Himself without witness and that He hath made manifest in His works what may be known of Him But all this light doth only shew us the greatness of their corruption For they with all the vivacity of their spirits made no proficiency in the School of Providence unto the fearing of GOD and serving Him but became vain in their reasonings and miserably abused the gifts of Heaven so as the whole success of this dispensation was nought else on their part but that they were thereby rendred inexcusable Conclude we then that all men generally not one excepted are of their own nature such as the Apostle here describes the Colossians strangers and enemies to GOD in their understanding in wicked works There is nothing but the word of the LORD alone which is able to bring them out of this estate by the saving grace of His Spirit wherewith GOD accompanies it And this the Apostle representeth here to the Colossians in the second place For having minded them of their former condition he addeth Yet now hath GOD reconciled you by the body of His flesh that is the flesh of JESUS CHRIST by His death The condition they were in before was very miserable For what can be imagined more wretched than men far from and strangers to GOD in whose communion alone all their welfare consisteth men enemies to Him without whose love they can have no true good yet besides misery there was horrour also in their case Misery doth ordinarily stir up pity their 's was worthy of abhorring and hatred For what is there in the world that less deserves the compassion of GOD and men or is more worthy of the execration of Heaven and Earth than a Subject that withdraweth from His Soveraign that hates Him and Warrs against Him that insolently violates all His Laws and abandons himself to all the crimes He hath forbidden especially if the Soveraign be gracious and beneficent as the LORD is the only Author of all the being life and motion that we have Nevertheless Oh inestimable and incomprehensible goodness GOD for all this forbore not to have pity on the Colossians He sought to them when they were alienated from Him He offered them peace when they made War upon Him He took them for His friends and chose them for His Children when they shewed Him the greatest hatred and enmity Their wicked works deserved His curse and He bestowed on them His grace Their rebellion deserved His direful flashes and He sent them His comfortable light This opposition the Apostle indicateth here when he saith And yet you hath God reconciled A like opposition he expresseth elsewhere Rom. 5.8 in the same matter saying GOD altogether commendeth His love to us-ward in that while we were but sinners CHRIST dyed for us For the setting forth of this great grace of GOD towards these faithful people he saith that GOD hath reconciled them Having spoken of their estrangement and of their enmity with GOD He doth with good reason make use of the word Reconcile to signifie the setting of them again in His good liking and favour It happens somtimes in the misunderstandings of men that the averseness and hatred is but on one side one of the parties seeking the favour of the other Here as we have yerst intimated the aversion was mutual For we hated GOD and He because of our sins hated us It was necessary therefore for the restoring of us that both the one and the other of these two passions should be remedied that is that the wrath of GOD against us should be appeased and our hatred and enmity against Him extinguished The word Reconcile doth of its self comprehend both the one and the other But in the Apostle's writings it referreth principally to the first that is the mitigation and appeasing of the wrath of GOD. As indeed this is the principal point of our reconciliation For GOD being our soveraign LORD it would not benefit us at all to change our will towards Him if His did not operate otherwise towards us as the repentance and tears of a subject are vain if his Prince reject them and remain still angry with Him Furthermore the word Reconcile as also the most part of other words of like form and nature is taken two manner of ways For either it signifies simply the action that hath such vertue as is necessary to make reconciliation or it compriseth the effect of it also It 's in the first sense that the Apostle used it afore where he said that GOD hath reconciled all things celestial and terrestrial in Himself or for Himself having made peace by the blood of the cross of CHRIST For he meaneth simply that GOD hath taken away the causes of hatred and enmity and opened the way of reconciliation not that all things are already actually reconciled It 's thus again that we must take 2 Cor. 5.19 what he saith elsewhere that GOD was in CHRIST reconciling the world unto Himself not imputing unto them their trespasses But the Apostle takes the word Reconcile in the second sense when he saith that we have obtained reconciliation by CHRIST and when he beseecheth us to be reconciled to GOD it being evident that in these places he intendeth not the right and power only but the very effect and actual having of reconciliation It 's after this second way that we must take the word reconcile in the Text. For again this Reconciation may be considered two ways first in general as made by JESUS CHRIST on the Cross and secondly in particular as applyed to each of us by Faith In the first consideration it is presented to all men as sufficient for their salvation according to that doctrine of the Apostle Tit. 2.11 1 Joh. 2.2 that the Grace of GOD is saving to all men and that also of St. John that JESVS CHRIST is the propitiation for our sins and not for ours only but for the sins of the whole world Under the second consideration it appertaineth only to the faithful according to that clause of the covenant which declareth That the only Son was given to the world that whosoever believeth in Him Joh. 3.16 should have eternal life It 's precisely in this sense the Apostle saith here that GOD had reconciled the Colossians he meaneth not simply that GOD had given them through the cross of His Son that they might be reconciled to Him by believing but also that He had effectively reconciled them to Himself and put them in real possession of the benefits that were purchased for us by the merit of CHRIST embracing them as His children pardoning them all their sins and obliviating all His wrath and the aversion their offences had given Him towards them But the Apostle mentions to them yet again here the means by which this reconciliation was effected as being a thing of infinite importance both to the glory of GOD and their edification He hath reconciled you saith he by the body of His
have cause to complain of it as He yerst did of that of Israel I expected saith He it should bring forth grapes and it brought forth wild grapes Sure He hath had no less care of ours than of theirs He hath planted it in like manner with choice Vines He hath also environed it with a brave and admirable hedge He hath watered it with the rain of His Clouds and made the beams of His Sun of Righteousness to shine on it and may justly say of it What was there more to be done to my Vineyard that I have not done to it Be we not ungrateful to so sweet a Master Let not our sterility confound His expectation Let our fruits be answerable to His cares and our secondity to His husbandry Let there be no soul barren and unprofitable among us Let each one Fructifie of that He hath each one improve the dressing and sap the LORD hath given us Let the sinner present Him his repentance the Just his Perseverance the Rich his Almes the Poor his Praises Old Age its Prudence Youth its Zeal Let the Knowing abound in Instruction the Strong in Modesty the Weak in Humility and all together in Charity And since it is the good pleasure of our Heavenly Father that we have here divers combats as none may live piously without persecution prepare we also for this other part of our duty and supplicate the LORD with the Apostle that He do strengthen us with all strength according to the power of His glory that He do give us a firm and unmoveable patience to persevere constantly in the Holy Communion of His Son so as neither the promises nor the threatnings of the World neither the Lusts nor the fears of Flesh may be ever able to debauch us from His Service O GOD our task is great and we are feeble Our enemies are Giants and we but Dwarfes Therefore thy self work in us merciful LORD the work which thou commandest us Perfect thy glorious power in our weaknesses Strengthen our hands and confirm our hearts that we may combat vigorously and atchieve great things in thy Name and after the trials and tentations of this life may one day receive in the other from the Sacred and Sweet hand of thy Son the glorious Crown of immortality which we breathe after So be it THE V. SERMON COL I. Ver. XII XIII Vers XII Giving thanks unto the Father who hath made us capable to partake of the inheritance of Saints in light XIII Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness and translated us into the Kingdom of His well-beloved Son DEar Brethren Though the first Creation of man be a most illustrious master piece of the goodness power and wisdom of GOD this great worker then making Adam of the dust and forming Him after His own image to live and reign on earth in a soveraign felicity Yet it must be confessed that our restauration of JESUS CHRIST is much more excellent and admirable For whether you consider the things themselves which have been given us or have respect to the quality of those to whom they have been communicated or to what the LORD did for the communicating of them you will see that the second of these two benefits of His doth surpass the first every way The first gave us an humane nature the second hath communicated to us a divine one The first made us a living soul the second maketh us a quickning spirit By the one we had an earthly and animal being by the other we receive a spiritual and heavenly one The one seated us in the garden of Eden the other elevateth us to the Heaven of Glory There we had a Lordship over living Creatures and the Empire of the Earth here we have the fraternity of Angels and the Kingdom of Heaven There we enjoyed a life full of delight but infirm and depending as that of other living Creatures on the use of meat and drink and sleep Here we possess one full of vigour and strength which like that of blessed spirits is sustained by its own vertue without need of other nourishment The one was subject to change as the event hath declared the other is truly immortal and immutable and above the accidents that altered the first The advantage of the first man was that he might have not dyed the priviledge of the second is that he cannot dye But the difference will appear no less in the disposition of the persons to whom the LORD hath communicated these benefits if you attentively consider it I confess that dust which GOD invested with an humane form merited not a condition so excellent and received it from the meer liberality of the Creatour But if it were not worthy of such a savour at least it had nothing in it which rendred it uncapable thereof in the rigour of justice Whereas we not only have not merited the salvation which God giveth us in His Son but have over and above merited that death which is opposite to it If the matter upon which the LORD wrought in the first creation of man had no disposition for the form He put in it so neither had it any repugnancy thereto whereas in our second Creation that is in our redemption by JESUS CHRIST He findeth in us souls so far from complying with His operation that they potently resist it So you see that to effect the first work He employed only the single out-going of His will and word whereas for creating the second it was necessary He should shake the Heavens send down His Son to earth deliver Him up to death and do miracles that astonished men and Angels It 's with this grand and incomprehensible mysterie of GOD that the Apostle entertaineth us my Brethren at this time in the Text which you have heard For having finished the exordium that is the Preface of this Epistle and intending from thence to enter on His principal subject to slip the more gently into it after representing to the Colossians the Prayers he made to GOD for them he now adds the thanks he offered Him for their common salvation and by this means opens the entry of his dispute touching the sufficiency and inexhaustible abundancy of JESUS CHRIST for saving of believers which leaves no need of making any addition to his Gospel Giving thanks unto the Father saith he who c As this Text consists of two verses so it may be divided into two articles In the first the Apostle giveth thanks unto GOD for His making us capable of entring into the inheritance of His Saints In the second is proposed what he hath done to make us capable of this happiness namely delivered us from the power of darkness and translated us into the Kingdom of His beloved Son These are the two points we will handle if it please the LORD in this action humbly beseeching Him to guide us in meditating so excellent a mysterie and touch our hearts so vively with it as that it
Burial is nothing else but a consequent of death It 's the sad and dismal state to which it reduceth men ever since they became guilty that is to say it makes up a part of the punishment of sin As indeed it 's a hideous thing and full of horror to see so noble and excellent a Creature in whom the Image of GOD did shine forth and who had been formed for immortal glory to be brought down to the grave under the power of Worms and putrefaction JESUS CHRIST therefore having undergone this ignominious Infirmity for us and for our Salvation that he might leave none of our penalties unsatisfied for it 's evident that when he was buried we were buried in him and with him since it was properly for us that he did descend into the Sepulcher He bore us upon the Cross He bore us in the grave We all were in him forasmuch as he in all this work acted but for us We did and suffered these things since we are the cause that he did and suffered them We were buried in him forasmuch as His being buried hath discharged this part of our punishment and so changed the nature of our graves that instead of being prisons and places of execution they are now so many beds and dormitories wherein our bodies do repose until the resurrection Thus his burial hath freed ours from the curse which is naturally upon it and this benefit makes up a part of that justification which he hath merited for us it comprehending an exemption from all the penalties that are due to our sins But it is not in this sense that the Apostle saith we have been buried with JESUS CHRIST For he speaks here of the first part of our sanctification which is nothing else but the mortifying of the body of sin or old man in us and its burial that is the bringing it to nought It 's therefore properly in this respect S. Paul says that we have been buried with JESUS CHRIST even in as much as by the virtue of his death and burial our old man hath been destroy'd and suffer'd a death and burial semblable and analogical to JESUS CHRIST's For as his flesh after it was depriv'd of life was laid in a grave in like manner the old man of true believers having been stain is interred and brought to nought And as the LORD JESUS left in the Sepulcher his Funeral linnen clothes together with all the infirmity and mortality he had and came forth vested with a nature and a life fully refined from all that weakness of the first Adam which appeared in him during the days of his flesh even so the faithful do put off for ever that body of sin wherewith their first Parent had enwrapped them and leave it in their mystical Sepulcher to be resum'd no more but that they may henceforth lead a life free and exempt from all its filthiness and turpitude Lastly As the burial of our Saviour was properly but a progression and continuation of his death so likewise that of our old man is but a prosecuting of his destruction 't is the estate this puts him in and under it he abides for ever without rising any more S. Paul does else where clearly shew us that it is thus we must understand his words as when he saith in the sixth to the Romans that we are buried with CHRIST by baptism into his death Rom. 6.4 5. that as he was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father so we should likewise walk in newness of life and immediately after he saith that we have been made one self-same plant with him by the conformity of his death and resurrection To which must be also added that it is in him and with him we have been buried in this sort for that in his death and burial the principles and causes of ours were contained His death hath destroyed our old man and his burial hath interred him it being evident that if our LORD had not suffered both the one and the other for our salvation sin would still live and reign in us For it is the love of GOD and his peace and the hope of glory the true effect of our Saviour's death and burial that gives the deaths-wound to our old man and that doth abolish and bury his whole life See then how we are buried with him not that to speak properly our bodies do really enter into the grave in Joseph of Arimathea's garden where his abode three days away with so childish a conceit but for that the virtue of his death and holy Sepulcher doth derive into us an image and a copy of his burial destroying and burying our old man by his efficacy and bringing on him a mystical death and burial conform to his own real and mystical one This now which the Apostle addeth that we are also risen again together with him must also be understood after the same manner As our death and burial with him is mystical and spiritual so is likewise our resurrection these words signifying no other thing but that he by the virtue of his resurrection doth work and produce one in us which hath resemblance and analogy with his own And this resurrection of the faithful in consequence and by the efficacy of JESUS CHRIST's is their being renewed unto an holy spiritual and Evangelical life For even as the LORD having put off on the Cross and left in the grave that earthy infirm and natural life which he had led here below during the days of his flesh did put on a new one that was glorious spiritual and immortal rising from the grave a man heavenly and living to eternity by the sole strength of a quickning spirit so likewise all his true members having quitted their old man as destroyed and abolished by the virtue of his death do put on the new which is formed in righteousness and holiness and instead of that vile and wretched life which they led aforetime in the turpitude and fifth of sin they take up another wholly new one which is quickned by the Spirit from on high upheld by his power and shineth all over with the glorious lights of his sanctity charity and purity But besides this conform â—y between the new nature which we receive in JESUS CHRIST and that same which he put on at his coming forth of the grave we are said to rise again with him because it is the virtue of his resurrection that produceth all this change in us His resurrection is the cause of ours without it we should lye dead still and in bondage to sin This will appear if you afford ever so little attention to consider it For that which formeth the new man in us and gives us the courage to renounce the world that we may live pure and holy is as every one knows the perswasion of the love of GOD and of the remission of our sins and the hope of blissful and glorious immortality Now it is the
