knowledg of Christ after the flesh 2 Cor. 5. 16. in a righteous Law-Life for the knowledg of him after the spirit in his spiritual Gospel-life into which risen out of the Death of the former Phil. 3. 7-10 This according to his own advice in the Holy Ghost Rom. 7. 1-4 That which is born but of the Flesh of Christ the Fleshly First-Covenant Law-life is but holy flesh not Eternal Life But that that 's Born of his Gospel-Spirit only Jo. 3. 6. The former when taken by himself as made under the Law he Crucified as the only means and way of exalting our nature in himself into the second in which he Lives for evermore So must we As there was an appointed time for him and so for us by his mean's to be Born or have this Righteous Law-Life brought forth in him So was there an appointed time for the death and loss of it in him and is also in us By the fresh Gift and Birth of it from him is he the Healer Planter Restorer and Builder up of Man afresh out of the Shameful Bloody Polluted State of Nature dead in Trespasses and Sins into the Fading Glory Life Wisdom and Righteousness of Man the Goodliness of Holy Flesh which yet is but as a Flower of the Field Isai. 40. 6. This Restoring Healing-work of Christ as to the deadly Wound given to all Men by the First Sin of the First to the top-stone of this Renewed old Building by his comlines or perfect Righteousness of the Law imputed to or put upon them he warn's against the abuse of by an over-value of it over-considence in it and doating love to it so as to prefer it before his offered Spiritual Life and Everlasting Righteousness in the Image of the Heavenly the new Building For this is Mystical Adultery against him as their true Spiritual Lord and Husband worse then Litteral Yea and Murder also as a Murdering Mind of Enmity against him there is Interpreted for which they are to be Judg'd as the most Criminal Adulterers and Murderers All this we find Ezek. 16. 1-15 and v. 38. Man as Dead in Sin is figuratively Charactred by the helpless condition his Body is Born in as to any thing he can do for himself v. 3-6 These Expressions Represent the Dark Black Dismal Bloody Condition and Desolate State of his Spirit that none but Christ can help Let him look within without and round about him there 's none to Pity or have Compassion upon him that can help him This disconsolate State and Extremity God declares to be a motive and opportunity to him to help him restore Life to him Cleanse or Sanctify him and by Imputation of another's Righteousness justify him and render him fruitful in his Restor'd Naturals under the Fructifying Influences of Christ as a Fleshy Bride-groom and Husband who also puts the Mystical Ornaments Bracelets and Jewels of Supernatural Spiritual Enlightning Gifts upon him And he causes him to feed at his earthly First-Covenant Table on such Meats or Communications from him as tend to Nourish Strengthen and Build him up into a Fruitful Flourish in that Life to the Encreasing with the Encreases of Man not of God in the Wisdom aud Glory of his own Life not of God's So grows he exceeding Beautiful prospering into a kind of Kingdom State in his own Life and way consisting in a Ruling Power of his Restored Spirit over all the Inferiour Powers of Nature in him Such Kings Paul found amongst the Corinthians 1 Cor. 4. 8. Multitudes refuse this common Salvation love their Chains and Bondage under the Brutish Lusts of their fallen degenerate nature so as not to accept of deliverance there-from And Multitudes of First-Covenant Believers and Professors that receive this Common Salvation refuse the Special the Crowning benefit of Christ's Death his Spiritual New-Creation or New-Covenant Life his unspeakable Gift Their Restor'd Spirit of Nature or the Law is still a Spirit of Bondage under the Law and Curse Gal. 3-10 another State of Death by Filth of Spirit or Enmity to God's Spirit in which alone they can be finally saved Paul found his Holy Flesh or Restor'd Natural State a Body a Law of Sin and Death as Phil. 3. 6. and Ro. 7. 24. 8. 2 compared do Evidence Man's Rational Powers and Free-Will at best are the Living Holy Sacrifice God requires as their reasonable Service and true Gospel-Free-Will Offering unto him by the death of all Rom. 12. 1. Final refusing to do this renders men Conformable to this World v. 2. yea to the Devil the God of this World who has set up his Superiour worldly life wisdom and glory in unchangable enmity to God Thus fall first covenant Saints by refusing the second and crowning benefit of Christ's death under greater Guilt and sorer Condemnation then if they never had received the First They refuse to listen to Christ's Heavenly second voice and call to them out of the Fading Life and Earthly Freedom of the Sons of Men into the Everlasting Life and Glorious Liberty of the Sons of God Thus do Men sin away their First-Covenant Life and second Covenant Light again after the Similitude of Adam ' s Transgression by preferring such Life and Ornaments to the very Gospel New-Covenant more excellent Life and way 1 Cor. 12. 31. And so come they to a latter end worse then their beginning either in Innocency or as Born dead in Sin because now Irrecoverably Unpardonably and Unchangably dead This then is Solomon's meaning here God has appointed a time for the Birth and Death the Planting and Plucking up the Building and Pulling down the Healing and Wounding or Killing and Destroying Man as to this mortal first-covenant-life of his own nature The Birth of the Planting and Building him up therein is the ground and cause of his Laughing Dancing Exulting and Rejoycing in the Embraces of Christ as a fleshly Bride-groom The pulling down and destroying all this again by his Gospel-Cross or spiritual Sword is the cause of his Weeping and Mourning All this have we Vers. 2 3 4. Vers 5. A time to cast away Stones and a time to gather Stones together a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing Christ has a set time for gathering together the stones of Man's ruined desolated Building in his own nature and a time to pull down his rebuilt natural state and cast away the stoues thereof again uot leaving one stone upon another in this fleshly Church-building Thus serv'd he the first mystical Temple-building of our spotless nature in himself figured in his Prophecy of the downfal of the litteral Temple at Jerusalem in Answer to his Disciples Mat. 24. 1 2. Christ has a time to embrace Men as a fleshly Bridegroom to them and a time to refrain from embracing on his dying and departing from them there And he requires them to desire expect or look after him no more there for a knowledg of him after the Flesh but wholly fix
their Eye and Heart upon him with Paul in that Spiritual Life into which 〈◊〉 out of the Death of the former and be Married to him there as their Everlasting Spiritual Lord and Bride-groom Ro. 7. 1-4 While Christ Pipes to Men in First-Covenant Communications as he did by John Baptist's Ministery they are to Dance and Rejoyce When he with-draw's and call's them into the death of that State they are to Mourn else are they Immorigerous and Undutiful Mat. 11. 17. Their Natural Hearts will be filled with Sorrow as the Disciples when as a Fleshly Bride-groom and Comforter he departed from them Mat. 9. 15. Jo. 16. 20-22 Right Obedient Mourners in this case are Blessed and sure to hear of Christ as a better Comforter and Bridegroom in his Spiritual Life The Death of Man as to a Mortal First-Covenant Life is as sure as the Birth of it as the case is with the Birth and Death of the Body And indeed the House of Mourning and Death is better to Man in the tendency of it then the Birth and utmost Flourish of a First-Covenant Life in him For though after Rebuilt in the Restor'd Righteous Life of his own Nature and then pull'd down again he be seemingly in a worse condition and more hopeless then before ever Christ medled with him at all 〈◊〉 yet is this the only way to Christ's House of Everlasting Feasting and Rejoycing Those that refuse this way and Laugh now their 〈◊〉 Joy will end in Everlasting Mourning and Saints Transient Sorrow in everlasting Joy Mat. 5. 4. Luk. 6. 25. Jo. 16. 20. Christ came not to speak Peace but War and Death by his Spiritual Fire and Sword to the earthly Life of Nature at best in himself and followers Luk. 12. 49-51 We must follow the Suffering-Steps of this great Captain of our Salvation or never come where he is True Saints with Paul Glory in the Cross of Christ Conformity to his death and in bearing about them the marks of the dying of the Lord Jesus So the Spiritual Life of risen Jesus comes to be more and more manifested in their Mortal flesh 2 Cor. 4. 10 11. Vers. 6. A time to Get and a time to Lose A time to Keep and a time to cast Away A time to seek after and recover the exercise of our nature in the first-covenant righteous life thereof and to heap up Riches by a fruitfulness therein And then comes a time to lose and cast all away again as dung and loss with Paul for the more excellent Life Christ's unspeakable gift Phil. 3. 6-9 And so is there a time to keep up the exercise of our nature in the restor'd first-covenant righteous Life thereof so long as Christ own 's that to be his Dispensation to us by continuing as a fleshly Bride-groom with us and a time to part with and cast it away again for the second in the same sense with what is meant in the former clause of this Verse Vers. 7. A time to Rent and a time to Sew A time to keep Silence and a time to Speak That which has been Sew'd Heal'd and made up again after the sore breach by the first Sin and so fitted or fitting us in its kind to speak to and instruct the dark ignorant corrupt Spirit of nature in others as a Teacher and Guide of such blind ones all this healed speaking State in the Wisdom of Man made Wise in Christ must in its season be rent broken down and torn in pieces again silenc'd and wholly laid aside to make way for another better Dictatour Ruler and Guide the Infallible Spirit of Truth The final refusal to submit to this chang of Ruler and Guide lodges up first-covenant Saints in unchangable Enmity to God and the spirit of the second under the guilt of the most Criminal Adultery Theft and Sacriledg Ro. 2. 17-22 God speak's once and he speak's twice yet Man perceiveth it not Job 33. 14. God call's Man out of his Death in Sin into the righteous Life of a Man or of the first-covenant Law again Then by the voice of his second-Covenant spirit into the death of the first as his only pass into the Life and Righteousness of God in the second Under pretence of continuing in obedience to his first voice does man Rebell against his second and is found an Enemy to the Spiritual Cross of Christ. He prefer's the oldness of Letter in his Living Soul to Gods newness of Life in his quickning Spirit Man's Laughing Dancing Speaking time is over in his own Wisdom and Righteousness when shew'd the unprofitableness as to true Blessedness of all done or said by him therein The right understanding and obedient Submitting to Christs Various Voices and observing the several seasons of Speaking and Silence is Mans safety and he therein wel-pleasing to God 'T is a high point of true Wisdom for Man to be more ready to hear the voice of the Spirit of Christ in himself or Saints then to speak and so Offer the Sacrifice of Fools in his own Ec. 5. 1. Man in his highest Wisdom is a Fool as to all spiritual things his greatest concerns the unreasonable Man Paul desir'd to be delivered from the Impertinent Trouble and Babbling Loquacity of about Gospel things that he has no discerning in The restor'd Law-principle of Life and Action in Man is but a ceremony to be abolish'd and becomes an antiquated thing with all the Fading Glory of it when to be done away to give room for a spiritual Principle of everlasting Righteonsness as a new Root and Spring of his Desire Thought and Action This refused all Duties perform'd in the Law-spirit are thenceforth but Sacrifices of Fools that do evil What in its appointed Season and day was Obedience in that Law-State becomes then direct Rebellion As Man has Lived therein to God so the Season come is he to die therein to him that both living and dying he may be the Lords Rom. 14. 8. Passive Obedience is the utmost requir'd of Man in his own nature to make way for the true spiritual principle of active Obedience to God's wel-pleasing Vers. VIII A time to Love and a time to Hate a time of War and a time of Peace There 's a time of Love and Peace such as it is to be found in a first-covenant Union with Christ and such obedience as is performable therein But at length Christ speaks War and Death to this state comes to break down demolish and cast away all the stones of this old 〈◊〉 creation building And thus have we seen in these eight Verses God's twofold dispensation to Man's Body and fleshly or natural Spirit in all the fading first-creation Life and Glory thereof The Birth and Death of the Body and so of the natural Understanding as exercised there in and by all this is Typical to the like twofold dispensation of mystical Life and Death to his Spirit as to its first-covenant righteous state under the temporary wrath
of God executed by the Cross on obedient Saints or eternal wrath of God by the same Cross on incorrigible sinners And so are we brought by Solomon to consider the Result from all this which he declares by way of Question Vers. IX What profit hath he that worketh in that wherein he laboureth A like Question to that Chap. 1. 3. already spoken to Who is this he that worketh Man in the twofold perishing life of his Body and Spirit both inevitably falling under a twofold Dispensation of Birth and Death from God A vicissitude of building up and breaking down are unavoidable to both For Man in the utmost flourish of both is but a fading flower altogether Vanity lighter then vanity less than nothing Isa. 40. 7. 17. Psal. 39. 5. and 62. 9. The Life of both is mortal So was that of Angels in their innocency So is this Question of great weight What profit can Man have of all his Labours in a Life that 's Vanity All his best Labours therein do but encrease his heap of Vanities And what is he the better Eccl. 6. 11. Both lives in conclusion vanish and all the works fruits riches litteral and mystical all the things thereof things of man come to nothing Man then struggles under an impossibility to keep up the said lives or things thereof in rebellion against God's declared order and Command for surrender of all to him in obedient sacrifice by death If he refuse to give up all as demanded in love God will take away all In final Wrath. 'T is utterly impossible to avoid one of these two way 's of losing all No remedy All striving against these unalterable Appointments of God and fading nature of the things themselvs renders the inevitable parting with all and all Death-blow's of a tendency there-towards more Heavy Painful Bitter and Uneasy to Man's sore disadvantage and at last totall amazing disappointment If he has no other ground to stand on when all that is gone where is he What was his duty and beautiful in its season righteous performances in the activity of first-Covenant principles when call'd to Passive Obedience by the death and loss of all in order to active Obedience in the new-covenant Spirit and Principle of Everlasting Righteousness is Rebellion as the Sin of Witch-craft and Idolatry 1 Sam. 15. 23. T is a keeping that Amalekite Law spirit of Bondage alive as Ruler that God requires the death of Under such Witch-craft Paul found the Galatians Gal. 3. 1. No saving natures head from the irresistible Sword of the spirit of Grace No scaping in this War for Fighters against God Should the whole Creation Angels and Men lend their helping hand set their Shoulders to Boulster up and Support any one Man in this case he is gone They are all less then nothing to him we have to deal with All proud helpers and helped all final Resisters must stoop and fall under his Victorious Flaming Two-edged Spiritual Sword Wherein any deal proudly presumptuously keeping up the Life it ' larum's them in and summon's them to surrender it will be above them All that submit not to it in order to be made by it new Vessels of Honour and Fternal Life it will make their old ones Vessels of Dishonour and everlasting Contempt in Eternal Death To one of these two final Periods will the Versatile changable Spirit of Man Infallibly come The Obedient Saint when he awakes out of the Marred Visage and Death of the Earthy will be satisfied with the Image of the Heavenly Ps. 17. 15. And when Christ shall awake or come forth in the Visibility of the Heavenly he will despise or destroy all self-exalters against him with their Image of the Earthy Ps. 73. 20. In the Morning of Christ's day of Appearance with all his Saints in their Spiritual Resurrection-life after the long Night of this World under the Powers of Darkness will they have Dominion over all their Enemies in the Earthy and Consume all their Fading Beauty or Comliness Ps. 49 14. And what profit then will they find of all their Labours in a Law-Spirit of Bondage Death and Enmity to the Gospel Vers. X. I have seen the travel which God hath given to the Sons of Men to be exercised in it Heb. To afflict or humble them thereby Here 's Solomon's experience and Conviction of the unprofitableness of all Man's Labour and Travel for the gratifying and keeping up the Life of his Body or Spirit in the fading glory of a first-covenant state God gives or permits this Travel to Men in answer to and pursuit of their own vain Desire and Thought to humble or afflict them even by that very self-exalting Labour and State they chuse delight in and please themselves with They must with Job Solomon and others sit down at last in dust and ashes acknowledging the vanity of both the said Lives and of all done by them in the activity of both Happy they only that are timely humbled by the due consideration hereof so as to be willing to cease from the same quitting the folly of all their unprofitable Labours and false Confidences to walk with God in the more excellent Life and Way Vers. XI He hath made every thing beautiful in his time also he hath set the World in their heart so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end Man by Creation was made beautiful in the glory of a first-covenant Law-life for God's appointed season to him there So again when restor'd by Christ while he continues a fleshly Bride-groom to them there as his present dispensation But when by the convincing light of his new-covenant Gospel-spirit he discovers all this beauty to be but a fading Flower a Glory to be done away and that there 's Enmity to God under all then does Man's unlawful use of the Law or Rebellious keeping up his Law against Christ's Gospel-Life render that which was Beautiful most Filthy and Abominable to God Spiritual Sodomy worse then Litteral Man's hardning himself in his Law-Life against Christ's graciously shew'd and offered Gospel-Life provokes him to depart and Swear he shall never enter his Rest Heb. 3. 7. 11. Thus does Man bring his matters to a desperate pass by wilfully refusing so great Salvation as is offered and so is excluded for ever from it shall never be offer'd it more Christ and his true Saints and Seers will meddle no more with him in their Gospel-ministry nor intercede for but against him Act. 13. 46. 51. 1 Jo. 5. 16. They 'l shake the Dust off their Feet against him and away If Men say to Christ's Seers see not Prophecy not unto us right things They'l'a done Their Commission is out In Judgment on them they shall be Dumb Ezek. 3. 25 26. I know God has determin'd to destroy thee said the Prophet to King Amaziah because thou hast not 〈◊〉 to my Counsel and so on his threatning forbare 2 Chro. 25.
