having before represented to the Colossians the reconciliation of things on earth and things in heaven by means of the peace which was made through the blood of CHRIST according to the good pleasure of the Father he now descendeth from general things to particular cases and to excite in the hearts of these faithful persons a more lively feeling of this grace of GOD he puts them by name in mind of the part they had in it forasmuch as the efficacy of this goodness of His had been displayed upon them and drawn them out from perdition and advanced them to highest happiness And you saith he who were somtime estranged from him and who were His enemies in your understanding in wicked works Yet now hath He reconciled in the body of His flesh by death to render you holy and without spot and unreproveable before Him In these words as you see to heighten the excellency of the benefit GOD had done them he first sets before their eyes the miserable estate they were naturally in before the Gospel was preached unto them You were saith he somtime estranged from GOD and His enemies in your understandings in wicked works Next he sets forth the favour GOD had shewed them in the sequel notwithstanding all their unworthiness And yet now saith he he hath reconciled you in the body of His flesh by death Finally to sway them unto the pursuance of an exquisit sanctification he represents unto them the purpose or end of their reconciliation with GOD. To render you holy saith he and without spot and unreproveable before Him These are the three points we will handle GOD willing in this action distinctly one after the other The first and natural estate of the Colossians before grace Their reconciliation with GOD made in the body of the flesh of CHRIST by His death And the end of this reconciliation to be holy and unreproveable before Him Certainly since the sin of Adam corrupted and infected our nature there are no men born into the world but their condition of it self is most wretched Yet their misery is no where so clearly discovered as in the Heathen who are born and live without the Covenant of GOD. For as to those whom He preventeth with His grace breeding them up in His Church from the beginning of their life His light and His goodness encompassing them from their nativity do hinder the discerning so fully in them the horrid corruption of our nature Whereas Heathens having no other guide but that nature in them its state and strength is to be manifestly seen The Colossians to whom St. Paul writeth were of this rank Gentiles by extraction by religion and in manners before JESUS CHRIST enlightned them Let us behold in them an image of the condition which we should be in if GOD had not separated us from the rest of men and timely drawn us out of our original misery The Apostle saith first that somtime that is before their conversion they were estranged alienated namely estranged from GOD from His covenant and from His people as he explaineth it more largely elsewhere Remember saith he to the Ephesians that at that time Eph. 2.12 ye were without CHRIST having no communion with the common-wealth of Israel being strangers from the covenants of promise having no hope and being without GOD in the world They had no communion with the true GOD were so far from adoring Him that they not so much as thought on Him and did deride the only nation in the world that knew Him and served Him This is clear by the Books of the ancient Heathens that have remained to our time as also by the ignorance and idolatry of the modern But the Apostle goes further yet and adds that at that time they were enemies of GOD which comprehends two things the one that they hated GOD and warred against Him the other that GOD accounted them and pursued them as His enemies For the first St. Paul speaks it expresly of the Heathen in the Epistle to the Romans where among other characters He giveth them He sets down this for one they are saith he full of envy murder debate Rom. 1.29 30. deceit malignity whisperers back-biters haters of GOD upon which a question ariseth how it is true that the heathen hated GOD For either they knew Him or they knew Him not If they knew Him not how did they hate Him since love and hatred are two passions which cannot be exercised but towards objects known it being no more possible to hate than it is to love what we know not And if they knew Him seeing He is the cheif good how is it possible they should hate Him since our will is not capable of hating good known To this I answer first that when the Scripture says the Heathen hated GOD it meaneth not that GOD was the proper and formal object of their hatred For it is certain that in this sense the Deity can neither be hated by them that are ignorant of it nor unloved by those that know it But the Holy GHOST thus speaketh for that these wretches do altogether as if they hated GOD It 's a manner of speaking familiar enough to say the cause for signifying the effect and the antecedent for expressing of the consequent Now these people in their blindness defaced the glory of GOD the most they could They battered down the most illustrious marks of His GOD-head They blasphemed His Providence They reviled His nature They robbed Him of the honour of creating and conserving the Universe and gave it to monsters They despised His Will and contraried all His orders They passionately loved what He most abhorred and abhorred what He is best pleased with Are not these ordinary and natural effects of hatred It 's therefore with much reason that the Scripture to set forth this impiety and fury of the Heathens saith that they hated GOD since they treated Him in the very same manner as if they had directly hated Him As when the Wise man saith somwhere Pov. 29.24 8.36 that the wicked hate their own soul or their own life it is not to signifie that their will hath properly in it any aversion for their own life on the contrary they but too much love it But to declare that they carry themselves just as if they expresly hated it affecting and practising with an extream vehemency the things that cause their ruine and neglecting and abhorring those that would lead them to salvation Secondly I say That though the Heathen have some knowledge of GOD yet because they phancy Him quite another then in effect He is they may be said in propriety of speech to hate Him For though it be not possible for us to hate good so far as it is good nevertheless it often happens that error representing things to us quite otherwise than they are in themselves we love what is indeed worthy of hatred and we hate what is in truth most worthy to be
and death of our LORD because He by dying sealed the truth of what He preached in His life this is evidently to mock the world His miracles also confirmed His doctrine and yet neither Scripture nor any wise man ever said that we have remission of sins by His miracles as St. Paul saith here and elsewhere often that we have it by His blood and by His death Besides if this reason must take place since the Martyrs suffered to seal the same doctrine it may be also said that we have redemption and remission of sins by their blood which is not read at all On the contrary the Apostle vehemently denies that either himself or any other was crucified for us but CHRIST alone These reasons do destroy another shift these people use to wit that we have salvation by the death of JESUS CHRIST because in dying He gave us example of patience and perfect obedience For by this account the Martyrs whose sufferings had in them the like patterns should have saved us as well as CHRIST We add that patience and obedience do constitute part of our sanctification whereas the Apostle saith we have in JESUS CHRIST by His blood the remission of sins and not simply sanctification What they say for a third evasion is no better that CHRIST hath acquired by His death the right of pardoning sins For either their meaning is that the LORD hath rendred sin remittable by the satisfaction He hath made for it or they simply intend that CHRIST obtained by His death the power of pardoning sins which He had not before If they answer the first they grant us the very thing that we demand If the second they do thwart the Gospel which testifies that our LORD often remitted sins unto men while He lived and said expresly that He had authority on earth to forgive them In fine that which despair of so bad a cause suggesteth to them in the last place is of no more validity namely that the remission of our sins is attributed to the death of CHRIST because it preceded His resurrection the glory whereof lighteth up faith and repentance in us the true causes of that remission But they cannot produce any one example of so strange a manner of speaking and to say that the blood of CHRIST washeth away our sins because the effusion thereof preceded His resurrection the cause of that faith by which we obtain the pardon of them this is as much or more absurd than if you should say that it 's by the darkness of the night we are enlightned by day because the light of the Sun which then shineth on us had the darkness of the night preceding it After this account the remission of our sins should be everywhere attributed to the resurrection of CHRIST JESUS to His ascension up to Heaven and to the miracles of His Apostles and not to His Death whereas quite contrary it is ever constantly referred to the death to the blood and to the Cross of the LORD as to its true cause and not ever to His resurrection For as to that which the Apostle somewhere saith viz. that CHRIST rose again for our justification his meaning is not that our sins obliged Him to rise as they had obliged Him to dye Rom. 4.25 according to what he had affirmed that He was delivered for our offences but that He might apply to men the fruit of His death in justifying them by the Vertue of His blood therefore was He raised from the grave and crowned with highest glory this being necessary for the production of those divine effects in the world Say we then that the LORD by pouring out His blood and His life on the Cross did truly satisfie the avenging Justice of the Father undergoing for us and in our room that death which we deserved and without this laid down there can be no rational asserting what the Apostle saith here and in divers other places to wit that we have remission of sins in JESUS CHRIST by His blood But from the same Apostolical assertion it is also very evident that none other but our LORD alone is capable of satisfying for us For since the remission of sins is our Redemption who seeth not but that if any one procure it for us he must be our Redeemer a title which by the unanimous consent of all Christians appertaineth singly to JESUS CHRIST Moreover it 's by the blood of our LORD that this remission hath been purchased so as neither Paul nor Cephas nor any other having been Crucified for us it likewise followeth that no one of them hath either satisfied GOD for us or merited the remission of sins â—eo Mag. Serm. 12. de Passion Though their death be precious in the sight of GOD said an Ancient long since yet there was none of them how innocent soever he might be whose suffering could be the propitiation of the world The just have received crowns not given them and from their constancy and stedfastness in the faith have grown up examples of patience not gifts of righteousness This glory is due to nothing but the blood of CHRIST And as He is the only victime that was offered up for our sins so is it sufficient to expiate them all Never man found favour but through this sacrifice Never did the sword of GOD spare any but for the sake of this blood St. Paul teacheth it us in this Text and it 's the last particular we have to observe upon it For when he saith We have redemption in JESVS CHRIST by His blood he intends not to speak singly of himself and the Colossians but of all the faithful that were on earth and even of those that had lived from the beginning of the world unto that time There neither was nor ever had been salvation in any other but in Him And as sin and death descended from Adam upon all men so the righteousness and life of all the faithful cometh from JESUS CHRIST Rev. 13.8 Heb. 9.15 He is the Lamb that was slain from the foundation of the world and His death intervened for a ransome of the transgressions that were under the Old Testament as well as of those that are committed under the New His blood is the remission of the sins both of the one and the other people It 's being to be shed in due time gave it the same efficacy for the generations that preceded His Cross as it had afterwards by its actual effusion in those that succeeded it GOD the Father appeased by this sacrifice ever present in His sight as well before as after its oblation did communicate the fruit and merit of it that is to say grace and remission to all those that believed in Him under the one and the other Testament Behold Beloved Brethren that which we had to say to you concerning the Redemption we have in JESUS CHRIST The Text of the Apostle teacheth it us and the table of the LORD representeth it to
us This is the mysterie of the bread we there break and of the cup we there bless in remembrance and for the communicating of that sacred body which was broken for us and of that divine blood which was shed for the remission of our sins Let us carefully improve a doctrine so necessary and which is so diligently inculcated on us in the word and in the Sacraments of our LORD referring it to our edification and comfort Learn we from it first the horrour of sin a spot so black as could not be washed out but by the blood of JESUS CHRIST That remission of it might be given us it was necessary the Father should deliver up His dear Son to dye and the Son give His blood the preciousest jewel of the universe a thousand times more worth than heaven and earth and all the glory of them From this meditation conceive a just hatred against Sin since it is so abominable in the eyes of this Soveraign LORD on whose communion alone depends all your bliss shun it and pluck it out of your Consciences and your hearts As for sins already committed seek the remission of them in the blood of CHRIST Give your selves no rest till you have found it till you have obtained grace till it be exemplified in your souls by the hand and seal of the Holy Ghost Lay by the pretended satisfactions and merits of men Have no recourse but to the righteousness of JESUS CHRIST which alone is able to cover our shame and render us acceptable to GOD. But having once obtained pardon for the time passed return not into it for the future When sin shall present it self to you repell it couragiously opposing to all its temptations this holy and healthsome consideration It 's my Master 's the murtherer of the LORD of glory It 's the accursed Serpent that separated man from GOD that put enmity between Heaven and earth that sowed misery and death in the world and obliged the Father to deliver up His Son to the sufferings of the Cross GOD forbid I should take into my bosome so cruel so deadly an enemy But from this same source we may also draw unspeakable consolation against the gnawing guilt of sin and the troubles of Conscience For since it 's by the blood of the Son of GOD that we have been redeemed what cause is there to doubt but that our remission is assured The superstitious hath reason to be in continual affright since man in whom he puts his confidence is but vanity The propitiatory I present you Faithful soul is not the blood of a man or of an Angel creatures finite and incapable of sustaining the eternal burnings of the wrath of the Almighty It is the blood of GOD's own Son who also is Himself GOD blessed for ever It 's a blood of infinite value and truly capable of counter-poising and bearing down the infinite demerit of your crimes Come then sinner whoever you be Come with assurance How foul soever your transgessions be this blood will cleanse them away How ardent soever the displeasure of GOD against you be this blood will quench it Only bedew your soul with it Make an aspersion of it on your hearts with a lively faith and you shall no more need to fear the word of the executioner of the avenges of GOD. But Faithful Brethren having thus assured your Conscience by the meditation of this divine blood of our LORD admire ye also His infinite love which He so clearly sheweth us and confirmeth to us This King of Glory hath so loved you that when your sins could not be pardoned without the effusion of His blood He would dye upon a Cross rather than see you perish in Hell He poured out His blood to keep in yours and did undergo the curse of GOD that you might partake in His blessings O great and incomprehensible love the singular miracle of Heaven which ravishest men and Angels What should we fear henceforth since this great GOD hath so loved us Who shall condemn us since He is our surety Who shall accuse us since He is our Advocate He hath given us His own blood What can He any longer refuse to bestow on us He hath laid down His soul for us how much more will He grant us all other things that may be necessary for our salvation But as this thought doth comfort us so ought it to sanctifie us Of what Hells shall not we be worthy if we love not a LORD who hath so passionately loved us If we obey not His commandments who hath blotted out our sins If for this precious blood which He hath given us we do not render to Him ours and consecrate to His glory a life which He hath redeemed by the offering up of His own in sacrifice for our salvation And after an example of so ravishing goodness how can we be ill affected to any man Christians GOD hath forgiven you a thousand and a thousand most-enormous sins how have you the heart to deny your neighbour the pardon of one slight offence He hath given you His blood you that were His enemy How can you refuse a small almes to him that is your Brother and that upon the account both of nature and grace Let the goodness of the LORD JESUS mollifie the hardness of your heart let the vertue of His blood melt your bowels into sweetness into charity and into love both toward Him and towards His members Discharge you this very day at His table of all the bitter passions of your flesh Put off there pride hatred and envy and clothe you there with His humility and His gentleness Do him new homage and give Him oath to be never any others but His alone presenting your selves with deepest respect before this Throne of His grace Remember both at this time and ever after that blood by which He hath obtained Redemption for you that is the remission of your sins This blood is the peace of Heaven and of earth This blood hath brought us out of Hell and opened Paradise unto us It hath delivered us from death and given us life This blood hath blotted out the sentence of our curse that stood registred in the Law of GOD it hath stopped the mouth of our accusers and pacified our Judge This blood hath effected a renovation of the world It hath quickned the dead and animated the dust and changed our mortal flesh into a celestial and divine nature Dear Brethren GOD forbid we should tread under foot a thing so holy or account such precious blood profane or common Let us reverence it and receive it into our hearts with an ardent devotion And may it display its admirable efficacy in them causing the royal image of GOD even holiness and righteousness to flourish there to the glory of the LORD and our own consolation and salvation Amen THE VII SERMON COL I. Ver. XV. Vers XV. Who is the image of the invisible GOD the first-born of every
is not yet enough for my consolation CHRIST I confess sufficiently assureth me of the pardon of my sins What assurance doth he give me against so many enemies the world the evil Angels flesh and blood in midst of whom my way doth lye But Christian doth not the same Cross which hath merited your pardon give you also clear and undoubted evidence of your safety during the whole course of your life For since you understand by it that GOD hath delivered up his only Son to death for you how can you fear that he will with-hold any of the cares of his Providence from you Yet this is not all CHRIST JESUS who sheweth us these excellent and sacred verities in his death as it were engraven in great Letters on his Cross holds up others before our eyes of no less importance in his Resurrection Believers neither the pardon of your sin nor the assistance of GOD during your life would be sufficient for you for as much as after all death will swallow you up as well as unbelievers See then further in your JESUS the truth that is necessary to compleat your consolation By committing his spirit at the point of death into the Father's hands he teacheth you that GOD will receive your soul when you depart out of the world And by rising again the third day after he assureth you that your bodies shall one day be rais'd out of the dust And ascending into Heaven he assureth you that you shall be transported thither both soul and body to live and reign there with him in eternal glory As for the way which you must take to arrive at this high happiness his whole life and his death have clearly mark'd it out to you and he still shews it you from that lofty Throne whereon he is set Tread in my steps saith he if you will be exalted to my glory Follow the example of my innocence and of my charity if you desire to have part in the Crown of my Kingdom I have born injuries with calmness and patience I have constantly obeyed my Father even unto my death on the Cross and you see the honour wherewith he hath crowned me Imitate my obedience and you shall receive my recompence This is the lesson which the LORD JESUS giveth us shewing us incomparably more clearly than either the frame or government of the World or the Mosaical dispensation ever did both the Justice of GOD that we may dread him and the Power and Wisdom of God that we may reverence him and his mercy that we may love and serve him with all the strength of our souls serve him I say not with the sacrifices of old Judaism nor with the feeble and childish devotions of Superstition but with a pure and holy heart with works worthy of him with an ardent zeal a sincere charity a constant integrity and honesty a profound patience and humility an immovable hope and confidence These are the Verities which do constitute true Wisdom all of them as you see high and sublime but in like degree useful and salutiferous Here is not question of the nature of Elements of Animals of Plants or of Meteors nor of the motions of the Sun or of the Moon or of the other Planets but of the Beeing and the Counsels and the Conduct of that Great and Most High God who made and formed all those things and in comparison of whom Heaven and Earth are but a Mite of dust Question is not of numbers and figures which can neither diminish your mseries nor make your souls happy but of your peace with GOD of your consolation in this life and of your glory and immortality in the next It 's this which JESUS CHRIST teacheth us that Divine crucified Person who dyed and rose again for us It s this he shews us represented in high and splendid colours through all the pieces of his Mystery However Nature and the Law might discover the brims and first lineaments of this Celestial Wisdom it 's he alone who hath exhibited to us the whole body and shewed us the entire frame and structure of it Conclude we then that it is verily in him that all the treasures of wisdom and knowledg are hidden as the Apostle saith Embrace we this Conclusion with firm belief and upon it bless we GOD first for that he hath vouchsafed to give his CHRIST unto Mankind and particularly for that he hath communicated him unto us mercifully presenting him to us both in his Word and in his Sacraments Next pray him to open our eyes more and more that we may discern these rich and precious treasures of wisdom and knowledg which he hath hid in him Let not the vileness of his Cross nor the veil of his Infirmity nor the simplicity of his Gospel and these Sacraments wherein he is offer'd to us offend us This very thing if we consider it as we ought makes up one principal part of the wonder and that we may rightly know and value this treasure let us cleanse our minds from the clay and mire of the earth let us purifie our understandings and rid them of the sentiments and opinions of the world which being fastned to its own dung doth prize nothing but the luster of its false honours and the vanity of its perishing riches and the delight of its unseemly pleasures Let us once set free our souls from these fordid and servile passions and acknowledg as is clear and visible and justified by experience that it 's an extream error and folly to seek one's happiness in such wretched things Lift we up our eyes unto Wisdom and desire the possession and embrace the study of it It is the jewel and ornament of our nature its whole dignity stands in it Without it man is little or nothing different from beasts nay in some sort in worse case than they as sinking beneath himself and falling into utmost misery But give we good heed lest we take a shadow for substance and a phantasm for true wisdom Be not deceived This wisdom is only in CHRIST JESUS All that pretended wisdom which hath the acclamations and applauses of people whether in the Courts or in the Schools of the world is but masked folly a disguised extravagance and a painted error which passeth by the principal and necessary part and amuseth its self about that which is of no profit nor any way provides for its own welfare which is the true end of wisdom Seek it therefore in JESUS CHRIST alone It is in him that you shall find the true substance of it And as those that have any treasure are wont to visit it often and have their hearts always in the place where it is so think you night and day upon this Divine Saviour in whom are hid the treasures of wisdom and knowledg Consider him pry into him and diligently sound him He is an Abyss of good things Have your hand ever there and draw thence by faith study and meditation all
all this fulness As little could any man be to seek who this JESUS was of whom the Apostle speaks All knew him at least confusedly and in gross and did conceive him a man born of Mary in Judea who having liv'd some years among the Jews had been at length crucified by the sentence of Pontius Pilate and who being risen from the grave to a new life had sent forth his Apostles to preach his Gospel and afterwards afcended up into Heaven And though all did not believe that he was risen again and glorisi'd yet all well knew that this was said of him so that both the one and the other hearing JESUS CHRIST named did presently conceive in their mind the Idea of this Person born and dying in Judea at such times and at such places with some retinue of Disciples during his life and after his death This then is the subject of which S. Paul speaks even JESUS CHRIST considered under this form of a man in which he manifested himself to the world and in which he was conceiv'd and figured in the minds of those that heard him named In this man whose appearance was like that of other men who was born and bred on earth sustained during his life with our common food subject to our infirmities who passed through the differences of our ages suffer'd our griefs felt our inconveniences and experimented the rigour of death yea the cruellest that was in this man I say whose body was nailed to a Cross and deprived of its soul and buried in a Sepulcher in this man under so mean and contemptible a form dwelleth faith the Apostle all the fulness of the Godhead It is ordinary in the Hebrew Language to signifie by the fulness of any thing that which the thing containeth as by the fulness of the earth Men and other living creatures Psal 24. which do fill it and by the fulness of the Sea the Isles which the Sea containeth After this manner of expression the qualities and perfections of any one nature may be call'd its fulness because they are the things that fill it and with them it is as it were furnished and adorned as the movables and ornaments of a room or an house are the fulness of it Therefore as if I should say that in Adam as he was at first created was found all the fulness of Manhood every one would easily perceive that my intention were to say the perfections of human nature the faculties and properties and beauties which it is full of and without which it cannot sustain the dignity of that name were all in Adam â—an immortal soul a vigorous understanding a free-will a body of excellent 〈◊〉 acute senses and in sum all the other faculties that have any place among the perfections of the nature of man So here when we hear the Apostle saying that the fulness of the Godhead is in JESUS CHRIST let us account that by this clause he meaneth those perfections and qualities which fill up the Divine nature in which this great and soveraign Beeing doth consist and which Theologues commonly call the Attributes of GOD. You know what the word Godhead doth signifie even the Nature and Essence of GOD. The fulness of the Godhead then is that rich and incomprehensible abundance of perfections whereof the supream and adorable Nature is full as His Life His Power His Wisdom his Justice His Goodness His Immensity His Eternity His Holiness and all the other Properties which it hath in an ineffable manner and which our understandings according to their mean capacity do conceive in it as the form of the Deity that is necessary for its having that Name a nature that wanteth it being incapable of being called GOD otherwise than falsly and improperly I grant some resemblances or rather some touches and lineaments of these Perfections of the Godhead do appear in the noblest of the Creatures as in the Angels for instance who are immortal and endowed with an admirable sanctity vertue and power But the fulness of them is not in any Creature at all neither can it be found that ever the Scripture spake in this manner of Angels and said that the fulness of the Godhead was in them Besides these blessed Spirits and other Creatures how excellent soever you can imagine them to be do participate of these divine perfections but in a very little measure Whereas the LORD JESUS hath them wholly And to make this evident to us the Apostle thought it not enough to say that the fulness of the Godhead is in Him but hath expresly declared that ALL this fulness dwelleth in Him that we might be assured there is not at all any Perfection or Excellency or Accomplishment in the Divine Nature but is found in Him Thus in these two or three words he hath comprised all that the Scripture teacheth us in divers places of the richness of the Perfections of our LORD and Saviour For instance it tells us That he is full of grace and truth that he is the Wisdom and the Power of the Father that he hath the words of life that he is the Way the Truth and the Life that in him are hid the treasures of wisdom and knowledg that he hath that might and strength which sustaineth all things now and which created them at first that he is the Everlasting Father and hath immortality and incorruption hath an infinite understanding whereby he soundeth the reins and discerneth all the thoughts of the hearts of men that he hath a super-eminent Glory to which all Creatures ought to do homage yea the Angels themselves who indeed adore Him the Empire and dominion over all the world the right and authority to judg all men and a multitude of such things as these Verily S. Paul hath comprised it all in one word saying here that all the fulness of the Godhead is in JESUS CHRIST it being evident that if he wanted any of these Names Rights and Attributes He could not have all the fulness of the Godhead which is ascribed here unto Him But let us now see in what manner he possesseth these things the Apostle expresseth it very briefly saying that all this fulness of the Godhead dwelleth in him bodily First the term dwelleth is illustrious signifying that all this copious abundance of perfections doth not reside in JESUS CHRIST for some time only appearing a little while and then withdrawing again so making some transient stay in Him a few moments and no more but that it abideth in Him constantly and for ever for so the word dwell in Scripture-use doth import The Word and the glory of GOD appeared in Moses and the Prophets when being moved by the power of his Spirit they uttered and acted Divine things but it dwelt not in them It only rested on them some hours space for the LORD 's recommending those Servants of His and for the setling their authority by these marks of his Providence and of his communicating with
