task of our whole life in especial manner at present now that the death of our LORD and Saviour and his resurrection and his holy Supper do call us to extraordinary efforts of piety and sanctity And if the labour be great the felicity and the glory that follows it is infinite Let us employ our selves in it well-beloved Brethren with ardency and generosity put off the body of all our sins that having truly crucified our old man with the LORD JESUS we may also rise again with Him to be enliven'd by his Celestial food and have part for ever after the short trials of this life in His blessed immortality Amen The Twenty-third SERMON COL CHAP. II. VER XII XII Being buried with Him through baptism in which also you are raised again together through the faith of the efficacy of GOD who hath raised Him from the dead DEar Brethren It is very true that the solemnity of this great day which hath been consecrated by all Christians to the resurrection of the LORD JESUS and sanctifi'd by the Mysteries of his Table at which we have communicated doth require more than ordinary devotion and meditations of us Yet I have not needed to seek a subject for the present exercise any other where than in the series of the ordinary Texts which I do in this place expound to you the words I have read which immediately succeed those you heard last LORD's Day excellently suiting each of those duties to which this day is particularly dedicated For they treat of our LORD's resurrection and of the fruits that redound to us thereby as also of Baptism wherein they are communicated to us and which was wont for this reason to be solemnly administred heretofore in the ancient Church on the night before Easter and of that faith by which we become possess'd of this Divine Resurgent Lastly They speak of the interest we have in his burial that sequel of his precious death the blessed commemoration whereof we have celebrated this morning Subjects these which are as is plain to all eminently meet for the devotion of this day This then shall be by the will of GOD the matter of this action Faithful Souls afford it a vigorous and a deep attention elevating your thoughts to JESUS CHRIST the Prince of our salvation and Author of our immortality whiles we shall endeavour to represent to you what his Apostle here teacheth us about our communion in his burial and resurrection You may remember that to confound the impiety of certain Seducers who would oblige Christians to Mosaical Circumcision this holy man alledg'd in the precedent Text that we have in JESUS CHRIST that substance and truth whereof the Judaical Circumcision was but the shadow and model having in him put off the body of the sins of the flesh so as having receiv'd through the grace of JESUS this mystical and divine circumcision the other carnal and typical one is altogether useless to us and cannot be desired or practis'd by Christians without wronging their Saviour He still prosecutes that same intention and to shew how rich that sanctifying-grace is which we have in JESUS CHRIST he adds that besides our being circumcised by the virtue of his word and divested of the body of the sins of the flesh we have moreover been buried with him through Baptism and further that we are therein risen again with him through the faith of the efficiency of GOD who raised him from the dead For a right understanding of these words we are to consider First The communion we have both in the burial and resurrection of our LORD JESUS CHRIST And secondly The twofold means by which this communion is given us to wit Baptism and the Faith of the efficiency of GOD who hath raised our LORD from the dead The Apostle expresseth the first point in these words Being buried with him in which also you are risen again together As for our burial with the LORD you know that having suffer'd on the Cross that dolorous and accursed death which we had merited his sacred body loosned from that mournful tree and wrap'd up in a sheet was by Joseph of Arimathea laid in a new Sepulcher where it remained three days without motion without respiration and without life in this sad state the last of our infirmities until the beginning of the third day when he gloriously rose again The transcendent wisdom of the Father which ordered all the parts of this great work proceeded thus here very fitly to justifie the truth of his Son's death by his stay in the grave For if he had resum'd his life immediately after he laid it down and descended from the Cross alive again I confess such a Miracle might have astonish'd and transported the minds of the Spectators and demonstrated that this Divine crucified Person was more than man But on the other hand it would have rendred his death suspicious and without doubt made men imagine that it had been but a feigned and false appearance and no real separation of his soul from his body which opinion would evidently have shaken and overthrown our salvation it being entirely founded on the death of the LORD JESUS Whereas therefore it so highly concerns us to believe the same GOD hath in such sort assured and certifi'd the truth that we have not any shew of reason to call it in question For this cause it was his will that the LORD JESUS having commended his spirit into his hands should be laid in the Sepulcher and continue there three days there remaining after this no more cause to doubt but that he was truly dead since he was so long a time in the state of the dead Moreover our consolation required that he should enter into our Sepulchers to take away for us the horror of them and to assure us by His example that they have not force enough to detain our bodies for ever or to hinder them from rising one day again It 's for these reasons and other such that JESUS CHRIST would go down into this death's last entrenchment The Apostle saith then that true believers have been buried with him How so you will say seeing that they being living persons were never laid in the grave and surely not in our LORD's that was situate on Mount Calvary nigh to Jerusalem places very far distant from our abode Dear Brethren there is no man so gross but doth plainly see that these words are not to be taken according to the letter but figuratively and that they signifie not a natural but a mystical Sepulcher And in such a sense it may be said two manner of ways That we have been buried in CHRIST or with CHRIST First in regard of our justification that is the remission of our sins And secondly in regard of our sanctification and the mortifying of the old man For as concerning the first it is evident that JESUS CHRIST was not buried as neither was he crucified and put to death but for us only
the whole extent it hath for our edification and consolation without insisting precisely upon that particular use for which it was first written to the Colossians and that nothing in it may escape us we will examine if GOD permit the two heads which are proposed in it distinctly one after another The first is The estate we were in before the vocation of GOD in his Son Ye were dâ—ad saith the Apostle in offences and in the uncircumcision of your flesh The second is The grace that GOD hath shewed us in JESUS CHRIST He hath quickned you saith he together with Him having freely forgiven you all your offences Here is in sum the map of our whole Redemption The first part represents unto us our misery by Nature And the second our happiness under Grace That is the archrevement of the first and of the second Adam the death into which the one had sunk us and the life unto which the other hath raised us There 's none so ignorant but knows what life and death are As life is the sweetest and dearest of all our good things so death is the greatest and the last of all our evils Accordingly you see now prudent-Nature hath given Animals such an Instinct as to use all the strength and skill they have to preserve themselves alive and prevent their dying Other evils take from us each of them but some part of our comforts Death bereaves us of them all Bondage deprives us of Liberty Banishment of our Countrey Sickness afflicts our Bodies Shame or Infamy our Souls Pain troubleth our Senses Poverty incommodateth our life But there is no calamity so great as not to leave us the use or enjoyment of some good or at least of our selves Death extinguishing our life and by this means sapping and overthrowing the very foundation of our enjoyments doth at the same time despoil us of all other good things altogether Wherefore the holy Apostle and the other sacred Writers that they might represent the hideousness and misery of the condition of men that are without the grace of GOD do not call it simply a Bondage a Banishment a Sickness a Disgrace a Blindness a Poverty a Calamity a Nakedness They term it a Death to signifie that it is the utmost of all the evils that can betide our nature that it is a privation not of some good things only but generally of all so as nothing remains either in the spirit or in the senses or in the body of these miserable creatures that deserves to be called good It 's the term Isaiah makes use of to express the estate of people while they had no part in the Covenant of GOD Light hath shined saith he upon them that dwell in the region of the shadow of death Isa 9.1 And the LORD JESUS puts us all in the same condition before he hath called us Joh. 5.25 The hour cometh saith he and already is that the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of GOD and they that hear it shall live And without doubt it is to these kind of dead that he willed one of his Disciples to leave the care of burying their dead Matt. 8.22 1 Tim. 5.6 And you know what the Apostle says of that Widow who passeth her time in the pleasures of sin That she is dead while she liveth And our Saviour tells that person who led a wicked life under a false reputation of piety Rev. 3. â— Thou hast a name to live but art dead S. Paul following the stile of the Holy Ghost doth call them dead who abiding in the ignorance that is natural to all men do neither know GOD nor his will Ye were dead saith he to the Ephesians Eph. 2.1 â— speaking of the time they spent in the darkness of Paganism ye were dead in trespasses and sins And a little after putting himself in the same number though he was otherwise a Jew When we saith he were dead in our trespasses GOD quickned us together with CHRIST which are precisely the same terms that he here applies to the Colossians whose original condition was in effect the same with that of the Ephesians they being both the one and the other of them by birth Pagans I well know that the men of the world and generally they that have no part in the grace of GOD do live and are sensible and go to and fro they do desire and fear and hope and exercise in sum all the actions in which life is ordinarily made to consist Yea I confess that to measure things by appearances and the outside only there are none that seem to live but they filling the world with the noise of their actions and motions while the faithful for the most part groan in some corner or pass their days obscurely in the silence of retirement without appearing or making themselves seen so as it may be said of them in this respect as the Apostle somewhere doth in another 1 Cor. 1.28 that GOD hath chosen things that are not to bring to nought things that are the flesh no more accounting the faithful to be any thing than if they neither lived nor existed at all and considering none but men of the world when things that live and indeed are do come to be reckon'd up But S. Paul himself clearly shews us that he speaks not here of the privation of this kind of life in as much as he saith not simply that we were dead but that we were dead in offences and in the uncircumcision of our flesh We must know therefore that there are two kinds of life the one carnal and natural which consists in the exercise of natural actions and faculties such as are common to us partly with sensitive creatures as drinking eating sleeping and the like partly with evil spirits as sinning offending GOD and our Neighbour The other sort of life is spiritual and divine having for its principle the Image of GOD and his Grace and for its actions the exercising of piety towards GOD and charity towards our neighbour Such a life as Adam's would have been if he had persever'd in the innocence wherein he was created and such as is the life of the holy Angels now in Heaven To these two kinds of life do answer two kinds of death the one natural which is the separation of the soul from the body and an abolition of the actions and motions and sensations which the union of these two parts of our beeing doth produce in us The other spiritual which is nothing else but a privation of the Image of GOD and of those good and holy faculties and habitudes and actions wherewith it is accompanied It 's this second kind of death the Apostle intends here when he saith that we were dead in offences and in the uncircumcision of our flesh For the Holy Ghost the true Judg and Estimator of things doth count all those for dead which have not the life of GOD how full of
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
flesh that is to say of the flesh of His CHRIST by His death There is no one of these words but is of very great weight First mentioning here the body of our LORD he intimateth to us the mysterie of His Incarnation As if he had said that GOD loved us to such a degree as He would have His own Son become man to re-unite and reconcile us with Himself He would have this Divine person whose essence is spiritual and infinite assume a visible and finite body He shews us also by this word the sacrifice by which the wrath of GOD was appeased and our crimes expiated For it is properly for this that the Son of GOD had a body as the Apostle teacheth us when opposing this body of the LORD to sacrifices of living creatures that were unprofitable and incapable of satisfying the Justice of the Father he brings Him in saying Sacrifice and burnt-offering thou wouldst not have Heb. 10.5 10. but a body hast thou prepared me and adjoyneth that it is by the once offering up of this body we have been sanctified But the Apostle doth not say simply the body of CHRIST he addeth the body of His flesh that is according to the stile of the Hebrews His fleshy body His body of flesh At first blush you may seem that this addition is needless and to no purpose But it 's much otherwise For in the language of Scripture every Body is not flesh It gives this name only to an infirm a passible and mortal body He means therefore that the LORD to reconcile us not only assumed a body which yet is very marvelous but that He took a feeble and mortal body a body sustaining it self by meat and drink a body like ours and subject to all their meannesses and infirmities A consideration that as you see exceedingly heightens both the excellency of His love towards us and the value of the means by which He reconciled us it so being that the King of glory who is the Author and Mediator of this work vested Himself with poor Flesh to compass His design And this is the reason why the sacred writers so often use this word to signifie our LORD's humane nature as when they say 1 Tim. 3. Joh. 2. Heb. 2.14 that GOD was manifested in the flesh that the word was made flesh that the Son did partake of flesh and blood Indeed this qualification of the body of CHRIST was necessary for the expiating of our sins since this could not be effected but by sufferings of which only a fleshy body is capable Whence it comes that in the sixth Chapter of St. John where Himself speaketh of the vertue He hath to quicken us He also useth these very words saying that His flesh is meat indeed and His blood drink indeed and that He will give His flesh for the life of the world This word is the cause that I understand this passage of the natural body of CHRIST and not of His mystical body to which it seems some do refer it I acknowledge that the LORD receiveth into the union of His mystical body that is of His Church all those that applying to themselves the promises of His Gospel by Faith are effectually reconciled to GOD. Yet this is not the body the Apostle meaneth here since the body he speaks of is the body of the Flesh of the LORD which cannot be affirmed of His mystical body His saying therefore that GOD hath reconciled us in His body must be taken as if he had said by His body For as we have often informed you 't is ordinary in