XLIX SERMONS Upon the Whole EPISTLE OF THE APOSTLE St. PAUL TO THE COLOSSIANS In Three Parts BY THAT FAMOUS MINISTER OF THE REFORMED CHURCH in PARIS Mr. John Daille Author of that Incomparable BOOK Intituled The RIGHT VSE of the FATHERS Translated into English by F.S. LONDON Printed by R. White for Tho. Parkhurst and are to be sold at his Shop at the Bible and three Crowns in Cheapside near Mercers Chappel 1672. To the HONOURABLE Sr. Will. Courtenay Of Pouderham Castle in the County of Devon Baronet SIR THE Divine Epistle of S. Paul to the Colossians was not to rest in their hands but by his express order to be communicated unto the neighbouring Laodiceans as we read in the Epistle it self towards the end It would therefore seem a little congruous that these Sermons which expound it do undergoe a like disposal and not confined to the French to whom they were originally Preached be imparted to the neighbouring English The Author of them was He whom his Auditors at Charenton did frequently call for the beauty and richness of his Discourses the Silver-tongue Daille Readers here have applauded and do esteem highly for his Apologie and that exquisite Treatise of the use of the Fathers both which have for some years spoke our Language The learned all abroad do know him and value him for divers other excellent labours He signalized himself both at the Press and in the Pulpit and GOD was pleased to crown him in His service with the glory of a vigorous and venerable old age I confess I was none of the meetest to represent this Work of his and communicate it as I do nor did I design it at the entrance But a private exercise receiving some encouragement grew up and comes at length into a publication Neither am I without hope but that the known English civility for strangers will be shewed Mr. Daille though his Interpreter be no more then he is Yea while that Reverend man interpreteth here a great Apostle and presseth as he doth solid religiousness towards GOD Loyal Subjection to Princes and Superiours Peace and Love and every Vertue among men I would promise him Christian attention and consideration a calm and generous enduring of little discrepancies if any occurr and all the respect that befits a Minister of CHRIST Now Sir I deem it not improper to put into Your hand a piece which had its Original in France when I reflect upon the illustriousness of Your Ancestry sometime there I cannot but mind in particular how the Family was engraffed into the Royal House it self Peter a Son of Louis le Gros espousing the Inheretrix a Name and Arms of Courtenay so becoming the stock whence those Noble afterbranches issued which did spread forth on this and on that side of the Sea But the Dominion and Empire of GOD is equally over all the Kinreds and Kingdoms of the World and unto Him every one 's greatest and nearest relation I tender therefore the present Volume chiefly as spent upon the illustrating and enforcement of His holy mind and will and do beseech You to accept the gratitude which it is tendred withall That every Divine blessing may descend and rest upon Your Person and Affairs Your Vertuous Honourable Lady and all those sweet Branches about Your Table is the earnest and incessant Prayer of SIR Your Obliged and Affectionately devoted Servant F. S. TO MONSIEUR Monsieur du Candal LORD of FONTINAILLE Counsellour and Secritary of the KING House and Crown of France SIR I Present You these Sermons believing I owe this acknowledgement not only to the Friendship wherewith you honour me but much more to the edification and good offices the Church where I preached them receiveth now a long time from your piety For besides the fair example which your life giveth us a life full of vertue and honour always constant and equal in the profession and holy Exercises of the truth of the Gospel there hath been presented no occasion of doing service to the people of GOD either in the one or in the other of their times but you have embraced with zeal and managed with prudence So likewise we see that the Good and Merciful LORD you serve hath crowned your obedience with the benedictions of His Grace For in the inequality of seasons and the diversity of affairs He hath still rendred You acceptable both to those within and even to them without And which is the principal He hath preserved His Covenant in your house that neither the vanity of the world nor the scandal of the time hath been able to make any of the breaches there which we see with grief in other families To establish this pretious heritage of piety in your blood His Providence hath added to it by alliance persons excellent in knowledge and in merit in whose linage you daily see your own life renew and flowrish afresh It is true Sir you have also had your trials as no true believers are exempted from them But those which GOD hath dispensed to you have been so tempered with his goodness as I believe you may truly say that in this more than in any other passage of Your life He hath made shine forth the marveils of His grace towards You. Such was some years ago the bitter but blessed and happy death of the late Sir Your eldest Son taken away untimely and in the prime flower and vigor of His age This was without doubt a very dolorous stroke which cut down in a moment the sweetest of your hopes plucking from your embraces a Son as love-worthy as he was loved and whose deserving to say all in a few words was no less than the dignity of a Senator to which he was already arrived in the chief of the Parliaments of this Kingdom But how sensible soever His death was unto you it was notwithstanding accompanied with grace of GOD so visible and ravishing as I fear not to refresh Your memory of it well knowing it is no less dear and pretious to You for the piety and the high and truly Christian constancy He shewed in those last and happy moments of His life than troublesom and bitter for the mourning and sadness which it left on Your whole House As soon as His malady appeared to be what indeed it was He looked on Death without disturbance He prepared Himself for it with great courage and His air his eyes and all His discourses were full of resolution and contentment He comforted us all and amid the tenderness and resentments of such a separation never expressed ought of feebleness And though He left on earth of the dearest and sweetest one may here possess or desire yet He quitted it not only without regret but even with joy so firm was the hope or to say better so clear and assured the sight which the LORD JESUS then gave Him of the blisses and delights to which He called him He remained in this graceful and holy disposition even to
never shew that the Monarchy or infallibility of their Pope or the Adoration of their Host or the service of their Images or their invocation of Saints or Purgatory or the trafick of their Indulgencies or any other of the points which we debate with them was Preached in all the world at the time of the holy Apostle no track at all of them being found in any of the Books or Memorials that remain of that age or of a long time beyond it only a man may perceive them some ages after growing up one in one place and another in another at divers times and in different Climats an evident sign that they are not parts of the Gospel of JESUS CHRIST which was Preached entire in all the world in St. Pauls life time but inventions and traditions of men that came since After this suddain and admirable spreading of the Gospel the Apostle adds the efficacy it had in the places where it had been preached It is not only come into all the world saith he but which is more it bringeth forth fruit there as it doth also in you It bears the same fruits there which it hath produced among you You discern that these fruits of the Gospel signifie no other thing but that faith charity honesty modesty temperance and the other spiritual vertues which it produceth in the souls of those that hear it and receive it as they ought and in which the Sanctification of men doth consist It is this power and efficacy of the Gospel which the LORD would represent unto us in the Parable of the seed to which He compareth it Matt. 13. and which according to the divers disposition of the places where it fell brought forth more or less fruit in some an bundred fold in other fixty and elsewhere but thirty Never was seen a thing more marvellous The Gospel changed the whole earth in a few years It crowned plants with flowers and fruits that were barren and accursed It filled the desarts the plains and the most desolate heaths with exquisit and delicious trees That which the Laws of Nations that which the most excellent Philosophy had husbanded whole ages in vain no sooner felt the hand of these Evangelique Vine-dressers and labourers but suddainly losing the bitterness of its first juice was sweetned and became loaden with Celestial fruits There was piety sweetness and humanity seen to flourish where never had appeared ought but the horrour of Superstition of Atheism of cruelty and all other kind of Vices This is the change which the LORD had foretold in Isaiah Isa 41.19 in those Allegorical words I will make to grow in the Desart the Cedar the Pine tree the Myrtle and the Olive I will set in the Plains the Firre-tree the Elme and the Box together And elsewhere again comparing the Gospel to a rain that watereth the Earth and makes it bud and bring forth corn and bread So shall my word be saith He it shall not return to me without effect Isa 55.10 11. but it shall do all my pleasure and prosper to the things I shall send it for And this divine fruitfulness of the doctrine of the Gospel which miraculously changed the world is also a most evident argument of it's truth and of it's heavenly original there never having been Religion or Discipline on earth that had so lively and universal an efficacy But the Apostle particularly commendeth here the fruits it had brought forth among the Colossians It fructifieth in you saith he since the day that you heard and knew the grace of GOD in truth He praiseth both their teachableness in that this word had fructified in them from the first day they heard it and their constancy for that it continued still fructifying to that time The earth produceth not fruit as soon as it hath received the seed there must be time to mollifie the grain to make it thrust forth and sprout to raise it up and garnish it with fruits In this spiritual Husbandry it is not so The Gospel if rightly received into your heart will fructifie there from that very moment Receive it then faithful Brethren Defer not till the morrow This day that you hear the voice of the LORD harden not your hearts Psalm 95. It 's one of the most pernicious artifices of the enemy to suggest to men that they put off their conversion to the future Give me saith He this day and thou shalt give God the next Give me the present and Him the future to me the flower and vigour of thy life to Him the remains and thine old age So they find at last when all hath been given to Satan and the world nothing remains for them to give the LORD to whom they have left the future only that is what was not theirs disposing of the present which alone was in their power to the pleasure of their mortal enemy Christians take heed of his wiles and hasten ye out of his snares Imitate these faithful Colossians Receive the Word of GOD so deep into your hearts that it may fructifie there from this very day You cannot be the LORD' 's too soon Put not off the design of being happy to another time consider that time fleeth and life runs out and death comes while you deliberate But if we must begin betimes to bear fruit worthy of the Gospel it is not mean't that we may cease again soon after as forward Trees which make an end first as they did begin The plants of the LORD begin early but never cease to fructifie They bring forth fruit in their through-white old age and are even then in good liking and bide fresh as the Psalmist singeth Psal 92.15 If you have embraced the Gospel with ardour retain it with an invincible constancy For salvation is not prepared save for them that shall persevere that shall keep the verdure of the heavenly sap in them in spight of the scorching heats of Summer and the coolings of Winter so as no season how rude and contrary soever doth ever strip them of their mystical flowers and fruits As to what remains the Apostle calleth the faith of the Gospel The knowledge of the grace of GOD because it is not possible to relish this heavenly doctrine if a man have not received and experimented the mercy which it offereth us in JESUS CHRIST This grace is the heart and substance of the Gospel Whence appears that it is a corrupting it and a changing the nature of it to thrust into it the doctrine of the satisfactions and merits of men things either wholly incompatible with Grace or such as at least extreamly darken and enfeeble it When he faith that they heard and knew the Grace of GOD in truth he meaneth either that they received it truly in sincerity of heart without hypocrisie or that this Grace they knew was delivered them pure and sincere without any mixture either of Pharisaical Superstition or Philosophical Vanity or finally
the heart to offend still a LORD so charitable so admirable How is it that His so divine beneficence doth not transport our spirits doth not win to His service all the thoughts and affections and motions that we have Christians all the acknowledgement He demands of you for so much good done you is but that you live holy Refuse Him not so just and so reasonable a due He hath made you to partake of the inheritance of Saints Be not ye so ingrateful as to mix with the profane Be ye separate from them and have no communion with the impurity and ordure of their vices Despise not as Esau the title you have to so precious an inheritance Let it be dearer to you than all the perishing provisions and delights of the earth none of which is better than that pittiful pottage of Lentils for which the profane man did truck away His birth-right This inheritance is in light Live then as children of light Let your conversation be all radiant with those divine and heavenly vertues which the Gospel of your Saviour recommendeth unto you The darkness is now passed The Sun of righteousness is at his full height Let that infamous power of darkness under which you sometime groaned have no more authority over you Open all your understanding that you may perceive the glory of the LORD and suffer no more abuse by the illusions of errour Labour to encrease your light being still at the Scriptures of GOD the living spring of all spiritual illumination the inexhaustible treasure of saving knowledge But let this light shine also in your manners For it 's to no purpose to renounce the darkness of superstition if you remain in that of vice 1 Joh. 2.11 He that hateth his Brother saith St. John is in darkness and walketh in darkness and knoweth not whither he goeth for darkness hath blinded his eyes Remember you are no longer in the School of Satan the Prince of darkness You are in the Kingdom of the Son of GOD. Have thoughts and do actions worthy of so glorious a condition Let it purifie your life of all stench and sordidness Let it elevate your hearts above mortal things and set them in Heaven the residence of this Divine royalty But Dear Brethren as this Text doth oblige us to a singular studious pursuit of Sanctification so openeth it to us a living source of consolation and joy For if we knew our blessings and that wonderful grace which the Father hath shewed us what were there more happy than we We have part in the heritage of Saints The kingdom of the beloved Son of GOD hath been given us O great and magnificent portion Let the world boast of and adore its gold its honours and its delights as much as it listeth we have that better part which alone is sufficient to make us eternally happy though we should be deprived of all the rest Christian if the world bereave you of what you have in its fee and jurisdiction consider it cannot take from you the inheritance of Saints If it deny you its Leeks and Onions and Flesh-pots it shall not be able to debarr you from that divine light which shineth on you and which in spight of all its attempts shall conduct you to your bliss-ful Canaan If it take from you its honours if it drive you even out of its earth it shall not be able to wrest the Kingdom of the Son of GOD from you nor sequester that dignity and glory which you possess in it This is not a corruptible Kingdom it 's not like those of the earth that are subject to a thousand and a thousand disgraces miseries and mutations It 's an immortal Kingdom firmer than the Heavens so abundant in glory and in goodness that it changeth all those who have part in it into Kings and Priests Faithful Brethren content we our selves with so advantageous a portion Let us enjoy it for the present by a lively and an establisht hope sweetly bearing the incommodities of this small journey we take to get to it and patiently expect that blessed day on which our Heavenly Father having finished the work of His grace will raise us all up into His glory and put on our heads the crownes of life and immortality which he hath promised us in the eternal Communion of His well-beloved Son To whom with the Father and the Holy Spirit the true and only GOD blessed for ever be all honour and praise to Ages of Ages Amen THE VI. SERMON COL I. Ver. XIV Vers XIV In whom we have redemption by His blood to wit the remission of sins DEar Brethren As the true and thorough knowledge of that great Redeemer whose remembrance we are at this day to celebrate is the only foundation of the piety and salvation of men in like manner on the contrary ignorance of His person of His offices and of His benefits is the source of those errors and abuses which have corrupted religion and consequently of that unhappiness into which the unbelieving the profane the superstitious and the heretical do fall We may say to all these people Joh. 4.10 as our LORD sometime did to the woman of Samaria If you knew who He is that speaks to you in our Gospel you would ask of Him the refreshment and consolation of your souls and He would give you living water 1 Cor. 2.8 springing up to everlasting life And as St. Paul said of the ancient Jews that if they had known the wisdom of GOD they would never have crucified the LORD of glory So may we say to all the enemies of Godliness in general that if they knew JESUS the Wisdom and Word of the Father they would not wrong either His truth or those that make profession of it JESUS rightly and throughly known believed and apprehended is enough to expell errour doubt superstition vice and death from our hearts and to establish truth peace joy holiness and salvation in them Accordingly you see that Paul the master of the whole world the Minister of truth the teacher of life and happiness for the executing of this high commission and opening the eyes of His gentiles and bringing them from the power of Satan unto GOD protesteth he determined to know nothing among them but JESUS CHRIST Crucified He findeth in this rich and inexhaustible subject all that was necessary for him to convert Infidels to confirm believers to comfort the afflicted to reduce the strayed and recover such as had erred He finds in it wherewith to confute the Philosophy of the Pagans wherewith to abase the presumption of the Jews wherewith to instruct the ignorant and to convince the intelligent It 's with the sole science of this JESUS that He plucketh men off from idolatry and sets them free from the slavery of vice It 's with the same again that he reformeth the abuses and cureth the wounds which errour hath caused in the Church It is his weapon against enemies without