he saith that the Gospel is preached to every creature Col. 1.23 that is under Heaven and at the tenth of the Epistle to the Romans where applying to the Ministers of the LORD JESUS what the Psalmist had sung of the Heavens Rom. 10.18 Their sound saith he is gone forth through all the earth and their words unto the ends of the World And elsewhere speaking of himself he saith That from Jerusalem Rom. 15.19 and round about it even to Illyricum he had made the Gospel of JESUS CHRIST to abound and after the time he wrote those words He sowed it besides in the Isle of Malta and at Rome Now if the other twelve Apostles and the seventy Disciples and the Evangelists did labour each according to his measure in proportion with St. Paul as it is not to be doubted but they did no one will have cause to be astonished that all they together should have by that time carryed the Gospel through the whole world We read likewise in the writings of the first Christians Justin Clement Tertullian and others that in their time that is about 130 and 160 years only after the LORD's death all was full of Christian Churches and that there was no Nation either among the Greeks or the Barbarians nay the very Scythians or Tartarians wherein CHRIST JESUS had not servants And though these testimonies cannot be rejected without extream impudence there being no probability that either St. Paul or those other Writers would have spoken of the thing in such sort if it had not been true yet entirely to disarm incredulity I will add that the very same appears by the Books of Pagans of that time that are remaining For Tacitus a Roman Historian a passionate enemy of Christianity Amel. l. 15. though otherwise a grave man and of great esteem among his Countrymen hath left in Writing that in the eleventh year of Nero that is only eight years after the date of this Epistle of St. Paul to the Colossians a severe search having been made after it there was found a very great multitude of Christians at Rome This sufficeth to justifie what the Apostle says For since that Preaching was able to penetrate so far on this side athwart Provinces that made as it were the heart of the Roman Empire it might be much more easily spread towards the East in the Estates of the Parthians and in the Indies even whither St. Thomas went as appears by tracks of it that remain of it to this day in those Countries and towards the South in Egypt and Ethiopia where St. Matthew Preached as the ancients do report and towards the North whither passed some of the other Disciples This was well nigh the whole world then known of the Greeks and Romans and thus without doubt the Apostle understands it in this place For as to those great Countreys discovered in the West about one hundred and fifty years ago which they commonly call the West Indies or the New world it is evident the Ancients had no certain knowledge of them and it is very likely that they were not yet peopled in the Apostle's time the furtherst memory which the Nations there have preserved of things yerst done among them being but for four or five hundred years at most Be it concluded therefore that taking the World as is commonly understood for Countries inhabited and known at that time the Gospel was then already come into all the world The Apostle mentions it to the Colossians First to confirm them the more in the saith they had given to the Gospel I confess that its truth depends not upon the success of the Preaching it nor upon the multitude of them that believe it Though all the world should reject it though Heaven and Earth should persecute it the faith of a Christian ought to abide alwayes firm and unshaken being founded as it is upon the word of GOD and not upon the consent of men as on the contrary though the whole universe should maintain errour we should not be for this either obliged to follow errour or excusable for having followed it this order of GOD subsisting for ever that we must not follow a multitude to do evil But thoug it be thus yet it is a great consolation to a faithful soul to see the truth spread abroad And since the Divine Vertue of the LORD is so much the more powerfully declared by how much the more men it converteth unto his Christ it is evident that this extension of the Gospel helpeth and confirmeth our Faith in as much as it furnisheth us with an excellent testimony of the power of GOD and of the efficacy of His word But I add also that the success here touched by the Apostle contains a manifest argument of the Divinity of the Gospel and that in two respects For first if you consider the thing in its self it is so great and marvelous as that it sheweth sufficiently that this Doctrine is not only true but even Divine and Celestial When St. Paul wrote this Letter it was not full thirty years that JESUS CHRIST had suffered death in Judea and yet the Gospel as he saith was already come into all the world How could it have made so much way in so little time penetrated so many obstacles flown into so many places infinitely distant if it had not been both of a Celestial Original and carryed by a divine force Certainly as the extension of the light of the Sun who inlightens the whole Hemisphere in an instant and the rapidness of its motion who visits all the Climats of the universe in four and twenty hours doth evidently shew us that it is a work of GOD and of a nature altogether different from that of Earthly and Elementary things In like manner this so swift and suddain course of the Evangelique Doctrine that fill'd the world in so little time pierced through and dissipated the darkness and made it self be seen so quickly from one end of the Heavens to the other invincibly proves that it is a divine thing and no humane production Look on all the disciplines that ever had sway in the World You shall not find any of them that was establisht in this sort and made such a progress in so small a time The religions of the Pagans lived only in the Countries where they were born and if sometimes they stretched further it was rather the curiosity of strangers that brought them from the place of their birth than their own design or vigour all those so famous sects of the Philosophy of the Greeks did abide each of them in the soil that bare them And the Doctrine which the Popes of Rome have established in their Communion came not to the estate wherein we see it but by a long succession of time one age gaining one point and another adding a second till after many ages it took in fine the consistence and form it hath at this day and wherein
the heart to offend still a LORD so charitable so admirable How is it that His so divine beneficence doth not transport our spirits doth not win to His service all the thoughts and affections and motions that we have Christians all the acknowledgement He demands of you for so much good done you is but that you live holy Refuse Him not so just and so reasonable a due He hath made you to partake of the inheritance of Saints Be not ye so ingrateful as to mix with the profane Be ye separate from them and have no communion with the impurity and ordure of their vices Despise not as Esau the title you have to so precious an inheritance Let it be dearer to you than all the perishing provisions and delights of the earth none of which is better than that pittiful pottage of Lentils for which the profane man did truck away His birth-right This inheritance is in light Live then as children of light Let your conversation be all radiant with those divine and heavenly vertues which the Gospel of your Saviour recommendeth unto you The darkness is now passed The Sun of righteousness is at his full height Let that infamous power of darkness under which you sometime groaned have no more authority over you Open all your understanding that you may perceive the glory of the LORD and suffer no more abuse by the illusions of errour Labour to encrease your light being still at the Scriptures of GOD the living spring of all spiritual illumination the inexhaustible treasure of saving knowledge But let this light shine also in your manners For it 's to no purpose to renounce the darkness of superstition if you remain in that of vice 1 Joh. 2.11 He that hateth his Brother saith St. John is in darkness and walketh in darkness and knoweth not whither he goeth for darkness hath blinded his eyes Remember you are no longer in the School of Satan the Prince of darkness You are in the Kingdom of the Son of GOD. Have thoughts and do actions worthy of so glorious a condition Let it purifie your life of all stench and sordidness Let it elevate your hearts above mortal things and set them in Heaven the residence of this Divine royalty But Dear Brethren as this Text doth oblige us to a singular studious pursuit of Sanctification so openeth it to us a living source of consolation and joy For if we knew our blessings and that wonderful grace which the Father hath shewed us what were there more happy than we We have part in the heritage of Saints The kingdom of the beloved Son of GOD hath been given us O great and magnificent portion Let the world boast of and adore its gold its honours and its delights as much as it listeth we have that better part which alone is sufficient to make us eternally happy though we should be deprived of all the rest Christian if the world bereave you of what you have in its fee and jurisdiction consider it cannot take from you the inheritance of Saints If it deny you its Leeks and Onions and Flesh-pots it shall not be able to debarr you from that divine light which shineth on you and which in spight of all its attempts shall conduct you to your bliss-ful Canaan If it take from you its honours if it drive you even out of its earth it shall not be able to wrest the Kingdom of the Son of GOD from you nor sequester that dignity and glory which you possess in it This is not a corruptible Kingdom it 's not like those of the earth that are subject to a thousand and a thousand disgraces miseries and mutations It 's an immortal Kingdom firmer than the Heavens so abundant in glory and in goodness that it changeth all those who have part in it into Kings and Priests Faithful Brethren content we our selves with so advantageous a portion Let us enjoy it for the present by a lively and an establisht hope sweetly bearing the incommodities of this small journey we take to get to it and patiently expect that blessed day on which our Heavenly Father having finished the work of His grace will raise us all up into His glory and put on our heads the crownes of life and immortality which he hath promised us in the eternal Communion of His well-beloved Son To whom with the Father and the Holy Spirit the true and only GOD blessed for ever be all honour and praise to Ages of Ages Amen THE VI. SERMON COL I. Ver. XIV Vers XIV In whom we have redemption by His blood to wit the remission of sins DEar Brethren As the true and thorough knowledge of that great Redeemer whose remembrance we are at this day to celebrate is the only foundation of the piety and salvation of men in like manner on the contrary ignorance of His person of His offices and of His benefits is the source of those errors and abuses which have corrupted religion and consequently of that unhappiness into which the unbelieving the profane the superstitious and the heretical do fall We may say to all these people Joh. 4.10 as our LORD sometime did to the woman of Samaria If you knew who He is that speaks to you in our Gospel you would ask of Him the refreshment and consolation of your souls and He would give you living water 1 Cor. 2.8 springing up to everlasting life And as St. Paul said of the ancient Jews that if they had known the wisdom of GOD they would never have crucified the LORD of glory So may we say to all the enemies of Godliness in general that if they knew JESUS the Wisdom and Word of the Father they would not wrong either His truth or those that make profession of it JESUS rightly and throughly known believed and apprehended is enough to expell errour doubt superstition vice and death from our hearts and to establish truth peace joy holiness and salvation in them Accordingly you see that Paul the master of the whole world the Minister of truth the teacher of life and happiness for the executing of this high commission and opening the eyes of His gentiles and bringing them from the power of Satan unto GOD protesteth he determined to know nothing among them but JESUS CHRIST Crucified He findeth in this rich and inexhaustible subject all that was necessary for him to convert Infidels to confirm believers to comfort the afflicted to reduce the strayed and recover such as had erred He finds in it wherewith to confute the Philosophy of the Pagans wherewith to abase the presumption of the Jews wherewith to instruct the ignorant and to convince the intelligent It 's with the sole science of this JESUS that He plucketh men off from idolatry and sets them free from the slavery of vice It 's with the same again that he reformeth the abuses and cureth the wounds which errour hath caused in the Church It is his weapon against enemies without
Creature DEar Brethren As the salvation of mankind the true end of the coming of our LORD JESUS CHRIST into the world did oblige Him to expiate sin and destroy the Dominion of Satan so the performing of these great works did require an infinite dignity and power in His person For as it was not possible He should give us eternal life without voiding our guilt and satisfying the justice of the Father and delivering us from the hold of Devils so it was alike impossible that He should perfect these effects without an infinite merit and a divine strength that is to say without being GOD none but a true GOD being capable of having an infinite either dignity or power As then the streams conduct us to their spring branches to their stock and root the house to the foundation that sustaineth it So the salvation which is of the LORD JESUS leadeth us to the acts by which He obtained it for us and from thence to the quality that was necessary in His person for the executing of those acts Salvation is the fruit of this tree of life The infinite merit of His cross is as the branch that bore this noble fruit and His almighty most holy and most divine person is the stock or root that did shoot forth this beautiful and blessed branch This order the Apostle observes here in the consideration of our LORD JESUS CHRIST He sets forth to us first His fruit that is our salvation or redemption the last end of His whole mediation Next He represents the means by which He acquired this salvation for us to wit the effusion of His blood for the remission of our sins from thence He now ascendeth to the Quality of His person which he magnificently describeth in the Text that you have heard saying that He is the image of the invisible GOD the first born of every creature forasmuch as by Him all things were created Wonder not Faithful Brethren that JESUS should give us life and eternity Us I say poor sinners that had deserved death and the curse of GOD. For He purchased remission of our sins by His blood and did by the sweet savour of His sacrifice perfectly appease the wrath of GOD which alone withstood our entring into His heavenly Kingdom Neither account it any more strange that this JESUS so infirm cloathed with frail flesh subject to all our sufferings should be able to offer so great and so precious a sacrifice to GOD. For how weak and despicable soever that form was under which He appeared here below He is nevertheless in reality the true Son of GOD His wisdom His word and His power the perfect pourtrait of His person His living and essential image the soveraign Lord and Creator of the Universe In this description of the dignity and excellency of the LORD JESUS the Apostle compares Him first with GOD the Father saying that He is the image of the invisible GOD. In the second place with the Creatures saying that He is the first-born of them and adds the reason of it in the two following Verses which is taken from His having made and established them all as their Creatour their preserver their last and highest end Afterwards He finally proposeth the relation He hath to the Church saying in the eighteenth verse that He is the Head thereof the beginning and the first-born from the dead having the first place in all things In these three points the soveraign dignity and excellency of the Saviour of the world is as you see comprised But because it would be difficult to explain them all three in one only action the richness and profoundness of the matter constraineth us to fix for this time on the two first and remit the remainder to another season We shall then have to handle in this exercise the two heads that are contained in the verse which we have read One that JESUS CHRIST is the image of the invisible GOD the other that He is the first-born of every creature The same LORD who shall be by His grace the subject of our discourse please to be the direction and light thereof too inspiring us with conceptions and expressions worthy of Him illuminating our understandings with the knowledge of His high and supereminent Majesty and enflâ—ming our hearts with a fervent love to Himself for the glory of His own great Name and our salvation As for the first Head the Apostle telleth us two things in it the one that JESVS CHRIST is the image of GOD the other that the GOD whose image JESVS CHRIST is is invisible For understanding aright how the LORD JESUS is the image of GOD we must observe at the entrance that the word image is of great extent signifying generally every thing that represents another so as things being very variously represented it comes to pass that there is great variety and difference of images Some are perfect which have in them an entire an exact and adequate resemblance of the subjects which they represent others are imperfect and express but some particular nay that too with some defect having not properly in them the same features and same essence which is in their original I place in this second rank all artificial images whether drawn by Painters or engraven or cut by Carvers or fashioned by Founders or woven by Embroiderers and workers of Tapistry which represent nothing but the colour the figure and the lineaments of men and animals and plants and such like subjects and to say true have nothing in them of their life and nature To this same order must be reduced that which Moses writeth that Adam was made after the image of GOD. It 's not to be thought he had such an essence as that of GOD is but this is said because the conditions of His nature had some resemblance of the properties of GOD namely in that He was endowed with intellect and will and had the dominion over animals and earthly creatures In the same manner must we take what St. Paul saith when comparing the two sexes of our nature 1 Cor. 11.7 he termeth the man the image and the glory of GOD whereas the woman is the glory of the man He calleth the man the image of God because of the advantage and superiority he hath over the woman having nothing above himself but GOD who is His head whereas man is the head of the woman because she was created of him and for him as the Apostle teacheth But beside these kind of images which represent their originals but imperfectly there are others that have a perfect resemblance of them Thus we call a Child the image of His Father a Prince the image of His Predecessour For a Son hath not meerly the shadow or the colour or the figure of his father he hath his nature his qualities and properties and if we may so say the whole fulness of his being a soul a body a life the same with those his Father hath A Prince
Divine nature was created which is that we utterly deny In fine for the words of St. Paul in this place some answer that by saying JESVS CHRIST is the first born of every creature he only signifieth that He was born before all creatures and perhaps it would be very difficult that I say not impossible to refute this exposition Yet there is another which I judge more fluent and indeed more suitable both to the scope and to the sequel of this Text It is to understand by the first born the owner the Lord and the Prince of every creature That which the Apostle addeth For by Him were created all things in Heaven and in earth perfectly accordeth with this sense it being clear that the creation of things is a true and solid title to that power and Lordship which GOD hath over them Why is the Son of GOD the Lord of every creature Because there is not any of them but He did create the same and it is good reason He should dispose of them and govern them at His pleasure since He gave them all the being or life that they have And that the word First-born may be taken to signifie Master and Lord is evident both by examples in Scripture and by the reason of the thing it self For the LORD promiseth in the Psalmes to make David the first-born of the Kings of the earth that is Psal 89.27 as every one seeth to make Him Master and the chief of Kings it being evident that to speak properly he was not their elder brother being neither brother unto other Kings nor more aged than they Isaiah saith also in His Prophecy Isa 14.30 the first-born of the poor to signifie the chiefest poor those that if I may so say do carry away the prize for poverty though otherwise they were born neither before others nor of the same family with them But the passage in Job is more remarkable than any other where mention is of the first-born of death He is meant Job 18.13 that hath the power and the administration of death the Angel and Prince of death and as the Epistle to the Hebrews speaks he that hath the dominion of death The reason of this manner of speaking is also throughly evident For the eldest-born by the law and custome of most Nations heretofore were and to this day are the principal of the family the heads and in a manner the LORD 's as well of their brethren as of the slaves and goods whence hath come this kind of language even the putting eldest or first-born to signifie the head the Lord and the Master We say therefore that it is in this sence we must understand the Apostles saying that CHRIST is the first-born of every creature to wit the Master and Lord of them Which no way inferreth that himself is a creature Lords not being always of the same extraction and lineage with their subjects but most frequently of another very different And as it would be ridiculous reasoning to conclude that he that hath the dominion of death is death it self under the colour that Job termeth him the first-born of death so is it most impertinent arguing to infer that the LORD is a creature because the Apostle saith here that he is the first-born of every creature We have a passage exactly parallel with this in the beginning of the Epistle to the Hebrews where the Apostle saith Heb. 1.2 that GOD hath established His Son heir of all things by whom also He made the worlds There you see first that he expresseth the Lordship which JESUS CHRIST hath over all the creatures by a figurative word stiling Him the Heir of them For that the word Heir was taken by the ancients to mean Lord and Master Instit l. 2. tit 19. S. ult the Civilians themselves have observed And secondly you see further that the Apostle after the same manner as in the Text doth found the dominion which JESUS CHRIST hath in the whole universe upon His being the Creator of it For it is this he meaneth when he saith that by Him GOD made the worlds Be it then concluded that this Primogeniture of the LORD JESUS over every creature is nothing else but that glorious and soveraign Empire which He hath over the whole world and every of its parts by the right of creation being the supream and absolute LORD thereof as He that brought all creatures out of nothing and gave them every degree of that being which they have Thus you see Dear Brethren that which we had to say to you for the exposition of this Text. Let us make our profit of it and extract the uses it containeth and the succour it may give us against sin and errour First it furnisheth us with what to answer those that blame us for having no images among us Tell them that JESUS CHRIST the only most perfect image of GOD sufficeth us This is an image we securely honour without fear of offending GOD because it is a true one and shews us to the life and in reality all the perfections of the Father whereas the others that are offered us are the work of mens hands inventions of their superstition and images not of GOD but of their own vain imaginations Their very being visible doth discover their falsity since that GOD is invisible For to represent an invisible nature by colours is to do much worse than if you should paint whiteness with a cole or light with darkness Your images O adversaries are dead and insensible destitute of the advantages which nature hath given to the least and lowest animals Ours is alive and intelligent the source of life and wisdom Yours are incapable of seeing or rewarding the service you do them Ours knoweth our hearts and hath an infinite goodness and power For JESUS the image of GOD that we adore is the first-born of every creature the Soveraign Master of the universe Let us boldly address our most religious services to Him And since it is in Him that GOD manifesteth Himself to us have we Him still before our eyes seeking the true knowledge of GOD in Him alone There we shall see Him as He is But let this seeing by no means be idle He doth not set before us this most full-wrought table of His perfections which he hath drawn to the life in His CHRIST that we should unprofitably feed our eyes therewith but that we should imitate Him each one according to our small ability should express in our souls some draughts of that perfect goodness and sanctity which shineth so gloriously in Him and become every of us by little and little a pure and lively image of our LORD Consider how He was obedient to the Father charitable to men helpful to the afflicted compassionate to sinners sweet and kind to enemies There is Christian the pattern of your life Follow these sacred examples Serve GOD like Him patiently bearing all that He layeth on you marching
if the Heavens and the Elements and the Winds and the Meteors and the Plants things deaf and dumb and inanimate do preach and celebrate the wonders of their LORD all of them obeying His voyce and faithfully serving His designs what will our ingratitude be if with these senses and this excellent reason He hath given us we alone of all His creatures should cross His counsels and dishonor His Name instead of glorifying it The glory He requireth of us is only that we walk in His Commandments that we abound in good and holy works that we depart from all evil and live in such manner as may oblige our neighbours to acknowledge that this JESUS whom we serve is truly a great GOD. Acquit we us then faithfully of these duties and assure our selves that if we advance His glory He will provide for our bliss and guard us from all that opposeth the same For since all things Celestial and Terrestrial visible and invisible were created and do still subsist by Him there is nothing in the whole world that should make us afraid All the Armies of Heaven of the Elements and of Nature are in our Masters pay and neither war nor work but for His interests and by His order These very Thrones these Principalities these Powers and these Dominions which He hath exalted above all His other creatures do not employ the mightiness and the glory of their nature but for Him and for those that fear Him They are ministring Spirits sent forth to serve for their sakes that shall receive the inheritance of Salvation They keep us in all our ways They defend us in life they assist us at death and convey us up into the bosom of our true Abraham Let us live in assurance under the protection of so good and so great a LORD that we may one day receive at His hand blissful Immortality the great and last Donative His Benignity conferreth To Him with the Father and the Holy Spirit the true GOD blessed over all things be for ever Honor Glory and Praise Amen THE IX SERMON COL I. Ver. XVIII Vers XVIII And it is He who is the head of the body of the Church and who is the beginning and the first-born from the dead to the end He might have the first place in all things IT is not without just cause Beloved Brethren that the Apostle St. Paul speaking of the union of JESUS CHRIST and His Church which was represented at the beginning of the world Eph. 5.32 by the marriage of Adam and Eve doth pronounce it aloud to be a great secret For in effect there is nothing in this mysterie which way soever you take it but is very great and worthy the admiration of men and Angels First if you weigh the thing it self is it not wonderful strange and unheard of in the world that the Creator should unite Himself with the creature The LORD of glory with worms The King of Heaven with dust and ashes The Saint of Saints with sinners Then again if you consider the foundation of this Union what can be conceived of a more ravishing nature than the birth and the death of the Son of GOD upon which this Divine alliaâ—â—e was contracted this mystical Spouse having had so vehement a passion for the Church that to make her His He made Himself a man like us and shed out all His blood upon a Cross If you contemplate the form and manner of this Union it is so strict and intimate that it perfectly mingleth together the parties whom it doth unite and makes them one only body one flesh and one Spirit joyning both their persons and their affairs and in such manner confounding their interests that JESUS CHRIST is wholly His Churches and the Church wholly Her CHRIST's The firmness of this Union is no less admirable being such as all the powers of the Earth of Hell or of Heaven are not able to dissolve it and whereas Nature hath bound nothing in the whole Universe but time doth lose it in the end the sacred clasps of this the Churches eternal Union with her LORD shall never be undone either in this world or in that which is to come by any of those innumerable ages that shall roul forth Finally if you respect the effects of it what can be mentioned of more glorious and saving import than the fruits this Union doth produce It filleth our understanding with light it purifies our affections it sanctifies our hearts it keepeth the peace of GOD in them it changeth slaves of Devils into Children of the most High it transformeth Earth into Heaven and instead of that death and curse which we deserved it giveth us eternity and glory For 't is from it alone that all those Divine graces do flow down which we enjoy in this world and all the advantages and felicities we hope for in the other It need be no wonder therefore that the Scripture doth make use of so many different resemblances to figure out to us so excellent and so rich a subject there being to be found no one so accomplished as might singly suffice to represent us all the marveils of it For this cause it borroweth to express this same one all the unions that nature or art or humane society doth afford us comparing it sometimes to the Union of a Vine with its branches or of an Olive with the graffs that are set into its slock sometimes to the knitting of a Foundation with the building which it beareth or of a corner stone with the two walls which it binds together sometimes to the conjunction of a Prince with His subjects or of an elder brother with the younger or of an husband with his wife But among all these sacred pictures of our union with the LORD there is hardly any more proper or more genuine than the two similitudes which the LORD my Brethren now sets before you the one in those words of His Apostle which we have read to you and the other on that sacred Table whither you are invited to the feast of His Lamb. The first is drawn from the natural union of the head with its members and the second from the union of bread and drink with the bodies which are nourished thereby By reason of the one CHRIST is our head and we His body By reason of the other He is called our bread our meat and our drink and we the creatures whom He feedeth and quickneth And though in other respects these two images be very different yet in this particular they agree that they excellently represent to us both our union with the LORD and the life which is thence derived to us it being clear that as well the head as the food doth each of them give life to the bodies with which they are united This hath induced me to believe that the meditation of this Text will be useful for the Sacrament of the LORD's Supper for which we prepare our selves since for the main
