avaricious by name for that among all vices these do particularly provoke the vengeance of GOD by reason of their vileness and enormity and also by reason of the disturbance they occasion in humane society the interest and conservation whereof doth often force the LORD to speed the execution of His judgements upon these kind of sinners and punish them exemplarily in this world that so by this severity of His He may cool the furiousnesse of those who giving up themselves to the passions of these two accursed pests would overthrow all order among mankind if their rage were not repressed by some notable chastisement As for the truth of this sentence that the wrath of GOD cometh for these sins upon the children of rebellion since it is the Apostle that is the mouth of Heaven the oracle of JESUS CHRIST that pronounceth it no Christian may doubt of it First though they should go on altogether unpunished in this world yet sure it is that in the next this burning wrath of the Almighty which shall there manifest its self once for all at the great and terrible day of the LORD shall separate them for ever from the society of the blessed and strike them down to Hell there to suffer eternally with devils the just punishments of their rebellion For besides this Text which is clear 1 Cor. 6.10 Eph. 5.5 Gal. 5.21 Heb. 13.4 1 Cor. 3.17 the Apostle doth in three other passages expresly enroll idolaters fornicators and adulterers among those that shall have no part in the Kingdom of Heaven And else-where he saith particularly of whoremongers and adulterers that GOD will judge them and else-where again that GOD will destroy those who shall have by such pollutions destroyed or violated His Temple that is their bodies In like manner St. John assigneth them their part in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone Rev. 21.8 1 Cor. 6.9 1 Tim. 6.9 which is the second death And as for the covetous it 's of them in particular St. Paul saies that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of GOD and elsewhere that covetous desires do drown men in perdition But besides this great and dreadful punishment which these vices will infallibly draw down at the last day upon the children of rebellion they involve them for the present in so many divers evils that if the worlds stupidity and passion did not blind it it might easily perceive the truth of what the Apostle doth affirm For first is not that bruitishnesse and that horrible eclipsing of good sense and right reason and that bestial abandonednesse to the vilest passions and actions into which almost all the slaves of these vices are seen to fall is not this I say an eminent and plain mark of the wrath of GOD upon them The debauched for their part the life they lead is nought else but a continual wandring out of the way Consider me Soloniâ—â—â— the sagest Prince that ever was in whom shone so glorious and so splendid a light of knowledge and of wisdom that he ravished his whole age and attracted a great Queen from the ends of the earth to come behold his glory After he yielded up himself to this infamous passion he so lost all that force of spirit and judgement that he became extravagant to such a degree as to give up himself to idolatry the utmost of all bruitalities in complacency to his Mistresses And the Heathen Poets themselves to represent what the ordinary sequel of this vice is do make one of their Heroes assume in their fables the habit and equipage of a woman after he had once fallen into the snares of this wretched passion It 's an image of what doth still betide those that let themselves be taken in the same putting off by little and little all vertue and shame they become effeminate and so utterly lose their senses that at length there is nothing so disgraceful nothing so contrary to order honour and decency but they readily do and suffer The same is signified again by another fable of the same Author's concerning some whom the potion of a sorceresse transformed into swine and other beasts The fable is pregnant of truth and under feigned names and persons containeth the history of the most part of those miserable men whom fornication and adultery hath bewitched They lose heart and judgement and humane sense and commit so many follies and extravagancies as it is very easie to perceive that it 's no longer the foul of a man but of a meer animal that guides them Whence then comes so strange a Metamorphosis even in a Solomon and in persons that otherwise seemed so advis'd and prudent Dear Brethren doubt not but that it comes from a secret judgement of GOD who deprives them of that spirit and judgement which they made such ill use of and who so to say degrading them of the quality of men whereof this vice hath rendred them unworthy Rom. 1.20 drives them out among animals delivering them up unto a mind disfurnished of judgement as the Apostle doth else-where describe this dreadful vengeance of GOD. But besides mind and reason who sees not that it also usually takes away their strength their beauty their vigour and health of body bringing on them diseases which gnaw their very bones diseases which rot them and incurvate them before the time and which creating sharpest pains in all the parts of their miserable flesh do make it pay dear for the dishonest pleasures they have given it Loss of goods is also one of the punishments which GOD commonly inflicteth for this sin permitting its very self to consume by the irregularity of its foolish expences the means that are necessary for the support of the life of man and reduce those that serve it to an incommodious and shameful poverty Whereto may be yet added infinite examples which the lives of men are full of of tragical miseries wherewith GOD doth visibly strike sins of this sort It was for them that He sent the first deluge of water on the earth and afterwards again a second of fire and brimstone upon the coasts of Sodom and Gomorrah The debauches of Israel with Moah were the cause of the death of four and twenty thousand men whom GOD consumed in His fury And the tribe of Benjamin so great and flourishing as it had been was reduced to six hundred men for the uncleanness of one of their Cities Who knows not that sometimes one man's adultery hath caused long wars and ruined great Estates And among the instances of it particularly lamentable is that of the Gothes Empire which having flourished in Spain a long time was destroyed and utterly overthrown for a fault of this kind committed by one of their Kings This occasion brought in the Saracens upon their hands who besides liberty and goods took Christian religion away too from the most part of those people introducing and maintaining Mahometism in those Countreys during many ages It is
good thing so necessary for you If you have it not hitherto ask it of GOD incessantly with prayers and tears and quit Him not before you have obtained it If you have it thank Him for it more than for all the goods of the Universe and make account that in giving you charity He hath given you the Life the Kingdom and the Crown of Heaven Exercise this precious gift continually let there be none of your neighbours without feeling of it Do good to all Communicate what you have received the light of your knowledge to the ignorant the succour of your good offices to the afflicted the sweetness of your patience to enemies the consolation of your visits to the sick the assistance of your alms to the needy the example of your innocence to all with whom you converse But have a particular care of Saints the members of the LORD JESUS who serve Him here with you and how poor soever they be have yet been redeemed with His blood and predestinated to His glory as well as you Dear Brethren your labour shall not be in vain Your charity shall bring forth it's fruits in their season with a most abundant usury For terrene and perishing good things which you shall have sowed here below you shall one day reap on high those that are celestial and immortal for a little bread and a little money that you shall now give to JESUS CHRIST you shall receive from His liberal hand the delights of Paradice and the treasures of eternity This is the hope which is reserved for you in the Heavens It is not the word of weak and vain men that hath promised it to you You have heard by the Gospel the Word of Truth which cannot lye And as so magnificent an hope should enflame our Charity so should it comfort our patience and render it invincible under the Cross to which the Name of CHRIST doth subject us Consider a little what the men of the world do and suffer for uncertain hopes that whirl in the Air flote on the Sea and depend upon the Wind and Fortune to how many dangers they expose themselves to what travail and disquiet they condemn themselves Voluntarily passing nights and dayes in a most laborious servitude for an imaginary good that neither yet is nor perhaps shall ever be and which how happy soever the success of their designs may be they shall not enjoy at most but during some years only Christian shall it be said that you have less zeal for Heaven than these people have for Earth Their hope is doubtful Yours is assured Theirs dependeth on the will of men and the inconstancy of elements Yours is in Heaven Pursue then generously so high and glorious a design And since your hope is in Heaven have incessantly heart affection and thought there Regard no more either flesh or earth it is not here your bliss is JESUS CHRIST hath seated it on high at the right hand of the Father in the Palace of His holiness Let this excellent hope sweeten all the evil you suffer here below If you be not at ease here if you be despised if you have no part in the wealth or honours of the world think that in like manner neither is it here that JESUS CHRIST hath promised you the rewards of your piety That Heaven which you see so constant and immutable keeps them faithfully for you You shall there receive one day the honour the glory and the dignities you now breath after not to possess them during some miserable moneths as worldlings enjoy their pretended riches but eternally with a perfect and unspeakable contentment in the blessed communion of Saints of Angels and of JESUS CHRIST the Lord of the one and the others To whom with the Father and the Holy Spirit the only true GOD blessed for ever be honour and glory to ages of ages Amen THE II. SERMON COL I. Ver. VI VII VIII Vers VI. The Gospel which is come unto you as also it is into all the World and bringeth forth fruit as it doth also in you since the day you heard and knew the Grace of GOD in truth VII As also you have learned of Epaphras our dear fellow servant who is a faithful Minister of CHRIST for you VIII Who also hath declared unto us your charity which you have in the Spirit DEar Brethren the Gospel of our LORD JESUS CHRIST is the most excellent and most admirable Doctrine that was ever published in the Universe It is the grand mysterie of GOD the wisdom of Angels and men the glory of Heaven and the happiness of the Earth It is the only seed of immortality the perfection of our nature the light of our understandings and the sanctity of our affections There is no Philosophy or other Discipline but this alone that is able to deliver us from the slavery of Devils and make us Children of the most High It is this solely that truly purifieth us from the filth of sin and clotheth us with a complete righteousnes that plucketh us out of the hands of death and hell and giveth us access to the Throne of GOD there to receive of His bounty life and supreme felicity All other religions invented and followed by flesh and blood are wayes of perdition disciplines of errour and vanity that present themselves to poor men in the thick darkness of their ignorance as those seducing fires that sometimes abuse Travellers during the obscurity of the Night leading them into the deeps of death and eternal malediction The Law it self though come from on high is nevertheless as much beneath the dignity of the Gospel as Sinai is beneath Heaven and Moses beneath JESUS CHRIST The Law affrighteth Consciences the Gospel assureth them The one slayeth the sinner the other raiseth Him up again The one maketh grace be desired the other makes it be enjoyed The one presented the shadows and figures of the truth the other giveth us the lively image and very body thereof Whence you may judge my Brethren how much it concerneth us to know so saving and Divine a Doctrine that we may embrace and obey it since the repose and happiness of our souls stand on it which we shall unprofitably seek any other where It is to enflame us with an ardent desire of this holy and blessed knowledge that the Apostle St. Paul proposeth to us so often in His Epistles the praises of the Gospel scarce ever naming it without adding presently something to its commendation as the custome is of those that love ardently never to speak of that they love without giving it some Elogy that testifies both its excellency and their passion Such is the manner of Our St. Paul towards the Gospel of his Master He hath his soul so full of the love and admiration of this Heavenly doctrine that He can neither pronounce nor write the name of it but He accompanies it with praises as the just and due marks of its dignity We have
