cause that S. Paul here gives the name of an Obligation to the Law or Testament of Moses The word he makes use of in the Original doth signifie generally any acknowledgment written or at least signed with our hand by which we confess our selves to owe a man such or such a sum and oblige our selves to pay him it at such time and in such manner as we have agreed upon Such are those which be commonly called Bills and Schedules But because of all Contracts of this kind an Obligation that passeth before Notaries with certain solemn forms is the most juridical the French Bible hath made use of the name thereof in particular An obligation then in Civil matters is a Creditor's Title and an evidence of the power he hath upon his Debtor to convince him of his debt and compel him to make payment if he do refuse It 's an authentick testimony of his owing such a sum which condemns him to pay and makes his body and goods liable in this behalf unto his Creditor Whence it appears that this Obligation whereof the Apostle speaks in the Text is the instrument of our condemnation and an authentick declaration and demonstration of our sin which gives valid testimony that we are guilty and subjecteth us by this means to the avenging Justice of GOD giving him a clear and undisputable right to prosecute and punish us All agree that the word Obligation must be so taken in this passage of the Apostle But when question is of founding the bottom and of determining what properly and precisely the thing is to which this quality agreeth and whereunto S. Paul's meaning was to give it there is found some difference among Expositors some conceiving it one particular and others another I will not stay to report their several opinions it being no way necessary for your edification I will content my self with representing to you that sense which I account the truest and which hath likewise been follow'd by divers eminent servants of GOD. I say then that this Obligation whereof the Apostle speaketh is no other thing than the old Law given in time past to the Israelites by the Ministry of Moses and of them accepted at Mount Sinai This appears first from S. Paul's saying that this obligation lay in ordinances For every one knows that this doth properly belong to the Law of Moses which consisted in a great many moral ceremonial and political Ordinances The Jews who are very exact and scrupulous in such matters reckon them up to Six hundred R. Moses ben Majm and their learned'st Authors divide them into fourteen Classes or ranks The whole body of these Ordinances is precisely the Law of Moses so as it is evident 't is this Law the Apostle means since he saith that what he meaneth lay in ordinances He thus explains it himself in a passage that hath great alliance with the Text in hand where speaking of the re-uniting of the Gentiles with the Jews into one only people done by our LORD JESUS CHRIST he saith that he abolished the enmity in his flesh to wit saith he the law of commandments which lay in ordinances where it is evident that he signifies the Law of Moses both by those express words the law of commandments and also by the nature of the thing it self it being certain that this enmity of the Jews and Gentiles that is the thing which separated them before our Saviour's dispensation was nought else but the Mosaical Law which the one of them had and the other had not The same appears again clearly from that conclusion which the Apostle inferrs from this Doctrine in the sixteenth and the following Verses of this Chapter For from his position here namely That the obligation which is in ordinances hath been effaced he concludeth that none ought to condemn us in eating or in drinking or in distinguishing of a Festival or of a new Moon or of Sabbaths and again that it is impertinent for any to burthen us with ordinances such as are Eat not Col. 2.21 tast not touch not Now every one seeth that these ordinances do make up a part of the Law of Moses Certainly then it 's that Law he doth mean here because otherwise it would not follow from the abolishing of our obligation that we are no longer subject to such things But the truth of this interpretation will be fully perceived by an exposition of the Apostle's own words themselves there being no other subject but the Mosaical Law to which all the circumstances and qualities he here attributes to it do properly agree First He termeth it an obligation against us Secondly He saith that it lay in ordinances In the third place he addeth that it was contrary to us And finally in the fourth and last place he saith that it hath been effaced abolished and fastned to the cross things these which cannot all of them together be verified of any other subject First The Law of Moses was an obligation against such as liv'd under its dispensation that is as we have explained it an evidence and â—â—â—alible argument of their sin and of the just power that GOD had to condem them unto punishment For the Law of Moses proclaiming aloud that all such as failed to observe any one of its ordinances are accursed it is manifest that they all who accepted it for the terms of their Covenant with GOD did by the same pass condemnatory sentence on themselves and submit to the curse both the