latter If they 'l not follow his suffering steps they never come where he is They prefer the earthy life and Countrey of the Creature to the heavenly life of the Creatour Blessed for ever The issue of and for this disobedience matters come to is this God will strip them of and take from them all the fading good they are possess'd of in the mystical earthly Countrey or land of their own restor'd enlighten'd nature as wilfully retain'd in a known rebellion against him The very same Mystical Sword or new-Creation Spirit of Christ and God will be drawn against them in final wrath to destroy them for ever which they so fear'd startl'd at and turn'd from when offer'd to be brought upon them in love to give them a kindly and right death-pass into the true land of promise Had they willingly obey'd it they had enter'd and eaten the good of the true land of promise But having absolutely and conclusively refused it and rebell'd against it they 'l be devour'd by the same sword or Spiritual cross upon them for ever The mouth of the Lord the living word of God Christ himself hath spoken it Isa. 1. 19 20. Obediently lose the fading life of nature and enter Rebelliously save pitty spare your own life and ye lose all for ever in eternal death under final wrath This is Christ's doctrin Mat. 16. 25. And this Christ presently deliver'd on Satan's contrary doctrin by an Apostle with the perswasive and seeming friendly words of his wisdom When he had spoken of his sufferings Peter rebuk'd him and preach'd the self-same doctrin to him the Old Serpent preach'd to Eve and by her to Adam Be it far from thee Lord this shall not be unto thee that is thou shalt not suffer or die at all This Spotless righteous law-life in holy flesh is eternal life no danger of death The Gospel-Riddle uninterpretable by Man's Wisdom is this die must nature or all 's lost nature and grace too all good in first or second covenant changable or unchangable And what succeeds unchangable evil of sin and punishment The obedient death of nature under the cross the full sevenfold purifying of it in the fiery furnace thereof from all dross tin and reprobate silver all filth of flesh and Spirit too renders man clean every whit Jo. 13. 10. This delivers him for ever from all captivities bondages enemies dangers and death's litteral and mystical Sodom Egypt and Babylon the life of nature corrupt or righteous both of which are a state of enmity to God and death to man if fix'd in Thou shalt never wash my feet said Peter No say's Christ then thou wilt have no part in me Oh then not my feet only but hands and head said Peter If feet be wash'd 't is enough say's Christ there need 's no more to make perfectly clean every whit whole and spiritually sound If the feet the will and understanding the two mystical feet on which man walks in his esteem judgment thought of and desire after things if these be Spiritual Heavenly Gospel-feet the discerning and desiring powers of the Gospel-Spirit and principle all will go right Heavenly things never-perishing meats will be wholly and only esteem'd desir'd and fed upon in this bottom-principle All will be right a-top in all Holy Gospel-Conversation when all 's right at bottom A Spirit greater then he that 's in the World the Devil in which 't is impossible to displease God Sin erre miscarry deceive or be deceived must needs ever do all things well and man be truly blessed in the deeds thereof The extream folly then of man in not only deferring but finally refusing to pay his engaged commanded vow for giving up his whole nature or Spirit the devoted thing in sacrifice by death unto God is unpardonable And then God will be extream and that most justly in marking all done amiss by him in his self-chosen nature and life He will call him to an account for every thing done therein from first to last This great transgression the presumptuous unpardonable sin unto eternal death will bring all other sin 's at its heels to be answer'd for as creditors come upon a man for lesser debts when clapt up in prison for a great one And then will every Spiritual conviction offered men in the day of their trial and God's patience towards them be reviv'd in them and stare them in the face to witness against them judg and condemn them in harmony with God himself When man's trial is over and sentence of death irrevocably past upon him God will not repent or change from his dispensation of wrath and man cannot repent or change from his rebellious mind of enmity against God Repentance will be hid from God's eyes and man's on all hands Unchangable enmity to God lay's man under the unchangable wrath of God thrust's him out of all distance as to any favour for ever or benefit by Christ's sacrifice or intercession Christ died not nor will intercede for the pardon of unchangable enmity to God and him And God will revive his formerly given Spiritual light to testify for him against them in their own consciences the evidence whereof can never be silenc'd extinguish'd or denied by them The irresistible testimony of it will be a perpetual condemner of them and justifier of God in his most wrathfull proceedings against them This is the worm never dies witnessing the fire of that wrath to be undeniably just which can never be quench'd Mark 9. 44. 46. 48. Vers. 6. Suffer not thy mouth to cause thy flesh to Sin neither say thou before the Angel 70. before God that it was an errour wherefore should God be angry at thy voice and destroy the work of thine hands The Spirit of man at best in its own life is but flesh The life mind will desire thought wisdom righteousness glory all the things thereof are but sleshly earthly perishing vanities Man in all altogether vanity is possess'd of no goodness but what 's a fading flower no beauty no glory but what will be consumed and done away Ps. 39. 5. and 49. 14. Isa. 40. 6. Man in all this is the slesh his mouth should not cause to sin Mouth as said signifies all manner of expression of this slesh 〈◊〉 mind or natural Spirit inward or outward in desire thought word or action If the inmost mouth bottom desire and thought of man be found approving of and consenting unto the entering into a firm unchangable union with the Devil the striking up an everlasting covenant with him then does it cause his flesh or natural Spirit to sin unpardonably against the Spirit of Grace the Gospel-Spirit or Holy Ghost in which convincingly shew'd he ought to enter into or strike a new and everlasting covenant with God His knowing wilful choice is rather to comply with the Devil in a fond self-destroying love to himself or his own life and nature to be by his most destructive workmanship Baptized into
Capacity and lawfull Calling in this World diligently performing his Duty and referring the issue and success of his labours to Providence without any carking solicitud's or murmuring repining thoughts against God when cross'd in his expectations and disappointed of his hopes has rest and quiet to himself therein Such a one however low in outward Riches Solomon preferr's as to outward worldly Happiness before the litteral covetous rich man that from excessive inordinate Love to such Wealth robb's and deprives himself of all right comfort therein His solicitous self-tormenting thoughtfulness for getting and keeping such Wealth and then fear of losing all again all which the other is freed from render him a very 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 His abundance of Riches fills his Heart with abundance of trouble and disquiet as well as his Coffers with Silver which will not suffer him to rest or sleep Through this vanity under the litteral first-creation Sun Solomon saw such Riches downright hurtfull to the Owners thereof instead of being of any benefit or advantage to them Semblably the inward Riches of man's Spirit under the mystical first-creation Sun the enlightning enlivening fructifying influence of Christ as a fleshly Bride-groom in his first-covenant Spirit Single upon man's nature Laodicean Treasures heaped up and trusted in and to by man for true Happiness produce the same restlesness and disquiet to him Full of solicitud's is he in getting and keeping and of Fears about losing all again as the litteral covetous rich man is Is there not a cause for such Jealousies and Fears All 's but a vain shew in Holy Flesh a first-covenant Spirit of bondage and fear about his known perishing vanities refusing Christ's convincingly shew'd and offer'd durable Riches and true Freedom even the glorious Liberty of the Sons of God in his Gospel-Spirit or perfect Law of Liberty to good only and that good unchangable That 's Freedom indeed to purpose Heb. 2. 15. 2 Cor. 3. 17. Joh. 8. 32. 36. Jam. 1. 25. and 2. 12. The Truth Christ's Gospel-Spirit of Truth makes us Christ's true freemen though in letter man's Servants 1 Cor. 7. 22. And the Master that 's free in letter if effectually call'd by Christ into his heavenly Life of true freedom is his Servant Christ's new-covenant Law or Gospel-Spirit of Life by its death-work on our old or first-covenant law-Spirit of Sin Bondage Enmity and Death sets us free from Sin and Death Rom. 8. 2. all vain Trouble Bondage and Fear He that 's so dead is freed from Sin Rom. 6. 7. ceases for ever from it 1 Pet. 4. 1. Vers. XIII There is a sore Evil which I have seen under the Sun namely Riches kept for the Owners thereof to their hurt This with the Verse before and four following joyntly Character the folly and misery of the litteral and mystical covetous rich Man the former as a Type of the latter One of them is fill'd with cares and solicitud's about making provision for his bodily ease the other is as busy about provisions for his Soul's ease Luk. 12. 16-19 Both of them trade but in perishing vanities 'T is but for perishing meats that gratify the evill Lust's the Belly Desire or Appetite of a mortal perishable Life of Body and Soul these two sorts of foolish Labourers Toil and fill their Heads and Hearts with vain self-tormenting cares and solicitud's All 's but to compass and finger the vain Delights of the Sons of men Nothing of the never-perishing Life and Meats of the Son of God delights of the Sons of God are admitted into their regard God is not in all or any of their thoughts Psal. 10. 4. Nothing of God's Christ's new-creature Life is sought after They 'l not come to him for it nor regard it when he comes and offers it to them Ioh. 5. 40. How oft would I have gather'd you together unto me under my divine and Creature-wings in this Life and ye would not Mat. 23. 37. Ye are all for your selves your own Life will have none of me or mine Then take your course ye shall never have mine at all never enter into my rest So will be left to your own desolate house for ever V. 38. The mystical rich man delightfully contemplat's the Beauty Fruitfulness and Riches of his own enlight'ned nature and too oft arrivesat this highest point of Spiritual wickedness as the result of his own wisdom to strike up an everlasting-covenant-union with the Devil He agrees to receive by his transforming Hel-fire-Baptism an advance of his own nature out of a narrower changably evil humane capacity into a wider and unchangably evil angelical This by suffering Satan to fill his Heart with his Spirit of unchangable enmity to God This is the making man's mystical House or Barns greater Luk. 12. 18 the enlarging and heightning his natural capacity by a kind of mystical death through Satan's false cross-work or counterfeit mortification for the death of man's Spirit of nature on his engagement by covenant and satisfying assurance that he will raise and catch him up out of that mystical Grave into his higher wiser stronger more excellent and capacious angelical nature Thus by bargain does he touch man's Spirit with the transforming alterative assimilating touch of his and translate him out of his narrower humane into his larger angelical capacity of the first-creation sort Man rather chooses this heightning and enlargment in his own way and after his own heart in the first-creation state of nature which renders him a man after the Devil 's own Heart in unchangable enmity to God then such destruction of his fleshly nature or whole natural state and life at best as leaves him no hopes of ever finding himself in a single natural first-creation-life more for ever but in a spiritual and heavenly by a new-creation in the new everlasting covenant Gospel-principle God's Spirit of Grace and Truth The assimilating transformingwork of Christ's Spiritual Cross or heavenly fire-baptism upon man would translate him if obediently submitting thereto and compliant therewith into the life of God's sacrificing Gospel high-Priest of our Profession or of that very Spirit and fiery law of liberty Deut. 33. 2. Jam. 1. 25 that puts his Law or lawless Spirit of bondage enmity and Death to Death with engagement by Covenant to raise it into the everlasting Life and Glorious liberty of the Sons of God Satan will Personate this very high Priest of God and God himself 2 Thes. 2. 4. And he will transform his higher Angelical excellencies and capacity into the likeness or neerest possible resemblance of Christ's new-creation Glories This is the top-stone of his mystery of iniquity the strongest delusion by which this most subtle old Serpent Dragon and roaring Lion deceives and devours men when and where God permitt's for his own most wise and holy ends Think what this choice of man under Gospel-conviction-Light to joyn unchangably with the Devil rather than with God deservs In order to secure their
with a whiff 'T is deceitful above all things and desperatly wicked who can know or discover it The wisdom of God in himself and Saints this only can search it out and cause it to know it self teach it or bring it to the true 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Jer. 17. 9 10. Nothing in Nature nothing below the all-searching Gospel-Spirit in Christ and Saints can discover all its Meanders and Wiles anatomize and unriddle it to the full The holy Ghost in and by Peter found out the falshood of Ananias and Saphira and slew them Act. 5. 1 -- 10. The first-Covenant wise Jew or Christian Gentile boasts himself as a fit Teacher and Guide to the common sinner in corrupt Nature little dreaming that himself in 〈◊〉 Nature is guilty of a more criminal sort of mystical 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 against God and his Spirit of Grace Rom. 2. 17 -27. He sits in his majesterial Chair as an instructor of fools insulting over the gross sinner with a touch me not stand by keep off for I am 〈◊〉 than thou This renders the proud Pharisee an abomination to God Isa. 65. 5. To such self-confidents Paul puts divers searching questions which discover him more deeply guilty of mystical sins against the Gospel bearing the same title with the literal Adulteries Thefts Idolatries and Sacriledg he justly reproves in the common sinner against the Law The death and loss of all such boast in is absolutely necessary in the methods of God's Wisdom to Salvation the receiving that Gospel-Spirit of life in which any can be saved Miss this and miss all Come short of the Grace and ye fall short of the Glory of God never enjoy the beatisical vision thereof An exact observer of the letter of the Law may be a most criminal breaker of its spiritual mind or meaning as Paul once The Law-Saint or legal-spirited Christian Believer finds the corrupt Heathen a no-body to him and he is a no-body to the true Gospel-Saint a meer blind Ignoramus as to all-Gospel-truths yea worse a mortal hater of and enemy to all Gospel-Saints as no-bodies to him the worst of Men the 〈◊〉 of the World The circumcis'd cleans'd first-covenant wise Man by opposing the second becomes a greater sinner and worse Man than the uncircumcis'd polluted Heathen If he and the Heathen fix themselves in righteous and corrupt Nature the 〈◊〉 righteous Man will have the worst on 't for ever T will be easier for the literal than mystical Sodomite in Hell Mat. 11. 23 24. But what then hath the wise Man or first-Covenant holy Man more than the fool in corrupt Nature What advantage has he Much every way says Paul in answer to his own question Rom. 3. 1 2. The Law or restor'd life of it rightly us'd is of great benefit to Man in suppressing and keeping under the vile affections of corrupt Nature but if abused against spiritual conviction in a 〈◊〉 enmity to the Gospel 't is render'd by Man worse than nothing and he is thereby rendered worse than the fool or common sinner 〈◊〉 in polluted Nature For he is absolutely excluded God's Rest on his wilfully contracted incurable Leprosy or disease of unchangeable enmity to God the other not so But leaving both their cases what hath the poor that knoweth to walk before the living What has the poor broken-spirited Saint beyond both and all the the said wise and fools that are levell'd at the death of the body and come all to the same sad end a being cover'd with darkness for ever This truly poor in spirit is a blessed Heir of the Kingdom of God The natural Man of the true Saint impoverish'd and run down by the cross as to that wisdom life riches and fading glory the self-exalting first-Covenant Princes of this World keep up in rebellion against God and enmity to the cross is the poor and needy the Scripture so ring's of specially the Psalms And occasionally has this mystical poor bin plentifully spoken of and charactered in this and the like discourses on Job Timothy c. Christ pronounces such poor blessed Mat. 5. 3. the opposit rich or wise cursed Wo to the rich Luk 6. 24. Such mystical rich go merrily without regarding this wo they are under with their whole Soul or unbroken natural spirit to Hell while the true Saint in the broken crucified impoverish'd mourning state thereof is following the slain Lamb to Heaven Blessed are such mourners Mat. 5. 4. Both the wise and fool in the restor'd or corrupt spirit of nature set by and laid aside Solomon ask's in reference to this third Man distinct from both What hath or is the poor c. What has he got in the room of all the lost life wisdom and riches of his own Nature spiritual everlasting Gospel-life and riches This is the case of such as with Paul are content to become fools weak and despicable as to all the first-Covenant rich and wise boast and glory in What this mystical fool and poor has is plain durable riches and life in God What has the opposit wise then no more to speak on than the fool in polluted nature All are fools one and 'tother as to their eternal concerns mind no such things Spiritual and Heavenly These go for nothing with them but are all in all The Spirit of God asks and resolv's his own question negatively and 〈◊〉 Isa. 66. 1 2. God delights not in any thing of the first creation where all is corruptible and altogether vanity even all the life goodness and top-excellencies thereof in Man and Angel But in the second where all the goodness materials and ingredients are incorruptible and unperishable Hence delights he in one poor broken-spirited man in the first in order to his being quicken'd up into the second incomparably beyond all the unbroken glory and excellency of all natural Men or Angels though not found in enmity changeable or unchangeable to that Gospel-Spirit or cross that will break down all fading good in all Angels and Men in Love or 〈◊〉 Wrath. What God delights not in he requires our obedient submitting to his destroying in order to be brought forth in what he does delight in and will delight in for evermore So of the work of his hands by a first-creation come we to be the Sheep of his Pasture in and by a second All first-creation or Covenant-Life Wisdom Righteousness c. are but Law-Ceremonies not Grace or Gospel-Truths meer transient vanities perishing next to nothings When they have serv'd their season away they are to go as dung for Gospel-life Phil. 3. 8. The Poor here as to all Law-life and riches are the only true wise Men that know how to walk before the living even before the living God unto all-pleasing in the living Word Wisdom New-creature Gospel-Spirit of the Son of God They are taught principled or spirited so as infallibly to know the whole mind and do the whole will of the Father They have obediently quitted and
