by the almighty power of God Secondly By the conquest of Christ himself for we must be partakers of that before we can believe And thirdly by the energie and operation of the Spirit so that we may say as it 's said Zachariah 4. 6. Not by strength he means humane not by power but by my Spirit saith the Lord of Hosts But to speak particularly to the point Faith in Christ as it is a duty in respect of the command of God so it is a principle of new life in order to the recovery of the state of Gods Image Now let the consideration of faith as 't is a duty passe and consider it as 't is a principle seed and root of spiritual life whereby we live unto or with God and then tell me in a sober judgment whether nature can plant a supernatural principle For plantation of principles the strength must be supernatural whether a supernatural principle is likely to be planted by the power of nature I think there are but few that will affirm it Formes naturally begotten by generation are educed as Philosophers say out of the power of the matter But can a supernatural principle be educed by the power of the matter No they rise meerly out of nothing I do not discuss now whether every duty of faith and repentance require a supernatural strength proceeding from the principles already planted as fruit from the â—ooâ— but whether the principles themselves the habitual graces be of Gods plantation yea or no which no man will deny that thinks the new creature to be Gods work as well as natural man is For and it is but reasonable for me to speak it shall we by our natural being confessedly be the creatures of God and deny our selves as new creatures in regard of our spiritual being to be of God there are but two places of Scripture whereby I prove all this that I have recited John 1. 13. all believers are born viaâ— by regeneration not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man but of God a plain denial of the will of man to be a concurrent agent or cause in the work of regeneration he denies three things that natural generation hath dependance on and affirms one not of blood as natural generation nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man but of God This spiritual birth is left to be of God and his will and mark it is denied to be of the darling mans will Deut. 29 4. you have seen great signes and wonders that one would think should have brought faith out of a rock of stone for the space of forty years ever since you were in Egypt and came along through the wilderness and yet the Lord hath not given you a heart to perceive and eyes to see and ears to hear to this day Objects they had that one would have thought should have wrought faith in the heart of man But the reason why they had not a jot of faith wrought in them for so long a time was because God had not given them eyes to see so that the natural light of man is not that wherein faith is seated man may see and not see see and wonder but not see and believe a clear attestation that he must see by Gods light and perceive by a sense given to the heart by God And so I have done with that question and shall now open the properties of this drawing of God which are four First It 's victorious over all incounters and opposition Secondly It makes the person drawn a volunteir Thirdly It s a drawing by teaching vers 45. Fourthly It is such as is peculiar and proper to the elect of God First It is a victorious drawing prevalent over all resistance that can be made against it there is a contrariety in the heart of natural man to grace especially to faith and no grace is so much opposed tempted beleaguered and fought against by the Devil as a mans faith and none that the contrariety of nature makes head and fights against and resists by reason of the innate enmity which is in it as Faith it makes resistance but how As a drop of water falling into a great fire makes resistance to the fire as a drop can do but cannot make a victorious resistance to quench the fire but is swallowed up by it so the resistance that is made against the power of God cannot be victorious but that the power of God overcomes all resistance and withdrawment My meaning is when God engages purposely and intentionally according to his elective purpose to draw men to Christ then this power of God becomes and appears to be victorious then let Onesimus run from his Master to Rome God will find him in a prison there and convert him let Naaman be in Syria let the widdow of Sarepta be in a City of Sidon that is as Christ means out of all high ways to conversion the power and grace of God will find them out I say when God intends the work For as Israel is prevailed over and kept in slavery until God saith I have seen I have seen the affliction of my people and am come down to deliver them then you know the deliverance is wrought in despight of Pharaoh then there was no longer keeping them under slavery So till the time be that God hath appointed to draw his Children of purpose to his Son by an actual call a sinful lustful person lies in slavery to every sinful lust every cord holds him and then he shall find a door open and the resistance removed and suspended for that time When Moses was in Egypt and an Egyptian fought against an Israelite he slew the Egyptian in rescue of an Israelite it was a preludium or presage that he should deliver Israel out of Egypt the whole body of them and therefore when the body came to be delivered forty years after this he did it with a mighty hand So God victoriously brings out of the state of sin single souls and slays their corruptions as victoriously as the whole Church shall be delivered at last from the greatest Pharaohs death divel and sin and therefore observe the stile used in the Covenant is very peremptory I will give I will put and on mans part They shall come They shall know They shall not depart away from me The reason of the victorious power of grace is that the world moves by carnal and sensual objects and so the Devil and Flesh they move objectively their motion whereby they move from God is but objective propounding pleasing or fearful objects to the mind of man either drawing or alluring or affrighting a man from faith in Christ now if Gods moving and drawing should not be more powerful and strong then the devils the worlds or mans own withdrawing there neither would nor could be conversion wrought if the drawing of man to Christ were not more powerful than mans withdrawment