conscience of each one in particular and the common experience of all in general shewing that there was not a man who punctually observed all things written in the Law And as he that passeth an obligation to his Creditor doth condemn himself to make payment and if he fail therein doth make his goods and sometimes his very person liable unto him in like manner they that receiv'd the Law and sign'd it if I may so say after they had heard and understood it these I say condemned themselves unto the curse of GOD and did put their persons and all their goods into the hands of Divine Justice since it is clear that none of them did ever fully satisfie all the clauses which that Contract doth contain Therefore as a Bond given by a Debtor to his Creditor in acknowledgment of what he ows him is an obligation which makes it clearly appear that he is responsible to him and deprives him of all excuse and leaves him no defence to thâ— contrary So the Law of Moses is an authentick obligation which demonstrates and invincibly proves that the sinner is guilty and liable to the avenging Justice of GOD without having any considerable means left him to defend himself from that punishment which it ordaineth for all such as violate its commands As for the ceremonies I grant they promised in appearance some satisfying of the Justice of GOD and some expiation of sin inasmuch as they prefigured the mysteries of CHRIST who was
only for the sitting us to do them Of the first sort is Astronomy which hath no design but to comprehend the motions of the heavenly bodies and the Mathematiques which are busied in the study of magnitude and number without having other end than to know the nature of them Of the second sort is Science Moral or the Ethiques which teach us but in order to action and shew us what each of the Vertues is to the end we may practise them and live according to the rules this Science gives us It 's disputed in the Schools to which of these two kinds of Sciences belongs Sacred Theologie that is the doctrine of Divine things revealed to us in the Gospel of our LORD JESUS CHRIST For on one hand it teacheth us divers things of the nature of GOD and of Angels and of the World to come and such other mysteries which seem to be objects of contemplation only and not of action On the other hand it gives us divers Rules for practice and this mixture hath induced some to think that it is a discipline not simple and uniform but miscellaneous and composed of the one and the other kind Our Apostle in my opinion clearly decides the question in this place For having afore wished the Colossians a rich and full knowledge of this divine doctrine in all wisdom and spiritual understanding he stayes not there but adds in the Text we have read the end it is subservient to To the end saith he ye may walk worthily as is beseeming the LORD unto the pleasing Him in all things fructifying in every good work Here you see he states it expresly that the end of knowledge is practice holy walking and fructifying in every good work being evidently doing Whence follows that it ought to be placed among the Active Sciences since their end is the Character of their nature and that which properly gives them the rank they are to hold I grant it treats of the Essence and Attributes of GOD but it 's with design to carry us thereby unto the love and service of His Majesty that is unto action Whence it comes that in Scripture to know GOD is almost alwayes taken for to serve Him according to that light of the knowledge of Himself which He hath given us But it is of no great importance for us to know what rank this heavenly discipline is of among the Sciences provided we hold fast this principle of the Apostle's that the end why we should be instructed in the knowledge of GOD is a godly life and not the soothing of our minds or the contenting our curiosity with a vain delight much less the being able to entertain with such high mysteries the company we chance to be in For as we call that man an Architect not who can handsomly discourse of buildings but that hath the art to erect them and as we give not the name and glory of a Captain to one that can elequently speak of War but to him that can manage it and is of capacity to conduct an army skilfully and can withstand and fight an enemy and acquit himself in all the functions of a military command so we must hold for a Christian not him who knoweth and can pertinently explain the duties of the faithful but him that performs them It 's in the life and not in talk that this Science doth consist in the heart and in the conversation not in the brain and in the tongue Let this then be effectually the end of this holy study Let us learn not simply to know or to speak but to do carefully reducing into practice all the prescriptions of this heavenly doctrine And that we may rightly comprehend this legitimate end of our knowledge let us meditate the lesson which the Apostle now gives us concerning it It contains two Heads First The very life and actions which we are to endeavour and Secondly The firmness and patience wherewith we should persevere in them These shall be GOD willing the two subjects we will treat of in the present action The Apostle explaineth us the former of them in the