the stile of Scripture to put in for by And hence appears how extravagant the imagination of some ancient hereticks was who did dogmatize that JESUS CHRIST had but a vain and false appearance of a body and not a real solid and true body as also the errour of those who confessed He had a true body but held it to be celestial and of a quite other matter and substance than ours are The Apostle confounds these foolish phancies by terming the body of our LORD the body of His flesh In fine having said that we were reconciled by the body of His Flesh the Apostle addeth in the last place by His death It was not enough oh faithful brethren that the King of glory the Prince of life assumed to Himself a body and even a body of flesh vile and infirm as yours To reconcile you unto GOD it was necessary He should dye His flesh would have profited you nothing if it had not suffered that death which you deserved But of this death of the LORD and of its necessity and of its efficacy we have spoken largely upon the Texts foregoing Here we will only remark two things before we go further The first is that CHRIST did satisfie the Justice of His Father for us since it is by His death that He reconciled us For except this be asserted it is evident His death will have contributed nothing to our reconciliation in respect of that he would have dyed for nought Grant that there was need He should dye for the confirming of His doctrine and to give us an example of patience though to say true this reason if there were no other seemeth not so necessary that it should have obliged the Son of GOD to dye Yet still after this account His death will have contributed nothing to our reconciliation with the Father Him His own mercy alone and not any consideration of this death would have appeased towards us And nevertheless the Apostle saith expresly we were reconciled by that death which the LORD suffered in the body of His flesh Sure then it must be acknowledged that it quenced the wrath of the Father that is to say satisfied His justice for us The other particular which I would remark here is that the body of the LORD made propitiation of our sins only as it was infirm flesh that suffered death Every one confesseth that now He dyeth no more yea that He is invested with a soveraign glory having for ever put off the infirmity and mortality of the flesh Certainly then it is vainly and without reason that some do imagine His body is offered still to this day for the reconciling of sinners unto GOD. It 's by death Rom 6.9 that He hath reconciled us saith St. Paul And being now raised from the dead He dyeth no more saith he elsewhere But I come to the third and last article of our Text wherein the Apostle saith that it is to make us holy and without spot and unreprovable before Him that GOD hath reconciled us by the death of His Son It is strictly in the original to present us or to make us stand and appear before Him holy without spot and unreprovable which hath given occasion to some of our Expositors to referr these words also to our Justification before GOD as if the Apostle meant that He made our peace and abolished the
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
Burial is nothing else but a consequent of death It 's the sad and dismal state to which it reduceth men ever since they became guilty that is to say it makes up a part of the punishment of sin As indeed it 's a hideous thing and full of horror to see so noble and excellent a Creature in whom the Image of GOD did shine forth and who had been formed for immortal glory to be brought down to the grave under the power of Worms and putrefaction JESUS CHRIST therefore having undergone this ignominious Infirmity for us and for our Salvation that he might leave none of our penalties unsatisfied for it 's evident that when he was buried we were buried in him and with him since it was properly for us that he did descend into the Sepulcher He bore us upon the Cross He bore us in the grave We all were in him forasmuch as he in all this work acted but for us We did and suffered these things since we are the cause that he did and suffered them We were buried in him forasmuch as His being buried hath discharged this part of our punishment and so changed the nature of our graves that instead of being prisons and places of execution they are now so many beds and dormitories wherein our bodies do repose until the resurrection Thus his burial hath freed ours from the curse which is naturally upon it and this benefit makes up a part of that justification which he hath merited for us it comprehending an exemption from all the penalties that are due to our sins But it is not in this sense that the Apostle saith we have been buried with JESUS CHRIST For he speaks here of the first part of our sanctification which is nothing else but the mortifying of the body of sin or old man in us and its burial that is the bringing it to nought It 's therefore properly in this respect S. Paul says that we have been buried with JESUS CHRIST even in as much as by the virtue of his death and burial our old man hath been destroy'd and suffer'd a death and burial semblable and analogical to JESUS CHRIST's For as his flesh after it was depriv'd of life was laid in a grave in like manner the old man of true believers having been stain is interred and brought to nought And as the LORD JESUS left in the Sepulcher his Funeral linnen clothes together with all the infirmity and mortality he had and came forth vested with a nature and a life fully refined from all that weakness of the first Adam which appeared in him during the days of his flesh even so the faithful do put off for ever that body of sin wherewith their first Parent had enwrapped them and leave it in their mystical Sepulcher to be resum'd no more but that they may henceforth lead a life free and exempt from all its filthiness and turpitude Lastly As the burial of our Saviour was properly but a progression and continuation of his death so likewise that of our old man is but a prosecuting of his destruction 't is the estate this puts him in and under it he abides for ever without rising any more S. Paul does else where clearly shew us that it is thus we must understand his words as when he saith in the sixth to the Romans that we are buried with CHRIST by baptism into his death Rom. 6.4 5. that as he was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father so we should likewise walk in newness of life and immediately after he saith that we have been made one self-same plant with him by the conformity of his death and resurrection To which must be also added that it is in him and with him we have been buried in this sort for that in his death and burial the principles and causes of ours were contained His death hath destroyed our old man and his burial hath interred him it being evident that if our LORD had not suffered both the one and the other for our salvation sin would still live and reign in us For it is the love of GOD and his peace and the hope of glory the true effect of our Saviour's death and burial that gives the deaths-wound to our old man and that doth abolish and bury his whole life See then how we are buried with him not that to speak properly our bodies do really enter into the grave in Joseph of Arimathea's garden where his abode three days away with so childish a conceit but for that the virtue of his death and holy Sepulcher doth derive into us an image and a copy of his burial destroying and burying our old man by his efficacy and bringing on him a mystical death and burial conform to his own real and mystical one This now which the Apostle addeth that we are also risen again together with him must also be understood after the same manner As our death and burial with him is mystical and spiritual so is likewise our resurrection these words signifying no other thing but that he by the virtue of his resurrection doth work and produce one in us which hath resemblance and analogy with his own And this resurrection of the faithful in consequence and by the efficacy of JESUS CHRIST's is their being renewed unto an holy spiritual and Evangelical life For even as the LORD having put off on the Cross and left in the grave that earthy infirm and natural life which he had led here below during the days of his flesh did put on a new one that was glorious spiritual and immortal rising from the grave a man heavenly and living to eternity by the sole strength of a quickning spirit so likewise all his true members having quitted their old man as destroyed and abolished by the virtue of his death do put on the new which is formed in righteousness and holiness and instead of that vile and wretched life which they led aforetime in the turpitude and fifth of sin they take up another wholly new one which is quickned by the Spirit from on high upheld by his power and shineth all over with the glorious lights of his sanctity charity and purity But besides this conform â—y between the new nature which we receive in JESUS CHRIST and that same which he put on at his coming forth of the grave we are said to rise again with him because it is the virtue of his resurrection that produceth all this change in us His resurrection is the cause of ours without it we should lye dead still and in bondage to sin This will appear if you afford ever so little attention to consider it For that which formeth the new man in us and gives us the courage to renounce the world that we may live pure and holy is as every one knows the perswasion of the love of GOD and of the remission of our sins and the hope of blissful and glorious immortality Now it is the
resurrection of JESUS CHRIST that gives us all this assurance putting in our hand a firm proof of the satisfaction of Divine Justice from the deliverance of our Surety and of our immortality from his having taken possession of the same for himself and us so as our souls being certifi'd of the transcendent goodness of GOD and of their own happiness do ardently embrace his Discipline and the endeavouring of a new life Besides that faith which purifies our 〈◊〉 and by which as we shall hear anon we are risen again in JESUS CHRIST could not take place in us if he were not risen from the dead Rom. 1.4 1 Pet. 1.3 since it 's by that he was declar'd the Son of GOD with power according to the spirit of holiness Therefore S Peter saith it 's by the resurrection of JESUS CHRIST from the dead that GOD hath begotten us again unto a lively hope And S. Paul for this very reason 1 Cor. 15.17 protesteth that if CHRIST were not risen our faith would be vain and we should be still in our sins It must then be concluded that in rising again he raised up us also by the same means forasmuch as by rising he gave being and clearness to the principles and causes of our mystical resurrection Opening his own tomb he by that means opened ours He broke in pieces the doors and barâ—s of our Sepulchers by quitting his own and raising himself from the dust he drew us up out of the earth and brought us forth from the abode of death that glorious life also wherewith he then vested himself hath inspired into us all the spiritual life motions and sentiments that we have O holy and blessed Communion O divine and incorruptible fruits of the Sepulcher of JESUS CHRIST The death of the first man did kill us and the death of the second maketh us alive The one's Sepulcher is our prison the other our liberty In the former do appear horror and malediction the signs of our guilt and of the just wrath of GOD but from the latter peace and life do bud out glory and immortality shoot forth The grave of Adam did extinguish and shut up for ever in a state of exinanition all the beauty strength and life of our nature The Sepulcher of JESUS CHRIST hath destroyed nothing but our sin it hath shut up and kept in only our old man that is the loathsomness and misery of our lives and instead of this abominable body of sin and death whereof it hath divested us hath as it were teemed with and brought forth a celestial and immortal nature which it puts on us together with our Saviour And thus you see what are the fruits of our communion with JESUS CHRIST namely the destruction of our old man and the creation of the new signified by the Apostle in these words we are buried and risen again with him Let us now consider the two fold means here intimated by the Apostle by which GOD doth make us partakers of them The first is Baptism being buried saith he with CHRIST by baptism wherein also you are rais'd again together with him For so do I take these words rendring wherein not in whom and referring this term not to JESUS CHRIST but to Baptism as it it had been said In which Baptism you are also raised again together with the LORD this construction being more natural and more convenient than the other as they that understand the original Language wherein the Apostle wrose with easily perceive if they take the pâ—ns to consider this Text there though it the bottom it make no difference which of these two ways be taken the whole amounting to the same sense whether you say that we are risen again in Baptism or in JESUS CHRIST In truth all the means which GOD makes use of in Religion have no other tendency but to communicate JESUS CHRIST to us as dead buried and risen again for us to the destruction of our old man and the vivification of the new Nor do they ever fail to produce these two effects in any of those that receive them as they ought Therefore the holy Apostles frequently ascribe them to the word of the Gospel which is the first and principal means that GOD makes use of to save us Rom. 1.15 Heb. 4.12 by reason whereof it is called his power to salvation As for the destroying of the old man the Epistle to the Hebrews attributes to the Word the virtue that operateth and effecteth it in us saying that it is quick and powerful 2 Cor. 10.4 5 sharper than any two-edged sword piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit and of the joints and marrow and S. Paul elsewhere calleth it a weapon mighty to the pulling down of strong holds to the overthrowing of imaginations and every heighth that exalteth it self against the knowledg of GOD and for the bringing of every thought into captivity to the obedience of CHRIST And as to the life of the new man 1 Pet. 1.23 25 you know S. Peter teacheth us that the Gospel which is preached us is the seed of this life telling us that it is thereby we are born again That holy Supper of which we have participated this morning hath also the same effects For since it communicateth to us the body of JESUS CHRIST dead and buried and risen again for us we need not doubt but iâ— gives us also the virtue which it hath and is insuparably adherent to it for the putting to death the old Adam and making the new to live in us by its be-dewing our Consciences with his blood and feeding our souls with his flesh But although these two effects be common to all the means which GOD hath instituted and 〈…〉 use of in Religion yet the Apostle speaks here but of Baptism 〈◊〉 Because 〈◊〉 the first seal we receive of our Saviour and the proper Sacrament of our regeâ—eration which containeth the initials and beginning of our spiritual 〈◊〉 in the House of God whence it comes that treating of the same subject elsewhere Rom. 6.3 4. he makes mention of Baptism in like manner Know you not saith he that we all who have been baptiz'd into JESVS CHRIST have been baptiz'd into his death Therefore we are buried with him by Baptism Secoudly He so doth that he might with so much the more clearness confute the erroâ— he here combareth even by opposing to that circumcision which the seducers did press that Baptism which we have receiv'd in JESUS CHRIST whereby hath been fully communicated to us all that these people pretended to draw from the use of circumcision Their folly was therefore so much the more insupportable for that they would not only retain a shadow whereof JESUS CHRIST hath given us the true body but also withstood one of the old Sacraments of Moses its giving place to one of those which JESUS instituted If question be of the substance and very effect of
