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A60956
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Twelve sermons upon several subjects and occasions. The third volume by Robert South.
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South, Robert, 1634-1716.
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1698
(1698)
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Wing S4749; ESTC R27493
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210,733
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615
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why Christ's sufferings could not be Penal since Punishment in the very Nature and Essence of it imports a Relation to Sin To this I answer That Punishment does indeed import an Essential Relation to Sin but not of Necessity to the Sin of the Person upon whom it is inflicted as might be evinced by innumerable Instances as well as undeniable reasons If it be replyed that God has declared that the Soul that Sins shall die I answer That this is only a Positive Law according to which God declares he will proceed in the ordinary course of his Providence but it is not of Natural and Eternal Obligation so as Universally to bind God in all cases but that he may when he Pleases deal otherwise with his Creature But this will receive further light from the Discussion of the third and last General head to which we now proceed Namely 3. The ground and Cause of this suffering which was God's Propriety in and relation to the Persons for whom Christ suffered specified in these words My People For the Transgression of my People was He stricken If it be here asked upon what account the Persons here spoken of were denominated and made God's People I answer that they were so by an Eternal Covenant and Transaction between the Father and the Son by which the Father upon certain Conditions to be performed by the Son consigned over some Persons to him to be His People For our better understanding of which we are to observe that the business of Man's Redemption proceeds upon a two-fold Covenant First An Eternal Covenant made between the Father and the Son by which the Father agreed to give both Grace and Glory to a certain Number of Sinners upon Condition that Christ would assume their Nature and pay down such a Ransom to his Justice as should both satisfy for their Sin and withal Merit such a measure of Grace as should effectually Work in them all things necessary to their Salvation And this Covenant may be properly called a Covenant of suretiship or Redemption Upon which alone and not upon any Covenant made between God and Men in their own Persons is built the Infallibility of the future Believing Repenting and finally Persevering of such as Christ from all Eternity undertook to make his People Secondly The other is a Covenant made in time and actually enter'd into by God and Men by which God on his part Promises to Men Eternal Salvation upon Condition of Faith and Repentance on Theirs And this is called in Scripture the second Covenant or the Covenant of Grace and stands opposed to that which is there called the First Covenant or the Covenant of Works Now by that Eternal Compact or Transaction between the Father and the Son of which alone we now speak was this Donation of a certain determinate number of Persons made to Christ to be his People by virtue of which Agreement or Transaction he was in the fullness of time to suffer for them and to accomplish the whole Word of their Redemption from first to last For to affirm that Christ dyed only to verify a Proposition That whosoever believed should be saved but in the mean time to leave the whole issue of things in reference to Persons so loose and undetermined That it was a Question whether ever any one should actually believe and very possible that none ever might and consequently that after Christ had suffered had been stricken and dyed for Transgression yet for any thing that he had done in all this he might never have had a People this certainly is a strange and new Gospel and such as the Doctrine of our Church seems utterly unacquainted with Having thus shewn the Foundation upon which the Persons here spoken of are called by the Prophet God's People Namely An Eternal Covenant in which God the Father and the Son mutually agreed upon the Terms of their Redemption We are now to observe that the same Thing that thus denominates and makes them God's People makes them under the same Relation to belong also to Christ and that not only upon the Account of his Nature that he was God but chiefly of his Office that he was their Mediator which capacity made him equally concerned in that Eternal Covenant He accepting and agreeing to those Terms that were proposed and offered him by the Father By His Acceptance of which he became both a Mystical head and a Surety to those for whom he so undertook And this Relation of his to them was the Cause why he both might be and actually was stricken by God for their Transgression without any Violation of the Divine Justice notwithstanding the perfect Innocence of his Person For to render it just to inflict a Punishment upon an Innocent Person instead of another either of these two Causes are sufficient First An intimate Conjunction between those Persons and that either Natural as between Father and Son or Political as between King and People and the like Or Secondly The Voluntary Consent and Will of an Innocent Person to undergo the Punishment due to the Nocent as it is between a Man and his Surety Accordingly from that Covenant by which the Father made over a certain number of Persons to the Son to be His People there arose this twofold Relation of Christ to them 1. Of a King to his People or of a Mystical Head to his Members so that Legally and Politically they suffered as really in Christ as the whole body suffers when the head is wounded or struck through with a dart 2. The other Relation is of a Surety so that the Satisfaction paid down by Christ to God's Justice for Sin is in estimation of Law as really accounted to be paid down by the Saints as if they had paid it in their own Persons And this is a further and withall a full answer to that objection formerly hinted from the Innocence of Christ's Person as if it rendered him uncapable of Punishment For his own free voluntary consent to be a Surety for Sinners and responsible for all that Divine Justice could charge them with Transferred the guilt and obligation from their Persons to his Own In a word the Compact between Christ and his Father made him a King a Mystical Head and also a Surety to some certain Persons and his being so made them His People and their being his People did upon that account make it both just and equitable for him to suffer and to be stricken for their Transgression which is the result of the Text and the Thing undertook by us to be proved I have now finished the several things proposed from the Text. In which having set before you how much Christ has suffered and all for our sakes I hope it will kindle the Workings of a pious Ingenuity in every one of our Breasts For I am sure if Christ's suffering for us were the Doctrine Gratitude should make our Readiness to suffer for Him the Application Christianity I shew was
