nor others may think themselves imposed upon I shall represent his apprehensions of it in his own words Those Metaphors says he which describe the Relation and Union betwixt Christ and Christians do primarily refer to the Christian Church not to every individual Christian The Union of particular Christians to Christ is by means of their Union to the Christian Church The Church is the Body of Christ and every Christian by being United to this Body becomes a Member of Christ. The Union of particular Christians to Christ consists in their Union to the Christian Church and our Union with the Christian Church is the Medium of our Union to Christ. Those Phrases and Metaphors which represent our Union with Christ signify our visible Society with the Christian Church and our sincere practice of the Christian Religion Now this Union says he between Christ and the Christian Church is a Political Union that is such an Union as is between a Prince and his Subjects Christ is a Spiritual King and all Christians are his Subjects and our Union to Christ consists in our Belief of his Revelations Obedience to his Laws and Subjection to his Authority Fellowship and Communion with God according to the Scripture Notion signifies what we call a Political Union that is that to be in Fellowship with God and Christ signifies to be of that Society which puts us into a peculiar Relation to God This is the account that Mr. Sherlock is pleased to afford us concerning the Union of Believers to Christ and were this a true report and description of it it ceaseth to be Mysterious nor needs the perfect knowledge of it be reserved to the next world or the coming of Elias that I may again usurp our Authors phrase He seems very careful that there should be nothing left Mysteririous in the Christian Religion nor doth the Term Mystical please him being as he tells us a hard word Only I wish that under pretence of wariness and caution there be not any thing in the Gospel acknowledged of arduous conception he did not lay a foundation of going soberly to destroy Christianity Now in the examining Mr. Sherlocks Notion of the Union of Christ with Believers I reckon it necessary before I address to the disproof of what I dislike in his opinion to declare what I own to be true in the matter of a Political Union between Christ and Christians First then That Christ is the Political Head of his Church we readily grant nor is it denyed by any so far as I know that profess themselves Christians The very espousing the Profession of the Christian Religion includes an acknowledgment of Christs being our Supreme Legislatour and Governour and that we are to be subject to his Authority and obedient to his Commands A Right of Erecting Governing and protecting the Church is delegated to and vested in him And as he in the discharge of this Regal Office wherewithal he is entrusted hath enacted Laws appointed Ordinances and ordained Officers for the Government of his Church so we by our submission to them do acknowledg his Authority and make profession of our subjection to him as our Lord and King and therereupon may be said to be related to Him as our Political Head All that own the name of Christians are thus far agreed for though the Papists interpose another immediate ruling Head between Christ and the Catholick Church yet as they acknowledg Christ to be the only Head of Vital Influence to the Church Regenerate so they confess Him to be the only supreme Governing Head of the Universal Church But as their Notion of a Vicarious Political Head over the whole Church is both destitute of all countenance from the Scripture and repugnant to it so no one is capable of enacting Laws for the Universal Church nor of seeing them executed nor hath the Catholick Church ever acknowledged such a constitutive Imperant Head what ever some part of it may have done Upon this account especially we judge the Pope to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Antichrist and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Opposer who exalteth himself above all that is called God or that is worshipped so that he as God sitteth in the Temple of God shewing himself that he is God because he usurpeth the Headship over the Church of Christ as to Legislation Judgment and Execution dispensing with Christs Laws and enacting his own He challengeth a peerage with Jesus Christ as to Legislative Power and Headship over the Universal Church which is no less than to storm his Throne and Usurp his Scepter The claym of the Roman See is great but their Allegations to justifie it are wholly precatious And when Jesus Christ appears to vindicate his Supreme Authority from the invasions which Usurpers have made upon his Dignity the counterfeiting the broad Seal of Heaven and the suborning Scripture to supplant Christs Throne will prove a Crime unanswerable I shall only add in reference to this particular I have been discoursing that no verbal profession of being a Christian unless it be accompanied with a belief of the Revelations and an Obedience to the Laws of Christ can de Jure entitle us amongst his Subjects Secondly As a visible profession of subjection to Christ testified in the belief of what he hath revealed and in the obedience of what he hath commanded is the foundation of this political Union between Christ and his Church so we do hereby become politically united one to another and are denominated Members of Christs