a perpetual disorder which displaceth every thing and overturns all yet all hath its certain causes It 's therefore with a great deal of reason and elegance that the Apostle compares this strange convention of so many evils which are so divers and do all work with some sequel and dependance unto a body and each of those vices of which it is composed as covetousness fornication and the like unto the members of a body He calleth them our members because that old man which is made up of them is wholly ours and does invest all the principles of our life from their root and invelope them and mingle so deeply with them that it all in a sort is nothing but corruption and malady this venome infecting all the actions and all the motions of our nature its understanding its affections and passions together with the thoughts words and actions which flow from them so that as our animal and natural life consisteth in the exercising of our members and in their actions in like manner our moral life is all of it nothing but a continual exercising of these vices and of the sins they produce as is to be clearly seen if you consider the lives of profane and unregenerate persons For they are nought else but a continual exercise of vices of ambition of vanity of covetousness of luxury and sensuality as they are addicted more or less to the one or the other of these sins the perpetual running of a foul and muddy stream which a corrupted spring doth daily thrust forth that you cannot observe so much as one of its swellings or rollings exempt from its filthiness And this may suffice for comprehending the reason why the Apostle calls these parts of the old man our members For as to that consideration which some do propose in this matter namely that the members of our bodies having been created of GOD they are not ours but in regard of use and not in regard of their original whereas the members of the old man are ours all manner of waies having been made and formed in us by our own fault and naughtiness and not by the hand of GOD who created man upright and pure man distorting and depraving himself this conceit I say seems to me more subtil than solid For though the matter of it be very true yet it is so wide from the Apostles design in this place that there is little likelyhood he thought upon it when he called the vices here of our corrupt nature our members Without doubt he so doth only because it is in the exercising and acting of these vices that the carnal life of men doth consist For the rest if you remember what we said upon the precedent Text of the death of the old man in us you will not think it strange that the Apostle after having said that we are dead does not yet forbear to exhort us to mortifie the members of this same life which we have put off in JESUS CHRIST For our being dead in this respect doth not import that the life of the flesh is entirely and absolutely extinct in us this will not be effected untill we shall quit it at our leaving of the earth and put on coelestial and spiritual bodies at the day of the resurrection but the Scripture doth thus speak first because JESUS CHRIST hath by His death His resurrection and His ascension into Heaven destroyed and abolished all the causes that gave nutriment and sustenance to the life of the old man and secondly because the old man 〈◊〉 receiv'd his deaths wound in each of us by the faith that ingrafted and incorporated us into JESUS CHRIST so as if we persevere it is not possible that he should recover But this death of His as we said doth not arrive all at once It 's executed by little and little and the exercise of a believer during his stay here below is to busie himself incessantly about it daily to weaken and wound that flesh of his which is already nailed to the cross of his LORD to entinguish by little and little all the life it hath remaining that is to mortifie his members as the Apostle here speaks In this sense you see these two conceptions are so far from having ought that 's contrary or incompatible in them that quite otherwise the one doth evidently and necessarily follow from the other For since we are dead in JESUS CHRIST since the arrest of the death of our old man is past since JESUS CHRIST hath done on His part all that was necessary to execute it since this flesh condemn'd is already fastened to His cross it is evident that it ought to live no longer and that by consequent each of us should incessantly bestirr our selves to put it to death by mortifying its members beating down and weakening their vigour driving deep into them our Saviour's nails and thorns untill they be effectually reduced unto that state of death unto which they were condemned having no more either motion or sentiment or force or life at all in us Lo My Brethren the thing the Apostle means by these words mortifie your members To say it in a word he would have us weaken and extinguish the vices of our old man and put them in such a state of death as hath no more strength nor vigour nor stirring But as this holy man's whole language is full of profound wisdome I am of opinion he thus speaks to give a further blow to those seducers whose error he had been refuting in the fore-going chapter These men to recommend their disciplines gave out that they did not at all spare the body that they had no regard to the satiating of the flesh that they oppos'd its pleasures and humbled and mortified it And you know that this is at this very day the language of those votaries who place Christianity in such exercises They speak of nothing but their mortifications St. Paul therefore doth here correct the vain conceits of this error and sheweth us what true mortification is and that that is worthy of the study and exercise of the faithful It is saith he the members of the old man we are to mortifie and not those of the body It is vices It 's fornication and covetousness and pride that we must quell and kill with blows and not our body And as one of the Prophets sometime said to the superstitious of his age who fasted and afflicted themselves and rent their clothes Rend your hearts and not your garments Joel 2.13 in like manner the Apostle here opposeth the internal mortification of sins as only necessary and truly worthy of a Christian unto the external mortification of the body unto which error did and still doth tye up its self For in truth to what purpose is it to beat a man's breast and rend his back while sin mean time reigneth in his heart To what purpose is it to afflict the members of this body while the members of the
any other of the Ministers of JESUS CHRIST doth any where injoyn us to wear hair-cloth or to disfigure our countenances with a multitude of fasts and watchings or to go barefoot or to put on a cowl or renounce the usage of any of the meats which GOD hath created for our service much less to cover our selves with dung and filth or to gore our selves all over with disciplines Isa 1.12 God will one day say to those that amuse themselves in such mortifications Who hath required this at your hands and why have ye suffered so much in vain Gal. 3.4 The only mortification he demands of us is that of the old man that we beat down our vices and not that we rend our bodies that we deface our passions and not our countenances that we renounce our lusts and not His gifts That we give the discipline to our manners and not our shoulders As for our selves My Brethren I acknowledge that we have renounced the mortification of the superstitious the misery is we do not practise that which is our Saviours though without it no man can have part in Him or His kingdom as the Apostle intimates plainly enough here where he doth not own any person for a member of CHRIST risen who is not dead and else-where he affirms in expresse terms that they that are CHRIST's have crucified the flesh with its affections and lusts We amuse not our selves in bodily exercise No but neither do we more heed that of the spirit We spare our hearts no less than our bodies and do not treat the vices of the one any whit more roughly than the skin of the other Men see sufficiently by the actions of our lives that the members of this old man whom the cross of CHRIST hath condemned unto death remaining very far from being dead are scarce wounded in us that they are not so much as scratch'd that they live in us in their full strength and vigour and no more feel our Saviour's nails and thorns than if He had not died or we not believed in Him at all Our adversaries are nor to seek how to charge it home upon us and it is the only one of their arguments that puts us to confusion We easily answer all their other reproaches There 's none but this wherein our consciences enforce us to separate the cause of JESUS CHRIST and of His Gospel from our own For if His truth were to be judged of by the quality of our deportments who could defend it seeing the horrible disorder that generally appeareth in our lives Let us consider only the two articles here touched by the Apostle unchastity and avarice In conscience is the one and the other of these two passions dead among us Have they not as great a vogue as among the men of the World Is the modesty of youth the honesty of marriage is chastity and temperance better practised here than other-where Doth the fordidnesse and eagernesse of avarice less appear Verily I am extremely asham'd to say it all is alike except that those without do confess and discipline themselves and macerate their flesh with some kind of fasts and say their chappelet whereby at least they shew some sense of their faultinesse though they apply ineffectual and ridiculous remedies of it Whereas we after committing the same faults and dabling in the same filth come to present our selves impudently here without fearing GOD or having shame of men And if the voice of the LORD that resoundeth in this place do draw some sigh from us at our going hence we return every one to our vices as pleasant and as obstinate as ever GOD is so good that He hath hitherto attended our repenting But let us beware lest our obduratenesse do change His patience into fury and constrain Him in the end to punish such a refractory contempt of His word and His favours and avenge the affront we do His Gospel by living so ill in so fair and so divine a light Let us all descend into our selves Let us examine our carriage and our consciences Let each one interrogate himself Come my soul after so many moneths and years that JESUS CHRIST hath so carefully instructed thee what pains hast thou taken to conform thy self to Him and to imprint the image of His death and of His life upon thy behaviour Hast thou nailed thine old man to His cross Hast thou mortified his members Hast thou deprived them of that wretched vigour which they display with so much efficacy in the children of disobedience Do they leave thee at rest Or when they begin to trouble thee hast thou the courage to resist them Doth not avarice stretch out thine hand upon the goods of others or doth it not with-hold the same from imparting of thine own unto the poor Hast thou not felt its vain sollicitudes and fruitless melancholies it's insatiable cupidity and unbridled eagerness and that impudence it hath to despise and violate honesty laws and decency for the satisfying its inordinate desires But if avarice hath not importun'd thee tell me my soul hath not the lust of the eyes and the vanity of the flesh at one time or other insnared thee Hath not this traiterous Dalila lulled thee asleep Hast thou guarded the glory of that Nazareat to which GOD hath consecrated thee from her ambushments Brethren let us thus catechize our souls daily and about our other duties as well as these Let us not pardon them any thing Judge we them righteously and with inexorable severity Chastise them for all their faults and bringing them down at the feet of GOD make them weep and grone in His presence Let us reproach them with their ingratitudes and set before their eyes the benefits of GOD and the offences with which they have recompensed Him Denounce we also His judgements on them and the horror of His dreadful vengeance and not give them over untill they have taken a full and firm resolution to return no more to their ingratitudes Above all Dear Brethren let us make them hate and detest those two pests which the Apostle hath to day so solemnly condemned to dye to wit luxury and covetousnesse Let us execute his just sentence upon these two passions and cause them to suffer that death which they so many waies deserve For as to the first it impudently profaneth a body which belongs to JESUS CHRIST was redeemed by His blood washed with His heavenly water fed with His flesh and consecrated by His spirit Rends it from the communion of that divine body of which it is become a member to change it into one of the members of Satan Bereaves it of its glory and despoils it of the greatest honour it had and drawing it out of Heaven whither GOD had called it drags it into Hell I know well that men of the world flatter themselves and extenuate this sin And I am not ignorant that there are people among our selves who suffer themselves to be
at which you shall be examined will have no more complacency for you then for them That LORD whom you see over you is their Creatour and Redeemer as well as yours He hath put them under you but to govern them not to tyrannize over them to have care of them as his creatures and children not to tread them under foot as worms Remember He will treat you as ye shall have treated them You are his servants as they are yours or to say better they are your brethren and ye are not worthy to be so much as His Vassals You and they are one and the same flesh that came out of the earth and unto earth shall return but neither they nor you have any thing in common with GOD. He is in the Heavens and you crawl in the dirt He is the King of Glory and ye are but dust and ashes Yet such is His goodness that notwithstanding this infinite inequality He hath not disdained your nothingness He hath pardoned you your sins He hath washed you in the bloud of his Son He hath forgiven you all your debts He hath communicated to you His divine nature Respect His graces and have no less gentleness and goodness for your own flesh and bloud then this Soveraign LORD hath had for you who were His enemies With what face will you beg mercy of Him if ye be inexorable to your people How can you hope for the grace of your Master if you have none for your Servants I beseech you both have these holy thoughts night and day fore your eyes to the end you may faithfully discharge those mutual duties which the Apostle enjoyns you the one subjection and obedience the others justice and equity both of you living in such an holy correspondence as that the loyalty the respect the humility the submission and the diligence of servants may go in conjunction with the gentleness the gravity the liberality and benevolence of Masters If ye so do you will be happy the families where you live together in this manner will become the wonder of the earth and the honour of the Church The blessing of Heaven will fall continually on them and besides the contentment and repose which this kind of life will give you abundantly for the present it will also bring you hereafter into the possession of the heavenly inheritance But Dear Brethren it is not enough that those Masters and Servants to whom St. Paul particularly speaks do make their profit of his instructions We all have in them what to learn of whatever quality and condition we be For since he would have servants render so exact and so frank an obedience to their Masters according to the flesh judge ye what kind of obedience we owe to that Highest LORD whom we all have in Heaven The Master according to the flesh gave not his servant the being he hath and if he redeemed him he redeemed but his flesh and that at the price of a sum of money only Ours did make us and it 's by His liberality alone that we hold all the being life and motion that we have Nor hath He only created us He hath also redeemed the whole of us our soul and body flesh and spirit not with silver and gold which are corruptible things but with His own precious bloud having voluntarily sacrific'd His life to preserve us from death and give us an happy immortality Never Master had so much right to command His servants as He hath in reference to us Let us obey Him then in all things without reservation and consecrate this whole life of ours to His service the whole whereof we have once and again received from His grace Neither is it with this LORD as with Masters according to the flesh These oftentimes command things unjust or unhonest things contrary to our salvation which we cannot do without destroying our selves He commands us nothing but what is just what is honest and