that pull'd out by thy powerfull Redeemer how can it now hurt thee It may possibly hiss at but it cannot bite thee Look upon the Serpent lifted up for thee on the Cross and this Serpent's sting if it has any to wound it can have none to kill thee If thy Saviour has not quite destroy'd this thine enemy at least he has brought it under and made it subject like the Gibeonites if not banished 't is enslaved and made now instrumental to Christ's Kingdom Loose thou then the bands of thine iniquity and those of death which Christ has broken shall no more be able to hold thee than they could doe him Death in its most affrighting shapes to thee is but a scare-crow 't is but the shadow of death while God is with thee Nay 't is but an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a going out a departing in peace to a Holy Simeon 'T was no more between God and Moses but go up and dye as 't was said to another Prophet up and eat Ever since our Lord has swallow'd death up in victory our Tombs become Death's Graves more than ours Sepulchrum non jam mortuum sed mortem devorat says a Father Our Bodies are not lost in the Earth but laid up to be improved like Porcellane-dishes which the ground does not consume but refine In the Transfiguration that body of Moses which was hid in the valley of Moab appeared glorious in the Mount of Tabor And though we appear now like Aaron's dry rod yet that dry rod shall at last bud and bring forth fruit unto glory The Israelites garments indeed in the Wilderness waxed not worse for wearing but though our Bodies which are the garments of our Souls doe so and are rent and torn by afflictions and death yet God can and will mend them Nay when these Temples of the Holy Ghost we carry about us are dissolved he will so build them up that as it was said of the first and second Jewish Temples Haggai 2. 9. the glory of our latter houses shall be greater than that of the former Diruta stante Major Troja fuit God will bless us as he did Job more at our latter end than at our beginning and Exalt us as he did Christ by our Sufferings If with him we drink of the brook in the way tast of his Cup he will lift up our heads too We shall be like him as now He is A golden Head and Members of Clay suit not well together This is our great comfort that Christ is risen for if the Head be above water the Body is safe Joseph is alive said Jacob and that news revived the drooping Patriarch So when we hear that Christ our elder Brother the first-begotten from the dead is alive too let us take courage go and find him out seek him not in the Grave He is not there he is risen and why should we seek the living among the dead but in Heaven where he now is and set our affections on things above and not on things below It befits us not to lye in our Beds of ease and pleasure to lye sleeping there when Christ is up such a spiritual Lethargy does not suit with a Resurrection How are we conformable to Him if when He is risen up we remain still in the Grave of our Corruptions How are we Limbs of his Body if while He hath perfect dominion over death death hath dominion over us if while he is alive and glorious we lye rotting in the dust of death O let us then rouse our selves up this day with the Lion of the Tribe of Judah Let this be our Resurrection-day too and that it may be so let it be our Passion-day also as it is our Lord's For as he rose this day for us so does he now this day dye for us too And although St. Paul tells us Rom. 6. 9. That Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more and that death hath no more dominion over him or to speak in the Language of the Text that he be not holden of it yet in regard of the constant vertue and benefit of his Death and Passion he may be said to dye daily for us who receive him worthily in the Blessed Sacrament Let me then bespeak you in the words of St. Thomas utter'd upon another occasion Joh. 11. 16. Let us also go and dye with him Dye with him unto sin that we may live unto God through him Rom. 6. 9 10. Let us feed on him by Faith flock like true Eagles to his Holy Carcass and eat thereof that we may live This is the way to be raised to glory Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my bloud hath Eternal life is even now in possession of it and I will raise him up at the last day says Christ himself Joh. 6. 54. The very touch of the Prophet Elias's bones Ecclesiasticus 48. 5. could raise up a dead Man to a Temporal and shall not the sense and application of Christ crucified be able to quicken us who are dead in trespasses and sins to a spiritual and immortal Life O let us then be planted with him in the likeness of his Death that we may be also in the likeness of his Resurrection Rom. 6. 5. Now the God of peace that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus that great Shepherd of the Sheep through the bloud of the Everlasting Covenant make you perfect in every good work to doe his Will working in you that which is well-pleasing in his sight through Jesus Christ To whom with the Father c. Amen Soli Deo gloria in aeternum A SERMON Preached on Whit-sunday JOHN XVI 7. Nevertheless I tell you the truth it is expedient for you that I go away for if I go not away the Comforter will not come unto you but if I depart I will send him unto you WE find the Disciples here in a very sad and disconsolate Condition Christ had told them that He was going his way to Him that sent Him V. 5. and thereupon Sorrow had filled their hearts V. 6. And no marvel for they were to be separated from one who hitherto had been their only comfort and support Had we been under the same circumstances we should no doubt have equally resented that loss They had had the happy advantage of beholding his glorious Miracles wrought by his All-powerfull Voice in the cure of Diseases in the confusion of Devils and the raising of the Dead They had heard those his ravishing Discourses which forc'd his most implacable Enemies in spight of all their prejudice against Him to confess That never Man spake as He did They had been Eye-witnesses of that Eminent Holiness that pure and unspotted Innocence which gave beauty and lustre to all his actions and of that glory too which discovered Him to be the only Son of God full of Grace and Truth And now unless we can suppose them void of all natural affection and
wrought before us How should we be ravished at a second Transfiguration and say with the Apostles who beheld it It is good for us to be here Should Christ ascend up again into Heaven in our sight as he did in that of his disciples and followers should we not need an Angel as they did to check us for our too much gazing And yet let me tell you that such a prospect as that would not be more glorious than of a Christ nailed to his Cross nor yet perhaps so usefull It would rather raise our curiosity than inflame our affections rather amaze and astonish than benefit us The Text therefore gives us a more advantageous one of Him It bids us look on him as pierced and pierced even for us who pierced him It bids us view this Sun of Righteousness more glorious in himself more benign to us in his Setting than in his Rising More beautifull in his Eclipse than in his full Lustre To look unto Jesus the Author and Finisher of our Faith who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross and despised the shame and to consider him who endured such contradiction of sinners against himself This was the aim of all St. Paul's preaching We preach Christ crucified 1 Cor. 1. 23. This the top of his Knowledge I determined not to know any thing among you save Jesus Christ and him crucified 1 Cor. 2. 2. This his only Glory God forbid that I should glory save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ Gal. 6. 14. And here to our joy and comfort may we view him Redeeming us from the curse of the Law Gal. 3. 10. Abolishing in his flesh the Enmity the Law of Commandments Ephes. 2. 14 15. Blotting out the hand-writing of Ordinances that was against us and nailing it to his Cross Col. 2. 14. Reconciling the World to Himself making our peace expiating our offences satisfying the Justice of an offended God repairing our loss and restoring us to a better condition than we had forfeited by our Transgression In a word vanquishing Hell and opening Heaven for us And ought not this to be matter of glorying to us Can any sight be more worthy our beholding Any object more deserve to be lookt on than such a one as this At this time especially when the Church solemnly invites us to this Spectacle When as St. Paul speaks Gal. 3. 1. Jesus Christ is evidently set forth crucified among us This the Text prophetically tells us Christ's crucifiers should doe and indeed All that expect to have their part in the Merit of his Death and Passion must doe that is by a serious and often-repeated Meditation have Christ crucified always before their eyes For we are not to look upon the words of my Text only as a Prophecy but as a necessary Duty obliging us to fix our eyes constantly on this object Christ pierced for us and that we may the better doe it let us take a more particular and exact view of Him and consider Him as pierced both in his Body and in his Soul In every Member of That in every Faculty of This the better to estimate his Sufferings and raise our Devotion and Admiration Consider we then Christ as pierced 1. In his Body Let us behold the Man as Pilate exposed him to the eyes of the Jews all in Bloud all as it were one Wound pierced in every part of his Body His Head torn with thorns his Face bruised with buffetings his Shoulders crusht with the weight of that Cross which he first bare before it bare Him His Back plowed up with Whips his Feet and Hands bored with Nails and his very Heart pierced with the point of the Spear I am not able to paint out those dire Sufferings Christ endured in his Body but must draw a Veil over them and leave them to your own Meditations And yet this is but the least part of what our Lord suffered for us that which our bodily eye can discern All this is but the outward piercing and but as it were skin-deep in comparison of the piercing of his 2. Soul For what is the pain of the Body to that of the Soul And this had its piercing too What Simeon said of the Mother by way of Prophecy That a Sword should go through her Soul Luke 2. 