tenth Verse That ye may walk worthily as is beseeming the LORD unto the pleasing of Him in all things fructifying in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of GOD. In these words as you see he shews us first the end of the knowledge of the Gospel in general which is a walking worthily as is beseeming the LORD Next he sets before us the principal parts of this worthy walking The first respects the scope it proposeth to its self even the pleasing of GOD in all things The second the actions wherein it ought to be employed which are a fructifying in every good work The third its progress and advancement which is to increase in the knowledge of GOD. Here then Christian soul is the true and only end of that heavenly light which hath been communicated to you that you walk worthily as is beseeming the LORD You know the Scripture ordinarily compares the life of man unto a journey and the actions and designes and employments he passeth it in unto a path or way In effect after we are once entred the world we incessantly eloign us from the point of our Nativity as from the place whence we departed and advance towards death as a common habitation where all do meet alike some sooner others later As for other travellours they may stay if it seem them good or return unto the place from whence they came But we cannot possibly do the one or the other Time enwrapping us about from the first point of our life carryeth us away still forward whether we wake or sleep whether we consent to it or strive to the contrary without permitting us to turn back or to repose our selves one single moment just as he whom the Sea and the wind carry on in a Vessel so as his own particular motion serveth not at all either to stop or to slack his course But as the wayes and designes of travellors are very different so there is an huge diversity between the forms and manners of the life of men The way that the wicked follow is one and that of good men another The Pagan steereth one course the Jew and the Mahometan another and the Christian another wholly different This is that the Scripture calls The way of man understanding by this word the form and institution of life which every one doth follow And suitably to this dainty figure it often makes use of the word Walking to signifie directing forming and composing the life after some certain manner whether good or evil intending thereby the tenour of life we lead and the deportments and actions to which we addict our selves There is nothing more common in the Psalms and in the Proverbs than these forms of speech to walk in Integrity or on the contrary in Fraud and Iniquity and in the Writings of the New Testament to walk in Light or
a perpetual disorder which displaceth every thing and overturns all yet all hath its certain causes It 's therefore with a great deal of reason and elegance that the Apostle compares this strange convention of so many evils which are so divers and do all work with some sequel and dependance unto a body and each of those vices of which it is composed as covetousness fornication and the like unto the members of a body He calleth them our members because that old man which is made up of them is wholly ours and does invest all the principles of our life from their root and invelope them and mingle so deeply with them that it all in a sort is nothing but corruption and malady this venome infecting all the actions and all the motions of our nature its understanding its affections and passions together with the thoughts words and actions which flow from them so that as our animal and natural life consisteth in the exercising of our members and in their actions in like manner our moral life is all of it nothing but a continual exercising of these vices and of the sins they produce as is to be clearly seen if you consider the lives of profane and unregenerate persons For they are nought else but a continual exercise of vices of ambition of vanity of covetousness of luxury and sensuality as they are addicted more or less to the one or the other of these sins the perpetual running of a foul and muddy stream which a corrupted spring doth daily thrust forth that you cannot observe so much as one of its swellings or rollings exempt from its filthiness And this may suffice for comprehending the reason why the Apostle calls these parts of the old man our members For as to that consideration which some do propose in this matter namely that the members of our bodies having been created of GOD they are not ours but in regard of use and not in regard of their original whereas the members of the old man are ours all manner of waies having been made and formed in us by our own fault and naughtiness and not by the hand of GOD who created man upright and pure man distorting and depraving himself this conceit I say seems to me more subtil than solid For though the matter of it be very true yet it is so wide from the Apostles design in this place that there is little likelyhood he thought upon it when he called the vices here of our corrupt nature our members Without doubt he so doth only because it is in the exercising and acting of these vices that the carnal life of men doth consist For the rest if you remember what we said upon the