love to God And therefore the love of God to his elect in their state of nature cannot produce any love in them to God why because it must be a thing known there must be day-break or Sun-rising a work of effectual vocation and calling by which light you may see it you can no more love God till not only you have his divine grace but also know it then the pavement can be hot or reflect heat to make you hot till the Sun hath shined upon it no more is it in your hearts to love God above self until the love of God hath shined into your hearts to make them in love with him And this is the second thing the contrariety of corrupt nature to God Serm. 7 THirdly the contrariety of corrupt nature unto grace is manifested in their mutual fight one against another Remember that I go about to prove that there is such opposition of a natural man to God as that he cannot convert himself and come in to Christ to believe for neither will sin give grace entrance admission nor will allow it quiet possession or dominion but they are always in unreconciliable war while there are remains of either For as it was said of Esau and Jacob when they strangely strugled and wrestled in their Mothers womb and she went to the Oracle and asked Why is it thus with me it was answered in Gen. 25. 23. There are two Nations and two manner of people in thy womb This sets forth to us grace and nature flesh and spirit which in the same womb of mans heart do fight and struggle and if you will have the very words it is in Gal. 5 17. These are set one against another the flesh lusteth against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh And these are of contrary perswasions principles byasses and affections and every man is opposite to this grace by reason that his corruption hath first possession and having so fights against that grace that comes to take him captive to Christ Jesus and there can be no more compliance in a natural man to comply with the grace of God then between fire and water why because there is a contrariety every thing that is be it of never so vile and base a being would be what it is and hath no principle to aspire to a higher being A spider cannot aspire to a being above her a toad or serpent cannot wish as I may say to be any thing then what they are only man indeed may aspire to be worse and more contrary to God but never better and therefore I see no reason that can be given why corruption should desire to change its estate into the state of grace Corruption supplanted grace at first and is always prone to supplant grace again Corruption supplanted Gods Image at first and is ever attempting to do so again but that through Christ grace comes in and supplants sin in part fighting down the dominion of it though not the existence and being of it Sin dwells in me saith the Apostle that look as Joshua when he came to the Land of Canaan destroyed all the Canaanitish Kings but not all the Canaanites and petty people for they were left for good uses to teach them humility and to do Gods work upon them so if ever regenerating grace come into the heart of man it will certainly kill and subdue all kingship and dominion of sin Sin shall not have dominion over you because you are not under the Law but grace But yet all sin is not extinguished the Canaanites yet live Sin dwels in the people of God but it dwels in them for good ends for if it had not been for good ends left be confident it should not have been There are two Uses of it for Humiliation and for Consolation For though it be a lamentation to every Christian to draw the clog Oh wretched man that I am who shall deliver me from this body of death Rom. 7. 14. yet it is a comfort when a man finds this contrariety in him he hath cause to bless God that he is not all of a piece that he is not all flesh that there is Esau and Jacob in him For it is not the conquest that shews grace but the fight or contrariety of grace unto corruption And were it not that grace had a stronger Second viz. Christ and the Spirit as it s delivered 1 John 4. 4. Greater is he that is in you then he that is in the world it would be extinguished and beaten out of the field every day for t is as easily put out as the light of the Sun would be put out by any interposition and would no longer live then a spark of fire in the Ocean but only God doth as well keep it in as bring it in at first by his mighty arm for as to heat the water you know there is need of fire but not to cool it the nature of the water will out the heat And though the Sun gives light yet there needs no cause of darkness for if the Sun cease to shine darkness it self returns and comes into the Air where it was before So the very cessation of the influences of the spirit if they should but cease though there were no contrary causes as there are from the flesh the world that infuses corruption yet these corruptions would return as the first inhabitants in man to which he is first principled so that it is the wonderful power of God that keeps grace alive That 's the third particular to prove this Contrariety that maintains the fight and keeps out divine grace until the heart be made willing to receive it Fourthly the Contrariety of corrupt nature unto God is manifested by this that the holy Law of God which the Apostle calls holy just and good makes sin more sinful and exasperates it into a greater height and therefore those men that live where the Law of God comes closest to them in reproof and correction are the wickedst men alive that as you see by making of a Dam the stream is raised and the water fumes and furiously beats against it so when a restraint is put upon the nature of man by the very Law of God nature it self I mean corrupt becomes furious And this point is taught almost in a whole Chapter Rom. 7. whereof excellent use may be made for a man to see his corruptions in Pauls glass ver 13. Was that which is good made death to me God forbid but sin that it might appear sin wrought death in me by that which is good and by the commandement became exceeding sinful What a miserable creature is natural man if God give him a commandement he is the worse for it there is a renitency an opposition in the heart of man to the Law of God that most appears in that we the less do what God commands because he commands it and we the rather do that which God forbids because
the knowledge of Christ Use 2 Secondly admire and magnifie Christ Jesus If Christ had opened the eye unstopped the deaf ear cut the string of the dumb tongue thou wouldest have leaped and rejoyced as they did in the Gospel These were the miracles he wrought when he was on earth but now if thou be a convert and he hath enlightned thy eye unloosed thy tongue that thou canst now speak to God in prayer and thanksgiving this is the miracle he works from Heaven exceeding those on earth upon the body and the reason is because these were wrought on them that must die if the dead were raised they died again But this miracle is wrought on thee that art not to die again thy spiritual death but always live as Austin saith And consider with thy self that among all the miraculous works of Christ that are reckoned Matth. 11. 4 5. The blind see the deaf hear the sick are raised up and walk this cure is added that the poor receive the Gospel As who should say these are the wonders I usually work and among them this may pass for a wonder too It s a pretty ingenious observation take something from it that may greaten your hearts to the admiration and magnifying the goodness of God And so I have shewn the greatness of the work Serm. 4 THe second Point is to shew the impotency and imbecillity of natural man of his own strength savingly to believe or convert himself It is said which I would have observed in John 5. 40. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 you will not come to me that you might have life And of the very same persons and almost with the same breath in the 44. verse 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 how can you believe you will not you cannot What do you gather from these two expressions You may very well collect that this cannot is a moral impotency and a moral impotency as learned men do know differs very little from an unwillingness you cannot believe because you will not being disabled by such worldly and carnal lusts and prejudices as do forestall and take up your hearts and make it justly to be said you cannot The reason why I compare together these two verses you will not come to me and ye cannot believe is to shew what manner of impotency Christ points us to in this matter namely Not a meer and simple impotency that is without our default but a moral and culpable impotency whereby the heart is captivated by some lust or forelaid with prejudice against Christ so as we cannot because we will not come to him And of this impotency let me say this to you at the first it takes away all excuse all defence and the more impotent the worse who can excuse his blindness that hath purposely put out his eyes yea though it be resembled in Scripture to a simple impossibility yet it is moral and culpable Can the Aethiopian change his skin Jer. 13. 23. then may you that are accustomed to do evil learn to do well it is a moral impotency the fault whereof may be charged upon you such as for which you stand culpable before God This impotency of man to convert or come to Christ I speak unto in this branch and mans unwillingness in the next And so ye shall have both the cannot and the will not There is an impotency in man and a disability to come in to Christ and act to his own conversion These are the same things but in the handling of this point I may sometimes name the one and not the other without offence Man in his integrity for truly the estate of mans created integrity hath as I conceive a mighty influence into all Divinity man in that estate had a posse velle to obey God a power to love and to keep communion with God An absolute velle was not determined but he had a power and therefore men that are under the fall as all men are must needs acknowledge they have lost somewhat by it we have lost the power to will which he had nay some say that if there were a power of believing in Christ and of conversion in lapsed man he should seem to have a greater power then Adam As the power to rise again from the dead is greater then to act life when a man is alive I hold it to be but a trifling objection which is made upon design and this is the design upon which it is made for clearly to know the reason of any thing is to know the thing it self to oblige God by vertue of his Covenant with man fallen to give forth universal grace because this faith in Christ this repentance were not lost in Adam who could not lose that which he had not neither are we to pay for that we took not up in him Therefore God is engaged to give to man a power to believe because he hath made a new Covenant with me he is bound to enable me to be responsible to the Covenant that he hath made This Objection amounts to no more but this That Adam could not exercise faith in Christ nor the grace of repentance I grant it there was no need of it nor conversion very true for that supposes a deviation and a fall If man say he could not look to the Serpent on the pole I answer true because neither had the fiery Serpent stung nor was the Serpent set upon the pole to heal them that were stung before the institution of God had taken place Adam did not exercise obedience to the fifth commandement and yet you account it one of the moral commands for he had no Parents and Superiors to honour Very true but there was a root of integrity a root of faith in God and love of God there was the image of God from whence if occasion had been grace might have budded forth But to argue from the not-exercising to the not having of grace is no argument There was a seminal in Adam of which there is none left in man the root of holiness the principles of faith these are lost Nor are there any seminals left in man out of which faith can be educed as forms are educed out of the fitness of the matter The Scripture seems to speak punctually to the point No man can come to me John 6. 44. The natural or animal man by the light of his intellectual perception cannot know the things of God 1 Cor. 2. 14. The wisdom or sense of the flesh is not subject to the Law of God nor can be Rom. 8. 7. They that are in the flesh cannot please God Rom. 8. 8. We are not sufficient that is not impowered of our selves to think any thing as of our selves 2 Cor. 2 3. And this is enough to prove this point of mans impotency and disability Which shall be handled in two members First No man can by his natural power convert and turn to God Secondly No man can come to Christ or believe
we rest not upon that grace meerly of having the Gospel preached and the Fountain declared to be opened unto us but there must be a divine hand to enable the will of man to come to this pool when it is moved Of any Text in Scripture this is most clear to prove the miserable impotency of sinful man to this point of salvation he cannot comply with this of himself No man can c. And if this do not suffice we will argue the point a little further Isa 53. 1. Who hath believed our report and to whom is the arme of the Lord revealed Here is Isaiah the Prophets report but there is an arm must be revealed both which must go together the report revealed by the Ministry and the arm of the Lord revealed must go together for else though they saw so many miracles the means of believing yet they believed not saith our Saviour quoting this Text John 12. 39. And whereas every one taught and drawn of God doth come and no man can come except so drawn it manifestly proves that as the coming is mans act and the free act of man for I think man is never more willing then when he is convinc'd indeed and enabled to come to Christ yet the drawing is Gods power that must first be and the drawing of God that is first in time for man doth not come that he may be drawn but because he is drawn therefore he comes And therefore this drawing of man to faith in Christ sounds like a work of Almighty power or a work of omnipotence Ephes 1. 19. The exceeding greatness of his power towards us that believe according to the working of his mighty power whereby he raised Christ from the dead and lifted him to glory The exceeding greatness of his power The Hyperbole of it here is a thrusting and crowding of words together a power that is compared to the raising of Christ Christ I say who bore our sins in his body on the tree though he lay under our sins for the death of Christ must be considered a little further no such load could depress him the Lord would have the stone rolled from his grave for him to rise again This was a work of mighty power and yet according to this God puts forth his hand in drawing of man to Christ so that as I conceive it cannot but argue that the free grace of God giving and the great power of God drawing makes faith to be above man and takes it from mans merit and mans power And truly it could not else be rightly said in Ephes 2. 8. Through faith not of your selves if this faith were of our selves The Root of this impotency shall be shewn you in five particulars First there are some footsteps of the Law of God remaining that were written in the heart of man In Rom. 2. 