they might rather be inclined to believe that he would not pardon such Criminals For as their Reason told them that God was Good So the same Reason told them that He was Just and had an infinite Regard to the Honour and Reputation of his Laws Which Laws their own Consciences told them they had heinously transgressed nor had they any thing wherewith to compensate or make satisfaction for the Transgression of them And therefore what could they expect from so Just a God but to undergo the punishment they had deserved This was a very uncomfortable Reasoning And yet such a one it was as there was no answer to be given to in the State of Nature and therefore in what a melancholy Condition were Mankind all the while What encouragement had they seriously to set upon the Amendment of their wicked Lives Or if they did what Fruit what Comfort could they promise to themselves by such amendment But Blessed be God that hath removed us out of these uncertainties Blessed be God that hath given us the greatest assurance that is possible of his Love and Kindness to the greatest of Sinners and consequently laid the greatest Obligation upon all Mankind to turn from their evil Ways He hath sent his Son his only Son into the World on purpose to assure us of his good Will to us to give a demonstration of the unfeigned Love and Kindness that He bears to every Soul of the Sons of Adam that he would not have any of them perish but that they should all come to the knowledge of the Truth and be saved This Son of His doth most Solemnly in the Name of his Father proclaim Pardon and Remission of Sins to every one that should believe in Him There is no Sinner excepted even the Oldest the Greatest the most Enormous of Sinners if they will come in and and submit to the Yoke of Jesus Christ have his certain Promise that they shall be received And least any one should fear the Divine Justice upon account that there is no satisfaction made to it for his Sins Our Lord hath taken care to remove that Objection For he by the unvaluable Merits of his Person and the free unconstrained Offering up of Himself to an ignominious Death upon the Cross on the behalf of Mankind hath made a full compleat and entire Satisfaction to God's Justice for all the Sins of the World from the beginning to the end thereof So that now every one hath free Access to God and a Right to his Favour through the Blood of Jesus Christ. And tho we have been never so bad never so unworthy yet if we have but the Hearts to forsake our Sins and to come to Jesus Christ we shall as certainly obtain the Acceptance and the Love of our Heavenly Father as if we had been Innocent and never sinned at all Nay God is not only willing to receive us but he earnestly begs and sollicits us to take his Mercy And so pleased he is at the Return of a Sinner that our Saviour has told us there is joy in Heaven over such a one Nay more joy among the Angels over a sinner that repenteth than over ninety nine just persons that need no Repentance O how welcome ought this News to be to us How transported should we be at the infinite Kindness of God manifested to us by our Saviour O! praised be God for his astonishing Love For ever adored be our Lord Jesus that has made a Propitiation for us by his Blood O let us for ever kiss and hug the pretious unvaluable Scriptures of the New Testament if there was nothing else in them but that faithful Saying that Saying worthy of all Men to be received That Iesus Christ came into the world to save sinners to save you and me and all Sinners even the greatest of Sinners O who is there that is in his Wits would chuse to be out of the Christian Dispensation or be left to the Methods of Nature and Philosophy for the attaining their Happiness as some loose People among us do sometimes talk Were the natural Talents of Mankind exalted far above what they either are or ever have been yet I would value that one Saying That Jesus Christ came into the World to save Sinners more than all the Notions and Speculations of Reason and Philosophy I would desire to know nothing but Iesus Christ and him crucified I would with the Apostle count all things as loss nay as Dung in comparison of the Excellency of the Knowledge of Christ Iesus my Saviour and that I may be found in him not having my own Righteousness which is by Nature but that Righteousness which is by the Faith of Iesus Christ who gave himself for me And thus much of Christ's appearing to put away Sin in the first Notion of that Expression But Secondly Christ appeared also to put away Sin in another sense That is to say To destroy the Power and Dominion of it from among Men to abolish it so as that it should not henceforth reign in our mortal Bodies To free us from Sin as the Apostle speaks that is to enable us to lead holy and virtuous Lives So that whereas Mankind heretofore yielded their Members Servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity so they should now yield their Members Servants to righteousness unto holiness Thus to put away Sin was as principal