a bloudy Passion These things at the first blush look as if they could not be congruously done But I answer The corrupt Reason of Man which would shape all things according to its own model and Idea hath under colour of avoiding indecencies and inconveniencies made very strange work about this Mysterie In the Pagan Sophi it looked upon a crucified God as meer folly and indecency In the unbelieving Jews it reproached Christ as a Talui a poor hanged man altogether incapable to be a Messiah or Saviour In the Hereticks of the Church it tore and mangled his sacred Person all to pieces and that under pretence of avoiding one inconvenience or other Arius that he might not fall into that Gentile-vanity a plurality of Gods took away Christs Deity Apollinaris spared his Deity but took away his humane Soul the room of that being better supplied by the Deity Saturninus and Basilides took away his body leaving only a Phantasm a meer Vmbra in the room of it or if there must be a real Body Apelles thought fit that it should be a Sydereal one which in his passage from Heaven he assumed and after his Resurrection restored again Nestorius Noli gloriari Judaee non crucifixistl Deum So Nestorias lest the impassible Deity should suffer would have two Christs one the Son of man who suffered another the Son of God who dwelt in the other as in his Temple Eutyches supposing that there could not be two Natures in Christ without two Persons thought it convenient that after the Union there should be but one Nature in Christ the humane Nature being swallowed up in the Divine And the reason of all this is because as an Ancient hath it touching the Eutychians In hanc insipientiam cadunt qui cum ad cognoscendam veritatem aliquo impediuntur obscuro non ad propheticas voces non ad Apostolicas literas non ad Evangelicas authoritates sed ad semetipsos recurrunt ideo magistri erroris existunt quia veritatis discipuli non suere Leo primus Epist 10. they look not so much to the Sacred Scriptures as to themselves being willing that their own Reason should be Umpire in sacred Mysteries they become Masters of Errour who would not be Disciples of Truth By this heap of Experiments we may plainly see that the decorum of this Mysterie is too great a thing to be judged by humane Reason if we will know any thing of it we must address our selves to the divine Oracle Jesus Christ the infinite increated Wisdom of God who never had so much as an indecorous thought delighted in the sons of men Prov. 8.31 in the prospect of a future Incarnation It was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a thing becoming him to fulsil all righteousness Matth. 3.15 when yet it could not have become him in an unbocoming Nature There was a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a must upon his Death and Sufferings Mutth 16.21 when yet it was utterly impossible that my necessity should press him into an indecency There was therefore an excellent congruity in this Mysterie God indeed was made flesh but how Non mutando quod erat sed assumendo quod non erat not by changing his Deity but by assuming his Humanity Majesty was humbled not in it self but in the assumed flesh which was as a Veil over all the Glory The change and death was not in the Divine but Humane nature which was taken into his Sacred Person in the Incarnition and suffered death in his Passion upon the Gross There was a just decorum in all Nay in this very Mysterie at which humane Reason cries out of indecency God hath hid such an Abyss of Wisdom as no created Understanding is able to fathom a glimpse of which appears in the next particular 2. That part of Holiness by which God doth all things for himself for his own Glory eminently appears in Jesus Christ In general it appears that God is the great Center the ultimate end of all and all creatures none excepted are as so many Lines and Mediums tending thereunto The Humane nature of Christ a Creature above all creatures lifted up above the highest pitch of Angels elevated into an Union with an insinite Person was not yet a Center to it self It had no subsistence of its own neither did it operate for it self I seek not mine own glory saith Christ Joh. 8.50 Nay He adds If I honour my self my honour is nothing as much as to say a creature referred to it self is an unprofitable Nullity In all his Doings and Sufferings he did but minister to the Will and Glory of God in the end he will deliver up the Kingdom to the Father that God may be all in all 1 Cor. 15.24 28. Hence it is demonstratively evident that no Creature no not the highest is or can be an End or Center to it self all of them are but as Medium's to the glory of God all must circulate into their first Fontal-principle that it in all things may be glorified In particutar the Glory of God breaks forth in this Dispensation Jesus Christ who in respect of the eternal genetation is the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the splendor or glorious effulgence of his Fathers glory is in the Incarnation the Glass or bright Evidence of the Divine Excellencies Never was there such a Constellation of Attributes as here Wisdom in the deep of its unsearchable Counsels laid the great plot of our Salvation Justice was paid to the full in Sufferings infinitely valuable such as did more than ballance the sufferings of a World Holiness was abundantly gratified in the pure and spotless obedience of our Saviour which was as a Gloss and living Commentary upon the whole Law Mercy and Love opened a bosom of infinite sweetness to receive penitent souls into favour and a blessed Immortality Power raised up an humane Nature in an extraordinary way and then shewed forth it self therein in the glory of innumerable Miracles Truth triumphed in that He who is the complement of the Law the substance of the Shadows and the Center of the Promises was come into the World Never did the brightness of Glory so excellently manifest it self as upon the Theatre of Christs humane Nature Hence Heaven and Earth ring with the high Praises of it At his Nativity an Host of Angels cry out Glory to God in the Highest Luke 2.14 In the Church there is glory to him by Jesus Christ throughout all Ages world without end Ephes 3.21 Saints and Angels must now fall upon their faces and say Blessing Glory and Wisdom and Thanksgiving and Honour and Power and Might be unto our God for ever and ever Amen Revel 7.12 Eternity it self will be little enough to spend in the praises of this incomparable Mysterie 3. Holiness as it imports an hatred of sin signally demonstrates it self in this Dispensation God hath many ways manifested his hatred of sin It appears in the Threatning in which he speaks as