reasonable what is worthy both of Himself and of us Wherefore the most abject bond-servant owes his Master but a limited obedience whereas we owe ours such as is absolute and infinite His yoke is easie and His burthen light He demands no other thing of us but that we love Him and our brethren for His sake that we live honestly and holily that is be happy O ingrateful and execrable creatures that we are if we deny a Master to whom we owe so much so just and so reasonable so beneficial and so blessed an obedience Again judge ye Faithful if the bond-servant ought to obey his Master in singleness of heart with courage and affection as the Apostle says with what ardour promtitude and devotion should we serve ours who is not only allmighty and all-wise but also goodness love clemency and beneficence it self Then as for the bond-man though he ought to serve his Master at all times and in every place yet his Master sees him not always whereas we are ever under the eye of ours He hath a full view of us sees us within and without nor can we hide our selves in any place where He is not present We cannot speak a word nor form the least thought in the secret of our hearts but He 's a witness of it knows the whole assoon as our selves Now sure there is no slave so sottish and shameless but the Master's eye will keep in order and compel unto obedience It such a one be idle or exorbitant he is not so but in the other's absence Since then we have ours alway present what remaineth but that we be never idle that we employ all our time in His service bearing respect to His Divine eye that looketh on us and is over us both day and night Again even when the serving of a man is in question the Apostle would have the slave not serve to please the man meerly so great an integrity and probity doth he require in all our performances Judge then how much more holy and how much more pure from all interest that obedience should be which we render to the LORD JESUS GOD blessed for ever Undoubtedly they that serve Him to please men to gain their esteem and acquire a reputation for sanctity among them or to draw thence any other profit they I say beside their being ridiculous and vain do commit also an huge and an inexcusable sacriledge profaning the Name of GOD and the sacred acts of religion Matt. 6.2 and most unrighteously abusing them for worldly ends Such are those hypocrites that fast and pray and hear the word of GOD and celebrate His Sacraments and give alms to be seen and had in honour that in short serve not GOD but to please men They saith CHRIST have their wages They are paid they have nothing more to look for at GOD's hands For such vain and deceitful service they shall have no other reward but that vain and deceitful breath which they have coveted and sottishly preferred to the glory of
XLIX SERMONS Upon the Whole EPISTLE OF THE APOSTLE St. PAUL TO THE COLOSSIANS In Three Parts BY THAT FAMOUS MINISTER OF THE REFORMED CHURCH in PARIS Mr. John Daille Author of that Incomparable BOOK Intituled The RIGHT VSE of the FATHERS Translated into English by F.S. LONDON Printed by R. White for Tho. Parkhurst and are to be sold at his Shop at the Bible and three Crowns in Cheapside near Mercers Chappel 1672. To the HONOURABLE Sr. Will. Courtenay Of Pouderham Castle in the County of Devon Baronet SIR THE Divine Epistle of S. Paul to the Colossians was not to rest in their hands but by his express order to be communicated unto the neighbouring Laodiceans as we read in the Epistle it self towards the end It would therefore seem a little congruous that these Sermons which expound it do undergoe a like disposal and not confined to the French to whom they were originally Preached be imparted to the neighbouring English The Author of them was He whom his Auditors at Charenton did frequently call for the beauty and richness of his Discourses the Silver-tongue Daille Readers here have applauded and do esteem highly for his Apologie and that exquisite Treatise of the use of the Fathers both which have for some years spoke our Language The learned all abroad do know him and value him for divers other excellent labours He signalized himself both at the Press and in the Pulpit and GOD was pleased to crown him in His service with the glory of a vigorous and venerable old age I confess I was none of the meetest to represent this Work of his and communicate it as I do nor did I design it at the entrance But a private exercise receiving some encouragement grew up and comes at length into a publication Neither am I without hope but that the known English civility for strangers will be shewed Mr. Daille though his Interpreter be no more then he is Yea while that Reverend man interpreteth here a great Apostle and presseth as he doth solid religiousness towards GOD Loyal Subjection to Princes and Superiours Peace and Love and every Vertue among men I would promise him Christian attention and consideration a calm and generous enduring of little discrepancies if any occurr and all the respect that befits a Minister of CHRIST Now Sir I deem it not improper to put into Your hand a piece which had its Original in France when I reflect upon the illustriousness of Your Ancestry sometime there I cannot but mind in particular how the Family was engraffed into the Royal House it self Peter a Son of Louis le Gros espousing the Inheretrix a Name and Arms of Courtenay so becoming the stock whence those Noble afterbranches issued which did spread forth on this and on that side of the Sea But the Dominion and Empire of GOD is equally over all the Kinreds and Kingdoms of the World and unto Him every one 's greatest and nearest relation I tender therefore the present Volume chiefly as spent upon the illustrating and enforcement of His holy mind and will and do beseech You to accept the gratitude which it is tendred withall That every Divine blessing may descend and rest upon Your Person and Affairs Your Vertuous Honourable Lady and all those sweet Branches about Your Table is the earnest and incessant Prayer of SIR Your Obliged and Affectionately devoted Servant F. S. TO MONSIEUR Monsieur du Candal LORD of FONTINAILLE Counsellour and Secritary of the KING House and Crown of France SIR I Present You these Sermons believing I owe this acknowledgement not only to the Friendship wherewith you honour me but much more to the edification and good offices the Church where I preached them receiveth now a long time from your piety For besides the fair example which your life giveth us a life full of vertue and honour always constant and equal in the profession and holy Exercises of the truth of the Gospel there hath been presented no occasion of doing service to the people of GOD either in the one or in the other of their times but you have embraced with zeal and managed with prudence So likewise we see that the Good and Merciful LORD you serve hath crowned your obedience with the benedictions of His Grace For in the inequality of seasons and the diversity of affairs He hath still rendred You acceptable both to those within and even to them without And which is the principal He hath preserved His Covenant in your house that neither the vanity of the world nor the scandal of the time hath been able to make any of the breaches there which we see with grief in other families To establish this pretious heritage of piety in your blood His Providence hath added to it by alliance persons excellent in knowledge and in merit in whose linage you daily see your own life renew and flowrish afresh It is true Sir you have also had your trials as no true believers are exempted from them But those which GOD hath dispensed to you have been so tempered with his goodness as I believe you may truly say that in this more than in any other passage of Your life He hath made shine forth the marveils of His grace towards You. Such was some years ago the bitter but blessed and happy death of the late Sir Your eldest Son taken away untimely and in the prime flower and vigor of His age This was without doubt a very dolorous stroke which cut down in a moment the sweetest of your hopes plucking from your embraces a Son as love-worthy as he was loved and whose deserving to say all in a few words was no less than the dignity of a Senator to which he was already arrived in the chief of the Parliaments of this Kingdom But how sensible soever His death was unto you it was notwithstanding accompanied with grace of GOD so visible and ravishing as I fear not to refresh Your memory of it well knowing it is no less dear and pretious to You for the piety and the high and truly Christian constancy He shewed in those last and happy moments of His life than troublesom and bitter for the mourning and sadness which it left on Your whole House As soon as His malady appeared to be what indeed it was He looked on Death without disturbance He prepared Himself for it with great courage and His air his eyes and all His discourses were full of resolution and contentment He comforted us all and amid the tenderness and resentments of such a separation never expressed ought of feebleness And though He left on earth of the dearest and sweetest one may here possess or desire yet He quitted it not only without regret but even with joy so firm was the hope or to say better so clear and assured the sight which the LORD JESUS then gave Him of the blisses and delights to which He called him He remained in this graceful and holy disposition even to
is the only source thereof to render Him thanks for it This is the just and reasonable Tribute this liberal LORD demandeth of us for so many benefits as he communicateth daily to our Brethren and our selves If our lowness and poverty render us incapable of other acknowledgement let us at least faithfully acquit us of this so easie an one and so rightful and say with the Prophet Psalm 116.12 13. What shall I render to the LORD All his benefits are upon me I will take the cup of deliverances and call upon the Name of the Eternal One. Let us study with so much the more care to render this sacred due to the LORD by how much more black and detestable the ingratitude of men is in this behalf Far from blessing Him for the benefits he doth their neighbours they scarce give Him thanks for those they receive of Him themselves They impute them to their own industry or fortune and as saith the Prophet Sacrifice to their Drag for the good successes that betide them yea some so insensible there are as it is not godliness it self but they give the glory of it to their own will and the strength of their free determination But it is not enough to render thanks to GOD for our Brethren there must be also prayer for them For as it is He that gives them all the good things they possess So there is none but himself that can preserve or augment them to them and thus our thanksgivings should be ever followed or accompanied with Petitions as the Apostle sheweth in saying that be giveth thanks to GOD for the Colossians praying alwayes for them The Title He giveth to GOD calling Him the Father of our LORD JESVS CHRIST is not put here in vain but to distinguish and specifie the object of our prayers and thanksgivings The appellation of GOD under the Old Testament was The GOD of Abraham of Isaac and of Jacob the Patriarchs with whom He contracted the Old Covenant and to whom He promised the New Now His Name is the Father of JESVS CHRIST by whom He hath abolished the Old Testament and accomplished the New Besides hereby St. Paul remindeth us of that we can never enough meditate that it is by the mean of this sweet and charitable Saviour GOD hath communicated Himself to us and if we have the honour to be His children 't is by JESUS CHRIST of whom He is properly the Father having not adopted Him as us but begotten Him from all eternity of His own substance by reason whereof that also which He assumed to Himself in the Womb of the Virgin hath the same glory according to what the Angel said The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee said he to the Holy Virgin and the Vertue of the Highest shall overshadow thee Luke 1 35. whence also that holy thing that shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of GOD. But the Apostle addeth in his process what were those blessings of the Colossians for which himself and Timothy so assiduously rendred their thanks to GOD the Father of our Saviour Having heard speak of your faith in JESVS CHRIST saith he and of the charity you have towards all the Saints He had never been among them as He will say hereafter putting them after the opinion of most Interpreters Col. 2.1 in the number of those Who had not seen his presence in the flesh Therefore he saith it was by hearing that he understood of their faith and charity Here is faithful Sirs the true matter of our joyings and thanksgivings for our neighbours not that GOD hath given them vigour of health abundance of riches the favour of the great the glory of fame the knowledge of Sciences and such other worldly good things which to say the truth are but figures dreams and shadows that secure no person as we daily see either from diseases of the body or death or from trouble and disquiet of conscience or true misery But indeed for that Heaven hath revealed JESUS CHRIST to them and shed into their souls that holiness without which none shall see GOD. For these two Graces Faith and Charity comprize within their compass the whole Kingdom of GOD. Faith is the entrance thereof and charity the accomplishment The one cleareth our understandings the other sanctifieth our affections The one is the light of the soul the other is the heat thereof The one believeth and the other loveth The one beginneth and the other finisheth the happiness of our life Now Faith respects indeed generally the whole doctrine of GOD revealed in His Word believing it undoubtedly true but yet it fixeth particularly on the Promise He hath made us to give us Eternal Life in JESUS CHRIST His Son 'T is this properly that renders Faith saving and vivifying Without this it would not differ at all from the faith of Devils who believe there is a GOD and tremble at it But this love of GOD which it apprehendeth and embraceth giveth it salvation and enables it to produce in us all that 's necessary for getting in to the celestial Kingdom according to the assertions of JESUS CHRIST and His Apostles in divers places of the Scripture that whosoever believeth in the LORD is already passed from death to life That there is no condemnation for him and that being justified by faith we have peace with GOD. Hence St. Paul to describe here true faith addeth expresly these words Faith in JEVS CHRIST He sheweth us in like manner the object of Charity by saying The Charity you have towards all the Saints that is as we have intimated afore towards all Christians all the faithful I confess that Charity extendeth it self to all men generally there being none to whom we owe not love and on occasion the offices which a true and sincere affection is apt to produce since all men are the Works and Images of GOD since in Adam they all have one common nature with us and all are called to the participation of faith and of eternity in JESUS CHRIST by the Gospel which without distinction or exception inviteth all Nations and persons to repentance and grace But so it is notwithstanding that Charity embraceth not all men equally It hath divers degrees in it's affections and loveth it's neighbours more or less as it perceiveth more or less in them the marks of the hand of GOD and the tokens of His CHRIST and Spirit Seeing therefore they appear no where more clearly than in the Saints that is in true believers it is evident these make the first and principal part of the object of Charity Gal. 6.10 according to what the Apostle saith elsewhere Let us do good to all but principally to the houshold of faith Besides that Union we have with them a much more strict and intimate one than with any others their necessity also doth particularly oblige us thereto the hatred and persecution of the world putting them for the most part in such