GOD is which we have by JESUS CHRIST It is Deliverance saith the Apostle The word he useth in the Original 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 particularly signifieth a deliverance effected by some ransom given for bringing the delivered out of the bast estate he was in and it is properly that which we call Redemption For a man may be delivered divers wayes either by being simply put out of the affliction he was in as when a master enfranchiseth his slave setting him at liberty of His good will or when a Creditor lets his Debtor out of prison forgiving him the debt or by exchange as when one prisoner of War goes for another or by forcible recovery as when Abraham delivered Lot by defeating his enemies and David his people that had been taken by the Amalekites The deliverance we have by JESUS CHRIST is not of this sort He hath procured it by the ransome He gave for us and it 's this that the word Redemption here used by the Apostle doth signifie But the same term informeth us also that the benefit which we have received of Him is not simply the gift of life It is a deliverance which brings us out of some misery GOD gave life and immortality to the Angels but He gave them no deliverance since they never were in sin or misery and before Adam's fall He promised Him life it 's true but not salvation and redemption because man was then in his integrity without sin and misery likewise The benefit we receive of Him by JESUS CHRIST is not simply life and immortality it is a deliverance a salvation a redemption that not only conferreth some good on us but taketh us out from sin and freeth us from misery The Apostle explains it us more particularly when he adds That this redemption which we have in JESVS CHRIST is the remission of sins True it is the word Redemption is general comprising under it deliverance from any evil whatsoever certain it is also that the number of our evils is great and that JESUS CHRIST hath delivered us not from one or two evils only but from all He hath delivered us from the ignorance into which we were naturally plunged He hath delivered us from the bondage of the Flesh the lusts whereof did exercise an horrible tyranny in our members He hath delivered us from that death which we were made subject unto and from the curse of the Eternal Father which we had deserved For which cause the Apostle elsewhere saith that JESUS CHRIST is made unto us not simply righteousness but also wisdom sanctification and redemption and in a multitude of places that He hath brought us out of darkness and delivered us from the tyrannous power of sin and death But though all this be very sure yet in this place he restraineth the Redemption we have in JESUS CHRIST to the remission of sins and that in my opinion for two reasons First because remission of sin is the first and the principal of His benefits the basis and foundation of all the rest which necessarily leads them on and without which it is not possible to reach any of them For sin as you know is expresly that which makes separation between GOD and us The cause why this most merciful and all-powerful Ruler of the world taketh from us the light of His knowledge and the communication of His goodness leaving us in the darkness of errour and in misery is neither hatred nor contempt nor disdain of His creatures It 's nothing but our Sin His justice and soveraign equity permitting Him not to crown with His blessings people that are criminal JESUS CHRIST therefore intervening and procuring for us the remission of our sins thereby bringeth us out of the ill case we were in and openeth the fountain of celestial good which was before shut up by Justice This obstacle being removed this sluice if I may so say opened Divine goodness recovering its natural course floweth forth upon us and poureth into us light peace holiness and life It is not then to exclude these other benefits of the Redemption which is by JESUS CHRIST that the Apostle defineth it hereby the remission of sins For it compriseth them all none having this remission but they have also upon it all the LORD 's other graces but to shew us the due order of all the parts of this deliverance of which remission of sin is the first and principal Secondly the Apostle doth this because the ransome which the word Redemption doth imply was not properly necessary save for obtaining the remission of sins Except for this there was no need that JESUS CHRIST should lay down His life for us For supposing that a pure and sinless creature should have lain in ignorance and misery and if you will even in death it self There would have been no necessity that the Son of God should have shed His blood or suffered death to bring it up thence It would have sufficed He had loved it His good will would have immediately moved His power to display it self in its behalf and fetch it out of its distress there being nothing to hinder this natural operation of His goodness and so the happiness of such a creature would have been simply a deliverance and not a redemption But forasmuch as we were sinners it was necessary for our recovery that JESUS CHRIST should make His soul an offering for sin and pay the ransome of our liberty Whence it follows that to speak properly and exactly there is nothing but the remission of sins that should be called redemption as the Apostle defineth it in this place the other deliverances which we obtain by our LORD being only fruits and consequents of the remission of sin This then is the grand atchievement of the Son of GOD the miracle of His goodness and love that He hath procured and obtained for us the remission of our sins This is our true redemption Without this redemption we should still be enemies of GOD. We should not have any part either in His grace or in His glory Be even what you can desire in other respects Have all the goods of the earth all perfections of body and mind Be Monark of the whole world Have if it were possible the lights of Angels and the riches of their knowledge If you have not the remission of your sins you are a bondman and a wretch a slave to Devils and vanity and death since true redemption is the remission of sins But as without it it is impossible to be otherwise than infinitly wretched so with it it is not possible to be otherwise than infinitely happy The repose of the conscience the illumination of the understanding the jewel of sanctification the Graces of the celestial spirit life and immortality do inseparably follow it Go in peace said the LORD JESUS to those whose sins He pardoned as if He had said thou hast nothing more to fear since thy sin is forgiven thee There is no
longer either evil that can hurt thee or good that can be denyed thee if it be profitable for thy salvation Away with that cruel and extravagant doctrine which will have it that GOD remitteth the fault without remitting the punishment This is to oppose even natural sense and common reason For what is it to remit a sin save to punish it not and treat him that committed it as if He had not been culpable This is to give the Apostle the lye who proclaimeth both elsewhere That there is no condemnation to them Rom. 8.1 that are in JESVS CHRIST and here that the remission of our sins is a redemption For if GOD punished the faithful as is pretended He would do it after having condemned them to suffer since being most just He neither punisheth nor absolveth any without judgement And if notwithstanding our remission we escape not burning in the pretended Purgatory fire how is our remission a redemption Is this to ransome a criminal person to make Him be burned I grant the faithful after this remission obtained are not freed from divers afflictions during their temporal abode here below But I affirm that their sufferings are exercises or chastisements and not properly punishments of their sin The LORD sends 'em them not in His wrath but in His grace not to punish them but either to amend them or to prove them and render them conform to the image of His Son who was consecrated by afflictions in the dayes of His flesh Such is this remission of sins the redemption we have in JESUS CHRIST Let us now see by what means He hath obtained it for us The Apostle teacheth it us in saying That we have it by His blood We have already said how the word Redemption here used doth signifie that our deliverance was effected by the payment of a ransome This he expresly noteth elsewere saying 1 Cor. 6.20 that we have been bought with a price Now therefore he declareth what this price is what this ransome of our deliverance even the Blood of JESUS CHRIST 1 Pet. 118 19. St. Peter insisteth likewise on the same consideration We have been redeemed saith he not with corruptible things as silver or gold but with the precious blood of CHRIST as of a Lamb without blemish and without spot And the LORD JESUS informs us plainly of the same thing when speaking of the end and design of His mission Mat. 20.28 He saith that He came not to be served but to serve and to lay down His soul a ransome for many Semblably St. Paul 1 Tim. 1.6 that JESVS CHRIST gave Himself a ransome for all And in this same sense it is that we must understand what the Spirits of the Blessed do say Rev. 5.9 Act. 20.28 when they glorisie the Lamb for that He hath redeemed them to GOD by His blood and St. Paul in the Acts that GOD hath purchased the Church by His own blood By these passages and a multitude of others of like import it is evident that the Apostle both in this place and in the first Chapter to the Ephesians where He repeats the same words by the blood of CHRIST understands the violent death He suffered on the Cross with effusion of His blood which He did shed forth in great abundance through the wounds of His feet of His hands and of His side And it 's a thing common in all languages to signifie life by blood and the loss of life by effusion of blood But the Holy Ghost particularly useth this manner of speaking when there is reference to a Sacrifice For in such cases the blood of the Victime is almost alwayes put for the life it loseth when offered so as it need not be thought strange that these divine authors say the blood of CHRIST who is the only Lamb and most perfect oblation which all the old Sacrifices did typifie when they mean the life He spent for us on the Cross offering it to the Father as the propitiation for our sins This now is the great mysterie of the Gospel which was not known to men or Angels nor could have been ever thought on or conceived by any but the supream and infinite wisdom of GOD that JESUS CHRIST the wel-beloved of the Father the most Holy one should lay down His life for us be set in our stead and bear our sins in His own body on the tree and suffer in His sacred flesh and in His most holy soul the pains and sorrows we had merited to exempt us from them It 's this precisely that we mean when we affirm that He satisfied the Justice of GOD for us And the Apostle in these words furnisheth us to preserve this glory to our LORD against two sorts of adversaries one of them that impudently deny His having satisfied for us at all another of those who grant His satisfaction but do extend this honour unto others also and will have it appertain likewise to Saints and even to our selves As for the first they deserve not to be accounted Christians since they reject a truth so cleerly and so frequently asserted in the Gospel confessed by all the Church and which besides is the source of our comfort both in life and death and the only foundation of all our hopes For if JESUS CHRIST satisfied not for us what mean the Prophets and Apostles who proclaim at the beginning in the midst and at the end of all their Preaching that He dyed for our sins 1 Cor. 15.3 Isa 53.5 10. Rom. 3.24 Joh. 1.29 Heb. 9.27 28. 10.10 1.3 was wounded for our trespasses and bruised for our iniquities That the chastisement of our peace was upon Him and by His stripes we are healed that His soul was made an offering for sin That He is our propittaion through faith in His blood That He is the Lamb of GOD which taketh away the sins of the world That He offered up Himself a sacrifice for sin and sanctified us by this oblation and purged away our sins by Himself I omit at present other places the number whereof is infinite These are sufficient to settle the truth For first since our deliverance is called a Redemption it must needs be that JESUS CHRIST hath purchased it for us by some ransome He gave in our behalf But He gave none at all except in dying He laid out His life and His blood for us and in our stead Again if it be not thus why saith the Apostle it is by the blood of CHRIST that we have the remission of our sins If it be not a satisfaction for our sins 't is evident it 's of no use at all to obtain us the remission of them In this case we should have it not by the blood or death of CHRIST which after this account would have contributed nothing thereunto but by the sole goodness either of GOD or of His Son For to say that the remission of sins is attributed to the blood
elsewhere That GOD hath reconciled us to Himself by JESVS CHRIST But it seems that this is not precisely that Reconciliation which S. Paul meaneth here First because the things in heaven which he expresly puts among the parties reconciled have no part therein the Angels that dwell in the Heavens pure and holy as they are having never fallen into any alienation from GOD. Secondly because of that Reconciliation the Apostle will speak instantly in the words immediately following in which he saith Having made peace by the blood of His cross so as the former words must of necessity be referred to some other Reconciliation except we will render the language of this Divine Writer culpable of a vain and fruitless repetition The truth is they that understand these words of Reconciliation with GOD do find themselves much intangled in the matter and have recourse to divers means for clearing them of this difficulty Some affirm that though the Angels be holy and blessed yet they were not exempt from needing the death of JESUS CHRIST to merit and obtain their confirmation and perseverance in the estate they had a bold Doctrine and such as it is hard to find any foundation for in the Scripture For by this reckoning JESUS CHRIST should also be the Mediator of Angels a thing that seems to cross the end and the true nature of this Office First because a Mediator should partake of the nature of the parties whom he reconcileth as you see that JESUS CHRIST the Mediator between GOD and men is GOD and man whereas He took not the nature of Angels Secondly because every Mediator interveneth between parties that are at difference whereas the Angels are and ever were at perfect accord with GOD holily obeying His will Lastly because the blood of JESUS CHRIST was shed only to wash away sin and the Scripture every where represents the people of GOD's Covenant His redeemed ones and those whom He hath saved as justified and cleansed from their filth for which there was no place in the nature of Angels they being pure and clean from all sin For as to that of Job That GOD putteth no trust in His servants Job 4.18 and doth set light by his Angels it is evident and acknowledged by all Christians that this is not said to accuse those blessed Spirits or to suggest that if they were tried by the ordinary and legal justice of GOD they would be found guilty and have need of pardon but rather to signifie either that the Authority of GOD over His creatures is so great and so absolute as He oweth nothing to the Angels themselves how exquisite soever their Sanctity be the light of glory wherewith He crowns them being a gift from His own bounty and not the due reward of their merit or else that the infinite purity of this Supreme Majestie is so splendid and so glorious that the light of the most holy Spirits fadeth before Him and is found dusky and defective in comparison of Him as the shining of our lights and of the Stars themselves doth disappear at the brightness of the Sun Others therefore not able to savour and for just cause I think this Doctrine that the Angels were reconciled to GOD by JESUS CHRIST to exclude them from this passage do restrain the Apostle's words to men only understanding by the things that are in Heaven the already hallowed spirits of the faithful which death had taken out of this world and by the things that are on earth the faithful that yet live here beneath in flesh But not to dissemble this Exposition seemeth both forced and frigid Forced because the Scripture by things in heaven ordinarily meaneth the Angels whose element and natural habitation as you know the heavens are whereas souls separated from their bodies are receiv'd in and lodged there by a Supernatural grace and dispensation Frigid because the sense it attributeth to the Apostle no way answers the sublimity and dignity of his words For if his aim were to express nothing but that the faithful are reconciled to GOD what need was there to divide them into two ranks some that are on the earth others that are in the heavens Who doubts but He reconciled these as well as those But without question he purposed to magnifie this work of GOD by JESUS CHRIST and to this end saith that it extendeth not to men alone that are reconciled to the Father by the efficacy of the cross of the LORD but that it hath effect in heaven it self re-uniting and reconciling the things that are there What shall we say then to these difficulties and in what sense shall we take the Apostle's words That GOD hath reconciled all things in Himself both those that are on earth and those that are in heaven Dear Brethren we will leave them in their genuine and ordinary sense and say that these expressions do signifie the recomposing and re-uniting of the creatures both Terrestrial and Celestial not with GOD but among themselves with each other For as in a State the Subjects have a twofold union one with their Prince on whom thy all depend another among themselves being as members of the same Political Body joyned together by the bond of mutual concord amity and correspondence In like manner is it with things Celestial and Terrestrial the two principal parties of this great State of GOD's which we cal the Universe Besides the union they have with GOD as their Soveraign Monarch from whose bounty they receive the being and the life they enjoy they have another alliance and conjunction one with the other as parts of one Corporation having been formed and qualified for mutual commerce It 's in this relation and in this union that the beauty and perfection of the Universe doth consist when Heaven and earth have amicable entercourse and conspire to one and the same end with an holy and a reciprocal affection Sin having broken the first union and separated man from his Creator by the same means dissolved the second loosning us from the creatures For as again in a state when one part of the Subjects riseth against the Sovereign the rest that remain in their duty presently break with the Rebels and instead of the commerce they held before with them do make cruel and implacable war upon them while they continue in their disobedience Such hath the event proved in the world Man had no sooner rebell'd against GOD but heaven and all that remained in His obedience brake with man Whole Nature took up arms against this Rebel and would have even then utterly ruin'd him if the Counsel of GOD who would not destroy us had not hindred it And as from one disorder there never fail to spring up divers others this first rupture of man with GOD and the good Creatures brought forth divers others indeed rending mankind it self into several pieces the one divided from the other by diversity of Religions and the aversions and animosities that attend it