he would strip himself of his Orient pearl that he would give his Son his eternal Joy out of his bosom to assume an humane Nature and in it to bear the horrible stroke of Justice which was due to us for our iniquities In giving Laws and Promises God gives but a created Image of his Sanctity and Grace but in giving his Son he gave his essential increated Image to suffer in the flesh for us that his holy Image broken in the fall might be repaired again in us When we were off from God the Center of Souls and wandring in the foul ways of sin God out of his immense Love sent no less person than his only begotten Son to seek us and bring us back unto himself that we might be for ever happy in the fruition of him The greatness of this Love will yet further appear if we consider the manner how the Son of God was given for us The lower a man stoops and condescends to do another good the higher and more eminent is his Love the steps wherein the Son of God came down and humbled himself for us evidently declare the infinite height of that Love which made him stoop so low to compass our Salvation The first step was his Incarnation the word was made flesh he who was in the form of God took on him an humane Nature In the Creation infinite produced finite but here infinite assumed finite there Eternal brought forth Temporal but here Eternal took Temporal into it self and what a wonderful Condescension was this It 's true Reason in the Socinian laughs at it but Faith in the Christian must needs admire it Had the greatest Monarch on Earth confined himself to the poorest Cottage there it would have been nothing to God Tabernacling in the flesh Should the highest Angel in Heaven have put off his Perfections and come down into an humane Nature and from thence have passed into a brutal bestial one and so on into a tree or stone and at last into nullity it would not have been a Condescension comparable to that of the Son of God coming in the flesh His Sacred Person was infinitely more above humane Nature than an Angel is above matter or nullity it self and what unparallel'd Love was here The Creator became a Creature the Son of God assumed our nature and that after it was in us tainted with sin Dr. Bates of the Attributes fol. 171. The natural distance saith that excellent Man between God and the Creature is infinite the Moral between God and the sinful Creature if possible is more than infinite Yet the mercy of our Redeemer overcame this distance What an extasie of Love transported the Son of God so far as to espouse our nature after it was defiled and debased with sin He was essential Innocence and Purity yet he came in the similitude of sinful flesh which to outward view was not different from what was really sinful Thus he St. Austin calls Love junctura duo copulans a coupling of two together That after man had rent off himself from God by his Apostacy God should assume an humane Nature into himself to make up the breach and reduce Man into an Union with himself again Miror Deum in utero Virginis miror omnipotentem in cunabulis miror quemodo verbo Dei caro adhaeserit Cypr. de Nat. Christi must needs be Love in a transcendent excess infinite This made St. Cyprian overlook the wonders in Nature that he might ravish himself in the admirations of an Incarnate God The Condescension was here so great that God seems to neglect his own Majesty that he may comply with our necessities yet infinite Love would have the Son of God stoop a little lower and do honour to that Sacred Law which we had violated His humane Nature being an inmate in his infinite Person could not but have a right to Heaven and might have been immediately rapt up thither but Love set him another task He the great Lawgiver was made under the Law He who knew the Father in an infinity of light now knew him in a finite Reason He who embraced the Father in an infinity of Love now loved him in a finite Will He who was Lord of all was subject to Parents and Magistrates He who upholds the world went up and down as a man doing of good he stooped as low as the Ceremonial Law His pure flesh was circumcised he kept the Passeover and so obedientially stood under his own shadow This is a Condescension much greater than if all the Angels in Heaven had put themselves under the Laws of the lowest matter yet infinite Love would have the Son of God go down a little lower We have him hungry thirsty weary weeping suffering the contradiction of Sinners enduring the temptations of Satan all his life-through a man of sorrows at last we have him bleeding on a Cross hanging there as a spectacle of shame his hands and his feet were pierced his body was racked and tortured to death in a stinking Golgotha But which was the greatest of all he bore the Wrath of God and what was that Wrath which was due to the sin of a World or what those Sufferings which satisfied Justice for it What a great thing was the Passion of God and how much beyond the dissolution of a World Words cannot utter it thoughts cannot measure it That Love must be no less than immense which made the Son of God stoop so low to take us up out of the ruins of the Fall The Love of God will yet more appear if we take notice of the persons for whom Christ was given it was for man poor impotent man a creature worth nothing a bankrupt in Spirituals one void of all those Primitive Excellencies which at first Crowned the humane Nature for him it was that God was at so vast an expence as that of his own blood Spond Annal. Anno 431. 'T was great Charity in Paulinus Bishop of Nola that he would give himself in pawn to the Vandals for a poor Child but it was transcendent superlative Love in God to give his Son one worth Millions of Worlds and as rich in Excellencies as a Deity could make him to be emptied and humbled to death for poor worthless worms such as we are Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that though he was rich yet for our sakes he became poor that ye through his poverty might be rich saith the Apostle 2 Cor. 8.9 The Riches of a God were laid out to set up broken man again But further it was for Sinners for Enemies such as were in Arms against God such as had broken his Laws despised his Authority cast off his Soveraignty and as much as in them lay stained his Glory These were the persons upon whose Salvation infinite Love set so high a rate that rather than fail the Life of God should be paid down for it The Apostle notably sets forth this
of God which as it is the highest suavity in it self so it pours out a delicious relish into all outward things Spirituals were so those initial Graces of Faith and Repentance which introduce us into an Union with Christ are from him He is a Prince and Saviour to give repentance Acts 5.31 To you it is given in the behalf of Christ to believe on him Phil. 1.29 As soon as we repent and believe we are justified in his blood and by a conjunction with him the natural Son we have power and right to become the Sons of God by Adoption and Grace The Holy Spirit the fountain of Graces and Comforts which was upon him the head above measure will fall down upon us his Members in a proportion every Grace every piece of the glorious new-creature is created in him In the power of his Merits and Spirit every comfort every beam of Divine Favour comes down to us through him He is the true Mercy-seat where God meets and communes in words of Grace with us Eternals were so too all the weights of Glory and Crowns of life in Heaven were purchased by him His blood opens the Holy of Holies the pure River of life springs out of his Merits the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ Rom. 6.28 Had it not been for him we could never have entred into such a blessed Region as Heaven What a Gift is Christ which virtually contains all gifts and good things in him How incomparable that Love which gave us so comprehensive a Gift In the last place let us consider the excellent Evangelical Terms which were founded on the Death of Christ Here two things are considerable The one is this The terms are easier The Covenant of Works was Do this and live The Covenant of Grace is Believe repent and live The first called for pure sinless perfect obedience The last stoops and condescends to fallen man it accepts of sincere though imperfect obedience uprightness passes for perfection the main of the heart for all of it the will is accepted for the work pure aims are taken for compleat performances infirmities are covered with indulgence duties are taken into the hand of a Mediator and perfumed with his infinite Merits and hence they are acceptable and as sweet Odours to God O how low doth infinite Love and Mercy stoop to poor sinners It will save a repenting believing sinner and how can it possibly go lower That God should justifie an impenitent unbelieving sinner is utterly impossible to his Holiness unless he would open a gap to all sin and wickedness and make it capable to have a Crown of happiness at last He could not more condescend than he hath done in the terms of the Gospel there is a Kingdom for the poor in spirit a Comfort for the mourners an acceptance for a willing mind a favourable respect for the least spark of grace which is latent in a desire and but as a little smoke or wiek in the socket as the expression is Matth. 