and next in regard of its degrees For its extent it comprehends the things themselves that we can know which being almost infinite it is evident a man may know some who yet knoweth not others And as for its degrees one self-same thing is known more clearly and more distinctly by one more obscurely and confusedly by another It 's the same in this as it is in seeing One seeth and discovereth more objects than another and of those that see one and the same object one seeth it much more clearly and purely than another and whatever be the cause of this diversity whether the inequality of their eyes or the difference of their attention or that of the light which brightens them so it is that their seeing is very different that of the one being imperfect and defective in comparison of the other's The Apostle therefore beseeching the LORD that the Colâ—ssians might be filled with knowledge intendeth that they might obtain of His goodness a perfection both of the one and the other sort first that if there were any points of the Gospel not yet come to their knowledge He would grant them the grace to observe and apprehend them and secondly that if they did not purely enough apprehend the things they knew already He would so shine on them by the light of His spirit that they might clearly and distinctly perceive them For it is in these two points that the fulness or perfection he wisheth them in this place doth consist the one not to be ignorant of any of the necessary particulars of the mysterie revealed to us by the Gospel of JESUS CHRIST The other to know each of these particulars clearly and distinctly seeing the truth of them as in a great and resplendant light Besides we must remember that as the estate of a believer is of one sort here below where he travails for a time and after another on high in Heaven where he shall live in the bosome of GOD so the perfection of his knowledge is of two sorts the one earthly and the other heavenly This same is his last and highest perfection that same is but the disposition and beginning of it the one is the perfection of his infancy the other of his full age And though the first may be in a sense and in some respect truly termed fulness and perfection yet in regard of the other it 's imperfect Whence it comes that the Apostle elsewhere putting these two knowledges in parallel one with the other saith that now we know 1 Cor. 13.9 10 11 12. but in part and see but darkly in a glass whereas in the other World we shall see face to face and know as we have been known And in the same place he compareth the knowledge we have here below to the thoughts of a child and that which we shall have on high to the thoughts and judgement of a perfect man Then all the arguments of the truth of the Gospel shall be so magnificently displayed before our eyes that doubt of it shall not be able to take place any more and whereas now we see but the images of things then we shall touch the substance of them besides that the light of our understandings shall be incomparably more clear and pure than it is here below But though considering the thing in its self one may call perfect only the knowledge of a believer enjoying the vision of his LORD on high in the Heavens yet referring and ajusting it to the state we are now in there is also on earth a sort of knowledge which in this respect may be called perfect namely the highest measure a faithful person can attain while he is here beneath As though the knowledge of a child be far below the lights of a perfect man yet this hinders not but there is a certain form and measure of knowledge proportionate to the capacity of this age which when the Child is come to we say it is an accomplished Child yea most accomplished For every age hath its perfection and every greatness its full height T is then of this second sort of perfection and fulness the Apostle intends to speak when he prayes the LORD that the Colossians might be filled with knowledge that is not that they might see the LORD face to face this is not given but in the other world but that they might receive of his goodness all the light necessary for the estate we are in here below and as high and rich a measure of knowledge as may and should be had on earth for getting one day to the upmost degree in the Kingdom of Heaven And note here by the way the holy artifice of the Apostle By praying GOD that the Colossians might be filled he secretly advertiseth them that they yet wanted something that he might render them teachable and attentive to the instructions he will hereafter give them For those that think they are perfect and have an entire and accomplished knowledge do disdain what any one would add thereto as a thing superfluous and unprofitable Therefore he timely takes away this imagination from the Colossians that they may patiently suffer him to instruct them and finish in them what was only rough-drawn To the same end doth that tend which he addeth that they might be filled with the knowledge of the will of GOD. For by this word he rejecteth and removeth far from this subject all the inventions and doctrines of men the disputes and subtilities of Philosophy the voluntary devotions and superstitions which had been sowed among the Colossians by the false teachers as things rather contrary than useful to the perfection and happiness of man and restraineth all the knowledge he desireth for them to the sole will of God as its true object and its just measure Upon which we have first to remark that the word here used by the Apostle in the Original and which we have translated knowledge signifieth properly a great and ample knowledge and these holy Authors employ it ordinarily to express that knowledge of GOD which is given us by the Gospel of JESUS CHRIST For the Law of Moses and the Doctrine of the Prophets doth indeed teach what is the will of GOD. But it hath not designed to declare it so purely and so fully as the Gospel Whence it comes that St. 2 Pet. 2.19 Peter compareth the light of the Prophets to that of a candle shining in a dark place and that of the Gospel to the brightness of the day And it s hereto St. John hath respect when he saith Joh. 1.18 that no man hath seen GOD at any time and that the only Son which is in the bosome of the Father He hath revealed Him Because the knowledge which was of Him before the manifestation of the LORD JESUS was so weak as it is scarce considerable in comparison of that which is given us It 's therefore properly this Evangelical and Christian knowledge which the Apostle wisheth
here to the Colossians opposing it to that of the Law the rudiments whereof some endeavoured to re-establish among them Secondly we must observe what is the object of this knowledge the knowledge saith he of the will of GOD. All men naturally desire to know and I avouch that every knowledge is beautiful and grateful and there is none truly such but addeth some ornament to our understanding Yet it must be confessed that they are for the most part incapable of giving us the perfection and happiness we desire and which is necessary for our nature Such are all mundane sciences found out and cultivated by the sages of the World not only their Philosophy about nature and the motions of the Heavens and the Elements and about the properties and effects of things animate and inanimate but also that part of their Doctrine which more neerly respecteth us and explaineth what our carriage should be both in particular and in respect of those that govern us or are governed of us either in the family or in the State For to say nothing of the variety and extream uncertainty of their opinions which change every day and float continually in infinite doubts after having passed an whole life in this study and made the greatest progresses that may be no man is by it either more content or more happy or more assured All the pretended light of their School will not be able to dissipate in us either the horrour of death or the fear of the Judgement of GOD. It is only the knowledge of the LORD that can free us of it and by consequence it alone is necessary for us the rest will not render us either more happy if we have them or more miserable if we have them not It 's then this alone which the Apostle wisheth unto the Colossians But we must yet consider in the Third place that He wisheth them the knowledge not of the nature or the Majesty or the other essential properties of GOD but of His will For as to the essence of this supream and incomprehensible LORD as to the infinite and immense greatness of His power as to the ineffable manner of His understanding and the marvels of His judgement it is not necessary for us to know them clearly It is sufficient for us to adore them and many have lost themselves in lusting to sound them It is His Will that we must know to attain salvation as the true rule of our duty and His judgement He hath fully declared it to us by the Ministry of His Heralds the Apostles and Prophets who have published it by word of mouth and configned it in writing in the Holy Books which they have left us There it is that we must seek it and not in the discourses of vain men There we shall find it manifested as far as is necessary for us to know and do it It hath two principal parts faith and obedience For the will of GOD as the Apostle understands it here is nothing else but that which GOD would have us believe Joh. 6.40 and do to be happy For faith His will is saith our LORD that whoever seeth the Son and believeth in Him have eternal life and be raised up at the last day 1 Thes 4.3 For action This is the will of GOD saith the Apostle even your sanctification These are the two first and principal heads of the will of GOD to which all other instructions in Scripture do referr It 's in the knowledge of these things that St. Paul prayeth GOD the Colossians might be perfect and accomplished He addeth in all wisdom and spiritual understanding We call them Wise men in the world that know how to compass their ends that use means fit for this purpose and skilfully avoid all that might put them from it so dextrously conducting their affairs that of two things the one follows either they finish that which they desire or if they prosper not in it it is some mishap and not their fault that is the cause of such ill success But because they propose unto themselves ends vain and evil and unprofitable to their happiness thence it comes that how wise soever they be esteemed by the world all their industry yet is to say true but folly and errour Those then on the contrary are wise after the Spirit who constantly hold the right course of piety guiding themselves in it with such skilfulness that they beware of scandals and all that might set them off from their mark avoiding what is contrary to it and practising what is useful And though the world commonly account them extravagant yet so it is that their conduct proves to be true wisdom since at the end and after all it will be found that none but they attain unto salvation It is then this skilfulness which the Apostle termeth here a spiritual wisdom both because it respecteth the things of the Spirit that appertain to a Celestial and spiritual life as also for that it is a gift of the Spirit of GOD coming from on high from the Father of lights neither the sense nor the reason of Nature being capable of giving it to any knowledge of the Divine will is as it were the matter and subject of wisdom Wisdom is as it were the use and employing of the knowledge of GOD. For to be wise after the Spirit it is not enough to know what is the will of GOD There must be use of this knowledge first by laying down for a certain and unmoveable maxime that it is in it our bliss consisteth and consequently that therein we must bound our desires Secondly by practising what we know of this Divine will aiming at the mark it sheweth us and employing to attain it the means it prescribeth us watching and labouring continually thereto For certainly that servant in the Parable who knew his Masters will and did it not was nothing less than wise As for the spiritual understanding which the Apostle wisheth in the last place to the Colossians it is a quick and exquisite prudence to judge aright of things that are presented and discern the good from the evil the true from the false and the real from the apparent and this gift as you see is also a fruit of the knowledge of GOD and consisteth only in an exact application of what we know of His will to the doctrines and counsels which the flesh and its Ministers set before us to turn us out of the way of salvation It 's this was wanting to Eve when she was seduced by the Serpent and to the Galathians when they were abused by those impostors the Apostle fearing lest the same should betide the Colossians to divert this fatal blow supplicates the LORD to give them understanding necessary for the happy severing the false colours the paintings and baits of untruth from the simplicity that is in CHRIST Therefore he demandeth not of Him only that they might be filled with the knowledge of His