35. was more signally verified of the Son of God The Arrows of the Almighty did not only stick in his Flesh but pierced his very Soul through That Bloud which streamed from him in his Agony was not so much the Bloud of his Body as of his very Soul And 't was this piercing which drew that sad and lamentable complaint from Him Matth. 26. 38. My Soul is exceeding sorrowfull even unto death Surely it was the apprehension of somewhat more horrible than either Pain or Death that made him so heavy and sorrowfull of Soul Evils are wont to crucifie the Mind in the expectation rather than in the suffering It is a double misery both to fear and undergo it God hath mercifully provided this ease for our Souls in the often ignorance of things that happen that they streighten not our Thoughts ere they load our Backs Who of us embraceth not Pain before Perplexity How often doe we groan and cry for a ready dispatch in our lingerings Defiring rather to dye than to feel or fear death and live Yet was our Saviour both terrified and crucified Terrified in the apprehension of Wrath and in the perpession of Death crucified Not only the sorrows of Death but the very pains of Hell came about him and God's dereliction was that which made up the greatest part of those pains Mat. 27. 46. My God my God why hast thou forsaken me was That which most tortured Him Christ's Enemies had now mocked scourged pierced Him so that from head to foot every Member was deformed and dislocated yet He opened not his mouth He is silent and patient at all the violence Man offered him He only complains of the absence of his God He bewails not what He feels but what He misses and could have endured any misery that could not abide to want his God And what a loss think we was this to want the presence and favour of God though but for a moment which where it is perpetual does in the judgment of Divines make up the greatest part of Hell But you will say How could God forsake Christ unless Christ forsook Himself Certainly God and Man were so unchangeably so inseperably combined in Him that so strict an Union could not possibly suffer the least Divulsion or Desertion True indeed And therefore the Godhead at this time denied the Manhood not his Person but his Patronage not his Presence but his Protection Divinity here winks and withdraws it self from Humanity that our Lord might now be bereft of all comfort and favour who took upon Him to sustain the wrath of all Well then might his Soul be heavy unto death
thereof and yet all this still dull and flat till he quickens it with an active Verb 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which he wrought in Christ when he raised him up from the dead An act proper to God the Father who is entitled to it ver 33. and by St. Paul too Gal. 1. 1. Yet so as that he has communicated this Power to his own Son Joh. 10. 17 18. and 5. 21 26. As the Father raiseth up the dead and quickneth them even so the Son quickneth whom he will who had a Power to lay down his life and to take it again to dissolve the Temple of his Body and in three days to raise it up so that Christ here did as much rise as was raised up and this the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in St. Luke imports a Verb of an active signification implying a Power in himself to rise and in that respect a certain argument of his being the co-essential and con-substantial Son of God as the Apostle concludes him hence to be Rom. 1. 4. in spight of all those his adversaries who by denying him this Power prove themselves worse enemies to him than the Jews were who robb'd him of his Life whereas these of his Divinity also as far as in them lyes III. The principal and sole Agent then in this great Work was God the Father and the Son And such an Agent was necessary since the task was so difficult the knot which Death had tied being so hard required no less than a God to unloose it Now by Death here is meant not only a seperation of Soul and Body though that be the most natural import of the word but all those sad things that preceded as so many Prologues to his last Tragedy styled Propassiones All those ingredients in the bitter cup he drank of Such as were Christ's natural apprehensions of the terrors of Death the curse of the Law the load of our Sins upon him and a lively sense of God's wrath due to those Sins which put him into an Agony and made him sweat great drops of bloud and to close up all the bitter pangs of that cruel death he underwent to satisfie God's Justice All which are compar'd here to the Pangs of a Woman in travail from which God at last freed him by raising him up to a life uncapable of pain or sorrow making him forget his former Sufferings as a Woman does her Pains when delivered of her Child Joh. 16. 21. This is implied in the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 But because to loose the Pains seems a hard expression and unloosing properly denoting the untying of some knot and so supposing some chain or cord wherewith Christ was bound and which God dissolved which the following word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 seems to make good some conceive it better to interpret the word Pains by Bonds as the Syriack does calling them Funes Sepulchri those adamantina mortis vincula in the Poet And the rather because the Psalmist promiscuously useth these words Psal. 116. 3. The snares of Death compassed me round about and the pains of Hell gat hold upon me Both of them signifie no more but the power of death those Shackles and Manacles which the Angel of the Covenant struck off from himself and then from us which could no more hold him than the withy bands could Sampson herein a Type of Christ being but as Flax and Tow to him who was the Power of God and though he might suffer himself to be entangled yet could not possibly be holden of them And that 1. In respect of the Truth of God's Word viz. those many Predictions and Types of Christ's Resurrection which else must have been voided The Predictions are many and clear relating to this point That of Esay 53. 8. That Christ should be taken from his prison That of Hosea 6. 2. After two days will he revive us and in the third day he will raise us up and we shall live in his sight see Esay 26. 19. But most expresly that of the Prophet David Psal. 16. 10 11. That his flesh should rest in hope and that God would not suffer his Holy One to see Corruption which Prophecy could not be apply'd to David himself as St. Peter here in the Verses immediately following tells his Auditors because he did see Corruption but only to Christ who did not and who did rise the third day according to the Scriptures Luk. 18. 33. As for those Types too which shadow forth Christ's Resurrection they are many and exactly representative of it As Adam's awaking from sleep a Type of the second Adam's from death Sarah's conceiving when old Isaac's being sacrificed and yet living Gen. 22. 12. An express figure of Christ's Resurrection Heb. 11. 14 17 Joseph's being taken out of the Pit and lifted up out of the Dungeon as Jeremy was too and Daniel out of the Den of the Lions Dan. 6. 23. And more clearly by Christ's own application Jonah's being taken out of the belly of the Whale Mat. 12. 40. All which Types would be meer shadows without their substance and insignificant Types if they had wanted their Anti-types and should not exactly have answer'd them which they could not doe if Christ could have been holden by the pains or cords of death 2. Not possible by reason of that indissoluble tye of Christ's Personal Union so strait that Christ's Body even in the Grave was inseparably united to the Deity which drew it to it For although Death could dissolve his Natural yet not his Personal Union and therefore necessary it was that his Body and Soul should be re-united that so he might become a perfect Man which could not be without his rising 3. Not possible in respect of God's immutable Decree so determining it which being still of force nothing could render ineffectual God had anointed his Son from all Eternity as to be a Prophet and a Priest so a King to accomplish the work of Man's Redemption none of which Offices could be fully executed but upon supposition of his rising from the dead 1. The preaching of the Gospel was to follow that Luk. 24. 47. 2. As was also the preaching of Repentance and Remission of sins through his bloud the Expiation whereof as well as our Justification the not imputing our Sins to us was an effect of his Resurrection Rom. 4. 25. Who was delivered for our Offences and raised again for our Justification God having declared by raising his Son from the dead that he had accepted of his Death as of a sufficient ransome for our Sins For if Christ had remained still under the power of Death his satisfaction could not have been perfect neither could he have applied the Vertue thereof to us And in like manner was Christ's Resurrection our Justification For Christ being our true pledge after he had satisfied for us by his Death returning unto Life gives us a clear Evidence and affords us a
