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A35753
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XLIX sermons upon the whole Epistle of the Apostle St. Paul to the Colossians in three parts / by ... Mr. John Daille ...; Sermons. English. Selections
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Daillé, Jean, 1594-1670.; F. S.
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1672
(1672)
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Wing D114; ESTC R13556
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714,747
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490
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passeth unto exhortation conjuring these faithful people to live well and holy forming their deportment to a Piety Honesty and Vertue worthy their vocation He endeth with some particular affairs whereof he speaketh to them and with the recommendations he presents them both on his own part and on the part of some other faithful persons that were with Him But you will better understand the whole by the exposition of each of the parts of the Epistle if the LORD grant us to compleat the same For the present we propose to our selves to consider only the five Verses we have read the two first of which contain the Inscription of the Epistle and the other three the joy and the thanksgivings of Paul unto GOD for the faith and charity of these Colossians These shall be GOD willing the two Points that we will treat on in this action The Inscription of the Epistle is couched in these words Paul an Apostle of JESVS CHRIST by the Will of GOD and the Brother Timothy to the Saints and faithful brethren in CHRIST JESVS that are at Colosse Grace be unto you and peace from GOD our Father and from the LORD JESVS CHRIST Whereas at this day the custom is to put upon Letters the name of those to whom they are written and within after the body of the Letter the Name and Sign of those that write them heretofore the use was otherwise for he that wrote did set both the one and the other Name within at the head of the Letter with a brief salutation in these words Such a one unto such a one health as we learn by a multitude of Greek and Latin Epistles which are left us in the ancient Books of the most renowned Personages of those two Nations The Apostle that lived in those Ages useth the same manner in all his Letters as you know saving that instead of wishing health and prosperity to those to whom he writes He ordinarily wisheth them Peace and the Grace of GOD and of his Son JESVS CHRIST According to this form the inscription of this Epistle containeth First The Names and Qualities both of them that write it and those they write it to and Secondly The good and happy wish wherewith they salute them The Names of those that write it are Paul and Timothy sufficiently known to all that are ever so little versed in the reading of the New Testament They are here described each by certain qualities attributed to them To Paul that of an Apostle of JESVS CHRIST by the will of GOD. To Timothy that of Brother simply The word Apostle signifies in the Language of the Greeks one deputed a person sent by some one But in the Scripture of the New Covenant it is taken particularly for those first and highest Ministers of the LORD JESUS whom He sent with a Soveraign and Independent Authority to Preach the Gospel and establish His Church in the world The highest and noblest charge GOD ever gave to men And to exercise it it was necessary First To have seen JESUS CHRIST alive after His Death that a good and lawful Testimony might be given of His Resurrection They must Secondly Have received their commission from the LORD himself immediately and in the Third place Have the Holy Spirit in an extraordinary measure with the gift of Tongues and Miracles Whence appears how ill founded they are that attribute the glory of an Apostleship to the Bishop of Rome to whom none of those three conditions do agree It is also clear that this dignity is extraordinary and was not instituted but for the first establishments of the Church the government whereof after its plantation the Apostles put in the hands of another kind of in feriour Ministers which are indifferently called in Scripture either Bishops that is Overseers and Superintendents or Presbyters that is Elders The History of the Acts informeth us that to the twelve Apostles afore ordained our LORD added besides afterward St. Paul having miraculously appeared to Him and sent Him with the same power the rest had to convert the Gentiles He assumeth therefore here this glorious Title at the entrance of this Letter and saith moreover that He is an Apostle by the will of GOD signifying that it was the express Order and Mandate of the LORD which honoured him with this Ministry and not the suffrage and authority of men differencing Himself by this means from those false Teachers and Troublers that had not been sent but by the will of flesh and blood The declaration of this His quality was here necessary for Him First To maintain His honour against the calumnies of Seducers who did disparage and black Him as much as they could under pretence that He had not lived as the other Apostles in the company of JESUS CHRIST during the dayes of His flesh and Secondly To ground the liberty He took of writing to the Colossians and of remonstrating to them their duty as well in faith as manners it being evident that the Apostles had right to use this authority over all and every of the Christian Churches To His own Name he addeth that of Timothy whom he calleth Brother as having one and the same faith and labouring about one and the same work whether it were to authorize His Doctrine the more by the consent of this holy man every word being more firm in the mouth of two or three Witnesses than in that of one alone Or to recommend Him to these believers that if he wrote to them or ever came to visit them they might receive Him as a person worthy of the fellowship of the Apostles and whose Name deserved to accompany that of Paul As for those to whom He directeth this Epistle He describes them next in these words To the Saints and faithful Brethren in CHRIST that are at Colosse I pass by as childish and impertinent the opinion of those whom it listed to say that it is the Isle and City of Rhodes He meaneth and that He calleth it Colosse because of that great and prodigious Statue of the Sun which the Rhodians had erected at the mouth of their Haven and which the Greeks ordinarily called the Colossus What need is there of these frigid and ridiculous subtilities since the Ancients shew that there was yerst in Phrygia a Province of Asia the less a City called Colosse not far from two others to wit Laodicea and Hierapolis whom the Apostle also mentions in this Epistle and recommends expresly to the Colossians the communicating this Letter to the Laodiceans when themselves should have read it Afterward this City of Colosse changed its Name and was called Cone and to it one of the famousest Writers of the latter times of Greece who is called Nicetas Choniates owed his birth taking His Surname from the place where he was born In Th saur l. 4. ch 22. and himself boasteth in one of His Works that it had been to the inhabitants of the City of Cone whence he was