Catholick Visible Church For as the Profession of the Gospel in the belief of its Doctrines an avowed subjection to its Laws is the constituent form of the Church as Visible and the formal reason of its obtaining that appellation so all that profess the Invocation of the Name of the Lord Jesus their Lord and ours 1 Cor. 7.2 do hereby belong to Christs Catholick Church Visible and become Politically united as Subjects of the same Legislator and King In the profession of the same Lord Faith and Baptism doth the Union of the Church under the consideration of Catholick and Visible consist and as the Subjects of one and the same Temporal Prince become politically United together by their being in subjection to the Authority of the same supreme civil Ruler and governed by the same Laws so may all Christians be said upon a parallel account to be politically united one with another And here upon the one hand as Christ hath not made our Right to a room and membership in the Catholick Church to depend upon a formal belief of every thing that he hath revealed though every thing that Christ hath revealed ought to be believed when it appears that he hath revealed it so upon the other hand there are some Doctrines the explicite belief of which is necessary to the having a place in the Universal Church a Church being nothing else but
a company of men owning the Authority of Jesus Christ as Lord and King and agreeing in the faith of such Doctrines as he hath made Salvation dependent upon As we do not outwardly hold the Head nor declare our subjection to Christ as our Law-giver and Ruler but by a belief of those things which he hath made the Essentials and Fundamentals of the Christian Religion so we have no Right of Matriculation into the Church Catholick-visible nor have we any Union with the Members of it but through a belief of these common radical principles These are what we commonly call Fundamental Articles which as I shall not take upon me to enumerate being neither necessary nor may be convenient so they are in themselves both few and plain Only as the Romanists are injurious to Christ and uncharitable to men in confining Christianity within the Circle of their own communion and making the Roman and Catholick Church Terms Equipollent so they are both unreasonable and ridiculous in making the Unity of the Universal Church to consist in the belief of all that they have thought fit to determine necessary to be believed For besides many other things pleadable against this Romish Foundation of the Unity of the Universal Christian Church and the Relative Politick Union of one member with the rest it renders the Unity of the Church and the Union of Christians one with another first impossible secondly absurd Impossible in that most Men can neither allow time nor have they sufficient acquired intellectual abilities either to know what the Roman Church hath defined necessary to be believed nor in what sence she hath proposed and determined them to be assented to Absurd 1 Because a man must believe contradictions before he can be a member of the Catholick Church or have any Union or Communion with Christians That is he must renounce Reason before he is capable of having Faith and devest himself of Man before he can espouse Christian. And the reason is plain because the Romish Church hath defined things to be believed that are repugnant one to another 2. Because what serves to matriculate a person into the Church of Christ and to give him the Relation of an Oneness with all Christians this year may not be sufficient to secure and continue his Union and Relation the next but that without alteration or change in his belief he may cease to be a Member of the Catholick Church For the Church may in that compass of time determine something necessary to be believed concerning which before she had not pronounced But to resume what I was upon as there is through our subjection to Christ by the belief of his Doctrine and obedience of his Laws a Political Union betwixt Christ and Christians so I see nothing to the contrary but that all Christians may in the virtue of their common Faith and Obedience be accounted united amongst themselves I shall not here discourse the reciprocal and mutual duties which we come under the obligation of by this Relation but as they are many and great so were they attended to a check would be given to that wrath and bitterness which is amongst Christians a stop put to that war and persecution which one wageth against another Neither shall I here discourse the Nature and Measures of a particular Church with the foundation and media which ground the Relation of one to another in it but shall only say this that though admission into an instituted particular Church presupposeth whatsoever was necessary to entitle us to a Membership in the Church-Catholick yet there are both diverse things required in order to the latter which were not so in reference to the former and diverse fresh duties emerge from this posterior Relation beyond what we were obliged to by the precedent Having briefly treated these things which ought not to be denyed and shewed my self as liberal to our Author as without trespassing upon my light I can I come now to discourse those things wherein our Author differs from the general sense of Christians and the common opinion of the Universal Church And the first conclusion which I propose in opposition to the Hypothesis