asked his Disciples if they would leave him they asked him again Whither shall we go Thou hast the words of Etetnal Life which no one else pretends to Now if these words of his are words only then was he an Impostor and his Doctrine is false But if this Assertion of himself be true That Man by him may live for ever Then all our Attempts beneath this are mean and cowardly as counting our selves unworthy of Eternal Life The Objection made against him when he affirmed it was The Custom of the World to the contrary Abraham is dead and the Prophets are dead whom makest thou thy self to be And I am not unaware that this Custom of the World to die hath gained such a prevalency over our minds by prepossessing us of the necessity of Death that it stands ready to swallow my Argument whole without digesting it For if the custom of Bondage derived upon Man but for a few Generations doth so enure him to subjection that he thinks it Jure divino and all attempts against it to be Rebellion How much more may I expect that this attempt against Death which hath had so much a longer possession over Man will be accounted madness But as a learned Man said That the Pride of Women comes from the baseness of Men and the courage of Cowards from others more Cowards So I may say That the Dominion of Death is supported by our fear of it by which it hath bullied the World to this day And therefore before I fall upon the direct proof of my Argument I 'll offer an answer to the Custom of the World against me Custom it self without a Reason for it is an Argument only to Fools Nor can the Life or Death of one Man be assigned as the cause of the Life or Death of another unless the same thing happen to them both Abraham is dead and the Prophets are dead What then Why Abraham died of Age as the Folk call it he gave up the Ghost being an old Man and full of Years And the Prophets were many of them knock'd on the head Ye have stoned the Prophets Must it therefore follow that either of these Deaths must happen to me or that because they died of one death I must die of another Suppose my Mother died in Childbed must I therefore do so too Or that my Father was hang'd must I therefore be drown'd Abraham is dead and the Prophets are dead What then Why Abraham had a Son of his own begetting at a hundred years old upon a Woman of ninety had an Army of Men born in his own House Flocks and Herds without number and a whole Country of his own to feed them in And the Prophets were Favorites of Heaven could raise the Dead and kill the Living Must therefore any of these Gifts happen to me Why then if I must not partake with Abraham and the Prophets in their Blessings why must I partake with them in their Deaths Nor did Abraham die because the Prophets died nor did the Prophets die because Abraham died Then if their Deaths had no effects upon one another Why should they have any effect upon me And as the Life or Death of one Man is no cause of the Life or Death of another so the multitude of Examples don't alter the case The Life or Death of all the World except one Man can be no cause of the Life or Death of that one Man Almost this very case once happen'd in the World when the Flood destroyed all but eight Persons and yet this was no Argument that those eight must be drowned too nor was the preservation of them any Argument for the preservation of the rest We have heard of a hundred thousand Men slain in Battel and yet this was no Argument for the death of any other Man who was not slain in it Wherefore the custom of the World to die is no Argument one way or other But because I know that Custom it self is admitted as an evidence of Title upon presumption that this Custom had once a reasonable Commencement and that this Reason doth continue therefore it is incumbent upon me to answer this Custom by shewing The Time and Reason of its Commencement And that this Reason is determined Which if I do shew then the bare Custom of the World to die ought no longer to be admitted as a Title against Life First then I do admit the Custom or Possession of Death over the World to be as followeth viz. That Death did reign from Adam to Moses by an uninterrupted possession over all Men Women and Children created or born except one Breach made upon it in that time by Enoch And hath reigned from Moses unto this day by the like uninterrupted possession except one other Breach made upon it in this time by Elijah And this is as strong a Possession as can be alledged against me To answer this I must shew That this Custom or Possession of Death had a reasonable Commencement which was the Original of it To avoid this Possession I must shew That this Reason is determined and that therefore this Possession ought to be no longer admitted as a Title against Life The Religion of the World now is That Man is born to die But from the beginning it was not so for Man was made to live God made not Death till Man brought it upon himself by his delinquency Adam stood as fair for Life as Death and fairer too because he was in the actual possession of Life as Tenant thereof at the Will of God and had an opportunity to have made that Title perpetual by the Tree of Life which stood before him with the Tree of Knowledg of Good and Evil. And here 't is observable how the same act of Man is made the condition both of his Life and Death Put forth thy hand and pull and eat and die Or Put forth thy hand and pull and eat and live for ever So little doth God esteem the Work of Man in order to his own Salvation The Lord Bacon descanting upon the Fall of Man expresses it thus That Man made a total defection from God presuming to imagine that the Commandments and Prohibitions of God were not the Rules of Good and Evil but that Good and Evil had their own Principles and beginnings and that Man lusted after the knowledg of those imagined Beginnings to the end to depend no more upon God's Will revealed but upon himself and his own Light as a God than which there could not be a Sin more opposite to the whole Law of God For 't is not to be conceived that there was any physical Virtue in either of these Trees whereby to cause Life or Death But God having sanctified them by those two different Names he was obliged to make good his own Characters of them by commanding the whole Creation to act in such a manner as that Man should feel the Effects of this Word according to which of
