yet he is also Immediate Head to every Individual person in it Mr. Sherlocks Logick is like that of Chrysippus which men were too dull to understand though they say the Gods would have used it 2. The Church and its Individual Members being of an homogeneous Nature whatsoever is predicated essentially of the whole is equally predicable of every part 3. The Holy Ghost plainly affirms that it is between Christ and the Church as it is between the Head and Members of the same Natural Body And therefore as not only the whole Body hath influence in the disposal of it self and in the discharge of its Functions from the Head but also every particular Member hath influences of life and strength from thence so Christ is not only an Immediate Head of Direction and Rule to the whole Church but to every Individual Believer in it Whatever the Habitude of Pastors Teachers be to their particular Churches to which they are related and to the Members of which these Churches are constituted yet it is to the Word of God as the Rule of conduct by which Christ under the Notion of a Political Head governs his Church that every Individual Believer is to attend 4. Though our Author informs us that he hath almost pored out his eyes in searching the Scripture in order to his being enlightned about this and some other Notions yet I must take leave either to question the matter of Fact or to suspect that his sight was not good before or that his visible Faculty was strangely tinctured For the Apostle whose Authority and Testimony may I hope be allowed to rival Mr. Sherlocks tells us that as the whole Church is Christs Body so we are all Members in particular of Christ 1 Cor. 12.27 and that the whole Body is joyned to Christ by the conjunction which every Member hath with him 1 Cor. 12.12 And that Christ is not only a Husband to the whole Church but that he is so to every Christian appears by this seeing not only the particular Church of Corinth is said to be Espoused to Him 2 Cor. 11.2 but every Individual Believer among the Romans is also represented as Married to him Rom. 7.4 Neither do they only report him to be the Foundation Rock and corner Stone of the Church taken Collectively but likewise in its distributive acceptation 1 Pet. 2.5 Eph. 2.19 20 21 22. Thus having not only defeated the strength and force of his first objection but improved the Medium from which he musters it to subvert the cause in whose defence it was brought I proceed now to the second That the Union of particular Christians with Christ consists in their Union with the Christian Church the Sacraments which our Saviour hath instituted as Symbols of our Union with him are says he a plain demonstration Our first undertaking of Christianity is represented in our Baptism wherein we make a publick profession of our Faith in Christ and it is sufficiently known that Baptism is the Sacrament of our admission into the Christian Church c. Thus the Lords Supper is a Sacrament of Union and signifies the near Conjunction that is between Christ and the Christian Church and the mutual Fellowship of one Christian with another c. For answer whether the Sacraments import any more than a Political Union between Christ and Believers I shall wave till anon and only consider them at present as brought in proof of Christians being united to Christ by means of their Union with the Christian Church And truly if these be the weapons with which Mr. Sherlock thinks to captivate and subdue the minds of men to espouse his Notion he must either only encounter those that court their own Bondage or there will be few found following the Chariot wheels of our Hero Instead of any slaughter he is like to make amongst the Non-conformists by these Forces he only wounds himself and overthrows his own cause by them And first as to the Argument drawn from Baptism I reply these four things 1. Baptism is neither the Medium of our Union with the Catholick Visible Church nor that by which we formally become Members of a particular Instituted Church Not the latter seeing it is not only possible that a Person may be Baptised where there are not enough to form an Instituted particular Church but it may be sometimes found necessary to deny the Priviledg of Membership in an Instituted even to such as have been Baptized Yea before any particular Churches were erected there were Baptised Christians it being of such that the first Christian Churches were constituted Not the Former forasmuch as a Person may be of the Universal Visible Church and yet not be Baptised Nor is this a Chimaerical Imagination for there have been many who partly through want of opportunity to enjoy the Ordinance of Baptism partly upon other Motives though they are not justifiable have denyed themselves the Mercy of the Baptismal Laver and yet to suppose that thereupon they are not Christians is to renounce all exercise of Charity and to involve our selves under the guilt of condemning those whom the Lord hath received 2. Were Baptism as well the Medium as the Symbol of our Union with the Christian Church yet it doth not follow that we are only United to Christ by means of our Union with the Church And the reason is plain seeing none ought to be admitted to Baptism I speak of adult persons but such who are antecedently judged to be Christians Act. 8.37 Now to reckon any one a Christian who doth not before-hand own the Authority of Jesus Christ in the belief of his Doctrines and an avowed subjection to his Laws which is the Bond of our Political Union is no less than a contradiction 3. Our owning the Authority of Christ which is the Vinculum of our Political Union with
a company of men owning the Authority of Jesus Christ as Lord and King and agreeing in the faith of such Doctrines as he hath made Salvation dependent upon As we do not outwardly hold the Head nor declare our subjection to Christ as our Law-giver and Ruler but by a belief of those things which he hath made the Essentials and Fundamentals of the Christian Religion so we have no Right of Matriculation into the Church Catholick-visible nor have we any Union with the Members of it but through a belief of these common radical principles These are what we commonly call Fundamental Articles which as I shall not take upon me to enumerate being neither necessary nor may be convenient so they are in themselves both few and plain Only as the Romanists are injurious to Christ and uncharitable to men in confining Christianity within the Circle of their own communion and making the Roman and Catholick Church Terms Equipollent so they are both unreasonable and ridiculous in making the Unity of the Universal Church to consist in the belief of all that they have thought fit to determine necessary to be believed For besides many other things pleadable against this Romish Foundation of the Unity of the Universal Christian Church and the Relative Politick Union of one member with the rest it renders the Unity of the Church and the Union of Christians one with another first impossible secondly absurd Impossible in that most Men can neither allow time nor have they sufficient acquired intellectual abilities either to know what the Roman Church hath defined necessary to be believed nor in what sence she hath proposed and determined them to be assented to Absurd 1 Because a man must believe contradictions before he can be a member of the Catholick Church or have any Union or Communion with Christians That is he must renounce Reason before he is capable of having Faith and devest himself of Man before he can espouse Christian. And the reason is plain because the Romish Church hath defined things to be believed that are repugnant one to another 2. Because what serves to matriculate a person into the Church of Christ and to give him the Relation of an Oneness with all Christians this year may not be sufficient to secure and continue his Union and Relation the next but that without alteration or change in his belief he may cease to be a Member of the Catholick Church For the Church may in that compass of time determine something necessary to be believed concerning which before she had not pronounced But to resume what I was upon as there is through our subjection to Christ by the belief of his Doctrine and obedience of his Laws a Political Union betwixt Christ and Christians so I see nothing to the contrary but that all Christians may in the virtue of their common Faith and Obedience be accounted united amongst themselves I shall not here discourse the reciprocal and mutual duties which we come under the obligation of by this Relation but as they are many and great so were they