that Mr. Sherlock hath erected is this That were the Union of particular Believers with Christ only a Political Relation yet it were immediate to the Person of Christ. Let our Relation to Christ which is styled by the name of Union be whatsoever our Author pleaseth to make it yet it is not the Church that we are primarily united to nor doth our Union terminate there nor is it meerly by means thereof that we are brought into a cohesion with the Lord Jesus This if justified overthrows Mr. Sherlocks two first Conclusions which indeed are but one in import though obtruded upon us for two For to say that those Metaphors which describe the Relation and Union betwixt Christ and Christians do primarily refer to the Christian Church and not to every Individual Christian which is Mr. Sherlock's first conclusion and to say that the Union of particular Christians to Christ is by means of their Union to the Christian Church which is his second Conclusion are in my opinion things coincident The same Metaphors which describe the Relation and Union of Christ with Christians do also display the Relation and Union of Christians with Christ if the Union betwixt Christ and Christians doth primarily refer to the Christian Church the Union of particular Christians with Christ can result from no other Medium nor bear upon any other foundation but the Union with the Christian Church I should not bestow remarks upon the ridiculous and impertinent Battologies of our Author nor sally out into reflections upon what meerly favours of dulness and hebetude but that it may not be amiss to inform the World how undeservedly Mr. Sherlock hath obtain'd the name of an accurate Writer and if it be possible to give check to his briskness in Descanting upon the Writings of others For he may remember what a reflection he hath cast upon Dr. Jacomb meerly for converting a Proposition and saying That the person of the Believer is United to the Person of Christ having before said though not so as to make it a different conclusion That the Person of Christ is United to the person of the Believer But to return to the proof of the Assertion which I have advanced in contradiction to Mr. Sherlocks Notion of our being United to Christ only by our Union and Fellowship with the Christian Church 1. If particular Christians be United to Christ only by virtue of a previous Relation to the Church I would then fain know of Mr. Sherlock how the whole Church comes to be united to the Lord Jesus For I suppose it will not be denyed but that there is a Relation of Oneness between Him and the Church and if any should be so perverse and of so unreasonable a humour as to question it there are Media enough
him being presupposed our submitting to the Ordinance and Institution of Baptism is a visible profession of it 'T is not enough that we are perswaded of the Truth of the Christian Religion and that we secretly embrace it but we are publickly to own it and to tell the World that we are of such a Belief As Baptism presupposeth Repentance which respects our turning to God as our End and Faith which implye's our owning Christ as our Way so our being Baptised into the Name of the Father Son and Holy Ghost is a solemn declaring to the world our coming to God by Jesus Christ through the Sanctification Influence and Conduct of the Spirit Nor is our naked promise so Authentick as when we publickly seal to the Articles required of us 'T is both a Badg and Symbol of our profession and a Bond Obligation upon us to discharge the Duties which our profession of Christianity calls us to Hence it is called an Answer towards God which as it supposeth the demands of the Covenant so it proclayms our undertaking to perform them 4. The Union of the Catholick Visible Church consisting in a joynt profession of the same Lord Faith and Baptism there doth therefore upon a Persons submitting to the Ordinance of Baptism such a Relation to the whole Catholick Visible Church emerge as that he is rendred a compleat Member of the Church under the consideration of Catholick Visible By this as by a solemn Rite we become visibly separated from the World and enrolled amongst those who have consigned over and consecrated themselves unto the service and obedience of Father Son and Holy Ghost So far is our Union with the Visible Church by means of Baptism from being the Medium of our Union with Christ that it is our dedicating our selves to Christ by this August ceremony which constitutes us compleat Members of the Church under the Notion of Visible Secondly As to the Argument Levied from the Lords Supper I reply these things 1. The Supper of the Lord though a Sacrament of Union yet it cannot be the first Medium of our Union with the Church seeing none have a right to it but such as are already Church-Members Men are first to approve themselves sincere Christians before they are to approach the Holy Table Only those that have Fellowship with God in Christ have a title of participating at this Christian Eucharistical Feast Much less is it the Medium of our Political Union with Christ it being only through a previous subjection of our Consciences to his Authority that we celebrate this Ordinance 2. As by Baptism we publickly avow our taking upon us the profession of Christianity so by the Lords Supper we ratify our perseverance and renew our engagements of being the Lords By coming to his Table we proclaym our selves of his Famimy and declare