yet when I say he did not do it voluntarily I don't mean that he did it unwillingly For as he did it with all frankness and generosity of his Will I lay down my Life of my self so he did it with the highest affection of Love to Mankind Greater Love than this hath no Man that he lay down his Life for his Friend But I mean he did not do it purely voluntarily without a necessity of doing it and a Consideration for it First then There was a Necessity upon God himself God told Adam that if he did eat he should die The Devil told Eve that they might eat and not die And these were the first words spoken to Man by God or the Devil upon the truth or falshood whereof the very Beings of them both were to depend for ever For which ever of them could maintain the Truth of his Word against the other he must have been God and the other the Devil And therefore God having turned the Lie upon the Devil he is from thence called a Liar from the beginning and the Father of it and will never be believed again for ever God could not have dispensed with his Word without complementing the Devil with his Godhead in taking the Lie upon himself and this he could not do For God cannot lie without undeifying himself and this he can't do because all his Qualities being of his Essence he can't change them That God cannot change is not a deficiency in his Nature but the perfection of his Essence which can be nothing but himself For as it is the happiness of imperfect Beings to be capable of change in order to be made better so it is the happiness of perfect Beings to be incapable of change whereby to be made worse Man can lie because he can't speak Truth there 's nothing that a Man can say but what he can unsay and falsify by the change of his mind which he can change only because he can't fix it as a Man that hath a broken Arm can turn it every way because he can fix it no way Nothing but an absolute Power can be absolute in any thing therefore Man having no absolute Power can't absolutely determine his own Will every change of which subjects him to a Lie either by falsifying his former Resolutions or his present Inclinations But God having an absolute Power to determine his own Will he could not change it after he had so determined it for what is fix'd can't be changed Wherefore God could not dispense with the Breach of his Law to pardon it Which was not for want of Mercy in God for he hath and doth daily pardon ten thousand times the Sins committed by Man against the moral Law which seem as great Offences as this Because the moral Law hath in it self a defeazance or condition annexed to it at the time of the first delivering of it Except ye repent ye shall perish By which this Law may be fulfilled without a performance of it in specie by doing another thing which is admitted to be done instead of it A defeazance is not the same thing with the thing to be defeated but something collateral to it And thus Repentance which is not a performance of the Moral Law is nevertheless accepted instead of it But in this Law delivered to Adam there was no such condition annexed to it at the first delivery The words are absolute In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt die which leaves no room for Repentance Adam did repent but he found no place for it he could not find any words of the Law to which he could apply his Repentance to do him any good And when a Deed hath no defeazance or condition annexed to it at the time of the first delivery it can't be added to it afterwards And hence tho this Law delivered to Adam was at the time of the first delivery a Law of Life and Death yet the Law of Life being ended by breach of the Condition there was then nothing left but the Law of Death which became absolute without any condition And this put God upon a necessity of executing the Sentence of the Law upon Man in specie or making himself a Liar which he could not do and therefore the necessity upon him was absolute Which necessity was all the while a contradiction to his Nature which is Love to Man God is Love And this divided him against himself and laid him under a necessity of finding out an Invention to reconcile his Truth to his Love and his Love to his Truth And this Necessity upon God draw'd a Necessity upon Christ to come and execute this Invention because none could do it but himself Now there being such a Necessity for Christ's assuming the Humane Nature and dying under it there was a Covenant made between him and the Father previous to his coming in the Flesh which is called the Covenant of Eternal Life and is the History of the Scriptures altho it be not set down altogether in any one place Rich Metals and precious Stones don't lie together in heaps above ground but being so valuable when found Men think it worth their while to dig down for them in all places where they have any