and felicity whereof we shall be seized on high in the Heavens It is best in my opinion to joyn these two expositions together that we may so comprehend the entire state of the whole inheritance of Saints who after they are once united to JESUS CHRIST do alwayes live in light first in that of grace during their pilgrimage on earth afterwards in that of glory Rev. 21.23 when they shall be raised up to that blessed City which hath no need of the Sun nor of the Moon because the brightness of GOD hath illuminated it and the Lamb is the light thereof 1 Thes 5.5 Phil. 2.15 Mat. 5.14 For this cause all the divine denizons of this heavenly State are called Children of light and of the day which should shine as lights in the midst of a perverse generation and be the light of the world as persons born of the light of the Spirit and of the word of God who being led by the rayes of their Sun of Righteousness walk on straight towards the supream source of lights where arrived they shall eternally dwell in that shine which will transform them into the image of their LORD from glory to glory by the power of His Omnipotent Spirit But it is time to come to the other verse in which the Apostle addeth what the Father hath done to make us thus capable of partaking in the inheritance of Saints in light He hath delivered us saith he from the power of darkness and translated us into the Kingdom of His well-beloved Son By darkness the Scripture ordinarily understands ignorance and misery the two contraries of knowledge and joy which it signifies by light as we said even now For ignorance and error do hide the true and natural form of things from our understandings just as darkness doth wrap up visible objects from our bodily eyes And forasmuch as there is nothing more unpleasant to men nor more affrighting than the obscurity of darkness thence it comes that the term is also made use of to represent horrour trouble and misery So the power of darkness is nothing else but that tyranny which the Devil and sin do exercise over their slaves filling their spirits with deadly errours and brutish ignorances and their consciences either with affrightment or insensibility and training them on by little and little under this dismal yoke into the horrours of eternal death which our LORD often calleth outer-darkness where is weeping and gnashing of teeth For as knowledge and truth is a light necessary for the attainment of salvation so errour and ignorance infallibly lead to death Therefore the Devil the sworn enemy of our good blindeth men the most he possibly can spreading before them gross and thick mists which hide Heaven and its blessed brightness from them This is the summ of his craft and subtil operation The deep of his abyss doth ever vomit forth into our aire a black vapour for the rendring of our senses useless By this means he turned heretofore the Nations of the Earth from the service of their Creator obscuring and smothering by his illusions those sparkles of the knowledge of Him which they had and plunging them and holding them down in so deep ignorance that these miserable men were not ashamed Rom. 1.23 to adore the work of their own hands and change the glory of the incorruptible GOD into the resemblance and image of corruptible man and of birds and of four-footed beasts and creeping things As for justice and honesty of life this impostor had so extinguished the lights which Providence had kindled for them in their hearts and so disordered all their knowledge by his seductions that the vilest abominations passed among them for indifferent things Walking on in so thick darkness it is no wonder if they were in continual fear they knew not where they went nor whither they should come and fell at last after having pittifully stumbled and staggered into the precipice of eternal perdition And would to GOD the Prince of errour did not yet still abuse the world in the same manner Certainly the darkness of the old Paganism was not more gross nor shameful than that which covers the greater part of the earth at this very day But whereas that errour wherein the Devil keepeth men is called by the Apostle the power of darkness and not simply darkness this teacheth us that that accursed one worketh effectually in them doing with their hearts what seemeth Him good and planting all deceit and ignorance in them at his will so as these wretches cannot defend themselves therefrom This is one thing the Apostle teacheth us elsewhere as when he saith that this evil Spirit now worketh with efficacy Eph. 2.3 in the children of rebellion Not that he hath naturally any just Dominion over the souls of men but their sin brings them under His Sceptre and their hearts being of themselves full of unclean and unjust affections it comes to pass through the excess of their corruption that he never tempteth them in vain And all this imperial force he hath upon them is founded meerly on imposture on errour and ignorance so as it is with a deal of truth and elegancy that St. Paul calleth it here the power of darkness This is Faithful Brethren the sad and pittiful estate in which naturally men lye Let not the paint and lustre of their pretended wisdom and justice dazle your eyes In the sight of GOD it is but darkness whence it comes Eph. 5.8 that the Scripture calleth them darkness it self Ye were sometime darkness saith the Apostle to the Ephesians Judge hereby how horrible the errour of those is who dogmatize that liberty is so very natural to man as they cannot conceive that they can be men without it Let them Philosophise upon this subject as they please They shall never be able to shew that a man can be all at once both at liberty and under the power of darkness He that is under the power of another is not free It 's GOD alone that can enfranchise men and take them from this miserable servitude and bind that strong Tyrant who did hold them Captive It is to this Soveraign LORD that the Apostle here giveth the glory both of his own liberty and of the Colossians theirs 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He saith he hath delivered us from the power of darkness Yet the Greek word which he useth in the Original hath more Emphasis signifying that He delivered us by an exerting of power drawing us and if I may so speak plucking us out of the irons we were in whereby he representeth to us on the one hand how strong and strait the bonds of our slavery were and on the other hand how excellent and admirable the power is which GOD hath displayed to bring us out of this spiritual Egypt For we experiment it daily that though nothing be more sordid and shameful than the tyranny of error Yet we all naturally love it so
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
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
here that CHRIST is our life doth not simply signifie that He is the cause and author of our life but that it fully and wholly dependeth upon Him that without Him and separate from Him we have not a drop nor spark of life and that it is in Him alone we have all the being all the moving and all the feeling that respects the life of Heaven In very deed it is He that hath merited it for us by His death It is He that hath brought it to light by His Gospel It 's He hath shewed us a most accomplish'd pattern of it in His person at His issuing out of His sepulchre It 's He that hath given us the first-fruits of it by His word and Spirit and conserveth and increaseth them in us by His benediction It is He that keeps the fulness of it for us in His treasury on high as being the true Father of eternity And lastly it is He that taking this glorious life out of His heavenly cabinet one day will put it on us with His own hand Besides we do possess neither the beginnings nor the perfection of it but in Him and by the benefit of our communion with Him in that we are members and branches of His which cannot live but united with their head and incorporated in their vine The Apostle therefore saith that when this soveraign and only author of our life shall appear then we also shall appear in glory He hath appeared once already but in the flesh as the Apostle sayes GOD was manifested in the flesh He shall appear again a second time but in glory It 's this second appearing he doth mean when the LORD JESUS descending from the Heavens with the host of His Angels and seating Himself on a judicial Throne shall openly shew to all the creatures of the World His Glory and Godhead which the Heavens that contain his flesh on high and the weaknesses that cover His mystical body here below do now hide from the earth as we lately said Then saith the Apostle shall you also appear with Him in Glory At the coming of this sweet and happy season you as plants in the spring shall receive your life which from that sacred stock wherein it is now conserved shall be diffused into you and into all the other branches of this vine of GOD and crown you at an instant with its eternal verdure The glory whereof he speaks doth signifie the light the perfections the wonders and the pomp of blissful life perfect knowledge of GOD love and sanctity and joy the immortality of our bodies their beauty their brightness their strength and impassibility and in fine all the pieces of that infinite good the grandeur and excellency whereof we shall never distinctly comprehend untill the time that we possess it We shall then appear in this glory first because beside the first-fruits of it which we have JESUS CHRIST shall give us the fulness of it which we have not this undoubtedly the greatest and most illustrious part of His glory which now remaineth hidden in Him being then to be shed abroad upon us Secondly because the World which now despiseth and treads us under foot shall then see us in this glorious estate And as CHRIST our head shall be seen with astonishment by those that sometime pierced Him so they that now outrage His members shall then see them in their glory and be constrained to change their opinion and to acknowledge those for children of GOD and Saints of His whom in the present World they do deride and make by-words of Wisd â— 3 as saith the Book of Wisdome Thus you see Beloved Brethren what kind of life it is which JESUS CHRIST doth promise and communicate unto His faithful ones to wit the fruit of our faith and of that divine food which we have taken this morning the life of Angels the crown of Saints a super-eminent and eternal felicity in conjunction with a super-eminent and immortal glory It 's the rich treasury the living and inexhaustible spring of our consolation and sanctification Judge I beseech you what manner of persons they should be that have so high and so divine an hope and if it be not reasonable we should withdraw our thoughts and our affections from the earth to elevate them unto Heaven since it is there our life is and thence that we expect our chief happiness Christian are you not asham'd to long for earth you that have title for Heaven to labour for the meat that perisheth you that are destinated to a life which perisheth not to run after shadows you that in JESUS CHRIST have the substance of true and solid happiness How much more generous and constant are the children of this generation in their vanity Those of them that are of noble extraction and especially they that are brought up in hope of a Crown would not for any thing have a mechanick trade or foul themselves in sordid actions and even nations there are among whom they totally refrain from commerce with other men and account themselves defiled and profaned by having but touched a plebeian And you that are the issue of Heaven a child of the most High a brother of His Angels and an Heir of His kingdom you that are bred up with divine manna in the hope of an heavenly life and an immortal crown how have you the heart to grope in the mud and heap up dung to intermix with the miserablest bond-men of the earth and the profanest workers of iniquity A King's son heretofore refused to contend in the publick games because he saw no Kings do it Christian remember the dignity of your name separate your self from the exercises and divertisements of the people of the world Leave them the earth out of which they come and unto which they shall return Enter not into so ignoble and fordid a race in which you see none run but children of the earth the race of Mammon and the brood of vipers and serpents Purifie your hearts and your bodies let it never betide you to defile them with base and terrene either thoughts or actions Say not what shall we eat what shall we drink wherewithal shall we be clothed These are the thoughts and cares of bond-men These are the discourses of Pagans This is all they seek You that are Christians and whose life is hid in JESUS CHRIST seek His kingdom and His righteousness Let this be your ambition and all the passion of your souls Let this divine life and the glory wherewith it will one day crown you in the fight of Heaven and earth be night and day the object of your thoughts Take it away even at the present with an holy impatiency Begin betimes to live as you shall live eternally Let the contemplating of GOD let the love of His beauties let the meditating of His mysteries let the considering of and a conversing with His CHRIST be your employment and your refreshment in the present World