15. they shew the work of the Law written in their hearts that as by the rubbish that you see you conjecture what building there was before and by the defaced lines you may guess at the picture so you may by the common Notions left in mens minds judge of right and wrong and the differences between justice and injury without which no society could be of any men in the world but would be herds of wilde beasts rather then men but of Christ there appears nothing written naturally in the heart of man nothing at all concerning a Saviour and a Mediatour but an utter darkness and silence of Christ and consequently of Faith in Christ Secondly therefore man when his conscience is angry having something of the Law in it and accuses as it doth for sins against Nature common Law and common Light and when it accuses and troubles him being altogether ignorant of the righteousness of God by faith in Christ and how he should be saved and justifieed knows not till it be revealed by the Gospel for therein is the righteousness of God revealed Rom. 1. 7. For who can so much as guess by the pregnancy of natural light that God in his Covenant of Salvation should pitch on such a way as Christ a Sponsor or Surety the Mediator between God and man that he should make expiation for sin truly no more then Moses or an Israelite could have so much as found out the way of healing the biting of the fiery Serpents by a figure set upon a pole to be looked unto no man could imagine no mans reason could have found it out had they wandred in the wilderness never so many years and yet this was Gods way and a Type of Christ signifying what man could never have found out to conceive of compensation for sin by a Mediator which was a thing impossible and had not been known therefore man being ignorant of this must of necessity fly to his own plaisters and fig-leaves for if by nature he may be convinc'd of sin yet by the dictates of natural conscience he can never find out any righteousness and satisfaction to Gods justice then it must follow that he must fly to making a medicine of his own righteousness which is of works for that only comes by man to be found out as being next to hand in this case that I say or nothing as being his only hope and this bulrush the drowning man takes hold of and holds it fast as for life and so comes of necessity to settle on his own righteousness being ignorant of the righteousness of God which is by faith in Christ And this the Apostle tells you Rom. 10. 3. For they being ignorant of the righteousness of God went about to establish their own righteousness and so submitted not to the righteousness of God where you see the righteousness that is our own maintains our pride in that word submitted not and rising from ignorance of that of Gods righteousness to which we must submit by way of humiliation which is a cause that men believe not And then Thirdly and pray mark there is a double Revelation of Christ the one is a revealing of him by Gospel-doctrine the other is a revealing of him by spiritual light The revealing of Christ by Gospel-doctrine to the natural knowledge of mans corrupt understanding cannot procure or produce any other then literal knowledge of Christ The Scripture calls it knowledge in the letter as to know the Gospel as a History may be known to be true whereof a man hath a dogmatical knowledge you have many believers and these by knowing the Gospel by a natural light are differenced from Heathens But this doth not nor never will produce a saving faith most men have a literal knowledge we see in ordinary experience all men have some knowledge and Scholars a great deal yet being seen by natural light though revealed in the Gospel will not reach so far as to beget faith saving faith in Christ But the other revealing of Christ by the light of the Spirit of God conveying the knowledge of him into the mind and heart
And so much for this Point That it is not in the natural power of man to believe Serm. 6 IF you please to keep in mind the order and method of handling this Point No man can come to me you may remember I propounded to handle these two things the impotency of natural and corrupt man and the repugnancy and opposition of him The impotency or disability of man was first in general to his own conversion in particular to his coming in to Christ which is the particular in the Text And having done with the Impotency or Adunamy of man which is a privative thing I now come to that which is positive and hath more of ths will in it though as I shewed it was a moral impotency The opposition to this work which will shew you that corrupt man is by his own will oppositely carried towards God And this point as the former speaks generally to the opposition that there is in man to God or to the holiness of God in two things First his contrariety Secondly his enmity to the holiness of God or his Law And it speaks particularly to the opposition that corrupt man doth make to Christ or the grace of Christ that is offered in the Gospel And that also in two things First his averseness to come and Secondly his resistance of grace when it s offered to him In which four steps this opposition may be handled and manifestly seen shewing you thereby what a miserable thing a natural man is being in statu belli in a state of war and hostility against the great God his Law his Grace and consequently an enemy and opposite to his own happiness And this point shall be opened to you to this end to vilifie and depress the pretended pride or worthiness of man and to exalt the freeness and power of Gods grace in the salvation of man For there are two eminent things in that Doctrine that you call the free grace of God Freeness and power First the contrariety of man in the state of corruption unto the nature of God is palpable and may be felt and so indeed had need to be rather then only taught And it is this Contrariety to God that renders the natural condition of man most deplorable and is a very good argument as there is any to prove that David in that confession of his in the 51 Psal did intend the confession of his own sin and not the sin of his Mother I was shapen in iniquity and in sin did my Mother warm me For he went backward from his own trasient and actual sins to the original and root of his malady and aggravated his sin by this contrariety to God which saith no more then that expression of Paul Rom. 7. Sin that dwells in me or haply that in Isa 48. 8. Thou wast called a transgressor from the womb And concerning this contrariety of man to God so deplored I shew you these three things in general First this Contrariety to God is not acquired or gotten by iteration of acts and actual sins but is innate and bred in nature As the strings of an instrument are out of tune before you play upon them and they sound harshly to you so is the heart of man the faculties there are vitiated but not quite blotted out but all the strings are out of tune before they come to be actuated For they have a good saying in the Schools and t is true First the person viz. Adam infected mans nature but now the nature infects the person so that there is this contrariety of man to God by nature For Secondly the Image of God in man was before this contrariety in corrupted nature but this contrariety to God is now before the Image of God restored to man therefore it s said Ephes 5. 