probability of finding them Then if the way and manner of attaining Eternal Life doth lie in so narrow a Volume as the Bible Search the Scriptures for in them ye think ye have Eternal Life shall we not think it worth our while to search it through for that precious Stone with a new Name which none can read but they that have it And this is a more pleasant Labour than the search for other Jewels for there we meet with nothing of pleasure or profit till we find the very thing we seek for But in making this enquiry we divert our selves with knowledg all the way we go Nor did God think any one Man or any one Age of the World worthy to have the whole of this Covenant revealed to them all at once He was 4000 Years from Adam to Christ delivering it in Types and Shadows to 62 Generations of Men who passed their Age in that time But having thus prefaced it at sundry times and in divers manners to our Fathers by the Prophets he at last spoke it to us by his Son In which these parts do appear 1. The Date 2. The Parties 3. The Contents and Consideration 4. The Sealing and Execution 5. The Witnesses 6. The Ceremony required of Man whereby to execute it on his part and take the advantage of it 1. The Date This was before the Foundation of the World I was set up from everlasting Before Abraham was I am God who created all things by Jesus Christ the Lamb slain before the Foundation of the World The priority of which Date prevents any preincumbrance that could be made of Eternal Life which is more than can be said of any Titles amongst Men. 2. The Parties It was between him
AN ARGUMENT Proving That according to the Covenant of Eternal Life revealed in the Scriptures Man may be translated from hence into that Eternal Life without passing through Death altho the Humane Nature of CHRIST himself could not be thus translated till he had passed through Death Nec vanis credite verbis Aspicite en faciatque fidem Conspectus Anno Dom. 1700. THE PREFACE TO them that knew not the reason it look'd like a Whym for the Man in the Gospel to walk about the streets with his Bed upon his Back on the Sabbath-day while the rest of the People were at their Devotion And perhaps it may seem more odd in me to bolt out an Argument in Divinity as a Bone of Contention into the World at a time when the rest of Mankind are so deeply engaged in Secular Affairs But he that regardeth the Wind will never sow and he that waiteth for Times and Seasons will never do Business And as that seeming whimsical Man said to them that reproved him He that made me whole the same said unto me Take up thy Bed and walk So say I to them that affront me He that revealed this unto me the same bad me tell it abroad as a watch-word to be given out from one to another every Man to his Fellow as fast as he receives it Let him that heareth say Come And having thus delivered my part of the Message I look upon my self to have no more to do with it afterwards than you have But hereby I shall know whether this Doctrine be mine or no. If it be mine it will sink and fall and die But if it be his that I think 't is it will kindle it self like a Firebrand from one to another till it hath set the World in Arms against Death And having thus left the decision of the truth of it to the success I begin to feel my self more easy under it And as the four Leprous Men said to one another in the Gate of Samaria If we sit here we are sure to die with Famine and if we go into the Camp of the Syrians we can but die by the Sword So I have said to my self If I submit to Death I am sure to die and if I oppose it I can but be kill'd and die And should I be baffled in this Essay I can lose nothing by it but that little Credit with the World which I value not in comparison of this Attempt And as those four desperate Men venturing themselves upon this Resolution did thereupon find that they had been before more afraid than hurt So in making this Sally against Death methinks I have discovered it to be rather a Bugbear than an Enemy And therefore as they having filled themselves with Plunder thought it their Duty to go and tell the news to them that were ready to perish So I can't satisfy my self to eat my Morsel alone without communicating to them who I know with my self must by reason of Death be all their life-life-time subject to Bondage And as their glad Tidings of plenty was never the less welcome to the King and People of Israel for being brought to them by Men poor and miserable So if my News be true in it self why should it fare the worse for being told by the greatest of Sinners And perhaps this qualifies me to be the Messenger lest one more holy should seem to be honoured with it for his own personal Sanctity I remember a sudden Retort once given me by a Lady to whom I excused this my Emulation by the Example of Enoch But you are not so good as he was for Enoch walked with God And this might have puzled me had not Paul in his List of Worthys counted upon the Translation of Enoch as done by Faith By Faith Enoch was translated that he should not see Death Why then if I have as good a Faith for this purpose as he had I am in this point quoad hoc as good a Man as he was tho I fall short of him in all his other Qualities Nor is it to be expected that any Assembly of Divines should be employed in such a Business as this They inclose themselves within the Pale of their own Church and whoever breaks through that Fence is prosecuted as a Trespasser upon their Jurisdiction And thus the Jewish Priests excommunicated a Layman for teaching them Religion Thou wast altogether born in Sin and dost thou teach us and they