utmost and highest point of its perfection in the Heavens when there shall be seen a compleat and Angelical sanctity to shine forth in it with glory and blessed immortality In fine the Apostle doth also briefly touch at both the manner after which and the pattern by which this renovation is wrought in us For the manner of it he saith That this new man is renewed in knowledge thereby shewing that JESUS CHRIST for the communicating of this new Nature which is in Him as in its source unto us doth give us and day by day augment the knowledge of his truth in us for as ignorance and error is the first and principal deformity of the old Man and the cause of all the rest so on the contrary Wisdom and Knowledge is the first and principal lineament of the new Man whereby are formed in us all the other vertues in which it doth consist as Love of GOD and Charity towards men and all the other holy habitudes which depend upon them it being manifest that we love none but the things we know and proportionably to the knowledge we have of them Wherefore the LORD begins the admirable work of his grace hereat And we have an excellent image of this method of his in the first Creation of the World where Moses expresly observes that the first thing GOD created by his Word was Light which is the symbol of Knowledge as darkness is of Ignorance This the Apostle plainly pointeth at elsewhere GOD saith he who commanded the light to shine out of darkness 2 Cor. 4 6. hath shined into our hearts This light of Knowledge once lighted up in our souls by the Spirit of the LORD doth presently expel Vices out of them and shewing us the holy and glorious face of GOD in JESUS CHRIST transforms us into his likeness as saith the same Apostle 1 Cor. 3.18 We all beholding as in a glass the glory of the LORD with open face are transformed into the same image from glory to glory as by the Spirit of the LORD It 's this he meaneth in the Text when he saith of the new Man that it is renewed after the image of him who created it that is of JESUS CHRIST our LORD For he properly is the Pattern by which that new Nature we are made partakers of is formed He is both the Author and Exemplar of it and 't is for this that it is called by his Name to wit the new Man Therefore the Apostle elsewhere to express the end and effect of his Ministry toward the Galatians Gal. 4.19 saith That he travelleth in birth until CHRIST be formed in them He had no other design but to revest them with the new Man Certainly then the new Man is nothing else but JESUS CHRIST formed in us that is nothing else but the form of this holy and blessed LORD engraven and imprinted on us by the seal of his Word and Spirit which is precisely the thing he here calls his Image If you know JESUS CHRIST you cannot be ignorant what this his form and image is JESUS CHRIST is the Saint of Saints a man full of all purity righteousness charity patience constancy and truth and in sum of all the lights of holiness Sure then his form and image can be no other than a genuine representation of these Divine qualities a soul in which appears a goodness an humility an honesty I say not equal for it is not possible to arrive unto so high a perfection but at least semblable and proportionate to his And this is that which S. Paul elsewhere compriseth expresly in two words saying That the new man is created after GOD in righteousness and true holiness Thus you see Brethren what that Old and what this new Man is which the Apostle speaks of in this place The one is the image of the first Adam and the other of the second He commandeth us to put off the old Man with his Deeds and to put on the New a manner of speaking no less elegant than familiar in Scripture which is wont to say of all the things that are found in this or that subject that it is clothed with them As when the Prophets say that GOD is clothed with strength with Glory and with Magnificence that he is cloathed with Justice that he will cloath his Priests with salvation and their enemies with shame that he will cloath the Heavens with darkness and so in a multitude of other places where it is evident that the term Cloathing is taken figuratively to express simply the putting of any thing in such or such a Subject whether it be internally or externally Whence it follows that to put off on the contrary is simply to quit a thing which one had and rid himself of it Thus to put off the old Man is nothing else but to rid our selves of his Vices and of his corruptness to pluck up for instance out of our hearts his covetousness and his ambition and the habitudes of his other sins But the Apostle expresly addeth that we put him off with his deeds that is to say that we not only pluck up out of our hearts the habits of Vices which are as it were the roots and stocks of it but that also we cut off from our lives all the actions whether interior as desires and lustings or exterior as other sins which proceed from the same and are as so many fruits of this accursed plant For to speak properly the old man is one thing and the act of sin that issues from it another The one is the corruptness it self of our nature the other is the effect it produceth The one is as the Plant and the other as its Fruit. For example cruelty or covetousness is one of the very members of the old Man murder or stealing ing are acts of it The Apostle would have us put off the one and the other that neither Vice nor its acts might have any place in us In like manner to put on the new Man is on the other hand to deck and adorn our understanding our will our affections and all the parts of our life with those excellent vertues in which the new man consisteth as we have said afore to endeavour it studiously and take no rest till we have them formed in us and our whole nature be covered and enriched with them But though these two words to put off and to put on be in this passage figuratively taken yet do they shew us notwithstanding against the gross and sensless error of some that as well the old Man as the New do both of them signifie the form and disposition not the substance and very essence of our nature For when a thing is utterly destroyed we do not say it puts off what it had but that it is perisheth And when the substance of a thing is produced altogether of new we say not that it 's cloathed but created so as the Apostle here commanding us to
this blessed light He would have objected the interest of these last generations that they were too far removed from this Sun-shine to make their profit of it Unbelief doth never want pretences It findeth somewhat to reply against all the LORD's procedures And not desiring that they should be just doth easily forge apparences to it self to believe they are not so Let us suffer Him to be wiser than our selves and instead of arguing about the order He hath taken receive it with respect and make our profit of it Let it satisfie us that by His grace we find our selves within the compass of that blessed time in which He hath manifested His secret and make we use with thankfulness of the advantage He hath pleased to give our age above those that have preceded But if you ask me why GOD communicated His Gospel to the Church no sooner tell me also why He giveth not to men and other living creatures the perfection of their kind at the instant of their nativity why lets He them lose so much time in the weaknesses of infancy which might be better employed in more noble actions if they had their vigor and maturity at the beginning of their days Tell me again why He maketh not the plants to grow up to blossom and to bear fruit in a moment and why He formeth families and States so slowly among mankind GOD doth nothing suddainly and would have us understand the maturity of His counsels by the gravity of His motions He hath formed the Church in the same method He would that she should begin to pronounce before she spake distinctly pass through childhood before coming to full age He would that she should learn her rudiments before she heard the highest lessons of His wisdom And haue in one of her times Moses for her School-master in the other JESUS CHRIST for her Doctor as the Apostle sheweth us in the Epistle to the Galatians Since the Gospel is the highest of Her lessons C. 3 4. it was justly reserved for her ripest age But if you press me still and ask me why GOD ordained such a difference between the ages of the Church I will answer you as before with S. Paul that thus He would do You cannot break over this bound without unsetling the whole nature and bringing the justice of all His progresses into contestation it being evident that it was neither more difficult for GOD nor less apparently reasonable to give animals and vegetables their strength and perfection in the first moments of their life then to give the Church the knowledge of His mysteries in the first centuries of her time The other point in this dispensation of GOD which offends our curiosity respecteth the persons to whom He hath manifested His mysterie and sanctified them by this Divine light Why to these hath He done this rather than to those Why to poor Galileans rather than to the Scribes and Priests of Israel The Apostle cutteth the knots of all these questions with one only word saying that He would make it known to them It 's the reason which the LORD Himself alledged for this diversity when having given thanks to the Father for that He had hid these things from the wise and prudent and revealed them unto babes Mat. 11.26 He addeth Even so Father for thus it hath pleased thee And our Apostle treating elsewhere expresly of this matter concludeth that GOD hath mercy on whom He will have mercy Rom. 9.18 and whom He will He hardeneth It 's at this Will that we must stop and not go on vainly seeking for reasons in the persons themselves of the favour GOD hath shewed them it being clear that we shall never find in them any which may give us satisfaction And again hereto must we reduce all the diversities which may be observed in the dispensation of the Gospel as that GOD maketh it to abound in one country and among one people while another is deprived of it that He maketh it to shine upon one generation after having denyed it to another that He communicates it here more liberally and there more sparingly All this dependeth meerly on His good pleasure nor can the things themselves afford us any valuable reason of it But I return to the Apostle who saith that by the revelation of His Gospel GOD hath made known what are the riches of the glory of this mysterie among the Gentiles They that are versed in the reading of this holy man's writings do know that he often useth the word riches Rom. 11.33 to set forth abundance As when he cryeth out Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge and when he speaketh elsewhere of the riches of the grace of the LORD Ephes 1.7 Rom. 2.4 and when he demands of the impenitent if he despise the riches of the goodness of GOD of His patience and long-suffering and so in a multitude of other places It 's in this sense that we must here understand the expression of riches of glory that is to say a great abundance of glory or which amounts to as much a very great and most abundant glory Whereby you see the zeal of this holy man for the praise of the Gospel Inasmuch as he cannot satisfie himself about this subject but heapeth up the most magnifick terms he can think of to represent the excellency of it He calleth it a mysterie and a mysterie of GOD and a mysterie hidden during all the ages that rolled on from the foundation of the world and at length discovered from Heaven in the last time to the Saints of GOD. This is very much and there is no other doctrine either humane or indeed Divine of which so much can be said But it is not enough for S. Paul He adds that it is a glorious mysterie yea contents not himself with this He ascribes to it not glory simply but riches and an abundance of glory And it is not here alone that he doth so He speaks of it every other-where in the same manner as when he saith that unto him this grace was given Eph. 3.7 8. to preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of CHRIST and to make all men see what is the communication of the mysterie which from the beginning had been hid in GOD and elsewhere he calls it the glorious ministration of the Spirit 2 Cor. 3.8.18 and the mirrour wherein the face of the LORD is openly beheld And in truth he had good reason For it is particularly in the Gospel that GOD hath made all the beams of His glory to shine out There He manifesteth and communicateth unto men all the marvels of His Power of His Wisdom of His Justice and of His merciful goodness in their greatest altitude and in their richest abundance which are as the substance and essence of this glory The Gospel is His treasury wherein He presents us His most glorious and His Divinest benefits His grace