8. Ye were sometimes darkness but now are light And Ye were dead in sins but now are quickened Ephes 2. 1. Ye were the servants of sin but now ye are made free from sin Rom. 6. 17. that look as life and death servitude and freedom light and darkness are contraries one to another So are exprest the state of Nature and the state of Grace Thirdly there are in sin say the Schools two parts the first mans aversion or turning from God the second mans conversion or turning to himself or the creature The one of these hath more of sensuality and self the other bewrays more Contrariety to God But to come more particularly to the point This contrariety shews it self in this that an unregenerate man cannot by any principle that is in nature love God above all things or above himself which thing if well minded may let you in to see spiritual wickedness and not only carnal and sensual self may love God as a benefactor or as a servant to his own ends whom he may make use of to gain by and live upon Call this love of God if you will but such a man doth uti Deo ut fruatur mundâ— uses God that he may enjoy the world A Merchant may traffique and commerce with an enemy whom he hates so you may converse with God whom you hate in your hearts meerly to get by him and for matter of advantage This love of God is not amor amicitiae a love of friendship but concupiscentiae a love of lust to gain by God a love of parasytism and flattery and self-love of God Concerning which self-love I say particularly thus much First that every man by nature is brim-ful of inordinate self-love I call it inordinate self-love for there is a subordinate self-love which neither can nor ought to be put off God having linked together his own glory and mans happiness in himself For the chief end of man is to please God and enjoy him Moses in denying of himself to please God had an eye to the recompence of reward But that 's inordinate self love when a man seeks God in order to his own ends and neglecting his holiness which it is impossible a corrupt man should love only serves himself upon God and makes use of him in prayer or otherwise for his private interest either ut prosit or ne noceat that God may profit him and keep him in health or wealth or that God may not hurt him and lay judgements torments and plagues upon him as the love of a whore is for hire This is that inordinate self-love that a man hath to himself because he sets himself above God as making himself the end and God the means to attain that end Secondly this Self-love with the branches of it which are very many self-seeking self-pleasing self-ayming c. is the root and mother of all sin And therefore when the Apostle makes you a catalogue of sin he sets this in the front in 2 Tim. 3. 3. Men shall be lovers of their own selves And then they shall be filled with all politick sins and all sins of private interests and above all this and more then
he forbids it A horse or stomackful colt put the bridle on him and he is mad let him run in the field and he is quiet Let the Sun shine on a stinking dunghill and it stinks the worse not because the Sun gives pollution by its heat but by accident makes the stink break forth so much the more Alas when the Lord comes to put the bridle of restraint on man he is filld with more stomack and rage and when the sweet Sun shines on him to invite him to God he is still the worse and the rather evil so little compliance is there of mans heart with God And as we may truly say that Antipathies and Sympathies do shew us very far into nature where they are found as the Schools do well observe for a lamb to hate and fly from not this and that wolf but every one though it never saw it before which shews a general antipathy to all wolves So it is in this case if there were a Law of God made known to any natural man such a Law as he never saw nor heard of before he would hate it and never comply with it which shews the stone that is in his heart and manifests a rebellion in it against God As on the contrary a Sympathy an agreement A soul that loves and delights in the Law of God though most cross to private interests is a very excellent proof of grace that hath reconciled the enmity of the heart to God Rom. 7. 22. I delight in the Law of God concerning the inner man Fifthly and lastly the pleasingness 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the heart with any lust to which its taken by peculiar agreement of nature which is peccatum in deliciis doth shew this contrariety unto God so long as this sin of delight continues his master-sin he will walk contrary to God say what you will I confess every man cannot practice every gross sin as to be a drunkard a whore-monger covetous no more then one man at one time can possibly be sick of all diseases but that sin which takes him up by natural propension inclination or custome or whatever it be that either takes acquaintance with or possession of him no such man can come to Christ He himself tells them How can ye believe that are taken up with worldly credit and ambition John 5. 4. Let it be any sin Covetousness Drunkenness or Lust which he feeds by other sins and serves as a master to which he is tyed as fast as by a Cable which he cannot break until divine grace appear to him and cannot get off by any power of his own but Gods no afflictions though they bray him as a fool in a morter pound him to pieces yet his folly shall not depart from him no vowes though he seem to bind himself never so firmly nothing while the lust remains will alter or change him nay set the judgement of God and death eternal before his eyes ye do nothing the pleasure of his sin remains Rom. 1. ult Who knowing the judgement of God that they that commit such things are worthy of death yet not only do the same but have pleasure in them that do them Nay would you think that any mans sin should be so fast rivetted in him as that it should cause him to love death He doth so interpretativè by Gods construction and interpretation Prov. 8. ult He that sinneth against me hurteth his soul and they that hate me love death Now how filthy and abominable is man saith God that drinks in iniquity like water comparing a natural man to a fish in the water in its own Element from which you know he cannot be willingly pulled to the dry bank and therefore I conclude that man is not willingly of himself brought into that estate though it be far better yea a thousand times better then his own until his nature be changed and then he is brought And so much for the first branch the Contrariety of corrupt nature to God to his Law and to his Grace But whereas an Objection might be made that man is not so contrary to grace because that shews him life Certainly there is a greater opposition in the heart of man to the grace of the Gospel then to the Law of Duty to humble man and shew him that the work of Conversion is from contrary to contrary And therefore let me make use of that which some say that God in creating the world drew the creatures out of nothing but in this new Creation Conversion he finds opposition and contrariety in the subject that he works upon that bids him battel and sets him at defiance The Minister converts by new objects and God by new natures until which there is little done The second Branch of this opposition of corrupt nature to God we call enmity unto or hatred of God himself self which I instance in to shew that poison venom that is in man in every one of your best hearts in your natural condition unto the Lord God you will not be known of it in your selves Hate God may some say there is not one of us that take our selves to be haters of God but seem to defie all that hate God But the Scripture speaks much of it Them that hate me saith God Exo. 20. 