GOD is which we have by JESUS CHRIST It is Deliverance saith the Apostle The word he useth in the Original 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 particularly signifieth a deliverance effected by some ransom given for bringing the delivered out of the bast estate he was in and it is properly that which we call Redemption For a man may be delivered divers wayes either by being simply put out of the affliction he was in as when a master enfranchiseth his slave setting him at liberty of His good will or when a Creditor lets his Debtor out of prison forgiving him the debt or by exchange as when one prisoner of War goes for another or by forcible recovery as when Abraham delivered Lot by defeating his enemies and David his people that had been taken by the Amalekites The deliverance we have by JESUS CHRIST is not of this sort He hath procured it by the ransome He gave for us and it 's this that the word Redemption here used by the Apostle doth signifie But the same term informeth us also that the benefit which we have received of Him is not simply the gift of life It is a deliverance which brings us out of some misery GOD gave life and immortality to the Angels but He gave them no deliverance since they never were in sin or misery and before Adam's fall He promised Him life it 's true but not salvation and redemption because man was then in his integrity without sin and misery likewise The benefit we receive of Him by JESUS CHRIST is not simply life and immortality it is a deliverance a salvation a redemption that not only conferreth some good on us but taketh us out from sin and freeth us from misery The Apostle explains it us more particularly when he adds That this redemption which we have in JESVS CHRIST is the remission of sins True it is the word Redemption is general comprising under it deliverance from any evil whatsoever certain it is also that the number of our evils is great and that JESUS CHRIST hath delivered us not from one or two evils only but from all He hath delivered us from the ignorance into which we were naturally plunged He hath delivered us from the bondage of the Flesh the lusts whereof did exercise an horrible tyranny in our members He hath delivered us from that death which we were made subject unto and from the curse of the Eternal Father which we had deserved For which cause the Apostle elsewhere saith that JESUS CHRIST is made unto us not simply righteousness but also wisdom sanctification and redemption and in a multitude of places that He hath brought us out of darkness and delivered us from the tyrannous power of sin and death But though all this be very sure yet in this place he restraineth the Redemption we have in JESUS CHRIST to the remission of sins and that in my opinion for two reasons First because remission of sin is the first and the principal of His benefits the basis and foundation of all the rest which necessarily leads them on and without which it is not possible to reach any of them For sin as you know is expresly that which makes separation between GOD and us The cause why this most merciful and all-powerful Ruler of the world taketh from us the light of His knowledge and the communication of His goodness leaving us in the darkness of errour and in misery is neither hatred nor contempt nor disdain of His creatures It 's nothing but our Sin His justice and soveraign equity permitting Him not to crown with His blessings people that are criminal JESUS CHRIST therefore intervening and procuring for us the remission of our sins thereby bringeth us out of the ill case we were in and openeth the fountain of celestial good which was before shut up by Justice This obstacle being removed this sluice if I may so say opened Divine goodness recovering its natural course floweth forth upon us and poureth into us light peace holiness and life It is not then to exclude these other benefits of the Redemption which is by JESUS CHRIST that the Apostle defineth it hereby the remission of sins For it compriseth them all none having this remission but they have also upon it all the LORD 's other graces but to shew us the due order of all the parts of this deliverance of which remission of sin is the first and principal Secondly the Apostle doth this because the ransome which the word Redemption doth imply was not properly necessary save for obtaining the remission of sins Except for this there was no need that JESUS CHRIST should lay down His life for us For supposing that a pure and sinless creature should have lain in ignorance and misery and if you will even in death it self There would have been no necessity that the Son of God should have shed His blood or suffered death to bring it up thence It would have sufficed He had loved it His good will would have immediately moved His power to display it self in its behalf and fetch it out of its distress there being nothing to hinder this natural operation of His goodness and so the happiness of such a creature would have been simply a deliverance and not a redemption But forasmuch as we were sinners it was necessary for our recovery that JESUS CHRIST should make His soul an offering for sin and pay the ransome of our liberty Whence it follows that to speak properly and exactly there is nothing but the remission of sins that should be called redemption as the Apostle defineth it in this place the other deliverances which we obtain by our LORD being only fruits and consequents of the remission of sin This then is the grand atchievement of the Son of GOD the miracle of His goodness and love that He hath procured and obtained for us the remission of our sins This is our true redemption Without this redemption we should still be enemies of GOD. We should not have any part either in His grace or in His glory Be even what you can desire in other respects Have all the goods of the earth all perfections of body and mind Be Monark of the whole world Have if it were possible the lights of Angels and the riches of their knowledge If you have not the remission of your sins you are a bondman and a wretch a slave to Devils and vanity and death since true redemption is the remission of sins But as without it it is impossible to be otherwise than infinitly wretched so with it it is not possible to be otherwise than infinitely happy The repose of the conscience the illumination of the understanding the jewel of sanctification the Graces of the celestial spirit life and immortality do inseparably follow it Go in peace said the LORD JESUS to those whose sins He pardoned as if He had said thou hast nothing more to fear since thy sin is forgiven thee There is no
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
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
elected and imploy'd to compass it or the love of the Son who for our welfare spared not his own blood Sinner approach the Throne of GOD with boldness He is no longer environed with flames and Lightning flashes He is full of grace and clemency Fear not His indignation or His severity Peace is made Your Rebellions are expiated your sins are purged GOD requires nothing of you but Faith and Repentance His Justice is contented and doubt not but the satisfaction it hath received is sufficient He that made it for you is the Well-beloved of the Father the Lord of glory in whom all fulness dwelleth You will find abundantly in Him all the good things that are necessary for your felicity the light of wisdom to dissipate your darkness and illuminate your understandings unto a perfect knowledge of Divine things a righteousness most compleat and of proof every way to justifie and exempt you from the Curse of the Law and to open the entrance of the Tribunal of GOD to you A most efficacious Sanctification to mortifie the lusts of your flesh and fill you with Charity Honesty and Purity And a most plentiful Redemption to deliver you from death and from all the evils that have connexion with it and put you in Eternal possession of Immortality Make your advantage of this Divine Well of Life Give no ear to them that call you any otherwhere You are happy enough if you possess the LORD JESUS He is the only Prince of Salvation the Way the Truth and the Life And as for Creatures whether Earthly or Heavenly fear them not If you are JESUS CHRIST's they shall do you no evil He hath reconcil'd them all to you He hath taken out of them all the will and all the power they had to hurt you They desire your good and secretly favour you owning you for their Friends and Allies Heaven looks down on you in peace and calleth you up into its holy place The Angels bless you and direct all your ways This Earth will hold you no longer than your common LORD shall judge expedient for His own glory and your salvation But if this general peace which you have now with GOD and the World do rejoyce you the means by which it was procured should no less ravish you even that blood of CHRIST shed out upon a Cross the grand Miracle of GOD the price of your Liberty the Salvation and the Glory of the Universe What and how ardent was that love which gave so rich and so admirable a Ransom for you What will He deny you who hath not kept back His own blood from you who to make you happy abhorred not a Cross the most infamous of all punishments who to raise you up to the most eminent Contentments underwent the extremest Dolours the lowest disgrace to bring you unto highest glory the Malidiction of GOD to communicate to you His Benediction O over-happy Christians if you could discern your blisses Where is the anguish of Spirit or the trouble of Conscience or the loss or the suffering or the reproach which the meditation of this love should not consolate Who shall condemn us since the Son of GOD dyed to merit our Absolution Who shall accuse us since His Blood and His Cross defend us Who shall take from us the Benevolence of the Father since He hath obtain'd it for us and conserves it towards us Who shall pluck out of our hands a life He hath given us a Salvation that He hath so dearly bought But dear Brethren these considerations which open to us so rich a Source of Consolation oblige us also to a singular Sanctification For how great will be the hardness of our hearts if these great evidences which GOD hath given us of His love do not affect us if they kindle not in us an ardent affection towards a GOD who hath so loved us a sacred and inviolable respect towards a Redeemer who hath done so much for us He hath reconciled and reunited all things in Him both Terrestrial and Celestial Let us live then henceforth in such sort as may answer this happy alliance Let us no more afflict heaven no more scandalize the earth by the impurity of our deportments Let us labour in conjunction with all the Creatures for the service and to glory of our common LORD Imitate we the purity the zeal and the obsequiousness of those Celestial Spirits into whose Society we are entred by the benefit of this Reconciliation Let us be cloathed as they are with a beautiful and pleasing light Our lot is to be one day like them in Immortality let us be so for the present in Sanctity Our peace is made with GOD. Let us not make war upon Him any more He hath pardoned us all the exorbitancies and rage of our Rebellion never turn we to any of them again He will be our good LORD and gracious Master Be we His faithful Subjects and obedient Servants Let the Blood of CHRIST wipe away both our guilt and our filth Fasten we our old man to His Cross Let the nails that there pierced His flesh pierce also the members of ours Let the Cross that made Him dye make to dye all our lusts and extinguish by little and little in us that earthly carnal and vicious life which we derive from the first Adam to regenerate and raise us up again with the second unto a new an holy and spiritual life worthy of that Blood by which he He hath purchas'd it for us and of that Spirit by whom He hath communicated the beginnings of it to us and of that Sanctuary of Immortality where He will fully finish it one day to His own glory and our eternal blessedness Amen THE XI SERMON COL I. Ver. XXI XXII Vers XXI And you who were somtime estranged from Him and who were His enemies in your understanding in wicked works XXII Yet now hath He reconciled in the body of His flesh by death to render you holy and without spot and unreprovable before Him DEar Brethren It was long since observed by Philosophers and we still find it by experience that general things do move the spirits of men very little The cause is that being naturally glewed up too close every one to his particular interests they mind only that which toucheth the same and are not sollicitous about a common concern till they are made some way smartly sensible that themselves have part in it The ministers of the Church therefore should not content themselves with proposing the maxims of heavenly doctrine in gross and in general only to the souls whose edification is committed to them that they may get hold of them and produce some good effect upon them they must apply to them in particular each of those Divine verities St. Paul whose example should serve for a rule to all the true servants of GOD takes this course in divers places of His Epistles and particularly in the Text we have now read you For
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
Himself without witness and that He hath made manifest in His works what may be known of Him But all this light doth only shew us the greatness of their corruption For they with all the vivacity of their spirits made no proficiency in the School of Providence unto the fearing of GOD and serving Him but became vain in their reasonings and miserably abused the gifts of Heaven so as the whole success of this dispensation was nought else on their part but that they were thereby rendred inexcusable Conclude we then that all men generally not one excepted are of their own nature such as the Apostle here describes the Colossians strangers and enemies to GOD in their understanding in wicked works There is nothing but the word of the LORD alone which is able to bring them out of this estate by the saving grace of His Spirit wherewith GOD accompanies it And this the Apostle representeth here to the Colossians in the second place For having minded them of their former condition he addeth Yet now hath GOD reconciled you by the body of His flesh that is the flesh of JESUS CHRIST by His death The condition they were in before was very miserable For what can be imagined more wretched than men far from and strangers to GOD in whose communion alone all their welfare consisteth men enemies to Him without whose love they can have no true good yet besides misery there was horrour also in their case Misery doth ordinarily stir up pity their 's was worthy of abhorring and hatred For what is there in the world that less deserves the compassion of GOD and men or is more worthy of the execration of Heaven and Earth than a Subject that withdraweth from His Soveraign that hates Him and Warrs against Him that insolently violates all His Laws and abandons himself to all the crimes He hath forbidden especially if the Soveraign be gracious and beneficent as the LORD is the only Author of all the being life and motion that we have Nevertheless Oh inestimable and incomprehensible goodness GOD for all this forbore not to have pity on the Colossians He sought to them when they were alienated from Him He offered them peace when they made War upon Him He took them for His friends and chose them for His Children when they shewed Him the greatest hatred and enmity Their wicked works deserved His curse and He bestowed on them His grace Their rebellion deserved His direful flashes and He sent them His comfortable light This opposition the Apostle indicateth here when he saith And yet you hath God reconciled A like opposition he expresseth elsewhere Rom. 5.8 in the same matter saying GOD altogether commendeth His love to us-ward in that while we were but sinners CHRIST dyed for us For the setting forth of this great grace of GOD towards these faithful people he saith that GOD hath reconciled them Having spoken of their estrangement and of their enmity with GOD He doth with good reason make use of the word Reconcile to signifie the setting of them again in His good liking and favour It happens somtimes in the misunderstandings of men that the averseness and hatred is but on one side one of the parties seeking the favour of the other Here as we have yerst intimated the aversion was mutual For we hated GOD and He because of our sins hated us It was necessary therefore for the restoring of us that both the one and the other of these two passions should be remedied that is that the wrath of GOD against us should be appeased and our hatred and enmity against Him extinguished The word Reconcile doth of its self comprehend both the one