attended to a check would be given to that wrath and bitterness which is amongst Christians a stop put to that war and persecution which one wageth against another Neither shall I here discourse the Nature and Measures of a particular Church with the foundation and media which ground the Relation of one to another in it but shall only say this that though admission into an instituted particular Church presupposeth whatsoever was necessary to entitle us to a Membership in the Church-Catholick yet there are both diverse things required in order to the latter which were not so in reference to the former and diverse fresh duties emerge from this posterior Relation beyond what we were obliged to by the precedent Having briefly treated these things which ought not to be denyed and shewed my self as liberal to our Author as without trespassing upon my light I can I come now to discourse those things wherein our Author differs from the general sense of Christians and the common opinion of the Universal Church And the first conclusion which I propose in opposition to the Hypothesis that Mr. Sherlock hath erected is this That were the Union of particular Believers with Christ only a Political Relation yet it were immediate to the Person of Christ. Let our Relation to Christ which is styled by the name of Union be whatsoever our Author pleaseth to make it yet it is not the Church that we are primarily united to nor doth our Union terminate there nor is it meerly by means thereof that we are brought into a cohesion with the Lord Jesus This if justified overthrows Mr. Sherlocks two first Conclusions which indeed are but one in import though obtruded upon us for two For to say that those Metaphors which describe the Relation and Union betwixt Christ and Christians do primarily refer to the Christian Church and not to every Individual Christian which is Mr. Sherlock's first conclusion and to say that the Union of particular Christians to Christ is by means of their Union to the Christian Church which is his second Conclusion are in my opinion things coincident The same Metaphors which describe the Relation and Union of Christ with Christians do also display the Relation and Union of Christians with Christ if the Union betwixt Christ and Christians doth primarily refer to the Christian Church the Union of particular Christians with Christ can result from no other Medium nor bear upon any other foundation but the Union with the Christian Church I should not bestow remarks upon the ridiculous and impertinent Battologies of our Author nor sally out into reflections upon what meerly favours of dulness and hebetude but that it may not be amiss to inform the World how undeservedly Mr. Sherlock hath obtain'd the name of an accurate Writer and if it be possible to give check to his briskness in Descanting upon the Writings of others For he may remember what a reflection he hath cast upon Dr. Jacomb meerly for converting a Proposition and saying That the person of the Believer is United to the Person of Christ having before said though not so as to make it a different conclusion That the Person of Christ is United to the person of the Believer But to return to the proof of the Assertion which I have advanced in contradiction to Mr. Sherlocks Notion of our being United to Christ only by our Union and Fellowship with the Christian Church 1. If particular Christians be United to Christ only by virtue of a previous Relation to the Church I would then fain know of Mr. Sherlock how the whole Church comes to be united to the Lord Jesus For I suppose it will not be denyed but that there is a Relation of Oneness between Him and the Church and if any should be so perverse and of so unreasonable a humour as to question it there are Media enough
to evince it though obstinate persons and such as maintain Tenets in despite of evidence to the contrary may not be convinced by them 'T is the Church in its full latitude and extent that is eminently Christs Body and his Spouse and 't is his Body and Spouse that he is conjoyned and marryed to Now for any one to say that he is united to the Church by the vincula that are between him and Individual Believers is to run himself into the absurdity which we commonly call a circle For if the copula of particular Christians to Christ be their Society and Fellowship with the Christian Church and if the vinculum between Christ and the Church be through the cohesion of particular Believers to Christ there is no remedy but that our Author must be entangled in a circle or else there is no such thing in the World as circular defining and discoursing And to say that Christ is united to the Church by the Churches belief of his Revelations and Obedience to his Laws is but instead of loosing the knot to tye it faster For the Church being an Aggregate Body of Believers she can no other ways embrace the Revelations of the Gospel or yield obedience to its commands but in the virtue of what her particular constituent Members do 2. That our Union with Christ even supposing it a meer Political Relation should be by the means of our Union with the Christian Church is repugnant to that conception and idea which we have of the Church For the Church Catholick-Visible and much more particular instituted Churches being nothing else but the Collective Body of Christians it naturally follows that they must in priority of Nature be Christians before they can any ways belong to the Church Now to suppose them Christians I speak of adult persons without their previous owning the Authority of Jesus Christ through a belief of his Doctrines and a professed subjection to his Laws is an absurd and self-contradictious Imagination 3. If the Apostles were immediately United to Christ without any Antecedent Relation to the Christian Church I see no cause why every Individual Christian ought not to be held united to Him in the same manner that they were For the Apostles being united to Christ under the formal consideration of their being Christians and not under the reduplication of their being Apostles it follows by a short and easie train of ratiocination that all who have a right to the denomination of Christians are united by the same Bond and stand in the same immediateness of conjunction with Christ that they were Yea Paul hath said enough to set this beyond all suspect in that speaking of the Body of Christ he reckons the Apostles in the classis of Members with other Believers 1 Cor. 12.27 28. Now that the Apostles were not united to Christ by the Mediation of any Antecedent Relation to the Christian Church but that their Relation of Oneness with Him was immediate there be unanswerable Arguments at hand to demonstrate But I shall only mention one namely there was no Christian Church pre-existent to them into whose Society and Fellowship they could be admitted I have thus far discoursed these things with Mr. Sherlock taking the church for the universal Catholick Visible Church which is the most favourable acceptation to befriend the Notion of our being united to Christ by the means of Union to the Christian Church that 't is capable of And this acceptation of the Church as our communion with it is the Medium and Bond of our Union with Christ Mr. Sherlock finds himself in some cases necessitated to retreat to If says he there be no Visible Society of Christians professing the Faith of â—hrist and living in Communion with each other as it may happen in times of persecution or some great degeneracy of the Church our Union to Christ then consists in an acknowledgment of his Authority and Subjection to his Laws which makes us Members of the Universal Church though there be no particular Church to communicate with Now if the Notion of Union with Christ by the Medium of a previous Interest in the Catholick Visible Church be not defensible much less is it maintainable on the Hypothesis of an Union with a particular Church as the Vinculum and Foundation of it And yet most of our Authors discourse is fram'd in countenance of this namely that Individual Christians are not united to Christ but by means of their Union to some particular Church Hence we are told that we cannot be United to Christ that is cannot own his Authority and Government till we unite our selves to the publick Societies of Christians and submit to the publick Instructions Authority and Discipline of the Church And this is made the motive and ground of our living in the Communion of the Church where Providence hath cast us so long as she submits to the Laws of Christ and acknowledgeth his Authority because as our Author saith this Unites us to