12.20 And what condescending Love is here How could God stoop lower for the Salvation of Men The other is this The terms are surer It 's true Adam had he stood in Righteousness would have had a reward But the difference is this Under the first Covenant it was not certain that Adam though he had sufficient grace should stand but under the second it is as sure as Gods Truth and Faithfulness in the promise can make it that a people shall be gathered up out of the corrupt Mass of mankind that Christ shall have a repenting believing seed and that they shall abide and persevere till they come to the recompence of reward in Heaven St. Austin distinguishes of a double adjutorium gratiae De Corrept Grat. cap. 12. or help of grace Adam had that grace without which he could not have obeyed Gods People have that which causes them to obey The first gave him a posse a power to obey and persevere The second gives us the very velle perficere the very willing and working with perseverance Hereupon he observes that Adams will though sound and without spot did not persevere in an ampler good whilest our will though weak and infected with indwelling Corruption doth persevere in a lesser Adam with all his Holiness fell before an Apple a little titillation of pleasure but the Christian Martyrs have stood it out notwithstanding the reliques of sin in them against racks and torments Under the first Covenant the stock of Grace was in Mans own hand the stress lay upon his Will the principle of Holiness in him was subjected to it to be continued or forfeited But under the second Covenant which was founded at so vast an expence as the Blood of God Mans Will is not made Trustee a second time the stock is not in his own hand Grace is a Victor and subdues the Will unto it self Hence this Covenant cannot as the other did miscarry God was a friend to innocent Adam but in the second Covenant God comes nearer to us in a double Union such as Adam never dreamt of There is an Hypostatical Union the Son of God taking our nature into himself and which is founded thereon a Mystical Union Believers being in a wonderful manner united unto Christ as members unto their head In the first Union of the Divine and Humane Nature in Christ there is one Person In the second Christ and Believers make one Christ 1 Cor. 12.12 Believers are but Christ displayed he lives in them he counts himself incomplete without them By virtue of these two Unions it is that Believers finally persevere Because I live saith Christ ye shall live also John 14.19 Their life is bound up in his as long as Christ the head is alive above the believing Members below shall not fail of quickning grace to maintain spiritual life unto eternal The Holy Spirit is in them a well of water springing up to everlasting life John 4.14 and to secure the abode of the Spirit with them Christ is a Priest after the power of an endless life Heb. 7.16 In the Covenant of Works there was no promise of perseverance but in the Covenant of Grace there are many such promises God shall confirm you unto the end 1 Cor. 1.8 He will put his fear in their hearts that they shall not depart from him Jer. 32.40 The Apostle praying for the Thessalonians that they may be preserved blameless unto the coming of Christ immediately adds Faithful is he that called you who also will do it 1 Thes 5.23 24 evidently God undertakes it and engages his Faithfulness in it To take these Promises conditionally is utterly to evacuate them to make them run thus If we will persevere we shall persevere and so much was true under the old Covenant and without any Promise at all The clear scope of those Promises is That Believers are not left in their own hand but kept in Gods and how sure
cast an aspiring glance after them Upon the whole matter we see this first Obstacle is such as no creature in Heaven and Earth was able to remove out of the way 2. Ex parte creaturae the impossibility is apparent may we look up to Heaven There seems to be a division above a kind of variance among the divine Attributes On the one hand Mercy that tender indulgent Attribute seems to melt and cry out over fallen man What! shall man made after the divine Image a poor seduced creature shall he nay his whole race Eternally perish shall I have never a Monument among the sons of men nay nor in the whole Creation shall nothing of the humane nature serve God or enjoy him On the other Justice pleaded That every one must have his due the wages of sin is death the Majesty of Heaven must not be offended nor his sacred Law violated without a just recompence Holiness which cannot but abhor sin could do no less than stand on the same side Truth remembred that that threatning moriendo morieris Thou shalt surely die was too sacred a thing to be made nothing of some way or other it ought to be satisfied Thus the Attributes themselves seem to be at a distance 3. Could a Ransom be found out to the content of Justice how should man depraved polluted man be made capable of receiving such a benefit who should unscale his eyes that he might look upon such a mystery who should break his iron-sinewed will that he might yield to such terms as Salvation was to be given upon It is certain that blind impenitent creatures cannot enter into Heaven before they can arrive thither their eyes must be opened upon the great Offer their hearts must be dissolved into the divine Will and how this shall come to pass is another difficulty Now after the difficulties let us see the admirable solution of them when all finite understandings were posed and nonplust at the case of fal'n man when neither men nor Angels could so much as start a thought touching a remedy infinite Wisdom found out a way of Salvation for us The incomparable contrivance was thus A creature a finite person could not satisfie Justice but an infinite one shall do it There are three persons in the sacred Trinity but the Son of God shall do it He shall assume an humane nature in it He shall obey and die upon a Cross and thereby he shall satisfie divine Justice and purchase Grace and Eternal life for us That the Son should do it rather than any other person was very congruous many ways Gods beloved One was fit to reconcile us his essential Image was fit to repair the gracious one none could be more meet to usher in Adoption than Gods natural Son nor to enlighten the World than the brightness of his glory the Eternal Word Incarnate must needs be an excellent Prophet the middle person in the sacred Trinity a most congruous Mediator The blessed Father shewed forth himself in a former work in Creation the holy Spirit appears in a subsequent work in Sanctification it was therefore very meet that the Son the second person in the Trinity should manifest himself in the middle work in Redemption But that we may look a little further into this admirable Design it will not be amiss to fix our eyes upon those rare Conjunctions which the divine Wisdom hath framed in order to our Salvation 1. There is a Conjunction of Natures God and Man in one person Jesus Christ who was consubstantial with the Father as to his Divinity was made consubstantial with us as to his Humanity Heaven and Earth were united together in an ineffable manner the distance between God and man was as it were filled up in this wonderful Incarnation supremum insimi did attingere infimum supremi the creature came as near God as possibly could be Admirable are the tendencies of this Union He was Man that he might be capable of suffering and that by suffering