Occasion to that fond Opinion of some that Christ descended into Hell and there underwent the Pains and Penalties of that infernal Place as full Satisfaction to the Justice of God and that these were the Pains God raised or loosed him from in his Resurrection But this Conceit is erroneous and extravagant and deserves no serious Confutation especially because it plainly contradicts Christ's Consummatum est upon the Cross for when Christ had undergone his Sufferings on the Cross Joh. 18.30 he said It is finished and so gave up the Ghost If Christ therefore did undergo any farther Sufferings and Pains than those Sufferings he underwent on the Cross those Sufferings would have been so far from being compleated and finished that they would have been but the Praeludium and Beginning of his Sorrows Having loosed the Pains of Death it implies no more but that God raised Jesus Christ from Death which after many dolorous Pains he suffered It follows It was not possible he should be holden of it This is that I intend principally to insist upon and here I shall shew upon what Accounts it was altogether impossible for Christ to be detained under the Power of Death and my Arguments for the Proof hereof are these that follow Reasons why Christ could not be held under the Power of Death First It was impossible Christ should be held under the Power of Death because of that great and ineffable Mystery of the Hypostatical Union of the Divine and Humane Nature in the Person of Christ Because of the Hypostatical Vnion There are three Unions the Belief of which are the Foundation of the greatest part of the Christian Religion which are wholly beyond the reach of Reason The Mystical Union of a Believer unto Christ The Union or rather Unity of the three Glorious Persons the Father the Son and the Holy Ghost in one Nature and this Hypostatical Union of two Natures in one Person in the Mediator It is a Mystery Angels pry into and adore with Wonder and Astonishment how the Eternal only begotten Son of God should assume Flesh to himself in so close and intimate a Conjunction that though he be Eternal yet he should be born though he be Immortal yet he should truly die and though he were truly dead yet he should raise himself to Life again These are things that seem very inconsistent one with another yet they truly come to pass through this miraculous Union which transcends the Reach of Reason as far as these things do that of Nature That the same Person that is Eternal should be young yea be born in the Fulness of Time That the same Person that hath Immortality and Life dwelling in himself should also die a shameful and accursed Death That the same Person that was truly and really dead yet had a power to quicken and recover himself Joh. 10.18 And this was it which declared him to be the Son of God with Power as the Apostle speaks Rom. 1 4â— even by his Resurrection from the Dead And indeed if he had not risen from the Dead the Deity would have suffered in the Opinion of the World nor would they have believed him to be the Son of God who would suffer himself to lie under the Dominion of Death longer than the End of his Death required it And this I shall demonstrate to you by two Arguments only premising this which is a common and true Maxim among Divines That when the Natural Union between Christ's Body and Soul was dissolved yet both Soul and Body did retain the Hypostatical Union to the Divine Nature The Divine Nature was united to the Body of Christ when the Soul was separated from it I. If Christ could not have raised himself it must have been either from a Want of Power or from a Want of Will to do it He could not want Power to raise himself because he was God equal in Power and in all other Divine Attributes with the Father As the Resurrection of the Dead is not impossible to the infinite Power of God so neither can it be that that God who had a Will to assume our Flesh should want a Will to raise it up That that God who so lov'd the Humane Nature as to associate it into Oneness of Person with himself should yet suffer it to continue under the power of Death which is of all things most contrary to his natural Inclinations We see Christ in his Agony prayed most fervently that the bitter Cup might pass from him insomuch that he strained clotted Blood through him and certainly one Ingredient into that Cup was the Separation of Soul and Body by Death which is that which even innocent Nature it self abhorred as destructive to him yet having taken our Nature upon him for this very End that by Death he might destroy him that had the power of Death that is Heb. 2 14. the Devil he voluntarily submitted himself to undergo it and this End being fully accomplish'd by his Death and the Truth of his Death likewise attested by his lying three Days in the Earth it was altogether impossible that that Person who had an Abhorrence of Death and a Power to raise himself should continue longer under the Arrest and Dominion of it And this is the first Demonstration of the Necessity of the Resurrection of Christ upon the Account of both Natures in one Person As Man so he abhorred the Separation of Soul and Body as God so he was able to re-unite them So that having as Man a Desire to live and as God a Power to live it was impossible for him