cast him out But he that had opened his Eyes took him in And such an exchange I should reckon no great misfortune But is it not a shame That this Enoch in the beginning of Time so long before the receipt of the Promise should attain to that Faith in Christ which we that have seen him crucified before our eyes think a Sin to offer at But having been tempted to commit this Sin like a true Mother's Child of my grand Parent Eve I would tempt my Friends to do so too And all I ask of them is this Having abstracted the study of seven years Recluse into less than two hours reading I only desire the perusal of it at a time of leisure when Men and Women design to be serious and think most of themselves And then I flatter my self that they will find it not the most unpleasant hour that ever they spent in their life For this I know that nothing is more pleasant to us than News and what I have said was never said by Man before And this I know that notwithstanding the defection of our Natures nothing is more pleasant to Man than Truth And what I have said is true And a Truth that all the Gainsayers shall not be able to resist Tho it be in contradiction to the most received Truth in the World That all Men must die An Argument proving That according to the Covenant of Eternal Life revealed in the Scriptures Man may be translated from hence into that Eternal Life c. ANTE obitum felix nemo supremaque fata is a fiction of Poets And that old Motto worn upon Tomb-stones Death is the Gate of Life is a Lie By which Men decoy one another into Death taking it to be a thorough-fare into Eternal Life Whereas it is just so far out of the way For die when we will and be buried when we will and lie in the Grave as long as we will we must all return from thence and stand again upon the Earth before we can ascend into the Heavens Hinc itur ad Astra Now the Assertion of Christ concerning himself was that Man by him may live for ever And this is that Magnetick which hath drawn the World after him For as he said to us Except your Righteousness exceed the Righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees ye shall in no wise enter into the Kingdom of God So we may say of him Except his words exceed the words of common Men what should we follow him for And thus when he
the Trees he first put forth his hand And it is yet more strange that Man having Life and Death set before him at the same time and place and both to be had upon the same condition that he should single out his own Death and leave the Tree of Life untouch'd And what is further strange even after his election of Death he had an interval of time before his expulsion out of Paradise to have retrieved his Fate by putting forth his hand to the Tree of Life and that yet he omitted this too But by all this it is manifest That as the Form or Person of Man in his first Creation was capable of Eternal Life without dying so the fall of Man which happen'd to him after his Creation hath not disabled his Person from that capacity of Eternal Life And therefore durst Man even then have broken through the Cherubim and flaming Sword or could he now any way come at the Tree of Life he must yet live for ever notwithstanding his Sin committed in Paradise and his expulsion out of it But this Tree of Life now seems lost to Man And so he remains under the Curse of that other Tree In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt die Which Sentence of the Law is the cause of the death of Man and was the Commencement of the Custom of Death in the World as the Original of it And by the Force of this Law Death hath kept the possession before admitted to this day For tho this Law was delivered to Adam before Eve was made and in it there are no express words to bind her or the Issue begotten between them yet it did not only bind him and her and all their Descendants but even the whole Creation under them for tho this Law was delivered to Adam in his single Person yet it was so delivered to him in his Politick Capacity as Head of the whole Creation and the great Trustee for them all And thus Adam understood it for he had told it Eve as a thing that concerned her as well as himself of which she took notice and repeated it to the Serpent in the Dialogue between them And as Adam thus understood it so God declared it immediately after the Fall To the Woman he said I will greatly multiply thy Sorrow c. To the Man he said Cursed be the Ground for thy sake c. And God having thus explained himself he immediately commanded Nature to turn upon Man to execute the Sentence of this Curse upon them And under this Command Nature hath acted ever since which is an Inversion of it from its original Institution Nature was formed by a Law superior to it which is called the Law of the Creation Let there be Light and there was Light And being thus made by a Law God immediately gave it another Law to act by by which the Earth watered it self and brought forth Fruit without the labour of Man or Beast But upon Man's delinquency God superseded this course of Nature and put it under another Law whereby the whole Creation stands inverted at this day So that all these common Events which now happen in the World tho they are become natural according to Nature thus inverted yet from the beginning they were not so Death was a strange word to Adam for tho he did understand it to be a determination of his Being yet he did not apprehend in what manner his Being should be so determined nor how he should make his Exit out of the World having never seen one Example of it And this made the Sentence of Death more terrible to them because