as for the People so also for himself to offer for Sins And no Man taketh this honour to himself but he that is called of God as was Aaron So also Christ glorified not himself to be made an High-Priest but he that said unto him Thou art my Son to day have I begotten thee Christ the Great and True High-Priest Reason Heb. 5.1 Christ therefore is the Great and True High-Priest in all Respects 1. Because he is Man in all things like unto Man Sin only excepted and therefore ordained and separated from other men and most holy that we might be made holy and therefore Compassionate of the Infirmities of Men as of their Ignorances and Errors not only in respect of Fact but of Law also because of weak capacities and slippery memories and weak performances having respect to their Wills which if earnest and honest to do what they can shall be accepted according to what abilities of knowledge and remembrance and doing they have and not according to what they have not As Man also he is compassed with Infirmity The Infirmity of the Legal High-Priest as of all men was Sin and therefore might and did fall into Ignorances and Errors frail Actions like other men But Christ's Infirmity is his Sufferings and not his Sin for he knew not sin He was subject to Afflictions and Trials as other men The Legal High-Priest therefore was fain to offer often for his own Infirmities in falling into Ignorance and Error and frail Actions often as also for the frequent failings of the People much more Lev. 16.6 c. So Christ in the daies of his Flesh Heb. 5.7 which is the subject of his Infirmity and Sufferings offered up for himself Prayers and Supplications unto him that was able to save him from death This Christ in his Agony chiefly requested to have that bitter Cup removed from him And when he was upon the Cross he lamentably complained saying My God my God why hast thou forsaken me He prayed therefore that because he must die he might be delivered from death and therefore in dying commended his Spirit to God to receive it into his hands and keep it for him and restore it to him who would not leave his Soul in Hell nor suffer his Holy One to see Corruption And these were strong Cries accompanied with many Tears in so great extremities Seeing then that Christ was exercised with the experience of unexpressible Pains he cannot but be moved at the Miseries and Pains of his Servants and must needs readily bow down his ear to hear their doleful Cries and stretch out his hand to save them before the Pit of ruine shut her mouth upon them Thus did Christ offer his Prayers for himself while he was on Earth Christ offered Self that he might save himself from death for when he was restored to life and had so overcome Death as to die no more He then being in heaven offered himself immaculate and immortal as he was not for himself as before when he bore our Sins and carried our Sorrows for he hath no need to offer for himself there Christ therefore offered up his Prayers on Earth for himself but he offered up himself in Heaven for us For himself he offered when he was mortal in the daies of his Flesh for us he offered when he was an immortal and eternal Spirit And in all his Prayers our great High-Priest is heard first for himself on Earth that he might be saved from the Death which he feared that is out of Death unto Eternal life and secondly for us in Heaven that we might be saved from the power of Death and brought to Eternal life as he was In the daies of his Flesh Christ was not yet perfect had not finished his work was not gone to his Father but when he had overcome Death and Ascended into Heaven and sat on the Throne of the Majesty on high he being made perfect through Sufferings became the Author and Minister of Eternal Salvation Then was he fully invested and installed into his Royal Priesthood there he presented himself to God for us in the Temple of God eternal in the Heavens 2. Because CHRIST is the Great and True High-Priest Reason 2 because he is called to that Office by God after the order of Melchisedec Heb. 5.10 Gen. 14.18 Psal 110.4 Who was King of Salem and Priest of the most High God The Lord hath sworn and will not repent thou art a Priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec That is a King and a Priest both for so were Kings of old as springing from the Princes of Families who were all Priests who afterwards being called to Rule many Families or a City were the Priests as well as the Princes of that City or Commonwealth Praying and Sacrificing for the People as well as Ruling them The most honourable Person was fittest to minister in the most honourable Service The CONTENTS A Priest A Singular Priest A Perpetual Priest Greater than Abraham Abraham paid Tithes to Melchisedec Melchisedec not of Aaron's Tribe Abraham blessed of Melchisedec Sacerdotal Blessing Levi paid Tithes to Melchisedec Actions