to be holden of Death II. Because of the Union of the Divine and Humane Nature in the Person of Christ it was impossible that his Flesh should see Corruption which yet it must certainly have done had he not been raised in a short space after his Death For since Christ's Body was not a phantastical Body as some of old held but made of true Flesh and of the same Temper and Constitution with ours it must without a Miracle have undergone such Changes after Death as ours shall do and to imagine the contrary is but to feign one Miracle to avoid the necessity of another even of the Resurrection But now it was utterly impossible that that Body that was united to both Natures by so close and unconceivable a Bond should ever see Corruption that is a Putrefaction in the Grave This the Scripture clearly asserts to us Act. 2.28 Thou wilt not leave my Soul in Hell neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see Corruption And also because all Bodies that are corrupted turn into some other Thing and some other Nature according to that undoubted Maxim of the Philosophers Corruptio unius est Generatio alterius And so this horrid and blasphemous Consequence would follow that the Divine Nature of the Son of God might have been joyned to some other So that it was necessary that Christ should be
raised again before any Corruption or Putrefaction by ordinary Course of Nature siezed upon him Thus I have proved by these two Arguments that because of the Hypostatical Union of the Divine and Humane Nature of Christ in one Person it was altogether impossible he could be holden of Death Secondly Another Argument is this It was impossible Christ should be holden of Death because of God's Veracity and the Truth of those Predictions which were before made concerning Christ in those many Types and Prophesies of the Old Testament all which God's Faithfulness stood engaged to fulfil I shall only mention that famous Prediction which St. Peter here subjoins as a Proof of the Subject I am now treating upon It was not possible Act. 2 25 27. says he that Christ should be holden of Death for God saith the Apostle as David saith concerning him Thou wilt not leave my Soul in Hell nor suffer thine Holy One to see Corruption And this Prophesie the Apostle quotes out of the Psalmist Psal 16.10 which that it did not belong to David nor did he speak it concerning himself when he indicted that Psalm the Apostle proves Act. 2.29 30. Ver. 29 30. of this Chapter where he proves that David was dead and buried and underwent the common Lot that all other dead Bodies did putrefying and mouldering away in the Earth and therefore he was not that Holy One that should never see Corruption because that Prophecy must belong to such an one who must so taste of Death and this is clearly implied in the former Expression Thou wilt not leave my Soul in Hell that is in the State of the Dead for so is Hell to be understood there as I shall shew more at large Neither could it belong to any of those who before Christ were raised miraculously from the Dead and brought back out of the State of Death yet was it not in such a manner that they were not to return again to it So that if they did not in the first yet in their second Dying they saw Corruption This then could belong to none of them and therefore must of necessity belong to Christ And since the Apostle lays so much stress on this Argument give me leave a little to consider the meaning of it and how it is applicable to him And here I shall not trouble you with the various Opinions of those that have attempted to interpret these Words Thou wilt not leave my Soul in Hell that by this Hell into which Christ descended is meant the place of the Damned where he preached the Gospel to them freeing those that would beleive from their Pains Others think that this Hell into which Christ descended was one great Partition of it called Lymbus Patrum the Repository of the Souls of those Fathers who died in Obedience to God and in Faith to the Messias before Christ came in the Flesh And the Reason of his Descent thither was that he might release those Souls from Chains and carry them with him to Heaven so that ever since that Mansion in Hell hath been left void without any Inhabitants But this Opinion is not capable of any sufficient Proof I shall therefore give you that Interpretation and Judgment which carries with it the strongest Current both of Scripture and Reason The Word Hades that we translate Hell is very often by the Septuagint in the Old Testament used to signifie the Grave or the State of the Dead So in Gen. 44. Ishades Gen. 44 31 we translate it the Grave but it is the same Word that is used for Hell in the Text. And thus the Word is used in other places of Scripture as also in other Authors to signifie the Place and State of the Dead and of separate Souls And for the leaving the Soul of Christ in Hades or in Hell we must know that it is a thing that is not unusual in Scripture to call a Man that is dead by the Name of Soul So the Septuagint translate that place in Leviticus Levit. 