in old time that your holy life might be new As your knowledge is greater than that of other ages so let your holiness surpass theirs The dimness of their light doth in some sort excuse their faults faults committed in the mistakes of childhood and in the obscurity of shadows With what pretext can you palliate yours you to whom GOD hath communicated all His counsel How will you defend that ardent and unruly passion which you have for the earth you whom by the Gospel he hath made to see all the beauties of Heaven How will you justifie the love and the adherence you have one to the pleasures of the flesh another to the heaps and honours of the world you to whom He hath shewed the riches and the glory of eternity in His Son JESUS CHRIST Sure to sin in such light is not an infirmity nor simply a naughtiness It is an impudence and an execrable insolency Take heed then Beloved Brethren that this great grace which GOD hath shewed you do not turn to your condemnation If you desire it should be saving to you purifie your selves and cleanse your selves from all filthiness and pollution For the mysteries of GOD are only for Saints Renounce the world's behaviour as well as its belief Walk in the wayes of Heaven in an Honesty and Purity worthy of the vocation wherewith GOD hath honoured you Let His mystery shew forth the wonders of its glory among you potently changing your whole life into its brightness and transforming you into the image of that JESUS CHRIST who hath vouchsafed to dwell in you and to take your hearts for His temple that after you have wisely managed His talents here below and happily travailed in His work He may crown you one day in the Heavens with that soveraign and eternal glory which He hath promised us and we hope for from His grace So be it THE XV. SERMON COL I. Vers XXVIII XXIX Vers XXVIII Whom we preach admonishing every man and teaching every man in all wisdom that we may render every man perfect in CHRIST JESUS XXIX Whereunto also I labour combating according to His efficacy which worketh in me powerfully DEAR Brethren There is a great difference between the Law and the Gospel both in regard of their own nature and in regard of the manner of their dispensation For to omit other things the Gospel is a mystery that is a verity so hid in GOD as if He had not vouchsafed to discover it to men Himself by a supernatural revelation no creature either earthly or heavenly had been ever able to bring it forth from the bottomless deeps of GOD's wisdom or to acquire any solid and distinct knowledge of it by the contemplation of the things of the world But the Law is a verity suitable to the sentiments of nature and so open to the view of Angels and men that if sin had not dulled and corrupted the strength of our understanding we should have easily comprehended it of our selves without any extraordinary manifestation from Heaven Accordingly you see how deplorate and how blind soever men be yet they fail not to discern the things of the Law and the rectitude and justice of the most of that which it commands us But if you consider the dispensation of these two doctrines you will find that whereas the Law was given by Moses to the Jewish nation only the Gospel of our LORD and Saviour was preached to all people on earth indifferently there having been no part of mankind to whom the benefit of this new light was not presented by the Apostles and their Schollars S. Paul if you remember informed us of it in the foregoing text where he affirmed first that the Gospel is a mystery sudden during all the ages and generations which had passed but now manifested to the Saints of GOD and secondly that the LORD hath made known the glorious riches of this mystery among the Gentiles that is to say among other people of the world beside the Jews This he further confirms in the Text now read unto you by the extent of his preaching protesting that he declareth this Divine word to all men For having intimated before the subject of this great mystery of the Gospel and declared that it consisteth wholy in CHRIST JESUS alone who is the author and the matter of this coelestial doctrine he addeth whom we preach admonishing every man and teaching every man in all wisdom that we may render every man perfect in JESVS CHRIST And because his labours and his sufferings were one of the most glorious marks of the truth and the Divine authority of his Apostleship he maketh mention of them also in the following verse Whereunto I also labour saith he combating according to His efficacy which worketh powerfully in me For his design is to justifie what he had before told the Colossians namely that he was a Minister of the Church set up to fullfil the word of GOD among the Gentiles and this to the end he might establish the Colossans in the doctrine which he preached and secure them from the seductions of false Apostles who endeavoured to corrupt it by immixing with it the errors which they went to and fro a sowing in the world and did pretend that besides Faith in JESUS CHRIST there was a necessity of observing the ceremonies of the Law of Moses and of practising divers superstitions as the worshipping of Angels which they recommended and hugely exalted as S. Paul will shew us in the following chapter It was for the setting up of his own Ministry and teachings above these evil workers that he urged his heavenly call before It is for this end again that he exalted the Gospel in so lofty a manner and it 's for the same end that he here sets forth the exercise of his Apostleship which consisteth in two things one whereof is the preaching which he describes in verse 28. The other is the labour and conflict which accompanied his preaching declared in the verse following the last of this chapter These are the two points which we will treat of by the will of GOD in the present action the Preaching and the combats of S. Paul noting upon each of them what we shall judge apt for your edification and consolation which is the only mark that all the labour of this great Apostle tended to and the true end both of our word and your faith As for the Apostles Preaching we shall have four things to consider which he saith of it First the subject of it to wit JESVS CHRIST whom saith he we preach Secondly the manner of it which he expresseth in those words admonishing and teaching every man Thirdly the object to which this preaching of his was directed namely every man admonishing every man saith he and teaching every man and in the fourth and last place the end and aim to which it tended to wit the perfecting of those to whom it was directed that saith he we may
in the matter before us as well as worth I deny not but that some of these precious Verities are hid in the world and in man himself and that by attention and meditation they may be thence drawn out as appears by what the Pagans had learned who read no other book I grant moreover that the ancient Tabernacle of Mâ—ses afforded a yet greater store But what is all this in comparison of that abundance of them which JESUS CHRIST presenteth us Certainly there 's none but He to say true in whom this Divine treasure is found And for the fuller discovery of the unmeasurable abundance of His inexhaustible riches to us the Apostle contents not himself with calling it a treasure He sayes treasures in the plural so great and vast is the opulency of this Divine subject Yea he saith not simply treasures but all the treasures to shew us that there is nothing fair or exquisite or precious but is found in Him Now S Paul subjoineth in the progress of His speech what those treasures be which are in CHRIST The treasures saith he of wisdom and knowledg Away ye covetous who never hear speak of treasures but do fancy those of the world which to say the truth are but piles of dung heaps of clods of earth a little otherwise formed and coloured than other parts of this vile and low element be The jewâ—â— which the treasury of JESUS CHRIST is full of is of an infinitely more precious nature than the metals you adore It is saith the Apostle wisdom and knowledg The term wisdom is honourable among men and though they are ignorant of the thing nevertheless they respect the name of it confessing that it properly agreeth only to such knowledges as are at once both sublime and useful divine and salutiferous Surely to stick in this definition which themselves give of it it is clear that not one of all the Sciences that they have learned in the world by the strength of their own spirit doth deserve to be call'd wisdom For either they are low and of things of small elevation as the skill of their trades which have no employment but on the earth or at least they are vain and unprofitable as that which they tell us of the Heavens and their motions of nature and its mutations of numbers and figures and the measuring of bodies For what service doth that science do them whereof they vaunt with so much insolence Are they any whit the happier for it or ought the more assured by it Themselves do vilifie it when they are in a good mood and confess that all of it yields those that excell most in it but a very slender profit Will you call an useless industry Sapience and count him a wise man that busieth himself to no purpose On the contrary is it not the character of a fool to amuse himself in things of nought and toil about that which affords him no benefit as children that run after their shadow and course butter-flies What is the wisdom then which is truly worthy of so glorious a name Dear Brethren it is evidently the knowledg of Verities necessary to our Salvation those Verities that can make us happy and conserve peace and consolation in our Souls and conduct us through the accidents of this life to the possession of that supream felicity which all men naturally desire It 's this kind of knowledg that the Apostle meaneth here It s this which by way of excellence he calleth wisdom as alone deserving the name while all other kinds of knowledg do lie far beneath it As for Science which he doth adjoin I think we need not strive to sever it from Sapience as if they must necessarily be two different things I know well there are they that subtilly distinguish them some affirming that Sapience is the knowledg of GOD and of things divine Science the knowledg of Man and of things humane Others resolving that Sapience signifies the knowledg of things to be believed and Science of things to be done But not to dissemble I much doubt whether the Apostle ever thought upon these petty subtilities For the word Science in the Original generally signifies all knowledg and there is no reason to restrain it to the knowledg of things either humane or moral I judg it therefore more accordant with the simplicity of these Divine Authors to take the words Sapience and Science in well nigh the same sense and to say that the latter was added only to enlarge and enrich one and the same conception as if the Apostle had said that there is neither Sapience nor Science nor any true and Saving knowledg but it is in our Lord JESUS CHRIST In fine it must be observed that he saith These treasures are hid in CHRIST This is a very apt prosecution of his metaphor For treasures are not exposed to every one's view They are lockt up in some close cabinet and many times those that have them hide them in remote places or lay them under ground to keep off the eyes and hands of men from them Forasmuch as this is usually done the Apostle hath very gracefully used this word in the matter before him and the more gracefully for that something semblable may be observ'd in the dispensation of JESUS CHRIST Not that GOD hath any such design as avaricious men have or that He fearing lest people should see and seize His treasure hath directly hid it from them to prevent their sharing it Far be it from us to entertain a thought so injurious to the goodness and liberality of this Soveraign LORD who sent not His Son into the world but to save the world and delights in nothing more than in seeing us search into His treasuries and enrich our selves with His good things Who likewise hath clearly and magnificently laid forth in His CHRIST all His heavenly wealth by reason whereof that Son of His is called the Sun of Righteousness that is the most visible and most remarkable object in the Universe He hath sent His Servants every way to discover Him unto Mankind and from the tops of the highest places to call all men to a participation of this treasure of light Now both His brightness and their voice hath spread abroad so gloriously that it may be justly said Light hath been in the world Joh. 1.10 but the world perceived it not Wherefore our Apostle saith elswhere That if his Gospel be yet hid it is hid to them that are lost 2 Cor. 4.3 4. and whose understandings the GOD of this world hath blinded to wit the unbelieving that the light of the Gospel of the glory of CHRIST might not shine into them Where you see he attributes all the fault of worldlings not discerning the excellency of this treasure to their own blindness caused by the darknings and malice of Satan and not to the obscurity or hiddenness of the treasure it self which he gives a quite contrary name to calling it light