precedent Text of the death of the old man in us you will not think it strange that the Apostle after having said that we are dead does not yet forbear to exhort us to mortifie the members of this same life which we have put off in JESUS CHRIST For our being dead in this respect doth not import that the life of the flesh is entirely and absolutely extinct in us this will not be effected untill we shall quit it at our leaving of the earth and put on coelestial and spiritual bodies at the day of the resurrection but the Scripture doth thus speak first because JESUS CHRIST hath by His death His resurrection and His ascension into Heaven destroyed and abolished all the causes that gave nutriment and sustenance to the life of the old man and secondly because the old man 〈◊〉 receiv'd his deaths wound in each of us by the faith that ingrafted and incorporated us into JESUS CHRIST so as if we persevere it is not possible that he should recover But this death of His as we said doth not arrive all at once It 's executed by little and little and the exercise of a believer during his stay here below is to busie himself incessantly about it daily to weaken and wound that flesh of his which is already nailed to the cross of his LORD to entinguish by little and little all the life it hath remaining that is to mortifie his members as the Apostle here speaks In this sense you see these two conceptions are so far from having ought that 's contrary or incompatible in them that quite otherwise the one doth evidently and necessarily follow from the other For since we are dead in JESUS CHRIST since the arrest of the death of our old man is past since JESUS CHRIST hath done on His part all that was necessary to execute it since this flesh condemn'd is already fastened to His cross it is evident that it ought to live no longer and that by consequent each of us should incessantly bestirr our selves to put it to death by mortifying its members beating down and weakening their vigour driving deep into them our Saviour's nails and thorns untill they be effectually reduced unto that state of death unto which they were condemned having no more either motion or sentiment or force or life at all in us Lo My Brethren the thing the Apostle means by these words mortifie your members To say it in a word he would have us weaken and extinguish the vices of our old man and put them in such a state of death as hath no more strength nor vigour nor stirring But as this holy man's whole language is full of profound wisdome I am of opinion he thus speaks to give a further blow to those seducers whose error he had been refuting in the fore-going chapter These men to recommend their disciplines gave out that they did not at all spare the body that they had no regard to the satiating of the flesh that they oppos'd its pleasures and humbled and mortified it And you know that this is at this very day the language of those votaries who place Christianity in such exercises They speak of nothing but their mortifications St. Paul therefore doth here correct the vain conceits of this error and sheweth us what true mortification is and that that is worthy of the study and exercise of the faithful It is saith he the members of the old man we are to mortifie and not those of the body It is vices It 's fornication and covetousness and pride that we must quell and kill with blows and not our body And as one of the Prophets sometime said to the superstitious of his age who fasted and afflicted themselves and rent their clothes Rend your hearts and not your garments Joel 2.13 in like manner the Apostle here opposeth the internal mortification of sins as only necessary and truly worthy of a Christian unto the external mortification of the body unto which error did and still doth tye up its self For in truth to what purpose is it to beat a man's breast and rend his back while sin mean time reigneth in his heart To what purpose is it to afflict the members of this body while the members of the
Mat. 18.30 that is for His cause and unto His honour and with confidence in Him It 's in this sense the Apostle takes these words in our Text. Do all things in the name of the LORD JESVS He means first that we refer all we do unto His glory and take His honour for the end of all our actions and secondly that we act according to His will and order and lastly with an entire confidence in Him not presuming ought of our selves as if we were able to do any thing considerable by our own strength nor expecting any success but only from His favour and benediction Such is the rule which the Apostle here gives us By it you see First that he banisheth out of our lives all the unfruitful works of darkness that is all vitious actions actions contrary to justice to charity and to other Christian vertues it being evident that if we do nothing but in the name of the LORD JESUS we shall do none of these things since they all are opposite to His will to His commands and to His glory Secondly by the same means he perfecteth and enliveneth all those works of ours which of themselves and in their kind are good and commanded of God engrafting them by this rule upon the true motive from which they ought to proceed and directing them to the true end unto which they