21.11 They shall not be defiled with dead Souls meaning dead Carcases neither shall they go into any dead Souls the Word is dead Bodies But not to detain you any longer on this Speculation though of great use for the right understanding of this excellent place of Scripture If we take Hell for the Grave we must take the Soul for the Body Thou wilt not leave my Body in the Grave But if by Hell be here understood the State of Death that is the State of Separation of Soul and Body the Interpretation will be more easie and natural Thou wilt not leave my Soul in a State of Separation from the Body but wilt certainly unite them together again and raise me up before I shall feel Corruption Thus I have given you the Interpretation of the Prophecy of David which upon the Account of God's Truth and Veracity was to take effect in the Resurrection of our Saviour and therefore being foretold he should not see Corruption the Faithfulness of God was obliged within that time inviolably to raise him up And that is the second Reason why it was impossible Christ should be holden of Death because it was foretold of him that his Soul should not rest in Hell that is either his Body in the Grave or his Soul in a State of Separation from his Body Thirdly God's Justice would not suffer Christ to lie in the Grave Another Argument is this It was impossible Christ could be holden by Death upon the Account of God's Justice For Justice as it doth oblige to inflict Punishment upon the Guilty so also to absolve and acquit the Innocent Now though Christ knew no Sin yet was he made Sin for us that is our Sins were imputed to and charged upon him and so through a voluntary Susception and Undertaking of them he became guilty of them Hereupon Divine Justice siezed upon him as being our Surety and demanded Satisfaction from him for our Offences Now no other Satisfaction would be acceptable unto God nor commensurate to our Sins but the bearing of an infinite Load of Wrath and Vengeance which if it had been laid upon us must have been prolonged to an Eternity of Sufferings for because we are finite Creatures we cannot bear infinite Degrees of Wrath at once and therefore we must have lain under those infinite Degrees of Wrath to an infinite Duration But now Christ being God he could bear the Load of infinite Degrees of Wrath at once upon him In that one bitter Draught the whole Cup of that Fury and Wrath of God that we should have been everlastingly a drinking off by little Drops Christ drank off at once Now it is the Nature and Constitution of all Laws that when a Person by undergoing the Penalty that those Laws require hath made satisfaction for the Offence committed the Person satisfying ought to be protected as innocent It could not therefore consist with the Justice of
Secondly Mocking may be taken for slighting and making no account of looking upon things or Persons as trivial and inconsiderable And thus it is used in Job where the Horse is said to mock at fear Job 39.2 when he rusheth into the Battel and is not terrified but rather enraged by all the Horrors of War When the Quiver rattleth against him the glittering Spear and the Shield And so it is said of the Leviathan Job 41.29 Job 41.29 He laugheth at the shaking of the Spear for he esteemeth Iron as Straw and Brass as rotten Wood. Now in either of these two Senses may the Words of the Text be taken when they tell us they are Fools that make a Mock at Sin For Sin may be considered A twofold Consideration of Sin either as committed by others or as committed by our solves and it is egregious Folly to make a Mock of either so as to sport at the one or to slight the other First They are Fools that make a Mock at other Men's Sins so as to turn them into a Matter of Jest and Raillery Secondly They are Fools that make a Mock at their own Sins so as to think the Commission of them a slight and inconsiderable thing I shall very briefly speak of the First and so pass on unto the Second Particular First therefore They are Fools that make a Mock at other Men's Sins They are Fools that make a Mock at other Men's Sins so as to make them a matter of Mirth and Pastime This indeed is Sport for Devils all whose Recreation and Hellish Solace is the Sin and Wickedness of Men. The Damnation of Souls is the Sport of Hell And Thou who canst rejoice in their Joy deservest likewise to howl under their Woes and Torments We justly condemn it as a most barbarous and inhumane Custom amongst the ancient Romans who brought many selected Pairs of miserable Men into their publick Theatres only to delight the Spectators with their Blood and Death But this was an innocent Recreation in comparison of thine who takest pleasure to see thy poor Brother wounding and stabbing yea damning his precious Soul Go laugh at a wrethed Man upon the Rack or upon the Wheel Laugh at the odd distorted Postures of Epilepticks or the Convulse Motions of Dying and Expiring Men Sport thy self with their writh'd Looks and antick Shapes of Misery This is far more civil more humane more pious than to make those Sins thy Mirth which will be thy Brothers Eternal Woe and Anguish What thinkest thou Couldst thou look into Hell that place of Torment Couldst thou see there all the Engines of God's Justice and the Devil's Cruelty set on work in the eternal Torture of those who perhaps once made as light of their own Sins as thou dost of other Men's wouldst thou think this a pleasant Spectacle Wouldst thou sport and divert thy self to see how they wallow