have found out a platform of Government among the fallen Angels who though their Principles be crooked yet being obey'd by Wills as crooked observe an irregular Rule and a perverse Order even in Hell so Sin rules in us too by Principles For there is saith St. Paul a Law of Sin But then 't is such a Law as if it should be Treason for any Subject not to Murther his Natural Prince or Adultery not to Ravish or Blasphemy not to take God's Name in vain 'T is such a Law as if two Anti-Tables should be written which should make it Sin not to break the Commandments Lastly Let the Apostle tell you what Law it is 'T is a Law of the Members warring against the Law of the Mind and not only warring but bringing it into Captivity Rom. 7. 23. Sin herein far exceeding the Author of it For he only aspir'd to be like the Highest but Sin hath made an inversion in the Soul advancing Sense into the Chair of Reason and placing the Beast above the Man And though it may leave us to a natural liberty in moral actions for 't is harsh to think that Justice and Temperance are but guilded Sins yet for actions of Grace it has so glewed and settered the Soul that it cannot possibly mount up to Heaven 2. Next for Death Men have made a Covenant with that saith the Scripture and if Contract be not enough we reade Wisd. 1. v. 14. of a Kingdom of Death so that Christ did not only find us Captives but Captives slain Teneo à primordio homicidam culpam says Tertullian Adam's Throat was our open Sepulchre who in that fatal Apple did not only murther his Children like Saturn but like Thyestes in the Tragedy did eat them After that Transgression there pass'd an Act upon us It is appointed for all Men once to dye Nay it were a degree of happiness to dye but once if nothing remained for punishment for nothing can suffer nothing But we were to be raised to another Death and like drowsie Malefactors that had lain down with their Sentence were to be awakened out of sleep to be put upon the Rack 3. The Scripture almost every-where styles the Devil the Prince of this World His Kingdom had enlarg'd its self from that place about which the Schools dispute to every rebellion and disorder of the Soul where as in a conquer'd Province per cupiditates regnavit saith St. Augustine He reigned by his Proconsul Sins There also making himself the Prince of Darkness by our ignorance and the Prince of the Air by raising Tempests through all the Regions of Man and exercising an universal and absolute Power over him For such was his power in the World when the Saviour of it came into it There was then a general defection from God Satan's Synagogue had in a manner swallowed up God's Church who had but one corner of the World left him and therein for a long time but a moving Tabernacle and when a fix'd habitation but one house wherein a very few to serve him while the Devil's Temples were every-where crowded with Priests and Sacrifices and his Altars smoak'd in all places with Incense so that the Earth and the fulness thereof seem'd now his and he though cast out of Heaven to have reveng'd himself in some sort of God by thus dispossessing him as it were of the Earth Nor was the Devil's power more Universal than 't was Absolute over men's Bodies and over their Souls too Their Bodies he possest and tormented at pleasure insomuch that his very Priests might have receiv'd Death with as much ease as they did his Oracles entring into Men as he did into the Hoggs hurrying them violently into perdition commanding Parents to make their Sons and Daughters pass through the fire to him tearing and bruising those he had got into and casting them sometimes into the water and sometimes into the fire Nor did he tyrannize less over Men's souls than bodies blinding their understanding putting out the light of natural reason in them first corrupting their Judgments and then their Manners from Error in judgment the passage being natural and easie to Error in practice and accordingly St. Paul tells us how vain men became in their imaginations even to worship the Creature instead of the Creator to change the glory of the uncorruptible God into Images made like to corruptible Men and to birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things which made God give them up to all manner of uncleanness as you may reade at large Rom. 1. 21 c. In such slavery had the Devil not only Heathens his own people as I may call them but even the Jews themselves God's chosen people who after so many Miracles of Power and Mercies so many excellent Statutes and Ordinances to direct them in the true manner of his Worship as had not been delivered to any Nation besides did not for all this fall short of the worst of Heathens either in matter of erroneous judgment or vitious practices The profane Sadducee had corrupted all good Manners and the hypocritical Pharisee perverted the Law by his false Glosses and Comments on it so that when our Saviour appeared on Earth an universal deluge of Wickedness had over-spread the face of it And thus all Mankind being the Devil 's by right of Conquest 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 taken by him as it were in War the true import of that word and bound fast to him with his Chains of darkness of gross error and vitiousness 't was high time for the Son of God to come down to rescue miserable Men from these several Captivities which he did three manner of ways 1. By Commutation 2. By Conquest and 3. By way of Ransome or Purchase 1. By Commutation For when we were prisoners to Death by sin God made an exchange delivered his Son over to it for us became our Scape-goat like the Ram substituted in the place of Isaac and as the Apostle speaks tasted death for every man that we might not be devoured and swallowed up by it 2. By Conquest as it referrs to Power and thus our Lord offered violence to Hell snatcht us as brands out of its fire and rescued us as so many preys out of the teeth of the roaring Lion delivering us from the power of darkness and translating us into his kingdom vanquishing death and him that had the power of death the Devil and treading him under our feet And not content with that he spoiled principalities and powers making a shew or as the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 imports an example of them openly and triumph'd over them in himself or in his Cross. 3. By way of Purchase or Ransome as it referrs to Justice Thus Christ made a perfect satisfaction to God by laying down a price for us and paying the very utmost farthing of our debt and so came not only to give us an Example as Socinians
sure Argument that God was fully reconciled and Life purchased for us Which assurance we could not have had if Christ our pledge had still remained under the power of death for as much as his continuance in his payment would ever have argued the imperfection of it The summ of all is this That our Justification was begun in Christ's Death but was perfected by his Resurrection That we have Redemption by his abasement and Application of it by his advancement 3. Again The pacification of our Consciences the confirmation of our Faith and the support of our Hope depended all upon the Exercise of his Regal Office which was mainly to triumph over his and our Enemies the last of them especially Death which he could never be said to have done while he still remained under its Dominion For then he had never ransomed Men from the power of the Grave nor redeemed them from Death but as it followeth in Hosea 13. 14. Death had been his Plague and the Grave his Destruction and so ours too So far should he then have been from swallowing it up in victory or leading captivity captive that himself should have been a slave and a captive to them so far from spoiling Principalities and Powers or making a shew of them openly triumphing over them that the gates of Hell should have prevailed against Himself and consequently against his Church contrary to his express Word and Promise Mat. 16. 18. 4. Not possible as the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 implies an unsuitableness or incongruity as well as an absolute impossibility for id possumus quod jure possumus And according to this notion of the word 't was impossible that is 't was altogether unsuitable and unbecoming as I may so say God to suffer Christ to be under the power and dominion of Death It did not become his Love thus to forsake his only beloved Son nor his Justice to suffer his Holy One to see Corruption to leave his Soul in Hell i. e. the Grave who had done no violence neither was guile found in his mouth or to let him go without his reward who by his active and passive Obedience the Sufferings in his Life and Obedience at his Death had merited Heaven for himself and us It being most unfit that he should remain any longer in Death's prison who had paid his own and our debt even to the discharging of the very uttermost farthing And to conclude this point How unbeseeming the Power of God was it also even in the judgment of Reason That he that looseth the bands of Orion should not be able to break Death's cords That that Death which God never made a meer privation should fetter him who made all things and that nothing command Omnipotency its self That the Devil should be said to have the power of death and the Prince of life be under that power Such Chains of darkness suit well with that roaring Lion who goes about seeking whom he may devour but not at all with the Lion of the Tribe of Judah who was to rescue the prey out of his jaws Certainly He that had the keys of Hell and Death could open the gates of Death to himself as well as to all believers The Grave to him was no other than a Womb which soon grew weary of its load and 't was as natural for Christ to force his passage out thence as for the Child now ripe for the Birth to drop from his Mother 's Womb. If the Creature groans to be delivered from the bondage of her Corruption it is but reasonable to imagine that the Earth could not chuse but be in pain so long as she became an Instrument of her Creator's captivity and 't was as absolutely necessary for those Iron gates of death to let out the Lord of life as it was for those Everlasting ones to be lifted up to receive the King of Glory into Heaven And into that place whereinto his Resurrection has made a way for Himself we hope one day to enter that where the Head is there the Members may be also We have ground for this Hope from St. Paul 1 Cor. 6. 