our resolution of continuing to be his Followers and Retainers 'T is a profession of our being in Covenant with him and that we will remain constant and faithful in it 3. Though as I have already said it can neither be the Medium of our Union with the Church nor with Christ yet it is both a Symbol of the one the other 'T is an eminent badge of that Union which is and ought to be among Christians Our eating at the same Table is an argument of our being of one and the same Family Forasmuch as we all eat of one Loaf that is the meaning of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 1 Cor. 10.17 we do thereby intimate that we are one Body and Members of the same Christ. Yet at such a distance doth this lye from evincing our Union with Christ to be by means of our union with the Church that indeed nothing else than an Antecedent union with Christ can give us a Right to partake of this Sacred Supper or of Fellowship and Communion with the Church in it Thus the Reader may see that even on the supposition that our Union with Christ is meerly a Political Union or such a Relation only as is between a Prince and his Subjects yet that it is immediate and not by the means of an Antecedent Relation to the Christian Church Having then dispatched the first thing which I laid down in opposition to Mr. Sherlocks Hypothesis That wherein my concernment next lyes is to prove that the Union between Christ and Christians is not meerly Political And if I be but able to acquit my self in this undertaking the whole of Mr. Sherlocks Notion in reference to the Union of Christ to Christians is subverted and overthrown And it being here that we have our Authors most Heroick Adventures and where especially he seems to speak as standing on his Tiptoes it is but fit that he should be the more peculiarly attended to In opposition therefore to his Assertion that the Union of Christians with Christ is only a Political Union that is such an Union as is between a Prince and his Subjects I Advance this Antithesis that a Political Relation doth not adequately express that Oneness which the Scripture so augustly celebrates as interceding betwixt Christ and Believers This directly contradicts Mr. Sherlocks third and fourth Conclusions which indeed are coincident For to affirm that the Union betwixt Christ and the Christian Church is a Political Union that is such an Union as is between a Prince and his Subjects which is his third proposition and to say that our Fellowship and Communion with God according to the Scripture-Notion signifies what we call a Potical Union which is his fourth are according to the best understanding of Enunciations I have coincident and equipollent propositions Now in discoursing this we are to take all our measures from the Scripture and to regulate our conceptions by it alone For this Union between Christ and Christians is one of those Mysteries which no Ideas congenite with us nor objective discoveries in the works of Creation and Providence could have conducted us to the knowledg of 'T is a Truth which our Intellectual Faculties in their Immediate exercise could never have discerned nor hath it any connexion with the things which we naturally know to be collected and deduced from them Though by attending to Revelation we may come to frame an intelligible Notion of it yet as it is considered in it self and with reference to other Doctrines of Faith on which it depends we could never have form'd any apprehensions of it if the Gospel had not previously declared and revealed it Now the first Argument in proof that our Union with Christ is more than Political shall be levied from those Symbolick Metaphors and Terrene Figures and Images by which the Holy Ghost is pleased to express it I have in the fore going Chapter assigned this as one Reason among others why God who doth all things in Infinite Wisdom declares the Mysteries of Faith under Earthly Parables and Symbols namely that Spiritual Things which lye remote from our Understandings may
be rendred more easie and familiar for our minds to contemplate and that our Faith concerning them may be promoted and assisted by their being represented to us under obvious and sensible Images We have also elsewhere intimated that where the Terms are Metaphorick yet the Truths intended and expressed by them are Real And as to that which we are now upon 't is highly remarkable that there being no one kind of Union in Nature which serveth fully to illustrate the Union betwixt Christ and Christians that therefore the Holy Ghost hath sought to enlighten it by Similitudes and Resemblances transferred and borrowed from all sorts of Unions For as Chrysostom well observes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Christ Unites us to himself by many paterns And it is worth taking notice of that having given us a List and Collection of some of them he shuts up the whole with this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 all these things declare an Union between Christ Believers such an one as will not admit the least thing to come between them Had our Oneness with Christ been only represented by the Relation between a Shepherd and Sheep the Conjunction between a Husband Wife or the habitude between a Prince and his Subjects there might have been some probability in Mr. Sherlocks Notion but being also represented by resemblances drawn from Natural and Artificial Union as the Insition of branches