Apostle addeth namely that the Church is the body of CHRIST this further clearly sheweth that none but CHRIST is the Head of it For if the Pope for example were head of it the universal Church should be the Popes body as it is the LORD's But where is the Christian ear that doth not tingle at so strange so unheard of and so profane language And so we see how vehement and inordinate soever the passion of men hath been for this title of Head of the Church no man hath ever hitherto called the Church His body every one confessing that it is no ones body but JESUS CHRIST's alone They should then grant in like manner that none is its Head but He only Since it cannot have any for Head but Him whose body it is In the next place note I pray in opposition to another error of the same adversaries of ours that CHRIST His being Head of the Church doth not at all infer that the Church toucheth Him corporeally or that the bodies of the faithful are properly and substantially joyned to Him as the members of a natural body are joyned to their head Every one confesseth that this must be understood figuratively and mystically and after the same manner all men take the other expressions for the most part by which our union with the LORD is represented as when He is called the Foundation of the Church the corner stone the vine-stock of the Faithful and their raiment No one concludeth that it is necessary for the verifying of these passages our bodies should really touch His substance Why then will they infer it from other places where to set forth the same mysterie it is said that He is our bread our meat and our drink If He be our Head if He be our Raiment if He govern and clothe us without touching our bodies with His why may not He be our bread and nourish us without real entring into our bodily throat and stomach If the one be mystically and figuratively understood why will you force me to take the other corporally and literally I say the same upon the Apostles express declaring that the Church is the body of CHRIST Our adversaries do conclude no Transubstantion from hence and they confess that for salving the truth of these words there is no need that either the Church should lose its own substance and nature or be really changed into the substance of the body of CHRIST Nevertheless they will by all means have it that the same words when the Gospel saith of the bread which our LORD took that it is the body of CHRIST As if it were not rational and easie to say that the bread as well as the Church is the body of CHRIST figuratively and in a mystical way If they admit this sense in one of these places why do they reject it in the other where the nature of things themselves and the truth of heavenly doctrine doth no less necessarily require it In fine not to make any longer stay here St. Paul cleareth up to us in two words another question which the passion of Rome hath so horribly embroyled in these latter times namely what is the nature and the true definition of the Church The Church is saith he the body of CHRIST These two words overthrow all the Philosophizing of our adversaries about this subject in order either to the straitning or enlarging the Communion of the Church beyond what ought to be I say the straitning For they admit to the possessing of this name those only that acknowledge the Bishop of Rome whereas St. Paul alloweth it to all those that belong to JESUS CHRIST and that have His Spirit no one of these but being of His body and by consequent of His Church in whatever place and under whatever Pastors he live I say also the enlarging it For these Doctors who are so severe on one hand as that they give the name of the Church only to the Roman Communion are so loose and so very indulgent on the other hand as they yield it up to the most desperate and prophane Hypocrites that are provided they addict themselves to their Pope not requiring as they affirm Bellarm. 3. de Eccl 〈…〉 2. as any interiour vertue in them to be members of the true Church but only an exteriour profession of the Roman belief and Communion But St. Paul fulminates down this no less impious then extravagant doctrine by saying that the Church is the body of CHRIST For no one can be of His body without being quickned by His Spirit Rom. 8.9 He that hath not the Spirit of CHRIST saith the same Apostle elsewhere is none of His. Certainly then it is not true that the prophane or hypocritical are parts of the Church There is no communion between CHRIST and Belial The body and the members of the one cannot be the body and members of the other Forasmuch as the Church is the body of CHRIST it must of necessity be concluded that these people of whom our adversaries compose their Church which have not as they say any piety or internal vertue and by consequence are members of Belial may well be since they will have it so true members of the Roman but assuredly not of the Christian Church And if the Pope do own them for his sheep we are very certain that the LORD JESUS will never avouch them for His. But it is time to come to the two other titles which the Apostle here giveth in the next place to our LORD JESUS CHRIST adding that He is the beginning or the principle and this first-born from the dead Even as when he had said before that JESVS CHRIST is the first-born that is the Lord of every creature he presently brought the reason of it taken from thence that all things were created by Him In like manner now having said that He is the Head of the Church he foundeth this truth upon His being the author of the Church He that formed and constituted it and the Prince of this new generation He that will give it the true and utmost perfection of its being For the word which we have rendred the beginning signifies also the principle that is to say the cause and origine of a thing and first-born denoteth likewise both Him who is born before the rest and him who is the Master or the Prince of the rest he saith therefore first that the LORD JESVS is the beginning or the principle Certainly this appertaineth unto Him upon the account of the first creation inasmuch as He is the Author of it the word and wisdom which did produce the Universe and it may be 't is in this sense that He calleth Himself in the Apocalypse Rev. 3.14 1.8 21.6 22.13 the beginning of the creation of GOD and elsewhere in the same Book Alpha and Omega the beginning and the end But speech here being of the Church and the resurrection the word beginning must