of Fathers transmitted to Children Levi Blessed of Melchisedec Melchisedec Immortal TITLE V. Of the Dignity of Melchisedec MELCHISEDEC was a Priest of greatest Dignity 1. Because he Blessed men Sacerdotally as he did Abraham saying Gen. 14.11 Blessed be Abraham of the Most High God Possessour of Heaven and Earth A Priest 2. Because he received Tithes of Abraham i. e. A Tenth part of the Spoils Melchisedec was a Singular Priest A singular Priest 1. Because there were no more Priests of his Order no Predecessor nor Successor in the Priesthood as other Priests had who must be of the Family of Aaron and of the Tribe of Levi to whom the Priesthood was designed A perpetual Priest 2. Because he was a perpetual High-Priest having neither beginning nor end of life remaining a Priest as Christ doth so long as there is need of any Priest And there shall be no need of a Priest when the People of God have their sins throughly expiated and are translated to Heaven SECTION I. Melchisedec was greater than Abraham Greater than Abraham 1. Because Abraham gave him Tithes a Token of subjection as Tribute is from Subjects to Princes 2. Because Abraham was blessed by him a Token of subjection also for the Inferior praies a Blessing of the Superior not of the Equal or Inferior for he is not able to do it 3. Because he was in a manner an Eternal Person so was not Abraham SECTION II. The Dignity therefore of Melchisedec appears in that 1. Even Abraham so great a Patriarch as he was was his Subject and acknowledged himself so to be By paying him a Tenth which was no Vulgar Present Abraham paid Tithes to Melchisedec but a Present for a Priest a solemn and sacred Portion not to be enjoyed but by the Priest alone as God's
that he may suffer for it as if he were guilty Hence the Quasi-sinner is termed by the Apostle a Constituted or Made-Sinner Rom. 5.19 as By one Man's disobedience many were made sinners where in the Greek it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. were constituted ordained or appointed sinners And hereto other vulgar Translations agree for the Italian hath it constituted sinners and the French rendred Sinners i. e. put into the state or condition of sinners to be Quasi sinners For in respect of the Tense none of the Verbs in that verse are of the Preterperfect Tense but all Aorists and Indefinite And seeing the two first are not rendred Preterperfectly thus Sin hath entred and death hath passed but Indefinitely thus Sin entred and death passed Therefore accordingly the Translation had been more suitable if the last Verb also had been rendred Indefinitely thus For that or in whom all sinned And in respect of the sense the words In whom all sinned carry the same sense with those Through the offence of one many were made sinners That the difference between them in the concrete is not essential and necessary but accidental and contingent for they are not so opposite and contrary as that the word being taken in some one sense should therefore exclude all the rest but the senses of the word are only diverse i. e. so different that one sense may be without the other and yet so consistent that they may all concur in the same word For the word Sinner doth carry sometime only one of those senses sometime two and sometime all three and when the senses are plural sometime they are equal sometime some one of them is more eminent so that one and the same person may be a transgressor improbous and calamitous And this Sinner shall be justified by his Faith in Jesus Christ as shall next be declared But before I leave this business which comes not in Play every day and it may be will never present it self again I shall crave leave to set one Spell more to the matter in hand Here is sin and death pretended in the pot haeret lateri Lethalis Arundo Adam sinned and we sin and die Omnes eramus in illo uno cum ille unus nos omnes perdidit We were all in the loyns of that one Man when that one Man sinned and slew us all So we sinned and died before we were born and all is put upon our first Parents score and Adam is made guilty of the Sins and Deaths of the whole World Our Natural and original weakness of being liable to Sin and Death I call not into question for so it is undoubtedly But that it came upon us by our Will when we had none because we were not I cannot understand the Grandees of the Church those great Names have frighted us into such an opinion for many Centuries of years and we have made it a cloak to cover and excuse our transgressions by our fall in another Man So willing are we to take so much pains to make the way to happiness narrower and the way to death broader than it is and sin and death as irresistible as God himself Magna pars humanarum querelarum non injusta modò materia sed stulta est The complaints the world maketh are for the most part unjust and void of reason Omnes nostris vitiis