they did not know what God was going to pronounce against them But God finding the Man and his Wife hid among the Trees of the Garden for fear of him he hinted to them their Redemption by the Seed of the Woman in the close of the Curse against the Serpent before ever he came to denounce their own Sentence against them which supported them under the terror of it and without which they had sunk down dead in the place And thus Christ as he saith is the Life of the World tho they don't know it For had it not been for this God had executed Man in the Fact Adam by this very act of Delinquency and the Sentence upon it stood attainted and became a dead Man in Law tho he was not executed till about nine hundred years afterwards and during that Interval he begat Sons and Daughters and performed all other Acts of Life From which it is observable that the change of a Man's State tho it doth at one instant ascertain his Fate one way or other yet it doth not work so sudden a change in his Person or Affections Eve after her eating and Adam before his eating of the Forbidden Tree were in two different States from one another she in the State of Death and he in the State of Life and yet this did not presently change their Affections one to another Which put the Case much harder upon him than it was before upon her For she by her very Creation was made so much a part of himself from his passion of Love to her that he could not be happy while she was miserable and hence perhaps we read of no other Argument she used to him for breach of the Command than that she had done it before him The violation of her Happiness did so much affect him by a sympathy with her that all his other Enjoyments could do him no good And therefore since he thought it impossible for her to return into the same State with him rather than be parted from her he chose to hazard himself in the same State with her The Philosophers say Man and Woman are one Creature in two pieces And as such God gave them one common Name before he made them Let us make Man and let Them have dominion c. And this is still retained as a common Name to them both in all Languages But their Offence was at last joint and several Now the Articles of the Curse denounced against those our common Ancestors for this their Offence is the Law of Death and is the State under which the World stands at this day and from which we can never be redeemed but by being discharged from this Law The falling of which Curse upon Mankind as descendants from those our common Ancestors is the Foundation of all the Laws of Man in the like case For that Parents have power by their own Acts to bind their Issue before they are born is the Law of all the World because every Man hath his Heirs in him And thus Levi is said to have been in the Loyns of his great Grandfather and to have paid Tithes in him four Generations before he was born And thus all the Descendants of Esau and Jacob are said to be in their Mother's Womb while they were Two Nations strugled in her Womb. And that the Birth
make his immediate passage to Heaven by way of translation because he was fallen under that Law which did oblige him to the common Fate of Death But having once suffered this and thereby and by his Resurrection delivered himself from that Law which had obliged him to it He then stood perfectly qualified to make his Exit by way of Translation And therefore having done all he had to do upon Earth he claimed a right of reentrance into his former Glory without dying any more I have finished the Work thou gavest me to do Now glorify me with that Glory which I had with thee before the World began And thereupon God sent him down one of the Chariots of Heaven to convey him thither as he had done before to those two Heroes of old whom I have excepted out of the possession of Death upon this their Faith in him before they saw him Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed Now I say this that as Christ did thus change his State upon Earth without change of his Person or Place so Man may do too with this difference that tho Christ passed this change by his own Death and Resurrection yet we can't do it by our own Death and Resurrection but must do it by passing through the Death and Resurrection of Christ in that legal Form prescribed by the Covenant of Eternal Life because his Death and not ours is made the Seal of that Covenant And this Man may do without any real Death or Resurrection of his own If the Death and Resurrection of Christ be the Passage into Eternal Life then he that is passed this is passed into Eternal Life whether he himself ever died or not And for us to think to imitate Christ in attaining Eternal Life by passing through Death because Christ did so shews us to be as ignorant of the Law of Eternal Life as a Man would seem of our Laws who seeing another intituled to an Estate by sealing of a piece of Wax upon a piece of Parchment should think to get the same himself by doing the same thing upon other pieces of the like of his own putting together For my own part I thank God I have already made this so familiar to my self that could I pass through an actual Death and Resurrection of my own without Pain I would not value the Experiment as any thing towards Salvation further than this that I should thereby know that there is nothing in it And of this I am as well satisfied by the Experiments made upon others as if it were upon my self When Christ had opened the Eyes of the Man born blind the People were ready to interrogate him to death What How Where When did he cure you What did he say to you What did he do to you What