having before represented to the Colossians the reconciliation of things on earth and things in heaven by means of the peace which was made through the blood of CHRIST according to the good pleasure of the Father he now descendeth from general things to particular cases and to excite in the hearts of these faithful persons a more lively feeling of this grace of GOD he puts them by name in mind of the part they had in it forasmuch as the efficacy of this goodness of His had been displayed upon them and drawn them out from perdition and advanced them to highest happiness And you saith he who were somtime estranged from him and who were His enemies in your understanding in wicked works Yet now hath He reconciled in the body of His flesh by death to render you holy and without spot and unreproveable before Him In these words as you see to heighten the excellency of the benefit GOD had done them he first sets before their eyes the miserable estate they were naturally in before the Gospel was preached unto them You were saith he somtime estranged from GOD and His enemies in your understandings in wicked works Next he sets forth the favour GOD had shewed them in the sequel notwithstanding all their unworthiness And yet now saith he he hath reconciled you in the body of His flesh by death Finally to sway them unto the pursuance of an exquisit sanctification he represents unto them the purpose or end of their reconciliation with GOD. To render you holy saith he and without spot and unreproveable before Him These are the three points we will handle GOD willing in this action distinctly one after the other The first and natural estate of the Colossians before grace Their reconciliation with GOD made in the body of the flesh of CHRIST by His death And the end of this reconciliation to be holy and unreproveable before Him Certainly since the sin of Adam corrupted and infected our nature there are no men born into the world but their condition of it self is most wretched Yet their misery is no where so clearly discovered as in the Heathen who are born and live without the Covenant of GOD. For as to those whom He preventeth with His grace breeding them up in His Church from the beginning of their life His light and His goodness encompassing them from their nativity do hinder the discerning so fully in them the horrid corruption of our nature Whereas Heathens having no other guide but that nature in them its state and strength is to be manifestly seen The Colossians to whom St. Paul writeth were of this rank Gentiles by extraction by religion and in manners before JESUS CHRIST enlightned them Let us behold in them an image of the condition which we should be in if GOD had not separated us from the rest of men and timely drawn us out of our original misery The Apostle saith first that somtime that is before their conversion they were estranged alienated namely estranged from GOD from His covenant and from His people as he explaineth it more largely elsewhere Remember saith he to the Ephesians that at that time Eph. 2.12 ye were without CHRIST having no communion with the common-wealth of Israel being strangers from the covenants of promise having no hope and being without GOD in the world They had no communion with the true GOD were so far from adoring Him that they not so much as thought on Him and did deride the only nation in the world that knew Him and served Him This is clear by the Books of the ancient Heathens that have remained to our time as also by the ignorance and idolatry of the modern But the Apostle goes further yet and adds that at that time they were enemies of GOD which comprehends two things the one that they hated GOD and warred against Him the other that GOD accounted them and pursued them as His enemies For the first St. Paul speaks it expresly of the Heathen in the Epistle to the Romans where among other characters He giveth them He sets down this for one they are saith he full of envy murder debate Rom. 1.29 30. deceit malignity whisperers back-biters haters of GOD upon which a question ariseth how it is true that the heathen hated GOD For either they knew Him or they knew Him not If they knew Him not how did they hate Him since love and hatred are two passions which cannot be exercised but towards objects known it being no more possible to hate than it is to love what we know not And if they knew Him seeing He is the cheif good how is it possible they should hate Him since our will is not capable of hating good known To this I answer first that when the Scripture says the Heathen hated GOD it meaneth not that GOD was the proper and formal object of their hatred For it is certain that in this sense the Deity can neither be hated by them that are ignorant of it nor unloved by those that know it But the Holy GHOST thus speaketh for that these wretches do altogether as if they hated GOD It 's a manner of speaking familiar enough to say the cause for signifying the effect and the antecedent for expressing of the consequent Now these people in their blindness defaced the glory of GOD the most they could They battered down the most illustrious marks of His GOD-head They blasphemed His Providence They reviled His nature They robbed Him of the honour of creating and conserving the Universe and gave it to monsters They despised His Will and contraried all His orders They passionately loved what He most abhorred and abhorred what He is best pleased with Are not these ordinary and natural effects of hatred It 's therefore with much reason that the Scripture to set forth this impiety and fury of the Heathens saith that they hated GOD since they treated Him in the very same manner as if they had directly hated Him As when the Wise man saith somwhere Pov. 29.24 8.36 that the wicked hate their own soul or their own life it is not to signifie that their will hath properly in it any aversion for their own life on the contrary they but too much love it But to declare that they carry themselves just as if they expresly hated it affecting and practising with an extream vehemency the things that cause their ruine and neglecting and abhorring those that would lead them to salvation Secondly I say That though the Heathen have some knowledge of GOD yet because they phancy Him quite another then in effect He is they may be said in propriety of speech to hate Him For though it be not possible for us to hate good so far as it is good nevertheless it often happens that error representing things to us quite otherwise than they are in themselves we love what is indeed worthy of hatred and we hate what is in truth most worthy to be
enmity to the end that being purified by the vertue of the Sacrifice of His Son and clothed with His righteousness by faith we might appear before the Tribunal of His grace without condemnation and without confusion But nothing compelleth us to pitch on this It is much better in my judgment to understand it of our sanctification than of our Justification First because the words themselves agree much better with it the Scripture as you know ordinarily expressing the gift of Regeneration by the word Holiness whereas it useth the word Justifie or pardon of our sins and not imputing them unto us when it would signifie the first benefit of GOD which we obtain by the imputation of the righteousness of CHRIST Secondly because the Apostle having already represented it unto us in those words that GOD hath reconciled us by the body of the flesh of His Son by death which do signifie that He hath received us into favour pardoning us all our sins as we have explained them it seems needless to repeat the same thing again In fine because both St. Paul and the other sacred writers are wont to joyn those two gifts of GOD our Justification and our Sanctification together as two graces that are inseparable and never go one without the other so as having spoken to us of the one it was not only convenient but also in some sort necessary 1 Cor. 1.30 1 Cor. 6.11 he should annex the other just as elsewhere having said that CHRIST is made unto us righteousness he immediately adds and sanctification and again in another place where having touched the filthiness of the former life of the Corinthians as here that of the Colossians he saith But ye are washed but ye are sanctified Here the Apostle doth not only knit these two graces together but moreover sheweth us the order and relation which they have the one to the other that the second to wit Sanctification is the end of the former that is of Justification He hath reconciled us saith he by the death of His Son to render us holy without spot and unrebukable before Him The Scripture teacheth us the same thing in divers other places as in St. Luke where Zachary saith that GOD sheweth us mercy and delivereth us out of the hand of our enemies that we might serve Him without fear in holiness and righteousness before Him And St. Peter in his first Epistle Luk. 1.74 75. 1 Pet. 2.24 CHRIST saith he hath born our sins in His own body on the tree that we being dead to sin might live unto righteousness And our St. Paul that JESVS CHRIST dyed for all that they which live 1 Cor. 5.15 might not henceforth live unto themselves but unto Him who dyed and was raised again for them and elsewhere again that CHRIST gave Himself for us Tit. 2.14 that He might redeem us from all iniquity and purifie us to be unto Him a peculiar people addicted to good works and in another passage altogether like that which we are upon Eph. 4.5 He loved the Church saith he and gave Himself for it that he might sanctifie it have cleansed it by the washing of water by the word and might present it to Himself a glorious Church having neither spot nor wrinkle nor other such thing but that it might be holy and unreprovable I insist upon this point because it is of exceeding great importance First you see by it what the dignity of Holiness is For since the end of necessity is always more excellent than the means which are used to compass it it is clear than sanctification being the last end of all the things that the LORD employs for our salvation is the greatest and most excellent of all His graces And so you know St. Paul positively declares that Charity which is for substance no other thing but sanctity is more excellent than either faith or hope and he proves it because neither the one nor the other of these two vertues shall have any place in Heaven as being but means and helps for our conducting thither whereas Charity as the last and highest perfection of our being shall eternally remain Secondly from hence appears how much carnal Christians do deceive themselves who pretend to salvation without sanctification Wretched men what do you Your pretention is a vain Chimera You pursue an impossibility For that salvation which you do desire is nothing for the main but that very holiness which you do refuse Both that faith and those other qualities which as you say you have serve only to sanctifie men Without this they are unprofitable things Suppose then that you have them if they do not change you if they do not fill your heart with love to GOD and with charity towards your neighbour in a word if they render you not holy they will advantage you nothing So far will they be from giving you immortality that they will aggravate your misery and sink you deeper into the abyss of death Never believe that GOD gave us His own Son clothed Him with a body of flesh delivered Him up to the death of the Cross that He reconciled us by such precious blood and wrought all these grand wonders which ravish Heaven and Earth that He might acquire us the priviledge to sin freely For far be it from so wise and so holy a Deity to be thought to have ever had such an extravagant and infamous a design He hath laid forth all the marvels of grace and love upon us that He might restore His own image in our nature that He might abolish sin out of it and transform us into new creatures pure and holy and in some sort like Himself and His Son in this respect I confess the description which the Apostle here giveth us of this grace of GOD in us is high and magnifique and that it seems to surmount the reach of believers while they are in the present life For of which of them can it be truly said while he remains in this world that he is Holy and without spot and unreprovable before GOD But to this I answer first that neither doth the Apostle affirm that this great work of the LORD 's in us is compleated in this life He sheweth us only what His purpose is and what the end of His grace and how good and glorious that holiness is wherewith He will cloath us For if we be truly His He will not leave us till He hath made us such as the Apostle's Text importeth even holy without spot and unreprovable Secondly I say that though the highest degree of sanctification in this life be much beneath that which shall adorn us in the next and that in comparison of it the same is defective yet it fails not of being true and of having all its parts though in a weak degree It is sincere and without hypocrisie and such in summ as the words of the Apostle in some sort agree to For true believers while
CHRIST the Prince of Life and with that fulness of grace we have received and the holy Apostles preached Mix nothing forreign with it To add to it is to accuse it of imperfection and insufficiency Instead of losing time in the inventions of Error and in the laborious but childish exercises of Superstition Let us employ all hours in good and holy works walking in JESUS CHRIST rooting and building up our selves more and more in him establishing our selves and abounding in faith and testifying and proving the truth of it by a pure piousness towards GOD and an ardent love towards our Neighbour by the fervency of our Prayers the liberality of our Alms the humility of our Deportments the modesty of our Persons the honesty justness and integrity of all our Words and Actions to the glory of the LORD JESUS whom we serve and own for our Master to the edification of men and our own salvation Amen THE TWENTIETH SERMON COL CHAP. II. VER VIII Ver. VIII Beware lest any man make prey of you through Philosophy and vain deceit after the tradition of men after the rudiments of the world and not after CHRIST OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST comparing the society of his faithful ones in the tenth Chapter of S. John to a Flock of Sheep doth advertise us that there are Thieves who coast about this mystical Fold and do come only to steal to kill and to destroy as also that there are Wolves which take away and scatter the Sheep You are not ignorant dear Brethren that under the names of these spiritual Thieves and Wolves he doth represent unto us evil Spirits and the false Teachers whom they set on work who both together earnestly promote the same design though by divers means namely the debauching and alienating of the faithful from the Communion of JESUS CHRIST their only Pastor getting them and appropriating them to themselves as the Thief who takes what is another's and makes it his own Whence ensues their death and destruction For as the Wolf kills the Sheep he hath seized so these Ministers of Satan do bereave of life those whom they pull away from the Flock of Christ out of whose communion there is nothing but death and perdition But these wretched workers do employ as I said many different means to compass their cruel and bloody design Some they take away by downright force making them leave the bosome of the Church by the violence of persecutions or drawing them into the world by the pleasures of the flesh and do bring them even to a renouncing of the very Name of JESUS CHRIST the Prince of Life Against others they make use of fraud training them forth and distancing them by little and little from JESUS CHRIST under fair and plausible pretences so as in the end they have nothing of his left them but a name and a vain unprofitable profession remaining indeed under the power and in the possession of his Enemy It 's against these mystical Thieves and Robbers that the Apostle doth awaken the Colossians in the Text we have read exhorting them to take heed of ' em Before he prayed them to establish to build up to root themselves more and more in the Communion of the LORD JESUS acknowledging with humble gratitude the excellency of his gift mâ—de them 〈…〉 ensure this Treasure to them he adviseth them to watch against th◠〈…〉 ambushes of their Enemies who sought to surprise them and pluck by 〈…〉 tifice of their subtilities and fair discourses JESUS CHRIST out of their hearts and render themselves Masters of them and of their life Beware saith he lest any man make prey of you c. For it is the duty of a good Pastor such a one as the Apostle was not only to seed the mystical Sheep which the chief Shepherd hath committed to his care by giving them the pure and wholsom doctrine of the Gospel the only pasture of souls but also to preserve them with all his power from the paws of Wolves and the hands of Robbers advertising them of the danger and dextrously delivering them out of it by the saving-tone of his voice But as your Pastors are obliged to this care so you see dear Brethren that it is your duty to watch for your own safety to open your eyes and senses that ye may discern a stranger from a domestick a thief from the shepherd the hand of a robber from that of a friend Beware saith the Apostle to you He would not have the faithful be silly sheep that let themselves be led away by the first commer and indifferently embrace all that is offer'd them His will is that we have our senses exercised and habituated in discerning between truth and falshood able to prove all things that we may hold fast what is good and not suffer our selves to be surprised either by the dignity of a Robe or the blaze of Wit or some appearances of Deportment seeing that Angels of Satan do sometimes clothe themselves with light The prudence of the Beraeans is praised by the Holy Ghost Acts 17.11 who examined S. Paul's preaching comparing what he had spoken to them with the Scriptures that they might assuredly know the state of the matter The salvation of our souls is too precious for us to trust any other than GOD in it Whence appears how dangerous that security of implicit faith as they call it is which without any scruple receives all that its Teachers deliver and is so far from examining it that it vouchsafes not so much as to understand it believing it true without knowing it provided only that the mouth which publisheth it hath been opened by the Pope's hand If the question were only of a title those of whom the Apostle adviseth the Colossians here to take heed were Teachers and he contesteth not with them about their dignity in any part of this Epistle He deals with them only about their Doctrine Accordingly the case is concerning Doctrine whether we ought to believe it or no and whatever may be the hand that delivereth it to us if it be false it will not fail to destroy us as poyson doth not forbear to kill though he that prescribed it hath taken his degrees with all the formalities requisite S. Paul too elsewhere with one word overthrows all the prepossessions that might be for any Preachers upon any ever so eminent quality of their persons when he proclaims twice together If we our selves Gal. 1.8 or an Angel from heaven do preach another Gospel to you beside what we have preached let him be an Anathema Be you all that you will you cannot be more than S. Paul or an Angel of Heaven Since their Doctrine ought to be examined by the Gospel for its having reception or being accursed as it should be found conform or contrary thereto it will be no wrong done you if yours be put to the same trial But consider I pray with what emphasis the Apostle recommendeth to us