be restrained to this matter and we are precisely to understand that He is the beginning of this second work of GOD. JESUS CHRIST the eternal wisdom may say in respect of this second creation what it saith of the first that the Father possessed Him in the begining of His ways and that it is the same wisdom that projected prepared and executed all this great design of the renovation of the world First it is the Son of GOD who intervening at the beginning in the counsel of the Father took upon Him the expiating of Sin without which it was not possible to found this second Frame And though he actually did it not till the fulness of time yet His engaging His word for it being once accepted of the Father it had as much efficacy as if the thing it self had been then already executed and performed which makes the Apostle elsewhere say that JESVS CHRIST is the same both yesterday and to day and for ever He hath the same efficacy always as well before as after His manifestation Without this not a man could have been called into the state of Grace Therefore St. Paul saith in another place that GOD hath chosen us in JESUS CHRIST considering Him as the foundation of our election because out of Him there could not be salvation or happiness for any one of us He is therefore truly the beginning of this work since His merit is the foundation of the counsel GOD hath taken to make and form it as St. Peter also observes when speaking of the redemption wrought by the blood of the Lamb he saith expresly that He was fore-ordained before the foundation of the world But beside the merit of His Cross which was from all time present in the counsel of GOD He is further the beginning or the principle of the Church another way even by the operation and efficacy of His power having called unto GOD all the faithful that ever were It 's He that brought Abraham out of Chaldea It 's He that appeared to the Patriarchs and that led Israel in the desert and that inspired the Prophets Psal 110.1 Whence it comes that David calls Him his LORD He builded and kept up that whole ancient Church as well as the latter by the vertue of His word and Spirit But He is again the beginning of the Church in the quality of a pattern and an exemplary cause the faithful of all ages having all been as it were cast into His mould as the Apostle teacheth at the eighth Chapter of the Epistle to the Romans saying that all those whom GOD hath fore-known He hath predestinated to be conformed to the image of His Son And it 's to no purpose to object that this cannot be said of that time when He had not yet assumed that humane nature tempted on earth and crowned in Heaven unto which we are conformed For to this I answer first that though that nature were not really yet in being it is enough that its idea and image was in the mind of GOD for the assimilating and conforming His work thereto This sufficeth to shew that He is the beginning and principle of it But I adjoyn in the second place that this work the Church may be considered two wayes either in its beginnings while it is yet but forming or in its perfection as finished when it hath all the touches requisite to set it in the highest degree of excellency which it must abide in I confess the Church under the first consideration had its being before the Son of GOD was made man and raised up to Heaven But if you take it under the second it is evident that in this respect He is truly the beginning of this Divine work For no one was perfect before Him He is if I may so say the first piece fully ended that ever came out of the Fathers hand and His own No one of the rest is absolutely completed Their bodies are yet under the power of Death the last of our enemies CHRIST is the only one that hath altogether broken its bonds and raised up His body from the grave and clothed it with glorious immortality He is the first man of the new world that the universe ever saw and it 's in Him hath been shewed us the true form of that second nature which we hope for in the time to come but which none hath or shall have for the present save JESUS CHRIST alone It seems to be this properly that the Apostle here intendeth when he calleth Him the beginning or principle because he addeth the first-born from the dead which words as you see do evidently correspond with this sense St. John also giveth this quality to the LORD Rev. 1.5 Grace be unto you and peace saith he from JESVS CHRIST who is the faithful witness 1 Cor. 15.20 23. the first-born from the dead And St. Paul illustrates this expression elsewhere saying to the same purpose that JESVS CHRIST being raised from the dead was become the first-fruits of them that sleep And a little after In JESVS CHRIST saith he shall all be made alive But every man in his own order CHRIST the first-fruits afterwards they that are CHRIST's And otherwhere yet Act. 26.23 in the Acts he saith it was necessary that CHRIST should be the first that rose from the dead who might shew light to the people From all these places doth sufficiently appear what the Apostle signifieth when he saith that JESVS CHRIST is the beginning and the first-born from the dead to wit that He is the first of all mankind who was raised from the state of the dead and setled in glorious immortality that He is the first ear of this blessed harvest that was carryed up into the Sanctuary and offered in due season to the eternal Father untill the rest do become ripe This truth is throughly evident For of what other man but the Lord JESUS was it ever heard say that he arose from the dead and ascended into Heaven I know the Scripture telleth us of some dead that were raised before the resurrection of the LORD But this deprives Him not at all of the glory which the Apostle here giveth Him For that I may not alledge that those persons were raised from the grave not by their own force and vertue as JESUS CHRIST but by the touching or prayer of Eliah and Elishah and by GOD's command I say that the resurrection which St. Paul understandeth is the rising again unto glory and immortality It 's a being born again not to the former life which is terrene and fading but to the other which is celestial and incorruptible Who seeth not that in this sence there never was nor yet is any raised again except the LORD JESUS alone For the Son of the Shunamite Lazarus and the others of like quality at their coming forth of the grave did reassume that same natural and perishing life which they had laid down a life subject to
the same infirmities and to the same necessity of dying and indeed they dyed after they had lived again awhile Their death was rather deferred than abolished Their bodies did corrupt and in the end return to that dust from which they were preserved for some years But with JESUS CHRIST it is not so He in coming forth from the dead retook not the life He had quitted that is the life of the first Adam that infirm natural and earthly life a life still subject unto death He left it in the Sepulchre where it must remain as in eternal oblivion He put on a new life and nature such as is spiritual and celestial as the Apostle elsewhere termeth it a life wholly full of strength and glory that is not subject either to the use of meat or sleep not subject to dolour or death a life appropriate to the second world and not to the first a nature peculiar to the future age not to the present Accordingly you see that being vested therewith he remained not on the earth This is the old Adam's element the habitation of corruption and death But having only sojourned there fourty days so long as was needful to assure His Apostles of the truth of His resurrection and to shew them in His own person the first-fruits of the mystical Canaan He ascended up above the Heavens to the true element of the new man and the Sanctuary of eternity Conclude we then that He is truly the beginning and the first-born from the dead since He is the first of all the dead that was born and raised again in incorruption But these titles signifie yet another thing namely that it shall be He who shall raise again all the members of the Church in like glory that He is the master and the Lord of the dead for the investing them one day in their order with a nature resembling His own according to what St. Paul elsewhere saith that He will make our vile body Phil. 3. like unto His own glorious body For He would not be the first-born from the dead if He did not communicate the priviledge and the possession of this second birth to all His brethren that is to say all the faithful The Apostle adds to the end that He might have the first place in all things Those that are well versed in the reading of these divine Books do know that the word to the end that is often put in them for so as that or in such a sort as even to signifie the event and consequence of an action rather than the intention or design of the agent I account that it must be so taken in this place For the intention of our LORD in being made Head of the Church and the beginning of the new life was rather to Save us and glorifie His Father then to obtain unto Himself the first place in all things Yet true it is that such was the success of this His undertaking as He actually hath the first place in all things For there are but two sorts of things one of those that pertâ—â—â—â—o the first world and its creation the other of those that are of the second world and of the regeneration CHRIST therefore being already the Master and Creator of the former it is evident that having been also established Head of the Church which is the State that consists of the latter and the beginning and first-born of the resurrection of the dead He doth obtain by this means the first place in all things that is to say both in those of the first creation whereof He is the author and in those of the second whereof He is the Head This is the conclusion which the Apostle deduceth from his whole precedent discourse there he said that the LORD is the image of the invisible GOD the first-born of every creature the Creator of the Elements and the Angels and moreover the Head of the Church the principle and the first-fruits of the new Creation now he addeth so as He hath the first place in all things This being as seems to me from hence clear enough there is no necessity we should make any longer stay upon the exposition of this Text. It remains that to conclude we do briefly touch at the duties to which the doctrine of the Apostle doth oblige us and the comforts which it doth afford us JESUS CHRIST saith he is the head of the body of the Church These few words if we meditate them as we ought will teach us all that we owe both of obedience to the LORD and of charity to our brethren and of care and respect to our selves As for the LORD since He hath vouchsafed to become our Head it is evident we ought to honour Him with utmost devotion and submit all the actions of our life to His conduct See with what promptitude the body obeyeth the head and with how absolute a submission it follows all its movings The body neither stirreth nor resteth but as the head ordereth It depends entirely on its guidance and never crosseth its orders or resisteth its commands The head hath no sooner conceived a thing but the spirits forthwith present themselves at the place it desireth and each of the members employeth all the vigor and strength it hath to execute its will This is an image of that obedience which the LORD our mystical Head demands of us and this is that which the Apostle meaneth elsewhere Eph. 5.24 when he saith that the Church is subject to Him It 's in vain therefore that they boast themselves to be the Church who do contrary to what the LORD ordaineth who are subject to another beside Him and instead of His orders follow the will of a mortal man owning another head adoring another oracle keeping what He hath forbidden Blessed be His Name for that He hath granted us to disclaim their errour and to hang all our religion upon His sacred lips believing only that truth which He hath revealed to us in His Gospel and engraven in our hearts by His Spirit But what will it profit us to follow Him in our faith if we resist in our manners How can he avouch for His Church a body subject to Mammon to pleasure to ambition and other idols of the world a body wholly bended down to the earth whereas this divine Head is lift up above the Heavens Dear Brethren let us not deceive our selves We cannot be the Church of CHRIST except we be His body and we cannot be His body except we depend absolutely on Him except we cast out of our members the spirit of the Flesh and of the world and take in His to follow it's light and obey it's movings Henceforth then let us so compose our life that it do not contradict our profession Let the LORD JESUS be truly our Head let Him be still above us let Him preside in all our designs let Him conduct our steps and govern all our motions and inspire into us
we now behold upon it It s in this sence that the Apostle St. John gives the name of the Fulness of CHRIST to that total abundance of perfections and divine graces which dwelt in Him His wisdom His justice His sanctification and His redemption when he saith that of His fulness we all have received Joh. 1.16 And it is after the same manner that S. Paul hereafter by the fulness of the Godhead meaneth all the qualities or properties of the Divine Nature its Understanding its Wisdom its Omnipotency it 's Goodness and Infinite Justice saying That in JESVS CHRIST dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily Col. 2.9 It is therefore in this sense also as seems to me that we must take the word Fulness in this Text referring it to the things whereof the Apostle had even now spoken when he affirmed That JESVS CHRIST is the Image of the invisible GOD the First-born of every creature by whom all things were created and do subsist the Head of the Church the Beginning and the First-born from the dead holding the first place in all things For these qualities as you see are the perfections and excellencies partly of the Divine Nature and partly of the Humane the former namely His being the Image of GOD and the Master and Author of the Creatures pertaining to the Divine the latter to wit His being the Head of the Church and the First-born from the dead to the Humane so as when the Apostle after these things addeth now For it was the good pleasure of the Father that in Him should all fulness dwell it is as much as if He had said For it was the Fathers will that there should appear in His CHRIST a rich and a compleat abundance of all Divine and Humane perfections all the beauty dignity and excellency that replenisheth heaven and earth that adorneth the nature of GOD and of men And so the question which Interpreters debate whether this Fulness should be referred to the Divinity or to the Humanity of our LORD is cleared for this Exposition comprizeth them both the eternal Wisdom and Power of the one with all its attributes the Sanctity and Charity of the other with all the graces which have been given it without measure This is the All-fulness that dwelleth in JESUS CHRIST And the word Dwelleth hath here a great deal of Emphasis For in the stile of Scripture it signifies an abode not transient and for a time only but such as is firm constant and durable So that the Apostle saying That all fulness dwelleth in CHRIST doth thereby shew us that this rich abundance of all Divine and Humane perfections shall eternally be in Him not as the Divine Glory and Majestie erewhile was in the Tabernacle of Moses and in the Temple of Solomon where it lodg'd but for a space not as the irradiations of the Deity in the souls of the Prophets which they fill'd but for some hours finally not as the graces and perfections that do for some years only enrich the bodies and spirits of mortal men old age and a thousand other accidents and in the end death it self quickly despoiling them of the same which makes the sacred Writers say that the comliness of flesh and the fashion of this world passeth away and that it is like to flowers and herbs in whom beauty tarrieth but a few days time without delay plucking it from them and defacing all the lineaments of it Our CHRIST is an eternal Temple which the Glory of GOD filleth both continually and for ever It doth not meerly lodge there it dwelleth there as in its true and incorruptible Sanctuary Never shall the same be void of it This Fulness shall abide eternally in Him But the Apostle saith That it was the good pleasure of the Father that this fulness should dwell in Him By the good pleasure of the Father he meaneth according to the ordinary stile of Scripture the determination and order of the Eternal wisdom of GOD. For CHRIST did not violently snatch up this glory nor did He assume it to Him of Himself He receiv'd it by the will of the Father who gave Him and sent Him into the world pouring into Him all the treasures of His graces that we might draw from His fulness all the good we need for our happiness But further it must be remembred that the Apostle considereth the LORD JESUS here as CHRIST and Mediator and not simply as the Son of GOD he considereth Him in regard of His Office and not in respect to His first and original nature for if you look upon Him this second way it is clear that being GOD Eternal with the Father He receiv'd of Him His Divine Essence with all its fulness not by any Decree of His will or of His good pleasure but by a natural communication that is to say by an Eternal Ineffable and Incomprehensible generation The Creation of the world is a work of the good pleasure of GOD the Generation of the Son is a natural act of the Person of the Father The first was done in time the other is before all time The world which is the effect of Creation had a beginning of being the Son who is the fruit of the foresaid Generation is Eternal without beginning as well as without end of days But this Son who is GOD by nature is CHRIST by the will of the Father for the name CHRIST signifies an Office and not strictly an Essence or a Nature Originally this Office was not fastned to the Person of the Son He might have been the Son without being our Mediator and had subsisted so indeed if the sin of man had not intervened or if the Justice of GOD had left us in the misery whereinto sin had precipitated us But this good and gracious LORD having had compassion on us and resolved thereupon to bring us up from those deeps of death in which we lay did ordain a Mediator who might effect this great work and invested Him with all the qualities and perfections that were necessary for this end It 's therefore precisely under this respect that the Apostle considers JESUS CHRIST here when he saith It was the good pleasure of the Father that in Him should all fulness dwell He thereby meaneth it was the Fathers will that in this Sacred Person of the Mediator who was established and destinated for our salvation all perfection richness grace and excellency should meet together Divinity and Humanity filled with the infinite aboundance of all the qualities and properties that pertain to them concur Such being His good pleasure He chose His Son GOD co-eternal and co-essential with Himself who uniting all the riches of His Deity with the Humane nature He assumed constituteth one only person in the bosom of which dwelleth all this fulness that is necessary for the charge of Mediator Whence it appears how vain the cavil of Hereticks is who conclude from this passage that the Deity of the
elsewhere That GOD hath reconciled us to Himself by JESVS CHRIST But it seems that this is not precisely that Reconciliation which S. Paul meaneth here First because the things in heaven which he expresly puts among the parties reconciled have no part therein the Angels that dwell in the Heavens pure and holy as they are having never fallen into any alienation from GOD. Secondly because of that Reconciliation the Apostle will speak instantly in the words immediately following in which he saith Having made peace by the blood of His cross so as the former words must of necessity be referred to some other Reconciliation except we will render the language of this Divine Writer culpable of a vain and fruitless repetition The truth is they that understand these words of Reconciliation with GOD do find themselves much intangled in the matter and have recourse to divers means for clearing them of this difficulty Some affirm that though the Angels be holy and blessed yet they were not exempt from needing the death of JESUS CHRIST to merit and obtain their confirmation and perseverance in the estate they had a bold Doctrine and such as it is hard to find any foundation for in the Scripture For by this reckoning JESUS CHRIST should also be the Mediator of Angels a thing that seems to cross the end and the true nature of this Office First because a Mediator should partake of the nature of the parties whom he reconcileth as you see that JESUS CHRIST the Mediator between GOD and men is GOD and man whereas He took not the nature of Angels Secondly because every Mediator interveneth between parties that are at difference whereas the Angels are and ever were at perfect accord with GOD holily obeying His will Lastly because the blood of JESUS CHRIST was shed only to wash away sin and the Scripture every where represents the people of GOD's Covenant His redeemed ones and those whom He hath saved as justified and cleansed from their filth for which there was no place in the nature of Angels they being pure and clean from all sin For as to that of Job That GOD putteth no trust in His servants Job 4.18 and doth set light by his Angels it is evident and acknowledged by all Christians that this is not said to accuse those blessed Spirits or to suggest that if they were tried by the ordinary and legal justice of GOD they would be found guilty and have need of pardon but rather to signifie either that the Authority of GOD over His creatures is so great and so absolute as He oweth nothing to the Angels themselves how exquisite soever their Sanctity be the light of glory wherewith He crowns them being a gift from His own bounty and not the due reward of their merit or else that the infinite purity of this Supreme Majestie is so splendid and so glorious that the light of the most holy Spirits fadeth before Him and is found dusky and defective in comparison of Him as the shining of our lights and of the Stars themselves doth disappear at the brightness of the Sun Others therefore not able to savour and for just cause I think this Doctrine that the Angels were reconciled to GOD by JESUS CHRIST to exclude them from this passage do restrain the Apostle's words to men only understanding by the things that are in Heaven the already hallowed spirits of the faithful which death had taken out of this world and by the things that are on earth the faithful that yet live here beneath in flesh But not to dissemble this Exposition seemeth both forced and frigid Forced because the Scripture by things in heaven ordinarily meaneth the Angels whose element and natural habitation as you know the heavens are whereas souls separated from their bodies are receiv'd in and lodged there by a Supernatural grace and dispensation Frigid because the sense it attributeth to the Apostle no way answers the sublimity and dignity of his words For if his aim were to express nothing but that the faithful are reconciled to GOD what need was there to divide them into two ranks some that are on the earth others that are in the heavens Who doubts but He reconciled these as well as those But without question he purposed to magnifie this work of GOD by JESUS CHRIST and to this end saith that it extendeth not to men alone that are reconciled to the Father by the efficacy of the cross of the LORD but that it hath effect in heaven it self re-uniting and reconciling the things that are there What shall we say then to these difficulties and in what sense shall we take the Apostle's words That GOD hath reconciled all things in Himself both those that are on earth and those that are in heaven Dear Brethren we will leave them in their genuine and ordinary sense and say that these expressions do signifie the recomposing and re-uniting of the creatures both Terrestrial and Celestial not with GOD but among themselves with each other For as in a State the Subjects have a twofold union one with their Prince on whom thy all depend another among themselves being as members of the same Political Body joyned together by the bond of mutual concord amity and correspondence In like manner is it with things Celestial and Terrestrial the two principal parties of this great State of GOD's which we cal the Universe Besides the union they have with GOD as their Soveraign Monarch from whose bounty they receive the being and the life they enjoy they have another alliance and conjunction one with the other as parts of one Corporation having been formed and qualified for mutual commerce It 's in this relation and in this union that the beauty and perfection of the Universe doth consist when Heaven and earth have amicable entercourse and conspire to one and the same end with an holy and a reciprocal affection Sin having broken the first union and separated man from his Creator by the same means dissolved the second loosning us from the creatures For as again in a state when one part of the Subjects riseth against the Sovereign the rest that remain in their duty presently break with the Rebels and instead of the commerce they held before with them do make cruel and implacable war upon them while they continue in their disobedience Such hath the event proved in the world Man had no sooner rebell'd against GOD but heaven and all that remained in His obedience brake with man Whole Nature took up arms against this Rebel and would have even then utterly ruin'd him if the Counsel of GOD who would not destroy us had not hindred it And as from one disorder there never fail to spring up divers others this first rupture of man with GOD and the good Creatures brought forth divers others indeed rending mankind it self into several pieces the one divided from the other by diversity of Religions and the aversions and animosities that attend it