he might satisfie in the same Nature which had sinned He was God that he might stamp such an infinite value upon his sufferings that those though but the sufferings of one might answer for a World and though but temporal sufferings might counterpoise Eternal He was Man that in condescension to our weakness he might speak to us through a vail of flesh He was God that he might speak to our hearts in divine illuminations in words of life and power He was Man that he might be touch'd with a feeling of our infirmities and melt into tender compassions towards us He was God that he might break all the powers of darkness and erect an holy Throne in our hearts This was the first fundamental Conjunction a thing worthy to attract from us a much higher admiration than what is due to the Wonders in Nature 2. There is a Conjunction of Justice and Mercy These in men do usually like the Sun and Moon reign by turns but in this wonderful Dispensation these are in exercise and glory both at once Justice appears in that Jesus Christ our Sponsor was smitten and wounded to death and that an accursed one for our sins Mercy shines forth in that Sinners repenting and believing are spared nay and advanced to glory Justice did not spare the Surety but exacted all Mercy doth not exact ought from the believer but forgive all The sufferings of Christ respect both Attributes they satisfied the Law and founded the Gospel Justice had a full compensation and Mercy sprung up in promises of Grace and Life 3. Holiness in God which hates sin is the fundamental root of that Justice which punisheth it Punishment issues out of Justice Justice springs out of Holiness Now that Holiness may be contented and so Justice satisfied not only in it self but in its very foundation there was in Christs Sufferings a Conjunction of punishment and obedience It 's true the Socinians think these two altogether inconsistent Si Christi passiones rationem obedientia habent rationem poenae habere non possunt obedientia enim virtus est poena autem propter inobedientiam infligitur Schlict contr Meisn 128. because obedience is a Virtue but punishment is inflicted for disobedience But in Scripture the thing is clear there was a virtuous action in his Passion a signal obedience in his Sufferings he poured out his soul he was obedient unto death Pure entire obedience run through his whole life to the last gasp upon the Cross it was not at all broken or interrupted by the bloody Agony nor lost or forsaken in that night of desertion when he cryed out My God my God why hast thou forsaken me His Sufferings were very penal in themselves and inflicted by Justice yet freely undertaken and obedientially undergone Here therefore was an admirable work of Wisdom his Sufferings as penal satisfied Justice and as obediential gratified Holiness 4. The Truth of God was concerned in that first Threatning Thou shalt surely
World notwithstanding its deep Corruption and the opposition of Potentates and Philosophers to the Gospel The instruments mean that the Power might be of God The Gospel proposes super-rational Mysteries super-moral Virtues super-mundane rewards things so much above us that without a Divine Power the proposal would have been fruitless IN the next place I come to consider the Power of God Power being a Perfection must needs be in him and being as all other Attributes are his very Essence it must needs be infinite The very light of Nature reveals this Attribute In the Grecian Philosophers he is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Omnipotent Nihil est quod Deus efficere non posset saith Tully Ludovicus Vives wonders Comment in Aug. de Civit. l. 5. c. 10. that so learned a Man as Pliny should cavil at Gods Omnipotence as if he could not do all things because he could not dye In Scripture he is called Gibbor a mighty one Shaddai an All-sufficient God he is the only Potentate 1 Tim. 6.15 He can do every thing Job 42.2 Nothing is too hard for him Gen. 18.14 Power belongeth to him Psal 62.11 Whatever is an act of Power that he can do that he cannot do contradictories is not Impotency but Power and Perfection for him to lye were to deny his own Truth for him to dye were to cast off his Immortality for him to make a thing be and at the same instant to make it not to be were to act repugnantly and overturn his own action These argue Impotency not Power We may more properly say that these cannot be done than that God cannot do them he can do all things which being done do argue Power or Perfection but what argues Impotency can no more fall upon him than darkness can seize upon the Sun This excellent Attribute of Power was eminently set forth in Christ He is called the power of God 1 Cor. 1.24 Divine Power shews forth it self in him in several respects First it breaks out in his Incarnation The word was made flesh John 1.14 He who was in the form of God took upon him the form of a servant Phil. 2.6 7 that is he who had the Essence and Majesty of God assumed so low a thing as an humane Nature He did not lay down his Deity but assumed an Humanity two Natures a Divine and Humane were in one person Never did God come so near the Creature as here He was in the world by his Universal Presence he was in the Temple in types and symbols in the Saints he is by his Grace in Heaven he is in immediate Glory but in the Incarnation he is hypostatically in an humane Nature The person of the Word which was from Eternity an Hypostasis to his Divine Nature became an Hypostasis to his humane Nature in time O what wonders of Power are here Here God was made Man the Creator became one with his Creature Had the whole world been crowded into a single Atom it would have been infinitely a less wonder than this the putting a greater finite into a less cannot be comparable to the taking of finite into infinite Here are two Natures a Divine and an Humane in themselves infinitely distant met in personal conjunction finite is not absorp't by infinite infinite is not changed by finite Here Eternal dwells in the same person with Temporal yet runs not into succession immortal dwells with mortal yet falls not into passion Here an humane Nature is united to a person infinitely simple and infinitely compleat yet he loses not his simplicity nor yet doth he receive any additional perfection Here 's an humane Nature without any Personality of its own Naturally the humane Nature of Christ would have had a Subsistence of its own a Personality would have flown from it but the resultance was miraculously prevented the want of its own finite Subsistence was supplied by the Presence of an infinite one Mr. Jeans of the words Incarn fol. 81. the Son of God communicated his Hypostasis to it to sustain it Here we have in some respect more of Divine Power manifested than there was in the making of the World When meer nothing was by an Almighty word elevated into Elements Plants Beasts Men Angels still it was but into finite but here a finite humane Nature was taken into infinite and between the infinite God and the humane Nature the disparity must be far greater than it is between a world and nothing Here indeed God did not create an infinite that being impossible but he came as near it as possibly could be by assuming a finite Nature into himself All other Creatures are comparatively extra Deum but here the humane Nature was in the very instant of its production interwoven with the infinite Person of the Son Thus we see that in this stupendious work Divine Power acted magnificently and congruously to its own infinity never any work did so fully answer and correspond to Omnipotence as this A second instance of Power we have in the Conception of our Saviour his body was not formed in an ordinary way by the concurrence of Man and Woman but in a way super-natural A Virgin was with Child As the body of the