LORD And it must be confess'd that this figure is marvellously elegant and proper for this matter For even as the body comprehendeth in its self several members which have each of them their particular function and exercise in like manner this mass of corruption which we bear about in our nature is composed of many different Vices which have each of them their peculiar motion and operation Ambition tendeth one way Avarice and Intemperance another Envy defileth us in one manner Cruelty in another and each of these pests hath its own sentiment and ends Their motions are sometimes even contrary and do thwart one another as unclean spirits that are not at an agreement However at the bottom all these evils come from one and the same source and live in one and the same mass as all the members do make up but one and the same body Hence it is that the Apostle sometimes considering sins under this notion calleth them our members or the members of our flesh Col. 3.5 as when he commands us to mortifie our members which are upon the earth to wit fornication uncleanness inordinate affection and other like Vices Moreover as this body in which we live doth cover us all about so that mass of Vices wherewith our nature is infected doth encompass and on wrap us on all sides there being no part or faculty in us but is as it were invested and besieged with it Such is the corruption that we derive from the first Adam and by reason thereof the Apostle sometimes also calleth it the old man He saith therefore that the circumcision which we have in JESUS CHRIST is the putting off of this body of the sins of the flesh when the faithful person by the virtue of the Word and Spirit of the LORD JESUS doth cut off all the vices of the flesh which are the members thereof and strips himself of this old habit of sin and death wherewith the first Adam clothed us This is that which in the same sense he elsewhere calleth a putting off the old man as to former conversation Eph. 4.22 Col. 3.8 Gal. 5.24 which is corrupted by deceitful lusts And in this present Epistle a putting off of anger malignity and evil speaking and other such sins and again in another place a crucifying of the flesh with its affections and lusts All this amounts to the same sense and signifieth the mortifying of the flesh and the cutting off of its Vices that there may be an abstaining from all the sins which they are wont to produce in the lives of men of the world The Apostle adds in the end that this is the circumcision of CHRIST First because our LORD and Saviour hath expresly instituted it in his Gospel commanding us to be born again to deny our selves to change our deportments to put on a simplicity and humility like that of little children and to break all the ties we have with the flesh and the world if we will follow him and have part in his Kingdom This is the first and most important instruction in his Discipline Secondly It is the circumcision of CHRIST because it 's he alone who is the Author of it and doth effect it in us neither is there ought but his Gospel alone that can unclothe man of this body of the sins of the flesh For it is not possible but that a soul on whom the Doctrine of JESUS CHRIST hath been imprinted by the power of the Holy Ghost should renounce the world and the flesh Philosophy was so far from curing this malady that it did not so much as know it exâ—ctly The Law discovered it indeed and made man to feel the tyrannous strength of this rebellious body of the flesh wherewith he is naturally clothed and surrounded But it was unable to subdue and mortifie it as the Apostle teacheth us at large in the seventh Chapter of the Epistle to the Romans There is none but JESUS CHRIST who by the efficacy of his heavenly truths and the divine examples of his holiness thrust down into our hearts by the hand of his Spirit can circumcise us in this manner unfolding and dis-investing us by little and little of these wretched bonds and weakning and extinguishing the life of the flesh in us Compare now this Circumcision of our Saviour's with that of Moses and you will without difficulty perceive that it infinitely surpasseth it in dignity and excellency That of Moses wounded the body this of CHRIST enliveneth the soul The one par'd away a little skin the other mortifies the whole body of the flesh The one was in its self but a typical ceremony the other is a mystical verity The one mark'd the flesh the other maketh better and ennobleth the heart Without the one a man could have no part in the communion of the carnal Jews and by the other we enter into the alliance of the spiritual Jews whole praise is of GOD and not of men Whereby you may judg how extravagant the conceit of those seducers was whom the Apostle doth in this place oppose who notwithstanding that excellent and divine circumcision which Christians have receiv'd in their Saviour's School would yet bring them under that of Moses which was poor and weak and so many ways defective as if Christians could not upon a far better ground than the Jews glory that they truly are GOD's circumcised Now for a right comprehending of the force of the Apostle's reasoning it must be remembred that circumcision as well as the other ceremonies of the Mosaick Law was a figure which represented the abscission of the vices and lusts of the flesh as the Prophets themselves do clearly enough shew when they promise the ancient people that GOD will circumcise their heart and the heart of their seed Deut. 30.6 Jer. 4.4 that they may love him and live and command them to circumcise themselves unto the LORD and to take away the fore-skin of their hearts an evident sign that this external action did refer to the internal mortification and sanctification of the soul Since then the figure is unprofitable when the truth is attained and models do serve only till the things themselves be formed and perfected the use of them when this is done being no longer necessary you plainâ—y see that from the Apostle's saying here that in JESUS CHRIST we have this putting off or cutting off of the sins of the flesh that is the truth whereof circumcision was the figure and model it evidently follows that it is no longer necessary for us and that a wilful retaining of it still is an accusing of JESUS CHRIST of having not fulfilled in his Discipline the thing represented by this ancient type Iâ—'s true that even in the time of the Old Testament the faithful had some part of the sanctification signifi'd by their circumcision but what they had was weak and in small measure because the true causes on which it dependeth being all comprised in the Mysteries of
the New Testament were then but fore-told and promised not fully and clearly revealed as now by their accomplishment they have been by means whereof it was meet that during all that time they should be exercis'd in the observing of these typical rites and held in and kept under the Pedagogie of Moses until the fulness of time according to the Apostle's Doctrine in the Epistle to the Galatians Now that JESUS CHRIST hath openly exhibited the very body of truth and fully brought to light all the causes and motives of true sanctification these exercises of the Church's infancy are no longer seasonable and they that still stick to them are no less ridiculous than he that would still keep up the centries of a vault or the models of a building even after the Fabrick is finish'd and brought to its perfection or retain under a School-master's Ferule and in the restraints of childhood a man grown up and come to ripeness of years This is that we had to say for the exposition of this Text. It remaineth for a conclusion that we extract those instructions and consolations which if we meditate on it attentively it will afford us First Since the Apostle assureth us that we are compleat in CHRIST you see how vain those mens pretensions are who set forth certain rules of perfection as they call them beyond the Gospel Let us content our selves with our LORD's fulness and seek our perfection in him alone And instead of amusing our selves about the inventions of men embrace and practise CHRIST's Discipline advancing daily towards the utmost degree of perfectness For we may not flatter our selves with an imagination that a man may nevertheless appertain to him though he lead an wholly vicious and corrupt life S. Paul here protesteth plainly to us that all such as are in him are made compleat Whence it necessarily follows that such as are not compleat are without his communion and by consequence should not promise themselves any share in his salvation it being prepared for those only that are in him If this Doctrine do trouble us let us impute it to our vices and our loosness and taking once this truth to heart with all our might endeavour after that perfection which is in JESUS CHRIST accounting that without it we cannot possess either his grace in this world or his glory in the world to come I well know that to speak absolutely no one is perfect and that if we compare our condition on earth with that in heaven all our perfections are but weaknesses Yet it is true that JESUS CHRIST doth even in this life in some sense compleat his faithful ones and this perfection which he giveth them is not a vain name or an imagination It 's a thing and a most real truth it is a piety and charity sincere and free and without hypocrisie which though it sometimes fail doth notwithstanding produce true fruits and works quite different from those of Worldlings and Hypocrites according to what our LORD said even that if your righteousness do not exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees you shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven Object not that you are yet on earth and that perfection is not to be found but in heaven and that to live as an Angel one should be without a body It is not the perfection of Heaven that we demand of you The LORD will not reject you for having not had in this life the transcendent brightness of the next But though a child be not obliged to conduct his life with as much prudence and reason as a man of years it doth not follow that he hath licence to live without rule and in the debanches and disorders of slaves Every Age hath its bounds and its measures and its perfection Our childhood here below must not be without discipline under the pretence that it is not come to full growth Christians I complain not that there are defects in your knowledg and practice which have no place in Heaven but that there are in you vices which ought to have no place on earth I blame you not for that there is a great difference between you and Angels but that there is none between you and worldly men I require not what is above the strength of your age but what is worthy of your profession and doth not at all exceed your light I beseech you only to labour as much for JESUS CHRIST as the children of this generation do for the interests of their lusts This doth not exceed the capacity of our nature since you see what the servants of sin do and it s necessarily your duty except you imagine that we owe less to JESUS CHRIST than Worldlings do to their foolish and vain passions The first piece of that compleatness which we have in him is this Divine Circumcision which is not made with hand but by the efficacy of his Spirit Without it we can have neither place in the communion of his people nor right to his Inheritance It 's a Circumcision of which we may truly say that every soul that shall not have receiv'd it shall be cut off from his people The Apostle shews us wherein it consists to wit in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh JESUS CHRIST hath put the sword in our hand that 's necessary to cut away this wretched flesh namely his sacred word wherein he discovers the horridness of sin and infernal venom of vices and the vanity and iniquity of all the lusts of the flesh He hath shew'd us the perdition which they that serve it fall into and hath put it to death on his Cross and buried it in his Sepulcher He hath spread before our eyes the wonders of GOD's love and the eternity of the Kingdom appointed for faithful servants He hath given us rules and examples of this part of our sanctification in his Gospel and in his life and offereth us the lights and consolations of his Spirit to lead us in this work Grasp we then this Divine Knife of his Gospel Thrust it hardily in to our hearts and cut out thence all the impurity of the vices that are there Let us rid our selves of them and cast them behind us Exterminate all the productions of the flesh as execrable things Leave not one of them in our selves Having subdued Avarice combat Ambition Pluck out Luxury and all its passions from our inward parts Root up Hatred and Wrath and Cruelty and spare the life of none of these Monsters Let us not rest until we have cleansed our hearts of all this cursed brood For it is not enough to have cut off some of them One sole Enemy abiding in our bosome is able to destroy us The body of the sins of the flesh must be put off saith the Apostle and not one or two of its sins only I confess the labour is hard but it is necessary and that at all times for it is the
task of our whole life in especial manner at present now that the death of our LORD and Saviour and his resurrection and his holy Supper do call us to extraordinary efforts of piety and sanctity And if the labour be great the felicity and the glory that follows it is infinite Let us employ our selves in it well-beloved Brethren with ardency and generosity put off the body of all our sins that having truly crucified our old man with the LORD JESUS we may also rise again with Him to be enliven'd by his Celestial food and have part for ever after the short trials of this life in His blessed immortality Amen The Twenty-third SERMON COL CHAP. II. VER XII XII Being buried with Him through baptism in which also you are raised again together through the faith of the efficacy of GOD who hath raised Him from the dead DEar Brethren It is very true that the solemnity of this great day which hath been consecrated by all Christians to the resurrection of the LORD JESUS and sanctifi'd by the Mysteries of his Table at which we have communicated doth require more than ordinary devotion and meditations of us Yet I have not needed to seek a subject for the present exercise any other where than in the series of the ordinary Texts which I do in this place expound to you the words I have read which immediately succeed those you heard last LORD's Day excellently suiting each of those duties to which this day is particularly dedicated For they treat of our LORD's resurrection and of the fruits that redound to us thereby as also of Baptism wherein they are communicated to us and which was wont for this reason to be solemnly administred heretofore in the ancient Church on the night before Easter and of that faith by which we become possess'd of this Divine Resurgent Lastly They speak of the interest we have in his burial that sequel of his precious death the blessed commemoration whereof we have celebrated this morning Subjects these which are as is plain to all eminently meet for the devotion of this day This then shall be by the will of GOD the matter of this action Faithful Souls afford it a vigorous and a deep attention elevating your thoughts to JESUS CHRIST the Prince of our salvation and Author of our immortality whiles we shall endeavour to represent to you what his Apostle here teacheth us about our communion in his burial and resurrection You may remember that to confound the impiety of certain Seducers who would oblige Christians to Mosaical Circumcision this holy man alledg'd in the precedent Text that we have in JESUS CHRIST that substance and truth whereof the Judaical Circumcision was but the shadow and model having in him put off the body of the sins of the flesh so as having receiv'd through the grace of JESUS this mystical and divine circumcision the other carnal and typical one is altogether useless to us and cannot be desired or practis'd by Christians without wronging their Saviour He still prosecutes that same intention and to shew how rich that sanctifying-grace is which we have in JESUS CHRIST he adds that besides our being circumcised by the virtue of his word and divested of the body of the sins of the flesh we have moreover been buried with him through Baptism and further that we are therein risen again with him through the faith of the efficiency of GOD who raised him from the dead For a right understanding of these words we are to consider First The communion we have both in the burial and resurrection of our LORD JESUS CHRIST And secondly The twofold means by which this communion is given us to wit Baptism and the Faith of the efficiency of GOD who hath raised our LORD from the dead The Apostle expresseth the first point in these words Being buried with him in which also you are risen again together As for our burial with the LORD you know that having suffer'd on the Cross that dolorous and accursed death which we had merited his sacred body loosned from that mournful tree and wrap'd up in a sheet was by Joseph of Arimathea laid in a new Sepulcher where it remained three days without motion without respiration and without life in this sad state the last of our infirmities until the beginning of the third day when he gloriously rose again The transcendent wisdom of the Father which ordered all the parts of this great work proceeded thus here very fitly to justifie the truth of his Son's death by his stay in the grave For if he had resum'd his life immediately after he laid it down and descended from the Cross alive again I confess such a Miracle might have astonish'd and transported the minds of the Spectators and demonstrated that this Divine crucified Person was more than man But on the other hand it would have rendred his death suspicious and without doubt made men imagine that it had been but a feigned and false appearance and no real separation of his soul from his body which opinion would evidently have shaken and overthrown our salvation it being entirely founded on the death of the LORD JESUS Whereas therefore it so highly concerns us to believe the same GOD hath in such sort assured and certifi'd the truth that we have not any shew of reason to call it in question For this cause it was his will that the LORD JESUS having commended his spirit into his hands should be laid in the Sepulcher and continue there three days there remaining after this no more cause to doubt but that he was truly dead since he was so long a time in the state of the dead Moreover our consolation required that he should enter into our Sepulchers to take away for us the horror of them and to assure us by His example that they have not force enough to detain our bodies for ever or to hinder them from rising one day again It 's for these reasons and other such that JESUS CHRIST would go down into this death's last entrenchment The Apostle saith then that true believers have been buried with him How so you will say seeing that they being living persons were never laid in the grave and surely not in our LORD's that was situate on Mount Calvary nigh to Jerusalem places very far distant from our abode Dear Brethren there is no man so gross but doth plainly see that these words are not to be taken according to the letter but figuratively and that they signifie not a natural but a mystical Sepulcher And in such a sense it may be said two manner of ways That we have been buried in CHRIST or with CHRIST First in regard of our justification that is the remission of our sins And secondly in regard of our sanctification and the mortifying of the old man For as concerning the first it is evident that JESUS CHRIST was not buried as neither was he crucified and put to death but for us only