its utmost growth flourish and fruitfulness is but a fading flower the mystical natural tree of God's left-hand-planting distinguish'd from the incorruptible seed 1 Pet. 1. 23. of his right-hand-planting by a new-creation which springs up in spiritual Saints prospers into an everlasting Kingdom-state rendring them mystical Gospel-trees the fruits whereof are incorruptible and the very leaves such as never wither or 〈◊〉 away Psal. 1. 3. This spiritual tree of Life will be known by its fruits in distinction from the natural fleshly tree all the fruits whereof are as the root and tree they grow upon perishing Vanities The new Name or Life of the new-Creature Gospel-spirit or living Word of God set up in man can never be turn'd into a lie Man's old name and fading first-covenant Law-life at best when asserted to be a spiritual Gospel-state of everlasting Life and Salvation is turn'd into a flat lie and falshood and all the things births works fruits and products thereof and in though good in their kind when call'd spiritual and confidently rested in for Salvation are all lies and enmity to God and his Gospel-Spirit of Truth Renew'd nature call'd Grace the renew'd old or natural Man with his first Covenant righteous Life and Name call'd the new-creature the spiritual Saint with the new Covenant-Life and Gospel-Name all these are dangerous destructive lies In sum the good Name and precious Oyntment here are the differing characters of first and second-Covenant Life The former through the said mistake Paul found to be a body a law a state of sin and death Rom. 7. 24. 8. 2. which the new-covenant law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus freed him from by putting his nature therein to death The Spirit of life is the death of death when it puts the law-spirit of Enmity and Death to death in the Saint utterly abolishing all the Anointings or said precious Ointment receiv'd in the natural state and giving all again with usury in the unchangeable life and transcendently more precious anointing of the spiritual Man Man in restor'd first-Covenant Law-life is apt as Paul once to despise and reject all Gospel-Tydings or witness of the second The good Name imports a transcendently higher and better anointing then the precious Oyntment here can signify For then the spiritual there is no better kind of precious ointment receivable by or communicable to Man This true meaning of the Holy Ghost in Solomon as to this former will much conduce to and facilitate the opening of the latter clause of this verse And the day of Death then the day of one's Birth The stress of these words can't lie in the literal sence which cannot hold generally nor mostly true For the literal death of the vast number of wicked men is abundantly worse then the day of their litteral birth and life in this World Man though born dead in Sin is capable of a restauration-birth of a first-Covenant life in his Spirit which puts him under hopeful advantages and possibilities of a new-creation-birth of an everlasting righteous Life These hopes are utterly cut off from all that die in their Sins as all that die in a state of enmity to God and his Spirit of Grace and everlasting Life do This necessitates the allowing a mystical meaning to these Words which is this The death of Man's Spirit as to all natural first-creation life 〈◊〉 or first-Covenant righteous obediently submitted to with certain hope of a Resurrection into the life of Christ's Gospel-Spirit that slay's and offers it up in sacrifice to God as he serv'd our nature at best in his own person is transcendently better then the Birth and utmost flourish thereof in him For now is he much forwarder on his way in the right method and death-pass towards an everlasting righteous new-Covenant life Paul counted the former dung to the latter and suffer'd the loss of all therein for it Phil. 3. 7 8. If Man submit not to the terms and ways of arriving at this new birth for a newness of life he will come to a latter end worse then his beginning in either of his two former Births litteral or mystical of bodily or first-Covenant life eternal death By obediently losing and quitting the former natural or Law-life for a spiritual Gospel-one he comes to a latter end better then any of his beginnings in Adam before the fall or since in his own said twofold personal birth eternal life A rebellious pitying and sparing our own nature in the first-covenant life thereof loses all for ever An obedient giving it up to death and right losing it saves all Matth. 16. 25. The Spirit or inner natural Man when crucified and raised into Christ's spiritual life the death or dissolution of the body is not fear'd but desir'd as by Paul He earnestly long'd and groan'd after the shaking off and being perfectly rid of the dusty mortal perishing earthly life and state of his whole natural Man body and spirit 2 Cor. 5. 1 4. and so to be wholly at home with the Lord ver 6. in the intire single uninterrupted exercise of spiritual life amongst the best company the pure unchangeable Friends of that life blessed Angels and Saints departed In this World the Saint is surrounded with innumerable Enemies thereof very burdensome ill unpleasing company to him In the birth and utmost flourish of a first-covenant Law-life we are still under Satan's power and delusive influence He can deceive us into the same perdition with himself by that very righteous life By inducing Men to over-value and and rest in it and on it for Salvation he brings them into unchangeable Union with himself in Enmity to God When perfectly crucified as to the life of the Law raised into the life of the Gospel we are not under the Law but under Grace Then Sin and Satan have lost their dominion over us for ever We wholly cease and are freed from both and all all enemies and dangers whatsoever Rom. 6. 7 -14. 1 Pet. 4. 1. The birth of a first-Covenant life gives not full victory over Satan the right death of Nature and loss of it does Therefore better on all hands as the only way to free us from death and set us up in eternal life The right full death of Man's Law-spirit of bondage delivers him from all bondage and fear of death for ever which all their first-Covenant life-time Men are continually subject to Heb. 2. 15. Vers. 2. It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting for that is the end of all Men and the living will lay it to his heart The house of mourning or state of sorrow to the natural Man under the death-blows of the Gospel-Sword or spiritual cross of Christ is better for him to go into and be in then the house of feasting in the most joyful fruitful life and exercise thereof in a first-Covenant state For therein draws he nearer to a heavenly
God and death to it self a Body a Law of Sin and Death as Paul found Rom. 7. 24. 8. 2. into the marvelous Palace or Paradisical Light and glorious Liberty of the Sons of God cannot forbear to go tell their 〈◊〉 how they fare They give them an account or true report of the new-creation Land of Promise or state of Life with the fruits and peculiar enjoyments therein above all other Countries Lands or States as far as the Heavens are above the Earth How is this News resented by these two sorts of Sodomites the Prophane in silth of 〈◊〉 or Legal-spirited Professor in filth of spirit enmity to God and all spiritual Truths that 's brought to both their ears by the Gospel-spirited Saint They all hiss at and deride his pretension to such Sun-light as the most presumtuous conceit and phanatical delusion in the World They sit them still won't budg an inch from their opinionated happiness in Rational Light and Moral Heathenism or first-covenant life also in Legal Christianity just as the case was in Plato's Apologue or fabulous Cave-students in their demeanour towards him that had ventur'd up a rocky Precipice with great difficulty and danger into the open Air and Sun-light on his return and tydings thereof to them What of all this The Saint is not to regard these contradicting Blasphemers misregarding him or his words nor be weary nor faint in his mind or Spirit Heb. 12. 3. They are to look wholly to God Christ blessed Angels and Saints that know and own them for what they know themselves to be What matters it for Man's day or judgment in which nothing of their spiritual life or doctrine is rightly seen felt heard or understood Saints by spiritual senses do all this natural never can do They hear see look upon and handle the Word of life even the original new-creature life in the living Word Wisdom of God Christ's Person 1 〈◊〉 1. 1. And they 〈◊〉 such life also in the derived streams of the living waters thereof in true Saints When their own Spirit is dead in Man's sight and judgement 't is most of all alive in God's Sight in his Spirit of Grace And those that live and spend their Widow-hood on Christ's death and departure from them as a 〈◊〉 first-Covenant Bridegoom in the pleasures of that life he has forsaken them in however alive in Man's sight are dead in God's while they so live 1 Tim. 5. 6. Incorrigible sinners in filth of Flesh or Spirit pass along this mortal World and Life jollily in the broad way to an eternal house of mourning Job 21. 13. Psal. 39. 5 6 11. Psal. 49. 10 -- 20. while true Saints through much tribulation and mourning are passing into an eternal house of feasting Those that will on in their various temporary houses or states of feasting literal or mystical making large and swift steps towards the Chambers of death seem to have much the better on 't in this World Who can help them Who can lift them up out of these drowning self-chosen lustful goatish ways of Vanity that will most certainly set them among the left hand 〈◊〉 Goats at last day Mat. 25. 33. Will ye hear a Wonder Spiritual Saints have the best on 't even in this World as thus They have the promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come True Godliness the power of Godliness is profitable to all things The form of it and bodily exercise or the fruitful exercise of Man 's cleans'd natural Spirit therein profits little The truely pure sinless use of worldly enjoyments without any sinful love to or delight in them and spending the strength of all in a serviceableness to the designs and interests of Christ upon and in Men belongs to the true Spiritual Saint only And they have a daily encrease with the encreases of God in the promised life of the World to come So have they the best on 't indeed and in truth even in their mortal day and state on earth All their Tribulations Persecutions and seeming worst things are wholly and exactly calculated for their good by him who cannot miss of accomplishing his design upon them therein and by There are three sorts of Men on the stage of this Earth together in a confused jumble as a mix'd heap in mortal bodies Profane inhabitants of the Sea in the corrupt Spirit of nature of the Earth in the righteous cleans'd earthy state or spirit of nature and dwellers in Heaven or in God's heavenly Spirit of Grace Rev. 12. 12. All People upon Earth are living and walking in the corrupt or changeably righteous Spirit of Nature or in God's unchangeably righteous Spirit of Grace No state in changeable nature is unchangeable or everlasting Salvation but a state of Grace only Eph. 2. 8 9. Not our working Spirit of Nature but God's working all in us and for us by his Gospel-Spirit of Grace will give us entrance into his Kingdom 'T is the unspeakable new-creation gift of God and workmanship of Christ fits any for the Kingdom And 't is then the unspeakable folly and madness of Man to refuse the receiving that Gift on any terms seem they never so hard to his nature Wo to Laughers they shall weep and mourn eternally Blessed are the mourners they shall rejoyce and laugh eternally These were Christ's spiritual sayings and warnings to all when in our flesh And he will be the Judge of all in that Spirit wherein himself is justified for ever in our nature before God most high 1 Tim. 3. 16. An innumerable multitude that have thought it so brave to have their wills in this World will meet with unimaginable amazing surprizing disappointments in the next An irresistible blast an irrecoverable death-blow will they be fore'd to receive on all first-creation delights desires and desirables belly and meats 1 Cor. 6. 13. All these dreadful things the living spiritual Saint lays to heart and as knowing the terrors of the Lord what a fearful thing 't is to fall into the hands of the living God and be torn in pieces without any possibility of deliverance Heb. 10. 31. Psal. 50. 22. endeavours to perswade Men while call'd to day to desist from their jovial march and swift posting it in their several sensual and intellectual paths of delight and present pleasure to their mis-judging nature which do all tend to meet and center in one and the same point a state of everlasting darkness and death under the triumphs of divine Justice and final Wrath. Solomon bewail's the unhappy choice most Men make of the merry self-pleasing-paths to eternal mourning But to allay the compassionating grief of this undeniably true observation he discovers an opposite party of happy People that in a new life and spiritual understanding do lay all these errors follies and madnesses of their fellow-mortals to heart though they can have little or no hearing with them and that find it their unspeakable concern
Christ's new and heavenly his natural for Christ's spiritual creature-life and possessions A conclusive refusal to part with all we have is a final parting-blow between God and Man Paul found Corinthian Professors bewitch'd Galatians and belly-God Philippians dangerously engag'd towards a sixure in this most presumptuous Sin and Error 1 Cor. 4. 8. 2 Cor. 11. 2 3. Gal. 3. 1 -4. Phil. 3. 18 19. And Christ found a first-Covenant party in enmity to the second in most or all the seven Churches Rev. 2. 3. In Laodicea scarce any other and all this under the outward dispensation and ministry of the Gospel owning themselves as Gospel-Professors And what or who else in a manner at this day can we find but such anti-Gospel-Gospellers in all variety of opinion form and way All the highly pretending and conceited Children of the Kingdom in the most sublimated Church-forms or purest Churches in but restor'd first-covenant Law-principles without advance by exchange and Gospel-conversion will be found at a loss and cast or kept out of the Kingdom of Christ as not at all of his new-Covenant Gospel-spirit of Grace and Truth 'T is in the heavenly Wisdom of this only Men can attain the sight and inheritance of the most glorious divine Sun and of the new-creation Sun of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Mal. 4. 2. in the Mediator's person which is the greatest gain the highest prosit and advantage Man or Angel can receive or enjoy to all eternity This 〈◊〉 proves ver 12. Vers. 12. For Wisdom is a defence Heb. shadow and mony is a desence but the excellency of knowledg is that Wisdom giveth life to them that have it Here 's a distinguishing character of the first and second covenant spirits Lives Wisdoms with or by the effects riches and priviledges of each The Wisdom and mystical mony or riches of the first are a defence against the rude assaults the unruly brutish motions of the corrupt state of nature and do make up to Man all he thinks he needs for eternal life 1 Cor. 4. 8. Rev. 3. 17. But through the fading nature of all that life and riches and evil use of it in preference and opposition to the durable life and true riches in the Gospel-spirit of God all 's spoil'd Man's inordinate love to the former is that love of mony that 's the root of all evil against God and to himself evil of sin and punishment It renders all the mammon of unrighteousness as preferr'd to the 〈◊〉 riches of Christ in his infinite divine and everlasting righteous new-creation Life First-creation Life with the riches thereof is to be allow'd its due as good in its kind and lawful use for suppressing the unruly desires thoughts and motions of the corrupt state of Nature Man so using it is faithful to the Light afforded him by Christ in the first Covenant as a fleshly Bridegroom But then farther is he to follow this Bridegroom in the death and loss of all this fading life and riches Wisdom and Mony for what in spiritual conviction-Light is shew'd and offer'd him by Christ as a better Bridegroom and Comforter in the second This second and principal thing done as the passive part of obedience requir'd in the right and lawful use of all in the first Covenant law-state God is well-pleased and Man saved But be Man never so faithful in the active obedience performable in his law-life if he refuse to perform or yield to the requir'd passive obedience all his active turns in conclusion to no account at all Himself is turn'd out of God's house for ever as but that servant in his own law-spirit of bondage that refus'd to become a Son of God in his Gospel-spirit of glorious liberty that makes free indeed Jo. 8. 35 36. The truth the Gospel-spirit of Truth makes Man truly free ver 32. Where or in whomsoever that Spirit is is liberty 2 Cor. 3. 17. The gospel-Gospel-law of the Spirit of life is the perfect law of liberty It renders Man free not to but from all sin and death at last Rom. 8. 2. Jam. 1. 25. Man's spirit of bondage chosen before and against God's spirit of true freedom becom's a house a prison a state of eternal death to him If Man use his law-life aright as to the first end for which restor'd and miss the appointed and declared second all comes to worse then nothing for ever He misses that true Wisdom that gives and is eternal life to them that have it This the Law-life and best Wisdom of Man can never give or be to him Gal. 3. 21. Vers. 13. Consider the work of God for who can make that straight which he hath made crooked Consider well the life and state of Men and Angels as the first-creation Workmanship of God's hand and you 'l find it crooked first comparatively To the second make of them by his new-creating Workmanship all the fading goodness Life Wisdom Glory and Righteousness of the first are as nothing no Glory 2 Cor. 3. 10. If the Glory and other things of Man in the first be not only presumptuously compared with but preferr'd and exalted into a jusling competition with and opposition to the Life Glory Wisdom Righteousness Works Fruits and things of God offer'd them by a new and second Creation this renders all such things worse then nothing Yea if this be finally wilfully and conclusively done the Glory Wisdom Light Life Righteousness all things of Man are turn'd into unspeakable shame utmost folly and highest wickedness to which belong utter Darkness and eternal Death The corruptible seed 1 Pet. 1. 23. of God's left-hand planting in Man's or Angel's natural first-creation-make and state at its utmost growth flourish and fruitfulness amounts but to a fading flower Man in all at best is altogether Vanity This fleshly state of Life was figur'd by the tree of good and evil before the fall Since the fall 't is always evil root and branch tree and fruit silth of 〈◊〉 or spirit are found in all its operations fruits products or performances root and branch When Paul was eminent in the restor'd righteous law-life of Man how fiercely did he persecute the Gospel or new-Creature life of Christ in himself and Saints That was filth of Spirit enmity and despite to the very Gospel spirit of Grace in which any can be saved 't was a sinning against the holy Ghost but ignorantly When done knowingly and so wilfully t is the presumptuous unpardonable Sin unto Death God made Man upright set up in him a first-Covenant-life perfect in its kind but fallible corruptible changeable loseable as all mankind have sadly experienc'd by the first error of humane nature at best in the first Man Now what is corruptible God calls corruption The natural seed of a first-Covenant life cast into Man in his natural first-creation make and fashion of being was sown in corruption dishonour weakness By the obedient death of Man therein 't is rais'd in Incorruption Glory Power a spiritual