Saints of GOD who do truly know His mysteries the revelation which is necessary for the knowing of them most assuredly purifying and sanctifying the heart of man But I perceive some difficulties arise here in your minds against this doctrine of the Apostle which must be resolved for your satisfaction before we pass further on First You may ask me in general how it is true that this mysterie was hid from the foregoing ages seeing the Gospel is eternal And then how this accordeth with so many Prophecies of the Old Testament in which it seems to be so clearly represented and moreover how with the LORD 's saying of Abraham that he saw His day and lastly with the Scriptures express informing us that the ancient believers were all saved by faith which seems to have no place without the knowledge of the Gospel To this I answer for the first article that it is true the Gospel was foretold and as the Apostle speaks elsewhere was promised and figured under the Old Testament but it was not manifested It was at that time in being but lay hid in the bosome of the Father and only wrap'd up in the Oracles by which He promised it and in the types by which He figured it so as it is nevertheless eternal forasmuch as in these latter times it was not made and created of nothing but only brought out of the obscurities and enveloppings which untill then it had remained covered with And as for the Prophecies it 's true they are clear since the Sun of righteousness arising in the horizon of the Church hath there shed abroad His light by the benefit thereof we easily read what the finger of GOD hath written in them But before this while the darkness of the night did cover all things it was impossible for the best sight to penetrate throughly the true meaning of them As when it is broad day we read distinctly and without difficulty the same writing wherein we see nothing but some strokes and a few letters confusedly during the dimness of the night Would you know what difference there is between these two seasons Turn to that Chapter of Isaiah Isa 53.7 in which we read He was led as a sheep to the slaughter and what follows There is not a child among us but presently understandeth it of CHRIST and His dying for us Act. 8.34 in a profound humbleness and charity Yet the Ethiopian who without doubt was very forward in the Schoole of the former people doth confess that he understandeth nothing of it and cannot tell whether the Prophet does say this of himself or of some other First the accomplishment of the things which is the commentary upon prophecies and the light of figures hath made the ancient oracles and types clear to us which by consequent remained obscure and inexplicable untill that event Secondly the Law did further augment this obscurity being then spread over these mysteries as a thick veil through which how sharp-sighted soever men were it was not possible for them to pierce Whereas now the righteousness of GOD having been revealed to us without the Law as the Apostle saith and this troublesome Veil having been rent and removed by JESUS CHRIST we clearly behold the light of Moses's face which indeed was of old but could not be seen as long as it abode covered with the Veil of the Law And as for Abraham he saw the day of the LORD and rejoyced in it that is to say he knew and believed that CHRIST should come and save the world and exalt the people of GOD unto a super-eminent glory which was sufficient for his joy but this implyeth not that he distinctly knew either what the person of CHRIST would be or in what manner He acquired salvation for us with all the circumstances of these things which neither any men or so much as Angels knew but by the manifestation of JESUS CHRIST in flesh Eph. 3.10 and by the consequents thereof the Apostle expresly testifying that it was then and not before that the manifold wisdom of GOD was made know to the Angels whom according to his ordinary stile he calleth principalities and powers The knowledge which the rest of the faithful had of CHRIST was like that which Abraham had They believed in sum His coming and their redemption and the restauration of all things by His means and they desired Him and waited affectionately for Him saluting His promises afar off But they did not distinctly comprehend the mysterie and in particular as we at this day do Yet this hindred not but that they were justified by the merit of His death and saved by His cross and fed with his Manna and made to drink of His source it being clear that there is no other salvation in the world but the same which He did procure nor do the divers degrees of faith by which the redeemed draw from His fulness vary ought at all in the essence and substance of His grace because GOD requireth no other faith of His people but such as is proportioned to the measure of the revelation He hath given them the same being more or less clear as the times were nearer to or further distant from the glorious light of His Son Thus the truth which the Apostle teacheth us here abideth firm and beyond all contradiction namely that the mysterie of GOD that is to say the Gospel was hid from ages and from all generations and was not manifested but now to the Saints of GOD. To whom saith he GOD would give to know what are the riches of the glory of this secret among the Gentiles which is CHRIST in you the hope of glory This is the third part of this Text and doth express the glory and the sum of this mysterie He sets the will of GOD at the entrance as a strong barr against our curiosity to stay it and restrain it from intruding into a search of the causes of this admirable dispensation of the mysterie of the Gospel It busieth its self principally about two points namely the time and the persons to whom this manifestation hath been made For as to the first it doth demand why GOD should suffer so many ages to flow forth and so many generations pass away without discovering the secret of the Gospel to them having reserved the revelation of it to these latter ages only Let us say with the Apostle that the truth is He would so do and be we contented with His will assuring our selves that it is just and reasonable though we know not the motives of it He hath reserved the seasons of things in His own dispose Besides at what time soever He had done it man would still have demanded why no sooner or no later Now he complains that GOD delayed so long If GOD had discovered His mysterie at the beginning he would complain of His having made so much haste He now objecteth the interest of the first ages that were deprived of
His peace His Spirit His Holiness His consolation His life and His immortality But the Apostle doth not speak here of the riches of the glory of the Gospel in general and towards all He addeth particularly among the Gentiles Sure there is no sort of men whether Jews or Greeks but the Gospel sheweth forth riches of glory in them if they receive it Yet we must acknowledge that never-did its glory break forth with so much splendor as when it was preached to the Gentiles First that exceeding great and inexhaustible abundance of goodness and grace which the Gospel goeth fill'd up with did pour forth it self and if I may so speak overflowed all bounds in saving the Gentiles the most hopeless of all men when it raised them from this grave or rather from that abyss of misery wherein they had lain not four dayes as Lazarus in his Sepulchre but for four thousand years For this cause the holy Apostle comparing the grace of GOD in His Son 〈◊〉 15.8.9 shewed to the Jew with that shewed to the Gentile at His calling of each of them doth name the former Truth for that it was promised and the second simply and altogether Mercy Then again how very admirable was the vertue of the Gospel which effected that in a few dayes that the Law had not been able to do in so many ages The Ministers of the Law did compass Sea and Land and after all found it very hard to make one proselyte and with all their diligence for two thousand years that they toiled had not reduced so much as one Nation to the Service of GOD though they employed even sword and strength to that end when they could But the Gospel quite naked and without other weapons then its Cross brought unto GOD many a people converted from Paganism They were a sort of men that worshipped stocks and stones they lay plunged in a bruitish ignorance and in the most infamous vices there was a mixture in them of the stupidity of beasts and the wickedness of Devils Certainly to make so much as one of these a Christian to bring him out of this infernal pit 〈◊〉 and place him in the Church to make him of a slave of Satan a child of GOD was as an Ancient writing on this passage rightly says no less a miracle than if some one should suddenly change an unclean and deformed dog into a man and from the dunghil whereon he lay cause him to sit upon a royal throne It was truly therefore a great and an ineffable richness and abundance of glory for the Gospel to transform so speedily not a small number but hundreds and thousands of Pagans into so many believers And in this the Apostle secretly strikes at the false Teachers who would mix such a noble and glorious mystery with their feeble traditions as if it had not strength and vertue enough of it self to subsist without the succour of their inventions Finally he intimates in two words the ground of all this richness of glory that the Gospel hath which is saith he CHRIST in you that is to say that CHRIST whom they possessed and who dwelt in them by faith 1 Tim. 1.1 And he addeth that He is the hope of glory after the same manner that elsewhere he calleth CHRIST our hope that is He of whom we hope for highest glory and in whom we do infallibly find all the blessedness that we can either defire or expect It is not without design that he advertiseth them that JESUS CHRIST is all the fullness of the mystery of the Gospel He lays a foundation hereby for what he will more clearly tell them hereafter namely that it is in vain that the seducers would mingle the Ceremonies of Moses and the service of Angels with it All this great mystery begins and ends in JESUS CHRIST since it is no other thing 1 Tim. 4.16 as himself defineth it elsewhere than GOD manifested in the flesh justified in the spirit seen of Angels preached to the Gentiles believed on in the world and received up into Glory that is JESUS CHRIST our LORD born put to death raised again glorified and set forth in the Gospel for us Such is the mystery whereof the holy Apostle hath spoken to us Judge now Beloved Brethren what grace GOD hath shewed us in communicating so rich and so admirable a secret to us Many Kings and Prophets have desired to see and hear it and not at all had the happiness Heaven and earth did sigh four thousand years after the blessing we possess But in the end only the last ages did obtain it The Jews saw the wonders of GOD but obscurely and through veils and shadows The Gentiles saw them not at all being covered with a disinal night living without GOD and without hope This divine mystery appearing at once in the end of times as a great light that shines forth sudainly from Heaven did dissipate the shadows of the one and dispel the darkness of the other changing by its vertue the whole face of the universe in a moment It hath particularly shewed the riches of its glory among us having brought our Fathers out of the horrours of Paganism which did once cover this whole Land Let us embrace therefore with all the affections of our souls this great and inestimable favour of the LORD's Let us keep it pure and uncorupted without immixing in it ought that 's alien to it It is not only sufficient for our happiness It is even rich and abundant in glory They that would stuff it out with Ceremonies and services whether of Moses's teaching or mans inventing as false Teachers heretofore did and our adversaries at this day do they understand not aright the inexhaustible opulency wherewith it overslows They obscure the resplendency of its heavenly glory by their additions they hide it and cover it again with the veil which JESUS CHRIST hath rent in sunder Let us say to such as propose them unto us We are contented with the mystery which GOD hath vouchsafed to manifest unto His Saints It sufficed for their bliss It will well suffice for ours We do not desire any other riches than those which it aboundeth with or any other glory than that which it shines withall It is enough that this JESUS CHRIST who fills it up is in us the hope of true glory There is no need to associate with Him either Moses or Angels or Saints But Faithful Brethren the securing of this mystery from the errors of superstition is not all For the conversing of it pure among us and placing it in that glory which is due to it there must be a putting far away the filth of vices and of carnal and earthly passions GOD hath not lighted up this great Sun among you that ye should continue to live ill and do the same works in such a blessed light as are done in darkness Far be it from Him He hath discovered to you the mysteries hidden
yea a glorious light that is to say great and sparkling Why then saith he that the treasures of wisdom are hid in Him whereas it seemeth he should say on the contrary that they are manifested in Him that they shine out and appear clearly in Him I answer that the one and the other may be said in divers respects For if you consider the thing in its self the treasures of wisdom are manifested to us in JESUS CHRIST and there is no purifyed Soul but sees them in Him and acknowledgeth them immediately when it views Him as the Gospel represents Him But if you have respect to the eyes and perceptions of men as they naturally are even obscured and corrupted by Sin I confess it 's hard for them to discern in JESUS CHRIST the riches of wisdom and knowledg which the Father hath put in Him and that this proceeds in part from that veil of meanness and infirmity wherewith He is as it were covered all over And this makes S. Paul say elswhere that CHRIST crucified whom He preached was to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness though to the faithful who were called He was the Power and the Wisdom of GOD. Therefore it being necessary for our Salvation that He should be born and live poorly on earth and there suffer in the end the death of the Cross which surpassed all others for cruelty and ignominy the Father who sent Him in this form cloath'd with this sad and shameful mantle that assrighteth men hath both manifested and hidden His treasures in Him He hath manifested them in Him since it is in Him and by Him that He exhibiteth to us whatsoever we ought to know for the attainment of Salvation He hath hidden them in Hun since He hath covered this treasure with such a veil as by its poor and contemptible look discourageth men and makes them say as Isaiah prophecyed He hath no form nor comeliness in Him and when we see Him there is no beauty that we should desire Him But they which have their eyes purified by light from on high do discern under this appearing simplicity and humility all coelestial riches in their stateliest and most glorious form This is the Apostle's meaning here when he saith that these treasures are hid in CHRIST He advertiseth us that we must not stop at that infirmity and emptiness which appeareth at first sight in Him and disgusteth vain and earthly spirits but look within and contemplate the great wonders which GOD hath there manifested for our compleat instruction and consolation Hitherto we have examin'd the words of this Text. It remaineth that we now consider the truth in it We shall do it but summarily For the prosecution of this rich subject in its whole extent is above the ability of Man or Angel to be worthily performed so great is the heighth and depth of it But we will briefly touch its chief heads Mans true wisdom in his present state is to know His misery with the means to escape it and his felicity with the way that he must take to attain it As for our misery nature indeed hath given us some perception of it there being scarce a man in the world who sees not some depravation and irregularity in himself and whose conscience doth not reproach him with his faults and threaten the judgment of a supream justice The Law hath taught us much more of it representing GOD unto us as armed with inexorable severity against sinners and fulminating his curse upon them But beside that these knowledges are weak and are easily smothered in security there is this sorrow with them that having shewed us our misery they do not inform us of the remedy so as if they be necessary to draw us out of that folly wherein the most are plunged who confidently sleep amid the tempest and presume they are well while they have a mortal impostume in their brain or in their bowels yet it cannot be said that they suffice to make us wise seeing that for the just possession of this title a man must know not only his malady but also the means to cure it And yet though we knew it too nevertheless this would not be sufficient because besides deliverance from evil we desire also the fruition of good yea the chief Good But neither the light of nature nor even the light of the Law does reveal to us what this supream felicity is which without distinct knowing it we do desire so far are they from shewing us the way to it But in JESUS CHRIST as proposed to us in the Gospel these Verities that are necessary to render us wise are found clearly and fully all of them For as to our misery He declareth it exactly to us not by some surd and inarticulate sounds as nature doth nor by circuitions and essaies as the Law did but by the fullest and most moving way of information that ever was in the world even crying aloud to us from that Cross to which our sins had nailed Him Behold ye sons of men how horrid your crimes are since that it was necessary for the washing them away that I should come down from the Heavens shed forth my blood Behold how great irreparable your fall was since there was none in heaven or earth that could raise you up again but my self As much as the life of the Son of GOD is more precious than the life of all mankind so much clearer is the proof which his death giveth us of the horror of sin than that which we might take from the death of all that ever sinned though we should we see them stricken down together and punished by the avenging justice of GOD. But if this great Saviour do make us so feelingly perceive the horridness of our misery his end is only to make us the more ardently desire and embrace the remedy which he offereth us fully prepared from that same Cross to which he He was fastned for us I grant that the forbearance and kindness of GOD in his conduct of men though sinful might give them some sparkle of hope and his promises under the old Covenant had highly confirm'd it betimes But the Sword of his Justice dreadfully flaming in the hand of the Law perplexed them not a little and it was very difficult for them to accord His inflexible righteousness with the mercy that was necessary for them JESUS CHRIST hath removed all these difficulties and exhibiteth unto us in his Cross the solution of all our doubts Fear nothing sinner I saith he have contented the Justice of God and satisfied his Law Boldly trust his promises and approach his Throne with full assurance This blood which hath opened to you the entrance thither is not the blood of a beast nor an earthly ransome it is the blood of GOD a ransome of infinite value more than sufficient to take away your sins how infinite soever the demerit of them be But you will say This
CHRIST the Prince of Life and with that fulness of grace we have received and the holy Apostles preached Mix nothing forreign with it To add to it is to accuse it of imperfection and insufficiency Instead of losing time in the inventions of Error and in the laborious but childish exercises of Superstition Let us employ all hours in good and holy works walking in JESUS CHRIST rooting and building up our selves more and more in him establishing our selves and abounding in faith and testifying and proving the truth of it by a pure piousness towards GOD and an ardent love towards our Neighbour by the fervency of our Prayers the liberality of our Alms the humility of our Deportments the modesty of our Persons the honesty justness and integrity of all our Words and Actions to the glory of the LORD JESUS whom we serve and own for our Master to the edification of men and our own salvation Amen THE TWENTIETH SERMON COL CHAP. II. VER VIII Ver. VIII Beware lest any man make prey of you through Philosophy and vain deceit after the tradition of men after the rudiments of the world and not after CHRIST OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST comparing the society of his faithful ones in the tenth Chapter of S. John to a Flock of Sheep doth advertise us that there are Thieves who coast about this mystical Fold and do come only to steal to kill and to destroy as also that there are Wolves which take away and scatter the Sheep You are not ignorant dear Brethren that under the names of these spiritual Thieves and Wolves he doth represent unto us evil Spirits and the false Teachers whom they set on work who both together earnestly promote the same design though by divers means namely the debauching and alienating of the faithful from the Communion of JESUS CHRIST their only Pastor getting them and appropriating them to themselves as the Thief who takes what is another's and makes it his own Whence ensues their death and destruction For as the Wolf kills the Sheep he hath seized so these Ministers of Satan do bereave of life those whom they pull away from the Flock of Christ out of whose communion there is nothing but death and perdition But these wretched workers do employ as I said many different means to compass their cruel and bloody design Some they take away by downright force making them leave the bosome of the Church by the violence of persecutions or drawing them into the world by the pleasures of the flesh and do bring them even to a renouncing of the very Name of JESUS CHRIST the Prince of Life Against others they make use of fraud training them forth and distancing them by little and little from JESUS CHRIST under fair and plausible pretences so as in the end they have nothing of his left them but a name and a vain unprofitable profession remaining indeed under the power and in the possession of his Enemy It 's against these mystical Thieves and Robbers that the Apostle doth awaken the Colossians in the Text we have read exhorting them to take heed of ' em Before he prayed them to establish to build up to root themselves more and more in the Communion of the LORD JESUS acknowledging with humble gratitude the excellency of his gift mâ—de them 〈…〉 ensure this Treasure to them he adviseth them to watch against th◠〈…〉 ambushes of their Enemies who sought to surprise them and pluck by 〈…〉 tifice of their subtilities and fair discourses JESUS CHRIST out of their hearts and render themselves Masters of them and of their life Beware saith he lest any man make prey of you c. For it is the duty of a good Pastor such a one as the Apostle was not only to seed the mystical Sheep which the chief Shepherd hath committed to his care by giving them the pure and wholsom doctrine of the Gospel the only pasture of souls but also to preserve them with all his power from the paws of Wolves and the hands of Robbers advertising them of the danger and dextrously delivering them out of it by the saving-tone of his voice But as your Pastors are obliged to this care so you see dear Brethren that it is your duty to watch for your own safety to open your eyes and senses that ye may discern a stranger from a domestick a thief from the shepherd the hand of a robber from that of a friend Beware saith the Apostle to you He would not have the faithful be silly sheep that let themselves be led away by the first commer and indifferently embrace all that is offer'd them His will is that we have our senses exercised and habituated in discerning between truth and falshood able to prove all things that we may hold fast what is good and not suffer our selves to be surprised either by the dignity of a Robe or the blaze of Wit or some appearances of Deportment seeing that Angels of Satan do sometimes clothe themselves with light The prudence of the Beraeans is praised by the Holy Ghost Acts 17.11 who examined S. Paul's preaching comparing what he had spoken to them with the Scriptures that they might assuredly know the state of the matter The salvation of our souls is too precious for us to trust any other than GOD in it Whence appears how dangerous that security of implicit faith as they call it is which without any scruple receives all that its Teachers deliver and is so far from examining it that it vouchsafes not so much as to understand it believing it true without knowing it provided only that the mouth which publisheth it hath been opened by the Pope's hand If the question were only of a title those of whom the Apostle adviseth the Colossians here to take heed were Teachers and he contesteth not with them about their dignity in any part of this Epistle He deals with them only about their Doctrine Accordingly the case is concerning Doctrine whether we ought to believe it or no and whatever may be the hand that delivereth it to us if it be false it will not fail to destroy us as poyson doth not forbear to kill though he that prescribed it hath taken his degrees with all the formalities requisite S. Paul too elsewhere with one word overthrows all the prepossessions that might be for any Preachers upon any ever so eminent quality of their persons when he proclaims twice together If we our selves Gal. 1.8 or an Angel from heaven do preach another Gospel to you beside what we have preached let him be an Anathema Be you all that you will you cannot be more than S. Paul or an Angel of Heaven Since their Doctrine ought to be examined by the Gospel for its having reception or being accursed as it should be found conform or contrary thereto it will be no wrong done you if yours be put to the same trial But consider I pray with what emphasis the Apostle recommendeth to us
or avarice or any of those loathsome defilements that do disfigure the whole life of worldlings The LORD JESUS who hath given us this excellent Divine Doctrine who hath founded it by his death and set it up by his resurrection who also hath in these latter times purged it afresh both of the vanities of Philosophy and of the traditions of men and of the elements of the world please to confirm us in it for ever by his good Spirit and to make it so efficacious for the sanctification of our life that after we have finished this earthly pilgrimage we may receive one day at our going forth of this vale of tears from his merciful hand the Crown of immortality which he hath promis'd and prepar'd for all true observers of his Discipline Amen The Twenty-first SERMON COL CHAP. II. VER IX Ver. IX For in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily AS the Christian Religion doth consist in Principles and Practises incompably more sublime and salutiferous than any that the world ever learned in the Schools of Nature and the Law so was it delivered and instituted by an Author infinitely more excellent than any of those were who ever erected other Disciplines among men I will not insist upon the Authors of those various Religions which bore sway heretofore in the time of Paganism who though they were in esteem among Nations and raised to an high reputation of wisdom and vertue yet had the taint of an extream ignorance and vanity as their own Institutions sufficiently discover to any one that will take the pains to examine them in the light of Reason It would be injurious to the LORD JESUS the Founder and Prince of Christianity to compare him with such people But even Moses himself the great Teacher of the Hebrews and the Prophets who commented on explained and confirmed his Law are all insinitely beneath the dignity of this new Law-giver They were I grant Ministers of GOD the Mouth and Organs of his Majesty the Interpreters of his Will and Heralds of his Truth being endued as was suitable to so high Offices with an excellent sanctity a rare and extraordinary Wisdom and an heavenly Power which evidenced it self in them by miraculous effects But after all they were men and never pretended to be ranked above that feeble nature which was common unto them and us nor did receive any of those Honours which belong to the Divine whereas the LORD JESUS is so Man as he is likewise GOD blessed for ever and was so far from refusing Divine Honours that he hath expresly required them at our hands and enjoined us to adore him with the Father and to acknowledg him his Eternal Son This same difference the Apostle observes between the LORD JESUS and those other Ministers which GOD made use of in the former Ages God saith he having at sundry times and in divers manners in time past spoken unto the fathers by the Prophets hath in these last days spoken to us by his Son Ebr. 1.1 Moses and the rest were Prophets of GOD JESUS is his Son The others were his Ministers JESUS is his Heir The others were faithful as Servants Ebr. 3.5 6. JESUS as Son is over the whole House In the others there did shine forth some marks of the commerce they had with GOD that Soveraign Majesty imprinting on their faces as upon Moses's in particular some sparklings of his glory But JESUS is His very Light the resplendency of his glory and the character of his Person Dear Brethren it doth highly concern us to know rightly this great dignity of our LORD and Saviour not only for the rendring to his Person the worship we owe him and of which we may not fail without offending the Father as himself hath told us John 5.23 He that honoureth not the Son honoureth not the Father who hath sent him but also for our embracing with so much the more zeal the Religion he hath delivered us without ever admitting the perswasion that either men on earth or even Angels from Heaven can add any thing to the light the goodness and the perfection of the discipline of so great and so perfect an Author For this cause doth S. Paul here hold forth to the Colossians the Divinity of our LORD JESUS CHRIST In the precedent Verses he exhorted them to constant perseverance in the belief of his Gospel confirming themselves in it more and more and taking heed they gave no car to Philosophy and the vain traditions of seducers who endeavoured to corrupt sound doctrine by the mixing of divers inventions which they would add to it as if it were not perfect enough of it self to guide us to salvation The Apostle to bereave Error of this pretext and shew the faithful not only the sufficiency but even abounding of the Gospel represents unto them the soveraign perfection and divinity of its Author For in him saith he dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily Since you have JESUS CHRIST saith he there is no need of recourse to others In Him as in a living and inexhaustible spring is all good necessary to your happiness a divine Authority to found your Faith an infinite Wisdom to direct you in all truth an incomprehensible Goodness and Power to give you grace and glory a quickning Spirit to sanctifie and comfort you All other things compared to Him are but poverty and weakness See how the Apostle fortifies the faithful in the doctrine of the LORD and in few words overthrows all that the presumption of flesh and blood may dare to set up beside or against his perfect truth For a right understanding of his words we must consider them exactly For though the number of them be small their weight is great they are rich and magnifick in sense and do contain within their narrow compass one of the noblest and fullest descriptions of JESUS CHRIST that is found in Scripture Let us see then first what all this fulness of the Godhead is whereof the Apostle speaketh And then in the second place how it dwells in JESUS CHRIST to wit bodily The LORD please to conduct us by the light of his own Spirit in so high a Meditation that of his fulness we may receive grace for grace and draw from it what may fill our souls with that life and salvation which overfloweth in him and can be no where found at all but in him As for the subject it self whereof S. Paul speaketh and in which he saith that all the fulness of the Godhead dwelleth none can doubt but that it is our LORD JESUS CHRIST For having said at the end of the verse immediately foregoing that the traditions of men and rudiments of the world are not after CHRIST he now addeth For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead Whence it is clear that the LORD JESUS CHRIST whom he had even then named is the Person of whom he speaks and to whom he attributes