first Adam was wonderfully framed out of the dust so the body of the second was admirably framed out of the Virgin That a Virgin should be with Child was a great an high Miracle far above all the Power of Nature How then was it effected The Evangelist tells us The Holy Ghost came upon her the power of the highest did overshadow her Luk. 1.35 This is a sublime tremendous Mystery the Holy Ghost as the word overshadow imports did as it were cast a Cloud over her to teach us that we should not over-curiously pry into so great a Work as this was The body of our Saviour was not produced spermatically out of the substance of the Holy Ghost but Operatively by the Power of it The matter of his body was from the substance of the Virgin the active Principle was the infinite Spirit The seed of Man was not here used it was not congruous that he who had God for his Father should have any Man to be so it was a miraculous extraordinary operation Hence Christ is called The stone cut out of the mountains without hands Dan. 2.34 There was an Almighty Power in the framing his humane Nature the Tabernacle of his body was not pitched by Man but by the Lord Heb. 8.2 There was a supernatural operation in the making of it it is called a tabernacle not made with hands that is to say not of this building Heb. 9.11 It was not made in a natural ordinary way of generation It 's true he took part of our flesh and blood but the manner of framing his body was in an extraordinary way the structure of it was Divine and much above that of our bodies Another instance of the Divine Power we have in the Miracles wrought by Jesus
saved without any respect to Christ or faith in him and what need then was there of Christ or his satisfactory sufferings for us the great work might be done without him Hence it appears that to deny Original sin is to cast off Christ and Grace The Jewish Rabbins who made the evil figment in mans heart to be but a light matter small as a thread weak as a woman ruleable by the good figment of our own reason were very ignorant of that great point of Regeneration Hence Nicodemus a Master in Israel was startled and stood at a maze at our Saviours Doctrine about it How can a man be born when he is old can he enter the second time into his mothers womb and be born saith he Joh. 3.4 Such carnal and gross expostulations could never have dropt from him if he had had a true sense of Original sin but for want of that Regeneration was a strange and unintelligible mystery to him The Pagan Philosophers had some glimmerings of Original sin hence they complained that the soul had lost her wings and crept upon these lower things that it was in the body as a prison and there lookt out at the grates of sense that it was fallen from the happy Region and inclined to evil But because these were but glimmerings they did not so much as dream of Grace or Regeneration because they did not see the depth and venom of our Original wound they thought there was medicamentum in latere enough in the Power and Free-will of the soul to heal it self they reckoned all virtues to be among the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the things in our power and accounted the will to be such a mistress of it self that it might make it self good and excellent at its pleasure By all these instances we see plainly that the Doctrine of Original sin is very useful and momentous Original sin is set forth by many names in Scripture It is called Sin The sinning sin The sin that dwelleth in us The sin that doth easily beset us The Law of sin and death The Law in the Members The flesh and the old man The root of bitterness The plague of the heart in the Fathers it is called the paternal poyson The first radical sin The venom and stroke of the old serpent The contagion of the ancient death The weight of the ancient crime The injury of our Original And St. Austin that he might ascertain that in which he opposed the Pelagians called it Original sin from whence that name was afterwards frequent in the Church it was so called partly because we have it in our Original it is interwoven with our nature and may say to every one of us As soon as thou wert I am partly because it is derived to us from Adam the head and original of mankind * Non peccat iste qui nascitur non peccat ille qui genuit non peccat iste qui condidit per quas rima◠inter tot praesidia innocentiae peccatum fingis ingressum Aust de Nup. l. 2.28 Hence when Julian the Pelagian argued thus against Original sin He sins not who is born he sins not who begets he sins not who creates By what chinks or cranies among so many guards of innocence Quid quaerit latentem rimam cum habeat a pertissimam januam Per unum hominem ait Apostolus quid quaerit amplius do you feign that sin did enter St. Austin answers him thus Why doth he seek a chink or a crany when he hath an open gate By one man saith the Apostle what would he have more It is that one man Adam the original of mankind by whom sin entred into the world it is by him that it is derived to us That one Text touching the one man is enough to break and sweep away all the subtile cobwebs which the Pelagians and Socinians have spun out of their Wit and carnal Reason to oppose the Doctrine of Original sin Original sin consists in two things 1. In that Adams first sin is imputatively ours 2. In that we have an inordination and inherent pravity derived upon us from him The first thing is Adams first sin imputatively ours not that God reputes us to have done it in our own person not that it is imputed to us in the full latitude as it was to Adam We sinned not as the head and root of mankind we murdered not the whole humane nature we did not usher in sin and death upon the world no as the Apostle saith this was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by one Adam but as soon as any man becomes proles Adae in conjunction with him it is imputed to him pro mensura membri in such sort and proportion as is competent to him being a part and piece as it were of Adam 12. Quest 81. Art 1. Aquinas illustrates this by a notable instance Murder as a sin is not imputable to the hand in it self as distinct or separate from the body but as it is a Member in man and moved by his Will in like manner the sin of Adam is imputed to us not so properly as we are in our selves but as we are parts and pieces of him and derived our nature from him Adams sin was past before we were born It is therefore as Bellarmine well expresses it Nobis communicatur co modo quo communicari potest id quod transiit nimirum per imputationem De Amiss Grat. l. 5. c. 17. communicated to us in that manner as a thing past can be communicated namely by imputation we did not personally commit it It is therefore imputed to us in that measure as is fit and just for it to be imputed to those who are parts and members of Adam In that capacity it is constructively and interpretatively ours and accordingly God justly reckons and imputes it unto us That this is so I shall offer some Considerations 1. That of the Apostle is very pregnant by one man sin entred into the world and death by sin and so death passed upon all men for that all have sinned Rom. 5.12 In the Original it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in him that is in Adam all have sinned Those words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are Relative Three things as St. Cont. 2. Epist Ptl. l. 4. c. 4. Austin observes are set down in this verse before Adam Sin and Death those words relate not to sin for Sin in the Greek is a Feminine nor to death for men do not sin in death but dye in sin therefore they relate to Adam in him all have sinned It 's true others take the words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 causally for that all have sinned But I think that as I said before they are to be taken Relatively in him all have sinned Thus those three things which the Apostle conjoyned together in this verse that is the propagation of sin the original of death and the foundation of both very well cohere