Paul's or the other Apostle's preaching can they ever shew us that Mass and that Purgatory and that worshipping of Saints and in one word any of those other Articles which they retain and we have relinquished Every one seeth how all these things do vary from the Lord JESUS CHRIST and make void his Cross and his Kingdom causing men to seek the expiation and purging away of their sins other-where than in His Sacrifice and attributing to Creatures the honour of Invocation and of presiding over the whole Church which belongs to Him alone But that other mark which S. Paul gives of the Doctrine which ought to be held fast doth less yet accord with them namely its having been receiv'd from the Apostles it being manifest that not one word of them is found in those holy mens writings which are the publike and authentick records of what they preached and that those traditions of Rome grew up in after-ages some at one time some at another issuing by little and little out of the forges of men according as error gathered strength as they know that read the Volumes of Antiquity without prejudice and prepossession Let our adversaries therefore leave these odious accusations They must either shew that those Doctrines of theirs which we have relinquish'd are Apostolical or confess that we had reason to relinquish them This very command of S. Paul's which they are not ashamed to object to us necessarily obliging us to adhere to that LORD JESUS CHRIST alone whom he preached and whom the Colossians believed on according to his preaching And it may not be insisted on that the Doctrine we contest with them hath been their belief for a thousand years or more Time is no prescription against any truth and least of all against the truth of CHRIST and his Apostles That which he hath pronounced continues in force for ever If any one preach ought as Gospel to you Gal. 1.8 9. besides what we have preached were it my self were it an Angel from Heaven let him be an anathema I enquire not of what date your opinions are It is sufficient for me to anathematize them that were not preached as Gospel by the Apostle Time cannot have conferred on them the advantage of being true which they had not at their rise What is not now veritable or Apostolical will never be so You are not the only men among whom Error hath grown old that gross one of Idolatry liv'd among the Pagans well nigh Two thousand years and their Rome hereto alledg'd * Symmachus her hoary hairs as well as yours doth at this day and said as now again Rome doth that it is an Undertaking ill-timed to correct old age and that to charge it with error is to affront those years It 's a thousand years and more since Mahomet's perfidy hath been up yet is never a whit the better for that You your selves observe Errors in the same antiquity whose authority you cry up so loud and you cannot deny but that those which you condemn in the communions of the Grecians of the Armenians of the Jacobites and of the Cophties are very old It 's an extreamly bad defence when men are convict of error to say that they have been a long time of that opinion How ancient soever your Doctrine is it 's young in comparison of S. Paul's since it was born after his days Neither its pretended antiquity nor any other consideration can secure it from his fulmination Since he would have us keep to that which he preached without receiving ought beside how stale and mouldy soever with age your traditions can be they all ought to perish under pain of an anathema seeing they are without the compass of S. Paul's preaching We are at this day in the same case the Colossians yer while were They stood bound by this exhortation to reject the worshipping of Angels the distinction of meats justification by the Law all that any way tended to add to that LORD JESUS CHRIST whom they had received from the hand of Paul and who had been taught them by him Let us then also freely reject the same things keep we constantly to that JESUS CHRIST whom we have received of him who did fill up all his Sermons and doth still fill up all his Epistles Content we our selves with that primitive and truly ancient Doctrine and boldly despise all the novelties that the world hath presum'd to add thereto in after-times Let us walk as the Apostle gives us order in this LORD JESUS Let Him be our only way the rule of our faith and of our manners You know the Scripture ordinarily useth this term to signifie the ordering and conduct of our life It compareth the various Disciplines and Perswasions which men follow unto Ways which lead some to one end some to another For it speaks of the way of sinners and of the way of the righteous meaning thereby the apprehensions and maxims by which they lead their lives Therefore it saith walk to signifie living or leading and ordering the life As therefore our Lord and Saviour saith that He is the Way so his Apostle enjoineth us to walk in Him that is to lead our lives both in regard of knowledg and perswasions of mind and also in respect of affections and actions according to his holy Gospel without any forsaking it to take another course judging all that varies from it to be folly how plausible soever it may appear otherways And as a prudent and advised traveller never leaves his road but puts on in it constantly till he come to his journey's end how smiling soever the Meadows look how green and fresh soever the shades be how fair and large soever the ways are that lye in view In like manner are we ordered to keep continually to the Doctrine of our Lord and Saviour and not relinquish it or assume any other of what nature or colour or appearance soever it be still resolving in our selves that whatsoever is without the dimensions of this model of Truth cannot but be dangeorus and apt if we follow it to lead us to perdition I pass by the observation which some make namely That the Apostle commanding us to walk in CHRIST doth intimate we should advance still and make progress therein For though this conception be for substance veritable it being the duty of each true believer to go forward and not pass a day without improvement 〈◊〉 piety yet it seems to me to be without the reach of the Apostle's words 〈◊〉 scope of which is simply to oblige us unto perseverance in the Gospel of JESUS CHRIST Beside what he addeth in the following verse doth sufficiently 〈…〉 commend this duty to us where he shews us after what manner we are to 〈◊〉 in JESUS CHRIST Being rooted saith he and built up in him and 〈◊〉 the faith as you have been taught and abounding therein with thanksgiving In these words he prescribeth us three things Firmness of faith the abounding
all this fulness As little could any man be to seek who this JESUS was of whom the Apostle speaks All knew him at least confusedly and in gross and did conceive him a man born of Mary in Judea who having liv'd some years among the Jews had been at length crucified by the sentence of Pontius Pilate and who being risen from the grave to a new life had sent forth his Apostles to preach his Gospel and afterwards afcended up into Heaven And though all did not believe that he was risen again and glorisi'd yet all well knew that this was said of him so that both the one and the other hearing JESUS CHRIST named did presently conceive in their mind the Idea of this Person born and dying in Judea at such times and at such places with some retinue of Disciples during his life and after his death This then is the subject of which S. Paul speaks even JESUS CHRIST considered under this form of a man in which he manifested himself to the world and in which he was conceiv'd and figured in the minds of those that heard him named In this man whose appearance was like that of other men who was born and bred on earth sustained during his life with our common food subject to our infirmities who passed through the differences of our ages suffer'd our griefs felt our inconveniences and experimented the rigour of death yea the cruellest that was in this man I say whose body was nailed to a Cross and deprived of its soul and buried in a Sepulcher in this man under so mean and contemptible a form dwelleth faith the Apostle all the fulness of the Godhead It is ordinary in the Hebrew Language to signifie by the fulness of any thing that which the thing containeth as by the fulness of the earth Men and other living creatures Psal 24. which do fill it and by the fulness of the Sea the Isles which the Sea containeth After this manner of expression the qualities and perfections of any one nature may be call'd its fulness because they are the things that fill it and with them it is as it were furnished and adorned as the movables and ornaments of a room or an house are the fulness of it Therefore as if I should say that in Adam as he was at first created was found all the fulness of Manhood every one would easily perceive that my intention were to say the perfections of human nature the faculties and properties and beauties which it is full of and without which it cannot sustain the dignity of that name were all in Adam â—an immortal soul a vigorous understanding a free-will a body of excellent 〈◊〉 acute senses and in sum all the other faculties that have any place among the perfections of the nature of man So here when we hear the Apostle saying that the fulness of the Godhead is in JESUS CHRIST let us account that by this clause he meaneth those perfections and qualities which fill up the Divine nature in which this great and soveraign Beeing doth consist and which Theologues commonly call the Attributes of GOD. You know what the word Godhead doth signifie even the Nature and Essence of GOD. The fulness of the Godhead then is that rich and incomprehensible abundance of perfections whereof the supream and adorable Nature is full as His Life His Power His Wisdom his Justice His Goodness His Immensity His Eternity His Holiness and all the other Properties which it hath in an ineffable manner and which our understandings according to their mean capacity do conceive in it as the form of the Deity that is necessary for its having that Name a nature that wanteth it being incapable of being called GOD otherwise than falsly and improperly I grant some resemblances or rather some touches and lineaments of these Perfections of the Godhead do appear in the noblest of the Creatures as in the Angels for instance who are immortal and endowed with an admirable sanctity vertue and power But the fulness of them is not in any Creature at all neither can it be found that ever the Scripture spake in this manner of Angels and said that the fulness of the Godhead was in them Besides these blessed Spirits and other Creatures how excellent soever you can imagine them to be do participate of these divine perfections but in a very little measure Whereas the LORD JESUS hath them wholly And to make this evident to us the Apostle thought it not enough to say that the fulness of the Godhead is in Him but hath expresly declared that ALL this fulness dwelleth in Him that we might be assured there is not at all any Perfection or Excellency or Accomplishment in the Divine Nature but is found in Him Thus in these two or three words he hath comprised all that the Scripture teacheth us in divers places of the richness of the Perfections of our LORD and Saviour For instance it tells us That he is full of grace and truth that he is the Wisdom and the Power of the Father that he hath the words of life that he is the Way the Truth and the Life that in him are hid the treasures of wisdom and knowledg that he hath that might and strength which sustaineth all things now and which created them at first that he is the Everlasting Father and hath immortality and incorruption hath an infinite understanding whereby he soundeth the reins and discerneth all the thoughts of the hearts of men that he hath a super-eminent Glory to which all Creatures ought to do homage yea the Angels themselves who indeed adore Him the Empire and dominion over all the world the right and authority to judg all men and a multitude of such things as these Verily S. Paul hath comprised it all in one word saying here that all the fulness of the Godhead is in JESUS CHRIST it being evident that if he wanted any of these Names Rights and Attributes He could not have all the fulness of the Godhead which is ascribed here unto Him But let us now see in what manner he possesseth these things the Apostle expresseth it very briefly saying that all this fulness of the Godhead dwelleth in him bodily First the term dwelleth is illustrious signifying that all this copious abundance of perfections doth not reside in JESUS CHRIST for some time only appearing a little while and then withdrawing again so making some transient stay in Him a few moments and no more but that it abideth in Him constantly and for ever for so the word dwell in Scripture-use doth import The Word and the glory of GOD appeared in Moses and the Prophets when being moved by the power of his Spirit they uttered and acted Divine things but it dwelt not in them It only rested on them some hours space for the LORD 's recommending those Servants of His and for the setling their authority by these marks of his Providence and of his communicating with