that was against us which lay in ordinances and was contrary to us and which he hath entirely abolished having fastned it upon the cross DEar Brethren That remission of sins which GOD giveth to all those who believe in his Gospel is in truth of it self a great and inestimable grace For who seeth not but that it was an effect of a transcendent goodness in GOD to be willing to pardon such persons as had mortally offended him and consent to their happiness who had obliged him by their feloniousness and ingratitude to make them eternally miserable But the manner in which he hath pardoned us and the price that our grace hath cost him doth infinitely heighten the wonder of this benefit of his For he hath not forgiven us our sins by a single act of his will as a Creditor remitteth a Debt to his Debtor because such a man having absolute power to dispose of his Estate in favour of whom he pleaseth it is sufficient for his doing of such a kindness that he will do it With GOD it was not so in the present affair His Justice and the majesty of his Laws were concern'd in the favour he would shew us and formed an opposition against it with-holding and staying the motion of his Clemency towards us so as his own sanctity permitting him not to despise the voice of Reason and the rights of Justice for any one's sake whosoever the will he had to pardon us was not sufficient alone to bring it to effect And here it was that his love to us did shew it self admirable and truly divine For seeing that sin could not be forgiven us without satisfying that Justice which we had violated and on the other hand that this inexorable Justice could not be satisfied but by the Cross of his only Son this good and merciful LORD did so affect our bliss that to take away the legal impediments which Justice laid in against it he resolved to deliver up his Son to that cruel and shameful death as our Saviour himself hath declared in the Gospel John 3.16 saying that God so loved the world as he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have eternal life Here then properly is the highest pitch of this wonder which doth justly ravish men and Angels that the pardon of our sins which GOD hath given us was bought at the price of the death of his only beloved Son And in truth our consciences could not have been assured of his grace without the same Nature having planted in our hearts so quick a sense of the right that GOD hath against sins as we could not put an entire confidence in his mercy until we might know that his Justice was contented and dis-interessed Therefore the holy Apostle having represented to the faithful at Coloss in the precedent Verse the great favour that GOD had shewed them in the free forgiving of their offences doth now adjoin the foundation of this remission and the means by which it had been obtained He hath forgiven you having effaced saith he the obligation which was against us that lay in ordinances and was contrary to us and which he hath entirely abolished having fastned it to the cross By this consideration he giveth them to see the greatness of this benefit of GOD and doth assure their consciences against all the doubts that the rigour of the Law might raise in them and particularly against the contendings of those false Teachers who would make them believe that the grace of JESUS CHRIST was not sufficient for their salvation except they did moreover submit to observe the ceremonies of Moses This shall be by the will of GOD the subject of this Exercise and for the giving you a full understanding of this Text we will consider two things in it First What this obligation is whereof he speaks that lay in Ordinances and was contrary to us And Secondly How GOD did efface it abolish it and fasten it to the Cross of His Son It 's a similitude very ordinary in Scripture to liken Sin unto a Debt whence comes that phrase which is so common in the language of GOD and of the Church of the remitting or acquitting of sin for the pardoning of it Our Saviour us'd it in the prayer he gave us where the petition for the pardon of our sins is conceiv'd in these words in the Gospel of S. Matthew Acquit us our debts Mat. 6.12 Luke 11.4 as we also acquit them to our debtors that is to say as S. Luke hath interpreted it Forgive us our sins as we forgive them that owe us or that have offended us This form of speech was so ordinary among the Chaldees and Syrians that they put the word Debtor for Sinner or a guilty person as appears by the ancient Chaldee-Paraphrase upon the Psalms which saith Psal 1.1 Blessed is the man that standeth not in the way of debtors instead of saying sinners as the Hebrew Text of the first Psalm doth import And our LORD used the same word in this sense when upon speech of certain Galileans whose blood Pilate had cruelly mingled with their sacrifices he saith Think you that they were more debtors than other Galileans that is more culpable Luke 13.4 as the French hath it Thus also must we take it in that tradition of the Scribes and Pharisees reported by S. Matthew He that hath sworn by the gift which is upon the altar he oweth or is a debtor that is he sinneth or is culpable The reason of this Metaphor is founded upon the resemblance of the things themselves debt and sin having some conformity For as the one obligeth the debtor unto payment the other obligeth the sinner unto punishment And as a debt doth give the Creditor a certain power over his Debtor in like manner doth sin give unto GOD or unto the Magistrate over the offendor For he hath a just power to punish the sinner as a Creditor hath to make his Debtor pay though otherways as we said not long since there be some difference between the powers of the one and the other publick Justice being concern'd in the punishing of an offender whereas in a debtor's making payment it is not so whence it comes that debts may remain unpaid if the private person to whom they are due be pleased to remit them whereas Justice doth not leave a sin unpunished though the offended party doth quit his interest to the offender And this difference is seen in human affairs where you know that for the exempting of a Criminal from punishment it is not enough he do content his Adversary except the Prince who is Guardian of the Law and the Conservator of publike Justice do give him an abolition of his crime But setting aside this difference there is in other respects such an analogy between a debt and sin as the name of the one is justly applied to signifie the other This similitude is the
S. Paul teacheth constantly ev ry where that it was disannulled and abrogated by the death of the LORD JESUS to make room for the Gospel according to the Oracles of the Prophets that GOD would make a new Covenant with his people Here is then the second head of our intended matter upon which we are to consider how GOD hath abolished this obligation which was against us by the Cross of his Son He tells us two things concerning it the one That this obligation is made void the other That it 's by the Cross of CHRIST it was made so He expresseth the former of these with great elegancy as his manner is using three most significant terms all of them taken from the nature of civil promises and obligations in pursuance of the similitude he began with First he saith that this obligation hath been effaced For so 't is ordinary with men to do when they have a debt paid them up they efface the name of their debtor that was upon their Books and the sum which he owed them The Apostle saith that GOD hath done the same in reference to us that he hath effaced this obligation of our mystical debt which was written in his Law and signed in our particular Consciences And this term hath the greater elegancy in this place because there did intervene for our acquitting some such thing as men are wont to do For they strike out their debtors promises with some liquor as Ink or the like which they draw over the lines of their writings So was our obligation made null by the effusion of a liquor to wit the blood of JESUS CHRIST which was poured forth as may be said from the Cross upon that dismal Book of the Law for the effacing all the clauses of our condemnation in it For as to the writing of men Ink is enough to blot it out But there was nothing save the Blood of the Son of GOD that was able to efface this doleful writing of the Law wherein the sentence of our death was contained Now it seems that this should be sufficient to assure a debtor even the telling him that his obligation is effaced Yet the Apostle contents not himself he addeth that ours hath been taken out of the way or abolished Thus you know among men they that are exact and punctual do not only efface their debtors writings they tear them and reduce them to pieces that no sign of their debt may remain GOD hath done so towards us He hath not only effaced the obligation he had against us He would not have so much as the rasures of it to appear He hath disannull'd it and abolish'd it and rent it with the nails of his Son's Cross He hath saith the Apostle fastned it to the Cross It is not possible to say any thing that should be better or more elegant Those same nails and those same thorns that pierced the body of our LORD upon that fatal Tree whereon he dyed for us did by the same means tear and cut in pieces the obligation which was against us that evidence of our debt and instrument of our death that is to say in sum the Cross of JESUS CHRIST hath disarmed the Law and divested it of that killing-force which it had against us naturally and reduc'd it to such an estate that we being under the covert of his Cross it can no more harm us than if all the Letters of it were estaced and its Papers rent in sunder This divine crucified Person hath by dying himself made the Law dye and that which doth sometime fall out in the combats of men hath been the event here both the Combatants even CHRIST and the Law remained dead upon the place The Law slew our LORD who went unto this combat for us to the end he might take and bear the terrible blows the thundrings and lightnings of our principal enemy But he hath also bereav'd the Law of life and left it in the same estate it had reduced him to though indeed with huge disserence in the issue For our LORD raised up himself from that death which he receiv'd and suffer'd for us rising again the third day gloriously alive whereas the Law shall never resume the life or the strength which he hath depriv'd it of It shall remain for ever in that death he hath given it This is that the Apostle teacheth us very clearly elsewhere when he saith that JESVS CHRIST having been made a curse for us hath redeemed us from the curse of the law Gal. 3.13 His wounds have been our cure his death our life and his curse our bliss The blood which issued out of his sacred body did blot out the sentence of our condemnation and the blows which pierced him did break in pieces the instrument of our ruin Now this great and admirable effect which S. Paul attributeth to the Cross of CHRIST doth furnish us with a clear proof of his Satisfaction For if his death were nothing but an example of patience and humility to what purpose saith this holy Apostle that the obligation which was against us was abolished and fastned to his cross Who seeth not but that by this account the Cross of our LORD would have done the Law no harm at all That his Blood would have been so far from making void our obligation as it would not have made so much as the least rasure in it What doth his death contribute to my deliverance from that curse under which this fatal writing puts me if he dyed only to give me a noble pattern of constancy and not to discharge my debts The Saints have verily suffer'd for our example and their deaths are patterns of our patience Yet it cannot be found that the Prophets or Apostles ever said of them by reason of it that the obligation which was against us hath been made void by their death or that the evils which they suffered have redeemed us from the curse of the Law And besides the blasphemousness of it it would render a man evidently ridiculous to give such language of them or to say of them as the Scriptures speak of the LORD alone that they have born our sicknesses and carried our dolours and been pierced for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities and that the chastisement of our peace was upon them and by their stripes we are healed Conclude we therefore that he verily dyed in our stead and did satisfie on his Cross the Justice of the Father for us For this being presupposed as the Scripture teacheth there is no longer any difficulty and it is clear that his Cross did strike out and abolish the obligation that was kept in the Cabinet of GOD against us and which alone had the right and power to destroy us As when a Surety pays the sum which the man he hath given security for doth owe he voids the Obligation that had been made to the Creditor about it and by virtue whereof he was to
be put in prison of all the force it had to endamage him He effaceth it cancels it and makes it null He renders useless all the preparatives of Justice against his friend He puts the Adversary and all his Advocates to silence He stops the mouth of the Judg that was even open to decree against him He stays the Serjâ—ants and secures his liberty from their outrages This is just the thing our LORD and Saviour hath done for us But what say I he hath done thus for us He hath done for us infinitely more than all that this comes to Death and the Curse were due to us as the wages of our sins The sentence of it was written in â—he obligation of the Law which we our selves had signed and wherein we had submitted to this penalty The Judg was ready and Execution could not be avoided The LORD JESUS moved with compassion and sent by the goodness of the Father puts himself in our room as Surety and Mediator for us He pays what we did owe. He suffers on the Cross the punishment we deserv'd His Cross therefore hath struck out that redoubtable obligation which was against us He hath abolish'd and made it of no effect He hath broken all the forces it was going to raise against us He hath pacified our Judg coufounded our Accusers staid the Officers and Ministers of Justice and sav'd our persons from the fetters and torments which were prepared for us But hence again appears how vain the error of those is who pretend that GOD doth but half-pardon our sins that having remitted unto us the fault he doth exact of us part of the punishment and make us suffer it either in this life here or after death in a certain partition of Hell which they call Purgatory How could they more rudely clash with the Apostle's Doctrine He saith that GOD hath effaced cancelled and abolished the obligation which was against us These men affirm that he still makes us pay some part of our debt Sure then our obligation is not yet torn It 's a thing unheard-of in the course of Justice to bring an Action against that Debtor whose Obligation you have effaced If it be torn if it be made void and of no effect you have no longer any right to draw him before the Judg much less to get him condemned to pay If GOD who doth nothing but according to Justice should make us pay any part of the penalties of our sins which he hath forgiven us the Obligation by virtue whereof he condemneth us is still in its full force But the Apostle protesteth that it hath been effaced and remains blotted and nailed to the Cross of CHRIST for ever The Obligation which was against us imported all the punishments both temporal and eternal that we were obnoxious unto It is voided and nulled We therefore do no longer owe any of them Fear not Christian you have to do with a faithful Creditor Having remitted to you your debt yea cancell'd the evidence of it and torn the Obligation he hath no intent at all after all this to demand any part of it of you I confess that the payment JESUS CHRIST hath made is of no use to such as remain in unbelief and though he hath in point of right nulled the Obligation which was against us yet their ingratitude and infidelity is a cause that they have no benefit from this kindness of his Even as the unthankfulness and obdurateness of that servant of whom we are told in that Parable in the Gospel did deprive him of the favour his Master had shewed him in forgiving the ten Talents he owed For GOD hath affixed this reasonable condition to the Covenant of Grace which he hath made with Mankind that the payment of our Debts made by our Surety should not be allowed to any but those that believe so as they that obstinately abide in incredulity have no share in that impunity or in those other benefits which this great Mediator hath obtained for us But as to the man that believeth and by a true faith applieth applieth to himself the death and blood and merit of the LORD JESUS there is no more any condemnation for him Rom. 8.1 as the Apostle elsewhere saith nor by consequence any punishment the obligation by virtue whereof alone he could be condemned at the Tribunal of GOD having been effaced abolished and fastned to the Cross of his Saviour Thus you see Beloved Brethren what that grace of GOD is which the Apostle hath here made known and by what means we may get part in it Sinners you that groan under the heavy load of your crimes that feel your misery and perceive the cords of that damnation in which the Law doth entangle you come unto the Cross of CHRIST and you shall find rest to your souls Your consciences accuse you and compel you to subscribe your own condemnation acknowledging the justness thereof But how just soever it be the Cross of JESUS freeth you from it forasmuch as it hath fully fatish'd for you Beware of the error both of the ancient and the modern Pharisees who pretend ability to pay what they owe and even more than they owe and to justifie themselves by their works that is by the Law The Law is the instrument of our condemnation and the ministration of our death and a man that would be justified by the Law commits no less an extravagance than he that to prove he owes nothing should produce in Judgment the Bills and Bonds he hath given his Creditors Confess you your debts Divest your selves of all presuming upon your own righteousness Declare that of your selves you are bound over to eternal malediction that you have deserv'd it and do present your selves naked before GOD who justifies the ungodly He will clothe you with the righteousness of his Son And you Faithful Brethren who are already entred into this blessed Covenant Live ye in peace and quietly wait for the fruit of your faith according to the promises of GOD. Let not the thundrings and lightnings of the Law make you afraid Let not that death with which it so severely menaceth the sons of men terrifie you at all Let not World or Devils the Executioners of its Justice astonish you JESUS CHRIST hath brought to nought all their strength by effacing the obligation that was against us Satan thou cruel enemy of our repose object not to us our sins We confess they are greater and yet more grievous than thou canst express Lay not before us that clause of our old Covenant which puts all that have sinned under the curse We confess we have merited this curse But know Satan if we have deserv'd death JESUS CHRIST hath suffer'd it for us and if we have committed sins worthy of thine Hell the Blood of the Son of GOD hath blotted them out His Cross hath made void that old piece upon which thou makest such a clamour that rough obligation with which thou incessantly
threatnest us How hast thou the insolency to accuse those whom GOD justifies and to condemn those for whom the Son of GOD dyed and rose again 'T is thus Dear Brethren that we must repel the tentations of the enemy and maugre his assaults possess in peace the loving-kindness of GOD adoring his bounty and ardently employing our selves to his glory For this is the scope and the end of his grace He hath acquitted us of all our debts and made void the obligation which was upon them that we being ravish'd with a Goodness so divine might love him with all our strength and all our soul according to that veritable Maxime acknowledged by Simon in the Gospel He to whom much is forgiven Luk. 7.43 Luk. 1. 74 75 ougth to love much He hath delivered us by his Son out of the hand of our enemies that we might serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness before him all the days of our life And indeed how can we have the heart either not to love at all or to love but coldly a GOD who is so good to us who seeing us overwhelm'd in debt hath freely forgiven us all hath made void the obligation and for the razing out and making void the same spent the blood of his only begotten Son and for the rending it in pieces suffered his Divine Body to be all rent with strokes After a goodness so ravishing must not that man be worse than a Devil who loves not this Father who hath given us his Son and this Son who hath by his death obtained our salvation Oh how much reason had the Apostle to count him execrable who loves not this great Saviour 1 Cor. 16.22 If any man saith he love not the LORD JESVS CHRIST let him be anathema maranatha GOD forbid there should be any so wretched and odious a person in the midst of us Yet if any be sure he believes not of our Saviour what he makes profession to believe For it is not possible to believe him without loving him Let us love him then and faithfully serve him setting his Name and Honour above all the Interests of the World and our Flesh Let us obey his holy Discipline and conform all that life unto his will which we hold not but by his grace Let us imitate that Divine Pattern he hath left us diligently walking in humility and patience and charity whereof he hath given us so great and so admirable examples Let us have compassions and tendernesses for our Brethren that may resemble those which he hath had for us He hath pardoned us all our sins and quitted to us all our debts He hath shed his blood to blot out the obligation that was against us He dyed on a Cross that he might thereunto nail up and for ever abolish all the instruments of our condemnation Having experienced so great a goodness towards our selves how can we dare to have so little towards others to be obdurate to them and implacable when they have offended us cruel and inexorable when they owe us any thing He hath forgiven us Talents and we exact of them even Farthings He hath pardoned us a thousand and a thousand crimes We retain against them the slightest offences What shall we answer when he one day shall say to us Behold I have forgiven thee all this great debt at thy request shouldst not thou also have had pity on thy fellow-servant as I had pity on thee Without doubt my Brethren we should It is a duty too just and too reasonable for us to fail in If yet our flesh oppose let us pray the LORD to subdue it to his will by the power of his Spirit granting us to do what he commands that after we have had part here below in his Grace and in his Sanctification we may one day participate on high of his Eternal Glory So be it The Twenty-sixth SERMON COL CHAP. II. VER XV. Ver. xv Having spoiled principalities and powers which he publickly made a shew of triumphing over them on that Cross DEar Brethren The Cross of our LORD CHRIST which at the first preaching of the Gospel was a scandal to the Jews and the scorn of Gentiles is in truth the greatest mystery of the Wisdom of GOD and matter of highest admiration to Angels and men In it the Supream Majesty hath mixed together with incomprehensible art and reconcil'd most contrary and most incompatible things death and life ignominy and glory condemnation and absolution defeat and victory The Devil having put it in the heart of Judas to betray JESUS and push'd on the Princes of the Jews to take him and deliver him to Pilate who condemn'd him and caused him to dye a cruel death upon a Cross this mortal Enemy of our salvation seemed to have got the day inasmuch as by his artifices he had brought the Prince of Life to so shameful an execution But it succeeded quite otherwise The blow he gave our LORD struck himself and our Saviour by suffering of death overthrew for ever all the power of the Devil as Sampson the Heroe of Israel who when he dyed pulled down and involved in the same ruins some thousands of his enemies This Cross on which JESUS hung was to say truth the instrument of his glory rather than of his ignominy and the trophee of his victory rather than the gibbet of his execution He suffer'd death on it I grant but a death that lasted no longer than three days and got him immortality whereas he there defeated and ruin'd the Devil and all our Enemies without recovery It 's this the Apostle represents to us in the Text where in connexion with that he had said before namely that the LORD effaced the obligation which is contrary to us and abolish'd it and fastned it to the cross he now adds Having spoiled principalities and powers which he publickly made a shew of triumphing over them on the cross Good GOD what a change is this He tells us of the death of CHRIST the most painful the most shameful and most execrable punishment in the world as of a triumph and doth not stick to compare that fatal Tree whereon he suffer'd it to a triumphal Chariot He puts in chains those that put him to death and causeth them to go not for authors or spectators of his sufferings but for part of the pomp of his victory This is the sight my Brethren to which the Apostle inviteth us the triumph not of a Caesar or some other of the World 's great Captains but of the Son of GOD the Father of Eternity In it you shall see this King of Glory riding in a Chariot bath'd all over with his divine victorious blood Isa 63.1.3 and as the Prophet Isaiah yer-while represented him with Princes and people under foot and he marching over them with his garments died red In it you shall see not Soldiers and Commanders in chains but Daemons the Princes of this world bound and
fetter'd fast for ever You shall see not Arrows broken and Cuirasses batter'd and Arms cut in pieces but Sin abolish'd and Death destroy'd You shall see the spoils not of an Army or a Countrey but of the Lords of the world and of the Governours of the darkness of this Age. Lastly You shall behold in it not the image of some petty Fortress taken by assault or composition or of some River forced or some Province subdued but Hell finally beaten Heaven gained and an Eternal World brought under the power of our victorious LORD Let us apply our selves to the fruition of this magnificent spectacle and afford it all the sense and attention that we have To this end consider we First What these Principalities and Powers are which JESUS CHRIST hath spoiled And then see in the second place how he made a shew of them and triumph'd over them on the Cross These are the two Heads we will treat upon if the LORD please in this action The Apostle ordinarily makes use of the words Principalities Powers Dominions Thrones Col. 1.16 Rom. 8.37 Eph. 1.21 and Virtues to signifie the Angels as for instance in the first Chapter of this Epistle in the eighth of the Epistle to the Romans and in the first of that he wrote to the Ephesians He gives those spiritual beeings these names both because of the strength and power they are endowed with which mightily surpasseth the virtue of material and elementary things and also by reason of the divers orders into which GOD hath distinguish'd them according to the difference of their ministrations placing some of the Angels as it were Chiefs in a superiority to others And though the sin of Devils hath corrupted the perfections of their nature yet it doth appear by divers places of Scripture that it hath not quite destroyed this Order among them Satan being set forth to us as the Head of this black band and as having other evil Angels under him so as they may in this respect be still reâ—med Principalities and Powers Nevertheless there is another reason which the Apostle had his eye principally upon in giving them these names as he himself intimateth in the sixth Chapter to the Ephesians We wrestle not saith he against flesh and blood Eph. 6.12 but against principalities against powers against the rulers of the darkness of this world against spiritual wickedness in high-places Here you plainly see he calleth them Principalities and Powers by reason of that Imperiality they exercise in this world under its present state of subjection unto sin and vanity Not that such a superiority doth of right belong unto them for having rebelled against their Creator they have lost all true and lawful dignity But the sin of man having â—uslav'd him to those evil spirits hath withall made these elements subject to them whereof he was the true and natural Lord. And GOD hath permitted it so to be for the executing of his justice against sin For since that man shook off the yoke of GOD having wretchedly preferr'd the pernicious counsel of his Eneâ—y before the just commandment of his Master it is but reason he should be subject to him to whom he did betray his own liberty Such then is the order or rather the confusion of the world since the fall to wit that the Devil exerciseth an insupportable â—yranny in it governing it at his pleasure as if he were Lord of it For First He worketh upon all the ungodly with wonderful force swaying their souls unto brutal passions setting on fire their lusts and by that thick smoak which he raiseth from their hearts blinding their minds and depriving them of all the light that 's necessary for distinguishing of truth and falshood Eph 2.2 of good and evil as the Apostle doth elsewhere inform us saying that this unclean spirit doth work effectually in the children of disobedience and in another place 2 Tim. 2.26 he telleth us that he hath the wicked in his snares and makes them do his will Not that he compelleth them to evil by co-active force and how much soever they dislike it but their nature being corrupted as it is he never tempteth them without effect their souls voluntarily surrendring themselves to his pernicious perswasions Moreover he disposeth of material things turning and changing them at his pleasure raising tempests in the air seditions and warrs among men putting in commotion all that murtherous violence that makes havock of mankind and presiding over all the instruments of the creatures damage and death Heb. 2.14 By reason whereof the Apostle in the Epistle to the Hebrews calleth Satan Him who hath the power of death And although he executeth none of his bad purposes without the permission of GOD as the Scripture clearly shews us in the History of Job where you see he toucheth neither the goods nor the children nor the person of that holy man until leave had of this Supream Majesty nevertheless because he worketh commonly in the world the greater part whereof is depraved and rebellious against GOD he seems Master of it and himself doth glory in it as when he said to our Saviour in temptation after he had shewed him all the Kingdoms of the Earth Luke 4.6 All the power and glory of these things will I give thee for to me it is delivered and I give it to whom I will And indeed for these reasons doth our Saviour stile the Devil John 12.31 and 14.30 2 Cor. 4.4 the Prince of this world as when he says Now the Prince of this world shall be cast out and so elsewhere and S. Paul calls him in the same sense the GOD of this world Represent unto your selves the world as it was under the darkness of its old Heathenism when GOD left all Nations to walk in their own ways In it the Devil absolutely domineered All those poor multitudes held he under his tyranny He had put out the eyes of their minds and in this blindness made them commit all kind of vileness and abominations He inspired into them hatred of the true GOD and of his Service and so effectually beguiled them by his fallacious illusions that he caused them to adore himself under the forms of divers Idols These same spirits are they that the Apostle intends here by those Principalities and Powers he speaks of For though the Scripture doth particularly mark out one of them whom it calleth Satan as the Head of this abominable Monarchy yet it rangeth under him a vast multitude of Spirits who all travelling upon the same design and setting on work in it all the might and industry they have do bear a part in his accursed Empire And there is great probability too that they are divided into certain bands each of which are drawn up under their particular Chiefs and do all of them depend upon Satan as their General For which reason it is that the Apostle calls them in the plural number Principalities