circumcision we have that truth and fulness in JESUS CHRIST whereof it had but some part shadow'd out by its figure If the matter be the Sacrament it self the LORD hath given us one highly excelling to wit Baptism So as which way soever it be taken there is no reason at all that any man should desire still to retain circumcision But to proceed it is not here only that the Apostle attributes so great an effect unto Baptism He speaks thus of it constantly as for example when he saith that CHRIST sanctifieth the Church Eph. 5.26 Gal. 3.7 cleansing it with the washing of water by the word and elsewhere that we all who were baptized have put on CHRIST and in another place again 1 Cor. 12.13 that we have all been baptized into one spirit to be one body For the Sacraments of CHRIST are not vain and hollow pictures wherein the benefits of his death and resurrection are nakedly pourtray'd as in a piece of Art that feeds us barely with an unprofitable view of what it represents They are effectual means which He accompanieth with his virtue and filleth with his grace effectively accomplishing those things in us by his heavenly power which are set before us in the Sacrament when we receive it as we ought He inwardly nourisheth by the virtue of his flesh and blood the soul of him that duly takes his Bread and his Cup. He washeth and regenerateth that man within who is rightly consecrated by Baptism And if the infirmity of age do hinder that the effect does not at the instant appear in Infants baptized yet his virtue doth not fail to accompany his institution and conserve its self in them and bring forth its fruits upon them in their season when their nature is capable of the operations of understanding and will Heretofore in the primitive Church this double effect of Baptism was more clearly represented in the external action of the Sacrament than it is at this day For the greater part of those that were baptized being persons of age who came over to Christianity from Judaism or Paganism they were uncloth'd and then plunged into the water whence they immediately came forth and so were baptized in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost whereby they testifi'd that they did put off the body of sin the habit of the first Adam and buried it in the saving-waters of JESUS CHRIST as in its mystical grave and came forth thence risen up to a new life for a symbol whereof they took up a white habit and wore it an whole week Now though the water wherewith we baptize doth not carry so express a figure of this mystical Sepul cher and Resurrection as that of the Ancients did since this ceremony cannot be practis'd towards Infants without very great inconvenience and even danger of their lives in so tender an age and especially in such cold Countreys as ours nevertheless the virtue of holy Baptism is still the same that JESUS whom in it we did put on communicating to us by the virtue of his Spirit the mystical image of his Burial and Resurrection that is as we have shewed the annihilation of the old man and creation of the new If we meet with any baptized persons as there are but too many such in whom the old man is so far from being buried that he lives and reigns with absolute power and the new man hath neither life nor action at all it may not be imputed unto JESUS CHRIST who always accompanieth his Sacraments with his saving virtue but unto the persons own unbelief who doth wretchedly repell the operationof the grace of CHRIST and deprive it of all the effect which it would have assurâ—dly produced in them if their unworthiness had not frustrated its efficacy towards them For I acknowledg that neither Baptism nor the Word do work in any but such as receive them with faith And in this as in all other things the admirable wisdom of our LORD doth appear For the subject being Man a reasonable Creature he dealeth with him in a way proper and suitable to his nature The means he useth for his salvation do not operate in him as drugs and simples by a Physical action and such as takes its effect whatever otherwise be the mind of the man that takes them But the operation of the Word and Sacraments doth depend upon the preparation of their hearts to whom they are administred They work when they are receiv'd with faith they produce nothing when they are receiv'd with unbelief And thus it is meet that the understanding which is the Guide and Ruler of all our moral actions be first perswaded of the truth of GOD and then our wills and affections take impression and be changed by the efficacy of his power This very thing the Apostle here doth shew us with much clearness by adding besides Baptism that we are buried and raised again with CHRIST by faith an evident token that the Sacrament doth mortifie sin in us and raise us up unto sanctity according to the faith it meets with in us It left the heart of Simon Magus in the bonds of iniquity and in the gall of bitterness because it found in it no faith at all but a naughtiness hardned in unbelief and full of Hypocrisie But as for Lydia and all those that have a true faith it doth assuredly mortifie sin in them and makes the new man live in them unto righteousness and holiness For it is not possible but that the person who is firmly perswaded of the truth of the Gospel should renounce sin the venom and horror whereof this Divine Doctrine doth so clearly discover and on the contrary embrace that holiness whose beauty and blessedness it doth so magnificently set before us man naturally flying from what he believes mortal and pernicioâ—s to him and adâ—ering with like necessity to what he judgeth healthful and advantageous But the Apostle who does every where exalt the grace of GOD and cast down the 〈◊〉 of man lest any one should imagine that this â—â—â—th upon which 〈…〉 doth depend were a production of our own will doth by the way advertise us that it is a gift of our LORD's when he nameth it the faith of the efficacy or of the operation of GOD that is to say which the efficacy of his hand produceth in us Whereby their error is refuted who hold that GOD for the producing of faith in us doth meerly set before us either outwardly by his Word or inwardly by his Spirit the object of truth leaving it to the liberty of our will to believe it or reject it By this account faith should not be the faith of the efficacy of GOD since that according to this supposition he should exert none at all upon us But the Apostle stileth it the faith of the efficacy or operation of GOD. We must conclude therefore that for the giving of us faith he operateth in
two things namely first the corruption of a nature destitute of all just and rational apprehensions and motions and secondly the guilt of sin and an obligâ—tion to eternal punishment In like manner that life to which GOD calleth us by his grace doth consist in two particulars first a restauration of His Image in us by the infusion of principles and faculties of true life and secondly the remission of our sins The Apostle here doth briefly speak of them both of the first in saying that GOD hath quickned us together with CHRIST of the second in adding that he hath freely pardoned us all our sins For the first GOD hath quickned us in that delivering us from the death we were under he hath put into us by the grace of his Spirit the principles of an heavenly life and formed in our breasts new hearts hearts illuminated with a new light to wit the good knowledg of his Truth and of the mysteries of his will Then in the second place by the virtue of this Divine flame he enkindleth in our souls the love of his most excellent Majesty charity towards our neighbour uâ—â—ection for just and honest things zeal for his glory abhorrence and hatred of sin and in a word sanctification and all the virtues which it comprehendeth that are the sproutings and productions of this second celestial and happy life which in his great mercy he conferreth on us From this new nature as from a blessed root do issue good and holy actions prayer worshipping of GOD frequent meditation and reading of his word extasies of love to him travels for his glory sufferings for his Name sake relieving instructing assisting of our Neighbour and such others that are as it were the flowers and fruits in the production whereof that life which GOD hath given us in his Son doth properly consist It 's the same thing that the Apostle elsewhere compriseth in few words saying Eph. 2.10 and 4.24 that we are the workmanship of GOD being created in JESVS CHRIST unto good works which GOD hath prepared that we should walk in them And again in another place that our new man that is the second nature which he formeth in us when he quickneth us by his grace is created after GOD in true righteousness and holiness The holy Spirit being rich and magnificent in its expressions doth explain this admirable and blessed operation of the grace of GOD in us by divers terms taken from different resemblances but all amounting to the same sense For to set it forth it saith not only as here that GOD hath quickned us but also Eph. 2.10 1 Pet. 1.3 Ezek. 36.26 Jer. 31.33 Rom. 11 23. Col. 1.13 1 Cor 3.6 Acts 16.4 Phil. 2.13 that He hath created us and in another place that He hath begotten us again the same is meant when it saith that GOD taketh out of us our hearts of stone and gives us hearts of flesh in which he writes his laws that He reneweth us and formeth us into new creatures or new men that He graffeth us by his power into the true olive that He translateth us out of the kingdom of darkness into his marvellous light that it 's He who giveth encrease the Ministers of the Word being nothing that He openeth our hearts and worketh in us effectually both to will and to do of his good pleasure and other like phrases which are found here and there in the Scriptures But the Apostle addeth here that GOD hath thus quickned us together with CHRIST shewing us by these words the cause and the manner of our vivisication namely that it was effected in JESUS CHRIST and with Him and by Him For as that death which we heretofore bore in our selves doth come from Adam the stock and original of our carnal beeing who by destroying himself destroyed us also with him and corrupting his own nature corrupted ours likewise so as it is in him and from him that we inherit this misery in like manner on the contrary that life which we have now receiv'd from GOD doth come from JESUS CHRIST the stock and root of the new nature who raising up himself unto life raised us up also according to what the Apostle saith elsewhere viz. that as all dye in Adam so likewise in JESVS CHRIST are all made alive But this assertion of his here that GOD hath quickned us together with CHRIST 1 Cor. 15.22 doth particularly refer to his resurrection as if GOD in restoring him to that glorious life which he receiv'd at his issuing out of the Sepulcher had at the same time given us also part therein And he speaks in this manner for two reasons principally The first is because it was then that JESUS CHRIST brought to light that blessed life whereof we have been made partakers and from him as from its source hath it been derived unto us so as that same time was the day of our new birth as well as his For if he had not been made alive no more should we have ever been Not but that the Father all had the might and power that was necessary to give us life again But his Justice could not have suffer'd him to give life to any of the sons of men if their Surety and Mediator had abode under death The second reason is That he being our Head and we his Members he our Pattern and we Copies drawn if I may so say from his Original when GOD raised him he re-enliven'd us also by the same means since by this action he obliged himself to vivifie us likewise it being evident that without this we should not have that conformity with our Head to which he predestinated us Not to mention for the present the efficacy this Resurrection hath to form in us faith and hope and love of glorious immortality which are the principles of that new life that GOD doth put into us by his Spirit as we intimated in the exposition of the precedent Verse There remains now the other part of this blessed life which GOD giveth us in his Son namely the remission of our sins S. Paul sets it before us here when he saith that GOD hath freely pardoned us all our sins For the Spirit of Sanctification which is as the soul of that new life he createth in our hearts doth indeed turn away our affections from vice and obstruct our committing of unjust ungodly and impure actions wherein we wallowed afore Yet this respecteth only the present and the future and if there were no more the guilt of sins committed in time past during our spiritual deadness would nevertheless remain in its strength it being clear that though the act of sin be past the faultiness wherewith it commaculates him who committeth it goes not off so soon It subsists still both in the conscience of the sinner if he have any and in the registers of the Justice of the Supream Judg of the World binding over the sinner unto punishment Whence it follows
threatnest us How hast thou the insolency to accuse those whom GOD justifies and to condemn those for whom the Son of GOD dyed and rose again 'T is thus Dear Brethren that we must repel the tentations of the enemy and maugre his assaults possess in peace the loving-kindness of GOD adoring his bounty and ardently employing our selves to his glory For this is the scope and the end of his grace He hath acquitted us of all our debts and made void the obligation which was upon them that we being ravish'd with a Goodness so divine might love him with all our strength and all our soul according to that veritable Maxime acknowledged by Simon in the Gospel He to whom much is forgiven Luk. 7.43 Luk. 1. 74 75 ougth to love much He hath delivered us by his Son out of the hand of our enemies that we might serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness before him all the days of our life And indeed how can we have the heart either not to love at all or to love but coldly a GOD who is so good to us who seeing us overwhelm'd in debt hath freely forgiven us all hath made void the obligation and for the razing out and making void the same spent the blood of his only begotten Son and for the rending it in pieces suffered his Divine Body to be all rent with strokes After a goodness so ravishing must not that man be worse than a Devil who loves not this Father who hath given us his Son and this Son who hath by his death obtained our salvation Oh how much reason had the Apostle to count him execrable who loves not this great Saviour 1 Cor. 16.22 If any man saith he love not the LORD JESVS CHRIST let him be anathema maranatha GOD forbid there should be any so wretched and odious a person in the midst of us Yet if any be sure he believes not of our Saviour what he makes profession to believe For it is not possible to believe him without loving him Let us love him then and faithfully serve him setting his Name and Honour above all the Interests of the World and our Flesh Let us obey his holy Discipline and conform all that life unto his will which we hold not but by his grace Let us imitate that Divine Pattern he hath left us diligently walking in humility and patience and charity whereof he hath given us so great and so admirable examples Let us have compassions and tendernesses for our Brethren that may resemble those which he hath had for us He hath pardoned us all our sins and quitted to us all our debts He hath shed his blood to blot out the obligation that was against us He dyed on a Cross that he might thereunto nail up and for ever abolish all the instruments of our condemnation Having experienced so great a goodness towards our selves how can we dare to have so little towards others to be obdurate to them and implacable when they have offended us cruel and inexorable when they owe us any thing He hath forgiven us Talents and we exact of them even Farthings He hath pardoned us a thousand and a thousand crimes We retain against them the slightest offences What shall we answer when he one day shall say to us Behold I have forgiven thee all this great debt at thy request shouldst not thou also have had pity on thy fellow-servant as I had pity on thee Without doubt my Brethren we should It is a duty too just and too reasonable for us to fail in If yet our flesh oppose let us pray the LORD to subdue it to his will by the power of his Spirit granting us to do what he commands that after we have had part here below in his Grace and in his Sanctification we may one day participate on high of his Eternal Glory So be it The Twenty-sixth SERMON COL CHAP. II. VER XV. Ver. xv Having spoiled principalities and powers which he publickly made a shew of triumphing over them on that Cross DEar Brethren The Cross of our LORD CHRIST which at the first preaching of the Gospel was a scandal to the Jews and the scorn of Gentiles is in truth the greatest mystery of the Wisdom of GOD and matter of highest admiration to Angels and men In it the Supream Majesty hath mixed together with incomprehensible art and reconcil'd most contrary and most incompatible things death and life ignominy and glory condemnation and absolution defeat and victory The Devil having put it in the heart of Judas to betray JESUS and push'd on the Princes of the Jews to take him and deliver him to Pilate who condemn'd him and caused him to dye a cruel death upon a Cross this mortal Enemy of our salvation seemed to have got the day inasmuch as by his artifices he had brought the Prince of Life to so shameful an execution But it succeeded quite otherwise The blow he gave our LORD struck himself and our Saviour by suffering of death overthrew for ever all the power of the Devil as Sampson the Heroe of Israel who when he dyed pulled down and involved in the same ruins some thousands of his enemies This Cross on which JESUS hung was to say truth the instrument of his glory rather than of his ignominy and the trophee of his victory rather than the gibbet of his execution He suffer'd death on it I grant but a death that lasted no longer than three days and got him immortality whereas he there defeated and ruin'd the Devil and all our Enemies without recovery It 's this the Apostle represents to us in the Text where in connexion with that he had said before namely that the LORD effaced the obligation which is contrary to us and abolish'd it and fastned it to the cross he now adds Having spoiled principalities and powers which he publickly made a shew of triumphing over them on the cross Good GOD what a change is this He tells us of the death of CHRIST the most painful the most shameful and most execrable punishment in the world as of a triumph and doth not stick to compare that fatal Tree whereon he suffer'd it to a triumphal Chariot He puts in chains those that put him to death and causeth them to go not for authors or spectators of his sufferings but for part of the pomp of his victory This is the sight my Brethren to which the Apostle inviteth us the triumph not of a Caesar or some other of the World 's great Captains but of the Son of GOD the Father of Eternity In it you shall see this King of Glory riding in a Chariot bath'd all over with his divine victorious blood Isa 63.1.3 and as the Prophet Isaiah yer-while represented him with Princes and people under foot and he marching over them with his garments died red In it you shall see not Soldiers and Commanders in chains but Daemons the Princes of this world bound and