Christ. Mr. Sherlock so far as I am able to conjecture was not at leisure to think what was most serviceable to the Hypothesis he had espoused or what was most disserviceable to it All Immediate Union of particular Christians with Christ save by means of their union with the Christian Church he was resolved to deny but in what sense the Church was to be taken by Communion with which we come to be copulated with Jesus Christ he durst not determine At one time 't is by our being Members of the Universal Church at another 't is by our Fellowship with such a Church as is under the conduct of Bishops and Pastors whose Members are in regular subjection to their spiritual Guides and Rulers and live in concord and Unity amongst themselves and in a mutual discharge of all Christian Offices But that Communion with a particular Church cannot be the Medium of a Christians Union with Christ I come under the influence and command of these Reasons to believe 1. There may be some Individual Christians where there is no particular Instituted Church of Christ into which they can be admitted Nor may this only be supposed but there are divers instances in Ecclesiastical story to evince it Yea there can be no particular Church without the pre-existence of Individual Believers seeing it is of such that every particular Church is constituted and formed We may as well build a House without pre-existent Materials as erect a particular Church without Believers to constitute it of There must be living stones of which this Temple of God is built and fram'd The being Saints through the effectual Vocation and renewing of the Holy Ghost is the first ground presupposed by the Apostles in their adscription of the Name and Title of Church to any Nor are the Duties required of those that stand in a particular Church Relation possible to be performed but by such as are sincere Christians 2. Christians in the very
Virtue and upon the alone Motive of their being Believers may be obliged and that upon no meaner inducements than their Loyalty to Christ to renounce Communion not only with the particular Church with which they have walked but to suspend Fellowship with any particular Church that lyes within the circle and compass of their knowledg If any Church shall so degenerate as to forsake the common Faith it becomes the duty of every honest Christian to forsake that Church and renounce all external communion with her And yet I hope it will not be said that the Person so acting ceaseth to be united to Christ there being no greater evidence of his Union with the Lord Jesus than his disclayming fellowship with those who had revolted from the Faith of the Gospel 3. Christians may be injuriously cast out of the Communion not only of one but of every particular Church and yet remain united to Christ and consequently their union with a particular Church cannot be the Bond of their cohesion to Him Our Blessed Lord hath predicted it to be the Fate sometimes of Believers to be so entertained and hath accordingly advised his Disciples to expect it as their lot and to resent it as their honour to be cast out and separated for the Son of mans sake Luk. 6.22 The Term 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 rendred they shall separate you is of the same import with 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Joh. 16.2 Yea it may fall out that a person may be justly secluded for a time from communion with any particular Church and yet his union with Christ not be dissolved A scandalous sin in a Professor providing the party offending give not evidence of his sincere Repentance is foundation enough for the Church to proceed to such a censure yea the maintaining her own Dignity and Honour and the making Christianity appear to be a Doctrine of exact purity and that the Christian Religion as Celsus and Julian reproached it doth not allow impunity to Criminals obligeth her to it and yet it will be unsafe to pronounce of every person that is the Object of those censures that he ceaseth to be a Christian or that all his union with Christ is interrupted and dissolved 4. Our union with a particular Church being the Medium of our Union with Christ is an assertion so remote from all truth that on the contrary none are to be received under the Notion of Members into a particular Church but upon a presumption that Christ hath first received them Without previous grounds of judging men to be Believers we are not only destitute of all warranty to admit them but we are obliged by the Laws of the Gospel yea by principles of Reason considering the Nature of the Society not to do it A Church being a Spiritual Corporation wherein Priviledges are to be enjoyed upon Terms antecedently required and these Terms being at least the acknowledgment of Christs Authority through a belief of his Doctrines and a professed subjection to his Laws which is the Notion and Idea of a Political Union with him to suppose our Union with a particular Church to be the foundation and ground of the Relation of Oneness with Christ involveth no less than a Contradiction 5. 'T is a persons submitting himself to the Laws and Authority of Christ which is that wherein Mr. Sherlock himself stateth the Political Union of Christians with Christ to consist that swayeth and influenceth him to submit himself to Pastoâ—s and Teachers and to joyn with others in the Fellowship of the Gospel and by consequence our Union with a particular Church is so far from being the Bond of our Union with the Lord Jesus that on the contrary our Union with Him is the Motive inducement of our joyning into Fellowship with a particular Church which is that we mean by Union with it The account which the Apostle giveth us of the Churches of the Macedonians is that they first gave themselves to the Lord and then unto them by the Will of God 2 Cor. 8.5 It was by taking upon them the observance of Christs commands that they found themselves obliged to coalesce into Church-Societies 6. I shall only add in the last place for it is not number but strength of Arguments that men are prevail'd upon by that an Imagination of our being United to Christ by the Mediation of an Union with the Church seems to have been the foundation of the Papal Vicarious Political Head Nor is this my apprehension alone but 't is the sense also of Episcopius a Person whose Judgment Testimony Mr. Sherlock will not undervalue And to speak my inward thoughts 't is all he says to purpose upon this Theme though he undertake to treat it with some industry being in this as in most other particulars rather florid than nervous Besides a brisk air that displays it self in his manner of handling things there is little solid or beyond what is vulgar and common in him But to return into this supposition that Christ is not the immedidiate Political Head of his Church is the substitution of an Universal Vicarious Head resolved And to do the Papists right if Believers even in a Political sense be not immediately united to Christ 't is more congruous to Reason to establish one Vicarious Catholick Visible Head than five thousand And though upon the supposition that there is such a Head the Pope may fail in his claym to it yet I see not but that if the honour and priviledg of it be refused him some one or other must have the credit of it Thus admitting that were all the Union which intercedes between Christ and Believers meerly such a Political Relation as is between a Prince and his Subjects yet I hope I have proved that our Union with Christ is nevertheless immediate I am sure the King of England through his governing his Subjects by subordinate Officers delegated to Rule by his Authority doth not cease to be an Immediate Head to all his Subjects and to every Individual person amongst them There remains only before I advance to the second Conclusion some exceptions of our Author to be taken notice of And upon a survey of what he hath mustered in the behalf of his Hypothesis I cannot but ascribe to him a faculty of pressing any thing that comes in his way to fight for him Nor shall I here only rescue some Texts of Scripture and some received Doctrines from the rape which our Author hath committed upon them and from that involuntary service into which they are compelled but I shall endeavour to defeat his cause by them The 1st is drawn from the Metaphors which describe the Relation and Union between Christ and Christians which says he do primarily refer to the Christian Church and not to every Individual Christian. Thus Christ is called a Head but he is the Head of his Church which is his Body as the Husband is the head of the Wife Eph. 5.23 24.