and the other But in the Apostle's writings it referreth principally to the first that is the mitigation and appeasing of the wrath of GOD. As indeed this is the principal point of our reconciliation For GOD being our soveraign LORD it would not benefit us at all to change our will towards Him if His did not operate otherwise towards us as the repentance and tears of a subject are vain if his Prince reject them and remain still angry with Him Furthermore the word Reconcile as also the most part of other words of like form and nature is taken two manner of ways For either it signifies simply the action that hath such vertue as is necessary to make reconciliation or it compriseth the effect of it also It 's in the first sense that the Apostle used it afore where he said that GOD hath reconciled all things celestial and terrestrial in Himself or for Himself having made peace by the blood of the cross of CHRIST For he meaneth simply that GOD hath taken away the causes of hatred and enmity and opened the way of reconciliation not that all things are already actually reconciled It 's thus again that we must take 2 Cor. 5.19 what he saith elsewhere that GOD was in CHRIST reconciling the world unto Himself not imputing unto them their trespasses But the Apostle takes the word Reconcile in the second sense when he saith that we have obtained reconciliation by CHRIST and when he beseecheth us to be reconciled to GOD it being evident that in these places he intendeth not the right and power only but the very effect and actual having of reconciliation It 's after this second way that we must take the word reconcile in the Text. For again this Reconciation may be considered two ways first in general as made by JESUS CHRIST on the Cross and secondly in particular as applyed to each of us by Faith In the first consideration it is presented to all men as sufficient for their salvation according to that doctrine of the Apostle Tit. 2.11 1 Joh. 2.2 that the Grace of GOD is saving to all men and that also of St. John that JESVS CHRIST is the propitiation for our sins and not for ours only but for the sins of the whole world Under the second consideration it appertaineth only to the faithful according to that clause of the covenant which declareth That the only Son was given to the world that whosoever believeth in Him Joh. 3.16 should have eternal life It 's precisely in this sense the Apostle saith here that GOD had reconciled the Colossians he meaneth not simply that GOD had given them through the cross of His Son that they might be reconciled to Him by believing but also that He had effectively reconciled them to Himself and put them in real possession of the benefits that were purchased for us by the merit of CHRIST embracing them as His children pardoning them all their sins and obliviating all His wrath and the aversion their offences had given Him towards them But the Apostle mentions to them yet again here the means by which this reconciliation was effected as being a thing of infinite importance both to the glory of GOD and their edification He hath reconciled you saith he by the body of His
enmity to the end that being purified by the vertue of the Sacrifice of His Son and clothed with His righteousness by faith we might appear before the Tribunal of His grace without condemnation and without confusion But nothing compelleth us to pitch on this It is much better in my judgment to understand it of our sanctification than of our Justification First because the words themselves agree much better with it the Scripture as you know ordinarily expressing the gift of Regeneration by the word Holiness whereas it useth the word Justifie or pardon of our sins and not imputing them unto us when it would signifie the first benefit of GOD which we obtain by the imputation of the righteousness of CHRIST Secondly because the Apostle having already represented it unto us in those words that GOD hath reconciled us by the body of the flesh of His Son by death which do signifie that He hath received us into favour pardoning us all our sins as we have explained them it seems needless to repeat the same thing again In fine because both St. Paul and the other sacred writers are wont to joyn those two gifts of GOD our Justification and our Sanctification together as two graces that are inseparable and never go one without the other so as having spoken to us of the one it was not only convenient but also in some sort necessary 1 Cor. 1.30 1 Cor. 6.11 he should annex the other just as elsewhere having said that CHRIST is made unto us righteousness he immediately adds and sanctification and again in another place where having touched the filthiness of the former life of the Corinthians as here that of the Colossians he saith But ye are washed but ye are sanctified Here the Apostle doth not only knit these two graces together but moreover sheweth us the order and relation which they have the one to the other that the second to wit Sanctification is the end of the former that is of Justification He hath reconciled us saith he by the death of His Son to render us holy without spot and unrebukable before Him The Scripture teacheth us the same thing in divers other places as in St. Luke where Zachary saith that GOD sheweth us mercy and delivereth us out of the hand of our enemies that we might serve Him without fear in holiness and righteousness before Him And St. Peter in his first Epistle Luk. 1.74 75. 1 Pet. 2.24 CHRIST saith he hath born our sins in His own body on the tree that we being dead to sin might live unto righteousness And our St. Paul that JESVS CHRIST dyed for all that they which live 1 Cor. 5.15 might not henceforth live unto themselves but unto Him who dyed and was raised again for them and elsewhere again that CHRIST gave Himself for us Tit. 2.14 that He might redeem us from all iniquity and purifie us to be unto Him a peculiar people addicted to good works and in another passage altogether like that which we are upon Eph. 4.5 He loved the Church saith he and gave Himself for it that he might sanctifie it have cleansed it by the washing of water by the word and might present it to Himself a glorious Church having neither spot nor wrinkle nor other such thing but that it might be holy and unreprovable I insist upon this point because it is of exceeding great importance First you see by it what the dignity of Holiness is For since the end of necessity is always more excellent than the means which are used to compass it it is clear than sanctification being the last end of all the things that the LORD employs for our salvation is the greatest and most excellent of all His graces And so you know St. Paul positively declares that Charity which is for substance no other thing but sanctity is more excellent than either faith or hope and he proves it because neither the one nor the other of these two vertues shall have any place in Heaven as being but means and helps for our conducting thither whereas Charity as the last and highest perfection of our being shall eternally remain Secondly from hence appears how much carnal Christians do deceive themselves who pretend to salvation without sanctification Wretched men what do you Your pretention is a vain Chimera You pursue an impossibility For that salvation which you do desire is nothing for the main but that very holiness which you do refuse Both that faith and those other qualities which as you say you have serve only to sanctifie men Without this they are unprofitable things Suppose then that you have them if they do not change you if they do not fill your heart with love to GOD and with charity towards your neighbour in a word if they render you not holy they will advantage you nothing So far will they be from giving you immortality that they will aggravate your misery and sink you deeper into the abyss of death Never believe that GOD gave us His own Son clothed Him with a body of flesh delivered Him up to the death of the Cross that He reconciled us by such precious blood and wrought all these grand wonders which ravish Heaven and Earth that He might acquire us the priviledge to sin freely For far be it from so wise and so holy a Deity to be thought to have ever had such an extravagant and infamous a design He hath laid forth all the marvels of grace and love upon us that He might restore His own image in our nature that He might abolish sin out of it and transform us into new creatures pure and holy and in some sort like Himself and His Son in this respect I confess the description which the Apostle here giveth us of this grace of GOD in us is high and magnifique and that it seems to surmount the reach of believers while they are in the present life For of which of them can it be truly said while he remains in this world that he is Holy and without spot and unreprovable before GOD But to this I answer first that neither doth the Apostle affirm that this great work of the LORD 's in us is compleated in this life He sheweth us only what His purpose is and what the end of His grace and how good and glorious that holiness is wherewith He will cloath us For if we be truly His He will not leave us till He hath made us such as the Apostle's Text importeth even holy without spot and unreprovable Secondly I say that though the highest degree of sanctification in this life be much beneath that which shall adorn us in the next and that in comparison of it the same is defective yet it fails not of being true and of having all its parts though in a weak degree It is sincere and without hypocrisie and such in summ as the words of the Apostle in some sort agree to For true believers while
here below do put off the habitudes of vices and put on those of Christian vertues by reason whereof they are justly called holy though through infirmity there slip from them somtimes some actions contrary thereto They are washed from those foule and ugly spots that yerwhile deformed their whole life and an adversary connot note or reprehend ought in their deportments that is contrary to the profession they make of the Covenant of grace As for what the Apostle addeth that they are such before GOD it is only to signifie that their piety is true and real not feigned nor dissembled that it is not a mask which cheateth the eyes of men but a disposition of heart which GOD discerns within them as men do behold the evidences of it without upon them in the same sense that St. Luke said of Zachary and Elizabeth that they were both righteous before GOD. Lo there Beloved Brethren what we had to say to you upon this Text. The rigour of the season obliging us to conclude this action I will only touch at in a word or two the uses we should deduce from it for our edification referring it to your diligence to dilate each of them and above all to reduce them carefully into practice Remember first the miserable estate wherein you were before GOD prevented you by His grace and think that it is to you also the Apostle saith ye were somtime estranged and enemies in your understandings in wicked works For our ancesters before the Sun of Righteousness shone on these countries were in such a condition as the Colossians or rather a worse Our Fathers were Hittites and our Mothers Amorites living in the darkness of Paganism serving an Hesus and a Belenus and a Tautates and I know not what other vanities sacrificing men to them and weltring in the filth of the most infamous vices Being by the great benignity of GOD drawn out of this gulf we were yet cast into another in which under other names we committed the like crimes adoring an insensible and inanimate thing and bending down our selves before wood and stone and dumb images and giving to a mortal man the glorious names which belong only to the Son of GOD being corrupted both in our thoughts and in our deeds These faults were so much worse than the former by how much less ignorant we were of our master's will than we had yerst been Admire next the goodness of GOD who seeing us in this abyss though our ingratitude and rebellion merited His heaviest avenges yet had pity on us and visiting us in His infinite mercies hath reconciled us by the body of the flesh of His Son through His death He hath sent to us Epaphras's as He did to the Colossians Ministers of His word who have made the voice of Paul and of the other Apostles to resound among us He hath purified us and washed all our filth in the blood of His CHRIST He hath bedewed our hearts therewith and abolished the enmity and extinguished the hatred and re-united us unto Himself communicating to us the Divine body of His Son nailed for us to the Cross the source of our salvation and the treasury of all the good things of Heaven His death hath been our life and His malediction our benediction Acknowledge we this great goodness of our GOD with a profound gratitude Give we Him the glory of all the good that may be in us If there be any light in our understandings any peace in our consciences any pureness in our affections any rectitude in our ways bless we the kindness of this Soveraign LORD who hath vouchsafed to illuminate us to reconcile us and to cleanse us Without this favourable beaming forth of His grace we should be yet strangers and enemies in the bondage and darkness of Aegypt or under the yoke and in the captivity of Chaldea Make we use now of the benefits He hath conferred on us Let us abide fastned to Him so as nothing may set us at distance from Him Love we Him fervently and serve Him diligently lest we become yet again His enemies Let those understandings which were somtime the heads of that wicked war we made against Him religiously maintain that holy and happy Peace which He hath vouchsafed to conclude with us Banish we thence all thoughts of rebellion Have we still before our eyes that sacred flesh which the King of glory was clothed with for us the blood wherewith He purchased our peace the death He underwent to bring us in again with GOD His Father Let us not prophane a blessing that cost Him so dear Imitate we also His goodness Treat we our neighbours as He treated us If they avoid us let us seek to them For we also were enemies to GOD and warred against Him when He called us to the communion of His grace Above all remember we that the end of all the miracles GOD hath done on our behalf is to make us holy without spot and unreprovable before Him Let not us betray so admirable and so reasonable a design Let us not frustrate so good and so merciful a LORD of His intentions Dear Brethren I might here make large complaint of the profaneness of some of the loosness of others and of the faltrings of us all who labour after nothing less than that high and accomplished sanctification to which GOD calleth us but I had much rather end with entreaties than with complaints and do conjure you in the Name of the LORD and by your own salvation that you would judge your selves and that renouncing all the faults of the time past all the impieties and lusts of this world ye would live henceforth soberly righteously and godly and keep your selves holy pure and unreprovable to the glory of GOD the edification of men and your own salvation Amen THE XII SERMON COL I. Ver. XXIII Vers XXIII If indeed ye continue in the faith founded and firm and be not moved away from the hope of the Gospel which ye have heard and which was preached to every creature which is under heaven whereof I Paul have been made a Minister OUr LORD JESUS CHRIST in the Gospel according to S. Matthew telleth us of two sorts of people which hear His Doctrine and frequent His School the one they that put His words in practise that is those who embracing the Gospel with a true and lively faith do render Him the obedience He demandeth of them the other they that hear but put not in practice what He saith unto them that is those who giving but little or no belief to His Divine truth take no care to perform what He commands but content themselves with a vain outside Profession and are not inwardly affected and changed as they ought to be He compares the former to a wise and prudent man that hath built his house upon a Rock and when the rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew and beat upon that house it fell not for