in Fire and Brimstone or how they circle and twist themselves in unquenchable Flames Certainly such a Sight as this would affect thee with a cold Horrour and a shivering Dread And how then canst thou sport thy self to see thy Brother damning himself since it would fright thee to see him damned Believe it Sirs The Sins that now abound in the World challenge our Tears and Pity We ought to mourn and repent for those who do not who will not repent for themselves It is a sad and a doleful Sight to see so many every where dishonour God disgrace their Natures and destroy their Souls to see some come reeling home disguis'd in all the brutish Shapes that Drunkenness can put upon them ready to discharge their Vomit in the Face of every one they meet Others frantick with Wrath and Rage like a Company of Mad Men Prov. 26.18 flinging about Fire-brands Arrows and Death To see such woeful Transformations and the dire Effects that Sin and Wickedness have caused in the World certainly he that can entertain himself with Mirth at these things hath not only forsworn his Religion but his Humanity and may with much more Reason make the Miseries of poor distracted People chain'd up in Bedlam to become his Sport and Pastime I know it will be here pretended that surely it can be no such great Crime to explode and hiss Sin off the Stage nay it were a proper Means to keep Men from being generally so wicked could we but make Wickedness more ridiculous in them But alas Vice is now-a-days grown too impudent to be laughed out of Countenance and those Methods of a scurrilous Mockery which some plead for as rendring Vice ridiculous have I doubt only made it the more taking and spreading and encouraged others to be the more openly sinful by teaching them to be the more wittily vile and wicked Few will be deterred from sinning when they think they shall but gratifie others by making Sport for them and stir up not their Indignation and Abhorrence but their Mirth and Laughter 'T is true we read that Elijah mock'd the Idolatrous Worshippers of Baal and his Scoffs and Taunts at them were very biting and sarcastical and cut them much deeper than they are said to cut themselves But this he did in a serious and zealous reproving of their Sins not in a jocular and sportive Merriment There are two things in Sin Impiety and Folly we may lawfully enough scorn the one while we are sure to hate and detest the other And a due Mixture of both these together Scorn and Detestation are very fit to enkindle our Zeal for God and may oftentimes be a requisite Temper for him who is to reprove confident and audacious Sinners But to laugh and sport at others Wickedness and to make the Guilt Shame of others our Mirth and Recreation is both unchristian and inhumane and we may as well laugh at their Damnation as at that which will lead them to it Thus to make a Mock at Sin is to make our very Mocks to be our Sins and argues us not only profane but foolish for this is to laugh and rejoyce at our own Stain and Dishonour and to abuse our own Nature that Nature which is common to us as well as others that Nature which were it not debased with Sin renders us but a little lower than the Angels What a fair and glorious Creature was Man before Sin debased and sullied him A Friend to his God Lord of the Creation made a little lower than the Angels being a-kin to them though of a younger House and meaner Extract adorn'd with all both natural and divine Perfections till Sin despoil'd him of his Excellency and made him who was almost equal to the Angels worse than the very Brutes that perish sottish and miserable And canst thou laugh and sport thy self at that which hath ruin'd and undone thee as well as others Thy Nature is blemish'd and corrupted as much as theirs When we look abroad in the World and observe the abominable Wickednesses
World whose Minds were too deeply tinctur'd with contrary Notions that they look'd upon the Christian Religion as a Design rather to destroy Reason than to save the Soul accounting it a very absurd thing to believe in a crucified Saviour as being a Person weak and impotent or the future Resurrection as being a thing utterly impossible We find the Apostle to the Corinthians 1 Cor. 1.24 complaining that the Greeks who were then the great Masters of Wisdom and Learning esteemed a crucified Christ Foolishness and thought those Men little befriended by Reason that would depend for Life upon one that lost his own and venture to take off the Shamefulness of the Cross or to silence those Scoffs that were cast upon them for their Credulity who affirm the wonderful Resurrection of a dead Saviour and his glorious Triumph over Death and the Grave For this seemed to them no other than to solve an Absurdity by an Impossibility and make Reason more suspicious in that they judged the Fundamentals of Reason must be overthrown to make the Fundamentals of Christianity any way tolerable or possible Wherefore we find that even at Athens that great Concourse of Wits where all the Sect of Philosophers made their common Retreat yet when St. Paul preached to them Jesus and the Resurrection this Doctrine seem'd so absurd and foolish to them and so contrary to all Principles of right Reason that they forgot that Civility that usually is found in Men of