14. God hath both raised up the Lord and will also raise up us by his own power He can for he did raise up others before he raised himself Jairus Daughter the Widow's Son Lazarus after four days rotting in the Grave are all pregnant instances of his Power Et ab esse ad posse valet consequentia What he has done he can still doe unless we shall fancy his Arme shortned or that the Ancient of days has lost his strength And that he will we have his own Word for it Joh. 6. 40. Whosoever believeth in me may have everlasting life and I will raise him up at the last day If he can and will why should we doubt of it Who hath resisted his Will Or what can tie up his Hands Death we see could not her Cords were too weak to Manacle him and why should we think they can now hold us He that could break them off from himself can he not dissolve ours too Let me then put St. Paul's question to the most doubting Sceptick Act. 26. 8. Why should it be thought an impossible thing that God should raise the dead Since we see he has effectually done it in the Person of Christ and every day does it in Nature For what is Nature its self but a continual Resurrection We may see it every Day in a perpetual orderly Succession of Nights and Days in the Setting and Rising of the Sun in Winter and Spring The Serpent's casting off his old Skin the Eagle's renewing his strength with his Beak not to mention the Phoenix rising from her Ashes which yet some of the Fathers as Clement and Tertullian use as an argument to prove the Resurrection the Seed corrupted in the Earth and thence springing up into a full Ear our Lord's and St. Paul's instances all Emblems or rather Demonstrations of it Our very Bodies to go no farther than our selves even in our life-time are continually altered and those we now carry about us are not the same they were a few years past so that we may change the Tense and reade not that we all shall be but that we are continually changed Our sleep what is it but a shorter death and our awaking thence but a return to life What are Church-yards but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Sleeping-houses from whose Graves as from so many Beds we are one day to be raised up by the sound of the last trump And as Nature so Art shadows forth a Resurrection That Art whereby a little rude piece of Earth is refin'd into pure Metal whereby a Chymist can raise a flower out of ashes at least to shape and colour And shall not God be able to change our vile Bodies and make them like unto his glorious Body And when he has
turn'd Men into destruction to say Come again ye Children of Men. If the Disputer of this World the conceited Rationalist should deny a possibility of a return from a privation to a habit a re-production of the same thing once corrupted Let me ask him why that God who created our Bodies out of nothing cannot be able to recall them out of something For since even Philosophy its self will grant that in every dissolution the parts dissolved doe not perish the Materials still continuing All the Skill here will be but to join and reunite the scattered parcels Quasi non majoris miraculi sit animare quà m jungere Tertullian's reasoning here is very concluding and we cannot resist the argument Utique idoneus est reficere qui fecit quanto plus est fecisse quam refecisse initium dedisse quà m reddidisse Ita restitutionem carnis faciliorem credas institutione An Artificer can take a Watch or Clock asunder and put it together again and shall not the great Creator be able to doe as much here to re-unite what he has severed having still reserved the loose scattered pieces and fragments The separation of our Bodies and Souls by death as 't was violent so their desire of re-union being natural shall not be frustrated They are incompleat Substances in that state and long for their perfection which is their re-union for by that are the spirits of just Men departed made perfect and God will not leave them in an imperfect condition lest a power and inclination should for ever be in the root and never rise up to fruit This may suffice to silence though not to satisfie Natural reason especially if we consider that many Philosophers have had strong apprehensions of a Resurrection upon the dissolution of the World by fire a reduction of all things to a better state as Seneca terms it Nor was there any Article of the Faith more generally believed among the Jews than this as appears by Joh. 12. 24. and Act. 23. 8. The Patriarchs were certain of it witness their great care before their death to have their Bones carried away by the Children of Israel out of Egypt that they might be buried in Abraham's Field out of a hope no doubt of being the first that by vertue of Christ's Resurrection might rise from the dead as 't is very probable they were of the Number of those many Saints which arose and came out of their Graves after his Resurrection and went into the holy City and appeared unto many Matth. 27. 53. But then to the Faith of a Christian nothing is so easie as a Resurrection since God's Word clearly tells us That Christ is our Resurrection and our Life Joh. 11. 25. and that our life which is now hid with him in God shall one day be revealed Colos. 3. 3. That God is not the God of the dead but of the living Matth. 22. 32. Nay the Lord of dead and living Rom. 14. 9. For that he will one day raise them up to life again For the dead Bodies of Saints while they lye rotting in the Grave being still united to Christ as his Body there was to the Deity cannot be for ever separate from him the Members must at last be joined to their Head If the first-fruits be risen the whole lump shall follow Not one hair of our head shall perish He that numbers the sand of the Sea numbers our dust nor can the least Attom escape him All our members are written in God's book He that puts our tears into his bottle locks up the pretious dust of his Saints in his Cabinet can recall our dispers'd Ashes and require our Bloud of every Beast that has drunk it fetch those several parcels of us which have been buried in a thousand living Graves and been made a part of those Graves which have devoured them God can make the Earth cast out her dead cause the Sea to disgorge them and our dry bones to gather together as in Ezekiel's Vision ch 37. He that calleth all the Stars by their names knows his by name for their names are written in Heaven and will call them by their names as he did Lazarus bid them come forth and by bidding enable them to doe so in spight of all their bands Now that we may be of the number and partake of the lot of these happy ones we must hear Christ's voice here calling us to repentance and newness of life that we may hear that with comfort which shall hereafter call us to Judgment and be able to answer it with joy and confidence Here we are Let us be sure of our part in the first Resurrection that the second death may have no power over us All shall one day be raised All must one day appear before the Judgment-seat of Christ good and bad But there is a Resurrection of damnation for these and for those of life Both shall come out of their Dungeons but the one like Pharaoh's Baker to an Execution the other like his Butler to an Exaltation The former shall have 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the latter only 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Sinners shall arise but the godly be quickned How happy would it be for wicked Men if they should never have been born or should never rise again since they shall rise no otherwise than as drowsie Malefactors who lying down with their Sentence are afterwards awakened to be set on the Rack But 't is not so with the Godly who sleeping in Christ doe rest in hope I would not have you ignorant Brethren concerning them which are asleep says St. Paul that ye sorrow not even as other which have no hope For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him What doest thou fear then O good Christian Sin Behold the Resurrection of thy Redeemer publishes thy discharge Thy Surety has been arrested and cast into the prison of his Grave for thee Had not the utmost farthing of thine Arrearages been paid he could not have come forth But now that thou seest he is come forth now that the summ is fully satisfied what danger can there be of a discharged debt Or is it the Wrath of God thou dreadest Wherefore is that but for Sin And if thy Sin be defrayed that quarrel is at an end And if thy Saviour suffered it for thee how canst thou fear to suffer it in thy self Surely that infinite Justice hates to be twice paid He is risen and therefore he hath satisfied Who is he that condemneth It is Christ that died yea rather that is risen again Rom. 8. 34. Lastly Is it Death that affrights thee Behold thy Saviour overcoming Death by dying and triumphing over it in his Resurrection And canst thou fear a conquered Enemy What harm is there in this Serpent but for his sting The sting of death is sin And when thou seest