into their root the copulation of Members to their Vital Head the incorporation of concocted Food with our pre-existent Flesh the cohesion of a building by a strong cement to its Foundation and the confederation of the Vital Soul with the Organick Body There must be a sublimer kind of Union between Christ and Christians than meerly what a Political Relation doth import Christ is the Vine we are the Branches He is the Vital Head we the enlivened Members He is the Living Foundation Stone to whom we as lively Stones are cemented I may confidently say that there is not any Analogy between what is originally signified by these Metaphors and the thing aimed at and designed by them if only a Political Relation between Christ and Christians is to be understood The Gospel-Method and Form is the most obscure and improper way in the World of teaching the Truth of things if all these Tropical phrases imply no more but that Christians acknowledg Christ for their Legislator and obey him as their Soveraign Grand expressions and magnificent Terms in Subjects that require Low are an argument of no great discretion in a common Author And to imagine that in the Scripture petty things should be declared in Forms that are august lofty and Emphatical is to think diminutively of the divine Wisdom In a word if there be no more intended under all those Symbolick expressions which we have mentioned but that Believers own the Authority of Jesus Christ by believing his Doctrines and submitting to his Laws then we wonderfully expose the Gospel to contempt by telling the World that under a grandeur of words and Hyperbolical expressions things of a mean and low sense are to be apprehended and conceived I shall only urge this from two other Pattern Unions to which the Scripture in the shadowing forth and illustrating the Oneness between Christ and Christians signally alludes The first of these Symbolical Unions is that of the association and adhesion of the component particles corpuscles of Meal of which a Loaf is kneaded and compacted For as the Apostle says 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Seeing 't is one Loaf of which we partake we are therefore one Body viz. in Christ who participate of that one Loaf 1 Cor. 10.17 Picherellus well observes that Paul doth not say we are One Loaf or Bread though our Translation render it so but that he argues from the coalition of the clusters of the small corpuscles of Meal of which a Loaf is kneaded and contexed to the identity and Oneness that intervenes between Christ and Believers And accordingly Beza translates it As the Loaf of which we all eat is one so we partaking of that One Loaf although we be many are but One Body to Christ. Thus also Chrysostom paraphraseth it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. What is that Loaf It is the Body of Christ viz. Sacramentally what are those who partake of it They are the Body of Christ not many Bodies but One. For as the many grains of which a Loaf is form'd are so conven'd into one Mass that the distinction and diversity of one from another doth not appear 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the same manner are we conjoyned to Christ and one another in 1 Cor. Hom. 24. The cohesion of the many little parts of Flour of which one and the same Individual Loaf is kneaded and compacted being that which the Apostle declares and illustrates our conjunction with Christ by it plainly follows that our Conjunction to him must be of another kind than what a bare Political Relation doth import The second Pattern Union I shall at present argue from is the Oneness betwixt the Father and Son in the blessed Trinity At that day ye shall know saith Christ to his Disciples that I am in my Father and you in me and I in you Joh 1.14 20. I pray that they all be One as thou Father art in me and I in thee that they also may be One in us c. Joh. 17.21 I readily grant that 't is not an Oneness of Essence betwixt Christ and Christians an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Weigelians wildly and blasphemously imagine that is here to be understood Nor doth the particle 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 always signifie sameness but is often used to denote similitude and likeness as Matth. 9.48 Luk. 6.36 But yet upon the other hand I deny that 't is meerly an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or an Oneness of Will and affection between the Father and Son as the Arians and Socinians pretend that is here meant Nor indeed can there be an Oneness of Will and an universal Consent and Agreement in Design and Affections where there is not previously either a Specifick or a Numerical Oneness of Nature An attendance to other Texts such as Joh. 10.30 Joh. 14. 9 10. 1 Joh. 5.9 where the same phrases occurr will best resolve us what kind of Oneness between the Father and Son we are here to understand And certainly unless we will betray the Gospel and the Faith of Christians into the hands of their worst Enemies 't is an Essential Unity that is there meant Now though we plead not for the same kind of Oneness between Christ and Believers as is between the Father and Son yet we affirm that somthing more sublime than barely a Political Relation between Him and Them is adumbrated and shadowed forth to us 'T is not a sameness of Union between Christ and Christians with that betwixt the Father and Son which the Holy Ghost intends by