5. And he calls them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Rom. 1. 30. Haters of God And in handling of this point I shall enter upon that sin which is diabolical First Hatred is a part of that diabolical malignity which makes man like the Devil for when he overthrew man at the first he spawned into man a certain diabolical seed not sins of sensuality and the flesh but malignity and opposition and spight against God this man is of a serpentine nature One man may be angry with another man but a Serpent hates the very nature of man Anger is in particulars hate in generals say the Schools so that this arises higher then the other doth into a hatred of God himself And then Secondly Hatred differs from Contrariety in this It rises from the consideration of such effects of justice which are threatned or executed upon man against his will punishing him for sin and so causes hatred but Contrariety is to the holiness of God and his Law and so is an opposite to Gods justice and the effects of it for corruption is so desperately carried against God that like the Devil it hates God punishing and inflicting not peradventure as God is a benefactor and sustainer of nature but he will not abide Gods vengeance on him Insomuch that a man in his private retired thoughts hath secret wishings in himself sometimes that God were not looking upon the effects of the Justice of God And this I will shew you in three Particulars And oh that this might rifle your hearts to go away from this self-love of yours whereby the great God is so opposed First all the hate that is in man aganst the Law
what he was or is But God that commands the walking will put on the Byas whereby thou shalt move right It is as one should say A hog or swine considering how a sheep feeds cleanly on the grass should never feed as a sheep and live as he doth It s true whiles he remains a swine But if the nature of a sheep be put into him if he be so principled and altered its impossible he should live otherwise if you measure the walking in Gods wayes by the lusts in you you are never able to endure to affect to love them But the change of the principle makes the thing to nature changed There is also a prejudice that a man shall see no good dayes lose all content and joy live a melancholike or recluse life c. this is a mistake he shall not lose but change his joy the countenance of God doth not darken the heart but puts in more delight then Corn and Wine and Oyl increasing Psal 4. 7. More of these prejudices might be named but I instance in some that you might find your own in you that render you unwilling to believe for they are but misapprehensions of Christ and the work of his Grace by which the will is hindred as the species or appearance of good doth most frequently invite it If I would strain hard there might be other reasons given for the unwillingness of man to accept of Grace offered him but these shall serve for this tract Serm. 10 THe fourth point serving to open the Adunamy or disability of man in respect of coming unto him which our Saviour holds forth in these words no man can come to me is mans resistance of Grace or the means thereof that are offered towards conversion and this resistance is the highest step for it is not so high to be unwilling to receive grace when it is offered as it is to resist grace whereby we might believe and be converted And the Point that shall be the foot of my discourse shall be laid down in these words That the natural corruption of man prompts him to a rebellion against and the resistance of grace offered him for conversion or bringing him in to faith in Christ Jesus Every one of us do stand in defiance all the dayes of our natural condition unto the very grace of God that is offered us for conversion I say all our dayes untill the time comes whereof the Apostle speaks that every thought in us be brought into captivity to the obedience of Christ 2 Cor. 10. 5. till then we stand it out in rebellion so that it may very justly be said by Wisdom Prov. 8. ult speaking in the person of God and Christ All they that hate me love death A strange servitude of a man under sin that for the sake thereof that which is the great terrour of the whole world death death eternal should interpretativè though not formaliter be loved Being to speak of this point of Resistance offered unto the grace of God we must note that Resistance is either between equal or unequal powers The Resistance that is between equal powers brings forth the indifferency of an equal Scale where neither end is victorious The Resistance between unequal powers is either when a lesser power resists the greater and then it retards the action but makes no conquest or when a greater power resists the lesser and that conquers the Resistance and swallows up the opposition So that upon this point of the Resistance of man because it is of no proportion to Gods omnipotency therefore if God should act ad extremum virium to the extremity or height of his own power there could be no opposition made unto Divine grace But because God is a free agent tempering his working by his will which gives the gage unto his power putting forth so much as he will and no more therefore is his grace whereby he calls man often frustrated and defeated of his work I will make no quarrel about these words which one calls prodigious words which learned men have made occasion of quarrel in the Church the resistibility and unresistibility of converting grace but so go on to handle this point as to divide an even thred that God may have and reap all the glory of this work of Conversion unto his free grace and sinful man nothing but thankfulness and self-confusion thankfulness if he be drawn or however self-confusion and abasement to himself as contributing nothing unto but a great deal of opposition and resistance against the work Let me fall upon a distinction that will clear your understandings in this intricate and difficult point We will distinguish first between the act of conversion or the grace that is exercised in the act And secondly The means and way of God which in the nature of it tends towards Conversion as preceding and preparing of the heart thereunto for its very well said by a learned man God doth not bring any man ordinarily into a state of Justification per subitum Enthusiasmum by sudden and upstart Enthusiasmes by an unexpected work of illumination but by previous means and methods and workings Now upon this distinction I say First That the Grace of God exerted and exercised in and to the act