incident to Men under the wonder-working Power and Grace of God in the King of Saints Hos. 1. 6 10. God requir'd Israel to own him King submit to the Government of his Spirit in Samuel the same Spirit in which Christ is universal King All in that Spirit are his true obedient Subjects Any Person or any People that will not have this spiritual heavenly King reign over them and in them though his earthly Jerusalem Citizens or first-covenant People see how they 'l be handled by him Luk. 19. 14 27. This great universal King lately offer'd to set up his Theocratical Fifth-Monarchy amongst us His earthly-Jerusalem-Citizens in a first-covenant spirit pretended to it as the Corinthian 〈◊〉 in Paul's Gospel-time in a spirit nor Christ nor he could own for a reigning principle 1 Cor. 4. 8. and a huge noise they made of owning the King Jesus in but a knowledg of him after the flesh in a restor'd Law-life the very principle and state the Jews would have 〈◊〉 him King in Joh. 6. 15. Such first-Covenant first-Monarchists Kings or Princes of this World crucified the true King Jesus 1 Cor. 2. 8. They blasphem'd and crucified him for owning a Kingship and Kingdom not of this World in his Gospel-spirit of Grace and Truth that would have made him a King in that Law-life and spirit they were of and in They cry up their Heathen Cesar for their King rather then such a King Jesus Shall I crucify your King says Pilate We have no King but Cesar say they Joh. 18. 36 37. 19. 12 15. A plain case and our's just He that was for the right King Jesus in his true reigning Spirit must be shuffled out of the World with his great Master as an Enemy both 〈◊〉 Cesar and them 〈◊〉 and a first-covenant People are joyntly for the rooting Christ and his true spiritual Anointed Ones out of the World as not sit to live in it Psal. 2. 1 -- 3. Act. 22. 22. And what got Israel by refusing the King Jesus or Government of God in the said Spirit of true Prophecy grievances enow What help none to remove them God would not as he fore-threatned them when busie about their new choice of Government Ye shall cry because of your King ye have chosen but the Lord will not hear you says Samuel Fair warning See all this 1 Sam. 8. 6 18. The law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus comes to strike down the ruling Power of that spirit in Man that 's but a Law of Sin and of Death and so by setting up his own kingly Rule and Power in him frees him from all evil and bondage Those that willingly submit to this death-blow of Christ on their ruling Law-spirit cast down their Crowns or ruling Power at his Feet and set the Crown on his Head in the day of their new-covenant Espousals to him owning his true Kingly-Spirit for their Ruler Cant. 3. 11. Christ struck down the earthy Law-king in Paul to the Earth and instantly set up his Gospel-spirit King and Ruler in and over him Act. 9. 3 4. The Law-spirit at best in fallen man is but the Amalekite-Ruler the Agag which tho' Saul spared in favour to it in himself as was implied in his unpardonable sin Samuel in the true Kingly Spirit of Jesus hewed in pieces when he said or thought as Man when the corrupt spirit of Nature is subdued and a Righteous Law-spirit set up in ruling authority in him surely the bitterness of Death is past here 's no Cross or Death-work by a Spiritual Gospel-Sword behind to be brought upon this Righteous Law-life 1 Sam 15. 32 33. Spiritual Friends of Christ have the whole counsel and mind of God made known by him to them First-covenant Servants in their Law-spirit of bondage holy flesh form of Godliness Righteousness of Man tho' as busy as may be in reading hearing preaching and obeying the letter of their Lord's Command in the Scripture are wholly strangers to the spiritual design sense or meaning of their Lord in all They know not what he does Joh. 15. 15. or has now done himself with our nature at best in his own Person nor will consider their duty in following him therein by giving it up at best in whatever state in their persons as God's requir'd Sacrifice He that keeps the spiritual Command of Christ believes or obediently submits to the Law of his Cross shall feel hear see or know no evil thing or word against him from Christ at last day when on his Judgment-Seat But he that believeth not quits not his Law-spirit or principle of life and action under the Gospel-Cross or spiritual Sword of Christ for the Gospel-Life of that very Sword or living Word of God will be damn'd Mark 16. 16. t. And a wise man's heart discerneth both time and judgment The spiritual wise man discerns an appointed time for the right use of a changeable first-Covenant Law-life and then as an antiquated Law-ceremony with the fading things and glory of it to be done away by a holy death as the Judgment and Command of God in Sacrifice to himself This Gospel-Sacrifice of Man at best was figured by the Law-Sacrifices of clean Beasts and Birds Spiritual Saints under the Law obediently gave up this Gospel-Sacrifice to God And all save a spiritual Seed refuse to give it under the Gospel When restor'd Law-life has serv'd its turn in man by his faithful performing Law-service to God therein suppressing the vile affections of the corrupt spirit of Nature 't is to give way to a better guide Christ's Gospel-Spirit or quicken'd up life thereof A Sentence or Judgment of Death upon the restor'd righteous Law-life of man must be submitted to by him with Paul 2 Cor. 1. 9. Law-life and the things thereof the Wisdom Righteousness Beauty Glory Fruits Works Duties Desires Thoughts Words Actions and all manner of performances therein kept up and finally preferr'd to Christ's Gospel-Life and things of God therein is the highest and most criminal Adultery and Murder Ezek. 16. 15 38. There 's an appointed time for Man and Angel too to die Heb. 9. 27. or lose that first-Covenant Law-life which was set up in them by creation The obedient loss of it under the Cross frees man from all guilt contracted by Sins past and all power of sinning any more for ever He thereby ceases from Sin and comes to be justified before God in a newness of life wherein he can never sin 1 Pet. 4. 1. Rom. 6. 7. 1 Joh. 3. 9. A change by the death of Nature of Law-life for Gospel under the working power of the Grace of God brings Men's matters to that blessed pass that no enemies will find any iniquity in them to charge them with nor will God himself Rom. 8. 33 34. Jer. 50. 20. The guilty sinner in the Saint that has committed innumerable 〈◊〉 is dead and gone and a spirit of everlasting Righteousness is become the single and sole principle
For he can deceive all Men short of the Spirit of Grace and Truth to Worship him as so above and against God himself 2 Thes. 2. 4. Vers. 2. A time to be Born and a time to Die A time to Plant and a time to pluck up that which is Planted Vers. 3. A time to Kill and a time to Heal a time to break down and a time to Build up Vers. 4. A time to Weep and a time to Laugh A time to Mourn and a time to Dance There 's an appointed time for every Man to be Born in a Fleshly Body which is his personal appearance or Manifestation The Body is an Essential Ingredient into the compleat Constitution of every Man which under all Temporary Vicissitudes Alterations and Changes by Decay's Death and Resurrection remain's for ever the distinguishing part of Man from other Created beings in Heaven and Hell Angels are compleated in their personal Constitution without any such thing as Man's Earthly Body or Life The Spirit of Man before it enters the Body or after departed out of it is not the Compleat Person of a Man For Man consists of Spirit Soul and Body as distinct Essential parts of his being which Paul distinctly Pray's may in Saints be Preserved blameless unto the comming of our Lord Jesus Christ 1 Thes. 5. 23. The whole Spirit of Man Comprehends in its make a Dormant Souly Animalish Life So has a Natural tendency of desire to a Union with its fitly Organized Body in order to bring its Latent Soul or Souly Life into actual Exercise and Operation At the death of the Body this Soul or Souly Life ceases as to exercise lies dormant again in the Spirit as before it's entrance thereinto So till the Resurrection of the whole Man the Spirits even of Just Men made perfect in Spiritual New-Creation Life Act and Converse as pure Intellectual Powers Intuitively after the manner of Angels only Now as there 's a time for the Birth of Man's Body so from the frail materials and constituting Ingredients of it is there an appointed time for its dissolution and so for the Death of the Man by a Seperation of his essential parts This is a truth universally experienc'd and known by all And the like Vicissitudes and Seasons are appointed for other parts of this greater Visible World without Man as well as lesser World the Sum and Abridgment of all within him From the Moment of his Bodily Birth may be Dated the Building Planting Laughing Dancing Rejoycing and Embracing season during the growth and Flourishing State of his Bodily Life When this is at its height Approaches God's appointed Season from the perishing Materials thereof for plucking it up breaking it down and Slaying it This Season is attended with Man's Weeping and Mourning as the Consequents thereof These litteral truths are Experienc'd by Man in the Decay's Gray Hairs Old Age and Death inevitably incident to his body In the declining state thereof is he reduced to a kind of equality with Childhood as debilitated in the exercise of his rational Powers in and by bodily Organs or Instruments Brain Animal spirits c. So if he come to 70 or 80 years his decayed strength affords him little but labour and sorrow Psal. 90. 10. as finding himself to have out-lived the brisk and vigorous exercise of that Reason by which distinguished from brute Beasts In this case 't is man's duty and wisest course to fall in and comply with God's twofold dispensation upon his fleshly body by willingly owning and submitting to the decay's thereof in God's latter demolishing work upon it for pulling it down as well as to be found rejoycing and delighting in his former planting and building up of the same 'T is man's gross folly to struggle and contend for an impossibillity even the keeping up of that which he sees by an inevitable Law of necessity must be laid down He is as sure to die as he was born yea to go strip'd and naked out of the World as he came into it Job 1. 21. God has determined the time for both Death comes as an armed man on man's Body and on all that sort of understanding that 's exercised in and by it There 's no discharg in this War The decay's of it all along from the turning declining point preach the death of it and of that organical Understanding exercised in and by it Come we now to the Mystery of all this All the methods of God's wisdom in his dealings with man's body or bodily life the outward part of his natural man are typical to the like methods and dispensations to his immortal spirit considered in the but mortal first-covenant natural righteous Life thereof planted in it by the first creation A birth life death and buriall are incident to this also as God's appointments to it At the birth of the Body the Spirit or inner natural man is dead as to the mortal first-covenant life of the Law of Works it was at first created in But a fresh birth of or quickning up into this shadowy Life and Image of the Earthy wherein the first Adam was created is offered to all and may be actually received and experienced by all as the common or general salvation if they will The far greater part of mankind refuse to part with the corrupt life of their nature for the righteous And many that receive the righteous as the common salvation Jude 3. from the general Saviour of all men 1 Tim. 4. 10. refuse the special or eternal Salvation receivable only by and in a spiritual Faith This cannot be received without the obedient surrender and death of all received twice from Christ's own hand by his first-creation and general-redemption-workmanship Such death according to the declared methods of God's wisdom must undispensably be yielded to and we become as fools and little Children as to all the restored wisdom life and glory of our own Nature as the undispensable way to our receiving the Life Wisdom and Righteousness of God in his Gospel-spirit of Grace and Image of the Heavenly which alone is Eternal The former is but Reformation-Life in restor'd enliven'd naturals This latter a true Regeneration into spirituals by the Birth of such a new Life in us springing up from the quickned incorruptible seed thereof as plants us together in the likeness of Christ's resurrection on our obedient likness to his death Rom. 6. 5. Nor Angel nor Man had any thing of this Life in the Innocency of both by creation but only as objctivetly presented to their understanding in the Mediator As God at first gave Man that that 's natural and call'd his own offering him that which is spiritual God's own So he first restores something of the first-covenant-Light or also Life that 's natural and after that that 's spiritual Paul when eminent in restored naturals holy flesh by knowledg of or conformity to Christ in the flesh or righteous life of the Law quitted such
Prophet or Mouth and Living Word of God he is a Blasphemer a Sabbath-breaker a Glutton a Wine-Bibber a Friend of Publicans and Sinners implying him to be a Hater of an Enemy to Good Holy Righteous Men aud that he has a Devil and is Mad. These are they that Persecute the Spiritual Brotherhood say in their hearts to true Spiritual Prophets and Seers see not Phophesy not unto us right things speak to us smooth things pleasing to nature when righteous things after or according to our own Hearts Prophesy deceits turn aside out of the Path the good old way cause the Holy one of Israel and all his right words of Counsel and Instruction to cease from before us Isai. 30. 9-11 We desire not to hear of him to have any knowledg of his Words or Ways Job 21. 14. and 34. 27. Jer. 44. 16 17. Desperate Resolutions But why should the Servant look to fare better then his Lord amongst them These are they that proudly say to the blind Heathen on the one hand in Scorn and Contempt stand by come not neer me touch me not for I am Holier then thou Isai. 65. 5. And the same do scorn ravenously trample upon and insult over the Spiritual Saint on the other hand as the filth of the World the very off-scouring of all things 1 Cor. 4. 8. 13. These are the signal Objects of their Scorn and Hatred they shoot forth their most Malicious Arrows even bitter Words against Psal. 64. 3. As for their left-hand Men the corrupt Heathen they can on occasion call and make use of them as the Professing Jews did even the most Debauch'd and Corrupt amongst them any lew'd Fellows of the baser sort to help carry on their Persecuting-work against Gospel-Saints Act. 17. 5. But seldom shall ye take them calling in them to their assistance against the corrupt Party except unawares or in an exigent And when succesfully help'd and delivered by them rather then bear their Words if they can't otherwise suppress them they 'l e'ne call in their Subdued lewd party again to their assistance in the case So has the true Fift-Monarchy-Saint not allow'd any name or place at all amongst these corrupt and Righteous worldly Scrambles for the Scepter the slip given him on all hands by the whole twofold earthly party Professing and Profane When the former have made use of his assistance against the latter and then find him not to be for their turn in that first-Covenant Principle or Life of the Law the Pseudo-Fift-Monarchy-Spirit Christ would not Reign in Jo. 6. 15. Paul could not Reign in 1 Cor. 4. 8. they call back the latter to their assistance against him deliver him up into their hands as Guilty of Death for what he did in Union with them against them This though what he did was in such extraordinary unusual and never before happening Circumstances the dissolving and parting asunder of the Supream Legislative Powers as might reason have had any hearing or place would fairly have 〈◊〉 to justify him as doing the best that in so difficult a case could be done On the reform'd Parties Victory over the Corrupt and Idolatious in any Nation the Trumpet is presently and confidently blown and makes a ringing Noise as a tinckling Cymbal gives a Confused Uncertain Sound for the King Jesus But in what Spirit In that he 'd never own himself a King in yea directly contrary to that in which he did so in a flat contradiction to that good profession he made before Pontius Pilate concerning his true Kingly Spirit and Reign both Negative and Affirmative the one expressed the other necessarily implied 1 Tim. 6. 13. Jo. 18. 36 37. He bore Witness to the Truth or to and in that new-Creation Spirit of Truth in which alone his Reign is to be There 's nothing but Shadow Letter Figure Type as to any life or Goodness found in the first Creation All truth is found only according to Scripture-Testimony in the second So Pilat's question what is Truth v 38. was answer'd before-hand v. 37. Thus are true Saints the truely poor and needy inwardly in their Spirits as to first-Covenant Life and Laodicean Treasures and oft also outwardly in bodily concerns Shuffled out of all Play on all hands and at length out of the World as not fit to live any longer in it Act. 22. 22. Heathens and a first-Covenant people mean while can joyn Counsels and speak lies at one Table against them Dan. 11. 27. even against those that are the best Subjects of the one and on lawful warrantable grounds the best helpers of the other yea they 'l joyn forces also in one Army against them Thus down goes the true Saint on all hands They have no visible relief All are against them They are men of contention to the whole Earth Jer. 15. 10. or earthly party corrupt and righteous They are poor and needy on all accounts within and without while their combin'd Adversaries Heathens and a professing People Psal. 2. 1. are fat rich full and flourishing in outward or inward litteral or mystical riches or both and joyn hand in hand or hand and heart maliciously against them On the side of both these Oppressors there is Power but they have no comforter God helps them supports them Christ and good Angels are for them But all this Relief is invisible and is not visibly put forth for their deliverance from Persecution and violent bodily Death but makes such 〈◊〉 and Death the method in their wonderful mysterious contrivance to secure them from eternal Death and bring them into eternal Life Here 's comfort for them to purpose in their utmost Tryals And this are they well aware of Enemies of all sorts hate and despise the marr'd Visage of their natural man which they see and they mortally hate their spiritual man hid with Christ in God which they see not but only hear hate and dread the unpleasing words or doctrine of But this yet is not all nor half the worldly power engaged against them which they have to deal and grapple with combate and wrestle against We wrestle not against flesh and blood only or chiefly in our selves or others but against Principalities against Powers against the Rulers of the darkness of this world against spiritual wickedness in high Places against unchangably wicked spirits Devils comming forth in their counterfeit heavenly spiritual appearances of God Christ and holy Angels a disguise by their permitted sinful transforming arts put upon them whereby to deceive if 〈◊〉 the very Elect. These are more subtile and potent than both their visible inhumane enemies But There are higher than these highest enemies of the Saints of the Most High on their side and then who can be against them and finally prosper or what can any do against them that can 〈◊〉 them yea that shall not be of a direct tendency under God's over-ruling order to their final and everlasting good comfort enough Good Angels excel all Enemies