favemus quod propriâ facimus voluntate ad naturae referimus necessitatem We are all tender and favourable to our own sins and what we have done by the pleasure of our own Will we lay them at the door of fate and necessity and put them upon God and Nature till we are speechless and our complaints end in curses and weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth SECT IX Lord what a noise hath this Original Sin thus stated made amongst the Sons of Adam O wretched Men that we are so we groan it out and there is a kind of Musick in the sound which we hear and we delight in it and carry it along in our mind and so become wretched indeed even those miserable sinners which will ever be so When this Lion roareth all the Beasts of the Forrest tremble we hear the noise of it and do not know whence it cometh nor whither it goeth we feel and fear it but none of us knoweth what it is When we are Infants we do not know that we are so no more than the Tree doth that it groweth we cannot discover what poyson we brought with us into the World but poyson'd we are and understand not how nor in what as it is the nature of some poyson to have no sensible operation for some years but breaks forth at last into swellings and putrified sores and not throughly purged to our lives end In the dawnings and breakings forth of our Reason we understand little more than the rod and smart it bringeth with it In our riper age our Blood runneth hot in our veins then do we act over that with some sense and feeling which our Nurse pratled unto us and servants read to us with a licentious tongue and wanton behaviour in our Nonage and express those Rudiments and principles at last as perfectly as those old Gray-headed Atheists that taught them And having acted wantonness revenge and love of this world to ease our selves cast them all upon Adam and in effect upon God This was the best Crown wherewith our Mother crown'd us in the day of our Conception She taught us from the beginning that we suckt it from her breasts as she and all her Fathers had done before her who were forced to sin by a violent hand that first thrust us into that deadly path Indeed the Old Man that old Sinner is glad to hear of another Old Man worser than himself although he never intend to crucify him nor well understandeth what he is no more than the vulgar do Anti-Christ or the Devil God bless us but that the one is a Beast that hath horns and hoofs and the other sawcer eyes and claws and a cloven foot Multitude of years though Age be talkative yet many times know no more of this so much famed sourse of dealy poyson than the youths that are but of yesterday even they who have been brought up in Nob in the City and University of Priests in the Vatican can tell no more what to make of it than the Breeder of Bullocks or he that holdeth the Plough The Anabaptists in the daies of our Fore-Fathers called it Somnium Augustini St. Austin's Dream Some make it a Sin some a punishment only some make it both some the want of original Righteousness some the habitual obliquity of the Will others have made it the Image of the Devil There be that conceive all the Faculties of the Soul and Body even the whole Essence of Man to be corrupted and a Mass of evil molded up into a Man There be that make it an Accident and
from the first evil that ever was seen under the Sun But then in our old age which is a complication and collection of all sins as well as diseases how should a dim eye discover it in the midst of so many evil habits wreathed platted one within another Covetousness wrought in with luxury and with luxury cruelty each thwarting and yet friendlily complying one with the other Can we now say That these sins were thus multiplied and raised to such a height by the power and continued force of that fatal legacy which our first Parents left us Nor was this the last Crime wherewith our Mother crown'd us in the day of our conception Can we labour and toil can we affect and study sin can we make it our business our ambition to walk in our evil waies and say that we were put in them from the beginning and forced forward by the violent hand that first put us in Indeed the Old Man the old Sinner is glad to hear of another Old Man though he never intendeth to crucifie him nor well understandeth what it is no more than the vulgar do Antichrist which in their phrase is a Beast and hath horns Multitude of years though Age be talkative yet many times knows no more of this Primitive and famed evil than they do who are but of yesterday Even they who have been brought up in Nob in the City and University of Priests have not all agreed of their discovery of this evil but have presented it in so many shapes that it will be hard to chuse and say This is the right this this it is I am sure that their opinions are more than the sins can be which original sin doth necessarily