in the Council of Nice but killing and treading down each other in that of Ephesus What would he have said had he lived to behold those fatal Tragedies which have been acted since on the Theatre of the World upon the score of Men's different persuasions How have they put one another out of their Synaguoges cast them out of their Churches by Excommunications and by worrying them to death turned them out of the World too and so as much as in them lay destroyed peoples Souls as well as their Bodies I dare say that Jews and Heathens put together have not spilt so much Christian bloud as Christians themselves have done For proof whereof I might appeal to Massacres foreign and domestick Croysades Persecutions raised and carried on against Men with the utmost rage and violence merely for not being able to bring their Judgments to the same pitch and level with that of their Persecutors not to mention the bloudy design of this Day which had it taken effect would at once have blown up a Church and a State And all this with the same pretences of holy zeal and pious intentions that Jews and Heathens had and with as equal ignorance too For however they thought hereby to doe God service yet God Himself we see does not think so nor Christ neither who chargeth all such Zealots with utter ignorance both of the Nature of God the Father and of Himself also These things will they doe unto you says He because they have not known the Father nor Me. Which leads me to the second Head of my Discourse to wit Our Lord's Judgment of or rather Sentence of Condemnation past here upon all such persons and their practices They have not known the Father nor Me. I know not what good opinion some may have of Ignorance in matter of Devotion so as to make it the Mother thereof I am sure the Scripture all along makes it the source of all impiety of atheism oppression cruelty and of all that confusion that is in the World Have they no knowledge that they are all such workers of mischief eating up my people as it were bread Psal. 14. 8. It was this Ignorance that crucified Christ Had they known it they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory says St. Paul 1 Cor. 2. 8. And he thanks his ignorance for his persecuting and blaspheming 1 Tim. 1. 13. They are the dark places of the earth that are full of the habitations of cruelty Psal. 74. 20. And when men walk on still in darkness all the foundations of the earth are out of course Ps. 82. 5. That is There is nothing then but confusion in the world They proceed from evil to evil because they know not me saith the Lord Jerem. 9. 3. And here we see that Christ Himself chargeth all the cruelty that should be exercised on his Servants upon men's not knowing the Father nor Himself But wherein did this their Ignorance consist It consisted I say in these two Things 1. In that they thought that such violent courses as they took to bring men in to them as their putting them out of their Synagogues and their killing them could be an acceptable Service to God 2. That their pious Intentions Their thinking thereby to doe God service could be able to bear them out and justifie this their way of proceeding 1. I say first That they were grosly mistaken in thinking that those violent courses they took could possibly please God This was their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 their First grand mistake For there was nothing in the Divine Law to shew God's approbation of any such thing Nor do we find that the ancient Jews who alone worshipping the true God and being his peculiar People might in that regard have had some colourable pretence to persecute all that were out of God's Covenant as enemies to Him did notwithstanding use any rigorous much less barbarous and cruel ways to compell men to come into their Church The Law indeed required the life of an Apostate to Idolatry whether 't were a single Person or a City Deut. 13. And therefore to prevent the Jews running into Idolatry to which they were so prone Death which was the only proper restraint in that case was put into the Law by God who was Himself then the Supreme Magistrate in that Theocracy against whom it was exact Rebellion and Treason to take another God and therefore was by Him punished with Death But this Law concerned those only who were within the Pale of the Jewish Church nor do we find that any who were without were forcibly compelled to come into it This was wholly left to their own choice and they were suffered to go on in their own way without being obliged to receive the Mosaical Law It was never God's method this to drag men to his Service nor otherwise to work on their understandings than by rational convictions He might have made use of his great Power to confound but he hath always pleaded with men by way of Argument a Way most suitable to the nature of reasonable Creatures and to his own abhorring all manner of cruelty and by his forbearance long-suffering and goodness seeking to lead men to repentance And therefore they who have any other apprehensions of a Divine Being measure Him by their own fierce and inhumane Temper thinking wickedly that he is such a one as themselves and be they who they will They know not the Father Nor do they know the Son neither I say Whosoever employ any violent ways or means to force men's consciences in matter of Religion do not know Christ. Let me not here be mistaken as if I were against all manner of legal compulsion I deny not Magistrates the power of constraining them to outward acts of Justice Honesty and Religion too who are destitute of the inward Vertues such acts falling within their Jurisdiction serving to preserve Civil Societies of whom Magistrates are properly Lords and who do obtain their ends if the outward acts be done There are two Swords among Christians the spiritual and the temporal and both these have their due office and place in the maintenance of Religion But we may not take up Mahomet's Sword or like unto it that is We must not propagate Religion by sanguinary Persecutions nor force consciences so long as men's opinions destroy not faith or morality that they keep them to themselves and do not spread them to the ruine of the established Religion and Government For when they doe so as some Peoples very Religion is treasonable the Treason not the Religion is then punished by the Magistrate But setting a-side this case I say That as all outward compulsion to oblige men to quit their present Persuasion without any rational conviction is directly contrary to the Will of God the Father as I have already shown you so to that of his Son Jesus Christ as will appear upon these three following accounts 1. Because it
our Apostle here is so earnest and so concerned in asserting the necessity of a Resurrection which Heathens and Sadduces utterly denyed and many weak and seduced Christians scarce believed some affirming it already past others turning it into a mere Allegory The former he labours to convince by reasons fetch'd from nature The latter here in the Text by an argument ad hominem drawn from the particular interest of Christians who of all others should most suffer if their hopes should determine with this life A sad and uncomfortable Consequence would then follow to All but a most absurd one also to these Others should then be miserable but these of all others most miserable For If in this life c. we Christians we Apostles especially and Ministers of Christ should be of all men most miserable In which words you may observe 1. A false hope a hope in Christ in this life only with its effect misery and greater misery to Christians than to thers who upon such a supposition are pronounc'd of all men most miserable 2. A true hope a hope in Christ not in this life only with its effect also Happiness For if the other make its owners miserable and most miserable Then this by the Law of contraries happy and most happy Happy in this world as well as in the other Though there most because there is most happiness yet here too because here is some The first hope and its effects are more plainly exprest the second and its effects as necessarily imply'd and both of them together make up the full contents of the Text. I shall not consider the Parts so minutely as I have proposed them but draw out the substance of them into these three following Propositions which naturally result from the Text. 1. That they who have no other hope but what this life affords them are miserable 2. That upon supposition of no better hope all good Christians but the Ministers of Christ especially should be not only miserable but of all other men most miserable 3. That there is another Life to come the expectation whereof makes them who have it most happy both here and hereafter Of these in their order And first That they who have no other hope but And indeed how can they be otherwise since this life is so Our early tears prognosticate our future unhappiness and we come into this world with as much sadness as we go out of it with horror Some have curst the day of their birth with Job others have not thought fit to allow that Title but to those days wherein Martyrs have suffered Some Philosophers have affirmed that man's chiefest happiness had been not to have been born at all his next to have dyed as soon as born Nay the Scripture it self represents our Blessed Saviour groaning when he raised up Lazarus from the dead for this reason say some because he saw himself as it were oblig'd by his Sisters tears to fetch him back from the happiness of the other to the miseries of this wretched life Nor can I much wonder at their fancy who have conceited that our Souls were thrust into these our Bodies as into so many prisons since those which are most conveniently are but ill lodg'd there our Bodies at best being but so many hospitals if our Souls be any better for as diseases plague