an End of Christ's coming as the other before mentioned nay perhaps more principal For the other in true reasoning may be said to be wholly in order to this Certain it is unless this End be attained the other will signifie nothing to us For we are not capable of any Benefit from the Remission of Sin which was purchased for us by Christ until our Sins be put away by Repentance and we become holy Persons by the change and renewal of our Natures Never therefore let us deceive our selves Though Christ hath actually put away all the Sins of the World in the former sense by his satisfaction that is to say hath procured the Pardon of them hath taken away the Sting of them so as that they shall not be deadly to any Yet all this is upon supposition that the Strength of them he taken away in us that they 〈◊〉 no Dominion over us that we mortifie them in all our Members that we daily die to them and live a Life o◠Righteousness All that Christ merited or purchased for the World will not do us the least good unless we be made conformable to him in his Death and Resurrection by our dying to Sin and living to Righteousness And in truth if we will mind it the putting away Sin in this sense of it hath as great weight laid upon it in Scripture and is as often assigned for the great End and Business of Christs appearance as the other S. John tells us plainly that for this purpose was the son of God manifested that he might destroy the works of the
do it in our Flesh and so united both the Deity and Humanity in one Person O what a sense ought this to impress upon us of the Honour that is hereby done to our nature and the Dignity it is advanced to And how ought that sense either to fright us or to shame us from prostituting this our Nature to any vile unworthy Mixtures and Communications which God did not disdain to take into so near a Relation to himself If we consider that this God in humane Flesh came as the Messiah the Saviour of the World so long before promised and so long expected How ought this to fill our hearts with Joy and Thankfulness How should it move us to pour out our Souls in Benedictions to God for having thus Visited and redeemed his People And putting us into that dispensation which so many Holy Men for so many Ages wished to see but did not see it nay and which the Angels themselves desired to look into and which the Jews for rejecting at the time it was published are to this day a standing Monument of God's Displeasure and Vengeance If we consider the many Evidences that this our Saviour gave at his Appearance of his being the true Christ How exactly in all the Circumstances of his Nativity and all the Passages of his Life he fulfilled the Prophecies which went before of him and how convincing the Testimonies were which God gave to the Truth of his Mission How ought this Consideration to strengthen our Faith in this Christ To make us constant to the death in owning him for our Saviour our Messiah in Opposition to all the Pretences of the Jews and Infidels and Atheists and Scepticks to the contrary Lastly If we consider the mean Circumstances that this our Christ chose to appear in so say below the Dignity of so great a Prince that there is not the poorest Beggar 's Child among us but generally finds better Accommodation when it comes into the World O what a Check what a Rebuke ought this to be to that Spirit of Ambition and Pride and Vain-glory that too often possesses us poor Mortals How ought it to take off our admiration and lessen the too great esteem we are apt to have of all outward Pomp and Greatness Nay and to make us despise all the glittering Shews and Bravery of the World Since God has given us so visible a demonstration by the sending his own Son into it how little a Value he sets upon these Things But II. I proceed to the Second Point which my Text leads me to speak to and that is the Time of our Saviour's Appearance here mentioned Once hath he appeared in the end of the World You see here that the time of his Appearance is said to be the end of the World But how is that to be understood If we take the expression in the literal sense and as we commonly use it the thing is not true For there have already passed near seventeen hundred Years since our Saviour's Appearance and yet the end of the World is not come nor do we know when it will But there will be no difficulty in this matter if we carefully attend to the Phrase the Apostle here useth and interpret it according to the Propriety of the Language in which it is delivered The word in my Text is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which every body that is versed in the style of the New Testament knows may be better and more naturally rendred the Consummation or Conclusion of the Ages than the End of the World For the understanding this Phrase we must have recourse to the known Idiom of the Jews who used to speak of the several Oeconomies and Dispensations under which the World successively had been or was to be as of so many 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Ages