Death where is thy Sting So that when we come to resign back these frail Bodies these Vessels of Mortality to the Dust from whence they were taken we may yet say of our Souls as Christ did of the Damosel whom he raised up That she was not dead but only Slept for in like manner we shall as certainly rise out of the Grave and Triumph over the dishonours of its Rottenness and Putrefaction as we rise in the Morning out of our Beds with Bodies refreshed and advanced into Higher and Nobler Perfections For the Head being once risen we may be sure the Members cannot stay long behind And Christ is already risen and gone before to prepare Mansions for all those who belong to him under that High Relation That where He is They to their Eternal Comfort may be also rejoycing and singing Praises and Hallelujahs to him who sitteth upon the Throne and to the Lamb for Ever and Ever To Whom Be Rendered and Ascribed as is most due all Glory Might Majesty and Dominion to Eternal Ages Amen THE Christian Pentecost OR THE Solemn Effusion of the Holy Ghost IN THE Several Miraculous Gifts Conferred by Him upon the Apostles and first Christians Set forth in a SERMON Preached At Westminster-Abbey 1692. 1 COR. XII 4 Now there are diversities of Gifts but the same Spirit OUR Blessed Saviour having Newly Changed his Crown of Thorns for a Crown of Glory and ascending up on high took Possession of his Royal Estate and Soveraignty according to the Custom of Princes is here treating with this Lower World now at so great a distance from him by his Ambassador And for the greater Splendour of the Embassy and Authority of the Message by an Ambassador no ways Inferiour to Himself even the Holy Ghost the Third Person in the Blessed Trinity in Glory Equal in Majesty Co-eternal and therefore most peculiarly fit not only as a Deputy but as a kind of Alter Idem to supply his Place and Presence here upon Earth and indeed had he not been Equal to him in the Godhead he could no more have supplyed his Place than he could have filled it which we know in the Accounts of the World are Things extreamly different as by sad and scandalous Experience is too often found Now the summ of this his Glorious Negotiation was to Confirm and ratifie Christ's Doctrine to seal the New Charter of the Worlds Blessedness given by Christ Himself and drawn up by his Apostles and Certainly it was not a greater Work first to Publish than it was afterwards to Confirm it For Christianity being a Religion made up of Truth and Miracle could not Receive its Growth from any Power less than that which first gave it its Birth And being withal a Doctrine Contrary to Corrupt Nature and to those Things which Men most Eagerly Loved to wit their Worldly Interests and their Carnal Lusts it must needs have quickly decayed and withered and dyed away if not Watered by the same Hand of Omnipotence by which it was first planted Nothing could keep it up but such a standing mighty Power as should be able upon all occasions to Countermand and Controul Nature such an one as should at the same time both Instruct and Astonish and baffle the Disputes of Reason by the Obvious overpowering Convictions of Sense And this was the Design of the Spirit 's Mission That the same Holy Ghost who had given Christ his Conception might now give Christianity its Confirmation And this he did by that wonderful and various Effusion of his Miraculous Gifts upon the first Messengers and Propagators of this Divine Religion For as our Saviour himself said John 4.48 Vnless you see signs and wonders you will not believe So that Sight was to introduce Belief and accordingly the first Conquest and Conviction was made upon the Eye and from thence passed victorious to the Heart This therefore was their Rhetorick this their method of Perswasion Their Words were Works Divinity and Physick went together They Cured the Body and thereby Convinced the Soul They Conveyed and enforced all their Exhortations not by the Arts of Eloquence but by the Gift of Tongues These were the Speakers and Miracle the Interpreter Now in Treating of these Words I shall Consider these Three Things First What those Gifts were which were conferred by the Spirit both upon the Apostles and first Professors of Christianity Secondly What is Imported and to be understood by their Diversity and Thirdly And Lastly What are the Consequences of their Emanation from one and the same Spirit First And first for the first of them These Gifts are called in the Original 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is to say Acts of Grace or favour and signifie here certain Qualities and Perfections which the Spirit of God freely bestowed upon Men for the better Enabling them to Preach the Gospel and to settle the Christian Religion in the World and accordingly we will Consider them under that known Dichotomy or Division by which they stand divided into Ordinary and Extraordinary And first for the Ordinary Gifts of the Spirit these he conveys to us by the mediation of our own Endeavours And as He who both makes the Watch and Winds up the Wheels of it may not Improperly be said to be the Author of its motion so God who first Created and since sustains the Powers and Faculties of the Soul may justly be called the Cause of all those Perfections and Improvements which the said faculties shall attain unto by their Respective Operations For that which gives the form gives also the Consequents of that form and the Principle with all its appendant Actions is to be referred to the same Donor But God forbid that I should determine God's Title to our Actions barely in his giving us the Power and Faculty of Acting Durandus indeed an Eminent Schoolman held so and so must Pelagius and his followers hold too if they will be True to and abide by their own Principles But undoubtedly God does not only give the Power but also vouchsafes an Active Influence and Concurrence to the production of every particular Action so far as it has either a Natural or a Moral goodness in it And therefore in all acquired Gifts or Habits such as are those of Philosophy Oratory or Divinity we are properly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Co-workers with God And God ordinarily gives them to none but to such as Labour hard for them They are so his Gifts that they are also our own Acquisitions His assistance and our own study are the joint and adequate Cause of these Perfections And to imagine the Contrary is all one as if a Man should think to be a Scholar barely by his Master's Teaching without his own Learning In all these Cases God is ready to do his Part but not to do both His own and ours too Secondly The other sort of the Spirit 's Gifts are Extraordinary Which are so absolutely and entirely from God that the Soul