be upon our spiritual watch we should set guards within and without that sin may not creep in by the ports of sense nor rise up out of the deep of the heart When a temptation approaches to us we should say as an holy man did Auferte ignem adhuc enim paleas habeo Take away the fire yet I have chaff within If a Jonah fall into a pet against God if a David wallow in adultery and blood if a Peter deny his Lord with a curse What may not we do The remnants of Original sin in us should make us keep a watch over our hearts and ponder the path of our feet Our flesh is an Eve a Tempter within us nay a kind of Devil as an Ancient speaks Nemo sibi de suo palpet quisque sibi Satan est CHAP. X. Chap. 10 Touching Grace The fountain of it Gods love The streams supernatural gifts The center Heaven It s freeness in that all perish not in the fall Original sin meriting death and Christ being a free gift It s freeness in chusing a Church to God Election not of all no Legislative act but a singling out of some to life in an infallible way and meerly of Grace It s freeness in the external and internal Call The distinction between the two Calls The efficacy of Grace as to the Principles of Faith and other graces with the manner of their production as to actual believing and willing with the proofs of it as to perseverance in faith and holiness The Habits of Grace defectible in themselves but not in their dependence HAVING spoken of Original Sin I shall next consider of Grace which heals that deadly wound Grace in the primary notion of it is the Love and Good-will of God towards sinners and in a secondary sense it is those saving-gifts which are derived from that Love These are called Graces because they lye in mans heart as beams of that eternal Grace which is in Gods and tend to that Glory in Heaven which is Grace consummate Gods will goes foremost and works those Graces in mans which make him meet for eternal happiness The fountain of Grace is the free-love of God the streams of it are supernatural gifts in men the center of it is the glory of Heaven These things shew us the true notion of Grace 1. The Fountain of Grace is Gods free Love which moves it self and gratuitously flows out in spiritual blessings these issue out of love and that is a motive to it self Emphatical is that of the Apostle If by grace then it is no more of works otherwise grace is no more grace but if it be of works then it is no more grace otherwise work is no more work Rom. 11.6 It is essential to Grace to be gratuitous unless it be so it loses its nature Upon this account Pelagius that Enemy of Grace but for his counterfeit Recantation had had in the Palestine Council a just Anathema for that saying Gratiam dari secundum merita That Grace was given according to merits or works Aust Hyp. l. 3. When the Pelagians said Quia ego prior volui Deus voluit Because I first willed therefore God willed Saint Austin tells them That they brought in Merit that Grace was then no longer Grace In omni opere sancto saith he prior est voluntas Dei posterior liberi arbitrii In every holy work Gods will is first in order Si vel tantillum boni a Deo non est jam non omnis boni essector est eoque nec Deus Bucer and then mans Without this order Grace cannot be Grace nor God God If he be not the Fountain of all good if the least good start up and anticipate his will he is not as becomes him the origine of all good The Fountain of Grace must therefore be in his Love 2. The streams of it are Supernatural Gifts It 's true natural benefits are in some sense grace but this is not the noted acception of the word in Scripture This acception was but Pallium Pelagianorum the Pelagians cloak under which they hid their Heresie Hence Aust Epist 105. when that question was asked What that Grace was which Pelagians thought was given without any precedent merits Answer was made That it was the humane nature in which we were made for before we were we could not merit a being Thus they confounded Grace and Nature together but the gifts of Grace are above the sphear of Nature and altogether undue to it Indeed in Innocency righteousness was natural to man not that it was a principle of Nature or an emanation from thence but that it was necessary and due to that Integrity which God would set up the human nature in God would make man very good and how that could be without righteousness I know not Moral goodness is that which is proper to a reasonable creature neither can it be wanting but there will be a maim in the creature There was in man an Union of rational powers in which he had communion with Angels and sensitive in which he had communion with Beasts This Union could not be made in a perfect orderly manner unless the sensitive powers being the more ignoble were subjected to the rational being the more excellent faculties that subjection could not be without a righteousness This is the rectitude and harmony of humane nature without it all the parts and powers of the Soul must needs jangle into confusion God would have man to serve and obey him in a perfect manner And how could this be without a principle of holy love Which way should there be actual righteousness without original Without an internal rectitude man could not love God as he ought amore amicitiae with a love of friendship for his own sake and without such a love referring all to God and his glory all mans acts a primo ad ultimum must needs be sin God would set before a man a most glorious end the happiness of the beatifical vision And how should man ever arrive at it without righteousness Or want that righteousness which qualifies for it Such a want would set him below the most contemptible creatures none of which are destitute of that furniture which is requisite for the reaching of their ends In all these respects righteousness was natural and in a sort due unto man in Innocency But after mans fall and forfeiture of Original righteousness saving gifts are altogether supernatural not only as being above the power of nature but as being totally undue to it To the state of Innocency righteousness was in a sense due but to the state of Corruption there was nothing due but wrath 3. The center of it is the Glory of Heaven Grace prepares a Kingdom for Believers Hence God bids them come and inherit the Kingdom prepared for them from the foundation of the World Matt. 25.34 it prepares them for the Kingdom Hence that of the Apostle Giving thanks to the father who
a difference one believes not another on God's a difference he justifies one not another but Christ stands only as a common cause his Satisfaction is in communi and constitutes no one righteous more than another He is no more as it seems the end of the Law for Righteousness to the Believer than to the Unbeliever Now if this be as it is durus sermo then it remains that Christ's Righteousness is by particular imputation made over to Believers and so becomes the matter of their Justification accordingly the Apostle in Rom. the fifth speaks of it not as a common cause but as peculiarized to Believers such as receive Grace He doth not speak of what Christ merited for all but of what Christ as an Head communicates to his Members The scope of the parallel between the two Adams evinces this it being no other than this That both of them communicate to those who are in them The sum of all is Adam and Christ are set forth by the Apostle as two communicative Heads if Adam's sin be imputatively ours so is Christ's Righteousness also I should now pass on to another Reason But possibly some may object That there is a great difference between the two Heads We were seminally