death he there suffered was the true and only cause of his triumphs 'T was the Tree of this Cross that bore the Palms and Laurels he hath been crowned with 'T is there that all the causes and originals of all his glory are found It is this Cross that opened his Sepulcher and brought him out from thence and raised him up in Immortality 'T is it also that a little after opened Heaven to him and seated him on the right hand of the Most High 'T is it that loosed the tongues of his Apostles and changed the world in a short time that defeated Paganism that is the greatest part of Satan's Empire that threw down Idols and drew all people to the service of that Divine crucified Person whom it bore It is the same likewise that will pluck us one day out of the hands of death and lift us up into the Sanctuary of Eternity Lastly 'T is it hath founded that glorious Throne whereon JESUS shall sit and both the one and the other his Subjects and his Enemies see him truly triumphing the one with eternal joy the other with a confusion that shall never end Since the Cross of our LORD and Saviour is the cause of so many triumphs who sees not that it is not only with truth but also a great deal of elegance that the Apostle here saith he triumphed on it over his Enemies Let us Dear Brethren adore the mystery of it and look upon it notwithstanding the sad appearances of its infirmity as the only cause of the glory of our Head and of the liberty of his people If the Jew do stumble at and the Greek deride it 't is an effect of their ignorance and infidelity For our part who know its virtue let us say with the Apostle GOD forbid that we should glory save in the Cross of our LORD JESVS CHRIST Gal. 6.14 It hath taken us out of the mortal bonds of the Devils and put us into the liberty of the sons of GOD. It hath spoiled our old Tyrants and broken their Iron yoke and overthrown those infernal principalities and powers Let us not fear them After the blow they have received from the Cross of CHRIST they are but back-broken Serpents that do but hiss and crawl along the dust I grant they yet stir and wind about us and do not cease to threaten us But they can no longer hurt us if we keep fast to the Cross of our Saviour by which the world is crucified unto us and we unto the world They are our Enemies they are no more our Masters We are to wrestle with them we are under their yoke no longer And if GOD do sometimes permit them to strike us in our goods or in our bodies and what we have on earth yet he preserveth our persons and doth not suffer them to take from us any thing that his Son hath purchased in Heaven for us And he so governeth these Combats that they ever turn unto our glory and their confusion as that of Job's yer while did GOD permits them to attaque us that we may overcome them or to say better that the Cross of JESUS may stand up once more victorious in each of us and bruise Satan under our feet Rom. 16.26 as it hath already bruised him under his Let us with good courage follow the victory of our Head and stoutly march on in his steps Let us pursue the vanquished Enemy and not quit him till we in this holy warr do bear away the Laurel and the honour of a Triumph Take heed he rally not his dissipated Forces and do us some affront For henceforth there is nothing but our wretchlesness that can give him the advantage Our Victory is as sure as may be if we have so much courage as not to destroy our selves For what can he do to us if we watch if we pray if we keep upon our guard and under the Ensign of the Cross of our LORD Will he accuse us GOD doth justifie us and his Son doth defend and intercede for us Will he batter us with the curse of the Law The Cross of CHRIST hath annulled that Will he stir up against us the hate and persecutions of the world In these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us and that can so turn and change them in favour of us as they shall all work together for our good Will he take hold of us on the other side by the baits of sin and pleasures and benefits of the present world Our Saviour's Cross hath extinguish'd and mortified the desire of them in our hearts shewing us that all this beauteous figure of the World is but a vanity that passeth away and endeth in eternal misery Will he menace us with death He may but the Cross of JESUS hath disarmed it of all its stings and so altered its whole nature that whereas it was of it self the wages of sin and an effect of our Judge's wrath and the beginning of Hell it is now a token to us of the grace of GOD the end of our Combats and the entry of our Paradice Let us therefore my beloved Brethren live in repose and take fruition with humble thankfulness of the good things which the LORD JESUS hath obtained for us by the merit of his Cross serving and religiously adoring him consecrating all our life to his glory as he gave his for our salvation and assuring our selves amid all the storms of this generation that neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities nor powers nor things present nor things to come nor heighth nor depth nor any other creature shall be ever able to separate us from the love of GOD which he hath shewed us in JESVS CHRIST our LORD So be it The Twenty-seventh SERMON COL CHAP. II. VER XVI XVII Ver. xvi Let no man condemn you in meat or in drink or in the distinction of a festival day or of a new moon or of sabbaths Ver. xvij Which things are shadows of those that were to come but the body of them is in CHRIST DEar Brethren Our LORD JESUS CHRIST doth excellently shew us the difference of that Evangelical service which he hath instituted in his Church from the Legal service which had place in Israel under the Old Testament when speaking of it to the Samaritan he saith Woman John 4.21 23 believe me the hour cometh that neither in this mountain nor at Jerusalem shall ye worship the Father But the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth Under the Law the service of GOD was affixed to certain places as the Temple at Jerusalem and the Land of Canaan to certain times as Sabbaths New Moons and those great Feasts of the Passover Pentecost and Tabernacles to certain corporeal things as Beasts and other Kinds which were offered upon a material Altar with divers ceremonies and to certain sorts of Meat it being not permitted at that time to eat of any
of the world why doth any one burthen you with ordinances as if ye lived in the world XXI To wit eat not taste not touch not XXII Which all are things that perish in the using being instituted after the commandments and doctrines of men DEar Brethren Seeing the Apostle plainly sheweth in diverse places that the use of meats is a thing indifferent and that if we eat 1 Cor. 8.8 we have not thereby the more nor the less if we eat not and even injoyneth us somewhere to accommodate our selves to the infirmity of our brethren Rom. 14.21 declaring that it is good neither to eat flesh nor to drink wine nor to do any thing whereby our brother stumbleth or is offended or made weak it may seem strange to some that in this Epistle and in the first to Timothy and elsewhere he doth so earnestly insist upon this point and employ so many words and reasons against those who did prohibit certain sorts of meats to Christians But if you throughly consider this holy man his whole procedure and the motives of his taking such order you will find it full in all the parts thereof of reason and profound discretion For first there is a great difference between such as he bears with and those whom he rejects The one were infirm and the other insolent The former through want of knowledge could hardly count those things permitted which the School of Moses whence they were but newly come forth had prohibited The latter did in their headiness enterprise the bringing of Christians under the yoke again The errour of those reached no further than their own persons These would dogmatize and give the Church new Laws Wherefore the Apostle is sweet towards the one and severe against the others according to the difference of their faults And as to the thing it self though it be no more a crime to abstain from than it is to eat any of the meats which GOD hath created for our use yet to make this abstinence pass for a matter of necessity is a penicious attempt First it 's an overthrowing or a diminishing of our liberty which having been purchased by the blood of CHRIST ought to be very precious to us for since He would buy it us at so high a price it is not just that the fancy or the tyrannicall humour of men should bereave us of a thing that cost him so dear Moreover such injunctions do make that to be thought necessary which is indifferent and that to pass for a part of the service of GOD which is not so An opinion which hath dangerous consequences For men once possessed with this imagination do in such exercises loose a good part of their time which should be wholy spent in the study and practice of the true commandments of our LORD JESUS But which is yet worse they easily imagine that they get a licence to commit things prohited without danger by such abstaining from things permitted and the priviledge of being dispensed with for obedience to GOD by that they render unto men a conceit which as you see does undermine the foundations of that true and real sanctification without which no man shall see GOD. The Apostle well-knowing therefore the venom of these doctrines and seeing on the other hand the strong inclination that men have to them being likewise not ignorant as experience hath but too much verified that there would be alwaies people sound to set them on foot among Christians did account it necessary for the securing of our faith to give us in diverse places of His divine Epistles strong Preservatives against the Contagion of this pernicious error You have heard already heretofore how he said concerning it Let no man condemn you in cating or in drinking irrecoverably overbearing by those few words the temerity of all those who for such things bring the faithful to the Bar and condemn them to the fire of Hell for having but tasted of meats which they prohibit He now resumes the same discourse and having in the two precedent verses refuted the serving of Angels which the Seducers did set up in religion he comes to their other Ordinances which concerned certain abstinences and devotions that they imposed on Christians as salutiferous and of necessary use for humbling the spirit and mortifying the flesh and first he refutes them by three excellent reasons which he urgeth against them next he rejects the vain and specious pretexts under colour of of which they were recommended The first of those three reasons which he advanceth against these pretended devotions is taken from the liberty which JESUS CHRIST hath purchased for us by His death freeing us from all carnal and ceremonial services If therefore ye be dead with CHRIST saith he why doth any one burthen you with ordinances as if you lived in the world to wit Eat not Tast not Touch not The second is drawn from the nature of those things themselves from which an abstaining was ordered they all are things saith the Apostle that perish in the using And the third from the rise of such ordinances instituted not by the authority of GOD but after the commandments and doctrines of men These are the three points we purpose to treat of in this action by the assistance of GOD beseeching Him to grant that we may meditate them to our common Edification and Consolation The Apostles last words were concerning the communion of the Church with JESUS CHRIST its head who furnisheth His whole body and fitly knitteth it together by joynts and bands causing it to increase with an increase of GOD. Hereupon he takes occasion to set before us again that enfranchisement from the yoke of Ceremonies which we have by this holy and mystical communion with our LORD That is his meaning in these words we are dead with CHRIST as to the rudiments of the world For as we have shewed afore the Apostle does usually call the Ceremonial ordinances of Moses's Law the elements or rudiments of the world because they were the first and lowest lessons of GOD's people standing all of them in material and worldly things and in the usage of or in an abstinence from either elements or plants and animals and other fruits and productions of the world But he seems in this place to signifie by these words generally all services of this nature whether those that Moses sometime instituted for the exercise of the childhood and minority of Israel or those that other men erected afterward of which sort were the devotions and ceremonies which the Elders of the Jews and the Pharisees added to the Law and made to pass for traditions of antiquity as we understand by the Gospel where our Saviour notes them and very sharply reproves them in diverse places Such again were the disciplines and devotions of those Seducers whom the Apostle here opposeth and all other like them which though set up by diverse authors and at different times yet joyntly consist in one
and the same kind of terrene and material things and tend to one and the same end to wit the purifying and sanctifying of men and the rendring the Deity propitious and favourable to them by such exercises This whole sort of service is carnal tyed up to certain corporeal things and actions in which it consisteth as is meat and drink in watchings and cloathing in mens washing and discipling themselves going in procession or on pilgrimage repeating certain words and forms of prayer it also dependeth upon times having its years its months its days its festivals and its very hours all regulated This was the very form of the carnal or ceremonial service of the Jews which was directly opposite to that other kind of service that JESUS CHRIST gave us in His Gospel which without being bound up to these childish scruples of times of places and of things doth wholly consist in a pure and genuine worshiping of GOD in loving and fearing Him and tenderly affecting our neighbour in honesty and justice and in a true and lively sanctity Accordingly you know that whereas the former service is termed carnal the latter is stiled spiritual The one is a serving in shadow the other in truth the one in flesh the other in spirit 'T is then in my opinion all that first sort of carnal services from what Source soever they flow either the institution of Moses or the invention of any other man that the Apostle doth here call the rudiments of the world declaring that we have been freed from it by our LORD JESUS CHRIST remaining no longer subject to all this childish and infantile pedagogy nor bound up to houres or times or elements or other parts of the world but being raised above all these things so as we may make use of them with full liberty according to the interests of Piety and charity and not be any more imbondaged to them or depend upon them But because JESUS CHRIST hath procured us this great benefit by His death and does put us in possession of it by the communion we have with Him in respect thereof thence it comes that S. Paul sets forth this grace of His freeing us from subjection to the rudiments of the world in terms that referr thereto saying not singly that we are delivered from such kind of services by JESUS CHRIST but that we are dead with Him as to the rudiments of the world An expression exceeding graceful and elegant It signifies first that we are no longer subject to these rudiments of the world For the dead are out of all servitude The Laws demand nothing of them any more Neither their Lords nor their masters have any power to require ought of them any longer Death breaks all the bonds that tyed them to any subjection whatever The Apostle saith therefore we are dead to the rudiments of the world to signifie that we are freed from them that we are no more subject to them as he tells us elsewhere to the same sense that we are dead to the Law and again in another place Rom. 7. â— Gal. 2. â—9 Rom. 6. â— I am saith he dead to the Law that I might live to GOD. And thus too it is that we must take his affirming elsewhere that we are dead to sin that is to say delivered from its tyranny And because death puts an end to and abolisheth the power and authority of the master as well as the servitude and subjection of the vassal thence it comes S. Paul saith indifferently that sin and the commandment of the old Law are dead to us and that we are dead to them signifying by the one and the other that we are Subjects of theirs no more But S. Paul saying here that we are dead with CHRIST as to the rudiments of the world doth shew us in the second place both the cause of our liberty JESUS CHRIST and the means by which He acquired it for us to wit His death We are dead to all ceremonial services for that our LORD hath disolved and abolished them in dying for us For His death hath satisfied all the reasons upon which these rudiments of the world were for a time appointed It hath procured that righteousness which they represented and exhibited that salvation which they promised and brought in the substance whereof they were but shadows It hath opened the house of GOD unto the Gentiles whom they barred from it and put an end to the Old Testament to which they pertained and founded the new an eternal and immutable one which they prefigured Wherefore the Veil of the Temple was rent from the top to the bottom at the time that JESUS suffered death for a token that the antient worship whereof this Veil was a symbole became thenceforth abrogated and annulled In fine these words of the Apostle do discover to us further an apt resemblance that is found to be between the LORD's death on the Cross and our freedom from the yoke of Ceremonies For as JESUS in dying did divest Himself of the former life He led here below during the days of His flesh in infirmity and in subjection to the elements of Moses to take up a new one by His resurrection which was to be free divine and coelestial so we conformly by vertue of the communion we have with Him and particularly in His death do lay down that former manner of life that consisteth in the childish exercises of some carnal abstinences and devotions to live henceforth in the liberty of children of GOD serving Him no more in shadow and in figure but in spirit and in truth with a conscience pure and an heart not bound up to the places things and times of the old world but continually elevated to that new incorruptible and eternal one above the heavens where JESUS CHRIST the author and prince of our religion and salvation is Such is this Evangelical verity here laid down by S. Paul at the beginning of the Text that we are dead with CHRIST as to the rudiments of the world Whereby to mention it by the way you may see how much out in their reckoning they are who place the perfection of the faithful in the practising of these carnal disciplines and devotions accounting those for perfect who do use them S. Paul on the contrary terms them here the rudiments of the world so as the subjecting of Christians to such disciplines is so farr from being a perfectâ—â—◠〈◊〉 completing them as these men pretend that it is clean contrary a putâ—ing them back to their ABC and a reducing them from the highest Classis of the School of GOD down to the lowest there to become children again and lead a childish life with the disciples of Moses in an apprentiship to his rudiments and under the Ferule of his pedagogie The Apostle from this principle thus asserted concludes against the false teachers that all their ordinances touching abstinence from certain meats were vain unjust and tyrannical If therefore
saith he ye be dead with CHRIST as to the rudiments of the world why are ye burthened with ordinances as if ye lived in the world Afterwards he reports and expresly specifies some of those ordinances which men would impose upon the faithful namely Eat not Touch not Taste not The force and the coherence of his argumentation is evident 'T is an injustice saith he and a tyranny still to burthen those with worldly ordinances who are dead to the world You are dead to its rudiments by the benefit of CHRIST who hath by His death abolished all this kind of carnal disciplines and services and nailed up and torn upon His Cross the obligation to them By His grace you live no longer in the world in the School of Figures and terrene Ceremonies You live henceforth in Heaven in the light and liberty of the Spirit For S. Paul doth sometimes apply the word world to the state of GOD's people within their land of Canaan heretofore in the school of their Moses and the performance of a terrene and carnal service And therefore it is that he elsewhere terms the Levitical Sanctuary Heb. 9.1 a worldly Sanctuary The faithful then being without this Mosaique world it is clear that no man justly can impose upon them in matter of religion any laws or ordinances of this nature and that such as attempt it do outrage Him that freed them and oppress the liberty of His people and that every one may justly reject their yoke and oppose their tyranny Neither may it be alledged that the ordinances promoted are none of Moses's but others quite different For what ones soever they be a yoke they are and every yoke of what matter and form soever deprives us of our liberty Besides very probable it is that the Apostle does as we have expounded it by the rudiments of the world intend not particularly the Mosaical service alone but generally all such service as is bodily and of the same nature that that of Moses was And in fine though you should take it simply for the Mosaique laws yet would S. Pauls argument be good and conclusive from the greater to the less as who should say If you be set free from the yoke of Moses which was framed and put upon the necks of the antient people by the express appointment of GOD how much more from one of men If CHRIST hath delivered you from such ordinances as it cannot be denyed but GOD was author of how intolerable is the headiness of those men who burthen you with their laws Indeed who can believe that GOD should have freed us from commands of His own to put us under those of others and that His Son should have delivered us from a yoke of GOD's to load us with one of mortal mens and that He should have exempted us from the rod of Moses to yeeld us up unto the scourges of these new Rehoboams As to these ordinances which the Apostle here produceth doubtless they were the Seducers and not his own as the Author of the Comment on S. Paul that goes under the name of S. Ambrose some one of the Ancients against all semblance of truth and reason did imagine S. Paul's saying afore Let no man condemn you in meat or in drink doth sufficiently shew that they were the magisterial ordinances of these pretended Legislators who did very severely command their people not only to forbear the eating but even the tasting and touching of such meats as they prohibited The first of those three words that the Apostle useth does in the Greek language properly signifie to touch and the Latin Interpreter as also many others have taken it in that sense here translating Touch not tast not handle not And our adversaries of Rome do understand it of the prohibitions in the Mosaique Law of touching or handling a dead body for instance or such other things as the Jews might not touch without being counted unclean In like manner they referr what is said of tasting to the prohibition of eating Swines-flesh and the Hare and other meats the use whereof was not permitted in the Law as if the false Teachers at whom the Apostle aimes would have introduced among Christians no other ordinances then those of the Mosaique Law But this whole exposition is incommodious and crosseth the Apostle's meaning If he had had that thought it would have sufficed to say once Touch not without superadding a third word of the same signification to wit touching or handling Not to urge that this cannot accord with that which follows where he saith that these things were set up after the commandments and doctrines of men it being evident that the prohibitions in the Mosaique Law were made by the authority not of men but of GOD so as if the Seducers had press'd no other thing it had been harsh that I may not say false to accuse them of making ordinances after the doctrines of men and they would without doubt have answer'd that they were founded upon the commandment of GOD. In fine the Apostle's saying that the things an abstinence from which the Seducers ordered were all such as did perish in the using doth subvert this exposition and evidently shew that the things forbidden by those false Teachers were only meat and drink and not dead bodies or other substances the touching whereof was prohibited by the Law For since the things he speaks of are consumed are destroyed and do all perish by the using and on the other hand it is most evident that the things which the Jews were forbid to touch are not at all of that nature that is such as perish in the using it must of necessity be concluded that it is not of them S. Paul speaks but of those only that serve for the food of man which are all consum'd by the use that is made of them in eating or drinking the same And in the end we must come back to the interpretation that our Bibles do exhibit which have very rightly rendred this passage in these words Eat not taste not touch not For though the first of these three words does frequently and commonly signifie to touch yet such as understand the Greek doe know that it is sometimes taken for to eat As our Expositors have produced instances of from good and irrefragable Authors Now in these three words thus ranked as they are the Apostle represents unto us by the way both the order of the scrupulous devotions of superstition and the progress of the tyrannie of these Legislators At first they forbid the eating of certain meats that is the using them at your ordinary meals If they win this ground they proceed further and will debarr you even from tasting them At last they possess you with scruple to touch them as if the mere contact of such things were apt to pollute you There is no end in the scruples of superstition nor any measure in it's devotions and observances It heaps them up daily