did you see first What did you feel first But he knew no more of the matter than they did Only that whereas I was blind now I see So when the People flock'd about Lazarus expecting to hear from him some News of the other World he could give them no other account of it than whereas I am dead now I am alive He was neither richer nor wiser by his Resurrection nor could learn by that how to escape another Death but died again and might have thus died and rose and rose and died a hundred times without any change of his State Wherefore Samuel ask'd Saul Why dost thou disquiet me to bring me up What wouldst thou have with me Is it to see me Why here I am an old Man in a Mantle as thou hast seen me a hundred times Wouldst thou talk with me Why thou knowst what I have told thee over and over the Lord is departed from thee and hath rent the Kingdom out of thy hand and so I tell you now and more I cannot say If Men will not believe Moses and the Prophets while they are living why should we fancy we shall rather believe them when risen from the Dead If they say the same things over again it is Impertinence and should they contradict themselves how could we believe them We have strange Conceptions of Death and Resurrection as long as we are on this side them But when we have once passed through and find our selves much the same as we were before we shall be at as much loss about it as we are now And if the Death of others who have died before us hath put us into such a fear of Death that we shall die too I can't conceive how our own Death should discharge us of that fear after our Resurrection but that it should rather augment it for what we have once felt we are ever after more afraid of feeling again The burnt Child dreads the Fire And yet far be it from me to say that Man may not attain to Eternal Life tho he should die for the Text runs double I am the Resurrection and the Life he that liveth and believeth on me shall never die and tho he were dead he shall live But this I say that by this very Text there is a nearer way of entring into Eternal Life than by the way of Death and Resurrection Whatever Circumstances a Man is under at the time of his Faith God is bound upon his Fidelity to make good this Text to him according to which part of it he builds his Faith upon If he be dead then there 's a necessity for a Resurrection But if he be alive there 's no occasion for Death or Resurrection either Nor doth this Text maintain two Religions but two Articles of Faith in the same Religion But this I do apprehend that the Article of Faith for a present Life without dying is a higher Article of Faith than that which expects Death and Resurrection because I passed through this last Article long before the other which I am now arguing for ever enter'd into my thoughts I once courted Death as Elijah did under the Juniper-Tree in the Wilderness when he requested for himself to die and said Now Lord take away my Life for I am not better than my Fathers Which shews that he was not educated in this Faith of Translation but attained it afterwards by study For no Man can comprehend the heights and depths of the Gospel at his first entrance into it And in point of order the last Enemy to be destroyed is Death The first Essay of Faith is against Hell that tho we should die we might not be damned And the full assurance of this is more than most Men attain to before Death overtakes them which makes Death a Terror to them But they that do attain to this assurance before they go hence can sing a Requiem at their Death Lord now lettest thou thy Servant depart in peace for mine Eyes have seen thy Salvation And if God takes them at their words they lie down in the Faith of the Resurrection of the Just But whenever he pleases to continue them after
of every Man within any Country doth subject him to the Laws of that Country is the Law of all Nations And without these Concessions there could be no Laws because else every Man must have a particular Law delivered him for himself which being a publick Inconvenience cannot be admitted in the nature of Laws And thus this Law of Death fell upon Christ himself as a Descendant from the same common Ancestors Christ had two descents in his Birth One was his natural descent from the Virgin Mary his real Mother The other his legal descent from Joseph his supposed Father But in his Genealogy set down by two Evangelists this legal descent by Joseph is only counted upon without taking any notice of his descent by his Mother's side Because this descent by Joseph was his legitimate descent according to that Law which makes all the Issue of the Woman born during the Coverture to be the Issue of the Husband although it be notoriously known that in Fact it were begotten by another And this is our Law at this day altho the Issue be born but one day after the Espousals And the Canon Law is much stronger for that makes the Issue born of the Woman before Marriage let them be begotten by whom she will unless by a former Husband in Wedlock to be the Issue of the Husband to whom she is afterward married And therefore Christ having such a Father-in-Law as this his descent must be accounted from his Father-in-Law and not from his Mother because all legal descents are accounted from the Father and not from the Mother When the eleven Tribes were polled in the Wilderness of Sinai they gave account of their Pedigrees after their Families by the House of their Fathers without taking any notice of their descent by their Mothers side And so did they of the Tribe of Levi who were numbered after them Wherefore I say the business of the