ought to tend which is without doubt the name of CHRIST and clensing them from all that impurity and viciousness which vanity or self-love might taint them with Good will be truly good if we do it in the name of JESUS CHRIST that is for His sake upon consideration of Him alone without seeking the approbation and acceptance or the interest and service of any other Lastly by the same rule the Apostle sanctifies those of our words and actions which are in their own nature indifferent purifying them by the name of the LORD from the filth and abuse wherewith the viciousness of men doth pollute them and elevating them to a degree of moral goodness which they had not of themselves in that he consecrates them to the name of the LORD and makes them to serve grace whereas of themselves they were instituted only for the uses of nature For instance if you observe this rule of the Apostle in your eating and drinking actions as every one knows indifferent of their own nature first this sacred name of the LORD JESUS will purge the exercise of them of the excesses of intemperance and drunkenness on one hand and of the vain and foolish scruples of superstition on another Secondly being referred to the honour of GOD and accompanied with invocation of His grace and thankful acknowledgement of His bounty of indifferent as they were in themselves they become good and holy and acceptable unto GOD. However I willingly grant that we must not so take the Apostles precept as if we were obliged in every act even to the least word we utter to raise our thoughts actually to the name of JESUS CHRIST and expresly implore His assistance by a particular prayer and formally eye His glory It sufficeth that we frequently and ordinarily make this application of mind to the name to the command to the help and to the glory of our LORD But necessary it is that we have the habit of this holy disposition so formed and radicated in our hearts that even when time or place or some other necessity surprizeth us and gives us not the leisure to think actually on the name of the LORD our souls yet do bend that way as of themselves being so habituated to it as without other discourse or consideration they may as to the substance discharge this duty and never do nor say any thing that tendeth not to the glory of our Saviour and is not conform to His will and consistent with the resolution we all ought to have of relying on JESUS CHRIST alone and referring none of our actions to any other end than His honour But I come to the other part of our Text wherein the Apostle adds that we give thanks by JESUS CHRIST unto our GOD and Father These words may be taken two wayes either for another precept apart added to the former or for some part and dependance of it In the first relation it 's a new order the Apostle gives us to thank GOD for the benefits He hath vouchsafed us in His Son He gives the same order to the faithful at Ephesus in welnigh the same words Giving thanks alwayes saith he for all things in the name of our LORD JESVS CHRIST unto our GOD and Father Under the second consideration the words are a reason of what he recommended afore and the title under which we ought to do all things in the name of the LORD JESUS namely for the rendring unto GOD the Father by His Son the thanks we owe him so as our whole life may be but homage and a perpetual act of gratitude to GOD by JESUS CHRIST His Son our LORD For it is not to be doubted but that the best and most proper means of thanking GOD the Father for those infinite benefits He hath confer'd upon us by the communion of His Son is so to frame our lives that we neither do nor say any thing but in the name of that Son of His that is as we have explained it according to His will and for His glory Now though it import not much which of these two expositions we follow since at the bottom the thing is still the same yet it seems to me the latter is more pertinent because it doth better and more clearly connect the Apostles words Thanksgiving is one of the most necessary and most universal offices of a Christian For if it be ingratitude to receive a kindness from any one without resenting it and giving him thanks for it what moment of our lives is there wherein we are not obliged to perform this duty unto GOD First of all this being of ours this life this body this soul and all the faculties of our nature are largesses of His which for all they be common to us with other men are not to be despised but ought to be consider'd as effects of an infinite goodness Then again what remerciments doth not the sending of His Son into the world and the death He suffered for us by the will of His Father oblige us to What shall I say as to those infinite blessings He hath obtained for us the remission of our sins our adoption to the number of His children the glory and immortality we hope for Add hereto His continual providence both over His Church in general and over each of us in particular His favourable bearing with us however great be not only our infirmities and imperfections but even infidelities and ingratitudes the admirable constancy of His Divine grace which our indignities can neither overcome nor put off and imperfections but even infidelities and ingratitudes the admirable