the one so passions and lusts as much torment the other And here should I declame on the miseries of humane life the common beaten theam even of those who know no other 't were easie to be Eloquent But not to speak of those accidents which befall it we need not charge our Miseries on our Fortune we owe them to our very Nature Every man is a several Enoch miserable by his very frame and make and 't were needless to borrow arguments from any thing but himself to prove him such or go about to demonstrate what he feels His own Experience shows him wretched in what he suffers and Reason will so even in what he enjoys The Evil he endures sadly afflicts him and the Good he possesses does not much affect him His Sorrows are many and great and his Joys but few and small Those come unmixt These at best but alloyed so that Man is wholly miserable and but half happy I shall not trouble my self to prove that he is miserable in what he suffers for he finds himself so but which I conceive more proper to my present purpose endeavour to demonstrate that the things of this life were they as high as fancied could never create any true satisfaction and consequently must leave a Man to misery even in that condition wherein he takes himself to be most happy And this will appear upon a threefold account 1. Because they are unsatisfactory 2. Because not lasting 3. Because upon supposition of no other life the continual fear of death would render the enjoyments of them most imperfect 1. Because they are unsatisfactory as not 1. bearing any proportion or fitness to the Soul They are material and This spiritual The Soul of Man being a substance of unbounded Desires can never be pleas'd but with what is infinite 2. And this dissatisfaction we receive from things here below appears then most when we come to a trial Our Enjoyment best confutes our Opinion of them then 't is we find that they are bigger in our eye than in themselves in our desire than in our review of them and that our expectations are far larger than our fruitions These Apples of Sodom shew fair and beautifull but the least touch turns them into dust and presently discovers all their painted beauty to be but Appearance and Illusion 3. Add we to this that there can be no surer mark of the dissatisfaction we find in the things of this life than that they presently cloy us Our continued enjoyment of the best of them tires us out as Happiness is said to have done Polycrates and Fortune Galba We must be beholding to their variety for their comfort nay to some evil to make us relish any good in them This is that which Heathens themselves have express'd in those Metamorphoses of their Gods thereby intimating that great Persons tired out with their own Happiness have been forc'd to descend to the Actions of their Inferiors to disguise themselves sometimes to ease themselves of the very burthen of their Honours and lay aside that Grandeur which importun'd them so that the perpetual presence of the same objects is scarce to be endured though they tire us no otherwise than as they are always the same And now let Philosophy tell us there is no vacuity in Nature Divinity and our own experience will assure us that there is nothing else in the things of it 2. But then secondly Were the things of this life never so full in themselves and satisfactory yet being not lasting all the satisfaction we find in them can be but as they are short and
their sight is that of all the parcels of time regard but the present and of all things but the face and appearance men that only mind earthly things of so low and base a spirit that their Souls are but as salt to them and of so brutish a temper that such a Transmigration as Pythagoras fansied a punishment to bad men would with them pass for a happiness and with the Devils they would make it their desire that they might be suffered hereafter to enter into Hogs Such men dare not openly deny an Immortality and yet they will not believe it or if they do 't is so faintly that their lives wholly confute their judgments 'T is strange to see how many there are that having nothing but frost in their veins and earth in their face do yet so much doat on that life which they have now scarce any part in whose faith reaches no farther than their senses and yet scarce retain they those senses whose frame should lift them up above the Earth and their affections carry them wholly to it They are unwilling to leave the World though they see they cannot keep it in their weak and enfeebled bodies they carry strong desires to it being dead to every thing but to the pleasures thereof which yet they cannot now enjoy because they cannot taste and do then covet most when they are just leaving them Than which as there cannot be a greater folly so let us take heed how we imitate it learn to look off from these temporal things which are seen to those eternal which are not seen get such a perspective of faith as may draw Heaven nearer to us shew us those glories which Christ has prepared for us and already taken possession of in his own flesh that so ours may rest in hope and one day inherit His kingdom And now since Christ has given us an assurance of Immortality let us endeavour to lay the foundation of a happy one in this life to work it out even in this world this common shop of change work it out of that in which it is not out of riches by not trusting in and well using them out of the pleasures of this world by loathing and forsaking them out of the flesh by crucifying it with the lusts and affections thereof and out of the world it self by overcoming it Lastly and above all let us labour to secure this blessed Immortality which lies before us by such good works as may follow us through the huge and unconceivable tract of Eternity Else we may be so eternal as to wish we were mortal wish against our interest that in this life only we had hope make our selves who now fear death to dread immortality too hope that there were no eternal joys and tremble at the thoughts even of that everlasting bliss which our ill lives should give us no just ground to hope for But if while we enjoy this life we make lasting provisions for the next by good works then do we truly hope in Christ and then the seeds of Vertue and Piety well cultivated here shall hereafter yield us the happy fruits of a glorious Immortality which he grant us who hath brought life and immortality to light through his Gospel Jesus Christ in us the hope of Glory To whom with the Father c. Amen Soli Deo gloria in aeternum A SERMON ON ROM XII 1 I beseech you therefore Brethren by the mercies of God that ye present your bodies a living Sacrifice holy acceptable unto God which is your reasonable service SAint Paul being from a Jew converted to a Christian hath taken great pains not only to prove the reasonableness of his doing so but that Judaism it self was to be Christned the legal Washings to be at last baptized That whole Oeconomy to be done away that it might be made complete and to be destroyed that it might be perfected And it was well that it was to be so For the Law could not justifie because its performances were but low its Promises but near and its strength weak The Law then could not justifie had it been observed but being broken it could condemn so that our Saviour to upbraid the Jews refers them not only to himself but to Moses in whom they did trust And indeed 't is as visible that the Jews did break their Law as that they did boast of it They were equally zealous in observing and industrious in transgressing it Instead of Religion they had brought themselves to be a Sect humorsome and peevish arrogant and censorious All the world was to be of their way and yet themselves not of it so that they were as I may so say Idolaters of the true God whose Circumcision was uncircumcised As if that fact of Moses when he brought the Law had been the Type of the future observance of it when at the time of bringing the Tables he brake them But not to upbraid the Jews with their failings let us see what use there is to be made of them while they perform the letter let us obey the meaning while their Sabbaths are lazy let ours be holy They wrote the Law on their Garments let us write them on our Hearts They boasted of it let us doe it While they sacrifice their Beasts let us offer up to God the more precious bloud of his own Lamb and with that bloud our selves For we Christians as well as the Jews have an Altar says St. Paul and are Priests too a royal Priesthood says St. Peter Aaron and his Successors offered up Bulls and Rams unreasonable Creatures that were first slain and then offered But we our Bodies and those such living Sacrifices as make up a reasonable Service No Calves here to be presented but those of our lips For a Lamb and a Dove meekness and innocence and for a Goat our Iusts must be sacrificed No death here but of inbred corruptions no slaughter but of the old man whose death enlivens our Sacrifice and so fits it for an Everliving God and makes it Holy and so becoming a Holy God And if we crown our Sacrifices with such flowers they must needs send forth a sweet and acceptable odour to God and pass with Him not only for a Sacrifice but which is more be heightned to a reasonable Service And this our Gratitude calls for and our Interest We owe it to God as to our Creator who made our Bodies and as to our Redeemer who hath purchased them We owe it to our selves too if we will be happy in the enjoyment of God who as He is not a God of the dead but of the living will have a living Body for a Sacrifice and not a Carkass And this in all respects is so reasonable that it may well be matter of wonder why our Apostle should spend so much passionate Rhetorick to persuade us to give up that unto God which 't is our highest advantage He should vouchsafe to accept But then