their parts come to Multiply into many different species 2 Some purely Immaterial among whom whether there be any specifical difference is pro and con disputed 3 Man a Compositum of both having an Immaterial Intellectual Soul joyned to an Organical Body Now say they God having in his Soveraign pleasure thought Good to form Man such a Creature he hath not only by an Uncontroulable Law confined the Soul to an intimate presence with and constant residence in the Body while it remains a fit receptacle or till he give it a discharge but withall hath made them dependent upon one another in many of their operations And in this mutual dependence of the one upon the other with respect to many of their operations they state the Union betwixt the Soul and Body to consist For through the impressions that are made upon the Organs of Sense there result in the Soul certain perceptions and on the other hand through the Cogitations that arise in the Soul there ensue certain Emotions in the Animal Spirits And thus say they by the Action of each upon the other their passion from one another they are formally united But all this instead of loosing the knot serves only to tye it faster For 1 This mutual dependency as to operation of one upon the other cannot be apprehended but in posteriority of Nature to Union and consequently the Formal Reason of Union cannot consist in it 2 There are cases wherein neither the impressions of outward objects upon the Sensory Nerves beget or excite any perceptions in the Soul which whether it proceed from obstinacy of Mind or intense contemplation alike answers my drift and also cases wherein Cogitations of the Mind make not any sensible impressions upon the Body as in Ecstasies and yet the Union of the Soul and Body remains undissolved which argues that it imports more than either an intimous presence or a dependence between them in point of operation 3 'T is altogether unintelligible how either a Body can act upon a Spirit or a Spirit upon a Body I grant it may be demonstrated that they do so but the manner of doing it or indeed how it can be done is not intelligible That a Tremor begot in the Nerves by the Jogging of particles of Matter upon the sensory Organs should excite cogitations in the Soul or that the Soul by a meer thought should both beget a Motion in the Animal Spirits and determine through what meatus they are to steer their course is a Phaenomenon in the Theory of which we are perfectly non-plust How that which penetrates a Body without giving a Jog to or receiving a shove from it should either impress a Motion upon or receive an impression from it is unconceivable So that to state the Union of the Soul and Body in a reciprocal action upon and passion by and from one another is to fix it in that which surpasseth the Sagacity of our Faculties to conceive how it can be Now if Common Unions of whose reality and Existence we are so well assured be nevertheless with respect to their Nature not only so unknown but unconceivable we may lawfully presume if there lye nothing else against the Immediate Union of Believers with Christ save that it cannot be comprehended that this is no argument why we should immediately renounce the belief of it If we can but once justify that there is such an Union betwixt the blessed Jesus and sincere Christians the incomprehensibleness of the manner of it ought not to discourage our Faith If we can take up with the Evidence of Sense and Reason as to the reality of other Unions whose Modes are as little understood I see no cause why the Veracity of God providing we can produce the Authority of Divine Testimony should not satisfie us as to the reality of the Union though the manner How it is were a question we could not answer § 6. The import of Terms being fixed we are now to make a nearer approach to the matter it self And the first thing that the threed of Reason conducts us here to is this that be the Kind manner of our Union what it please yet it is the person of Christ which we are united to For suppose it to be Political and that the only Vinculum be our owning his Laws yet forasmuch as Christ only personally considered both doth enact them and exact Obedience to them and punish our Rebellion against them our Relation to Him as Subjects doth ultimately respect his Person All the reverence we pay his Laws under the Reduplication as His bears upon the Veneration we pay Himself However he come by his Soveraign Dominion over the Church 't is his Person that it is stated and vested in Whatever room either our Obedience on the one hand or the Gospel of Christ upon the other have in this Relation of Union the Extremes United they cannot be Whether it be by means of our Union only with the Christian Church or by what Copula soever else we are United to Him Yet 't is still to the person of Christ i. e. to Christ himself that we are United Or suppose it to be only a Moral Union an Union in Mind Love Design and Interest a being acted by the same Principles having the same temper and disposition of Spirit yet still 't is between the Person of Christ and the persons of Believers that this Union intercedes For as they through the guidance of sanctified Reason embrace cleave to and with the greatest complacency delight in him so He through their participating of his likeness and haveing his Image imprinted on them loveth and embraceth them In a word all Unions except Natural or Physical are the Relations of Persons to Persons 'T is the Husband and Wife themselves that are ligu'd together by the matrimonial Tie 'T is between the persons of Subjects and the Person of the Prince as clothed with Authority that the Political Nexus consists I cannot therefore but stand surprised to find Mr. Sherlock both endeavoring to disable such Texts of Scripture as are levied in proof of an Union between Believers and the Person of Christ whereof § 4. and impeaching his Brethren that they are not satisfied that Christ and Believers are united unless their Persons be united too For let the Union as to its Quality and manner be what it will suppose an Union by mutual Relations or Affections or common Interest yet it is the Person of Christ and the Persons of Believers that the Habitude and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 lies between Yea this our Author acknowledgeth though all he reap by it is to contradict himself For this is a very plain case says he If Christ and Believers are United their Persons must be united too for the Person of Christ is Christ Himself the Persons of Believers are the Believers themselves and I cannot understand how they can be united without their Persons that is without themselves Nor
brought into a Continuity and as the meat which we eat being concocted in the Stomach that Laboratory of Nature doth incorporate it self with the previous Corpuscular Particles which constitute our Organical Body without the coexistency of two or more of them in one and the same Individual place which is that we style penetration of Dimensions So I see not but that a Hypostatical Union of Christ with Believers might be easily defended if Penetration of Dimensions were all the inconvenience it were liable to Tertullian who thought God Corporeal as did also the Anthropomorphites and the Audiani little dream'd tha◠a Personal Union could not be maintain'd without Penetration of Dimensions forasmuch as he believed the Incarnation of the Son of God and the Hypostatical Union of the Humane Nature to the Eternal 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And though the Opinion of the Corporeity of God hath not only been condemned by the Ancient Church as an Heresie but rationally refuted and demonstrated to be both blasphemous absurd yet I do not remember that amongst all the Arguments levied against it that this of Penetration of Dimensions through the Personal Union of the Humane Nature with the Word is so much as mentioned Though some of the Primitive Fathers as well as the Heteticks styled Luciferiani held the soul to be Material yet they never imagined that through being united to the grosser Matter of which the Humane Body is fram'd that any penetration of Dimensions ensued nor is this Medium mustered against them by any that have accosted and baffled their opinion There are some odd Stories in Authors worthy of Credit which seem to import a Personal Union betwixt two created Intellectual Beings and yet I do suppose that no man unless it be Mr. Sherlock will thence infer a penetration of Dimensions One is in Buchanan's History of Scotland where he tells us of a Monster which from the middle downward having but one Body had from thence upward two and that what ever impression was made upon the lower parts excited a perception in both alike but that one only was affected by assaults made upon them where their Members and Organs were distinct Now this together with their frequent quarrelling with one another seems to argue that they had two distinct souls and different formal Principles of perception and operation and yet that they were personally United seeing both every impulse upon the leggs and thighs was perceived by each of them and also because the inferior parts were under the influence of the one Head as well as of the other An instance something parallel to this we have in Voetius de Creatione where he tells us of a young man whom thousands in Holland saw who besides a Head which he