and the same kind of terrene and material things and tend to one and the same end to wit the purifying and sanctifying of men and the rendring the Deity propitious and favourable to them by such exercises This whole sort of service is carnal tyed up to certain corporeal things and actions in which it consisteth as is meat and drink in watchings and cloathing in mens washing and discipling themselves going in procession or on pilgrimage repeating certain words and forms of prayer it also dependeth upon times having its years its months its days its festivals and its very hours all regulated This was the very form of the carnal or ceremonial service of the Jews which was directly opposite to that other kind of service that JESUS CHRIST gave us in His Gospel which without being bound up to these childish scruples of times of places and of things doth wholly consist in a pure and genuine worshiping of GOD in loving and fearing Him and tenderly affecting our neighbour in honesty and justice and in a true and lively sanctity Accordingly you know that whereas the former service is termed carnal the latter is stiled spiritual The one is a serving in shadow the other in truth the one in flesh the other in spirit 'T is then in my opinion all that first sort of carnal services from what Source soever they flow either the institution of Moses or the invention of any other man that the Apostle doth here call the rudiments of the world declaring that we have been freed from it by our LORD JESUS CHRIST remaining no longer subject to all this childish and infantile pedagogy nor bound up to houres or times or elements or other parts of the world but being raised above all these things so as we may make use of them with full liberty according to the interests of Piety and charity and not be any more imbondaged to them or depend upon them But because JESUS CHRIST hath procured us this great benefit by His death and does put us in possession of it by the communion we have with Him in respect thereof thence it comes that S. Paul sets forth this grace of His freeing us from subjection to the rudiments of the world in terms that referr thereto saying not singly that we are delivered from such kind of services by JESUS CHRIST but that we are dead with Him as to the rudiments of the world An expression exceeding graceful and elegant It signifies first that we are no longer subject to these rudiments of the world For the dead are out of all servitude The Laws demand nothing of them any more Neither their Lords nor their masters have any power to require ought of them any longer Death breaks all the bonds that tyed them to any subjection whatever The Apostle saith therefore we are dead to the rudiments of the world to signifie that we are freed from them that we are no more subject to them as he tells us elsewhere to the same sense that we are dead to the Law and again in another place Rom. 7. â— Gal. 2. â—9 Rom. 6. â— I am saith he dead to the Law that I might live to GOD. And thus too it is that we must take his affirming elsewhere that we are dead to sin that is to say delivered from its tyranny And because death puts an end to and abolisheth the power and authority of the master as well as the servitude and subjection of the vassal thence it comes S. Paul saith indifferently that sin and the commandment of the old Law are dead to us and that we are dead to them signifying by the one and the other that we are Subjects of theirs no more But S. Paul saying here that we are dead with CHRIST as to the rudiments of the world doth shew us in the second place both the cause of our liberty JESUS CHRIST and the means by which He acquired it for us to wit His death We are dead to all ceremonial services for that our LORD hath disolved and abolished them in dying for us For His death hath satisfied all the reasons upon which these rudiments of the world were for a time appointed It hath procured that righteousness which they represented and exhibited that salvation which they promised and brought in the substance whereof they were but shadows It hath opened the house of GOD unto the Gentiles whom they barred from it and put an end to the Old Testament to which they pertained and founded the new an eternal and immutable one which they prefigured Wherefore the Veil of the Temple was rent from the top to the bottom at the time that JESUS suffered death for a token that the antient worship whereof this Veil was a symbole became thenceforth abrogated and annulled In fine these words of the Apostle do discover to us further an apt resemblance that is found to be between the LORD's death on the Cross and our freedom from the yoke of Ceremonies For as JESUS in dying did divest Himself of the former life He led here below during the days of His flesh in infirmity and in subjection to the elements of Moses to take up a new one by His resurrection which was to be free divine and coelestial so we conformly by vertue of the communion we have with Him and particularly in His death do lay down that former manner of life that consisteth in the childish exercises of some carnal abstinences and devotions to live henceforth in the liberty of children of GOD serving Him no more in shadow and in figure but in spirit and in truth with a conscience pure and an heart not bound up to the places things and times of the old world but continually elevated to that new incorruptible and eternal one above the heavens where JESUS CHRIST the author and prince of our religion and salvation is Such is this Evangelical verity here laid down by S. Paul at the beginning of the Text that we are dead with CHRIST as to the rudiments of the world Whereby to mention it by the way you may see how much out in their reckoning they are who place the perfection of the faithful in the practising of these carnal disciplines and devotions accounting those for perfect who do use them S. Paul on the contrary terms them here the rudiments of the world so as the subjecting of Christians to such disciplines is so farr from being a perfectâ—â—◠〈◊〉 completing them as these men pretend that it is clean contrary a putâ—ing them back to their ABC and a reducing them from the highest Classis of the School of GOD down to the lowest there to become children again and lead a childish life with the disciples of Moses in an apprentiship to his rudiments and under the Ferule of his pedagogie The Apostle from this principle thus asserted concludes against the false teachers that all their ordinances touching abstinence from certain meats were vain unjust and tyrannical If therefore
resurrection with our Saviour He had touched it already in the twelfth verse of the precedent Chapter and 't is from thence he resumes it and reminds us of it here saying If then ye be risen again with CHRIST that is to say since you are risen again with the LORD as I have said and shewed a-fore For the particle if is used here as often else-where by way of illation and concluding not in way of doubting and imports as much as if the Apostle had said since that or seeing that For the rest you plainly see that the Resurrection he speaks of is not that of our bodies which shall not be till the last day but another mystical and spiritual one already accomplished in us by the virtue of our LORD'S resurrection and the efficacy of His Spirit Eph. 2.5.6 He spake of it a-fore at the place we noted and in the Epistle to the Ephesians where he saith that GOD hath quickened us together with CHRIST and raised us up together and made us sit together in heavenly places in Him He explains us the mysterie of it else-where in these words Rom. 6. We are saith he buried with Him by Baptisme into His death that as CHRIST is raised from the dead by the glory of the Father so we in like manner should walk in newness of life Every resurrection presupposeth a death preceding For to rise again is nothing else but for one to be restored to life who before was dead Now the estate that men are in under the dominion of sin the Scripture calleth Death because therein they have no sense nor motion in respect of piety and sanctity no more than the dead that rest in the grave have any for the actions of this life Eph. 2.1 Ye were dead in your sins and offences saith the Apostle to the Ephesians speaking of the time of their ignorance Whence is that which our Saviour saith in the Gospel Let the dead bury their dead and which St. Paul sayes 1 Tim. 5.6 the widow that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth When therefore by the efficacy of the vocation of the Spirit and Gospel of the LORD a man comes to pass out of this miserable condition into the estate of grace receiving the light of Faith into his understanding and Charity and Sanctification into his heart the Scripture to express this wonderful change saith that he is risen again This is precisely the resurrection that St. Paul intendeth in this place He saith that we are risen again with CHRIST First because this blessed change that 's brought to pass in us by His grace is like that change which betided Him when from the grave where He had lain for the space of three daies He was raised unto life by virtue from on high For as He then received the faculties of moving and sensation of which He was deprived in the Sepulchre so we in our regeneration do receive a spirit and a principle of life which we had not before Again as the LORD was restored unto life by the glory of the Father as the Apostle speaks that is by virtue of the exceeding great and glorious power of GOD in like manner are we renew'd and put into the state of grace by the efficacy of the might of GOD and not by the arm of man or the operation of flesh and blood In fine as the LORD upon His rising again did recover not simply that life which He laid down in His dying but another much more excellent and glorious a spiritual a coelestial and an immortal life in like manner we resume in our regeneration not the life of the first Adam before sin from which we were fallen and which how excellent so-ever was nevertheless animal and mortal that is capable of being lost as appeared by the issue but another much more exquisite and perfect a life eternal immutable and like that the blessed Angels live Thus you see the Resurrection of the LORD CHRIST is the idea and pattern of ours But I add in the second place that we are said to be risen again with CHRIST because it is in Him and from Him that we have this grace it being evident that Faith which is the first faculty of the new life doth ingraff and incorporate us into JESUS CHRIST and as the vine-branch doth not live but in its stock so man cannot live that divine life but in his Saviour In fine we are risen again with CHRIST because His resurrection is the cause of ours in such sort as if He had not risen from the dead we should have remained lying in the darkness of our spiritual death CHRIST coming forth out of His grave hath opened and enlightened ours and hath administred out of His own store all things necessary to deliver us out of the miserable estate wherein we were and to put us in possession of the life of Heaven His resurrection hath founded our Faith shewing us clearly that He is the Son of GOD and that His Gospel is true His resurrection hath assured our souls giving us full proof that His death did fully satisfie and content the judge of the World It hath strengthened our hopes making us to see by example of our Head that death the dreadfullest of our enemies cannot impede our happiness Hereupon it hath kindled love of GOD and desire of so great glory in our hearts and finally produced in them the principles the habitudes and dispositions of the new life which are necessary for our attaining unto blissful immortality Since therefore JESUS CHRIST in rising again did thereby raise up our life which had been ingulfed in hell and the curse and brought to light the causes of Faith Hope and Charity the principal faculties of that new life we now have it 's evident that we are risen again in Him and with Him From whence that which the Apostle infers upon it doth no less clearly follow to wit that we ought to mind henceforth the things which are on high and seek them with all our affection For the life unto which we are raised up with our LORD is heavenly and not earthly divine and not natural eternal and not corruptible Since therefore every creature employeth all the sense and affection it hath about things suitable to its life who sees not that the faithful are obliged by the honour they have to be risen again with the LORD neither to breath after nor embrace other things but those that are on high in which their new life doth properly consist And such is the example He hath given us For being risen he abode but a very little time here below only so long as the work of our salvation did require and forthwith ascended into Heaven to draw up our thoughts and affections thither untill our bodies also follow one day being raised up thither as His was unto highest glory And this is the second consideration that the Apostle here lays before us to perswade
CHRIST hath given us in raising us again with Himself doth oblige us These thoughts and works of Heaven are necessary productions of the principles and faculties of that life unto which we have been raised up You can neither be Christians without having part in the resurrection of our LORD nor have part in His resurrection except you walk with Him and wear that lightsome robe of sanctity wherewith He vesteth all the associates of His resurrection He Himself calleth us hereto from that lofty Throne whereon He sitteth at the right hand of GOD Faithful soul saith He to each of us look unto me and I will give thee light Fear not for I govern the Heavens and the earth Only fix thine eyes thy thoughts and thine heart on me and I will guide thee by my counsel and receive thee one day into my glory Dear Brethren this He doth promise us and of this He will give us earnest next LORD's-day at His holy table Let us do what He demands of us or to say better let us pray Him to do it in us and He will assuredly do what He promiseth us Unto Him unto the Father and unto the Holy Spirit the true and only GOD blessed for ever be honour praise and glory to ages of ages Amen THE THIRTY THIRD SERMON ON COLOSSIANS CHAP. III. VER III IV. Verse III. For ye are dead and your life is hid with CHRIST in GOD. IV. When CHRIST who is your life shall appear then shall ye also appear with Him in glory DEAR Brethren The LORD JESUS being not only the author and the cause but also the pattern and exemplar of that great Salvation which GOD of His infinite mercy offereth to mankind in the Gospel it is not possible that we should have part in it or assuredly enter into this rich possession without having in us a resemblance of the same soveraign LORD and being as so many copies of this Divine Original where all His features and lineaments may appear though in a form and measure much less perfect and eminent than His. Rom. 8.28 Of this the Apostle expresly informeth us in his Epistle to the Romans saying that those whom GOD did fore-know that is love and discriminate from the rest of men according to His good pleasure to communicate really faith and eternal salvation unto them He did also predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son Heb. 2.12 13. For this cause He doth us the honour to call us sometimes His children and sometimes His brethren by reason of the resemblance we have with Him the nature the condition the quality and as 't is commonly termed the fortune of children following the fathers and of brethren being like their elder brothers Whence the Apostle concludes in the Epistle to the Hebrews that He who sanctifyeth that is the LORD JESUS Heb. 8.11 and they who are sanctified that is the faithful are all of one that is of one and the same mass of one and the same form and nature And to make it plain to us the Scripture compareth Him sometimes to a Vine-stock Jo. 15. Rom. 11. otherwhile to an Olive-tree of each of which we are branches all of them things between which there is by nature a strict communion the one and the others having the same constitution and qualities And thence again it is that Saint Paul calleth Him our first-fruits when speaking of our death and the resurrection which is to succeed it he saith that CHRIST was made the first fruits of them that slâ—ep 1 Cor. 15.20 the first-fruits as you know being of the same condition and nature with the rest of those things out of the mass whereof they are taken Now although this consormity of the faithful with the LORD JESUS be of a large extent yet it doth principally appear in two heads wherein the Scripture doth particularly consider it to wit in His Death and in His Resurrection the happy remembrance whereof we have celebrated this morning For the death of JESUS CHRIST hath produced a death like it in all true believers reducing them by its efficacy and virtue unto a state conform to His when He was stretched out on the Cross and lay in the Sepulchre In like manner His Resurrection transmitteth into them a life like that which He resumed when having overcome death He issued out of His grave His Death is not only the cause but also the pattern of ours and likewise His Life is both the principle and exemplar of ours It 's of this death and this life Dearly beloved Brethren the effect and the image of the Death and Resurrection of the LORD that we make account to entertain you in this action For after our having celebrated the memory of the death and resurrection of this Great Saviour and participated of the one and the other by the vertue of His Spirit and our Faith what can we more pertinently meditate than the precious fruit which each of them produceth in us and the images of the one and the other of these mysteries which this Divine dead and again risen perâ—â—â— doth draw and form in us inasmuch as He changeth us after a sort into Himself by an impression of His omnipotent vertue so as if we have truly receiv'd Him we are become dead and risen again with Him St. Paui teacheth us this excellent and saving truth in the series of our ordinary Texts by these words which we have read for the subject of this exercise In those that preceded which we expounded eight daies since this great Apostle drew us from the earth that he might elevate us to Heaven where JESUS sitteth at the right hand of the Father Seek saith he the things which are above and not the things which are on the earth But because he knew how difficult such a transportation would be for persons who are still so many waies fastned to the earth to work so high a design thoroughly into us besides the reasons already represented which were taken from our resurrection with the LORD and from His presence and glorious soveraignty in the places he would elevate us to he further proposes two more for that end in this passage The one taken from our death For saith he ye are dead and the other from that new life which we have received a life hidden it 's true for the present in GOD but such as will be plainly and plenarily discovered one day at the manifestation of the LORD JESUS Your life saith he is hid with CHRIST in GOD. When CHRIST c. These are the two principal points we will treat of in this action the grace of our LORD assisting and Him we invocate praying that this word of His may be effectually in us His power to salvation throughly changing us into the similitude both of His salutary death and of His glorious life that being dead unto our selves we may not live henceforth but in Him unto His honour and the edification