all this for it was founded upon a Rock But on the contrary he compares the second sort to a foolish man that built upon the sand And saith he when the rain fell and the torrents came and the winds blew and smote upon this house it fell and the fall thereof was great Dear Brethren this is an excellent Parable and worthy to be deeply engraven on the hearts of the truly faithful For it shews us first That to have part in the LORD's salvation it is not enough to call Him our Master and make Profession of His Discipline They that have but this will fall sooner or later and be infallibly ruin'd Secondly It further teacheth us That it sufficeth not to have begun except a man do presevere to the end without ever giving back And lastly It declares to us what the cause is both of the perseverance of some and of the revolting and fall of others those that are founded on the rock do stand firm and resist the scandals with which the Devil and the world do combate the truth those that are built only on the sand are easily born down even at the first assaults which the adverse powers make upon them This Doctrine S. Paul yerst represented to the Colossians in the Text we have now read to you In the words foregoing as you heard in its place he did set before their eyes the wonders of the love of GOD which had been gloriously shewed upon them by JESUS CHRIST their Saviour who had called them to His Communion and of strangers and enemies as they were made them friends of His Father reconciling them by the body of His flesh through His death to render them holy without spot and unreproveable before Him But the Apostle knowing there were Seducers and deceitful workers among them who laboured to turn them away from the purity and simplicity of the Gospel that they might be preserv'd from those mens poysons he now advertiseth them that this great salvation whereof he had spoken could not be assured to them without perseverance For qualifying and in some sort correcting His simple and absolute assertion That GOD had reconciled them to Himself he addeth the condition upon which this Divine grace was promis'd them If indeed saith he you continue in the faith being founded and firm c. This Lesson my Brethren is no less necessary for us than it was erewhile for the Colossians since the floods the winds and storms that were then raised against the Edifice of their faith do in like manner at this day beat upon ours divers deceitful workers both without and within endeavouring to overthrow it Take we therefore this sacred Preservative against their malice which the Apostle here giveth us and that we may the better make our profit of it let us meditate in order the three particulars which his Instruction containeth For to confirm the Colossians in perseverance he sheweth them first The necessity and the manner of it in those words If indeed you continue in the faith being founded and firm and be not moved away from the hope of the Gospel which you have heard Secondly He sets before them an excellent Argument of the truth of that Gospel which they had heard to wit That it was preached in all the world And lastly He further alledgeth a second proof of its verity taken from his own Ministry of which saith he I have been made a Minister These are three points we will handle if it please GOD in this action noting briefly upon each of them what we shall judge most proper for our Edification and Consolation As for the first the Apostle explains himself about it in those terms If indeed ye continue c. Where you see he lays down first As Above That Faith is the means by which we enter into possession and use of the good things of OOD which He promiseth us in His Son The old Covenant had also its good things but the condition which it required of men for their obtaining the same was quite different For it demanded of them an exact and perfect obeying of the Law and upon any failure of an entire accomplishing of the same threatned a curse leaving the sinner no hope of life at all according to that dreadful clause Do these things and thou shalt live and Cursed is every one that doth them not But the Gospel beside that the good things which it sets before us are much greater and more Divine than those of the Law differs moreover from the Law in this especially that it demands of men for their having them nothing but Faith * Only 1 alone according to the sentence of our LORD GOD so loved the world that He gave His only Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life This the Apostle sheweth us here with much clearness when having said That GOD hath reconciled us to Himself by the body of the flesh of His Son to render us spotless and unreproveable he addeth If indeed ye continue in the faith This Connexion of the two parts of his Discourse doth evidently infer that it is Faith which makes us to have part in the Reconciliation and Peace of GOD and in the holiness which is by the Gospel So likewise you know that in a multitude of other places the Scripture informeth us expresly that it is by Faith we are justified and have peace with GOD and that it is by Faith our hearts are purified Faith is the means of our union with GOD it is the root of our Charity and the Source of our comfort and in a word the only cause of our felicity For as a Medicine how excellent and healthful soever it be does no good save to those that take it So the LORD's Redemption and the vertue of His Sacrifice how great and infinite soever though able to heal all our sins and to give us Eternity yea not us alone but to all the men in the world yet notwithstanding will communicate none of those benefits to us except we receive it by Faith It is Faith that applies it to us and sheds abroad the efficacy of it into all the parts of our nature But because very many deceive themselves in this matter and take that for true Faith which hath but the shadow and name of Faith the Apostle telleth us that to have part in the salvation of JESUS CHRIST our faith must be constant and such as we do abide and persevere in For as in Games and Combates for Prizes none are crowned but they that hold out to the end So in the heavenly Lists or Race GOD glorifieth them only which run with constancy home to the mark Those that turn aside or stop in the midst of the course lose their labour according to that the LORD did declare Whoever shall persevere to the end shall be saved And therefore the Apostle in another place assuring himself of the Crown among other causes on
LORD And it must be confess'd that this figure is marvellously elegant and proper for this matter For even as the body comprehendeth in its self several members which have each of them their particular function and exercise in like manner this mass of corruption which we bear about in our nature is composed of many different Vices which have each of them their peculiar motion and operation Ambition tendeth one way Avarice and Intemperance another Envy defileth us in one manner Cruelty in another and each of these pests hath its own sentiment and ends Their motions are sometimes even contrary and do thwart one another as unclean spirits that are not at an agreement However at the bottom all these evils come from one and the same source and live in one and the same mass as all the members do make up but one and the same body Hence it is that the Apostle sometimes considering sins under this notion calleth them our members or the members of our flesh Col. 3.5 as when he commands us to mortifie our members which are upon the earth to wit fornication uncleanness inordinate affection and other like Vices Moreover as this body in which we live doth cover us all about so that mass of Vices wherewith our nature is infected doth encompass and on wrap us on all sides there being no part or faculty in us but is as it were invested and besieged with it Such is the corruption that we derive from the first Adam and by reason thereof the Apostle sometimes also calleth it the old man He saith therefore that the circumcision which we have in JESUS CHRIST is the putting off of this body of the sins of the flesh when the faithful person by the virtue of the Word and Spirit of the LORD JESUS doth cut off all the vices of the flesh which are the members thereof and strips himself of this old habit of sin and death wherewith the first Adam clothed us This is that which in the same sense he elsewhere calleth a putting off the old man as to former conversation Eph. 4.22 Col. 3.8 Gal. 5.24 which is corrupted by deceitful lusts And in this present Epistle a putting off of anger malignity and evil speaking and other such sins and again in another place a crucifying of the flesh with its affections and lusts All this amounts to the same sense and signifieth the mortifying of the flesh and the cutting off of its Vices that there may be an abstaining from all the sins which they are wont to produce in the lives of men of the world The Apostle adds in the end that this is the circumcision of CHRIST First because our LORD and Saviour hath expresly instituted it in his Gospel commanding us to be born again to deny our selves to change our deportments to put on a simplicity and humility like that of little children and to break all the ties we have with the flesh and the world if we will follow him and have part in his Kingdom This is the first and most important instruction in his Discipline Secondly It is the circumcision of CHRIST because it 's he alone who is the Author of it and doth effect it in us neither is there ought but his Gospel alone that can unclothe man of this body of the sins of the flesh For it is not possible but that a soul on whom the Doctrine of JESUS CHRIST hath been imprinted by the power of the Holy Ghost should renounce the world and the flesh Philosophy was so far from curing this malady that it did not so much as know it exâ—ctly The Law discovered it indeed and made man to feel the tyrannous strength of this rebellious body of the flesh wherewith he is naturally clothed and surrounded But it was unable to subdue and mortifie it as the Apostle teacheth us at large in the seventh Chapter of the Epistle to the Romans There is none but JESUS CHRIST who by the efficacy of his heavenly truths and the divine examples of his holiness thrust down into our hearts by the hand of his Spirit can circumcise us in this manner unfolding and dis-investing us by little and little of these wretched bonds and weakning and extinguishing the life of the flesh in us Compare now this Circumcision of our Saviour's with that of Moses and you will without difficulty perceive that it infinitely surpasseth it in dignity and excellency That of Moses wounded the body this of CHRIST enliveneth the soul The one par'd away a little skin the other mortifies the whole body of the flesh The one was in its self but a typical ceremony the other is a mystical verity The one mark'd the flesh the other maketh better and ennobleth the heart Without the one a man could have no part in the communion of the carnal Jews and by the other we enter into the alliance of the spiritual Jews whole praise is of GOD and not of men Whereby you may judg how extravagant the conceit of those seducers was whom the Apostle doth in this place oppose who notwithstanding that excellent and divine circumcision which Christians have receiv'd in their Saviour's School would yet bring them under that of Moses which was poor and weak and so many ways defective as if Christians could not upon a far better ground than the Jews glory that they truly are GOD's circumcised Now for a right comprehending of the force of the Apostle's reasoning it must be remembred that circumcision as well as the other ceremonies of the Mosaick Law was a figure which represented the abscission of the vices and lusts of the flesh as the Prophets themselves do clearly enough shew when they promise the ancient people that GOD will circumcise their heart and the heart of their seed Deut. 30.6 Jer. 4.4 that they may love him and live and command them to circumcise themselves unto the LORD and to take away the fore-skin of their hearts an evident sign that this external action did refer to the internal mortification and sanctification of the soul Since then the figure is unprofitable when the truth is attained and models do serve only till the things themselves be formed and perfected the use of them when this is done being no longer necessary you plainâ—y see that from the Apostle's saying here that in JESUS CHRIST we have this putting off or cutting off of the sins of the flesh that is the truth whereof circumcision was the figure and model it evidently follows that it is no longer necessary for us and that a wilful retaining of it still is an accusing of JESUS CHRIST of having not fulfilled in his Discipline the thing represented by this ancient type Iâ—'s true that even in the time of the Old Testament the faithful had some part of the sanctification signifi'd by their circumcision but what they had was weak and in small measure because the true causes on which it dependeth being all comprised in the Mysteries of
circumcision we have that truth and fulness in JESUS CHRIST whereof it had but some part shadow'd out by its figure If the matter be the Sacrament it self the LORD hath given us one highly excelling to wit Baptism So as which way soever it be taken there is no reason at all that any man should desire still to retain circumcision But to proceed it is not here only that the Apostle attributes so great an effect unto Baptism He speaks thus of it constantly as for example when he saith that CHRIST sanctifieth the Church Eph. 5.26 Gal. 3.7 cleansing it with the washing of water by the word and elsewhere that we all who were baptized have put on CHRIST and in another place again 1 Cor. 12.13 that we have all been baptized into one spirit to be one body For the Sacraments of CHRIST are not vain and hollow pictures wherein the benefits of his death and resurrection are nakedly pourtray'd as in a piece of Art that feeds us barely with an unprofitable view of what it represents They are effectual means which He accompanieth with his virtue and filleth with his grace effectively accomplishing those things in us by his heavenly power which are set before us in the Sacrament when we receive it as we ought He inwardly nourisheth by the virtue of his flesh and blood the soul of him that duly takes his Bread and his Cup. He washeth and regenerateth that man within who is rightly consecrated by Baptism And if the infirmity of age do hinder that the effect does not at the instant appear in Infants baptized yet his virtue doth not fail to accompany his institution and conserve its self in them and bring forth its fruits upon them in their season when their nature is capable of the operations of understanding and will Heretofore in the primitive Church this double effect of Baptism was more clearly represented in the external action of the Sacrament than it is at this day For the greater part of those that were baptized being persons of age who came over to Christianity from Judaism or Paganism they were uncloth'd and then plunged into the water whence they immediately came forth and so were baptized in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost whereby they testifi'd that they did put off the body of sin the habit of the first Adam and buried it in the saving-waters of JESUS CHRIST as in its mystical grave and came forth thence risen up to a new life for a symbol whereof they took up a white habit and wore it an whole week Now though the water wherewith we baptize doth not carry so express a figure of this mystical Sepul cher and Resurrection as that of the Ancients did since this ceremony cannot be practis'd towards Infants without very great inconvenience and even danger of their lives in so tender an age and especially in such cold Countreys as ours nevertheless the virtue of holy Baptism is still the same that JESUS whom in it we did put on communicating to us by the virtue of his Spirit the mystical image of his Burial and Resurrection that is as we have shewed the annihilation of the old man and creation of the new If we meet with any baptized persons as there are but too many such in whom the old man is so far from being buried that he lives and reigns with absolute power and the new man hath neither life nor action at all it may not be imputed unto JESUS CHRIST who always accompanieth his Sacraments with his saving virtue but unto the persons own unbelief who doth wretchedly repell the operationof the grace of CHRIST and deprive it of all the effect which it would have assurâ—dly produced in them if their unworthiness had not frustrated its efficacy towards them