had in its due and natural place had another prominent and jetting out from his Belly and that these two Heads were inhabited and actuated by distinct souls as appeared by the contrary perturbations and opposite passions which sometimes even to their falling out with one another display'd themselves in them In fine though we both disclaim all Personal Union of Christ with Believers and abhor the ascribing any such thing to sinful Worms as Identity with the Holy One of God yet I do not see that the opposing it by a Medium drawn from Penetration of Dimensions is either solid or pungent § 10. They who instruct us in the arranging Discourses do not only advise that in our Ratiocinations the stronger Reasons ought to succeed and support the weaker and our Velites precede our Triarij but that those things which perplex our progress though they do not directly oppose it should be first removed before we address to that which is either more difficult to be established or more particularly contradicted and gain-said And accordingly having proceeded hitherto in the best Method and by the most Regular steps I could and discharged the Notion of Believers Union with Christ from all such things as have no room in the Formal Idea of it we are next to apply our selves to the consideration of these things which though they some way or other enter its conception yet they neither adequately declare it nor are the Immediate foundations of that Mystical Union betwixt Christ and Christians whose Quality and Complexion we are enquiring into And the first thing which here falls under our prospect is that though there be a Legal Union betwixt Christ and Believers yet a Legal Union alone will not sustain the weight of all the Scripture-expressions which declare the mystery of our coherence with our Blessed Redeemer A Legal Union I not only grant but assert only I say that the whole of a Believers Union with Christ is not comprehended in it Two things then I am to prove 1. That there is such an Union between the Lord Jesus Christ and the Elect of God as may be styled a Legal Union 2. That this is not all the Union which intercedes between Him and Believers 1. Christians may be said in a Law sense to be One with Jesus Christ. This I account my self obliged to justifie because Mr. Sherlock by endeavouring to invalidate the Media upon which it is built hath not only undermined but in effect denyed it Now it is not by any Act Convention Appointment or Designation of ours that Christ comes to be constituted our Delegate Agent Representative or Surrogate We had neither any power over the Son of God to substitute or interpose Him in our room nor over the everlasting Father to oblige Him to accept any satisfaction from him or to admit that His sufferings should be effectual to Redeem us Yea having lost Gods Image and forfeited his Favour we were so far from being thoughtfull how to recover either the one or the other that Despair in our selves and Enmity against God were the Natural Attendants of our Sin and Misery The Law Union between the Redeemer and us is the Emergency and result of a Federal Pact between the Father and the Son The Blessed Trinity having resolved to manifest the glory of Immense Wisdom and Infinite Mercy in the recovering Lapsed Man from Sin and Wrath the Father by an act of Soveraign choyce and unconceivable Love invites the Son to interpose between the Law and us and the Son by the like Love and Complacential Election condescends to do so Though the exuberant fulness of God supersede all thoughts of any real accession to Him in any of His perfections yet in this great transaction towards Man we must conceive Him not only acting in consistency with the Honour of his Attributes but to the declaration of the Glory of all his properties Man having shaken off his dependency upon God by transgressing the Law of Creation Gods Rectorship over him which is Regulated by his Wisedom Holiness Veracity and the Eternal Rectitude and Righteousness of his Nature would not allow that he should be received into Favour but in such a way and by such means
the cause ground motive with relation to which the things interceded for are procured Christs interposure as Mediator between God and Man took its rise from and bore upon a compact between the Father and Him that he should be Incarnate and give his Life a Ransom for many This the Holy Ghost doth most emphatically instruct us in 1 Tim. 2.6 Heb. 8.6.9.15 12.24 which are all the places where he is in express Terms so styled Now had not the susception of our sins preceded as the Antecedent impulsive cause of Christs sufferings he could neither be said to be made Sin for us nor to bear them nor to have them laid upon him nor to dye for our Offences nor to be our Ransom Nor could the inflicting of sufferings upon him have been either good in it self or an act of Rectoral Justice in God or have had any tendency to his glory or to the honour of his Law or to deterr Sinners from offending yea preclude once the consideration of sin as the meritorious cause of the Agonies which Christ underwent and the Love Wisedom Justice and Rectorship of God are obnoxious to reflexions and stand lyable to be impeached And if it be once obtain'd that our sins are the Meritorious impulsive cause of Christs Death his susception of our Guilt will necessarily follow For Guilt being nothing but an Obligation to punishment it being impossible to conceive such a habitude betwixt a person and sin that it should be the meritorious impulsive cause of his punishment and yet he not be under an obligation to punishment it plainly follows that guilt must be supposed antecedent to a demerit of punishment Guilt and punishment being Relates he that is obnoxious to the latter must be previously under the imputation of the former as Bishop Andrews expresseth it Christ was first made sin in respect of the Guilt and then a Curse in respect of the punishment Serm. of Justification on Jer. 23.6 Where Sin is so charged as to expose a person to a demerit of punishment there is an obligation to it where there is such an obligation to it there is in some sense or other Guilt Those very arguments whereby we overthrow the Popish Dogm of Believers being discharged from the Guilt of Sin but not the punishment do equally disprove Christs undergoing the punishment of Sin without susception of the Guilt In brief 1. Through a convention betwixt the Father and Son our sins are so charged upon and transfered to Christ as to be exacted of him and he hath submitted to the Demerit of them so as to undergoe the penalty in the substance and kind of it though not in the Adjuncts and Consequential accidents which would have accompanied it upon such weak finite depraved subjects as we are that we should have undergone 2. Through Christs interposing as Surety and Mediator by suffering in our stead God hath so vindicated his own Honour asserted the Authority of his Commands and satisfied the ends of Law and Government that he accepts of what Christ hath done and suffered as full satisfaction to his Law and in consideration thereof without any reflexion upon his Attributes or subversion of his Rectorship he makes a tender of pardon to us 3. God having admitted the interposure of Christ on our behalf having inflicted sufferings upon him as a punishment for our sins and having accepted those sufferings as a Sacrifice of Atonement for the expiation of our Guilt and having also agreed with his Son and declared in the Covenant of Grace the Terms on which we are made partakers of the benefits thereof we upon a performance of these conditions come to have all that Christ did and suffered as our Mediator imputed to us in a Law-sence That is the Law owns that Christ intervening in our room hath answered all its demands so that God in consistency with its exactions may be both just in himself and yet be our Justifier And this being all that we intend by a Legal Union with Christ namely that by the Covenant of Redemption Christ so becomes our Surrogate as to have our sins in a Law-sence imputed to Him and that we through fulfilling the Terms of the Covenant of Grace have all that which He as substituted in our place and stead did and suffered imputed in a Law-sense to us He must not only disclaim Christs being Mediator in any proper sense but renounce the whole Gospel that denys it Having not only declared but justified that there is a Legal Union between Christ and Believers and having also stated and defined what it is and wherein it consists all that remains incumbent upon me relating to this Head is to shew that the whole of a Christians Union with the Lord Jesus is not comprehended in this nor hereby expressed And 1st There are many Scripture Texts manifestative of an Oneness that the Saints have with Christ which a Legal Union doth not come up to the heighth and grandeur of As there is not any one thing in the Gospel which the Holy Ghost hath judged meet to express in greater variety of phrase than the mystery of our cohesion with Jesus Christ so this Legal Union can no ways sustain the weight of most of them 'T is not consistent with the Wisdom and Goodness of God to entertain us with pompous words or to treat us with Hyperbolical expressions when he is declaring to us the Mysteries of Faith to which he not only requires our assent but hath made much of our comfort and duty dependent upon them Who can think that a Legal Union is all that the Holy Ghost intends by our being one Spirit with the Lord and being ingraffed into Him as Branches are into a stock or root cemented to Him as the building is to the Foundation incorporated with him as our Aliment and Food is with our fleshly substance ligu'd and connected to him as the Bodily Members are to their Natural and Vital Head I know all these expressions are Metaphorical yet I also know that they must be declarative of something that is not only real but whose greatness it is not easy to conceive As the variety of Metaphors which the Spirit makes use of to decipher it by declare its importance so the quality of them serves to intimate that it is not meerly a Legal Union If there be no other Oneness between Christ and sincere Christians but that which we have been discoursing of there could not be a Symbole worse chosen to express it by there being no Analogy between what the phrases originally signifie and that which they are designed and brought to illustrate 2dly Those things being distinct and different whose ideas are so the formal Conception of our Legal Union with Christ being hugely different from the Notion which we have of our Spiritual Union with Him it plainly follows that our Mystical coherence to Him imports some thing besides a Legal Oneness Now that the Idea which we have