inquisitive Spirits and brake out into open Reproaches and Revilings Act. 17.18 What will this Babler say because he preached to them Jesus and the Resurrection No doubt they wanted not very specious Arguments to urge against the Resurrection of the Body As first The Impossibility of a Recollection of the dispersed Particles of Men resolved into their Elements and scatter'd by the four Winds of Heaven though it might be very well retorted on the Epicureans who disputed with St. Paul against the Resurrection that it was not so unlikely a thing that there might be a Re-union of the scatter'd Parts of the same Man as the fortuitous Concourse of Attoms at the first Making of the World yet this Objection overbore and prevaild with Heathens that when they burnt the Bodies of Christians they cast their Ashes into the Rivers to confute their Hopes of ever being raised again from whenee they should be carried away into an unknown Ocean and there be made the Sport of Winds and Waves But what our Saviour says upon the same Occasion to the Sadduces may be said unto these Men You err Matth. 22.29 not knowing the Scriptures nor the Power of God For unless their Parts could be scatter'd beyond the reach of Omnipotency unless they could be ground so small as to scape the Knowledge and Care of God who ordereth and rangeth every Mote that plays up and down in the Sun-beams this Dispersion of the Body proves not the Impossibility of their Union because the Power and Providence of God will gather up every Dust and rally them together again into the same Place and Order as now they are Objection Another Argument against the Resurrection of the Body may be the various Changes dead Bodies undergo being first turn'd into Earth that again turn'd into Grass and Herbs that becoming Nourishment for other Men or Beasts that Nourishment again passing into their Substance making a kind of Transmigration of Bodies as Pythagoras would have there was of Souls which is very evident in the Case of Anthropomorphites and Men-Eaters who have of several parts of other Men's Bodies compounded their own And so the same Question may be demanded which the Sadduces asked our Saviour concerning the seven Brethren that married the same Woman whose Wife of the seven she should be at the Resurrection So here those Parts that belonged to so many Men to which of them belong they in the Resurrection without detriment to the rest Here the same Answer occurrs that Christ gave them Matth. 22.29 You err not knowing the Scriptures nor the Power of God who is the best Judge of Property and can resolve all those Parts by which any Nourishment hath been received by any other Creatures unto their own proper Bodies again And thus it appears these Arguments against the Resurrection of the Body amount not to prove the Impossibility of the Effect but only the Supernatural Almighty Power of the Efficient Wherefore granting the Resurrection impossible according to the Original Course of Natural Things yet when an Omnipotent Arm doth interpose which gives Laws unto it who dares to say the Creature may be brought to such a State of Dissolution as may out-reach the Dominion of the Almighty Creator Upon these Grounds it is that the Apostle urgeth Act. 26.8 why it should be thought a strange and incredible thing that God should raise the Dead and in the Text that he asserts the Resurrection of Christ And to prevent any fallacious Cavils against it he shews First Division of the Words That God raised him from the Dead and therefore it was not to be accounted a thing impossible since to God nothing could imply a Contradiction Secondly He doth not only assert the Possibility but the Impossibility of his final Continuance under the Power of Death The Grave that grasps and retains all other Mortals was not able to detain him who hath Immortality and Life dwelling in himself It was not possible he should be holden of it therefore God hath raised him up loosing the Pains of Death Whom God raised up Here is the Efficient Cause of Christ's Resurrection in the concurrent Action of the whole Trinity for all that God doth out of himself is ascribed to all the Three Persons Sometimes it is ascribed to the Father Act. 3.13 15. as the Apostle speaks The God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob the God of our Fathers hath glorified his Son Jesus whom ye delivered up and denied the Holy One and the Just desiring a Murtherer and killed the Prince of Life whom God hath raised from the Dead Sometimes it is ascribed to the Son who by the infinite Power of his Divinity raised up his Humane Nature from the Grave So our Saviour himself tells us I lay down my Life of my self Joh. 3.18 I have power to lay it down and I have power to take it up again The same may be collected of the Holy Ghost from the Words of the Apostle Rom. 8.11 If the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the Dead dwell in you he that raised up Christ from the Dead shall also quicken your mortal Bodies by his Spirit Now if the Spirit of God can quicken our Bodies the same Spirit also can quicken the Body of Christ since it is the same Spirit that quickens both the Head and the Members Having loosed the Pains of Death In some Copies it is Having loosed the Pains of Hell which possibly gave