The last of which Ages and the Accomplishment and Completion of all of them they held to be the Age of the Messia◠beyond which they knew there was to be no other Age or Oeconomy With reference to this way of speaking the Times of the Gospel dispensation are frequently called in Scripture the Last Times the Last Days the Fulness of the Times and in the Text the Consummation or Shutting up of the Ages The meaning of all which Phrases is no more than this That the Times of the Gospel that is the Appearance and Revelation of our Saviour though God intended them from the beginning yet should they be the last of all Times There should be several Dispensations set on foot in the World before they came and when those times were fufilled when the Ends of those Dispensations were accomplished then should our Saviour appear and begin his Kingdom which should never be succeeded by any other This is the true meaning of Christ's appearing 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Text expresseth it that is not as we translate it in the end of the World but in the last of the Ages or at the time when the Ages were fulfilled and accomplished Now what use we are to make of this Consideration the Apostle himself doth fairly intimate to us in the beginning of this Epistle God saith he who at sundry times and in diverse manners spake in times past unto the Fathers by the Prophets hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son whom he hath made heir of all things and by whom he made the worlds And so he goes on to set forth the incomparable Dignity and Preheminence of this last Messenger of God above that of either Angels or Men by whom he had spoke to mankind before But what is the inference he draws from all this Why that you may see in the beginning of the second Chapter We ought therefore saith he to give the more earnest heed to the things we have heard that is to say the Doctrine of the Gospel lest at any time we let them slip For if the word spoken by Angels was stedfast and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompence of reward How shall we escape if we neglect so great Salvation as was spoken to us by the Lord Jesus The Apostle's Argument here proceeds on this manner God's Revelation of his Will to Mankind and the discovery of his Grace and Goodness was not all at once but gradual and by parts He first spake to Mankind by the Patriarchs who were burning and shining Lights in their Generations He afterwards singles out the Nation of the Jews to be his peculiar People and to them he gives a written Law which was delivered to them by Angels in the hand of Moses their Mediator as the Apostle speaks in the third of the Galatians which Law was a shadow or dark representation of the Good things which were afterward to be revealed After this he sends Prophets in a continual Succession for several Ages who do more clearly discover God's will to them who call upon them to Holiness and Virtue and who speak in
devil And S. Paul likewise tells us that he therefore gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purifie to himself a peculiar people zealous of good works And lastly S. Peter gives the same account of his coming Acts 3.26 where he tells us that therefore God raised up his Son Iesus that is sent him into the World for his raising up there spoken of as any one will see that looks into the Context was not his being raised from the dead but his being manifested to Mankind For here the Apostle's business is to apply that Promise or Prophesie of Moses unto our Saviour viz. that God would in due thim raise up to his People a Prophet like unto him whom they should all be obliged to hearken to I say therefore God raised up his Son Iesus i.e. sent him into the World that he might bless his People in turning every one of them from their Iniquities This turning every one from their Iniquities was the great End for which our Lord Jesus Christ was manifested unto Mankind And indeed Reason will teach us all this as well as Revelation For in the nature of the thing none can be truly Happy but those that are truly Pious And in the same degree and proportion that any one is wicked or is under the power of his Lusts in the same degree he must needs be miserable So that if Christ came to be our Saviour and in that meant either to make us happy or to keep us from being miserable there was an absolute necessity that his first and principal Design must be to root our of our Nature all Sin and Wickedness and to restore the Image of God in our Minds which consists in unchangeable Purity and Holiness and Goodness Away therefore with all those Hypotheses that give such an account of Christs coming into the World as to make the ultimate End of it to be the freeing us from Hell and Damnation and purchasing Heaven and eternal Life for us but without any respect had to the renewing our Natures or the making us sincerely Holy and Virtuous All such Accounts of Christ's Undertaking are monstrously unreasonable and absurd For not to insist