to Gods love of complacency is fram'd to overthrow Election Efficacious Grace the perseverance of Believers and to render the New Covenant no better than the Old and our standing in Christ as lubricous as our standing in Adam was And therefore I hope Mr. Sherlock will pardon me if I do not readily subscribe to him in this forasmuch as I know it repugnant to the Articles of the Church of England not to mention what else it is The unchangeableness of his Love of Benevolence which took its Motives from himself and can no more be inconstant than the Divine Nature is doth strongly infer the preserving those qualifications in us which are the immediate foundations of his love of complacency supposing that he hath once wrought them For the bestowing of those upon us in order to this that he might delight in us being the aim and design of his Eternal Love of Good Will it naturally follows that the Immutability of his kindness ensures his watching over and maintaining them when once he hath wrought them in and communicated them to us In brief Christs heart is wonderfully knit in love to the renewed and sanctified soul Thou hast ravished my heart my Sister my Spouse says he Cant. 4.9 The word there used occurrs no where else in the Scripture and signifies to have won engaged seized upon or rob'd one of his heart 'T is a term borrowed from a passionate Lover who is not Master of his own heart another having gotten the possession of it He that loved us at no less rate than dying for us when we were Enemies cannot but be affectionately linkt to us having once washen us in his Blood and renewed us to his likeness by his Grace On the other hand though the love of a gracious Soul to Christ can neither equal his in its degrees nor any way rival it in the freeness earlyness or instances of discovery yet it is so far reciprocal that upon conviction of Reason conduct of Judgment and the propension of the New Nature it cleaves to and embraceth him The sincere Christian not only reckons Christ an object chiefly worthy of his love but by exiliency egress and expansion of Soul after him he endeavours a Conjunction and Union with him From hence comes that liquefaction and languor of heart to enjoy him and to receive his impressions hence proceeds that consignment of our Wills to his from hence also there springs a concernment for his interest more than for our own All the reciprocal love and friendship of the World are but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Idols and Images of Love and Friendship being compared with what intercedes between Christ and Christians Now this Love-Union we not only own but plead for and do state our happiness in the perfection of it Nor is there any thing that recommends Heaven more to us than that our souls shall be there enflamed with and united by holy ardors to One so infinitely amiable in his own perfections and so unspeakably deserving our purest flames for his free and preventing as well as his exuberant and superlative love to us This Conjunction through a ligature and bond of love manifested in imitation and uniform obedience betwixt Christians the Lord Jesus Christ is often mentioned in the holy leaves But yet I cannot assent to those who state the whole of Believers Union to the person of the Mediator meerly in a reciprocalness of affections 1. Because one Christian should at this rate be as much One with another as he is with Christ which the Scripture will not allow us to submit our assent to as not being reconcileable to those grand lofty and emphatical expressions which the Holy Ghost peculiarly appropriates to declare the Unity which intervenes between Christ and Christians That there is an Union of Affections between one Christian and another I suppose will not be denyed nor is he indeed a Christian who hath not a witness of it in himself and who doth not in the several ways wherein it is displayable endeavour to give evidence of it to the world 'T is this Love Union amongst Christians which our Lord Jesus so solemnly prayed for Joh. 17.21 'T is this which he hath enjoyned his Disciples as his New Commandment and which he hath appointed to be the bond of perfection unto them Joh. 13.34 Col. 3.14 'T is this which is represented as an evidence both of our Love-Union with God 1 Joh. 4.12 and of our implantation into Christ by Regeneration 1 Joh. 3.14 'T is this that was the glory of the Primitive Saints Acts 4.32 and for which the very Heathen both admired them and payed them an Internal veneration In a word 't is this whereby all the Members of Christ being first copulated to Him as to a Vital living Head and being Harmonious in the belief of all the Essential Fundamental Doctrines of the Gospel come to be principally knit together among themselves And where this is not a politick confederacy and a wicked conspiration there may be but such an Union as ought to be amongst Christians there is not But how high noble and necessary soever this Union is which intervenes betwixt one Christian and another yet it is not equipollent to the Union which occurrs between Christ and Believers Nor do I hereby only mean that they differ gradually in some accident or other for so even the Moral Union betwixt Christ and Christians differs from the Moral Union of Christians among themselves the source and spring the Motives and Arguments the degrees dimensions acts and instances of Manifestation being not universally the same either in the love that Christ beareth to Believers or in the flames which they cherish and maintain towards him with those that obtain in the love of one Child of God to another but my meaning is that they differ specifically and in kind And in proof of this I desire no more but that Persons would without prepossession prejudice examine such Texts as Joh. 15.1 2 3 4 5. 1 Cor. 12.27 Rom. 8.1.9 10. Gal. 2.20 Joh. 6.5 6. not to mention more where the Union betwixt Christ and Believers is represented illustrated and if he can find any thing in the Love-Union of one Christian with another that beareth a proportion and Analogy with what is there declared concerning the Union of the Lord Jesus with Believers I am mistaken 2. Because the Holy Angels would be every way as much connected and ligu'd to Christ as Believers are were no more to be understood by this coherence but a conjunction by way of Affection or did this adequately express the Notion of it For besides the subjection that the Angels are in to Christ as their Lord and Governour 1 Pet. 3.22 and the attendance which in pursuance thereof they give at his Throne Isa. 6.1 2. together with that adoration and worship which they pay him Heb. 1.6 and their readiness to minister in whatsoever services he enjoyns them about his Church