Appetite the Belly that 's but for such Meats as will perish with it 1 Cor. 6. 13. They that sate in the Gate spoke against him Was not the great Lord and Master Christ himself thus handled Despised and Rejected of Men even his own People in the first-Covenant for Witnessing and Practicing the Doctrin of the second Isai. 52. 14. and 53. 2 3. Jo. 1. 11. Was not Job the next signal instance for suffering to his Lord thus handled on the self-same account by his first-Covenant Friends when brought under the sharp Disciplin of the Cross in order to the second They vex'd 〈◊〉 broke him in pieces with reiterated frequent and continued 〈◊〉 Words They made themselvs 〈◊〉 to him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 themselvs against him in pleading his Reproach when God was Stripping him by his Cross-work on that State of the fading Glory 〈◊〉 that State and taking that Crown from his Head Job 19. 2-19 which he had long worn and enjoy'd as a first-Covenant Prince or King in the Army Job 29. 25. of that sort of Pseudo-Fift-Monarchist's Thus was Poor Job destroy'd and gone on every side forsaken and abandon'd on all hands by God and Men as to any more or farther Comfort in that state he had king'd it in over his fellow-Mortals His very inward Bosome-Friends abhorr'd him And was not Paul so handled by his Friends presently after his quitting their Law-Principle and House on the Sand for Christ's Gospel-Principle and House on the Rock The next news we hear of him is he signally beyond other Gospel-Saints and Apostles Persecuted by Law-spirited Jews at Damascus Act. 9. 19-25 2 Cor. 11. 32 33. What cleer plain undeniable instances are here Who would think any sober Man whose obstinate will does not bribe off Pervert Obstruct and deafen his understanding could withstand such undeniable demonstration in this case I would For who believ's the report Who takes any spiritual Gospel-Testimony with whatever undeniable Demonstration attended and Ratified No Man in the single Wisdom of humane nature at best when made Wise Strong and Honourable in Christ but there Jo. 3. 32. 1 Cor. 4. 10. The natural Man even in awak'ned Spiritual Saints is ready and apt to wonder at this But retreating to the Sanctuary-Light of their Spiritual Man they see how matters go and the wonderment ceases The Spiritual Man the true Watchman Prophet and Seer of God is a Fool Mad a Snare Hatred it self Where With whom With a first-Covenant People and House of his God Hos. 9. 7 8. Was this alway's so Is it so even now Gal. 4. 29. will it be so to the end of this World and Satan's Reign E'ne cease wondring then at it O Saints of the most High What Wonder at what has bin the constant course and Practice of Humane nature in all mankind corrupt or righteous Popish or Reform'd true Saints themselvs not excepted till unwoman'd by the Cross as to their mutable fickle Womanish Spirit of nature and made actual Partakers of Christ's manly Life in his Gospel-Spirit of Grace springing up from the quick'ned Incorruptible Seed thereof 1 Pet. 1. 23. Be not dismay'd to see the Law-Church of God your Brethren in the first-covenant Children Spouses of Christ as a sleshly Bridegroom in their Holy Flesh turning themselvs into a Synagogue of Satan and serving his designs in persecuting Christ's Gospel-Church in his Holy Spirit sitting and speaking Blasphemies against them Psal. 50. 20 21. Paul when a new-Covenant Gospel-Saint was a Fool weak and despicable to Law-Saints in the renew'd old or first These were still Wise Strong and Honourable in Christ after the flesh as to both Inherent and Imputed Righteousness from him Sanctifying and justifying them according to the Tenour of that changable first-Covenant Life and State True Saints when with Paul Job and others they find all that to be but a fading flower altogether Vanity or a vanishing Shadow however good in its kind and beautiful in its day and season a Glory to be done away away they sling it as Dung for Christ in his Spiritual Resurrection-Life and Gospel-State Paul also advises others to become Fools with him as to the Law-Wisdom of Man in the first-Covenant for the Gospel-Wisdom of God in the second 1 Cor. 3. 18. In short Paul was a Poor Wise Child in Christ's newness of Life or second Covenant that had with the doting first-Covenant Law-spirited Corinthians bin for a season an old Foolish King in the 〈◊〉 of letter his restor'd old first-Creation spirit of nature But with this difference not a fix'd knowing wilful one that would no more be admonish'd For as discover'd therein what he amounted to and convincingly shew'd and offer'd a more excellent life and way immediatly he conferr'd not with Flesh and Blood consulted not with or listned to the reasonings of the first-Covenant Wisdom of Man in himself or others but was Obedient to the Heavenly Vision Trembling and astonish'd he said Lord what wilt thou have me to do Act. 9. 6. Had he after such convincing discovery of his folly and Madness in Persecuting the Gospel-Spirit and Truths of Christ in his Saints obstinately persisted therein he had bin absolutely unpardonable But he did it ignorantly 1 Tim. 1. 13. For as soon as he knew a better a Gospel-Life and more excellent way of obeying and Worshipping God he instantly yielded to God's terms the death of his Law-principled Persecuting nature as 〈◊〉 for Christ's Gospel-Life He found the Corinthians after all this confident in that State he was in when a Persecutor Full Rich and Reigning as Kings Wise Strong and Honourable in first-Covenant Attainments from Christ himself after the flesh They were brought out of the corrupt into the righteous Life of theirnature and so into some good degree of Conformity to the Life of Christ that first Covenant Life of the Law under which he was Born of a Woman But were in no degree of Conformity to Christ in the obedient death of that state in Sacrifice to God So if they finally refused Paul's Counsel Example and Admonitions for becoming Fools Weak Poor and Despicable there as he had done in following Christ's own example and Counsel they proved themselvs with thousands of others in all Ages and Generations the very Old Foolish doting Kings here meant and Paul with his true Gospel-Disciples and Followers proved themselvs the Poor Wise Children of God in a newness of Life a Wisdom a Glory never to be done away He was content with Christ to have his Visage Marr'd his fading Law-Life and Glory in the restor'd Image of the earthy or first Adam done away as the undispensible means of receiving the Life and Image of the Heavenly or second Adam 1 Cor. 15. 49. Job with other first-Covenant Saints or Holy Men in their own restor'd nature while in the dark and in great measure if not altogether ignorant for a season as to the spiritual Life and Glory that was to follow and fall to his lot was sorely
his own Spirit offer 's but the sacrifice of fools in God's judgment however highly he esteem the sacrifice or himself for it He does not rightly know what he does what he is whither he goes whom he 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ospel things and truths the whole Counsel of God the 〈◊〉 and only way of salvation the methods of God's wisdom in order thereunto all the law's ordinances statut's and judgments of his new creation-sanctuary describ'd in the nine last chapters of Ezekiel all these things lie quite out of his sight How can Man in his own best Wisdom that 's foolishness to God's in his own Spirit that at best is enmity to God's perform do any thing or offer up any sacrifice acceptable to God any but the sacrifice of fools These fools consider not will not consider that they do evil Stiff-necked are they in their own self-confident understandings which are not only blear-ey'd and dimm-sighted but stark blind and wholly ignorant of all Gospel-things and truths yet on they will turning their deaf ear to or setting their mouth against the heavens Ps. 73. 9. all heavenly Gospel-doctrin and instruction They 'l listen to nothing that may induce them to consider the great mischief they are doing to themselvs and others by preaching promising and warranting peace with God in a spirit of direct enmity to him Ezek. 13. 6. 10. and decrying might and main that which is the only way of salvation and the only spirit in which any can be saved with all the words thereof This desperate work are these blind leaders with their self-confident followers at all reck'ning they are doing very pleasing and acceptable service to God Act. 26. 9. Having nothing of Christ's very Gospel-Spirit or doctrin in their Church do they with great indignation and scorn cast all that are wholly for the very Christ and his very Gospel out of their church Isai. 66. 5. Ps. 50. 20 yes and out of the world too when they can as not fit to live any longer in it Act. 22. 22. All this do these Gospel-Wolvs in Sheep's Clothing reckon to be a doing God service Jo. 16. 2. in a blind zeal for him and his law against every word of his Gospel Rom. 10. 2 3 for the first-covenant life of the law in their own restor'd spirit of nature against the second-covenant life of the Gospel in his own spirit of grace So think they do God service when they joyn with the Devil to do despite to the spirit of grace Heb. 10. 29 casting all the words thereof behind their backs and all contempt they can on all such words and all the speakers and right hearers of them as the worst of blasphemies and blasphemers What was Saul's Sin in letter and mystery too is their's in mystery They must be brought to acknowledg with Saul that what the wisdom of God and the words or commands thereof require to be destroy'd their foolish wisdom in the words thereof preaches keeps up and warrants currant for salvation The Spirit of nature in Man recovered and restored by Christ out of the fall into the life wisdom and ruling power thereof over all inferiour sensual brutish power of life and operation in him amounts to no more in mystery and truth then the Amalekite King Agag and best of the cattel The refuse of the cattel the vile affections the disorderly unruly lusts of the corrupt state of nature they have subdued yet not fully but the King and best of the Cattel the rational and sensual powers reduced to good order in the ruling authority of the former and due subjection of the latter these they judg fit to be spared And what are these both king and subjects All but still the Amalekite spirit of nature and Man therein the direct enemy of God and all his Gospel-Saints and truths Was not Paul in and with all these fighting against God when he thought his had bin fighting for him With Saul will all such self-confident justifiers of themselvs be condemn'd out of their own mouth even amid'st their self-justifying plea against the Lord's and his true spiritual Prophet's charge drawn up against them as Samuel's against Saul They 'l be found partial in God's Law The refuse things the vile affections of their polluted nature they are content should be subdued in obedience to it But the choicer things thereof nature at best in the Glory Wisdom and righteousness thereof that all this must go up in sacrifice by a just and holy death to God being an unholy life or state of enmity to God however in a sense holy as cleansed from filth of flesh though convinc'd God's Wisdom requir's this also do they with Saul under a self-condemning light refuse to obey c. and yet stoutly assert with him that they have obeyed the voice of the Lord. All this find we 1 Sam. 15. 18-23 This get men by setting up their own Wisdom and Spirit as judg or interpreter of the Oracles dictat's or words of God's in a known contrariety to the spiritual meaning and intendment of all In their restor'd righteous inlight'ned nature that 's God's required Gospel-sacrifice sigured out by all clean law-sacrifices in the old Testament do they presumptuously with Saul and King 〈◊〉 intrude or thrust themselvs into the priests office 1 Sam. 13. 8-14 2 Chron. 26. 16-21 In their own Foolish Wisdom and Spirit of Enmity to God and all the Words of his Wisdom do they pretend to the Office of Christ's Priestly Gospel-spirit of Infallible Truth and Everlasting Righteousness as the only true declarers of the Will and Words of God that rightly take not his meaning in any of his Words nor ever can understand them This Presumptuous course persisted and fix'd in will render the contagious over-spreading Leprosy the Sin of Enmity to God filth of Spirit that 's no otherwise curable then by the compleat and full death of nature absolutely incurable and mortal as the case was with the Litteral Leprosy on Uzzia's Body to his dying day though said for a season to have done that which was right in the sight of the Lord in his long Reign of two and fifty Yeers 2 King 15. 2 3. The true Priestly Gospel-Spirit of Christ offer'd up our nature in himself at best in Sacrifice to God When Samuel Reprov'd Saul for Sacrificing his answer was The Philistins were ready to come upon me to Gilgal and I had not made Supplication to the Lord so I forc'd my self and Offer'd a Burnt-Offring These 〈◊〉 Pleas and Apologies of nature go for nothing when thorowly search'd by the Spirit of Christ in his seers Thou hast done foolishly say's Samuel and shalt lose thy Kingdom Life and all for 't by those Philistin's through the fear of whom thou did'st Offer this Sacrifice of Fools And what befel Adam and all his Posterity with King Uzziah for Presumptuously setting or keeping up his Law-State or changable first-Covenant righteous Life of his own nature as therein
in preference to and exclusion of God's heavenly Spiritual Eternal creature-things as not worthy his regard or minding They deny they decry them They call them blasphemous 〈◊〉 and therein do they blaspheme devised fables only to 〈◊〉 diminish and disparage their conceited natural things perishing vanities which they reckon the only creature-things that are in a perfect contrariety to the 〈◊〉 of God By those very Spiritual Saints and things man's Wisdom count's Fools and foolishness will God confound all their foolish-Wisdom and self-exalting power By these foolish Persons and despised things Man looks on as worse then nothing will God bring to nought things that in man's Judgment are in God's not 1 Cor. 1. 9. and v. 27 28. who 'l be Judg at last God and wise holy first-covenant Saints are of a directly contrary Judgment in this great case Those that with Paul have Praise with God are such as the Lord commendeth go for no body worse than nothing with them They that are meer dreamers and please themselvs with their dream Jer. 23. 25-32 or dreamish hapiness call all Gospel-truths a dream 〈◊〉 a delusion of the Devil and say to Gospel-Saints as Joseph's brethren to him behold these dreamish-heirs that pretend to the everlasting inheritance in a Spirit and doctrine we hate let 's kill them all and see what will become of them and their dream's Gen. 37. 18-20 They reckon their doctrin Wheat and Christ's Chaff But he will say what 's your Chaff to my Wheat The true Spiritual circumcision-Saint seem's a fool a mad Man in the house of God or to and amongst first-covenant brethren Hos. 9. 7 8 yea the filth of the world the off-scouring of all things 1 Cor. 4. 10. 13. 2 Cor. 10. 12. Those that rejoyce in Christ Jesus or in his Gospel-Spirit the Holy Ghost with joy unspeakable and Glorious are despised and trampled on by their first-covenant brethren whose confidence is wholly in their holy slesh or restor'd naturals The first and second-covenant Saint are properly the natural and Spiritual man The enlightned moral heathen obedient to the restor'd rational first-covenant light or law of nature may be comprehended under the title natural man But the corrupt heathen living and walking wholly in the brutish lusts of his degenerate fallen nature is a beast He has not what is properly in a Scripture-sense the life of a man or any part of it That Death in Sin threatned and accomplish'd upon Adam and all his posterity they delight in rather then accept of deliverance out of it But the enlightn'd restor'd natural man in the light or also life of the first-covenant is of a distinct contrary palate desire appetite and thought or judgment from and to the Spiritual All his regard desire love and delight is for after and in worldly perishing vanities passant shadows dreams that come from a multitude of busines that he vainly makes to himself about such empty perishing nothings So will they themselvs even these first-covenant kings the mystical Princes of this world such as 〈◊〉 Christ come to nought yea worse then nothing with all their trusted in nothings They 'l be at a total loss for ever pining and starving in everlasting poverty and nakedness under the positive Inflictions and Burnings of unchangable and unquenchable Wrath. T. And a Fool 's voice is known by a multitude of words good words fair speeches as the only Ministers of Christ's Gospel deceiving the hearts of the simple or undiscerning that can't discern or at least 〈◊〉 own the difference between Christ's and Satan's Gospel All the while are they gratifying or serving their own palate appetite desire or belly of their natural Spirit in the perishing Life and with the perishing Meats of a first-Covenant State as the true Salvation and blessedness of any These Wise-Fools are the fiercest enemies of the very Christ the very Gospel of all men A multitude of Words and Books do they come forth in And nothing must pass for Orthodox right or true Gospel-Doctrin but what the wisdom of Man that 's a flat enemy to all Christ's Gospel sitting in its Magisterial Chair of Infallibility gives its ratifying nod or Imprimatur to Be such what they will they do and will yet pass for the only signal owners and Trumpeters of Christ's everlasting Gospel whereas indeed they are the most careful shutters up of the Kingdom of Heaven the most industrious decriers of the very Christ the very Gospel or Spiritual sense of all Scripture in the World This was the Pharisees case in Christ's own time Mat. 23. 13. The first-covenant law-spirit or principle fixed in enmity to the second is the 〈◊〉 same leaven with that of the Pharisees under the outward dispensation of the Gospel as well as under the Law They for a pretence made long Prayers compassed Sea and Land left no means unattempted no stone unturn'd to proselyte or fetch back any from Christ's Gospel-truth to Satan's lie and falshood his accursed other Gospel and so to make them two-fold more the Children of Hell then themselvs as sinning against cleerer discerning greater Light and Conviction then they ever had as to Gospel-truths And this done they Triumph as having done God Service in converting them from Christ's to their 〈◊〉 which Man's wisdom styles Orthodox So all run's smooth and fine 〈◊〉 keep 's silence and they please themselvs to imagine he is of their mind and judgment such a one as 〈◊〉 Psal. 50. 20 21. But he warn's them before-hand he will find a time to 〈◊〉 them in pieces so as none shall be able to deliver them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And as he 〈◊〉 them he comforts Saints abused by 〈◊〉 with this 〈◊〉 Pl. appear 〈◊〉 your Joy and they shall be ashamed These threat's 〈◊〉 the one and promises to the other will be accomplish'd at one and the same time Christ's second comming 〈◊〉 66. 5. If such 〈◊〉 were used to keep off people from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 himself what may the true Ministers of his 〈◊〉 now 〈◊〉 from the like legal-spirited Generation of 〈◊〉 and Professors The Pharisees said among themselvs 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 nothing To wit as to the gaining and keeping off the people from listning to his Ministry 〈◊〉 the World is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Jo. 12. 19. Indeed the World goes after 〈◊〉 1 Jo. 4. 5. hear's and own 's them and their Doctrin People a 〈◊〉 People 〈◊〉 after the Beast admire his Apostles praise reward and follow them The deadly Wound given mankind by the first Sin being 〈◊〉 in these Teachers and 〈◊〉 by which they are recovered out of that Death in Trespasses and Sins they were born in they reckon all 's their own And who but they Rev. 13. 3. With what a wry Mouth and scornful Indignation did the Pharisees take up theirs and the Chief Priest's Officers who were sent to Apprehend Christ but did not Never Man spake like this Man said the Officers Are ye also deceiv'd said the Pharisees Have any
commanded by Christ after his resurrection to wait in their earthly-Jerusalem-state for Act. 1. 4. and Luke 24. 49. Both these testimonies are given by the same hand Luke Man is to part with all call'd his own his Life Wisdom Righteousness and all the things of man in his first make and then God will give to him and set up in him what he call's his own by a se-second his Life Wisdom Righteousness the things of God All the Life of Man's Spirit with the free will and rational Powers thereof must go in Sacrifice to God as our true free-will Offering and reasonable Service Rom. 12. 1. These things clearly seen assented to agreed on and engaged for on all hands as to what man is to suffer and God to do in order to man's being actually brought into the new and everlasting covenant with him man's wilful Apostacy and flying off from all after for a season he hath run wel in obedience to Gospel-light and suffer'd many things towards the demolishing his law-life Gal. 5. 7. and 3. 4. Spoils loses and forfeits all Dislike to Ghrist's Gospel-life of truth from love to his own law-life and so a fixed enmity to God and despite to his Spirit of Grace exclud's him all benesit of Christ's Sacrifice and Intercession for ever 〈◊〉 10. 26 27. 29. This is the unpardonable Sin against the Holy Ghost or new-creature Gospel-Spirit of Christ. There 's no plea or excuse left Man Nothing to be look'd for by him but the fiery Indignation of God to devour him as the far sorer punishment for 〈◊〉 sinning against the Gospel-Light of the Son of God then Law-Light of the 〈◊〉 of Man T. For he 〈◊〉 no pleasure in Fools pay that which thou hast vowed without delay Deser not to pay it that is to perform thy part vow'd and engaged for by thee in order to thy entring into the first or second Covenant with God For the not paying it will be found the greatest Folly and Madness and of most desperate and dangerous consequence to thee Hence does Solomon farther say by way of Information in this case Vers. V. Better is it that thou should'st not vow then that thou should'st vow and not pay So Deut. 23. 21-23 When thou vowest a vow unto God thou shalt not slack or delay to pay it But if thou forbear to vow it shall be no sin in thee Thou shalt perform thy free-will Offring as thou hast vow'd Better not vow then vow and not pay Better for men never to have known the way of everlasting righteousness and truth 2 Pet. 2. 21. Heb. 10. 26 27. then after known to turn from the Holy Commandment deliver'd to them What Commandment That which Christ received from his Father and obey'd even the yielding up our nature at best in himself to death To. 10. 17 18. God connives at Man in the day 's of his ignorance and darkness as to a Gospel-Life of everlasting righteousness whether in the vile state of polluted nature dead in sin or moral Heathenism in obedience to the Light or Law of rational nature or in the first-Covenant Believer Professor and Worshipper of God under the outward dispensation of 〈◊〉 or Gospel as Paul when a Persecuter These 〈◊〉 sorts of people while wholly ignorant of Gospel though they reject yea oppose yea persecute it to the death of the true Professors thereof it is no unpardonable Sin in them We find this in Paul's case who was the highest of the three sorts of Sinners above-mention'd He was an injurious Blasphemer and Persecuter of Saints for Gospel-truth but because he did all ignorantly in unbelief he obteined 〈◊〉 was not an unpardonable Sinner against the Holy Ghost or Gospel-Spirit 1 Tim. 1. 13. He soon became more eminent in Gospel-Life and knowledg then those he Persecuted Yea a signal Teacher of them and more abundant Labourer in the Gospel then all the other Apostles who were in Christ before him So as while a righteous Law-Pharisee if any had whereof to Glory or trust in Holy Flesh he more Phil. 3 4 now if any had whereof to glory in the Spirit or Resurrection-Life of Christ that 't is duty and absolute safety to trust in he more 1 Cor. 15. 9 10. No Man is brought to an absolute Trial till Christ the mystical Sun of everlasting righteousness dawn upon him in the beaming forth of Spiritual Light by which to give undeniable notice of his Gospel-Life and State to him for vowing or engaging the giving up the Life of his nature in Sacrifice to God Neither Publican or Pharisee the common Profane Sinner nor righteous first-covenant Jew or Gentile is bound to vow nor therefore to perform the vow as to that devoted thing nature in what-ever variety of Life or condition will in all first or last be found to be even devoted to death under the final Love or Wrath of God Fixure in the Life of nature corrupt or righteous which renders Men litteral or mystical Sodomit's will be found against at least negative conviction and Testimony that they ought not so to do being by its own self-evidencing demonstration a fading Flower a perishing Vanity But when Christ by spiritual Conviction-Light cleerly discover's and graciously offer 's his Gospel-Life to Men in its own self-evidencing excellency above their Law-Life and that they are bound to give up their fading Law-Life or natural state in whatever condition corrupt or righteous for it then are they both bound to Vow the giving up this devoted thing to death and to pay their Vow yea speedily sorthwith not be slack not delay or defer the Payment 'T is better never to have experienc'd the righteousness of Man in a renew'd first-Covenant Life then after all either turn back to their old sins in the corrupt Life of nature or establish themselvs there in unchangable enmity to the righteousnes of God in the Gospel-Life of his Spirit of Grace The sorest Punishment for ever in Hell the many 〈◊〉 belong to such knowing not-doers of their Master's will 〈◊〉 in such knowledg and rebelling against all will encrease 〈◊〉 everlasting sorrow Most aggravated wickednesses will be recompenc'd with such aggravated punishment and Tormont for e-ever as is meet 〈◊〉 Salvation is seen by Man at his door when under the undispensable obligation to vow the death of nature in obedience to 〈◊〉 and accordingly as he perform's or not persom's this most deeply concerning vow he has or misses it Refusing finally to vow or perform when bound to both is fixing in nature in unchangable 〈◊〉 to God and his Spirit of Grace This break 's all Covenant with God first and second the staff of 〈◊〉 comliness Ezek. 16. 14. or righteousness of man in the first and of Bands Zec. 11. 7-11 or such an unchangable band of Union as they ought 〈◊〉 to have enter'd into with God in the second All 's 〈◊〉 and gone They are for ever excluded by God's Oath or swearing in Wrath they