in Adam we receive an Humane Nature from him but we were not seminally in Christ we receive not a Nature from him therefore though Adam's sin be imputatively ours yet so is not Christ's Righteousness In answer to this I shall offer several things First We receive an Humane Nature from Adam but is this the only foundation of the Imputation of his sin to us No surely Then all the sins of our Progenitors should be as much imputed to us as the first sin of Adam was Which I cannot at all believe Adam was a moral Head of Holiness and Righteousness to all Mankind but since the fall no Man no not Adam himself was such the sin of Adam is universally imputed to all even to the most holy but so are not the sins of other Progenitors we were not therefore one with Adam only by a Natural union but by a Divine Constitution Secondly We receive an Human Nature from Adam and have we not a Divine Nature from Christ are we not called his Seed are we not begotten by his Spirit and Word were we not in a Spiritual sence seminally in his Blood and Merits how else should any such thing as the New Creature be produced in a lapsed Nature These things are as proper to make us Parts and Members of Christ as an Humane Nature is to make us Parts and Members of Adam therefore the communication of Righteousness from Christ must be as full and great as the communication of sin is from Adam Bishop Vsher tells us That we have a more strict conjunction in the Spirit with Christ then ever we had in Nature with Adam one and the same Spirit is in Christ and Believers but there is not one Soul in Adam and his Posterity the communication from Christ therefore if answerable to the Union must be as great nay greater than that from Adam Thirdly Adam was a Head both by Nature and by Constitution Sin unless in Conjunction with Nature could not pass from him to us neither could we without a Nature conveyed from him have been members of him It diâ— therefore appertain to his Headship to convey a Nature to us but Christ was an Head not by Nature But above it by Divine Constitution he was not to convey Naturals to us but super-naturals since the Fall Righteousness was not to pass to us in Conjunction with Nature Nature was to be from one Head and Righteousness from another we were to be made Members of Christ not by communication of Nature but of Grace it therefore did not appertain to his Headship to communicate Nature to us yet was his Headship as potent to convey Righteousness to us as Adam's was to convey sin the Divine Constitution made him such an Head that his Satisfaction might become ours for our Justification thus much touching this Argument drawn from the Headship of Christ Fourthly Those Scripture phrases of being purged sprinkled cleansed washed justifyed in the Blood of Christ notably import two things the one that Justification is in a signal manner attributed to Christ's Blood as Sanctification is to the Spirit the other that Christ's Blood justifies by way of Application but neither of these can stand if that Blood be only a meritorious cause not the first how can Justification be signally attributed to it when as a meritorious cause it no less impetrates Sanctification than Justification nothing singular is done by it in the one more than in the other not the second how can it justifie by Application when as a meritorious cause it operates only by impetration You will say Christ's Blood is applyed in the effect in a pardon I answer those Scripture phrases before quoted shew that the Blood it self is applyed to us how else is it said that we are purged cleansed sprinkled washed in it unless it be applyed to us the phrases how emphatical soever seem to be improper surely a satisfaction must in its own nature be a justifying matter against the Law next to an absolute conformity to the Law Nothing is or can be more justifying against it then a satisfaction when God hath provided a plenary satisfaction to justifie us how may we think that it is not it self applyed to us actually to justifie us or that something less than it self should do it the Scripture sets forth this Application on both hands on our part it is applyed by Faith We receiving the Atonement Rom. 5.11 and Christ being a propitiation through Faith in his Blood Rom. 3.25 and on God's part by Imputation we being made the Righteousness of God in him 2 Cor. 5.21 and the Righteousness of God being upon us Rom. 3.22 I cannot tell how to think that such an excellent justifying matter as Christ's Satisfaction is should be provided for us and yet not applyed to us according to the terms of the Gospel a pardon is as I take it upon the satisfaction not meerly made but applyed for it is given to Believers only if the satisfaction be it self applyed then that is our Righteousness against the Law if it be applyed in the effect that is in a pardon then the pardon is the very application and not a pardon upon a satisfaction applyed or if there be a pardon upon a satisfaction applyed there will be a pardon before a pardon a pardon in the application and a pardon upon it if the satisfaction be it self applyed then it may precede a pardon and a pardon may be upon it but if it be applyed only in the effect in a pardon then it cannot precede a pardon no more then a pardon can precede it self You will say a pardon is not upon a satisfaction applyed but is the very application To this I answer the Learned Mr. Gataker saith
David roll in Adultery and Blood or with Peter deny the Lord Christ or with Julian turn total final Apostate were he left in the hand of his own counsel he knows he might do any thing which hath been done by others St. Austin brings in one speaking thus Non multa peccavi I have sinned little yet love much And then answers thus Hom. 23. Tom. 10. Tu dicis te non multa commississe Quare quo regente Hoc tibi dicit Deus tuus Regebam te mihi servabam te mihi agnosce gratiam ejus cui debes quod non admisisti Thou say'st That thou hast not sinned much Why who ruled thee Thy God saith to thee I ruled thee I preserved thee acknowledg then his Grace to which thou owest even this That thou hast not sinned as others The holy Man is very sensible that unless God bear him up with his Grace he shall soon sink into all manner of fin Hence that of Luther Vita hominis nihil aliud est nisi oratio gemitus desiderium suspirium ad misericordiam Dei Our Life should be a perpetual breathing after that Grace of God upon which we depend Were we full of divine Light yet if we should shut the windows and go about to possess it in a Self-subsistence we should soon be in the dark and find by experience that every Beam hangs upon that Grace which is above were we never so rich in inherent Graces unless there were influences from Heaven also we should soon spend our stock and become bankrupts The holy Man is a Part or Member of Christ and lives in dependance upon him as the Head There is as St. Chrysostom saith 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Spirit descending from Christ above which touches all his Members and makes a kind of Spiritual continuity between him and them Hence they are said in Scripture to live in the Spirit pray in the Spirit walk in the Spirit do all in the Influence of that Spirit which comes down from the Head to actuate their Graces Hence St. Paul saith I live yet not I but Christ liveth in me Gal. 2.20 His Graces as they had their Being from Christ the true Immanuel so were they continued and actuated by the Influences of his Spirit which in a sober sence are a kind of Immanuel God with us to uphold and quicken us to all holy Obedience As the humane Nature of Christ acted not in a separate way but in union with the Divine so the Believers Graces do nothing apart but all in union with Christ Still there must be as the Milevitan Councel tells us an Adjutorium Gratiae