upon the manifest Affront they put upon God's Justice and Holiness in making Him the great Patron of Sin whilst they assert Him to be the Justifier of wicked Men even whilst they continue wicked You cannot as I said but see in the first place how very much such Doctrins do disparage the Love of our Saviour and lessen his Undertaking For whilst He is here supposed to have Redeemed us only from his Fathers Wrath and the Punishment consequent thereupon leaving us in the mean time to the wickedness and impurity of our own Nature which alone without the accession of any other external Evil is a misery great enough He is hereby rendred but half a Saviour One that freed us indeed from an External Evil but left us irremediably exposed to an internal one as grievous as the other One that delivered us from the apprehensions of a Gibbet or an Executioner but could not or would not cure us of the inward Sicknesses and Maladies under which we languished But this is not all In the second place it ought to be taken notice of what an absurd inconsistent Notion this kind of Doctrine gives us of the Happiness of Mankind For whilst they suppose that a Man under the Power and Dominion of Sin is capable of that Happiness which Christ purchased for us in the other World which Happiness as both Scripture and Reason testifie doth chiefly consist in the enjoyment of God and of his Excellencies and Perfections They must at the same time suppose that a Man may be rendred happy by the enjoyment of that of which he has no Sense no Perception or rather to speak properly that he is the happiest Creature alive in the enjoyment of an Object to which he has the greatest a version and antipathy in the World Which if it be not an absurdity I know not what is When Light can have Communion with Darkness when God can have Fellowship with Belial Then and not till then can a wicked Man a Man that lives in Sin and loves it he capable of that Happiness which Jesus Christ hath purchased for us IV. The Fourth thing I should speak to from this Text is the Means by which our Saviour brought to pass the great End of his Appearance viz. the putting away of sin Which Means are said to be the Sacrifice of himself Now once in the end of the World hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself Two things should be done in order to a just Discourse upon this point First To give an account how the Death of Christ was a Means for the putting away of sin in the first Sense I gave that is the procuring the Pardon of it Secondly How it was a Means of putting it away in the other Sense that is the destroying or mortifying it in us But these things being Foreign to our present Business and more proper for the Argument of a Good-Friday Sermon I shall say no more of them but proceed to my last point V. The Fifth and last thing observable from the Text is the difference of Christ's sacrifice whereby he put away sin from the Mosaical ones Which difference so far as it is here taken notice of consists in this That the Legal Sacrifices for the Expiation of Sin were daily offered But Christ offered the Sacrifice of himself but once Once in the end of the World c. The Apostle in this Chapter is discoursing of the Difference between the Law and the Gospel And as to that Point he insists much on the Difference of their Sacrifices The Christians that owned the Gospel had but one Sacrifice the Sacrifice of Christ once offered whereas those that were under the Law were forced to have many Nay even the most solemn Sacrifice that God had appointed for the Expiation of their Sins was repeated once a Year as the Apostle tells us in the Verse before my Text. But now the Sacrifice of Christ which he puts by way of opposition to theirs that was but once offered and was never to be repeated This is the Point with which he concludes this Chapter two Verses after my Text Christ saith he was once offered to bear the sins of many and unto there that look for him shall be appear the second time unto salvation This is the Apostle's Doctrine and I insist on it now because all those that design on this day to receive the Holy Sacrament are concerned in it Let us from hence take notice that in this Service of the Holy Communion we are not to pretend to offer Christ as a Sacrifice to his Father His Sacrifice was but once to be offered and that was done 1600 Years ago and in the Virtue of that Sacrifice once offered all faithful Christians and sincere