resurrection with our Saviour He had touched it already in the twelfth verse of the precedent Chapter and 't is from thence he resumes it and reminds us of it here saying If then ye be risen again with CHRIST that is to say since you are risen again with the LORD as I have said and shewed a-fore For the particle if is used here as often else-where by way of illation and concluding not in way of doubting and imports as much as if the Apostle had said since that or seeing that For the rest you plainly see that the Resurrection he speaks of is not that of our bodies which shall not be till the last day but another mystical and spiritual one already accomplished in us by the virtue of our LORD'S resurrection and the efficacy of His Spirit Eph. 2.5.6 He spake of it a-fore at the place we noted and in the Epistle to the Ephesians where he saith that GOD hath quickened us together with CHRIST and raised us up together and made us sit together in heavenly places in Him He explains us the mysterie of it else-where in these words Rom. 6. We are saith he buried with Him by Baptisme into His death that as CHRIST is raised from the dead by the glory of the Father so we in like manner should walk in newness of life Every resurrection presupposeth a death preceding For to rise again is nothing else but for one to be restored to life who before was dead Now the estate that men are in under the dominion of sin the Scripture calleth Death because therein they have no sense nor motion in respect of piety and sanctity no more than the dead that rest in the grave have any for the actions of this life Eph. 2.1 Ye were dead in your sins and offences saith the Apostle to the Ephesians speaking of the time of their ignorance Whence is that which our Saviour saith in the Gospel Let the dead bury their dead and which St. Paul sayes 1 Tim. 5.6 the widow that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth When therefore by the efficacy of the vocation of the Spirit and Gospel of the LORD a man comes to pass out of this miserable condition into the estate of grace receiving the light of Faith into his understanding and Charity and Sanctification into his heart the Scripture to express this wonderful change saith that he is risen again This is precisely the resurrection that St. Paul intendeth in this place He saith that we are risen again with CHRIST First because this blessed change that 's brought to pass in us by His grace is like that change which betided Him when from the grave where He had lain for the space of three daies He was raised unto life by virtue from on high For as He then received the faculties of moving and sensation of which He was deprived in the Sepulchre so we in our regeneration do receive a spirit and a principle of life which we had not before Again as the LORD was restored unto life by the glory of the Father as the Apostle speaks that is by virtue of the exceeding great and glorious power of GOD in like manner are we renew'd and put into the state of grace by the efficacy of the might of GOD and not by the arm of man or the operation of flesh and blood In fine as the LORD upon His rising again did recover not simply that life which He laid down in His dying but another much more excellent and glorious a spiritual a coelestial and an immortal life in like manner we resume in our regeneration not the life of the first Adam before sin from which we were fallen and which how excellent so-ever was nevertheless animal and mortal that is capable of being lost as appeared by the issue but another much more exquisite and perfect a life eternal immutable and like that the blessed Angels live Thus you see the Resurrection of the LORD CHRIST is the idea and pattern of ours But I add in the second place that we are said to be risen again with CHRIST because it is in Him and from Him that we have this grace it being evident that Faith which is the first faculty of the new life doth ingraff and incorporate us into JESUS CHRIST and as the vine-branch doth not live but in its stock so man cannot live that divine life but in his Saviour In fine we are risen again with CHRIST because His resurrection is the cause of ours in such sort as if He had not risen from the dead we should have remained lying in the darkness of our spiritual death CHRIST coming forth out of His grave hath opened and enlightened ours and hath administred out of His own store all things necessary to deliver us out of the miserable estate wherein we were and to put us in possession of the life of Heaven His resurrection hath founded our Faith shewing us clearly that He is the Son of GOD and that His Gospel is true His resurrection hath assured our souls giving us full proof that His death did fully satisfie and content the judge of the World It hath strengthened our hopes making us to see by example of our Head that death the dreadfullest of our enemies cannot impede our happiness Hereupon it hath kindled love of GOD and desire of so great glory in our hearts and finally produced in them the principles the habitudes and dispositions of the new life which are necessary for our attaining unto blissful immortality Since therefore JESUS CHRIST in rising again did thereby raise up our life which had been ingulfed in hell and the curse and brought to light the causes of Faith Hope and Charity the principal faculties of that new life we now have it 's evident that we are risen again in Him and with Him From whence that which the Apostle infers upon it doth no less clearly follow to wit that we ought to mind henceforth the things which are on high and seek them with all our affection For the life unto which we are raised up with our LORD is heavenly and not earthly divine and not natural eternal and not corruptible Since therefore every creature employeth all the sense and affection it hath about things suitable to its life who sees not that the faithful are obliged by the honour they have to be risen again with the LORD neither to breath after nor embrace other things but those that are on high in which their new life doth properly consist And such is the example He hath given us For being risen he abode but a very little time here below only so long as the work of our salvation did require and forthwith ascended into Heaven to draw up our thoughts and affections thither untill our bodies also follow one day being raised up thither as His was unto highest glory And this is the second consideration that the Apostle here lays before us to perswade
us unto so just a duty Seek the things which are above where CHRIST saith he sitteth at the right hand of GOD. For it as our LORD sometime said where our treasure is there be our hearts also where should our souls be but in Heaven since it is in that blessed dwelling place that their treasure doth reside JESUS their good their life and their joy in whom is hidden all our felicity In time past under the Mosaical Law the faithful alwaies turned their eyes and thoughts towards the Temple at Jerusalem because it was the abiding place of the pledges of GOD's covenant with them and of the most precious symbols of His presence and glory Judge what our affection and earnestness should be for Heaven which containeth the true Ark of GOD where all the fulness of His Godhead dwelleth not in shadow and figure but really and bodily But there is more yet JESUS CHRIST is our Head and we His members How can we conserve this honour but in keeping close to Him and following Him faithfully without ever separating from Him or withdrawing from that Sanctuary where He dwelleth And indeed He expresly assures us in the Gospel that He willeth we should be where He is and that where the dead body is there also the Eagles gather together so as if we be truly of the number of His Eagles it is not possible but we should take our flight to Heaven since this divine body of our LORD and Saviour is there And hereby you see dear Brethren to note it by the way how distant the doctrine of St. Paul is from that of Rome For whereas the Apostle elevateth our hearts from earth to Heaven Rome brings them down as far as in her lyeth from Heaven to the earth fastning the hearts of her zealots on her material altars and ciboires which she pretends the LORD is enclosed in against the suffrage of the whole Church who hath ever constantly applied these words of the Apostle particularly to the Sacrament of the Eucharist exhorting the faithful when they celebrate it to have their hearts above Sure if JESUS CHRIST be here below as Rome would have it the Apostle does ill to command us to mind the things which are above and worse again in urging for a reason of it that it 's above that JESUS CHRIST resideth If for that the LORD is in Heaven we ought according to the Apostles instruction not to seek any thing on earth how much less I beseech you ought we to seek the LORD Himself there I do not advertise you that this is to be understood of the presence of the humane nature of JESUS CHRIST For you know that He is every where as to the essence and providence of His Divinity And as to the grace of His Spirit and the efficacy and virtue of His will and institutions we readily confess that the same is not confined to the Heavens and doth extend and shew its self wheresoever He pleaseth according to the promise He hath made us to be in the midst of us when we are assembled in His Name But the Apostle doth not barely say that JESUS is in Heaven He adds that He sitteth at the right hand of GOD. Divers Doctors have belaboured themselves much in the explicating of these words and at length there are some that have strangely disguised them as if they signified that our LORD 's humane nature had been invested with all the properties of the Divinity which would be no other thing but that it was transform'd into a Divine nature a conceit which all true Christians have horrour for confessing that the two natures do remain each of them in its integrity having been united in JESUS CHRIST but not blended together nor confused The Apostle if we please to hear him will tell us in two words what it is to sit at the right hand of GOD. For in the 15th Chapter of the first Epist to the Corinthians speaking of the estate to which JESUS CHRIST hath been exalted in the Heavens and in which he shall abide constantly unto the end instead of its being said by the Prophet from whom the expression was taken in Psal 110. that the LORD should fit at the right hand of the Father he saith simply that He shall reign till He hath put all His enemies under His feet an evident sign that this sitting at the right hand of the Father is nothing else but that supreme dominion which hath been given Him over all things and which He doth and shall exercise unto the end of all ages inasmuch as GOD hath made Him LORD Acts 2.36 and CHRIST as St. Peter speaks And this consideration doth again mightily strengthen the holy Apostle's exhortation For since Heaven is the throne on which the Prince of the Universe doth sit and from which He dispenseth and governeth all things at His will there is great reason we should turn our eyes thither-ward and have this Royal Court of our Soveraign in mind night and day to comfort our selves under the trouble that either the iniquity of men and devils or the intemperateness of other creatures does give us and to form our manners and all the parts of our life after the will and by the example of so great and so holy a Monarch Behold the Lesson Beloved Brethren which the Apostle gives us at this time that we seek not low but high things not those of the earth but the things of Heaven since we are risen up with JESVS CHRIST who is sat down on high in Heaven at the right hand of GOD. What would there be in all the World more happy than we if we took up a good and a firm resolution to obey Him and practise the thing He enjoyneth us These fears and these desires and so many other vain passions which trouble our whole life would have no more place in us We elevated far above that which men unprofitably covet or possess or apprehend should with Angels enjoy a Divine contentment From that glorious Heaven where we should be we should despise the vanities and variations of the earth and see its seasons pass on and its elements roul about and its idols perish and its pleasures fleet away without any perturbation being secure that none of its storms can ever reach that high and inaccessible region where our hearts and lives would be We should look upon death without terrour knowing that it could not take any of those things from us which we possess on high We should suffer all the accidents of this life without emotion because they can change no part of the things we have in Heaven The charms also and illusions of the World would touch us as little as its menaces and raging because the fruition of a greater good would render us insensible for lesser ones as the presence of the Sun puts out the shining of the stars Being content with Heaven and its eternity we should covet nothing more and satisfied
with so rich a portion not envy any of the creatures the perfections and happiness they have Our whole life would be a perpetual feastival whereon free from the travail and turmoil of worldlings contemplating in spirit the glory of the Palace of our LORD meditating His promises breathing after His benefits and enjoying them for the present by faith and Hope we should in repose wait for the blessed day of our glorious triumph But alas how far are we from such a felicity This wretched and perishing earth is the sole object of our minds Our souls are no less fastned to it than our bodies It swalloweth up all our thoughts it possesseth our affections it takes up our cares and our labours and hath the use of all our time We have no desires and love but for the false goods which it sheweth us nor fear and horrour but for the evils wherewith it threatneth us As for Heaven and the things it comprehendeth we are so far from seeking them that we not so much as think of them except it be dreamingly or in manner of a divertisement when we are told of them in this place looking on the stately representations which JESUS CHRIST hath drawn us of them as an empty picture fair indeed and pleasing but good for nought saving to feed our eyes with a short and bootless pleasure not attracting nor engaging our desires This is the cause why our whole life is miserable full of griefs and fears of weaknesses of regrets and infelicities The least strokes overturn us the least losses and slightest afflictions bear us down because not being fastned to Heaven the only firm and sure place of the World we fluctuate exposed to the mercy of all that comes against us And as children cannot be appeased when their puppets are taken from them because they have set all their affection on them so are we seized and do take on when we come to lose some of these toyes of the earth There is no way to comfort us because we have fastned our hearts to them And to say truth our condition is worse than other mens they at least are subject but to the evils that either the infirmity of nature or as they call it the inconstancy of fortune do bring with them whereas besides these the bad Christian who is not a Christian but in name is moreover exposed to the persecution of the World so as to say plainly there is nothing more foolish nor more wretched than he who hath part in the temporal sufferings and hardships of true beleevers and none at all in their consolation or blessedness inasmuch as his profession exposes Him to the hatred of the World and his vice excludes him from the Kingdom of GOD. Awake then ye that are worldly and come once out of so dangerous an errour Let not the trumpet of Heaven the voice of our great Apostle have founded now in your ears in vain Do not add this contempt to your other crimes He hath advertised you of your duty He hath declared the reasons that oblige you to it Take heed lest if you shut your ears against JESUS CHRIST who speaks by His mouth you perish in the end with this earth and the things you seek on it How do you not perceive that you shall never find there the happiness you seek Why hath not the experience of so many millions of persons who daily spend themselves in this vain labour taught you that the things of the earth are all of them but vanities and illusions transient figures which promise pleasure honour and contentment but afford none which do not cure the maladies of the body nor of the soul which infinitely toil out those that seek them and never fill the hearts of those that possess them multiplying their desires and their fears inflaming and envenoming their passions instead of extinguishing them which are subject to infinite mutations which men and elements may bereave you of every moment and which considering the short and uncertain duration of the life we lead here below you can enjoy but a very little time supposing that nothing does deprive you of them before death At that time Matt. 16.26 What will it profit a man to have gained the whole world and lose his own soul It is sure a blindness incredible to one that saw it not I do not say that a Christian who hath hopes of the world to come but that even any reasonable man should adhere with so ardent and obstinate a passion unto such wretched and fruitless things We perceive it and confess it and make the bravest discourses in the World upon it and after all that false lustre which we behold in these things hath such a faculty to bewitch our senses that not a person but lets himself be caught thereby But the worst is that besides errour and vanity there 's in it a tendency to eternal damnation For men may not slatter themselves None can serve two Masters nor look on Heaven and earth both together He that seeks the one must of necessity renounce the other it being no more possible to seek than it 's to find at once the things beneath and those which are above Faithful Brethren choose you and take the better part and leaving worldly men to labour in vain after the things of the earth and to seek in it what they shall never find turn you your hearts and eyes towards Heaven as the Apostle calleth you to do There Christian is the felicity you desire There dwelleth rest and joy and immortality and the perfection of both soul and body These are the only things that are truly worthy of your prayers and your pains Seek them and mind them night and day Give your selves no rest till you have found them and do feel the first-fruits and beginnings of them in your hearts Let these thoughts sweeten your sufferings and consolate your losses T is in vain that you threaten me ye people of the World You cannot deprive me of what I possess nor hinder me from finding what I seek since upon the things of Heaven you have no power Whatever you bereave me of the best part of my treasure and the only part that deserves that appellation will still remain entire to me Let the same thought arm us against all tentations Thou Tempter promisest me the things of the earth but I seek those of Heaven which thou canst not dispose of Though I should lose all I have here below even to this flesh its self yet shall I find it again with a thousand-fold increase in Heaven Let this thought again keep us continually busied in the good and worthy actions of piety charity and honesty Let our manners resemble those of the inhabitants of that divine City which wee seek Let the light of their knowledge the ardency of their love the purity of their affections shine forth now betimes in our lives 'T is that to which that new nature JESUS
not to be doubted but that the precipitaâ—ed deaths and ruines of so many great ones whom the world hath seen and still doth see perish with astonishment are for the most part from the same source even the debauches they have been carried into The accidents of particular houses and persons infected with this leaprousie are less marked yet are they nevertheless very remarkable And he that shall look narrowly into them shall find in them admirable examples of the justice of GOD upon these kind of sins and this in special that He commonly takes away His covenant from houses where such disorders reign I might easily let you see like foot-steps of the wrath of GOD upon the covetous whose unrighteousnesse He often punisheth with loss of senses of health of honour and of that very wealth which they love much better than their bodies and their souls themselves not to speak of the infamy which GOD sometimes poureth out upon them and the horrible miseries into which He lets them fall in their persons and in their posterity But I must pass to the other part of this Text and speak a few words of it and conclude For the Apostle after this wrath of GOD which he hath represented as falling from Heaven upon the children of rebellion because of their pollutions and avarices reminds the Colossians that themselves had sometime been in the same condition in which saith he you also walked other-while when ye lived in these things To live in these sins is to have the principles of our life infected with the venome of them To walk in them is to produce the actions of them The one is the power and faculty of life the other is the exercise and function of it For the having in ones self the principles and faculties of life this the Apostle termeth living and by walking he understands a putting forth the actions of the same as appears plainly by his saying elsewhere If we live in the Spirit let us also walk in the Spirit For a man that Gal. 5.25 for instance is asleep does nevertheless live and hath life though he performeth not the actions of it As therefore to live in the Spirit is no other thing but to have the faculties and powers of our nature renewed and as it were new-east and regenerated by the vertue of the Spirit of JESUS CHRIST so on the contrary to live in sin is in like manner to have our understanding and will and the other powers of our nature putrified and corrupted and as it were empoisoned with Adam's sin by the contagion of his flesh And again as those do walk in the Spirit who exercise piety and sanctity and do conduct all the actions and motions of their lives according to the will of the Spirit so they on the contrary walk in sin who follow and fulfill the lusts thereof and employ themselves in no other exercise but the serving it and doing those evil works which naturally flow from the habitudes of it But we have spoken largely heretofore if you remember of this first life of old Adam which the grace of the LORD JESUS hath destroyed and mortified in us We have only to observe in our way that since the exercise of man in his state of nature before grace is to walk in vices and in grossest pollutions it must be an huge error to imagine that he should be able in such a state to produce works either meritorious as some say or preparatory to grace as others do pretend All he doth for this time if you believe the Apostle in the case is not good but to prepare for Hell and merit the wrath of GOD and to have any other opinion of it will be a diminution of the greatnesse of the grace of GOD towards us Let us think then Beloved Brethren on that shameful and miserable estate in which we naturally were and should have continued for ever with the children of rebellion living and walking in sins the wages and fruit whereof could be no other than eternal death if the LORD through His abundant grace had not delivered us from such a condemnation And resenting as we ought the greatness of the benefit He hath conferr'd upon us let us incessantly bless His mercy and goodness Thanks be ever rendred unto thee O holy and merciful LORD for that we being servants of sin thou hast made us free by Thy Son and given us by thy Spirit Rom. 6.17 to obey that express form of doctrine which hath been delivered us by thy servants But as heretofore the vices in which we lived did continually produce all kind of pollutions and sins and henceforth since the cross and grace of our LORD hath dried up this source of impurity let there no more appear any track of them in our manners Let the holyness of that new man whose name and blood we boast of shine forth in all the actions of our lives Above all let us banish thence those two capital and accursed pests of luxury and avarices for which you have heard here before all the mouths of Heaven opened to fulminate against the rebellious that serve them the curses of this world and of that which is to come And if the ignorance of such as lived in error withheld not the wrath of GOD heretofore from coming on them for these two kinds of sins what must those expect now who commit the same crimes in the light of JESUS CHRIST Sure as much as the disobedience and the rebellion of the one is more grievous and more enormous than that of others so much more terrible will be the wrath that shall pour from Heaven upon them than all the judgements of GOD the world hath seen in time past Your ingratitude Christian who so ill brook your name and your disobedience surpasseth in horridnesse all the unbelief both of the first world and of ancient Israel they rejected but the preaching of Noah and the ministry of Mâ—ses whereas you outrage the Gospel of the Son of GOD and as much is in you is make Him a lyer Yet you know how they were punished you know the deluges which the fault of the one brought upon all the earth You know the abysse opened its mouth to swallow up the others alive Heaven and earth and the elements were armed against them If their punishment makes you tremble why do you imitate their faults yea why commit you such as are more hainous and blacker than theirs GOD is good and merciful I acknowledge but to sinners repenting To those that mock at His instruction and make a jest of His menaces He is severe and inexorable And if they amend not they shall know sooner or later to their cost that it 's a fearful thing to fall into His hands But the LORD JESUS whom we invocate please to give us better things so reforming this Church by the power of His Spirit and of His voice that henceforth these crying sins be no more seen
without His death we could not have had the pardon of our sins nor the grace of the Holy Spirit nor the hope of immortality all which are things absolutely necessary to the devesting us of the old man and to the revesting us with the new Whereas now JESUS CHRIST dying on the Cross hath there pierced through and fastned up our old man and by the vertue of His sufferings created and formed in us another new man as different from the old as Heaven from the Earth and Life from Death Therefore the Apostle doth elsewhere conclude from the death of JESUS CHRIST the death of the old man in us and the life of the new 2. Cor. 5.15.17 If one died for all saith he then are all dead and He died for them that they might live henceforth in Him and no more unto themselves If any man be in CHRIST he is a new creature And in another place he saith expresly Rom. 6.6 11. that our old man was crucified with CHRIST that the body of sin might be destroyed and that we being dead with Him might live to GOD in Him Thus the death of CHRIST is at once the destruction of the old man and the production of the new the one was abolish'd by it and the other created This flesh of the mystical Lamb which GOD to day presents us hath slain our flesh and enlivened our spirit and from that Divine blood of His wherein the old man is drown'd is issu'd forth the new created in righteousness and holiness like as heretofore the Israelite was seen to come alive and glorious out of that very gulf of the Red-sea wherein the Egyptian lay sunk and overwhelm'd But oh new wonder as our LORD's flesh and blood is the principle that gives being to our new man so is it his nutriment And as in nature things are sustained by the same means that they were set up so in grace the new man is conserved and increased and strengthened by the same blood of JESUS CHRIST out of which he was formed And that heavenly meat and divine drink which you shall anon receive from the hand of GOD are not given you but for the feeding and perfecting of your new man I go yet further and durst say that this new man whom the Apostle would at this time vest you with is none other rightly considered than the same JESUS CHRIST whom we have put on at Baptism and whom we receive in the Supper propagated if I may so speak and pourtrayed in us by His own vertue who transformeth us into the likeness of His death and resurrection by reason that entring into and dwelling in us He formeth in us a man like Himself that as He did dyeth unto the flesh and with him leaveth in his sepulchre all his old life as an infirm and useless offal and being enlivened with Him and adorned with His light and endowed with an heavenly nature leads thenceforth a spiritual and glorious life Thus you see that the body of CHRIST was crucified and His blood shed and that the one and the other are given us in the Supper to devest us of the old man and vest us with the new This is the end and fruit of all that mysterie unto the participation whereof you are this day called Make account then that the best preparation you can bring unto it is a serious meditating of what the Apostle doth here inform us He exhorted the Colossians afore to mortifie the vices of their flesh and all the infamous passions of that Pagan life they had sometime led in the darkness of their ignorance as fornication covetousness anger evil speaking impurity of language and lying Now to cut up these and other like vices by the root and to comprise all the parts of sanctification in few words he commandeth us to put off the old man with his deeds c. There are others that take these words for a reason of his precedent exhortation drawn from that estate which JESUS CHRIST had put them into by Baptism as if his meaning were that they are obliged to renounce the vices he had been forbidding them since in their Baptism they did put off the old man on which these vices depend and of which they make up a part and put on the new which is contrary to them and incompatible with them Whether you understand it thus or take the text simply for a prosecution of the precedent command shewing us that for the due execution of it we must perform what is here added all amounteth to well-nigh the same sense And for the right comprehending of it we will treat if GOD permit of the three points which offer themselves in the Apostle's words first of the old man which we must put off secondly of the new which we must put on and the form it consisteth in to wit a renewing in knowledge after the image of Him who created it and in fine of that indifferency of nations and ceremonies and conditions which the Apostle affirmeth in this matter requiring nothing in reference to it but CHRIST who is the all of it and in all May it please GOD so to inlighten our understandings for the right discerning of this saving truth and touch our hearts to love and practise it effectually sanctifying us by the vertue of His word and precious Sacrament that we may all go out hence new men conformed in purity and charity and every vertue to that LORD JESUS in whose name and communion we by His grace do glory The Scripture sets before us the person of Adam and of JESUS CHRIST as two different stocks of mankind or as it were two opposite heads or principles of this nature which we call humane They have this in common that both the one and the other hath a great number of children which are issued from them and do depend upon them and that each of them doth communicate to his own his being his form his life and his condition imprinting his image on them which every of them beareth according to the quality of his extraction They differ or to say better are opposite in that the one is earthy the other heavenly the one hath a carnal vicious infirm nature full of ignorance and error and subject to death and the curse The other hath a spiritual holy nature full of light and wisdom acceptable unto GOD immortal and inheriting eternity The one propagateth in his children sin and death The other communicates to his righteousness sanctity and life The one transmits his nature by a carnal generation the other imparteth his to his descendents by a spiritual generation and such an one as hath nothing in common with flesh and blood The nature of the one is deprav'd by the empoisoned breath of the old Serpent which creepeth on the ground and liveth on the dust thereof That of the other hath been formed and conserved by the Eternal and coelestial Spirit It 's for these reasons that