1 Joh. 4.9 10. In a word it is Love which is eminently ascribed to the Father in the Oeconomy of the Blessed Trinity about the Work of Mans Salvation And this property of his Nature which he chose to display in the work of Redemption he hath acted to the uttermost whereas he did not so by his Power which he manifested in the Works of Creation it being within the compass of his Omnipotence and Exuberant Bounty to produce a World more glorious than this And though all this respects Gods Love of Compassion to the Elect yet we may hereby guess what his Love of Delight in Believers is on whom his Love of Goodness hath compassed its designs When his Love of Benevolence hath attained so much of its End as the renewing us in part to his Image and the recovering us back to our obedience He views over with delight the births that his compassion went with and beholds the effects of his good Will with unspeakable complacence That similitude which his Love in its first consideration designed anâ—â—ntended his Love in the second Notion of it embraceth and settles its delight upon And that Believers do embrace the Father with a Love equal and proportionate to that which they have for Jesus Christ I hope I need not spend time to prove Besides the Allective and attractive perfections which the illuminated Understanding discovers in both as they partake of the same Divine Nature and Essence it meets with enforcing Motives of Love in the Oeconomical actings of each as they are represented in the Scripture operating towards about our Redemption with different peculiarities in the manner of their acting How doth the Father's Love in being the Author and Fountain of our recovery in his contriving the means of it in giving his Son to be our Ransom and Propitiation in order to the effecting it and in pursuance of his accepting the Sacrifice of his Death as an Atonement for sin and a meritorious price of sanctification his being the Original disposer in way of Authority and Order of all that Grace by which we are rendred meet objects of Gods delight inflame the souls of renewed Ones with Love to him 4. This Love-Union as it terminates upon Christ from us or as it implies our Affections being set upon him is so far from being the formal Reason of our Mystical Union that it doth suppose us already cemented to him There can be no true Love to Christ without a previous conformity seeing all love includes a supposition of likeness Now to imagine either a resemblance between us and Christ without a New Nature previously form'd and wrought in us or to conceive that there are any principles communicated to us as the ground and matter of similitude and yet we remain unconnected to Christ are fancies that the Gospel obligeth us to account absurd To apprehend a Person renewed by Grace and not implanted into Christ is to bid defiance to the Gospel and to conceive a soul cleaving to Christ by a Love that is sincere without an Antecedent Principle of Grace adapting and connaturalizing it is not only to contradict the Scripture but to denounce War against Metaphysicks which tell us that every Effect presupposeth a cause proportion'd to it In brief As we are not naturally imbued with a Love to Christ so no man will by a prevalent Love embrace him till he be first connaturalized attempered brought into a suitable habitude of mind to him Every act supposeth a Power nor is there hopes of Fruit where there is not a Root that can communicate sap to the branches that are to bear it Though the soul be the Vital Principle of all actions and Affections yet it is Grace that gives holy actions and affections their constituent form The Union which we have with Christ by love saith the Reverend Bishop Reynolds presupposeth an Unity we have in him by Faith Faith is the immediate tye between Christ and a Christian but Love a secondary Union following upon and grounded on the former By Nature we are all Enemies to Christ and his Kingdom of the Jews mind we will not have this Man to raign over us therefore till by Faith we are throughly perswaded of Christs love to us we can never repay love to him again Herein is love saith the Apostle not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son 1 Joh. 4.10 Now between Gods Love and ours comes Faith to make us one with Christ. § 12. That there ought to be nothing in Religion which is incomprehensible or of which we are not able to form adequate Notions is a fancy espoused by the Socinians Hence it is that though they do not wholly renounce the Gospel yet by designing to accommodate the mysteries of it to the Level of Humane apprehensions they supplant the prime Articles of it That there are Doctrines in the Christian Religion which our Understandings cannot fathom seems to have been the chief thing that influenced Celsus Hierocles Porphyrius Lucian and other Heathen Philosophers of old in their opposition of it This their upbraiding the primitive Believers for receiving things 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with an Irrational Faith and their styling them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 persons of easie belief that had no reason for the things which they embraced abundantly declare And truly admitting the Principle which they proceeded upon namely that there ought not to be any thing in Religion but what our Intellects bear a proportion to they seem to me to have acted more rationally in refusing the Gospel altogether than those do who embrace it and yet 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Model the Oracles of God to their private fancies that so they may level the Mysteries of Christianity to our weak and shallow capacities That there are Mysterious Doctrines in the Gospel and particularly that our Union with Christ is of that Number the Holy Ghost who should best know the complexion of every truth in it hath plainly informed us We are Members of his Body of his Flesh and of his Bones This is a great Mystery says the Apostle Eph. 5.30.32 Mr. Sherlock who seems to judg all such things foolish and fanciful Notions which men cannot fully conceive comprehend is pleased to tell us that there is nothing more easie to be understood than our Union and Communion with Christ but how he can reconcile himself to Paul unless great Mysteries be of easie conception and comprehension I know not 'T is true he hath taken care to present us with such a Notion of Believers Union with Christ as may be understood on this side Heaven and without sending for Elias to unriddle it that I may use his own expression Now what that Notion is and whether it fully answer the account which the Scripture gives us in the Matter of Christians Union with the Lord Jesus is that which we are now addressing to the ventilation of And that neither he
be rendred more easie and familiar for our minds to contemplate and that our Faith concerning them may be promoted and assisted by their being represented to us under obvious and sensible Images We have also elsewhere intimated that where the Terms are Metaphorick yet the Truths intended and expressed by them are Real And as to that which we are now upon 't is highly remarkable that there being no one kind of Union in Nature which serveth fully to illustrate the Union betwixt Christ and Christians that therefore the Holy Ghost hath sought to enlighten it by Similitudes and Resemblances transferred and borrowed from all sorts of Unions For as Chrysostom well observes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Christ Unites us to himself by many paterns And it is worth taking notice of that having given us a List and Collection of some of them he shuts up the whole with this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 all these things declare an Union between Christ Believers such an one as will not admit the least thing to come between them Had our Oneness with Christ been only represented by the Relation between a Shepherd and Sheep the Conjunction between a Husband Wife or the habitude between a Prince and his Subjects there might have been some probability in Mr. Sherlocks Notion but being also represented by resemblances drawn from Natural and Artificial Union as the Insition of branches into their root the copulation of Members to their Vital Head the incorporation of concocted Food with our pre-existent Flesh the cohesion of a building by a strong cement to its Foundation and the confederation of the Vital Soul with the Organick Body There must be a sublimer kind of Union between Christ and Christians than meerly what a Political Relation doth import Christ is the Vine we are the Branches He is the Vital Head we the enlivened Members He is the Living Foundation Stone to whom we as lively Stones are cemented I may confidently say that there is not any Analogy between what is originally signified by these Metaphors and the thing aimed at and designed by them if only a Political Relation between Christ and Christians is to be understood The Gospel-Method and Form is the most obscure and improper way in the World of teaching the Truth of things if all these Tropical phrases imply no more but that Christians acknowledg Christ for their Legislator and obey him as their Soveraign Grand expressions and magnificent Terms in Subjects that require Low are an argument of no great discretion in a common Author And to imagine that in the Scripture petty things should be declared in Forms that are august lofty and Emphatical is to think diminutively of the divine Wisdom In a word if there be no more intended under all those Symbolick expressions which we have mentioned but that Believers own the Authority of Jesus Christ by believing his Doctrines and submitting to his Laws then we wonderfully expose the Gospel to contempt by telling the World that under a grandeur of words and Hyperbolical expressions things of a mean and low sense are to be apprehended and conceived I shall only urge this from two other Pattern Unions to which the Scripture in the shadowing forth and illustrating the Oneness between Christ and Christians signally alludes The first of these Symbolical Unions is that of the association and adhesion of the component particles corpuscles of Meal of which a Loaf is kneaded and compacted For as the Apostle says 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Seeing 't is one Loaf of which we partake we are therefore one Body viz. in Christ who participate of that one Loaf 1 Cor. 10.17 Picherellus well observes that Paul doth not say we are One Loaf or Bread though our Translation render it so but that he argues from the coalition of the clusters of the small corpuscles of Meal of which a Loaf is kneaded and contexed to the identity and Oneness that intervenes between Christ and