Penitents shall receive Remission of Sins and all other Benefits of his Passion But for us to think of offering Christ again as a Sacrifice is in effect to put our selves into the same rank and condition with the unbelieving Jewes that is to need the repetition of the same Sacrifices every Year nay every Day which is the very reason for which the Apostle denys the Efficacie of them We do not indeed deny but that every time we approach to the Lord's Table for the receiving of the Holy Communion we offer Sacrifices to God For we offer our Alms which we beg of God to accept as our Oblations and these in the Language of Scripture are Sacrifices with which God is well pleased We likewise offer our Sacrifice of Praise and Thanksgiving to God for the Death of our Saviour And all our Prayers and Supplications we put up in his Name and in the Virtue and for the Merits of that Sacrifice he offered to God in our behalf And in so doing we commemorate that Sacrifice both to God and before Men. And this is all we are confident that the Ancient Church meant by the great Christian Sacrifice or the Sacrifice of the Altar But if we go further if we will in the Communion pretend to offer up the Body and Blood of Christ in Sacrifice to God that was once sacrificed upon the Cross It is intolerable It is a thing that was never dreamed of in the first Ages of the Church It is directly contradictory to the Foundation of all the Apostles Argument and Discourse here in the Text and the very supposal of it brings along with it many grievous Absurdities in the Theory and something that looks like impious in the Practice And yet this is the constant and avowed Doctrine and Practice of the Church of Rome in every Sacrament they have and that is in every Mass that is said among them The main business of that Mystery they make to consist in the Priest's offering up to God the very Body and Blood of Christ the same Body and Blood that was once offered up at Jerusalem this they pretend to offer up as a Sacrifice every day and they attribute to this their Offering the same Virtue and Efficacy that the Apostles and all Christians have always attributed to the one Sacrifice of Christ upon the Cross that is that it is a true propitiatory Sacrifice for the Living and for the Dead And none among them dare deny this under pain of an Anathema as the Council of Trent hath ordered the matter Good God! whither will Interest and Faction and Zeal for a Party transport Men But it is not my business to expose them but to put you in mind of what concerns our selves namely as I said that when we come to the Lord's Table we do not approach thither with a belief that our Lord Jesus is there again offered but only with a design to commemorate his Sacrifice that was once offered We come not thither to sacrifice Christ but to be Partakers of his Sacrifice We are not to feast God but God there feasts us and that with the best Food in the World such Food as will nourish us to eternal Life if we be worthy Guests Only we must not appear before God empty at this Solemnity We must offer to him of our Substance We must offer our Prayers and Supplications not only for our selves but for all the World but more especially for all that are called by the Name of Christ and among those most particularly for our own Church and Kingdom and all Orders and Degrees of Men therein We must offer likewise our selves our Souls and Bodies a living sacrifice holy and acceptable to God which is our reasonable service And lastly to conclude we must offer our most hearty and affectionate Thanks to God Almighty for that incomprehensible Instance of his Love in sending Christ Jesus to us to be our Saviour for his wonderful Birth for his holy Life for his pretious Death for his glorious Resurrection and Ascension and for his Intercession for us at the right hand of God And O thou Blessed Saviour that hast done all this for us give us such a lively Sense of thy marvelous Love in leaving thy Glory and taking Humane Flesh upon thee that thou mightest dwell among us and instruct us in our Duty and assist us in the performance of it and encourage thereto by the glorious Hopes of a never dying Life and at last make thy self an Offering for our Sins O let these things sink so deeply into our Minds and so wholly possess our Hearts that we may entirely give up our selves to thee That we may with our whole Souls embrace all thy Doctrines and Revelations That we may endeavour in all our Actions to conform our selves to thy Example and make it the Business of our Lives to be obedient to thy Precepts to submit to thy Will and to be contented to be disposed of by thee in all the Circumstances of our Lives O let nothing in thy Religion ever be an Offence to us But enable us to hold the Profession of our Faith in thee without wavering in all the Tryals and Difficulties thou shalt think fit to expose us to that so in Faith and Obedience in Patience and Perseverance we may ever wait for and at last obtain that Crown of Righteousness which thou hast laid up for all that love thee and expect thy second and more glorious Appearance To thee O eternal Son of God thou great Lover of Mankind to thee who tookest upon thee to deliver man and didst not abhor the Virgins womb to thee who overcamest the sharpness of death and didst open the Kingdom of Heaven to all believers to thee O most dear O most beloved O most adorable Jesus be for ever given by us and by all the Souls whom thou hast redeemed and by all the Creatures in Heaven and Earth all Honor and Glory and Praise all Service and Love and Obedience henceforth and for evermore FINIS