Evangelists being to shew such a descent in Christ by which the Curse of the Law might fall upon him in his Birth they must shew a descent upon which the Law might operate For as this is a Law all Proceedings thereupon are according to Law And hence it is observable that his being born of a Virgin espoused and not of a single Virgin was not accidental but designed For as it was necessary that he should be born of a pure Virgin to preserve his Nature from the defilements of the Humanity so it was necessary that he should be born of a Virgin espoused to derive upon himself the Curse of the Law by a legal Father For which purpose it was necessary that the Birth of Christ should in the terms of the Evangelist be on this wise and no otherwise And as this peculiar Genealogy of Christ was not accidental but designed the quality of his descent was so too There are mutual courtesies and civilities used amongst Equals but he that accepteth Riches or Honour from another doth thereby acknowledg him to be his Superior for the lesser is blessed of the greater Wherefore when Abraham had rescued the Plunder taken from the Sodomites he permitted the young Men that fought with him to eat and drink of the Provisions and his three Confederates that assisted him to take their Portion of the Goods but for his own part taking himself to be as good a Man as the then King of Sodom he scorned to accept from him the value of a Shoe Latchet lest it should be said he made Abraham rich So tho Christ in the days of his flesh behaved himself with all the freedom of Conversation The Son of Man came eating and drinking and when little Zacheus climb'd up a Tree to see him he frankly invited himself to dine with him Yet knowing himself to be the Son of God he neither could nor would receive any Dignity from Man I receive not Honour from Man And thus knowing his real descent to be from Above I am from Above it was equal to him to be reputed the Son of a King or a Carpenter But he rather chose the latter because being himself a King I am a King he would not accept his immediate descent from another King lest it should be said that that made him King David often vaunted of him as his descendant to come twice fourteen Generations before he was born And Abraham rejoiced to see his day But he was so far from valuing himself upon these great Ancestors one a King and the other a King's Fellow that he rather seemed to disown them Before Abraham was I am If David called me Lord how am I his Son He made no other use of his Royal Pedigree but to convey by them a corrupted descent from Adam who standing attainted of Treason against Heaven Christ himself under this Attainder was baptized in his own Blood to restore the rest of Mankind into the glorious Liberty of the Sons of God For Christ himself thus falling under the Law became as guilty of the breach of it as any common Man notwithstanding his personal Holiness For we are none of us guilty of this Sin in Fact but only by construction of Law in the Article of our Birth which falls upon us before we know Good or Evil and so it did upon the Humanity of Christ And this Law thus falling upon him was as just a cause of his Death as it is of ours Nor can his Death be assigned to any other cause but this This Death of Christ was the most unlikely thing that ever happen'd in the World His Disciples could not believe it till they saw it He did not die of Age being about thirty three at his Death He did not die of natural Infirmity having the power of Health by which he preserved his own and restored others He did not die in Battel For his Kingdom was not of this World else would his Servants have fought that he should not have been delivered unto the Jews He did not die by any sudden Accident the Angels having charge over him lest he should dash his foot against a stone He did not murder himself but made all his Efforts to escape the greatest of which was his asking his Life of God Nor was he murdered by others because there was a form of Law in doing it And yet he was not executed by Law because there was no Law then in being by which he could be executed for the Crime of which he stood accused The time that Christ lived in the World was after the destruction of the Jewish Monarchy and during the continuance of the Roman Conquest under which the Jewish Nation being then Subjects were permitted the exercise of their Religion and Priesthood but not of the Civil Power which they had while their Monarchy was in being So that if a Jew had committed any Offence against the Jewish Law which was not an Offence against the Roman Law he was liable to no other Punishment than the Censure of the Jewish Church
this attainment much longer above ground that Time seems to them an Interval of perfect leisure as Alexander's did to him after his Conquest till at last espying Death it self they fall upon it as an Enemy that must be conquered one time or other through Faith in Christ And for this cause there seems a respite of time intended to be allotted to Believers after the first Resurrection and before the Dissolution of the World for perfecting that Faith which they began before their Death and which they could not attain to in the first reach of Life For Death being but a discontinuance of Life wherever Men leave off at their Death they must begin at their Resurrection The Believers already dead are not ascended into the Heavens for David is not ascended into the Heavens Nor shall they ascend after their Resurrection till they have attain'd to this Faith of Translation And by that very Faith they shall be then convinced that if