Believers And accordingly Beza translates it As the Loaf of which we all eat is one so we partaking of that One Loaf although we be many are but One Body to Christ. Thus also Chrysostom paraphraseth it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. What is that Loaf It is the Body of Christ viz. Sacramentally what are those who partake of it They are the Body of Christ not many Bodies but One. For as the many grains of which a Loaf is form'd are so conven'd into one Mass that the distinction and diversity of one from another doth not appear 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the same manner are we conjoyned to Christ and one another in 1 Cor. Hom. 24. The cohesion of the many little parts of Flour of which one and the same Individual Loaf is kneaded and compacted being that which the Apostle declares and illustrates our conjunction with Christ by it plainly follows that our Conjunction to him must be of another kind than what a bare Political Relation doth import The second Pattern Union I shall at present argue from is the Oneness betwixt the Father and Son in the blessed Trinity At that day ye shall know saith Christ to his Disciples that I am in my Father and you in me and I in you Joh 1.14 20. I pray that they all be One as thou Father art in me and I in thee that they also may be One in us c. Joh. 17.21 I readily grant that 't is not an Oneness of Essence betwixt Christ and Christians an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Weigelians wildly and blasphemously imagine that is here to be understood Nor doth the particle 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 always signifie sameness but is often used to denote similitude and likeness as Matth. 9.48 Luk. 6.36 But yet upon the other hand I deny that 't is meerly an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or an Oneness of Will and affection between the Father and Son as the Arians and Socinians pretend that is here meant Nor indeed can there be an Oneness of Will and an universal Consent and Agreement in Design and Affections where there is not previously either a Specifick or a Numerical Oneness of Nature An attendance to other Texts such as Joh. 10.30 Joh. 14. 9 10. 1 Joh. 5.9 where the same phrases occurr will best resolve us what kind of Oneness between the Father and Son we are here to understand And certainly unless we will betray the Gospel and the Faith of Christians into the hands of their worst Enemies 't is an Essential Unity that is there meant Now though we plead not for the same kind of Oneness between Christ and Believers as is between the Father and Son yet we affirm that somthing more sublime than barely a Political Relation between Him and Them is adumbrated and shadowed forth to us 'T is not a sameness of Union between Christ and Christians with that betwixt the Father and Son which the Holy Ghost intends by
q. 5. and they will satisfie them This is all that I shall offer at present in opposition to Mr. Sherlocks Hypothesis nor should I have said so much but that it is here where we have his most Heroick adventures and where he seems all along to speak as strutting and standing on his tiptoes 'T is here that he flings down the Gantlet to all the World and treads the Stage with no less state and majesty than as if he intended to erect lasting Trophies to himself for having baffled the received Opinion of the whole Christian Church And 't is here that most particularly I have accepted his Challenge and bid him battel on his ground and at his own weapons and as to the issue of the Encounter I leave it to the Reader to pronounce betwixt him and me This I do affirm that as I have not declined him in any thing where he seem'd to argue like a Man and a Schollar so I must beg his pardon if in some things I have forborn him and given back forasmuch as I was not willing to be under the temptation of exposing him too much And upon this very inducement I thought once to have overlookt his Argument taken from the Nature of the Sacraments which he brings in proof that all the Union between Christ and Christians is meerly political but upon second thoughts I am resolved to say something to it least by being left in the way it should put some to a stand though it should put none to a retreat We have already encountered the same forces in another field and being defeated there there is the less likelyhood of their standing it long out here As we have disabled this Medium from serving our Author against the Immediate Union of Christ with Believers so we will now venture to see what strength is in it against the common Opinion of the Christian Church about the Nature quality of the Union that is between Him and them Now I take it for granted says he that there can be no better way to understand the Nature of our Union with Christ than to consider the Nature of those Sacraments which were designed as the Instruments and signs of our Union with Him and if we will take that account the Scripture gives of them all the Union they signifie is a publick and visible profession of our Faith in Christ and subjection to Him as our Lord and Saviour and a sincere conformity of our hearts and lives to the Nature and Life of Christ. Thus Baptism is a publick profession of the Christian Religion that we believe the Gospel of Christ own his Authority and submit to his Government And the Lords Supper is a Federal Rite which answers to the Feasts or Sacrifices under the Law whereby we renew our Covenant with the Lord and vow obedience and subjection to him c. For answer Baptism and the Lords Supper being Ordinances instituted by Christ in a Habitude to the whole tenour of the New Covenant as it mutually obligeth both on Gods part and outs accordingly they may be considered either as they respect us or as they respect God who hath instituted and ordained them As they respect us they are both Symbols of our Profession and solemn engagements upon us to Duty As they respect God who hath appointed them they are representations of the mercies of the Covenant and Ratifying seals of it But to speak a little particularly to each of them First to Baptism Baptism as it is the outward way and means of our Initiation into the Lord Jesus Christ and of our matriculation into the Catholick Visible Church so it is the great representation of the inward washing of Regeneration and of our being renewed by the Holy Ghost The effusion of the Spirit being often likened to the pouring forth of water See Isa. 44.3 4 5. Ezek. 36.25 26 27. Joh. 3.5 Joh. 7.38 Heb. 10.22 So in Baptism it is most excellently signified and represented The Spirit saith Dr. Patrick is very well signified by water for as that cleanseth purifieth from filth so the Spirit of God is the sanctifier of Gods people purging and cleansing their hearts from all impurities Now the Spirit being no otherwise the spring and principle of all our Sanctification but as he is the Bond and Vinculum of our mystical Union with Christ out of whose fulness we receive all the Grace which we are made partakers of therefore Baptism being a representation of the effusion of the Spirit it is also an adumbration of the Union which we plead for 2ly As to the Lords Supper As the Lords Supper is a visible Symbol and Badg of our abiding in Christ into whom by Baptism we were Initiated and an obligation to all the Duties of growth and progress in Christianity so it is really exhibitive of Christ to us and a representation of our Spiritual Union with Him As the Bread and Wine could not in any congruity of speech be called the Body and Blood of Christ if they were not exhibitive of them so our eating his Flesh and drinking his Blood in a Sacramental sense can signifie no less than our being spiritually incorporated with him The Cup of Blessing saith the Apostle which we bless is it not the Communion of the Body of Christ 1 Cor. 10.16 And as by one Spirit we are Baptized into one Body so we are all made to drink into one spirit 1 Cor. 12.13 Our very Author tells us not aware that thereby he overthrows his whole Hypothesis that the Lords Supper is a spiritual feeding on Christ an eating his Flesh and drinking his Blood which signifies the most intimate Union with him that we are Flesh of his Flesh and Bone of his Bone Eph. 5.30 The Apostle in the place that Mr. Sherlock refers to doth in way of illustration of the Union between Christ and Christians allude to the Oneness which was between Adam and Eve Now that was greater than the Oneness between any other Husband or Wife in the World for she was not only of the same specifick Nature with Him and knit to him in a Matrimonial tye by God himself but she was extracted and formed out of his very Body and so is the fitter Symbol of the Intimate Union that is between Christ and Believers And thus I hope I have not only wrested this weapon out of Mr. Sherlocks hand but struck through his cause with it § 13. It being acknowledged on all sides that there is an Union between Christ and sincere Christians and it being now declared and made manifest what it is not I might here wind up without proceeding any further or undertaking to assign the true and just Notion of it Nor is Religion exposed by our affirming some of its Mysteries to be incomprehensible Our Reason fails us when we attempt to give an account of our selves and the obvious phaenomena of Nature and therefore we may well allow it unable to