The broken-spirited Saint as to all that has the praise of God Luk. 16. 15. Rom. 2. 29. One such contrite-spirited Man God value's more than all Angels and Men in the unbroken excellencies of the whole first-creation Isa. 66. 2. How vastly distant are God's thoughts and Man's in this matter Again the more sad and marr'd the Countenance or visage of the natural or old Man in the Saint under the dispensation and discipline of the Cross the better is his heart the more thriving prosperous and fruitful in spiritual life The Spiritual Man rises as the natural decays and falls The decay and sorrow of the old Man is abundantly over-answer'd by the encreasing joy of the new To the full death of the old does immediatly succeed a compleatness of spiritual life in the new As the outer or natural Man perishes the inner or spiritual is renew'd day by day 2 Cor. 4. 16 -18. The light and short affliction of the former work 's for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of Glory in the latter and Rom. 8. 18. Hereby comes Man to be rid of all bondage and regard of ensnaring vanities things temporal delights of the Sons of Men and to be advanc'd into the glorious liberty of the Sons of God so as to look at and set his affections upon things eternal only ver 21. Lo then the plentiful harvest-sheaves they that sow in the Tear's of their natural Man shall reap in the Joy of their spiritual Psal. 126. 6. The decay of the life and glory of Man in the first-Covenant attended with an encrease of the never-fading creature-life glory wisdom and righteousness of God in the second render's his heart less after Man's but more after God's own heart with David and so better The unchangeable good new-creature life only with all the things and never-perishing meats thereof in the Man-Christ or his Saints and followers have God's approbation-Seal as is implied John 6. 27. Vers. 4. The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth Here are the contrary places or states in which the mystical wise and fools are found as the certain evidence of their wisdom or folly The latter take up for happiness in the flourishing fruitful life of their own restor'd nature This in a known wilful contrariety to the spiritual Law and Example of Christ himself In such place or state by them chosen will they be chain'd up as a Prison of everlasting darkness and death under wrath So will their house of feasting be turned into a house of everlasting mourning torment and vexation of spirit And this will they as a signal aggravation thereof be forc'd by God's awakn'd convictions in them to own as the fruit of their own device invention and wilful choice against all fair warning In a perfect contrariety to these merry travellers to the Chambers of death and their own everlasting confusion are the truly wise in the house of mourning under the cross as their secret Chamber of safety shutting their doors Isa. 26. 20. window's or natural senses outward and inward from all first-creation desireables visible or invisible Satan's perishing meats the dust himself feeds on By this means are they not exposed as all not under the Cross are to be catch'd in and with the ensnaring vanities of this world At winding up out come the reputed fools under the cross into an everlasting house of feasting and down sink their scoffing blasphemous enemies heathen or people Psal. 2. 1. fix'd in nature corrupt or righteous and so in unchangeable enmity to God and them into a house or state of eternal mourning Saints are content to pass thro' all sorts of reproach shame and much tribulation without and within knowing whither they are going even to the Kingdom of God Act. 14. 22. Joh. 16. 33. In the world ye shall have tribulation The world is full of enemies round about them corrupt and righteous Men are all enemies to the Life and Righteousness of God in the spiritual Saint Thus does Solomon distinguish and character by the marks of wisdom and folly the contarry-minded inhabitants of the two houses on the Sand and on the Rock Vers. 5. It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise than for a Man to hear the song of fools Here 's the cause and ground whence the said wisdom and folly come to be practis'd The wise obediently hearken to the voice and rebuk's of Wisdom Christ his death-reproofs upon their spirit of nature that they may receive his Spirit of Grace Prov. 1. 20 -23. They receive and submit to the chastning Discipline of the Cross according to the reveal'd and known methods of God's Wisdom for Salvation On the other hand fools listen to the pleasing voice and charming song of folly it-self in Devils and Men their accursed other Gospel for Salvation in the restor'd life of nature Man's quiet submitting to wisdom's sentence of death within him upon that life they preach up and warrant for Salvation is unspeakably better for him then to regard the delusive destructive song and flattering voice of fools that set up the first-covenant law-life and righteousness of Man most falsely calling it a Gospel-state and righteousness of God This Gospel or glad Tydings if true Satan preached to Eve Ye shall not die at all Ye have eternal life in this first-creation state or life of your own nature The righteous life of nature in Man or Angel is Eternal This is Man's and Satan's other Gospel in perfect contradiction to Christ's and the only way of Salvation He that hear's the reproof of the spirit of life on his spirit of enmity and death get's true understanding and abideth among the wise Prov. 15. 31 32. He that refuses it destroy's his own Soul Here are the infallible characters of Wisdom and Folly The only way to get true Wisdom and Life is to quit and lose our shadowy under the Cross. To be fools with Paul as to all Men do have delight in or feed upon in the first-Covenant that we may find the Life and Wisdom of God in the second 1 Cor. 3. 18. 4. 10. God declares that all who refuse the chastisments of his Cross to the death of their continually sinning spirit of Nature are Bastards and not Sons in his never-sinning spirit of Grace Heb. 12. 8. 1 Joh. 3. 9. So shall not be provided for in his house In short the rebuke of the wise leads to eternal life the song of fools to eternal death Vers. 6. For as the crackling Voice or Sound of thorns under a pa so is the laughter of the Fool this also is Vanity Here 's a true character of the short-liv'd joy song and laughter 〈◊〉 fools All mirth in first-creation life is but as the crackling of thorns under a pot a short blaze and away This is all the delights of the Sons 〈◊〉 Men amount unto All the fine song or
far inferiour to what he had bin in the Light Wisdom and Righteousness of a restor'd first-covenant Life His mistaking self-confident Friends under Satan's management of them to oppress him by adding to his afflicton deny the reality of his first-Covenant Righteousness and reckon him but a hypocritical pretender thereunto and now under the punishing hand and manifested displeasure of God upon him for his hypocrisy and wickedness Job in his dark house of mourning was sorely put to 't as to what way he should go about to defend himself against their most false and injurious chargings of him with falshood and deceit in all his former life and practice He did find all that life and goodness going to wrack in him under the Cross and knew not why nor what he should have in the room thereof as God's design in all Yet did he stem the tide through all difficulties and enemies with which on all hands surrounded and encountred till safe landed in the wished haven the true Land of promise state of true Life and Blessedness a newness of life His own conscience yea God himself were witnesses of his integrity in those first-Covenant Principles they charg'd him with Hypocrisy in Job 1. 1 8. 2. 3. Their charging him therefore with falshood was an unreasonable oppression and added great bitterness to God's afflicting trial of him stirring up his muddy earthy part raising all the dust and causing all the unadvised speeches that in a long debate of his case with them pass'd out of his mouth After all the Devil or his Wife could do or say 't is said he sinn'd not with his Lips Job 2. 10. Some few questionable words he had in his great Agony and consusion utter'd Chap. 3. that seem to have introduc'd or given some occasion to the following discourse of his three Friends When Satan finds the Saint's natural Man under the Cross for a removal out of first into the second Covenant-Principle he puts him on a vindication of his own faithfulness in the first so as strenuously to engage in a self-defence against the cross-work of the second upon him So makes he the Saint himself instrumental to the heightning and aggravating of that mystical oppression which tends to the making him mad Saints therefore and others too under like trial that apostatize are forbidden to take that gift which destroys the heart This gift is that Satan offers to bribe them off from God or obedience to his Cross. 〈◊〉 establish you for ever in the life and liberty of your own wills a way after your own hearts says he all which God comes not only to oppress but utterly to destroy in you and you therein So represents he God as the greatest Oppressor of all in that very dispensation of the Cross that 's his certain and constant method for bringing about their everlasting freedom from all bondages enemies and deaths Satan and his Instruments bring all that finally listen to their promised liberty into everlasting bondage with themselves This by speaking great swelling words of Vanity to them the alluring words of Man's and the old Serpent's Wisdoms 2 Pet. 2. 18 19. Ye shall be as Gods says the Devil if ye follow my counsel and 〈◊〉 Gen. 3. 5. that is ye shall be advanc'd into the highest pitch of happiness ye are capable of if establish'd with me for ever in the life and freedom of your own Wills and Spirits And this is indeed a fix'd state of unchangeable enmity to God and death to themselves in the utmost wo misery and confusion imaginable for ever Better is the end of a thing than the beginning thereof and the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit 1. In letter 'T is better quietly to bear any evil God permits others to do to us order'd by him for our good as the end thereof that 's better than the seeming evil beginning that really tends to such a good end 'T is Man's interest as well as duty to be patient under every dispensation or occurrent by providence to him 'T is folly and sin to be offended at God's dealings with us as to things not in our power to prevent or avoid Such anger is founded in pride and rests in the bosom of fools amounting unto a jussling competition of their wills with God's And hence are they angry with their fellow-creatures God permits by injuring to cross them On all accounts then in reference to God others and themselves better are the patient than the proud in spirit Man ought to suppose God's infinite Wisdom sees just reasons for crossing his will that are undiscern'd by his short-sighted understanding to his great advantage 2dly In Mystery these words signifie the differing demeanour of two sorts of Persons under the Cross a spiritual Seed that at length yield obedience 〈◊〉 it and a fleshly first-Covenant Seed that finally resist and refuse it The former patiently submit to and comply with the will of God therein as finding their great advantage in exchange thereby of the embondaging burdensome perpetually sinning life of their own Law-spirit for that light burden and easie yoke of Christ's Gospel-Spirit Mat. 11. 28 30 that 's indeed the glorious liberty of the Sons of God They find this peaceable fruit of all their loss sufferings even the everlasting Life and Righteousness of God In this newness of life only can they bring forth the peaceable fruits of righteousness and not in their own spirit of enmity to God This end is better than the beginning Beginning and end here signifie God's twofold gift of first and second-Covenant life and principles of two differing sorts of righteous fruits works duties and performances towards God or men The method of God's Wisdom in giving first the natural or first-Covenant life and afterward the spiritual or second 1 Cor. 15. 46. is not to be question'd or disputed against by Man's Those disputers of this world that so do and obstinately set up their natural against God's spiritual-creature-life come to a latter end worse than their beginning under final Wrath. They that in a lawful use of the Law or of their first-Covenant Law-life call'd their own exchange it by death for the second a Gospel-life call'd God's own come to an end better than their beginning in unchangeable union with God others to a worse in unchangeable union with the Devil By the Cross upon Nature God tryes whether Men love themselves and their own life and things or him and his things best their natural or his Spiritual new-creation-things Satan himself savours only the natural things of Man or Angel in the first-creation perfectly hates all the spiritual creature-things of Christ and God in the second Mat. 16. 23. All Men that he can fix in a union of mind and will with him are of the same palat belly or desire and appetite with him in unchangeable enmity to all the divine and spiritual things of Christ and God All Men and Angels as
this riddle of providence in outward dispensations to friends as 〈◊〉 and foes as friends He sees not this mystery that when the wicked spring as the grass and all the workers of Iniquity flourish it is that they shall be destroyed for ever Psal. 92. 6 7. They are in their various self-pleasing wicked ways but treasuring up Wrath for themselves against the day of Wrath and posting to eternal death as happy as they both seem to themselves and others to be God's abused patience and long-suffring towards them will be found at winding up a signal aggravation of their sin and punishment Yet mean while God magnifies his mercy towards them in giving them so large a time to take notice of and advantage by his instructing warnings for preventing the wrath to come The mystical-wicked first-covenant Brethren fix'd in enmity to the 〈◊〉 do long live and prosper generation after generation in union of mind with the Devil filling up the measure of their Fathers in the highest and most criminal wickednesses Wolves in Sheep's-clothing are they Serpents a generation of Vipers that have drunk down the old Serpent's poyson of unchangeable enmity to God and 〈◊〉 then can they escape the damnation of Hell Mat. 23. 31 33. They 〈◊〉 and follow their first 〈◊〉 Fathers in former generations as persecuting Zelots against the second and so pass along into the same everlasting darkness after them and never see light Psal. 49. 13 19. To prevent this dangerous fixure in the righteousness of Man in the first covenant against the Gospel-life and new-creature righteousness of God in the second Solomon advises all capable of repentance or change of mind as follows Vers. 16. Be not righteous over-much neither make thy-self over-wise why shouldst thou destroy thy felf Heb. be desolate Man is righteous over-much or long in the first-Covenant when he over-much values it and lay's to great a stress upon it when he trusts rest's in and builds upon the changeable fallible principles thereof for Salvation On this mistake he refuses Christ's heavenly call to him to come up out of the life and image of the earthy into his heavenly out of the perishing life wisdom and righteousness of man in the first-covenant principle into the everlasting Life Wisdom and Righteousness of God in the second An overvalue for and unwarrantable security in the first endangers man's shutting the door of his heart and deafning his ear to Christ against his gracious offer of and invitation into the second So by preferring the Law-righteousness of man to the Gospel-life and righteousness of Christ and God do men destroy themselves bring the desolating final judgments of God upon their guilty heads This get they by being over-much righteous and over-wise as putting a value upon such righteousness and wisdom of their own nature above what is written of it 1 Cor. 4. 6. in God's Oracles of Truth Job while yet much in the dark as to what God was about to do with him said tho' he were perfect yet would he not know his own soul but despise even his righteous life Job 9. 21. The professing Jews blasphem'd and crucified Christ Paul breathed out threatnings and slaughters against the Disciples of the Lord from a fond conceit over-value for and 〈◊〉 in the restor'd life of the first Covenant and the wisdom and righteousness of man therein so as to prefer it to the everlasting Life Wisdom and Righteousness of God in the second This 〈◊〉 when Paul was happily deliver'd from he found his Jewish professing Brethren still in Rom. 10. 1 3. They were ignorant of God's Gospel Righteousness in the second and so zealous for their own Law-righteousness in the first While thus ignorant as he once and so pardonable and curable he earnestly pray'd they might so accept of and receive his Gospel-instructions that they might be saved He had greater love and better desires for them than they yet knew how to have for themselves He compassionatly bemoans and laments over 〈◊〉 on the same account Christ himself did Mat. 23. 37 38. O Jerusalem Jerusalem c. Behold your house is left unto you desolate Here 's the temper of the mystical earthly Jerusalem professor in all times and places under Law or Gospel They have bin all along generation after generation found in a posture of 〈◊〉 towards all right words brought to them in Christ's Gospel-spirit of true 〈◊〉 declaring the death of nature in the first-Covenant undispensably necessary to their sinding eternal life in the second The final refusal of the Lord's Counsel herein will render their first-Covenant house of feasting eternally desolate This twofold errour one the certain consequent of the other even the placing Salvation in the first and finally rejecting the life of God in the second is certain Damnation Man establish'd in his own righteousness as a state of Salvation is the unchangeable enemy of God Christ all spiritual Saints and Gospel 〈◊〉 This unlawful use of the Law or their own Law-life against Christ's everlasting Gospel-life amounts to that love of the World or of themselves in their worldly first-creation Law-life of Nature that 's enmity to God and his Gospel-spirit of Grace This is spiritual and most criminal adultery Jam. 4. 4. Law-life thus abused is the leaven of the Pharisees a root of bitternesses against the Gospel-life and Truths of Christ with mystically profane Esau Heb. 12. 15 16. Such wilful opposing instead of obedient submitting to God's Righteousness Rom. 10. 3. and Jam. 4. 7. keep 's Men from ever entering into God's Righteousness David the Type and Christ the Truth intercede against such incorrigible enemies Let 〈◊〉 not come into thy righteousness Psal. 69. 27. Let their habitation be desolate ver 25. ' Be not then righteous over-much or over-long by over-much valuing and over long staying in that first-Covenant life place or state whence by the death and loss of all thou art there possess'd of the true spiritual Children of Christ break forth into the new-creature-life of God Hos. 13. 13. Be not over-pleas'd transported and delighted with the fading righteous life of thy own nature so as to be leaven'd and sowr'd into a bitter enmity against that spiritual life of Christ in which alone any can be saved Prefer not thy mortal to Gods immortal righteous life Why shouldst thou destroy thy self or be 〈◊〉 and undone for ever This by turning all the fading Life Righteousness Wisdom Beauty and Glory by Christ himself set up in and put upon thee into a perfect abomination to him and cause of final desolation to thy self Vers. 17. Be not over-much wicked neither be thou foolish why shouldst thou die before thy time Heb. not in thy time Here 's another branch of Solomon's advice to another sort of Men whom he call's wicked living in the vile affections and lusts of the corrupt spirit of nature refusing the Redeemer's purchas'd and offered Deliverance out of that most palpably evil and shameful state of