they had had that Faith before they need not have died The Story of Lazarus makes this plain His two Sisters said to Christ that if he had been there their Brother had not died And others that stood by said Could not this Man that opened the Eyes of the blind have even caused that this Man should not have died And Martha said further That whatever Christ would yet ask of God God would give it him By which she declared her Faith to be that Christ could raise her Brother presently Now these People had not these Articles of Faith from any Religion then commonly received amongst them But observing the Miracles Christ had done before they could not beat it out of their heads but that he could have prevented the Death of Lazarus and could then raise him presently Both which were right and rational Conclusions and did form a true Religion in them But when Christ closed in with them upon it and offered to make it good by raising the dead Man presently they all fell to recanting their Faith one cry'd He stinketh and the other He hath been dead four days and thereupon desired him to desist And the reason of the Recantation is evident The common Religion then received amongst them concerning the Resurrection was what we still retain That there will be a Resurrection at the last day And this having gain'd an Impression upon them from the force of Education was too strong for that single Impression which fell upon their Minds from their own Observation only And therefore they thought it safer to renounce their own Faith than the Religion delivered them by their Parents But Christ by doing the thing did convince them that their own Faith and Opinion of him was right And yet he did not say that the Religion delivered them by their Parents was wrong For that there will be a Resurrection at the last day in which all they that are not before that time raised shall then arise But what he said by this Text was that this Resurrection at the last day doth not prevent a present Resurrection from Death nor an immediate Translation without Death to them whose Faith is ready to receive it We must all be changed but we need not all die in order to be changed for 't is not Death that works our Change but the Death and Resurrection of Christ which we may pass through without Death Paul was of this Religion that we may be changed without Death We shall not all die but we shall all be chang'd And yet tho he had deliver'd this to be his Faith in general he did not attain to such a particular knowledg of the way and manner of it so as to prevent his own Death And his Confession tells us the reason of his failure That he had not yet attained the Resurrection of the Dead but was pressing after it But tho he was taken away in this pursuit he hath not lost his labour but is got so much nearer to the mark and at his Resurrection will be so far beforehand with them that never studied it He had but a late Conversion and after that was detained in the study of another part of Divinity the confirming the New Testament by the Old and making them answer one another in which he seems to have spent himself and from whence all Students in Divinity after him have stood upon his Shoulders For this is a Point previous to the Faith of Translation and must be learn'd before it in order to it And this his pressing tho he did not attain hath much encouraged me to make this Inquiry being well assured that he would not have thus pursued it had he not apprehended more in it than the vulgar Opinion is about it We don't think our selves fit to deal with one another in Human Affairs till our Age of one and twenty But to deal with our Maker thus offended to counter-plot the Malice of fallen Angels and to rescue our selves from eternal Ruin we are generally as well qualified for before we can speak plain as all our Life-time after Children can say over their Religion at four or five years old and their Parents that taught them can do no more at four or five and fifty For Religion being preach'd to them as a Mystery they are forbid to think of understanding it Graecum est non potest legi The common Creed of the Christian Religion may be learn'd in an hour And one day's Philosophy will teach a Man to die But to know the Virtue of the Death and Power of the Resurrection of Christ is a Science calculated for the study of Men and Angels for ever BUT if Man may be thus chang'd without Death and that it is of no use to him in order to Eternal Life What then is Death Or Whereunto serveth it What is it Why 't is a misfortune fallen upon Man from the beginning and from which he hath not yet dared to attempt his recovery And it serves as a Spectrum to fright us into a little better life than perhaps we should lead without it Tho God hath formed this Covenant of Eternal Life against Death Man still maintains a Covenant with it They have made an Agreement with Death and Hell By way of composition to submit to Death in hopes by that obedience to escape Hell And under this Oath of Allegiance we think our selves bound never to rebel against it The study of Philosophy is to teach Men to die from the Observations of Nature The Profession of Divinity is to inforce this Doctrine from Revelation And the Science of the Law is to settle our civil Affairs pursuant to these Resolutions The old Men are making their last Wills and Testaments And the young are expecting the execution of them by the death of the Testators And thus Mortis ad exemplum totus componitur Orbis Now what one Man dares raise a Faction against the whole World thus constituted under the Political Government of Death Why but if the