which had such a load as the sins of Mankind and God's wrath due to those sins hanging upon it These were the Arrows of the Almighty that went through his Soul This The poyson thereof that drank up his Spirit These The Terrors of God that did set themselves in Array against Him to use Job's expression The spirit of a Man may well bear his infirmities but a wounded spirit a spirit so wounded as his was by the hand and stroke of an omnipotent God who could bear but He that was God's equal and yet even He complains who yet did bear it How easily could He have vanquished the malice of Hell who stoops at the power and anger of God If any thing could add to this affliction to this piercing of his Soul on Man's part it must have been those bitter taunts those cutting reproaches he suffered from the ungratefull Jews or rather those despights He foresaw Sinners should doe Him who should make a mock of Him and of those Sins which pierced Him or at least so slender a reckoning of all his piercings as to have no sense at all of them and as if they were a matter not worth looking on should never bestow so much as one Thought upon them nay by their constant sinning and that without any remorse should crucifie afresh the Son of God and put him to an open shame treading him under foot and counting the bloud of the Covenant whereby they were sanctified an unholy thing All this and more than our faint apprehensions can reach to our Lord had in his prospect and which pierced his very Heart by that foresight He had of it and so brings us Christians within the compass of those that pierced Him Indeed the Text literally points to the Jews and their Assistants the Roman Souldiers as the Authors of Christ's crucifixion and the immediate Executioners thereof And it cannot be denied but that All of them had a hand or head in this Act. They brought him to they stretcht Him on his Cross They pierced his hands and his feet they stood staring and looking upon Him says the Psalmist Psal. 22. 17. All of them in their several degrees were guilty of the Fact some as procuring his Death as the whole Nation of the Jews some as commanding the Execution as Pilate others as doing it as the Gentile Souldiers And we are ready and not without good cause too to condemn their cruelty But this is only to mind the Evil they did not what Evil Christ suffered This is to be angry with them but not to justifie our selves who pierced him as well as they and some of us more deeply than many of them did Let us not mistake our selves It was their Sin that did practise but it was ours that procured our Lord's Death We would fain shift our Sin on the Jews and Heathens who were but the Instrumental causes here whereas we are the Principals 'T is not the Executioner that properly kills the Man nor yet the Judge Solum peccatum homicida est Sin only is the Murtherer and every Sinner the Executioner of a Saviour All Men are the Meritorious causes for whose Transgressions He was pierced The Lord hath laid on Him the Iniquity of us All says the Prophet Esay 53. 6. It was the Hypocrisie of our Hearts that mocked Him It was the Bribery of our Hands that buffeted Him The Oaths of our Mouths that spat in his Face We betrayed Him with our wanton kisses We whipt Him with the cords of our Oppression We gave Him Gall and Vinegar to drink by our luxurious Intemperance Our Pride in vain Apparel and Ornaments platted a Crown of Thorns upon his head and stript him of his garments In a word our mighty Sins were the Nails which pierced his hands and his feet and the Spear that was thrust into his side The glory of the Lord was brought to shame for our shamefull lives The Lord of life was put to death for our deadly sins and the word became speechless for our crying Ones So that I may justly bring this home to every Man in this Congregation with the Prophet Nathan's Tu es homo Thou art the Man that piercedst Christ and every one of us were that question put to us seriously which was once to him scoffingly Matth. 26. 8. Prophecy who smote thee may without the gift of Prophesying return the answer It is We that smote Him We have now found out the Piercers here And who but They ought to be the Spectators of that Tragedy which themselves have occasioned Indeed all Mankind are the They in the Text that have pierced and therefore must look upon him But what is it to look upon him Is it only to gaze upon a Crucifix with the superstitious Papist and have our Minds look one way while our Eyes look another Is it to look upon Him with dry Eyes and unrelenting Hearts Or only to look and no more To afford him a passing glance of our Eye and then fix it perhaps on some vain and sinfull Object Surely the looking here implies more than so it requires the Exercise of all our Senses and Faculties in the judgment of the Hebrew Doctors as Grotius on this place observes out of Exod. 20. 18. and Jer. 2. 31. It requires our Memory to recall our Understanding often to reflect and ruminate on Christ's Passion and engages all our Affections about it It exacts our most serious Attention and our often-repeated Meditations We must so look upon as to look into Christ pierced for us so look on as never to look off Him That by frequent viewing the dimensions of his Cross we may be able to comprehend what is the breadth and length and depth and height thereof and to know the love of Christ there dying for us which passeth knowledge St. Peter speaking of the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow 1 Pet. 1. 12. tells us ver 13. that the Angels desire to look or as the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 there imports curiously to pry into them and the more we doe so the greater benefit shall we reap by it For at every our looking here some new sight will offer it self to us to raise our admiration and exercise our affections It will make us love Him who was pierced for us and it will pierce us through with sorrow for having pierced Him It will move our Pity raise our Faith and exalt our Hopes to their highest pitch That we may then look upon Christ pierced to our benefit and comfort let us doe it these five ways With an eye of Pity and Compassion of Sorrow and Regret of Love Faith and Joy 1. With an eye of Pity and Compassion And this is no more than what we commonly doe to all afflicted persons The misery of Sufferers be they who they will naturally attracts our Eyes and turns our Bowels towards them At least we are apt to pity if not so
but that he would suffer himself to be pierced for us who only deserved to be so What should have become of us had he not undergone the punishment due to us Where had we been but for his Passion It is by his stripes that we are healed It is his meritorious Death that hath procured us Life It is his pretious Bloud shed on the Altar of his Cross that hath reconciled us to God that hath vanquished Death and Hell and opened unto us the gates of Heaven having thereby obtained eternal Redemption for us which we shall certainly partake of if we will but look on him whom we have pierced in such a manner as we ought to doe with an Eye of Pity and Compassion of hearty sorrow and contrition of Faith and of Love If we will doe so we may then lift up our heads for our Redemption draweth nigh We may then rejoyce too with joy unspeakable and full of glory looking for that blessed hope the glorious appearing of our Lord and Saviour at his second coming to deliver us from this present evil World and to restore us to the glorious liberty of the Sons of God But on the contrary if either we will not look at all on Christ pierced for us or so slightly as not to be in the least affected with that sight nay even despise his Sufferings make a mock of Him and of those Sins which pierced Him persecute Him in his Members rend his mystical Body by Discord and his seamless Coat by Schism corrupt the Purity of his Doctrine by Heresie and shame Him and his Gospel by our vile and wicked Lives We shall then have another but a very dismal and uncomfortable sight of Him not only the merciless Jew who actually shed his Bloud but the loose prophane Christian who hath trampled it under foot shall see him then to his eternal horrour and confusion I say shall see him see him whether he will or no. It shall not be in his choice whether he will see him or no. Every Eye says St. John shall then see him even they also who pierced him and all kindreds of the Earth shall wail because of him The whole World then shall be the Theatre on which this sight shall be shown and every Man thereon a several Spectator And what a dreadfull sight shall that be to all unconverted Sinners whether Jews or Gentiles when Christ their Judge shall appear in a visible shape with those Wounds in his Body which they gave him How successlesly shall they then cry unto the Rocks and Mountains to fall upon them and cover them from the presence of this Lamb once dumb before the Shearers but then with his very voice glorious and mighty in operation breaking the loftiest Cedars in pieces In vain doe we now put off this evil day from us and with St. Peter's mockers question the promise of his Coming Behold he cometh saith St. John Revel 1. 7. He is even now on his way and will as certainly come as if he were already present Nay is already come if we may believe St. James Behold the Judge standeth before the door Jam. 5. 9. And who may abide his second Coming when he shall come in flaming fire to take vengeance on them that know not God and that obey not the Gospel which his Son preached 2 Thess. 1. 