of Conversion so as it may be said now the man is Converted and born of God I say that Grace in that act being carryed on by the revealed arm of God is so potent and omnipotent as that indeed it is insuperable and cannot be resisted by any victorious resistance it conquers all the resistance of man that might be thought to frustrate and defeat it for when God hath a meaning and intention to overcome the heart of man effectually to draw him he puts forth a victorious power insuperable to any resistance that you can make to make void the work But Secondly That Grace which God offers and gives to sinful man which in the nature of it tends to the bringing of man to repentance and to faith in Christ Jesus leading thereunto as the Ministry of the Word and the excitations and internal motions of the Spirit of God being dispenst by a more common hand this Grace of God this Initial Grace this previous Grace tending to move excite and quicken man up these are defeated resisted and frustrated by mans resistance and indeed no man shall be able to lay his impotency and unbelief at the door of God But be made to take it upon himself upon the resistance that he makes against the hand of God stretched out to him he being a gainsaying soul and this is that I say which may be resisted and is Despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and long suffering called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the goodness of God leading to repentance these may be and are despised Rom. 2. 4. So then This distinction being laid we shall now enquire whether the heart of man do make actual and victorious resistance of Gods
Wherein there are three things to be taken up First That it is the Father of Christ that draws all the saved unto Christ He draws all the appointed Members that are fore-given to his Son by him The Father hath given them and the Father that hath given them draws them Every one that is the Fathers gift to Christ is the Fathers workmanship drawn to and created in Christ Jesus For the gift of God which is by Election is made good by the drawing of God which is by his calling or his operation according thereunto now because they are the gift of God by election therefore they shall surely come to him by the Fathers traction All that the Father gives to me shall come to me ver 37. Why because my Father will draw them and if my Father will draw they shall come And therefore God in Joh. 15. 1 2. is compared to a husbandman that sets in the graff Christ is the stock or body of the tree that bears and feeds it and the Believer is the graff that is set in by the husbandman Here is a distinct operation God sets Christ sustains and maintains it and he that is called and converted is the graff planted into this Tree and saved by Christ Jesus Object But doth not Christ say in Joh. 12. 32. that he draws I if I be lifted up from the earth will draw all men to me How is it then said Except my Father draw him Answ Though I shall not exclude and shut out Christ himself and the Spirit of God from their agency in this work in bringing men to Christ yet we may thus distinguish upon this objection That Christ being crucified and lifted up draws all men to him objectively as a healing Serpent set on the pole to be looked upon by the eye of Faith But God the Father draws to Christ effectively and powerfully working that power and life in them whereby they may come begetting a new nature and giving a heart propending unto Christ and closing with him And therefore if God should send Christ and leave man to himself as most think they can believe and be converted by themselves this great inconveniency thereof would follow that the Election of God would be defeated and made frustrate but those he gives he makes to come to him to whom they are given and so becomes both Christs Father and theirs The second Branch of this fourth Observation is this By those words Except my Father draw there is no meanâ—â—g to shut out Christ or the Spirit from this drawing work for the work of the Trinity in converting man is undivided But shall I tell you by the relative name of Father is as often in other places meant except man be drawn by a Divine hand an omnipotent power and operation of God for that 's the thing that Christ intends that no man can come and be a believer in him except it be by a Divine power and operation wrought in him above man himself so that it is not any way intended to divide the Three Persons or separate any of them from this work but to divide the work of God from man and this is the reason that some men do affirm omnipotentissâ—mam potestatem a most almighty power to go forth from God that works the conversion of man because it 's said Except my Father draw him and truly I know not why that expression should be quarrelled at if we do but consider the impotency of man to believe in Christ and be converted if we consider next that it 's called a Creation created in Christ Jesus and a resurrection from the dead and if also we consider what the Apostle saith of it Ephes 1. 18. where there is weight of words the exceeding greatness of Gods power according to that which God put forth in raising Christ from the dead we need not be ashamed to say that God puts forth an almighty power in making man believe nor to look upon it as an uncouth expression Thirdly I observe from this Point How impotent and unable man is to that which is his greatest concernment I know we are weak in other things but to be weak in that which is the main concernment of salvation is sad This I would have you to observe that in that wherein your life lies and the way to life in that very thing you are weak as water and no more able to believe than to keep the Law and yet you will say by rote I think many times that it is impossible to keep the Law of God but will not grant but that you can believe and yet let it be observed here that God hereby signifies that you are as impotent to this that is the great concernment of man as to any thing else And There might be a fourth thing observable God that thus imploys his power doth it in his drawing man to Christ See the method whereby God will save you he will not go to bring you to the Father himself the Father to the Father immediately as to an absolute Judge as Luther saith What have I to do with an absolute God he will damn me and not abate me a farthing of the righteousness of the Law which I cannot keep It 's true he could have made man able to keep his Law and have made man perfect but God will keep his own way and save man in and by his Son Why may some say this is about why doth he bring men to Christ Surely God is so strict in keeping the way that he hath set for saving man because that is his Covenant and therefore brings to his Son Christ that he may save them and as the husbandman will graft you into him And let this that is Gods way be your way if you could find another do not look after it By this you shall know the power of God whether it be in you by this which is the work of it It sets you not to other ways but draws to Christ The Use of this fourth Observation may be three-fold Use 1 First Learn hence That a regenerate man is twice Gods Creature I may safely call him so once as he is a man in his natural estate made up of Soul and Body next as a regenerate man created in Christ and if men consider it well that a believer is called a new man a new Creature why should there be lesse power why should we think it lesse work to make a new man then to make a man to be Lay your heads to consider this point and you will find it very difficult why it should be more the hand of God in this then to make man to be man hath a natural life what is that to the purpose for natural life is but a death in comparison and therefore it s said them that are dead in Trespasses and Sins hath he quickned and whereas there was in the matter of our first creation no propension to become a man more