For I acknowledg that neither Baptism nor the Word do work in any but such as receive them with faith And in this as in all other things the admirable wisdom of our LORD doth appear For the subject being Man a reasonable Creature he dealeth with him in a way proper and suitable to his nature The means he useth for his salvation do not operate in him as drugs and simples by a Physical action and such as takes its effect whatever otherwise be the mind of the man that takes them But the operation of the Word and Sacraments doth depend upon the preparation of their hearts to whom they are administred They work when they are receiv'd with faith they produce nothing when they are receiv'd with unbelief And thus it is meet that the understanding which is the Guide and Ruler of all our moral actions be first perswaded of the truth of GOD and then our wills and affections take impression and be changed by the efficacy of his power This very thing the Apostle here doth shew us with much clearness by adding besides Baptism that we are buried and raised again with CHRIST by faith an evident token that the Sacrament doth mortifie sin in us and raise us up unto sanctity according to the faith it meets with in us It left the heart of Simon Magus in the bonds of iniquity and in the gall of bitterness because it found in it no faith at all but a naughtiness hardned in unbelief and full of Hypocrisie But as for Lydia and all those that have a true faith it doth assuredly mortifie sin in them and makes the new man live in them unto righteousness and holiness For it is not possible but that the person who is firmly perswaded of the truth of the Gospel should renounce sin the venom and horror whereof this Divine Doctrine doth so clearly discover and on the contrary embrace that holiness whose beauty and blessedness it doth so magnificently set before us man naturally flying from what he believes mortal and pernicioâ—s to him and adâ—ering with like necessity to what he judgeth healthful and advantageous But the Apostle who does every where exalt the grace of GOD and cast down the 〈◊〉 of man lest any one should imagine that this â—â—â—th upon which 〈…〉 doth depend were a production of our own will doth by the way advertise us that it is a gift of our LORD's when he nameth it the faith of the efficacy or of the operation of GOD that is to say which the efficacy of his hand produceth in us Whereby their error is refuted who hold that GOD for the producing of faith in us doth meerly set before us either outwardly by his Word or inwardly by his Spirit the object of truth leaving it to the liberty of our will to believe it or reject it By this account faith should not be the faith of the efficacy of GOD since that according to this supposition he should exert none at all upon us But the Apostle stileth it the faith of the efficacy or operation of GOD. We must conclude therefore that for the giving of us faith he operateth in
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
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
absurd and ridiculous The spirits in prison 1 Pet. 3 20. of whom S. Peter speaks cannot upon any better ground be taken for the souls of the faithful detâ—ined in Limbus since those spirits were sometimes rebellious or disobedient in the time of Noah and perished in their sin which cannot be said of the Patriarchs and the Faithful In fine the Apostle's saying that the way into the holy places was not manifested while the first Tabernacle was standing signifies indeed that the High-Priest of the Church our LORD JESUS CHRIST did not carry not introduce our nature into Heaven in soul and body nor discover and make manifest the way to our Mansion of Immortality until the veil of the first Tabernacle was rent which is very true But thence it follows not that the spirits of the faithful consecrated before our Saviour's coming did not feel the fruit of his death and much less that they were detain'd in Hell But besides that this Tradition hath no foundation in the Scripture it doth plainly cross the same For our LORD promised the good Thief Luke 23.43 that the very day he was crucified he should be with him in Paradice where yet according to our Adversaries supposition he should not have entred till the forty-third day after And the Parable of that bad rich man doth plainly shew us that at that time as the souls of impenitent sinners were cast into the torments of Hell-fire so the spirits of the faithful were carried up into the repose and felicity of Paradice For that bosome of Abraham wherein Lazarus rested Luke 16.22 25 26. was not a pit without water as the pretended Limbus is counted to have been but a place of refreshment and consolation not situate in the vicinity of Hell but severed from it by a great gulf set between them And in truth since the faithful did even then drink of the Mystical Rock as well as we were sprinkled with his blood did partake of his sufferings why would any one imagine that our Saviour's Sacrifice had less virtue to introduce them into Heaven after their death than it had to justifie and sanctifie and comfort them in the days of their life As they bore a part with us in the same faith and conflicts on the earth so had they share of our repose and joy in Heaven neither is there any reason for our being admitted if you will needs have them excluded Accordingly certain it is that those elder Christian Writers who did barr the souls of the faithful that deceased under the Old Testament out of Heaven did as well deny reception there to the souls of Christians not assenting that either the one or the other were admitted till after the resurrection so as our Adversaries rejecting as they have reason to do the one half of this error and confessing that Christian souls sufficiently purged are received into Heaven it is nothing but pure obstinacy in them to retain the other half thereof and pretend that the condition of the faithful departed under the Old Testament was otherwise than under the New Be it then concluded that all this pretended deliverance of souls brought out of Limbus is but the fiction of an human spirit not only beside but even against Scripture and Reason But I add in the second place that though it were as certain as it is dubious and as true as it is false yet it would not be possible to refer this passage of the Apostles unto it First The spirits of the faithful departed this life are not at all in the power of Satan but in the hands of GOD to whom they recommend them at their death so as though JESUS CHRIST had brought them out of Limbus yet it could not be said that he had therein spoiled the Devils since that to spoil them is to take from them what they were possess'd of and its clear that though the souls of the faithful had been in this imaginary Limbus yet they would have been there out of the Devil's possession Secondly The word here used which the French hath translated mener en montre that is lead about for a shew is always taken in an ill sense for a shameful and ignominious shew such as that of Malefactors is when they are led through the City and publickly executed that the sight of their shame and punishment may keep men in their duty Now if our LORD had delivered the souls of the faithful out of such a Limbus it could not be said that he had made a shew of them in this sense it being evident that in this case they would have accompanied his Triumph by way of honour and that it would not have been any ignominy but a glory for them to have followed his victorious Chariot Moreover the Apostle's words are so placed in the Original that the spoiling and making a shew of and triumphing over which he speaks of do necessarily respect the same persons that is those whom he spoiled are the same he made shew of and triumph'd over Now he spoiled not the spirits of the Fathers he on the contrary did enrich them sure then it is not them he made a shew of neither can the action which the verb importeth be referr'd to them without depraving the Apostle's whole Context This is all spoken of one and the same subject to wit those Powers and Principalities that is the Devils as we have demonstrated and as all do accord They are the Devils whom JESUS spoiled It is the same that he publickly made a shew of and it 's they again whom he triumphed over As for the Latin Interpreter his saying Zanchy the LORD triumphed of them in himself I acknowledg that divers Greek Copies do read the Text in that manner and some of our Writers have so expounded it conceiving that our Saviour upon his crucifixion did bring the Devils whom he had overcome out of their Hells and shew them to the Angels and the Spirits made perfect bound and chained up as a glorious token of the victory he had gotten over them and they add that this triumph did continue too until his ascension into Heaven But the Scripture telling us nothing of this matter I think it dangerous to affirm the same it being better and more safe to keep to that which GOD hath revealed in his word than to take liberty to follow our own imaginations how plausible soever they appear And the reason which seems to have moved those men to advance this conjecture is exceeding slender For they have been induc'd to do it only by conceiving it absurd to say that JESUS CHRIST triumphed over his Enemies on the Cross seeing that to speak properly he overcame them on the Cross but it seems he triumphed only at his resurrection and ascension But first though there were in this some inconvenience yet nothing would enforce us to assert what they propose It would be sufficient for the avoiding thereof to say that our Saviour
avaricious by name for that among all vices these do particularly provoke the vengeance of GOD by reason of their vileness and enormity and also by reason of the disturbance they occasion in humane society the interest and conservation whereof doth often force the LORD to speed the execution of His judgements upon these kind of sinners and punish them exemplarily in this world that so by this severity of His He may cool the furiousnesse of those who giving up themselves to the passions of these two accursed pests would overthrow all order among mankind if their rage were not repressed by some notable chastisement As for the truth of this sentence that the wrath of GOD cometh for these sins upon the children of rebellion since it is the Apostle that is the mouth of Heaven the oracle of JESUS CHRIST that pronounceth it no Christian may doubt of it First though they should go on altogether unpunished in this world yet sure it is that in the next this burning wrath of the Almighty which shall there manifest its self once for all at the great and terrible day of the LORD shall separate them for ever from the society of the blessed and strike them down to Hell there to suffer eternally with devils the just punishments of their rebellion For besides this Text which is clear 1 Cor. 6.10 Eph. 5.5 Gal. 5.21 Heb. 13.4 1 Cor. 3.17 the Apostle doth in three other passages expresly enroll idolaters fornicators and adulterers among those that shall have no part in the Kingdom of Heaven And else-where he saith particularly of whoremongers and adulterers that GOD will judge them and else-where again that GOD will destroy those who shall have by such pollutions destroyed or violated His Temple that is their bodies In like manner St. John assigneth them their part in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone Rev. 21.8 1 Cor. 6.9 1 Tim. 6.9 which is the second death And as for the covetous it 's of them in particular St. Paul saies that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of GOD and elsewhere that covetous desires do drown men in perdition But besides this great and dreadful punishment which these vices will infallibly draw down at the last day upon the children of rebellion they involve them for the present in so many divers evils that if the worlds stupidity and passion did not blind it it might easily perceive the truth of what the Apostle doth affirm For first is not that bruitishnesse and that horrible eclipsing of good sense and right reason and that bestial abandonednesse to the vilest passions and actions into which almost all the slaves of these vices are seen to fall is not this I say an eminent and plain mark of the wrath of GOD upon them The debauched for their part the life they lead is nought else but a continual wandring out of the way Consider me Soloniâ—â—â— the sagest Prince that ever was in whom shone so glorious and so splendid a light of knowledge and of wisdom that he ravished his whole age and attracted a great Queen from the ends of the earth to come behold his glory After he yielded up himself to this infamous passion he so lost all that force of spirit and judgement that he became extravagant to such a degree as to give up himself to idolatry the utmost of all bruitalities in complacency to his Mistresses And the Heathen Poets themselves to represent what the ordinary sequel of this vice is do make one of their Heroes assume in their fables the habit and equipage of a woman after he had once fallen into the snares of this wretched passion It 's an image of what doth still betide those that let themselves be taken in the same putting off by little and little all vertue and shame they become effeminate and so utterly lose their senses that at length there is nothing so disgraceful nothing so contrary to order honour and decency but they readily do and suffer The same is signified again by another fable of the same Author's concerning some whom the potion of a sorceresse transformed into swine and other beasts The fable is pregnant of truth and under feigned names and persons containeth the history of the most part of those miserable men whom fornication and adultery hath bewitched They lose heart and judgement and humane sense and commit so many follies and extravagancies as it is very easie to perceive that it 's no longer the foul of a man but of a meer animal that guides them Whence then comes so strange a Metamorphosis even in a Solomon and in persons that otherwise seemed so advis'd and prudent Dear Brethren doubt not but that it comes from a secret judgement of GOD who deprives them of that spirit and judgement which they made such ill use of and who so to say degrading them of the quality of men whereof this vice hath rendred them unworthy Rom. 1.20 drives them out among animals delivering them up unto a mind disfurnished of judgement as the Apostle doth else-where describe this dreadful vengeance of GOD. But besides mind and reason who sees not that it also usually takes away their strength their beauty their vigour and health of body bringing on them diseases which gnaw their very bones diseases which rot them and incurvate them before the time and which creating sharpest pains in all the parts of their miserable flesh do make it pay dear for the dishonest pleasures they have given it Loss of goods is also one of the punishments which GOD commonly inflicteth for this sin permitting its very self to consume by the irregularity of its foolish expences the means that are necessary for the support of the life of man and reduce those that serve it to an incommodious and shameful poverty Whereto may be yet added infinite examples which the lives of men are full of of tragical miseries wherewith GOD doth visibly strike sins of this sort It was for them that He sent the first deluge of water on the earth and afterwards again a second of fire and brimstone upon the coasts of Sodom and Gomorrah The debauches of Israel with Moah were the cause of the death of four and twenty thousand men whom GOD consumed in His fury And the tribe of Benjamin so great and flourishing as it had been was reduced to six hundred men for the uncleanness of one of their Cities Who knows not that sometimes one man's adultery hath caused long wars and ruined great Estates And among the instances of it particularly lamentable is that of the Gothes Empire which having flourished in Spain a long time was destroyed and utterly overthrown for a fault of this kind committed by one of their Kings This occasion brought in the Saracens upon their hands who besides liberty and goods took Christian religion away too from the most part of those people introducing and maintaining Mahometism in those Countreys during many ages It is
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
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