8. His first Coming was in Humility and in Weakness but his second shall be in Majesty and Power How shall the Scene then be changed And with what face shall the enemies of this Cross be able to look on him then whom they had here so often pierced Consider we these things and let us prevent one sight by another and let every one of us prepare to meet our Lord in such a garb and posture as that we may be able to look upon him then with comfort And that we may so doe let us beg of Him to look upon us as once he did upon his Apostle that denied him that with him we may weep bitterly for having pierced him and so fulfill the Prophecy of the Text in the best sense of it in that of the Prophet Zachary and not of our Evangelist in the fore-cited Revel 1. 7. That we may here by Faith see him with St. Stephen sitting at the right hand and there making intercession for us by those Wounds which we have given Him that we may hereafter for ever behold him in Glory Amen A SERMON Preached on Easter-day ACTS II. 24. Whom God hath raised up having loosed the pains of death because it was not possible that he should be holden of it THE precedent Verse and this of the Text represent Christ unto us in a very different condition That in the low ebb of his Exinanition This in a high pitch of his Exaltation In the former we find him under the power of death In the latter raised up to life There a Worm and no Man Here more than Man Declared to be the Son of God with power by the Resurrection from the dead Christ had given sufficient evidence of his Manhood in his natural Infirmities and Necessities but above all in his Passion But the main proof of his Divinity was to be taken from his Resurrection A proof at this time most necessary in relation to his greatest Enemies the Jews who were so apt to triumph in his ruine to fancy they had now prevailed against him to say within themselves Now that he lieth let him rise up no more and once more to lay that in his Dish which they objected to him on his Cross He saved others himself he cannot save With these buisy mockers which gnashed upon him with their teeth these Atheists that could say Where is the promise of his return and that had called him in express terms a Deceiver St. Peter had to doe and had not the Holy Ghost appeared a little before in a cloven tongue of fire on his head his own could never have been able to make them credit such a thing as a Resurrection Christ's much less to whom they were so spightfull It was necessary then that so great a Miracle should make way for another as great which was to persuade them into a belief of Christ's Resurrection Men so incredulous that they would not believe though one rose from the dead as Lazarus had done who having brought them news from another World they for his pains would needs have sent him back to the place from whence he came so that nothing now but the sight of him they had so lately crucified if yet that would doe was sufficient to convince them whom though St. Peter could not present to their Eyes yet their Ears hear the certain news of his return from the Grave That he that was dead was now alive That that body which had been sown in weakness was now rais'd in power by a power no less than divine the power of an
Omnipotent God a power able to break in pieces the chains even of death its self strong ones indeed to hold all others but weak to hold him who was as well God as Man Whom God hath raised up c. From which words Four things are to be gather'd 1. The Certainty of Christ's Resurrection set down here as matter of fact Hath raised up 2. The principal Agent or rather the sole efficient Cause of Christ's Resurrection God Whom God hath c. 3. The Manner how 't was done Removendo impedimentum by taking away whatsoever might obstruct it the rowling away the stone as it were from the door of the Sepulchre the untying of a hard knot Having loosed the pains of Death 4. And lastly the Necessity of all this a most convincing and irresistible Argument and therefore brought up in the rear to make all sure Because it was not possible he should be holden of it Of these in their order and of such practical Inferences as doe arise out of them And first of the first Particular the Certainty of Christ's Resurrection in these words Hath raised up 1. There is not any truth in Scripture which God has been so carefull or as I may so say curious to secure as that of his Son's Resurrection Which he did as by taking away all grounds of doubting of it so by making use of all manner of proofs to ascertain it For first whereas Sceptical Men might have questioned whether Christ died truly or no or if so whether his disciples did not come by night and steal him away These two grounds of suspition God took care to remove The first by that Evidence the Centurion gave in to Pilate of his real dying besides that of so many Spectators who beheld that stream of bloud wherein he poured forth his Soul unto death And the second by the exact care of the High Priest who caused a vast stone to be rowled before the door of the Sepulchre adding his Seal and Souldiers of his own chusing to guard it from the attempts of the Disciples who had they had a will had neither power nor courage to break open a Sepulchre hewen out of a new entire Rock or force such a strong guard as kept it much less Money to bribe their silence as the High Priests and Scribes did And to say that his Disciples stole him away while the stout Watch-men slept was surely no better than a Dream or rather not a Dream but a studied Lie and yet such a Lie too as does most clearly confirm the truth of our Lord's Resurrection But then secondly As God took away all cause of doubt so did he draw Arguments from all Topicks to prove this great Truth Heaven and Earth here gave in their Evidence For not only the Souls of Holy Men were fetcht thence to be united to their Bodies for proof of that Resurrection by which themselves were raised but the Blessed Inhabitants of Heaven the Angels came down on purpose to publish it to the Women as these did to the Apostles to whom Christ shewed himself alive too after his Passion by many infallible proofs and expos'd himself to their very Senses who did not only see and hear but converse and eat with him after he was risen from the dead that they might not mistake his Body as once they did for a Phantasm or Christ for a Spirit having flesh and bones as they found he had and retaining still the marks and prints of the nails and spear to shew the Identity as well as Reality of that Body which arose The very Infidelity of an Apostle being not the least confirmation of our Faith too in this particular Not to mention other instances the Earthquake the empty grave the stone rowled away the linnen cloths curiously wrapt up together as dead Witnesses when there were so many living ones Angels and Men and among these such as were ready to seal this Truth with their dearest Bloud of such credit and honesty too as might highly recommend their Testimony to our belief of such Prudence Experience and Holiness withall as neither could betray them to Error nor suffer them to abuse the credit of others Such were the Holy Apostles who with great power gave witness of the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus and whose principal office it was to doe so as appears upon the Election of St. Matthias into the place of Judas grounded upon this necessity Act. 1. 21 22. To whom we may add no less than five hundred Brethren at once all agreeing in the same story Nemo omnes neminem omnes fefellerunt which made their Evidence rise to such a strong demonstration as was sufficient to stop the mouths of Christ's most contradicting Enemies and open ours to confess with the Disciples and Primitive Christians The Lord is risen indeed Luk. 24. 34. Thus we see how exact the Holy Ghost was as in removing all such Doubts as might in the least obstruct our Faith so in using all manner of Arguments to confirm and establish the undoubted Truth of Christ's Resurrection not only to show the possibility of a Resurrection in general by so pregnant and visible an Example but the importance of it in regard of ours whereof our Lord 's was the Fountain and Pledge 1. I say the clearing of the Truth of Christ's Resurrection was absolutely necessary in regard of the slowness and indisposition of most Men and in all times to admit of the possibility of a Resurrection The Philosopher we see could not digest it To the Stoicks and Epicureans it became matter of laughter who took it for some new Goddess Act. 17. 18 32. Nay some of the Disciples themselves lookt upon it as a Fable 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Luk. 24. 11. A considerable Sect too among the Jews the Sadducees utterly deny'd it Act. 23. 8. Simon Magus and the Gnosticks were of the same persuasion and so was Marcion as Tertullian informs me who deny'd the truth of Christ's flesh and consequently his Nativity and Resurrection as Valentinus's Disciple did the Resurrection of that Flesh he convers'd in Some there were who affirm'd 't was already past as Hymenaeus and Philetus Others turn'd it into a meer Allegory a Renovation Matth. 19. 28. A state of the Gospel call'd a New Heaven and a new Earth 2 Pet. 3. 13. And the World to come Heb. 2. 5. And lastly how doe all loose Christians decry it as a thing utterly inconsistent with their interest It was requisite then that this foundation should be laid very deep in men's Hearts which the Holy Ghost fore-saw so many would endeavour to over-throw 2. 'T was absolutely necessary to clear this Truth in regard of the importance of it to Christ's glory and the happiness of all true Christians 1. To Christ's glory which in the esteem of Men being much eclipsed by his Death was to shine out brighter by his Resurrection for nothing but this could take