with so rich a portion not envy any of the creatures the perfections and happiness they have Our whole life would be a perpetual feastival whereon free from the travail and turmoil of worldlings contemplating in spirit the glory of the Palace of our LORD meditating His promises breathing after His benefits and enjoying them for the present by faith and Hope we should in repose wait for the blessed day of our glorious triumph But alas how far are we from such a felicity This wretched and perishing earth is the sole object of our minds Our souls are no less fastned to it than our bodies It swalloweth up all our thoughts it possesseth our affections it takes up our cares and our labours and hath the use of all our time We have no desires and love but for the false goods which it sheweth us nor fear and horrour but for the evils wherewith it threatneth us As for Heaven and the things it comprehendeth we are so far from seeking them that we not so much as think of them except it be dreamingly or in manner of a divertisement when we are told of them in this place looking on the stately representations which JESUS CHRIST hath drawn us of them as an empty picture fair indeed and pleasing but good for nought saving to feed our eyes with a short and bootless pleasure not attracting nor engaging our desires This is the cause why our whole life is miserable full of griefs and fears of weaknesses of regrets and infelicities The least strokes overturn us the least losses and slightest afflictions bear us down because not being fastned to Heaven the only firm and sure place of the World we fluctuate exposed to the mercy of all that comes against us And as children cannot be appeased when their puppets are taken from them because they have set all their affection on them so are we seized and do take on when we come to lose some of these toyes of the earth There is no way to comfort us because we have fastned our hearts to them And to say truth our condition is worse than other mens they at least are subject but to the evils that either the infirmity of nature or as they call it the inconstancy of fortune do bring with them whereas besides these the bad Christian who is not a Christian but in name is moreover exposed to the persecution of the World so as to say plainly there is nothing more foolish nor more wretched than he who hath part in the temporal sufferings and hardships of true beleevers and none at all in their consolation or blessedness inasmuch as his profession exposes Him to the hatred of the World and his vice excludes him from the Kingdom of GOD. Awake then ye that are worldly and come once out of so dangerous an errour Let not the trumpet of Heaven the voice of our great Apostle have founded now in your ears in vain Do not add this contempt to your other crimes He hath advertised you of your duty He hath declared the reasons that oblige you to it Take heed lest if you shut your ears against JESUS CHRIST who speaks by His mouth you perish in the end with this earth and the things you seek on it How do you not perceive that you shall never find there the happiness you seek Why hath not the experience of so many millions of persons who daily spend themselves in this vain labour taught you that the things of the earth are all of them but vanities and illusions transient figures which promise pleasure honour and contentment but afford none which do not cure the maladies of the body nor of the soul which infinitely toil out those that seek them and never fill the hearts of those that possess them multiplying their desires and their fears inflaming and envenoming their passions instead of extinguishing them which are subject to infinite mutations which men and elements may bereave you of every moment and which considering the short and uncertain duration of the life we lead here below you can enjoy but a very little time supposing that nothing does deprive you of them before death At that time Matt. 16.26 What will it profit a man to have gained the whole world and lose his own soul It is sure a blindness incredible to one that saw it not I do not say that a Christian who hath hopes of the world to come but that even any reasonable man should adhere with so ardent and obstinate a passion unto such wretched and fruitless things We perceive it and confess it and make the bravest discourses in the World upon it and after all that false lustre which we behold in these things hath such a faculty to bewitch our senses that not a person but lets himself be caught thereby But the worst is that besides errour and vanity there 's in it a tendency to eternal damnation For men may not slatter themselves None can serve two Masters nor look on Heaven and earth both together He that seeks the one must of necessity renounce the other it being no more possible to seek than it 's to find at once the things beneath and those which are above Faithful Brethren choose you and take the better part and leaving worldly men to labour in vain after the things of the earth and to seek in it what they shall never find turn you your hearts and eyes towards Heaven as the Apostle calleth you to do There Christian is the felicity you desire There dwelleth rest and joy and immortality and the perfection of both soul and body These are the only things that are truly worthy of your prayers and your pains Seek them and mind them night and day Give your selves no rest till you have found them and do feel the first-fruits and beginnings of them in your hearts Let these thoughts sweeten your sufferings and consolate your losses T is in vain that you threaten me ye people of the World You cannot deprive me of what I possess nor hinder me from finding what I seek since upon the things of Heaven you have no power Whatever you bereave me of the best part of my treasure and the only part that deserves that appellation will still remain entire to me Let the same thought arm us against all tentations Thou Tempter promisest me the things of the earth but I seek those of Heaven which thou canst not dispose of Though I should lose all I have here below even to this flesh its self yet shall I find it again with a thousand-fold increase in Heaven Let this thought again keep us continually busied in the good and worthy actions of piety charity and honesty Let our manners resemble those of the inhabitants of that divine City which wee seek Let the light of their knowledge the ardency of their love the purity of their affections shine forth now betimes in our lives 'T is that to which that new nature JESUS
Apostle would have husbands love their wives even First that they live ordinarily with them as far as the necessity of their affairs permits not finding sweeter divertisement nor more pleasing company any other where Then next that they carefully make them partakers of the graces GOD hath given them and principally in all that concerns the salvation of their souls which is the greatest good of all faithfully directing them about it both by good and holy speech and also by pure and vertuous deportment It 's in this they ought to exercise that advantage which nature and the Apostle gives them shewing themselves to be truly the heads and guides of their wives in the matters of GOD's service and of holiness of life for this end making provision of all necessary knowledge that if they at any time consult them in their doubts 1 Cor. 14.35 as S. Paul commands they may be able to instruct them least in defect of it it might be said of them as a Prophet sometime said of Idols Hab. 2.18 that they are teachers of nothing but vanity But unto these cares for the soul the husband ought to add those also which respect the present life labouring in his vocation and imparting to his wife a share of all the substance he possesseth or acquireth proportionably to her need of it either for her own necessary food and raiment or for the maintaining her children and family as befits her condition It 's this the Apostle means when he commandeth husbands to love their wives But he forbids them in the following words to be bitter against them that is to be â—roward to them requiring that all their conversation with them be full of sweetness and amity The Pagans themselves have observ'd the justness of this duty as what we read of one piece of their devotions beareth witness For when they sacrificed unto that idol of theirs whom they call'd Nuptial Juno because they gave her the superintendency of Marriage they were wont to take the gall out of the victim and cast it behind the altar signifying thereby as say the interpreters of their Ceremonies that there ought to be no gall nor bitterness in marriage The Apostles meaning then is that the husband do first purge his heart of all this sowrness and bitterness that he never suffer hatred nor malevolence nor anger nor provocation nor fretting nor disgust to enter there against a person whom he ought to love as himself Next he would have the husband clense all his words and actions from the same poison For if he who is angry with his neighbour without cause and gives him the least reviling word doth deserve torment as our Saviour declareth of what hells is not he worthy who outrageth his own flesh Her whom he ought to cherish and tenderly affect as CHRIST doth His Church But if the Apostle command a Christian to use no offensive or opprobrious speech against his wife he doth as little permit him to shew bitterness of spirit by an angry sad and obstinate silence which is no less provocative nor less sharp to say truth than the most outragious reproaches In conclusion by this clause the Apostle does further and with greater force of reason banish out of conjugal converse the cruelty and rigour and tyrannie of those boysterous barbarous husbands who treat their wives as bond-servants denying them that share which the laws of GOD and man do give them in the government and administration of the houshold And the utmost degree of this inhumanity is when unto revilings and contempt they add blows and excesses of hand an outrage which the authors of the Roman Civil Law thought so unworthy of the conjugal alliance that they permit the wife so exceeded against to break with her husband approving and authorizing her divorce if she can prove he struck her Thus Dear Brethren you have heard what we had to deliver for the exposition of this Text. It teacheth us all in general first that all sorts of people may and ought to read St. Paul's Epistles and by consequent all the holy Scriptures For why should this holy man address his speech here to wives and their husbands to children and their fathers to servants and their masters if he meant not that all these persons should have the reading of this letter Christians fear not to read what the Apostle hath vouchsafed to write you It 's in vain that some forbid you the reading which it is his mind you should practise None can know better than he how those Epistles must be used which he wrote Then again he shews us further here how unjust the indiscretion of those is who have so ill treated the worthiness of marriage that by their manner of speaking of it you would say they held it incompatible with Christian purity St. Paul doth every where maintain the honour of this holy order and never prohibit or disparage it at all Also as the precepts which he gives to Masters to Pastors and others do clearly authorize the right and the dignity of those conditions so is marriage established by the lesson he writes here and often else-where unto married persons But the Devil knowing well that this holy institution of GOD is infinitely profitable unto men both to preserve them from tentations to incontinence one of the broadest waies to Hell and also to sweeten the harshness of their natures by the tenderness of conjugal and paternal affections and for divers other ends of great importance unto civil life and unto piety it self the enemie I say not ignorant hereof hath subtilly made hatred or contempt of marriage to insinuate its self into the spirits of a sort of men under divers plausible pretexts so as in conclusion Christians who would think it have asserted it a piece of sanctification to abstain from it and in the sequel prohibited to the Ministers of Religion For our parts Beloved Brâ—thren we constrain none to marry If any have received this grace of GOD that they can contain and live pure out of this estate let them forbear it if it seem them good Only we say two things first that the making use of it is free to all there being no dignity nor profession in the Church excluded from Divine permission of it Secondly that to such as have not the gift of continency marriage is not only permitted but even necessary and of whatever rank they be their marrying is so far from offending GOD that they offend Him much if they marry not Hereto for a conclusion we adjoyn a serious exhortation to all who are in this estate that they sedulously put in practise the lesson which St. Paul hath now given them Even that wives be subject to their husbands as is meet in the LORD that Husbands love their wives and not be bitter against them Many complain of finding thorns in this condition instead of the roses they hoped for Men charge it upon the pride the levity the vanity the