the true Shepherd the said strange Woman fill's her mouth with the most inticing perswasive words of her serpentine wisdom to furnish them for the serving all her mischievous designs upon themselves and others The words of Man's and Satan's wisdom's joyntly hand forth another pretended Gospel in flat opposition to every word of Christ's clothing all their falshoods with the misapplied letter of his words of truth This Woman's words are smoother than Butter softer then Oil but are drawn Swords wounding Men to eternal death Psal. 55. 21. Many strong Men Wise Strong and honourable in Christ by first-Covenant attainments have bin So slain by her Prov. 7. 26. The palate and temper of humane Nature in general is what Ahab discover'd in hating the one true Prophet Micaiah that counsell'd him contrary to his own will for his good and rewarding the four hundred false ones that gratified his will to his own destruction 1 Kin. 22. The language or thought of all natural hearts God declar's to be this Prophesie not unto us right things speak unto us smooth things prophesie deceits Isa. 30. 10. and Satan finds false Prophets enow in a readiness to gratify them so as to keep true Seers out of all hearing or regard all whose words lie cross to the will palat and desire of humane nature corrupt or righteous in all mankind They preach the Cross and death to it in all as necessary to the Salvation of any This Satan represents as the greatest loss and prejudice imaginable to them indeed their utter ruine He advises them to hold fast their own decrying the pretended advantages of suffering and dying even a living and reigning with Christ as meer delusive fictions All men in their natural principles corrupt or righteous stand ready for receiving Satan's doctrin the doctrine of Devils pleasing to Nature in all variety of condition it can be found in No man in that worldly nature and spirit receives Christ's Gospel-Testimony Joh. 3. 22. 14. 17. This must needs make a vast difference between the numberless flockers after Satan's Gospel and the few or next to no listners after Christ's When Satan has lock'd up men in a double prison the will of their own fixed spirit of bondage and his will upon that in this firm union of these self-embondaging spirits and wills are they invincibly hardned against all the words of God's Wisdom And then the whole counsel of the Devil in his Mystery of Iniquity passes currant with them for the whole Counsel of God in his mystery of Godliness Solomon Paul and other awaken'd spiritual Saints can find out all these depths wiles devices snares and nets of this Woman that they see their fellow mortals even the professing party so generally involv'd entangled and caught in This Woman is more bitter than death her heart being full of snares and nets So subtilly contriv'd and methodiz'd as most certainly to catch all that refuse and so are destitute of the new-creation wisdom of God which alone can enable to number and find out the name and nature of this first-creation Beast Rev. 13. 18 with all her natural perfections disguis'd and gilded over by her whorish paint and transforming skil with counterfeit resemblances of spiritual in order to give the utmost shock of opposition to what is so For this end does she vent her Gospel-lies in hypocrisy or feigned resemblances of Christ's Gospel-Truths 1 Tim. 4. 1 2. Thus accoutred and furnish'd with gilded painted snares and nets from the date of her first sin and fall is she the Captain-General of all her hosts of evil Angels and Men fix'd with her in a spirit of unchangeable darkness and falshood against God and his new-creature-spirit of marvellous Light and infallible Truth Under her powerful witchcrafts and alluring charm's fell Man at best And what can he do that comes after the King Adam in the unstain'd purity of all natural perfections and excellencies of humane nature Remember this first battel in which all mankind with the first fell dead at the Serpent's feet dead in trespasses and sins and do so no more Job 41. 8. Never think of undertaking him with success in but the gradually restor'd Righteous Life Wisdom and Armour of Man In the most restor'd righteous natural Man is now found actual enmity to God but changeable pardonable curable by the cross not otherwise If Satan render this unchangeable and unpardonable his work is finish'd Christ comes with Fire and Sword speaks War and Death to Nature at best Satan with flattering kisses and pleasing Words Who is like to be best liked by Man The wounds of the true Friend and Saviour submitted to will be Salvation The kisses and smooth words of the enemy complied with Damnation Prov. 27. 6. Satan finds in man a natural inclination to resist the Cross as his enemy and he leaves no meanes unattempted conducible to the fixing him in such resistance Then is he his own true subject in his kingdom of darkness and God swears in wrath he shall never enter into his Kingdom of Light This Woman will not fail to lay her snares and nets before Saints every step they are making under the cross towards the Kingdom of God while any thing of his natural friend in them is yet about them He was at it with Christ himself again and again while he had any thing of our pure fleshly Nature and changeable life of the Law in him Mat. 4. 16. 22 23. Luk. 4. Man establish'd in his own Righteousness thinks all safe for Salvation when fast lodg'd in the very arms of this grand mystical Adulteress the Devil irrecoverably wrap'd and bound up in the bundle of death caught and held fast in her nets and snares while pleasing himself with hopeful thoughts that his soul is bound up in the bundle of life with the Lord as David's 1 Sam. 25. 29. The perswasive words of Man's and Satan's wisdom are exactly calculated to gratify the desires of humane Nature in order to fix men in enmity to the unpleasing doctrine of the cross upon it and so perfectly deafen them to the voice of the true Shepherd all the words of God's Wisdom in himself and Saints to all spiritual charmers charm they never so wisely Psal. 58. 4 5. Man by willingly giving himself up in obedience to and compliance with Satan's known lie against God's known truth Heb. 10. 26. is abhorred of the Lord and given up by him to such strong delusion as holds him fast in the snares of this bottomless pit the very spirit of the Devil that he be damn'd with him 2 Thes. 2. 10 -12. When men are thus caught in the Snares of this Woman her hands are as bands upon them powerful cords and chains they can never break or get loose from never get out of this deep Dungeon and bottomless pit into which they have plung'd themselves Who so pleaseth or is good before God shall escape her but the Sinner shall be taken
teach and endeavour to reclaim him from his heretical and blasphemous Enthusiasms as they call the very Inspirations of the 〈◊〉 Job 32. 8. The teachings of God Does the spiritual Saint need that any such Men should teach him 1 Joh. 2. 27. who themselves may be or are the most criminal Enthusiasts under the inspirations of seducing Spirits preaching the very doctrines of Devils 1 Tim. 4. 1 2. Christ as our risen Lord is the supream Gospel-Minister in the said Spirit And there are no Ministers of his Gospel save in and of the same Spirit given to and quickned up in them Thus see we who is the true Gospel-wise Man Paul was such an one when a fool weak and despicable in the Eye or Judgment of first-covenant Professors or Brethren wise strong and honourable in Christ there 1 Cor. 4. 8 10. Having then dispatch'd the two questions come we to the declar'd Priviledges of this wise Man t. Such a man's wisdom maketh his face to shine and the boldness or strength of his face shall be chang'd These effects of the Spirit of true Wisdom in man were eminently seen upon the natural Man of Chr'st in his transfiguration prefatical to what would be fully accomplish'd upon him in the Resurrection His Face shone as the Sun and his raiment was white as the light Mat. 17. 2. After his Resurrection and Ascent also he shone brighter then the Sun to Paul in his way to Damascus Act. 26. 13. The Divine King greatly delights in this beauty put upon men and men therein Psal. 45. 11. This beauty gives men a holy boldness in God's presence No first-creation beauty or righteousness will do this Filth of Spirit or enmity to God's Divine and Creature-Spirit renders all that deformity and filthy rags Isa. 64. 6. See what all garments and works in the but restor'd natural state of Man amount unto Isa. 59. 6 -8. No flesh or man in fleshly first-creation life and best performances thereof and in can stand with boldness be justified before God Gal. 2. 16. or saved 1 Cor. 15. 50. In the clean unspottable incorruptible life linen or clothing of the new-creation Spirit of Christ can men come boldly to the Throne of Grace or appear before God with success in their addresses and prayers Heb. 4. 16. Vers. 2. I counsel thee to keep the King's Commandment and that in regard of the Oath of God The strict confining these words to the literal sense may overthrow the very advice given in them For literal Kings oft require what 's contrary to the Oath of God yea to the common light of Nature Both the moral Heathen faithful to his first-Covenant light or Law of rational Nature and the Jew or Christian possess'd of first-Covenant Life also both these are to keep the Command of the King here meant who gave them both the said Light and Life as the enlightner of every man that comes into the World Joh. 1. 9. As fast as Christ set up in Paul one light after another light of Nature light and life of the Law and then light and life of his Gospel-Spirit he walk'd faithfully in obedience to him Act. 23. 1. He obey'd him morally and then legally in first-Covenant light and then evangelically in the light of the second Man in all variety of light ought to be faithful to that King that gives all following that light as his Law in and to him for directing his steps in desire thought word and action Now a literal King oft establishes mischief by an evil Law or commands things contrary to establish'd good Laws and wants not for Flatterers that will tell him all are bound to obey such his personal Commands under pain of damnation from that of Rom. 13. 1 2. most falsly interpreted in a perfect contrariety to God's meaning in it Zedekiah swore Allegiance to Nebuchadnezzar who gave him that name signifying the Oath of God to mind him of his Covenant His rebelling and sending to Egypt for help against Nebuchadnezzar God revenges upon him Shall he prosper shall he break the 〈◊〉 and be deliver'd with the King that made him King whose Oath he despis'd in Babylon shall he die Ezek. 17. 14 -- 16. Yea v. 19. God calls it his Oath and Covenant the breach whereof therefore himself would recompence upon his guilty head Nebuchadnezzar and his Council of War at Riblah cause his Sons and all his Nobles to be 〈◊〉 before his eyes then put out his eyes and carry him prisoner to Babylon where he dies 2 King 25. 4 -- 7. So Jer. 39. 4 -- 7. and Jer. 52. 8 -11. This got he by rebelling against the words of the Lord by his two eminent Prophets Ezekiel in Babylon and Jeremy in Jerusalem A passive obedience to the Civil Magistrate in suffering for well doing 1 Pet. 2. 20. is what God requires even from Saints as acknowledging Civil Government an Ordinance of God under which by Providence they are put sigurative to a great spiritual Truth which is the full meaning of this advice for keeping the King's Command here in passive obedience under his Cross and Spiritual Sword on their natural state however faithfully they have demean'd themselves in it as Job Not then denying these literal Truths as to a right stated active or passive obedience to Civil Magistracies let 's turn our understandings to the ultimate sense of the counsel here given The absolute King here is Christ over all the Earth Psal. 2. 6 -8. This not in the spirit and life of the Law as the Jews would have made him Joh. 6. 15. but of the Gospel into which he rais'd our nature in himself In his resurrection-state is the Man Christ the universal Monarch as Paul interprets Psal. 2. 7. Act. 13. 33. By love or force shall every knee bow to and tongue confess this King All friends and foes must and shall pay homage to him when he takes to himself his great reigning Power Rev. 11. 17 or actually comes forth in the visible exercise thereof None shall be able to hurt or hinder him or his true subjects in his peaceable Reign over all He will dash enemies in pieces like a Potters Vessel with his Iron Rod or Scepter Psal. 2. 9. Isa. 11. 1 9. In that all-powerful new-creation life and name into which he has raisd our nature will he do all this to foes Nor is there Salvation in any other name or life for friends not in his partaken-of Law-name or life by the knowledg of him after the flesh or conformity to him in that perfect changeable first-covenant life of the Law he took as born of a Woman but that into which rais'd out of the death of that Act. 4. 10 12. He says that of himself in his Law-life he could do nothing The obedience he had to perform in that was passive as commanded of his Father John 10. 17 18. This suffering obedience appointed by the Father when finished Joh. 17. 4. our nature in him
was glorified and exalted by the Father into a life wherein he can do all the Father doth Joh. 5. 19 27. So Saints can do nothing of themselves or in their own Law-life towards Salvation but on the obedient surrender of that in Christ's Gospel-life can they do all things Phil. 4. 13. God then works all in or for them and they work all their works in him Isa. 26. 12 Phil. 2. 13. Joh. 3. 21. But consider how great this Man the King of Saints Ruler of all is He is anointed above all his fellow-Brethren that are Co-heirs with him of God in the transcendent prerogative of his fountain-creature-life of everlasting righteousness and also of his infinite divine life Psal. 45. 7. Rom. 8. 17 Saints that are Kings Priests to God will ever own him as their 〈◊〉 King of Kings Lord of Lords and High-Priest in a transcendent supremacy over and superiority to the highest Saints and all Saints and Angels put together All are to honour him as they honour the Father Jo. 5. 23. See then the weight of Solomon's Counsel here for keeping this King's Commandment to whom God has given all Rule and Authority over both Worlds as Heir of all things Psal. 2. 6 -- 9. Heb. 1. 2. The Reason he gives for this Counsel is in regard of the Oath of God This Oath implies the terms between God and the Man Christ on which he is to possess all God's Authority over his creatures The surrender of the pure and spotless natural Life of the Law for that spiritual Gospel-Creature Life that 's in unchangeable personal union with the divine entitles him to the exercise of all conjunctive divine and creature-power over all Christ's own Priestly Gospel-Spirit offer'd up his Law-spirit in Sacrifice to his Father as his part of the Covenant of the Oath the new and everlasting Covenant Then the Father perform'd his part made the Man Christ Ruler over all as advanced into the life of his original priestly Gospel-spirit and so made a Priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec or in the life of his creature-root the original 〈◊〉 And on the same account has he made him King over all Psal. 2. 6 7. All this hath God confirm'd by Oath to our mystical Lord Abraham figur'd by the literal on offering up his mystical Isaac or spotless natural Life to him God sware by Himself he would perform his promis'd part for advancing the Man Christ and Saints in their degree on the like obedient Sacrifice of their natural State So have they two immutable things for their strong consolation his immutable Counsel or living Creature-word and his immutable infinite Divinity Heb. 6. 13 18. Here 's the safe anchor-ground for Saints sure and certain hopes of eternal Life and Blessedness on surrender of their fading natural Saints by following Christ's suffering-steps into a conformity with him in his death are assur'd by him they shall reign with him in that life he is risen and ascended into 2 Tim. 2. 11 12. No other way can any come to reign with him Saints must keep his Command as he his Father's that has made him King Joh. 14. 15. 10. 18. These are the true and faithful sayings of his spiritual Law all yea and amen of absolute infallible certainty The same way our changeable nature comes to reign in him can it in us a change by death for his unchangeable creature-Life that 's spiritual and eternal The Man Christ the King of Kings in infinite divine and irresistible Creature-power exercises a universal kingly and priestly Authority in Love or Wrath over all Angels and Men good or bad He will sacrifice changeable nature as to any goodness thereof in them all in the incorrigibly wicked to God's revenging Justice No being saved but as with Christ obediently yeilding to the terms of the Covenant by Oath the new and everlasting Covenant even the sacrifice of all receiv'd by us in the first Psal. 50. 5. This must be done in regard of the Oath of God to Christ as our duty in obedience to this King's command to us who requires nothing of us herein but what himself has done Father and Son are herein obey'd or disobey'd together He that hath the Son hath the Father also and he that obeys the Son obeys the Father 2 Joh. v. 9. Mat. 10. 40. Luk. 10. 16. Joh. 15. 10. ver 23 24. 16. 15 27. Vers. 3. Be not hasty to go out of his sight stand not in an evil thing for he doth whatsoever pleaseth him Here 's a farther reason for obeying this great King He has full commission to do whatever he pleases in both Worlds to foes that set up in the first or natural and Friends that obediently quit that for the second or spiritual Be not hasty then to go out of his sight by wilful turning from that light by which he shews and offer 's that Life to you wherein he is King Think not to get out of his sight or reach of his Power He sees you whether you 'l see him or no. And his Power will reach you for your wickedness in refusing to see own and become willingly subject to him There 's no fleeing from his presence His presence in Wrath will reach you in Hell it self Psal. 139. 7 8. Yet will Enemies labour to shuffle themselves out of his presence They will bid him depart from them as not desiring the Knowledg of his Ways of saving them Job 21. 14 15. Even first-covenant holy Men desire not to hear of his Counsels for the saving them by the destruction of their fleshly life or natural state at best Yea true Saints for a season are found amongst these refusers of God's Reproofs and Counsels for their Salvation ignorantly with Paul And Job while frighted at the Death-discipline of the Cross upon his righteous natural state went a-while in company with the workers of Iniquitie pleading against the equity of it with strong reasonings and arguings as an injurious proceeding of God towards his Creatures thus 〈◊〉 charges him Job 34. 5 -- 9. Yea the natural Man even in awaken'd spiritual Saints will be at such work as offended and amaz'd at a being daily plagu'd and chast'ned notwithstanding all their 〈◊〉 circumspect walking while wicked Men have more then heart canwish See what strange conclusions an impetous hurry of carnal reasonings is ready to run them into Psal. 73. 1 -14. Jer. 12. 1 2. 20. 14 -- 18. But the spiritual Principle in the Saint lifts up the natural Eccle. 4. 10. into Sanctuary-light to see the design of God in these cryptick Methods of his wonderful Wisdom dealing with them as Sons Heb. 12. 7. while those that refuse such Chastisements perish by their very Prosperity as gratified in their self-chosen way to their everlasting Destruction Psal. 73. 15 -20. But thousands depart from Christ for ever and walk no more with him or look after him as coming with his Cross-doctrin