a perpetual disorder which displaceth every thing and overturns all yet all hath its certain causes It 's therefore with a great deal of reason and elegance that the Apostle compares this strange convention of so many evils which are so divers and do all work with some sequel and dependance unto a body and each of those vices of which it is composed as covetousness fornication and the like unto the members of a body He calleth them our members because that old man which is made up of them is wholly ours and does invest all the principles of our life from their root and invelope them and mingle so deeply with them that it all in a sort is nothing but corruption and malady this venome infecting all the actions and all the motions of our nature its understanding its affections and passions together with the thoughts words and actions which flow from them so that as our animal and natural life consisteth in the exercising of our members and in their actions in like manner our moral life is all of it nothing but a continual exercising of these vices and of the sins they produce as is to be clearly seen if you consider the lives of profane and unregenerate persons For they are nought else but a continual exercise of vices of ambition of vanity of covetousness of luxury and sensuality as they are addicted more or less to the one or the other of these sins the perpetual running of a foul and muddy stream which a corrupted spring doth daily thrust forth that you cannot observe so much as one of its swellings or rollings exempt from its filthiness And this may suffice for comprehending the reason why the Apostle calls these parts of the old man our members For as to that consideration which some do propose in this matter namely that the members of our bodies having been created of GOD they are not ours but in regard of use and not in regard of their original whereas the members of the old man are ours all manner of waies having been made and formed in us by our own fault and naughtiness and not by the hand of GOD who created man upright and pure man distorting and depraving himself this conceit I say seems to me more subtil than solid For though the matter of it be very true yet it is so wide from the Apostles design in this place that there is little likelyhood he thought upon it when he called the vices here of our corrupt nature our members Without doubt he so doth only because it is in the exercising and acting of these vices that the carnal life of men doth consist For the rest if you remember what we said upon the precedent Text of the death of the old man in us you will not think it strange that the Apostle after having said that we are dead does not yet forbear to exhort us to mortifie the members of this same life which we have put off in JESUS CHRIST For our being dead in this respect doth not import that the life of the flesh is entirely and absolutely extinct in us this will not be effected untill we shall quit it at our leaving of the earth and put on coelestial and spiritual bodies at the day of the resurrection but the Scripture doth thus speak first because JESUS CHRIST hath by His death His resurrection and His ascension into Heaven destroyed and abolished all the causes that gave nutriment and sustenance to the life of the old man and secondly because the old man 〈◊〉 receiv'd his deaths wound in each of us by the faith that ingrafted and incorporated us into JESUS CHRIST so as if we persevere it is not possible that he should recover But this death of His as we said doth not arrive all at once It 's executed by little and little and the exercise of a believer during his stay here below is to busie himself incessantly about it daily to weaken and wound that flesh of his which is already nailed to the cross of his LORD to entinguish by little and little all the life it hath remaining that is to mortifie his members as the Apostle here speaks In this sense you see these two conceptions are so far from having ought that 's contrary or incompatible in them that quite otherwise the one doth evidently and necessarily follow from the other For since we are dead in JESUS CHRIST since the arrest of the death of our old man is past since JESUS CHRIST hath done on His part all that was necessary to execute it since this flesh condemn'd is already fastened to His cross it is evident that it ought to live no longer and that by consequent each of us should incessantly bestirr our selves to put it to death by mortifying its members beating down and weakening their vigour driving deep into them our Saviour's nails and thorns untill they be effectually reduced unto that state of death unto which they were condemned having no more either motion or sentiment or force or life at all in us Lo My Brethren the thing the Apostle means by these words mortifie your members To say it in a word he would have us weaken and extinguish the vices of our old man and put them in such a state of death as hath no more strength nor vigour nor stirring But as this holy man's whole language is full of profound wisdome I am of opinion he thus speaks to give a further blow to those seducers whose error he had been refuting in the fore-going chapter These men to recommend their disciplines gave out that they did not at all spare the body that they had no regard to the satiating of the flesh that they oppos'd its pleasures and humbled and mortified it And you know that this is at this very day the language of those votaries who place Christianity in such exercises They speak of nothing but their mortifications St. Paul therefore doth here correct the vain conceits of this error and sheweth us what true mortification is and that that is worthy of the study and exercise of the faithful It is saith he the members of the old man we are to mortifie and not those of the body It is vices It 's fornication and covetousness and pride that we must quell and kill with blows and not our body And as one of the Prophets sometime said to the superstitious of his age who fasted and afflicted themselves and rent their clothes Rend your hearts and not your garments Joel 2.13 in like manner the Apostle here opposeth the internal mortification of sins as only necessary and truly worthy of a Christian unto the external mortification of the body unto which error did and still doth tye up its self For in truth to what purpose is it to beat a man's breast and rend his back while sin mean time reigneth in his heart To what purpose is it to afflict the members of this body while the members of the
any other of the Ministers of JESUS CHRIST doth any where injoyn us to wear hair-cloth or to disfigure our countenances with a multitude of fasts and watchings or to go barefoot or to put on a cowl or renounce the usage of any of the meats which GOD hath created for our service much less to cover our selves with dung and filth or to gore our selves all over with disciplines Isa 1.12 God will one day say to those that amuse themselves in such mortifications Who hath required this at your hands and why have ye suffered so much in vain Gal. 3.4 The only mortification he demands of us is that of the old man that we beat down our vices and not that we rend our bodies that we deface our passions and not our countenances that we renounce our lusts and not His gifts That we give the discipline to our manners and not our shoulders As for our selves My Brethren I acknowledge that we have renounced the mortification of the superstitious the misery is we do not practise that which is our Saviours though without it no man can have part in Him or His kingdom as the Apostle intimates plainly enough here where he doth not own any person for a member of CHRIST risen who is not dead and else-where he affirms in expresse terms that they that are CHRIST's have crucified the flesh with its affections and lusts We amuse not our selves in bodily exercise No but neither do we more heed that of the spirit We spare our hearts no less than our bodies and do not treat the vices of the one any whit more roughly than the skin of the other Men see sufficiently by the actions of our lives that the members of this old man whom the cross of CHRIST hath condemned unto death remaining very far from being dead are scarce wounded in us that they are not so much as scratch'd that they live in us in their full strength and vigour and no more feel our Saviour's nails and thorns than if He had not died or we not believed in Him at all Our adversaries are nor to seek how to charge it home upon us and it is the only one of their arguments that puts us to confusion We easily answer all their other reproaches There 's none but this wherein our consciences enforce us to separate the cause of JESUS CHRIST and of His Gospel from our own For if His truth were to be judged of by the quality of our deportments who could defend it seeing the horrible disorder that generally appeareth in our lives Let us consider only the two articles here touched by the Apostle unchastity and avarice In conscience is the one and the other of these two passions dead among us Have they not as great a vogue as among the men of the World Is the modesty of youth the honesty of marriage is chastity and temperance better practised here than other-where Doth the fordidnesse and eagernesse of avarice less appear Verily I am extremely asham'd to say it all is alike except that those without do confess and discipline themselves and macerate their flesh with some kind of fasts and say their chappelet whereby at least they shew some sense of their faultinesse though they apply ineffectual and ridiculous remedies of it Whereas we after committing the same faults and dabling in the same filth come to present our selves impudently here without fearing GOD or having shame of men And if the voice of the LORD that resoundeth in this place do draw some sigh from us at our going hence we return every one to our vices as pleasant and as obstinate as ever GOD is so good that He hath hitherto attended our repenting But let us beware lest our obduratenesse do change His patience into fury and constrain Him in the end to punish such a refractory contempt of His word and His favours and avenge the affront we do His Gospel by living so ill in so fair and so divine a light Let us all descend into our selves Let us examine our carriage and our consciences Let each one interrogate himself Come my soul after so many moneths and years that JESUS CHRIST hath so carefully instructed thee what pains hast thou taken to conform thy self to Him and to imprint the image of His death and of His life upon thy behaviour Hast thou nailed thine old man to His cross Hast thou mortified his members Hast thou deprived them of that wretched vigour which they display with so much efficacy in the children of disobedience Do they leave thee at rest Or when they begin to trouble thee hast thou the courage to resist them Doth not avarice stretch out thine hand upon the goods of others or doth it not with-hold the same from imparting of thine own unto the poor Hast thou not felt its vain sollicitudes and fruitless melancholies it's insatiable cupidity and unbridled eagerness and that impudence it hath to despise and violate honesty laws and decency for the satisfying its inordinate desires But if avarice hath not importun'd thee tell me my soul hath not the lust of the eyes and the vanity of the flesh at one time or other insnared thee Hath not this traiterous Dalila lulled thee asleep Hast thou guarded the glory of that Nazareat to which GOD hath consecrated thee from her ambushments Brethren let us thus catechize our souls daily and about our other duties as well as these Let us not pardon them any thing Judge we them righteously and with inexorable severity Chastise them for all their faults and bringing them down at the feet of GOD make them weep and grone in His presence Let us reproach them with their ingratitudes and set before their eyes the benefits of GOD and the offences with which they have recompensed Him Denounce we also His judgements on them and the horror of His dreadful vengeance and not give them over untill they have taken a full and firm resolution to return no more to their ingratitudes Above all Dear Brethren let us make them hate and detest those two pests which the Apostle hath to day so solemnly condemned to dye to wit luxury and covetousnesse Let us execute his just sentence upon these two passions and cause them to suffer that death which they so many waies deserve For as to the first it impudently profaneth a body which belongs to JESUS CHRIST was redeemed by His blood washed with His heavenly water fed with His flesh and consecrated by His spirit Rends it from the communion of that divine body of which it is become a member to change it into one of the members of Satan Bereaves it of its glory and despoils it of the greatest honour it had and drawing it out of Heaven whither GOD had called it drags it into Hell I know well that men of the world flatter themselves and extenuate this sin And I am not ignorant that there are people among our selves who suffer themselves to be
us to the obedience of GOD and after Him to the obedience of our Parents If we have chanced through imprudence or other-waies to tye up our selves else-where we must speedily break the bond and make no scruple nor conscience to break it but to observe it Beside evident reason for it and the confession of all wise men who hold that vows made against moral duty do not oblige the word of GOD expresly maketh this decision If a woman saith the Law shall vow a vow unto the LORD Numb 30.4.6 and bind her self by a bond in her youth being in her Father's house if her Father disallow her in the day he heareth it not one of all her vows nor of the bonds wherewith she hath bound her soul shall stand Here you see that vows though in other respects good and lawful yet oblige not if made by children of the family without their fathers allowance And this is yet more forcibly concluded from the Lawgiver's adding Num. 30.7 8 9. that the vows of a married wife disallowed by her husband are null and void it being evident that the authority of a Father over his child is much greater and more strict than that of an husband over his wife And hither must that censure be referred which our LORD and Saviour pass'd upon the Pharisees who under colour of the religion of vows did also annul the honouring of parents by their children so expresly commanded in the Law Saith He Matt 15.4 5 6. GOD hath commanded saying Honour thy Father and thy Mother And again He that curseth his Father or Mother shall dye the death But ye say whosoever shall say to his Father or his Mother All that whereof thou mightest have profit by me is a gift or Corban though he honour not his Father or his Mother shall be free Thus have ye made the commandment of GOD of none effect through your tradition For the right understanding of this discourse of our Saviour's and of that tradition of the Pharisees he opposeth we are to know that the Jewish Rabbies as we learn by their own books did and still do make a very great account of vows holding the religion of them absolutely inviolable Moreover they listed in the rank of vows not those only which were legitimate and conceiv'd in solemn manner with terms of a full extent as when one said I make a vow unto GOD not to taste wine or strong drink during the space of forty daies and the like but also all other words in what form soever conceiv'd and uttered whether upon deliberation or in choler or otherwise by which one devoted any thing whatever were it expresly or covertly as for instance if a man in a fit of choler or in the trouble of a quarrel with his neighbour came to say through indignation Let me dye if ever I do thee any service the Rabbines took this for a true vow and accounted such a man obliged in conscience never to do that person any service against whom he had uttered such words Now because the Corban that is the sacred gifts given to the Temple were a thing which they esteemed most inviolable and the offerings there kept might not be employed to any profane use nor any private person put his hand into the treasury for that end upon pain of death hence it comes that to signifie the use of a thing was totally interdicted unto any one they said it was to him corban that is he was no more permitted to make use of it than of the sacred gifts which in their language were called by that name When therefore it fell out that a son through distaste or anger at his Father once came to say All that of which you might have profit by me is a gift or corban that is you shall never be the better for me or you shall never draw service or profit from me no more than from the corban the Pharisees and other Rabbies held that such a man was obliged by this vow of his to do his Father no service any more and they judged him innocent and blameless though he never did him any how pressing soever the Father's necessity might be alledging that the religion of a vow was above the natural obligation of children towards their fathers and their mothers which was in very deed to annull the Law of GOD by their tradition as our Saviour charged them Judge if those of Rome do not the same thing dispensing with children for the obedience due to Parents upon pretence of monastick vows in like manner and if by consequent we have not all the reasons in the world to apply unto them what our LORD said of the Pharisees even that they make the commandment of GOD of none effect by their tradition Let us then lay aside since the LORD doth so injoyn it us all humane inventions and simply and faithfully keep to the will of our Soveraign Master as He hath declar'd it to us in His word As also you see that in the Text it 's the only reason the Apostle doth alledge to oblige children to this duty He might have urged the justice of the thing it self it being evident that we owe respect and honour unto those who gave us both life and education and if not all at least the greatest part of whatsoever help and honour we possess and understand He might have argued from Nature which hath engraven this law in the heart of animals themselves whom we see especially while they are little to be subject to those that brought them forth He might have produced the custome of all nations even the least civilized not excepted who by their usage and some of them by their laws have authorized the veneration of parents as of sacred persons and have noted as is indeed very notable that the Pagan both Greeks and Romans made so great an account of this duty as to give it the same name they gave unto the fearing and worshipping of GOD calling not only devout and religious persons but those also pious who were industrious to honour and to serve their Fathers and Mothers whence it came they held that excesses committed against Parents Val. Maâ— were to be punished as violations of the honour of the Deity were The Apostle might have produced all these things and divers others But he doth it not He alledgeth nothing but the sole will of GOD as the best and the strongest and the most considerable of all reasons Children obey your Fathers and your Mothers in all things Why Because this saith he is well-pleasing to the LORD If you be a Christian this is sufficient to perswade you to render to your Parents that obedience which the Apostle commands you For how can you neglect what is pleasing to that LORD upon whom depends all your Salvation who hath been so good to you as to redeem you from eternal perdition by the death of His only Son and to give you in