bring into act The Anabaptists in the daies of our Fore-Fathers called it Somnium Augustini Some make it a sin and some a punishment only some make it both Some have made it nothing but the want and deprivation of original Righteousness or an habitual aversion and obliquity of the Will Others have made it the image of the Devil There be that conceive the whole essence of Man to be corrupted there be that make it an Accident and there have been that have made it a substance And there have not been wanting those who have made it nothing All agree in this That there is something in us which we must strive to subdue and keep under Some call it our Natural inclination which may be the matter of vertue as well as of vice Others Original sin which to yield to is to die but to curb and restrain to fight against and conquer it is the great work and business of a Christian I speak not this to take away our original weakness but to take it away from being an excuse For In the second place our Natural weakness is so far from excusing our sin or making of it less voluntary that we are bound by our very Profession to crucifie this old Adam in us to mortifie our earthly members and lusts non exercere quod nati sumus not to be what indeed we are to be in the body but out of the body to tame the wantonness of the flesh For did we not for this give up our names unto Christ Were we not baptized in this Faith It is my Melancholy saith the Envious It is my Choler saith the Revenger It is my Blood saith the Wanton It is my Appetite saith the Glutton and so every man runneth on his own ways because the wind that driveth him cometh from no other treasury but himself no other corner but his corrupt heart Fructu peccatorum utuntur ipsa subducunt They are content to reap the fruit and pleasure of sin but withdraw the sin it self and remove it out of the way But this is not the right use of our Natural weakness which may be left in us but as all agree to humble not disarm us to shew we are men weak and impotent in our selves not to make us proud and rebellious against our God but to set us upon our guard and to make us bestir our selves and cast up all our forces and send our Prayers and Ambassadours to heaven for help and succour against this Inmate and domestick enemy The Envious should purge his melancholy Ro. 12.15 and rejoyce with them that rejoyce and weep with them that weep The Cholerick bridle his Anger and make it set before the Sun The Wanton quench that fire in his blood and make himself an Eunuch for the kingdom of heaven The Glutton 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 wage war with his Appetite and set a knife to his throat If this care were general if we understood Christianity aright and did strive and struggle with our selves the best contention in the World if we did do an act of justice upon our selves perform that Judicatory part of the Gospel labour to bind this old Man in chains and crucifie the flesh with the lusts and affections we should not complain or rather speak so contentedly of Adam's fall not bemoan our selves and yet be pleased well enough in it not take that doctrine in the left hand which is offered to us with the right or as he spake in the Historian Sinistrâ dextram amputare and by a sinister and unnecessary conceit of our own weakness rob and deprive our selves of that strength which might have defended us from sin and death which now is voluntary because we cannot derive it from any other fountain than our own wills For Last of all the blemishes of our Understanding and Will which we are said to receive by Adam's fall what they may be either by certain knowledge or conjecture yet we shall not die unless we will And if such we were all yet now we are washed now we are sanctified 1 Cor. 6.12 now we are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ And the Leper who is cleansed complaineth no more of his disease but returneth to give thanks The Blind man who is cured doth not run into the ditch and impute it to his former blindness but rejoyceth that he can now see the light and walk by the light he seeth And we cannot without foul ingratitude deny but what we lost in Adam we recovered again in Christ and that improved and exalted many degrees For not as the offence so is also the free gift Ro. 5.15 c. saith the Apostle For as by the offence of one many were made sinners that is were under the wrath of God and so considered as if they had themselves committed that sin So by the obedience of one many shall be made righteous made so not only by imputation that we would have and nothing else have sin removed and be sinners still but made so that is supplied with all helps and with all strength that is necessary and sufficient to forward and perfect those duties of piety which are required at the hands of a justified person For do we not magnifie the Gospel from