would have place in him but from the time he had put on the habit of Charity and could not hinder but that he might have transgressed divers waies before Since then the law justifyeth none but those that never violated it at any time what-ever it is manifest that though a Christian should never violate the law after he hath Charity yet could he not be justified by his works nor would he be exempted from needing the grace of GOD for the remission of the sins he committed before he had Charity But where grace is Rom. 11.6 there justification by works cannot have place according to St. Paul's saying in the Epistle to the Romans If it be by grace it is no more by works Otherwise grace is no more grace but if it be by works it is no more by grace Otherwise work is no more work But I add in the second place that what they do suppose to wit that he that hath Charity does perfectly fulfill the law and so as never to fail so much as in one point that this I say moreover is evidently false and contrary unto experience and unto Scripture Unto experience for who but daily sees and perceives how often how many waies those very men among the faithful do offend who have greatest degrees of Charity 1 Joh. 1. Unto Scripture for it plainly telleth us in divers places that if we say they are the words of an Apostle we have no sin we lye and the truth is not in us True it is that Charity doth not cause us to offend nay such offending is on the contrary a deviation and a departure from Charity However I affirm it is no impossibility but that a man that hath true Charity may sometime falter in it as you see it often comes to pass in all habits he that 's endowed with them doth some actions not very consonant unto them A good Archer for instance doth not alwaies hit the white and a good Advocate doth not alwaies plead exactly well It befalls the best Writers and the exquisitest Painters and the most accomplished Politicians to commit errors now and then in the matters of their profession And it was said long since of the excellentest and most admired piece of heathen Poetry that there are passages in it at which the author slept from whence others have deriv'd the priviledge that in a prolix work they may sometimes forget themselves The same event attends the habitudes of moral vertues for neither do these so absolutely fill up the souls of men but that actions contrary to them do sometimes escape those who have obtained them to an hiâ—â— degree as experience shews and Philosophers have expresly noted Therefore neither are faults incompatible with the habit of Charity as we possesse it here beneath Only it with-holdeth such as are truly endowed with it from committing them often and when they are overtaken it eftsoons toucheth them with regret at it and moves them to repent of what they have committed Since then that to be justified by works a man must present such one 's unto GOD as have no way any need of pardon it is still evident that Charity how accomplished soever we may have it here below yet is not capable of justisying us before GOD. If our adversaries will be obstinate and maintain that Charity is exempted from all sin I will grant it them of that Charity which reigneth on high in the Heavens being kindled Aug. Ep. 29. ad Hieron and kept up by the vision of the glorious face of GOD but I will say with St. Augustine that no man hath such a Charity upon earth ours here is but begun and impersectly formed Yet the Law requireth of us a Charity full and entire and perfect in every particular Surely then that which we for present have is not able to satisfie the Law nor by consequence justifie us But others conceive that by this perfection which Charity is the bond of the integrity and unity of the Church is to be understood for that the perfection of bodies doth properly consist in the collection and colligation of the parts whereof they are compos'd those that want any one of them being not in a condition to be called perfect These authors therefore make account that Charity is here stil'd the bond of perfection because 't is it that joyneth and bindeth all the faithful together by means of the mutual love they bear to one another For my part Dear Brethren I think we must joyn together these two expositions and reduce them to one for this end taking the Apostle's words the bond of perfection as simply importing that Charity is a perfect bond by an Hebraism very frequent through the whole Scripture as when 't is said a man of sin or a man of peace to signifie a sinful man Rom. â— 26 or one that 's peaceable or pacifick affections of infamy for infamous affections and so in a multitude of other places Here then in like manner the Apostle says a bond of perfection instead of a perfect bond an exquisite bond capable of binding up in perfection both all Christian Vertues in every faithful soul and all the faithful in the Church with one another For as concerning Vertues Charity binds them together both by that common principle whence it causeth them to spring to wit love of our neighbour and by that common end unto which it directeth them namely his benefit and edification It gathers up and puts all of them together in its bosome not leaving one out of its enclosure because they are all necessary for it mercy to comfort those whom it loves benignity to succour them humility to win them gentlenesse to please them patience to conserve them and in fine all the rest to acquit it self of those duties it would do them And as for the faithful who knows not that Charity is the perfect bond of their union The considerations of blood of state of interest and of pleasure do sometimes bind other men together but it is with a great deal of imperfection these unsure bonds being daily broken and so badly compacting the persons they inclose that they are soon separated and do sometimes even fall foul with and rend one another But Charity is in very deed a perfect bond that uniteth those whom it ties together so close and with such firmnesse as neither the accidents of fortâ—ne as they call them nor the mutations of the earth nor death it self which ruines all other unions and conjunctions in the World can loosen them or separate them from one another It was this sacred bond that heretofore made all the beleevers at Jerusalem to be of one heart and of one soul It 's a bond Acts 4.32 that all the force of men and elements can neither break nor untye a bond stronger than death and the grave as the mystical Spouse sings in that excellent Song It doth not only joyn the souls of the
spirit and knit together by one and the same Faith Hope and Charity No one hath part in the Kingdom of Heaven who lives not in the communion of this body Sure then it 's one of our greatest concernments to maintain peace among our selves and to put it as the Apostle gives us order in the highest place of our hearts that it may govern with supremacy all our thoughts all our motions and sentiments For there are no natural bodies but their members do conspire and live with one another in a perpetual and inviolable peace The societies of States and Families which are bodies but of another kind namely political and oeconomical are governed in the same manner their primary and most sacred law is that all the orders and persons of which they are compos'd have peace with one another Now if this hath place both in nature and in the societies of mankind how much more ought it to be observ'd in the Church which is a divine a coelestial and supernatural body Our own interest doth naturally require it For as war doth weaken and ruine the States into which it thrusts its self and whose members it divideth so on the contrary Peace establisheth fortifieth and conserves them according to that saying of our Saviour Matt. 12 2◠Every kingdom divided against its self shall be brought to nought and every City or house divided against it's self shall not stand The Apostle addeth in the close and be ye thankful which some referr to the same scope that the rest of the Text hath as if he intended that those thanks we owe to GOD for the free favour He hath shewed us in receiving us unto peace with Him do also evidently oblige us to maintain peace with our brethren And I acknowledge the argumentation is good and pertinent Yet it is better to take this clause for an exhortation he maketh us in general to be thankful towards GOD and towards men For as ingratitude is one of the blackest and most detestable vices expresly enrolled by the Apostle among the marks of those wretched times whose extreme corruption he foretells in the second Epistle to Timothy so is it sure that gratitude 2 Tim. 3.2 or thankfulness is a vertue most necessary of any and in my opinion he went not very wide from the truth who called it the mother of all other vertues Cicers It enkindleth piety in our hearts raiseth up the love of GOD and of His CHRIST and carrieth us to serve and obey Him and by consequence to exercise all honesty and vertue It is certain that upon this account no man sins without ingratitude Add hereto that thankfulnesse is the source of all the services and duties we persorm to our Princes to our Countrey to our Parents to our Superiors and all that have obliged us offices as you know that have an huge extent in 〈…〉 it's with a great deal of reason that the Apostle 〈…〉 give us charge also touching Thackfulnesse Dear Brethren These are the three Vertues which he tells us of in this Text. Let us not neglect any one of them But embrace them all three and deck our lives internally and externally with them In the first place above all let us put on Charity as the soul of Christianity the perfect bond of your union the mark of GOD's children the abridgement of all our duties and the mother of all Vertues Having it you have all and without it you have nothing Without it all the profession you make of the Gospel your prayers your religion and your services are but an empty noise a sounding brass 1 Cor. 13.1 as the Apostle speaks and a tinkling cymbal Because the Israelites wanted this GOD had all their devotions and all their sacrifices in abomination How much more will He reject yours if you have the impudence to present Him any without Charity Now that His Son JESUS hath so magnifically discovered to you the necessity and excellency of it For what can you alledge any longer for excusing your selves from this duty Nature it self verily sufficiently obliged you afore to love your neighbours since that they are your brethren even after the flesh issued from the same Adam and the same Noah animated by the same Spirit clothed with the same body born and bred upon the same earth and if you devest your selves of all the difference that vanity and opinion hath created you will see that in truth there is none at all between you and them You are subject to the same accidents they are and the death that at last brings them down will no more spare you than it does them Having so strict a conjunction with them you ought to look upon them as your other selves and love them as your neer relations and not account any thing that betides them forein or indifferent The Heathen who knew no more had the understanding to draw this conclusion from it But the Cross of our LORD and Saviour hath discovered to us other reasons of Charity that are much more excellent and much more pressing For He so loved men that He died to save them Christian how can you hate or despise persons whom your Master hath so much loved and esteem'd upon whom you see His blood whereby they have been wash'd and purified together with your selves His Spirit with which they have been sealed as well as you The first-fruits and earnests of that heavenly inheritance unto which they and you are called to live eternally together in the same It 's by that they are to be considered and not by what they are upon this earth which with the whole heap of all its pomps and riches and nobility and honours and other pieces of vanity is but a figure that passeth away and perisheth If your neighbour hath nothing on the earth if he be despised and accounted the filth and off-scouring of the world as the Apostle speaks remember that he hath his share in Heaven that he is an heir of this eternal Kingdom the child of GOD and brother of JESUS CHRIST Let this dignity of his which is so high and so precious in the sight of GOD and His Angels induce you to love him to tender him and apply your self to him let it mitigate your resentments if he hath offended you let it stretch for your hands to a ready communicating of the succour of your alms of your consolations and of your good offices if any necessity of his does call for them For such is the nature of true Charity it loves not in word and with the tongue but indeed and in truth Let ours then abound in alms and in beneficence unto the poor in consolations of and in good offices to the afflicted Let it be firm and constant Let not our brethrens ill successes no nor their offences if it befall them to do us any be ever able to break this sacred bond of perfectnesse which spiritually joyneth us and them together in our
the LORD JESUS giving thanks by Him unto our GOD and Father DEAR Brethren The love that the LORD JESUS hath born us is so great and the benefits He hath conferr'd upon us are so various and so precious that we are evidently obliged to give our selves entirely to Him and we cannot substract from Him without ingratitude any part of what we are or have He hath laid down His life for us It is just therefore that we again do consecrate ours unto Him He hath redeemed us at the price of His blood and by this admirable ransom deliver'd from death and hell not only our Souls but also our Bodies and our whole Nature We are therefore wholly His and have no more any other Master but Him neither is there any justice in the world but will adjudge Him the propriety and possession of what costeth Him so dear But though of right we be his Vassals yet it hath pleas'd His love that we should belong to Him under another much more glorious title For He hath made us His brethren having obtained of His Father that He should adopt us for His children and accumulated this grace with all the highest favours that creatures can be exalted to I mean He hath made us partakers of His inheritance and communicated to us His Nature and His Spirit and crowned us with His immortality and with His glory Though he had not shed His Blood for us as He did who seeth not but that this His great and divine liberality should have purchas'd Him all the life and being and motion we can have and that to divert any part of it from His service would be a robbing of Him and a bereaving Him with abominable Sacriledge of a thing belonging to Him so legitimatly and for many so just and weighty reasons If we be not the most unjust and ingrateful persons in the world we ought all to have such sentiments and consequently look upon our nature and our life as things no longer ours but JESUS CHRIST's and dispose of them not after our own phansie and for our own interest but at His pleasure and for His glory And as you see that the servants of a Prince above all those whom he hath particularly obliged and favoured do set up his arms through all their houses and adorn their Halls and Chambers with his Picture and have his praises alwayes in their mouth and fill up their whole life with his name and glory so should we do to JESUS CHRIST and with so much the more zeal for that He is a LORD infinitely more rich more clement more liberal and more beneficent than any Monarch of the Earth Let our Souls and Bodies therefore bear His badges let His glory appear exalted in all our actions let the words of our mouths be dedicated to Him and our whole lives full of His Name breathing throughout nothing but His honour and service without ever swerving from His Will from His interests This Beloved Brethren is the Lesson which the Apostle S. Paul now gives us in the words that you have heard And whatever ye do saith he whether in word or work do it all in the name of the LORD JESVS giving thanks by Him unto our GOD and Father By these words he concludeth that excellent exhortation which he makes to all Christians in general of what sex or age or condition soever He began it at the first Verse of this Chapter and continues it on to our Text pointing out in it briefly but divinely as you have heard in the precedent exercises our principal duties on one hand the mortifying of the flesh with its lusts as fornication covetousness wrath and the like on the other hand the studying and exercising of all Christian vertues as humility kindness patience gentleness charity and peace To all these he addeth our knowing and continual meditating of the Word of GOD with Psalms and spiritual Hymns And here it was we made stay in our last action upon this Subject Now that he might not stand to treat severally of all a Christians other duties which would be prolix and even infinite and a Discourse of too great extent for an Epistle before he passeth to that particular exhortation which he addresseth in the following Verses to some certain ranks of believers as to Married persons to Fathers to Children to Servants and Masters he closeth up his first matter with the precept he here gives us A precept verily excellent and well worthy to Crown his exhortation since it comprehends in few words all the duties of a Christian both those which the Apostle hath expresly pointed at and those which his design of brevity caused him to pass over in silence without speaking of them by name To the end we may give you an exposition of it we will endeavour by the grace of our LORD to explain one after another the two parts that offer themselves in it First that whatever we do either in word or work we do it all in the name of the LORD JESVS Secondly that we give thanks by Him to our GOD and Father When the Apostle pronounceth that all we do in work or word be done in the name of the LORD JESVS he clearly gives Him our whole life For these two sorts of things which he subjecteth unto Him words and works do comprehend all the other parts of our life it being evident that nothing issues from us but what may be referred to the one or the other of these two kinds They are either words or works Words are the fruits of our mouths works are the effects or actions of our other parts and faculties I acknowledge that beside this our spirit also does act within us when it knows or considers things and desireth or rejecteth them But besides that these internal actions might be put into the rank of our works by extending the word a little beyond its ordinary signification as in effect some interpreters do give it such a meaning here beside this I say it is evident that most of the conceptions and affections and resolutions of the Soul do refer to words and external works as being the principles and motives of them For it is not possible that our words and works should be in the name of our LORD and Saviour except our understandings and wills do so address them and it 's properly this action of the Soul the Apostle signifies when he orders that we do in the name of CHRIST all we do The tongue indeed pronounceth the words and the hands and other parts of our bodies do execute those actions of ours which are called works But it 's the Spirit that moves them all and that directeth and guideth on their functions to that end or design it hath proposed to its self and draws them from such motives as it hath conceiv'd and form'd within its self And it is properly upon this that the difference of mens actions doth depend It 's this Character that gives them
he never setting about them but when he may do them in the name of CHRIST For though the nature of them be indifferent the usage of them is not so but must be governed by the good and the evil that may thence redound either to or against the glory of GOD and the edification of men as the Apostle sayes elsewhere All things are lawful for me but all things are not expedient All things are lawful for me but all things edifie not Whence you see 1 Cor. â—0 2â— how vain the pretext of those is who excuse the excess of their habits of their tables and of their houses by the liberty which they pretend the LORD hath left them to clothe and feed and lodge themselves as they think good alledging that He hath not forbidden them Velvet or Silks or Gold or Silver or precious Stones or Tapistry or any sort of Furniture nor excluded from their Tables any kind of Meats or Services they being taken with thanksgiving I grant the use of these things to speak in general is free they all being created of GOD for man Yet this hinders not but each of you ought to observe certain rules about them and this one in particular namely that ye consider whether the thing be such as ye may do it in the name of JESUS CHRIST whether the money you waste in it might not be better employed in the service of His poor or of His Sanctuary whether your making men believe that you are vain glorious or intemperate or voluptuous by clothing or lodging or treating your selves more richly and more magnificently than beseems your condition whether this opinion I say which you give your Neighbours of you does not scandalize them and be not prejudicial unto the name and interests of our Saviour Hence again appears how inexcusable they are that marry with persons of a contrary Religion I confess that Marriage is honourable and that it is not prohibited to any But this action as well as all a Christians others must be done in the name of the LORD JESVS 1 Cor. 7.9 and so much the rather for that it is more important and continues as long as our lives Wherefore the Apostle doth expresly modifie the liberty he gives the believing widow by this exception She is at liberty saith he to marry again only so as it be in the LORD Now judge if it be a marrying in the LORD when you make alliance with a person allienate from your communion who will be a snare to pervert you from it will pluck the name of CHRIST out of your house and consecrate your blood to error and be so far from helping you in the exercises of your piety that the person will disturb them In fine this saying of the Apostle's shews us also what we are to think of Dances and Balls and such other vain pomps of the world If you can truly say that it is in the name of CHRIST you Masque and Dance I will accord that you fail not of your duty in it But if it be clear and manifestly known as it is that the LORD JESUS hath no part in these follies that in them His name is blasphem'd rather than glorified that His Spirit breaths not in them but indeed the Spirit of Satan and the world that scandal is given in them but no edification received confess it a thing contrary to your duty Add not impudence to guilt acknowledge if you be a Christian that it 's a violation of the Apostle's order to participate in such things which neither are nor can be done in the name of our LORD JESUS CHRIST I advertise you particularly of it because we are entring on the season in which the world is won't to give it self the greatest licence for such debauches Dear Brethren let not it's ill examples seduce you Let not the custome of the age nor the pleasing of men induce you to forget the respect you owe to the Apostles voice and the Churches consolation Seek your joys in the service of your LORD and Saviour and in the meditation and expressing of His life and having always before your eyes the love He beareth you the death He suffered for you and the Heaven to which He calleth you love Him with all your heart and whatever you do whether in word or work do it all in the name of this sweet and merciful Saviour rendring thanks by Him to our GOD and Father unto His glory and the edification of your Neighbours and your own Salvation Amen THE FORTY THIRD SERMON ON COLOSSIANS CHAP. III. VER XVIII XIX Verse XVIII VVives be subject unto your own Husbands as is meet in the LORD XIX Husbands love your VVives and be not bitter against them DEAR Brethren As man is subject to a twofold consideration first in regard of his nature simply as he is a reasonable creature secondly in reference to his condition or the rank he holds in humane society that is as either a Master or a Servant a Magistrate or a Subject or the like so he is obliged according to these two different respects to two divers sorts of duties those of the first sort are general and common universally to all men the others of the second do relate but to some certain order of persons only I place in the first rank piety towards GOD honesty temperance justice and charity and such other vertues for which neither sex nor age nor condition doth dispense with any because every man whatever he is otherwayes being a reasonable creature is bound upon that account to practice all those vertues as a perfection and ornament meet for such a nature I reckon among the duties of the second sort the service that bondmen owe their masters the obedience of children to their fathers the dependance of wives in relation to their husbands and the like which pertain as you see only to persons in such conditions and not to all men generally This difference hath produc'd in the Schools of Heathen Sages the distinguishing of active Philosophy into divers parts the first whereof which they call Moral Philosophy or the Ethiques do's explain that first sort of common and general duties the others do treat of the second to wit the Economicks which regulate and form the several different conditions that constitute a family namely husband and wife parents and children master and servants and the Politicks whose task is to expound the devoirs of all the divers orders that compose an Estate as the Prince and the Subject the Magistrate and the Citizen men of the long Robe and of the Sword and the like The Apostles of our LORD in those writings which they have left us where they have unfolded to us the Divine Philosophy of their Master have also followed the same order though their difference otherwayes be very great For they set before us in like manner some general duties which oblige all Christians of what quality soever and in whatever
That a Church which hath received any grace from GOD which tendeth to edification should not envy it to others but affectionately communicate unto them all that may serve for their instruction And this communion ought to have place particularly between neighbouring Churches as those of Coloss and of Laodicea were And it 's upon this example and upon the reason on which it depends that the uniting of the Churches of the same Provinces and resorts in the same Classes and Synods is founded a thing instituted and observed from the beginning of Christianity down to our days and still very profitably practised and kept up among us by the goodness of GOD. This mutual communication of neighbouring Churches appears yet further in that the Apostle orders the Colossians in the third place to read also the letter from Laodicea after their imparting to them his When this Epistle saith he hath been read among you cause that it be also read in the Church of the Laodiceans and read ye also that which came or was written from Laodicea It is demanded what this second Epistle whereof he speaks should be Many Theologues of the communion of Rome do answer that it was a letter which St. Paul wrote to the faithful of Laodicea at the same time he wrote this to the Colossians whence they conclude that this piece being lost as well as divers other writings of Prophets and Apostles it cannot be pretended that the Canon of holy Writ is perfect and doth contain all things necessary unto our salvation Others again from thence infer that it is the Church which gives the Scriptures the authority they have among Christians since of the Epistles of St. Paul it hath left this in particular out of the Canon of Divine Books and retained only those fourteen which are in our hands But there is nothing found nor solid in their arguing which concludes ill and presupposeth what is false For suppose the Apostle had written an Epistle to the Laodiceans and that it were lost as I would not avouch that St. Paul and his fellow-brethren the Apostles never wrote any thing to any particular person or to any Church but what is arrived down to us suppose it I say who told them that this loss makes the Canon of our Scriptures defective Who told them that there was in that letter some Article of Faith necessary unto our salvation which is not found in the other parts of the Bible we now have Again who taught them thence to conclude that it is the Church who authorizeth the Divine Books I grant she is the keeper and depositary of them as the Synagogue sometime was of the Books of the Old Testament according to the Apostle's saying that unto them were committed the Oracles of GOD and that it belongs to her charge to preserve them and read them and recommend them to every one But that it is the authority of her voice and testimony which gives them the price and value they have either in themselves or in reference to faithful souls this in my opinion cannot be said without outraging the Majesty of their Author by making the divinity of the instruments of His wisdom to depend upon the phantasie of men As the Romans heretofore submitted the worship and divinity of their Gods unto the Decrees of their Senate They were not Gods except it so pleased men If it were certain that the Apostle had written an Epistle to the Laodiceans and put it in the hands of the Church it should be concluded not that she hath the power to authorize what Divine Books she pleaseth but rather that she hath hugely failed of her duty in having so ill kept an heavenly jewel But the worst yet is that all they talk about this pretended Epistle of St. Paul to the Laodiceans is a vain conceit and hath no other foundation but their imagination I well know that in our Fathers days * Faber Stapulensis a Learned man did publish one under that name having found it in three or four Libraries But the piece is so gross and so ridiculous that it hath been rejected equally on all hands as the work of an impostour who abusing his leisure forged this trifle and shamelesly fathered it upon St. Paul Some of the Ancients do also make mention of a Script bearing the same name whether it were different from this or did resemble it But the Ancients that speak of it do all unanimously decry it as an Apocryphal Book and issued out of an heretical Shop and framed at pleasure after St. Paul's death Tertuld 5. c. 1â— contra Marcion And in truth one of the first Writers of the Latine Church do's declare that a famous Heresiarch named Marcion had changed the Title of the Epistle of St Paul to the Ephesians and instead of this name which it alwayes bore in the Church impudently called it the Epistle to the Laodiceans and read we do Heres 43. contiâ— Marcion in the Epistle to the Ephesians those words which Epiphanius reporteth to have been cited by Marcion out of the Epistle to the Laodiceans This hath given * Gretius a certain Writer occasion to fancy that St. Paul indeed sent and addressed the same Epistle to the Laodiceans which at the same time he wrote to the Ephesians these two Churches having had need of the same remedies and that its this Epistle the Apostle means in this place willing the Colossians to take a copy of it and read it in their Assembly All this would pass if it were at all grounded but it is too much considence or credulity to think to perswade it us upon the credit of Marcion the most impudent impostor that ever troubled the Church and one that in particular played with the Books of the New Testament contracting them maiming them and changing themat his pleasure with an infernal license Besides this supposition accordeth not with St. Paul's words For he doth not all say as these persons pretend that the Epistle in question was written to the Laodiceans True it is the Latine Interpreter hath rendred it the Epistle of the Laodiceans but this would signifie as every one seeth that the Laodiceans had wrote it and not that they had receiv'd it either from the Apostle or from any other Yet though the Latine would suffer this rude gloss it is clear the original cannot be made to bear it without undertaking as these new Doctours do truly with presumption enough to change the words of it which we find uniform in the Greek Copies and which the Ancients observed there above twelve hundred years ago For they clearly import as our Bibles have faithfully translated and represented that this Epistle had been written or sent from Laodicea so that we must necessarily ununderstand them with the ancient Greek Fathers of an Epistle written not to the Laodiceans but from their City Now the Apostle telling us no more of it either here or elsewhere we need not wonder that