For seeing themselves still put back by their own Fathers what can they hope for from other hands Some which is yet worse are by this means hardened and together with sensibility and nature do lose all shame and modesty and fall at last by little and little into desperate impiety no longer making any account of GOD or men which is the utmost and horrid'st degree of viciousness Consider if the fear of so great a mischief do not oblige all fathers who have any remainder I will not say of piety but even of judgement and good sense to take heed that they provoke not their children Brethren I beseech you improve now this instruction of the Apostles Children to whom first he addresseth his discourse render ye to your Fathers and Mothers in all things the obedience he commands you Remember the life they gave you the pains they have taken to preserve it to you the cares they have had to adorn and enrich it both with necessary knowledges and with conveniences requisite for the happy passing of it the fears and tears they have been and at every turn are still in for you their patience in bearing with the weaknesses of your infancy and the extravagancies of your youth the tenderness and constancy of the love they bear you a love so great so ardent that you are the principal object of their desires that they preferr your contentment before their own and toil not but for you and have you night and day in their hearts the vows wherewith they follow you every where craving nothing of GOD more instantly than your advancement and happiness and looking on you as the principal subject of their hopes and of their joy Have not so unnatural a soul as not to resent all these strict obobligations which you have to love and serve and honour them Pay their love with your respects and their pains with your obedience and be not so wretched as to render them trouble and affliction for so many benefits as you have received of them nor so ingrateful as to frustrate the just hopes they have conceived of you Certainly you would owe them this obedience though no other consideration did oblige you than what is founded in themselves But there is more than so The Apostle assures you that in performing your duty unto men you will please GOD the Father of Spirits and Ruler of the World This saith he is plaesing unto Him He will reckon it to you as a part of the piety you owe Him and charge Himself with the services you shall render unto those whom He hath given you for authors of your life It 's the best and the most pleasing devotion you can offer Him Miserable Superstition that goest to seek in cloysters for exercises pleasing unto GOD There was no need to go out of the Fathers house for this Thou hast enough at home wherewith to please the LORD As for the particular exercises about which Monks are busied in their cloysters we know not whether they please GOD who never commanded them But for the services which our Parents demand of us for their consolation and the easing of their lives we cannot doubt but that they are most pleasing to Him since He commands them and His Apostle assureth us here expresly of it Consider I pray the imprudence of these people They say they would please GOD and that it 's their whole aim to content Him Mean time to attain thereto they renounce the obeying of their Parents which is pleasing to him and subject themselves unto the fansies and the rugged rules of certain men of which they neither have nor can have any assurance that they please GOD Is not this to quit a certainty for an uncertainty and to do the wrong way what one pretends and go further off from what one seeks and cast one's self upon what he would eschew But ye Brethren better instructed by the word of the LORD seek to please Him in doing what He orders you and in employing that time and labour to the serving of and obeying your Parents which superstition loseth in its painful but vain and fruitless exercises This is the way to be pleasing unto GOD and to assure unto your selves that crown of blessednesse which He hath promised to such children as faithfully discharge this duty As for you Believing Parents nature it self and the interest of your own happiness so forcibly impelleth you to love your children and to treat them well that if the Apostle had forborn to give such an express advertisement against provoking them I think there would not have been much need to say any thing of it We offend much more on the other hand I mean in excess of affection and in the softnesses of indulgence not heeding that to treat them so laxely is in truth to hate and not to love them to destroy and not to breed them up The Apostle forbids you to provoke them but hinders not your correcting your reproving your chastening them if they deserve it He willeth only that your conduct be just and temperate that it keep a mean between the two extremes the roughness of severity and the remisnesse of indulgence The care you owe them is to form them unto true Vertue unto the knowledge and the fear of GOD unto charity and justice and honesty towards men to give them examples hereof in your lives and inculcate the lessons of them with your lips Whereas we our selves ruine their manners and form them early to our Vices almost before they know them Our greatest care is to keep their courage high and instruct them unto pride and inure them unto vanity as if nature had not given them enough of it And hereto they that have the means fail not to add Ball and Dance and Comedy And that they may the better learn these brave lessons Fathers and Mothers give them examples of ' em We need not wonder if under such education we see our youth to speed so ill if it become insolent if it hath little sentiment of true piety if it treat those so much amiss to whom it oweth most respect Brethren if you have children remember that beside the interest you have in their vertue and their vices you shall render an account for them unto GOD who hath given them to you to breed them for His glory and for the edification of His Church and not to content the world or to serve vanity But Dear Brethren of whatever state or condition we are let us further take out two lessons here which the Apostle gives us The one is to render all of us unto GOD an exact and humble obedience in all things since we have the honour to be His children It 's this that the child owes his Father We are not His if we obey Him not We falsly vaunt our selves in that glorious title if we neglect the duty to which it obligeth us The other lesson is that the Will of GOD should be
His peace His Spirit His Holiness His consolation His life and His immortality But the Apostle doth not speak here of the riches of the glory of the Gospel in general and towards all He addeth particularly among the Gentiles Sure there is no sort of men whether Jews or Greeks but the Gospel sheweth forth riches of glory in them if they receive it Yet we must acknowledge that never-did its glory break forth with so much splendor as when it was preached to the Gentiles First that exceeding great and inexhaustible abundance of goodness and grace which the Gospel goeth fill'd up with did pour forth it self and if I may so speak overflowed all bounds in saving the Gentiles the most hopeless of all men when it raised them from this grave or rather from that abyss of misery wherein they had lain not four dayes as Lazarus in his Sepulchre but for four thousand years For this cause the holy Apostle comparing the grace of GOD in His Son 〈◊〉 15.8.9 shewed to the Jew with that shewed to the Gentile at His calling of each of them doth name the former Truth for that it was promised and the second simply and altogether Mercy Then again how very admirable was the vertue of the Gospel which effected that in a few dayes that the Law had not been able to do in so many ages The Ministers of the Law did compass Sea and Land and after all found it very hard to make one proselyte and with all their diligence for two thousand years that they toiled had not reduced so much as one Nation to the Service of GOD though they employed even sword and strength to that end when they could But the Gospel quite naked and without other weapons then its Cross brought unto GOD many a people converted from Paganism They were a sort of men that worshipped stocks and stones they lay plunged in a bruitish ignorance and in the most infamous vices there was a mixture in them of the stupidity of beasts and the wickedness of Devils Certainly to make so much as one of these a Christian to bring him out of this infernal pit 〈◊〉 and place him in the Church to make him of a slave of Satan a child of GOD was as an Ancient writing on this passage rightly says no less a miracle than if some one should suddenly change an unclean and deformed dog into a man and from the dunghil whereon he lay cause him to sit upon a royal throne It was truly therefore a great and an ineffable richness and abundance of glory for the Gospel to transform so speedily not a small number but hundreds and thousands of Pagans into so many believers And in this the Apostle secretly strikes at the false Teachers who would mix such a noble and glorious mystery with their feeble traditions as if it had not strength and vertue enough of it self to subsist without the succour of their inventions Finally he intimates in two words the ground of all this richness of glory that the Gospel hath which is saith he CHRIST in you that is to say that CHRIST whom they possessed and who dwelt in them by faith 1 Tim. 1.1 And he addeth that He is the hope of glory after the same manner that elsewhere he calleth CHRIST our hope that is He of whom we hope for highest glory and in whom we do infallibly find all the blessedness that we can either defire or expect It is not without design that he advertiseth them that JESUS CHRIST is all the fullness of the mystery of the Gospel He lays a foundation hereby for what he will more clearly tell them hereafter namely that it is in vain that the seducers would mingle the Ceremonies of Moses and the service of Angels with it All this great mystery begins and ends in JESUS CHRIST since it is no other thing 1 Tim. 4.16 as himself defineth it elsewhere than GOD manifested in the flesh justified in the spirit seen of Angels preached to the Gentiles believed on in the world and received up into Glory that is JESUS CHRIST our LORD born put to death raised again glorified and set forth in the Gospel for us Such is the mystery whereof the holy Apostle hath spoken to us Judge now Beloved Brethren what grace GOD hath shewed us in communicating so rich and so admirable a secret to us Many Kings and Prophets have desired to see and hear it and not at all had the happiness Heaven and earth did sigh four thousand years after the blessing we possess But in the end only the last ages did obtain it The Jews saw the wonders of GOD but obscurely and through veils and shadows The Gentiles saw them not at all being covered with a disinal night living without GOD and without hope This divine mystery appearing at once in the end of times as a great light that shines forth sudainly from Heaven did dissipate the shadows of the one and dispel the darkness of the other changing by its vertue the whole face of the universe in a moment It hath particularly shewed the riches of its glory among us having brought our Fathers out of the horrours of Paganism which did once cover this whole Land Let us embrace therefore with all the affections of our souls this great and inestimable favour of the LORD's Let us keep it pure and uncorupted without immixing in it ought that 's alien to it It is not only sufficient for our happiness It is even rich and abundant in glory They that would stuff it out with Ceremonies and services whether of Moses's teaching or mans inventing as false Teachers heretofore did and our adversaries at this day do they understand not aright the inexhaustible opulency wherewith it overslows They obscure the resplendency of its heavenly glory by their additions they hide it and cover it again with the veil which JESUS CHRIST hath rent in sunder Let us say to such as propose them unto us We are contented with the mystery which GOD hath vouchsafed to manifest unto His Saints It sufficed for their bliss It will well suffice for ours We do not desire any other riches than those which it aboundeth with or any other glory than that which it shines withall It is enough that this JESUS CHRIST who fills it up is in us the hope of true glory There is no need to associate with Him either Moses or Angels or Saints But Faithful Brethren the securing of this mystery from the errors of superstition is not all For the conversing of it pure among us and placing it in that glory which is due to it there must be a putting far away the filth of vices and of carnal and earthly passions GOD hath not lighted up this great Sun among you that ye should continue to live ill and do the same works in such a blessed light as are done in darkness Far be it from Him He hath discovered to you the mysteries hidden