thereby even the promis'd gift of an everlasting righteous Life and so all their own fading good again with usury The Law or law-life in Man or Angel us'd unlawfully as kept up for Weapons of War in rebellion against Christ's Gospel-life is destroy'd by the said Sinner in evil Angels and Men. They thus destroy and frustrate all the good intended in and by their first-creation State and for ever exclude themselves from the immutable good of the second So destroy they much good even the whole good of the first and second Creation By the lawful use of the first they might have had all the good of both By the unlawful use thereof they spoil and lose all all the good given them in the former and offer'd them in the latter Then as six'd in unchangeable enmity to God they must fall and lie down for ever under the unchangeable Wrath of God as their undeniably just portion CHAP. X. V. 1. Dead Flies Heb. flies of death cause the Ointment of the Apothecary to send forth a stinking savour so doth a little Folly him that is in reputation for Wisdom and Honour THe dead flies or flies of death found in Men since the fall that cause the first-covenant precious Ointment of Christ the great mystical Apothecary or perfumer of Man's filthy loathsome corrupt polluted nature dead in trespasses and sins are a character of the 〈◊〉 to God's divine and creature-spirit which is filth of spirit in Man This enmity as the single product of the first sin is call'd the little folly in eminently restor'd righteous Man that with Job is there in great reputation for Wisdom and Honour Job 29. 7 -10 This little folly a changeable pardonable curable enmity to God in all comparatively with the great folly the incurable unpardonable great transgression or presumptuous sin unto death as thro' Man's wilful madness this changeable is turn'd into a fix'd unchangeable enmity to God in many this little folly what a noise it made in Job against the dispensation of the Cross when under it as we find at large by the reproofs Elihu and Christ himself came upon him with Job 32 to almost the end of that Book Man in the honour he was created in not understanding or duly considering the changeable nature of that honour and slipperiness of his standing in it soon fell and became as the Beasts that perish Psal. 49. 12 20. a brutified meer sensual creature as 't were having forfeited the righteous life of a Man And when restor'd by the redeemer out of that polluted bloody condition into the same kind of changeable first-covenant righteous life of a Man again Ezek. 16. 6. so as to remove and take off the punishment of the first sin the first sin it self is not hereby cured but through this very fresh coming of the command or Christ's setting up his first-covenant Law-life in him again does this sin of Enmity revive also which with and in dead nature lay as dead into an active bold confident daring presumptuous resisting of God and his Gospel-spirit as Paul experienc'd Rom. 7. 9 -11. And had he obstinately persisted in that course when convinced of his duty it had slain him for ever But he yielded to the death of that restor'd 〈◊〉 covenant law-life as the known means of abolishing that 〈◊〉 which reviv'd sprang up with it and is inseparable from it No way then to be rid of that enmity but by being rid of that life under the Cross. And no other way or on no other or lower and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 can God's Gospel-life of 〈◊〉 Righteousness be 〈◊〉 by or set up in us He therefore gloried in nothing save the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that by its twofold death and life-operation runs down the 〈◊〉 covenant life and 〈◊〉 up the second crucified all 〈◊〉 life and desire in his spirit to all this World's desirables and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it Gal. 6. 14. and set up a life in him the Palate Belly or 〈◊〉 and Desire whereof wholly and only savour'd 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 desir'd and 〈◊〉 after the things of God things eternal delights of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God He so became alive only to the World to come and that to him a meer Pilgrim and Stranger in and to this to the delights of the Sons of Men things seen temporal 1 Pet. 2. 11. 2 Cor. 4. 18. The dead Fly or little solly here is the same with the little leaven that leavens the whole lump Gal. 5. 9 of mankind which can be purg'd out of any no otherwise then by the death and Sacrifice of Nature at best from which inseparable And then with our sacrific'd spotless Nature in Christ our Pass-over shall we find that the destroying Angel even Christ with the same spiritual-Sword or Gospel-Cross will pass over us as to that use he will make of it in Wrath upon all fix'd incorrigible enemies Angels or Men. This fix'd leaven or Doctrine of the Pharisees in a sowr'd leaven'd spirit of unchangeable enmity in a 〈◊〉 Covenant righteous life against the second Law against Gospel is that Christ warn'd his Disciples to beware of Mat. 16. 6 11 12. For this cause did Christ sanctify our nature by the death thereof in himself that by the like death-sanctification the same fire-Baptism of his heavenly Spirit of Truth on our earthy-spirit of enmity and falshood he might sanctify it in us Joh. 17. 17 19. The enmity or Fly of death becoming unchangeable in Men renders them a most stinking abomination to God for ever Their Soul unchangeably loaths God's Soul or Spirit of Grace and his them Then Christ's fresh first-Covenant Gift that was for a season as salt to dry up the fleshly filth of their polluted nature loses its savour and the whole person becomes a stinking loathsome thing as all-over polluted with a spreading incurable Leprosy or most noisom Disease Vers. 2. A wise Man's heart is at his right hand but a fool's heart at his left Here 's a description of the truly wise and of the greatest fool The heart of the former is at his right hand fix'd and set to follow those right counsels of God in the life activity desire and thought of the incorruptible Seed of God's right-hand-planting in him by a new-creation which will set him at Christ's right hand when fools or lustful Goats in the activity life and desire of the corruptible seed of his left-hand-planting in them by a first-creation in which wholly set upon this worlds vanities will be found at his left-hand and doom'd to eternal punishment Mat. 25. 33 46. Saints give up their fleshly Tree with the fruits or works thereof their left-hand first-Covenant life to the death of the Cross that they may receive that right-hand second Covenant Gospel-life wherein to be wise unto Salvation Others of a perfectly contrary mind fool themselves into eternal damnation Vers. 3. Yea also when he that is a fool walketh by the way his Wisdom Heb. heart faileth him and
who so breaketh an hedg a Serpent shall bite him First-Covenant Life and second-Covenant Light are a twofold hedg of defence to secure Man from all dangers on his right hand and left The restor'd life of the Law is a hedg of defence for a season against the vile affections and lusts of corrupt nature dangers on the left hand Spiritual Light by which Christ in his spiritual Life is shew'd aud offer'd Men as their absolute Salvation is a hedg of defence to secure Men from the most dangerous sinning against that Supream Right-hand Mercy and gracious offer of it from God The first mystical hedg or fence against the workings of corrupt nature kept up in opposition to the second so as finally to turn from and reject the second which would secure from all sin in corrupt or righteous nature filth of flesh or spirit for ever this is Man's wilful breaking down the chief hedg for his security And then Satan the old poysonous Serpent breaks in upon him and bites or mortally wounds him to eternal death This by perswading Men to set up nature with him in an eternal opposition to God and his Grace Vers. 9. Whoso removeth stones shall be hurt therewith and he that cleaveth Wood shall be endangered thereby Stones here are the same with the hedg in the former Verse figuring the new-Creation Spirit and Light thereof This rocky-spirit of Christ in Saints renders them Rocks or living Stones in his spiritual house Mat. 16. 18. 1 Pet. 2. 5. Man's wilful refusing hating and turning from this rocky life shew'd and offer'd him is a removing these stones decrying and what in him lies pulling down this spiritual Temple and persecuting or scattering Christ and spiritual Saints the living Stone and lively Stones thereof This will bring the greatest hurt upon himself For this Stone or Spirit in Christ and Saints will fall upon him in wrath and grind him to powder Mat. 21. 44. t. And he that cleaveth wood shall be endanger'd thereby By cleaving wood is meant a separating the first benefit of the Cross or death of Christ a restor'd first-Covenant life from the second and consequently a setting up the first in unchangeable opposition to the second a Gospel-life of everlasting Righteousness and true Holiness God's Wisdom has found a way by the death of the former to join these two together in the new life of the latter By the obedient death of Nature corrupt or righteous is the changeableness and enmity of the former done away and so is it brought into unchangeable union with the latter and harmony of mind and will with God most high These that God requires a yeilding to his way of putting together as 〈◊〉 in Unity Psal. 133. 1. let no man presume to keep or put asunder as first-covenant Brethren do when they sit and speak against the second in despite to them and that spirit of Grace they are of and in Psal. 50. 20. Ezek. 33. 30 -- 32. Heb. 10. 29. Such cleavers or dividers of Wood the first benefit of the Cross from the second after a clear discovery of the whole design of the Cross to them will not only be endanger'd thereby but bring final destruction upon their own heads Vers. 10. If the Iron be blunt and he do not whet the edg then must he put to more Strength but Wisdom is profitable to direct Man's natural spirit fallen into sin and enmity whether in the corrupt or restor'd righteous Life thereof is the mystical blunt Iron here heavy and dull as to any right understanding of or obedience to the commands of God's spiritual Law 'T is more difficult to yield any obedience thereto then before the fall For now there 's positive enmity in it then not It therefore greatly needs the sharpning work of Christ's spiritual convictions to bring the blunted dull nature thereof so much as to see its unspeakeable concern in listning and submitting to the hard sayings and sharp discipline of his spiritual Law Those that finding themselves weary and heavy laden or overset as to such important concerns come to Christ for his spiritual life and senses for which willing to take up or submit to the death of their natural under his Cross will find all easie and plain both to understand and do Mat. 11. 28 30. His yoke is easie and burthen light Yea such yoke and burthen amounting only to our unchangeable subjection to his will that 's unchangeably subject to the divine is the very glorious liberty of the Sons of God And so also their sufferings in submitting to the yoke and burthen of his Cross on their natural will and spirit will in the prospect and certain sight of such glorious advantages not be reckon'd upon in any comparison therewith Rom. 8. 18. Scripture is a Parable or sharp saying and requires a sharp Wit that is spiritual understanding to discover the mysterious Things Truths or meaning of God's Spirit therein 'T is too painful yea impossible for Man's natural understanding to interpret and rightly understand so much as the providential dispensations of God to friends as foes and foes as friends Psal. 73. 3 -16. Spiritual understanding or Sanctuary-light discover's all v. 17. the voice of all Providences and the dark sayings or parables of all Scripture It can interpret oraculous dreams shew hard sentences dissolve doubts Dan. 5. 12. Take the total sum of its objects It discern's or judges all things 1 Cor. 2. 15. divine and twofold creaturely natural and spiritual the deep things of God's Infinite Divinity v. 10. his whole Counsel about the Salvation of his Creatures Act. 20. 27. and the whole counsel of the Devil for their Damnation the whole mystery of Godliness the whole mystery of Iniquity the mysteries of Christ's Spiritual Kingdom of marvelous light in his Gospel-Spirit the mysteries of Satan's accursed kingdom of marvelous darkness in his Law-Spirit 2 Cor. 2. 11. As God gradually more and more runs down the wisdom or understanding of the natural Man in the Saint into darkness by the demolishing operation of the Spirit of the Cross he raises it up more and more into the new all-discovering light or discerning of his spiritual which James calls his giving more Grace Jam. 4. 6. So the natural man or spiritual Prophets Servant in the Saint comes to see what the Prophet sees as in type 2 King 6. 17. Thus is man's understanding or spirit as more brought by way of Death and Resurrection into union of mind with the spiritual more and more whetted sharpn'd and enabled more clearly to discern the whole mind and do the whole will of God Paul found even Gospel-profelling Jews so dull of hearing or understanding so defective as to the right hearing ear reception or capacity for spiritual mysteries that he 〈◊〉 to have forborn the declaration of many things he otherwise would have said to them Heb. 5. 11. He clearly saw their darkness and incapacity as to spiritual Gospel-matters The most
1. Cast thy Bread upon the Waters for thou shalt find it after many days HEre 's an Admonition to the universal practice of Charity in doing good to all but specially to the houshold of Faith Gal. 6. 10. As having a compassionate fellow-feeling with our fellow-Creatures and Brethren in the same nature by a free-hearted distribution of this World's goods As contriving opportunities for the practice of this duty has God given some a super-abounding over-flow of such things while others are destitute of the very necessaries of Life To a faithful answering his design and our duty herein a Blessing is promised He that hath pity on the Poor lendeth to the Lord and that which he gives will he repay Prov. 19. 17. See also the contrary threat'ned Prov. 21. 13. Whoso stoppeth his Ears at the cry of the Poor he also shall cry himself and not be heard As for the peculiar charity to the houshold of Faith Christ's little ones as his spiritual Disciples this will not miss of the great reward Mat. 10. 42. 25. 34 40. But we should extend our charity also to all which though it seem but as a casting our Bread upon the Waters 't will through God's promised Blessing be found again Deut. 15. 10. Vers. 2. Give a portion to seven and also to eight for thou knowest not what evil shall be upon the Earth The practice of the said duty towards others is oft made a seeds-time to ones-self in such an unfore-known time of evil wherein we may be reduc'd to the like want Give and it shall be given you The same measure ye mete with shall it be measur'd to you again Luk. 6. 38. Such retaliation in distress will be comfortable when the said duty has bin well perform'd in prosperity So much of the literal sence of these two Verses In the spiritual or mystical what 's casting Bread upon the Waters Obedience to the Cross the spiritual Law whereof calls for mystical charity even the free giving up of all the Life Riches and fading Glory Wisdom and Strength of our own Spirit so as to become poor and dead with Christ there in order to live and reign with 〈◊〉 in that life he has rais'd our Nature into Here 's the recompence of such Love Obedience and Conformity to Christ a quitting our perishing life meats and riches for his never-perishing Christ himself was made poor in our Nature as to the mortal first-Creation 〈◊〉 and State thereof that thro' his exemplary poverty he might make many all followers of his suffering steps rich in God or in the everlasting righteous life of the second 2 Cor. 8. 9. The kindly suffering of the natural is the mystical seeds-time that will bring in a blessed harvest to the spiritual Man thro' an abounding fruitfulness in a newness of life Psal. 126. 5 6. Gal. 6. 7 8. He that sow's to the flesh builds his Faith hope and expectation for Blessedness on the corruptible life and fruitfulness of his but restor'd earthy natural state will reap corruption and eternal death He that sows to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap Life everlasting All in spiritual life principle and fruits the mystical Births and Children therein have Holiness to the Lord written in all their fore-heads The spirit of bondage and her Sons all Fruits Births or Works producible or performable in the most restor'd righteous natural state or life of the Law have all of them vanity and vexation to the Worker enmity and rebellion against the Lord writ out upon them All the Children there then are Children of death Except the 〈◊〉 seed of God's left-hand planting by a first-creation die in us 1 Cor. 15. 36 38. 1 Pet. 1. 23 25. as obedient to the husbandry and plough of Christ's spiritual Cross the incorruptible seed of an everlasting righteous life of God's right-hand planting in us has no room or way made for a springing up into its own life activity and fruitfulness under the powerful quickning influence of the same Spirit of Christ that destroys all our earthly life and fruit the mystical 〈◊〉 tree of good and evil root and branch tree and fruit This spiritual Love or Charity is the Saint to shew to Christ as the full and right payment of all mystical tithes and offerings to the true Melchisedec or high-Priest of God in a universal surrender of all changeable good things in his nature for all unchangeable good things in his Spirit of Grace as rais'd out of the death of his slain sacrific'd Nature into the life of the very Priest that slay's him But why should he be thus charitable and obedient to Christ Because he know's not what evil may be or come upon the earth even on all that rebelliously remain in their earthly life under final Wrath in everlasting poverty want and nakedness as to any goodness changeable or unchangeable A being willingly made poor there intitles to the true durable Riches and secures from all want for evermore in eternal life Vers. 3. If the Clouds be full of Rain they empty themselves upon the Earth and if the Tree fall towards the South or toward the North in the place where the Tree falleth there it shall be Man's natural spirit how everfill'd with the fading life riches fruits and products thereof at best must be emptied of and lose all again or never receives an everlasting life with the never-perishing meats fruits riches and clothing thereof Mat. 16. 25. North and South here may signifie the first and second or old and new-creation state Man in the first corrupt or righteous fall's toward the North into a cold barren desolate starveling condition for ever In the second toward the South has everlasting warmth and blessedness under the joynt shinings forth of the Divine and Creature-Sun of 〈◊〉 and everlasting Righteousness As the Tree fall's or Man dies in a six'd enmity to God as establish'd in his own life corrupt or righteous or in a spiritual life of everlasting union with and obedience to God there he shall be in Hell or Heaven Cold comfort in the former none at all under the scorching flames of unquenchable Wrath which will be found to make up to incorrigibly wicked Angels and Men a state of eternal darkness and death Vers. 4. He that observeth the Wind shall not sowe and he that regardeth the Clouds shall not reap The slothful Man that looks upon Winds and Clouds that are nothing but uncertainty it-self in their motions omit's the diligent husbanding his Ground and will not so sow as to reap any true profit or advantage to himself In the mystical sense he that neglect's Christ's voice and convincing discoveries not submitting to the spiritual husbandry of his Cross on his earthy natural state to make way for the springing up of a spiritual Seed and listen's to the stranger's voice the uncertain words or reasonings of Nature in himself or others signified here by Winds and Clouds for sparing that