be so odious by these few we may be convinced of our outwardness Observ 4 The fourth point that I observe is That in all times even those wherein religion appeared most outwardly carried on God did both aim at and expect an inwardness and real holiness in his people And comparatively did set the price and the praise upon the inward work the hidden man was alwaies in Gods accompt the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 thing of great price 1 Pet. 3. 4. For as the Apostle distinguishes between such trivial questions that bred quarrels between Christians in his time and such things as the Kingdom of God consisted in Rom. 14. 17. For the Kingdom of God is not meat and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy-Ghost For he that in these things serves Christ is acceptable to God and approved of men So the same Apostle speaking of the outward ordinances appointed unto and observed by the Jew as Circumcision which was their principal glory the seal of their Covenant standing the initial solemnity the bond of their obedience to the whole Law doth yet tell them that the inward circumcision the purity of the heart the inward work of the spirit upon their spirit was as to their salvation and as to acceptance and praise with God farre above that which had such esteem with men for though I know that Religion hath an outward part and an inward an outward part of positive worship as the Religion of the Jewes had and ours hath and an outward part of moral and practical holiness and righteousness James 1. 27. Pure Religion and undefiled is to visit the fatherless and widow in their affliction c. as both theirs and ours and though God require our bodies which are our outward part to be a living sacrifice presented to him Rom. 12. 1. yet are the Intrails and the Fat the inwards of Religion that without which all the rest is but a carkass of principal esteem with God the soul denominates and gives being to man yet his bodie is an essential part but the body without the soul is both lifeless and by reason of the retinue of death loathsome so it is the regenerating and renewing graces that give to us the life and beautie of a Christian yet so as outward duties of worship and of moral life are parts of Religion also but without an inwardness of spirit and a hidden man to accompany it they are all dead works and have no beauty in them This then is that I say that Religion is an inward thing Godliness heals our outward wayes by putting a bia◠within the bowl and the change is from within it give◠new principles new motives new manner of performance of duties the graces the comforts the sealings the experiences the communion with God and Christ are all inward things We judge of life by outward manifestations breathing moving but the seat of life is within This point is attested to by the testimony of three worlds the heathen world the Jewish and the Christian world The Heathens have seen and born witness that inward puritie is the cream and fat of all that they call the worship of God the rule of Scholars is that man is more corrupt in his morals than his intellectuals for to the lower part of the soul where the affections are the dregs do most settle they the heathens have a Theologie and a form of worship of their gods full of folly and vanitie but the wisest and soberest of them have confest that if God be a spirit he must be worshipped by a pure spirit si sit animus then puramente colendus so Persius who as the Apostle saies was one of the Heathen prophets Give me saith he Compositum jus jusque animi a due composure and honesty of mind and for my outward sacrifice farre litabe I le perform that with a few grains of Barly or meal and you may understand by Cicero 2. De natura deorum and by Seneca as Lactanctius cites him what uncontrollable conviction this hath even with natural men that honesty of mind and moral life is more pleasing to God then Hecatombs Then for the Jew it is very apparent how the Prophets call for holy life and for Circumcision of the heart Jer. 4. 4. and how they comparatively undervalue the outward forms in respect thereof Isaiah 66. 3. To him will I look that is of a contrite heart but otherwise the killing of an Oxe is as the slaying of a man and the offering of a lamb as he that cuts off a dogs neck Mic. 6. 7 8. Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of Rams c. He hath shewed thee O man what is good to love mercy to do justice and walk humbly with thy God And these outward ordinances of worship were never intended to continue for ever as you interpret the word ever for your ever hath sometimes an indefinite time therefore called ever as the Exod. 21. 6. and Deut. 15. thy servant for ever viz. till the Jubile but all your typical ordinances had their date and period God intended to shake them down that remaining things the everlasting Gospel might take place which cannot be shaken nor are to be removed Heb. 12. 27. It s said Heb. 9. 9. those outward and carnal ordinances were imposed till the time of reformation or correction and so long they had an excellent end and use but even then the circumcision of the flesh was but as Philo saith a symbol of circumcision of spirit and as the Apostle saith of your manna and rock it was but Christ and so of your outward worship the shell is valued for the kernel the bone for the marrow while the kernel and marrow is in them and now these typical symbols though they be mortua mortifera as to their use dead and deadly yet they are the word of God and may and do teach very much Gospel as the anatomie of a dead man teaches how the parts lie in a living man yet they continue not of further use to you and it may easily appear that God did intend to draw off this outwardness of worship by his taking off as you account fine things in the second temple which were found in the first and the Scripture promising a greater glory in the second temple than of the first cannot be understood otherwaies then that the outward glory was exchanged and recompenced by spiritual glory through Christ Hag 2. 9. consequently that the carnal outward should passe into spiritual glory which was both manifest when both the temple the seat of this outward service was demolished and the law the dignity of your nation led and shewn in triumph by the Roman Conqueror As for the attestation of the Gospel Christian that God aimes at inwardness and spiritualness especially I should but make expence of time and your patience to prove it for it is the whole scope and drift of the Gospel and that covenant