a supernatural Aid to work in us to will and to do When we do good then as the Arausican Councel hath it Deus in nobis atque nobiscum ut operemur operatur God works in and with us to make us work The Holy Man's Powers and Graces cannot go alone He is therefore depending upon that Spirit which acts the Sons of God in pure ways towards Heaven To deny this dependance is like the worshippers of Angels Not to hold the Head from which all the Body by joynts and bands having nourishment ministred and knit together increaseth with the increase of God Col. 2.19 Were the holy Man off from the Head what would become of him what illapses of the Spirit or Influences of Grace could he look for in a state separate from him how could he remain holy or continue in the Divine Life any longer In such a case he would be no longer a living Branch but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a quasi Branch dead and withered and fit for the Fire as the Exposition is Joh. 15.6 He could no more walk in Holiness than the old Dionysius as the Fable runs could walk a great way with his Head off We see then what manner of thing a true holy Life is it is that which stands in doing the Will of God in a way of humble dependance upon his Grace it is not enough to do that which is good but we must do it waiting and looking up to the God of Grace that he would strengthen our inner Man order our steps hold up our goings in his paths encline our Hearts and work all our works in us that he would by the continual supplies of his Spirit enlighten us when dark quicken us when dead draw us when backward hold us when falling enlarge us when in straits and actuate our Graces in the midst of our infirmities How excellent is the Life when God's Arm joyns it self to ours to set it a working when the Spirit breaths on our Graces and the Spices flow out when the Influences of Auxiliary Grace are as Dew and the Roots of Habitual Graces cast forth themselves in holy works sutable thereunto when there is Grace with our Spirit and in a sence a kind of Immanuel God with us to incline our Hearts to do all the Will of God and in the power of his Grace we set our selves seriously to the doing of it This is indeed an holy Life not only good in the matter but pious in the manner of it a vein of Faith and dependance runs through every Good Work God the Fountain and Original of Holiness is sanctified in every step we take there is an holy Life in us but the Fountain of Life is above we do Good Works but God is the Great Operator he works all our Works in us I shall conclude with that of the Arausican Councel Adjutorium Dei etià m renatis ac sanctis semper est implorandum ut ad finem bonum pervenire vel in bono opere perdurare possint Can. 10. Help from the Holy One must be ever implored even by the Saints themselves that they may arrive at the good End and abide in the Good Work Fifthly In an holy Life there must be a sincere mortification of sin without any salvo or exception no known sin may be indulged or spared It 's true in an holy Man there are reliques of in-dwelling sin adhering to him there are quotidian Infirmities Effluvium's of Humane Frailty breathing forth from him but neither of these are indulged both are inevitable in this Life Original Corruption is a very great burden to him it is the grief of his Heart to have such an evil in his Bosom to be a clog upon his Faculties a damp upon his Prayers a cooler upon his Zeal and Charity and a stain upon all his Duties and Good Works This makes him groan and cry out Oh! wretched Man that I am who shall deliver me from this Body of Death This is an Evil always present the holy Man shakes himself and yet it adheres he flies and yet it encompasses he mortifies and yet he must mortify on it is not it will not be extinct till Death dissolves him into dust He prays weeps sweats fights runs labours and yet he cannot make a total riddance of it However he indulges it not in
in man there is his Image but a finite a created one but Jesus Christ is the infinite increated Image of God The nearer any creature doth in its perfections approach to God the more it reveals him life shews forth more of him than meer being sense than life Reason than all the rest but oh what a spectacle hath Faith when an humane nature shall be taken into the Person of God when the fulness of the Godhead shall dwell in a creature Hypostatically Here the Eternal Word which framed the World was made flesh the infinite Wisdom which lighted up Reason in man assumed an Humanity never was God so in man never was man so united to God as in this wonderful Dispensation more glory breaks forth from hence than from all the Creation We have here the Center of the Promises the substance of the types and shadows the Complement of the Moral Law and Holiness and Righteousness not in letters and syllables but living breathing walking practically exemplified in the Humane nature of Jesus Christ CHAP. II. Chap. 2 Christ considered as a Prophet and a speculum The Divine Attributes shine in him particularly Wisdom The obstacles of Redemption to be removed The Son of God fit for the work many admirable conjunctions of God and Man of Justice and Mercy of Punishment and Obedience in Christs sufferings of Satisfaction and a kind of execution of the Law of Satisfaction and Merit of Merit and Example all tending to our Salvation The rare conquest of Sin Satan the World Death Humility of mind necessary The desperate issue of the pride of humane Reason need of Humility from the threefold state of Reason in Integrity after the Fall after Faith JESUS CHRIST as he is the eternal Son of God is the brightness of his glory and the express Image of his person Heb. 1.3 But because our weakness could not bear so excellent a Glory without being swallowed up by it he veiled himself in our flesh that he who was light of light in the eternal Generation might become the light of the World in an admirable Incarnation and such he was under a double notion He may be considered either as revealing the Gospel and thus he is the great Prophet who from his Fathers bosom brought down so many pretious truths and mysteries to the World or else as set forth in the Gospel in his conception birth life death resurrection and exaltation at Gods right hand and thus he is speculum Theologiae a pure glass of Divinity Hence the Apostle tells us that the light of the knowledg of the glory of God is in the face of Jesus Christ 2 Cor. 4.6 This latter Notion is that which this discourse aims at to contemplate those many Truths which are either lively expressed in the Incarnate Word or may be reasonably drawn from that incomparable Dispensation God that he might help our weakness and attract our faith to himself hath been pleased to come as it were out of his unapproachable light and manifest himself in Attributes such as Wisdom Holiness Justice Grace Mercy Power with the like These Rays of the divine Perfection are let down on purpose that we might sanctifie him in our hearts that our souls might be in a posture of holy humility faith fear love joy and obedience suitable to those Excellencies in him My first work therefore must be to shew how these Attributes are displayed in Jesus Christ We all with open face behold as in a glass the glory of the Lord saith the Apostle 2 Cor. 3.18 Jesus Christ is that pure Glass wherein the glory of God that is the divine Attributes so eminently shine forth to us that we may contemplate them with open face To begin first with the Attribute of Wisdom this is the great Disposer which in all things places the Center and draws the lines fixes the end and harmonizes the means thereunto There is a fair impress of it in the work of Creation much more in that of Redemption a Nobler end there cannot be than Gods glory in the Salvation of lost man nor a more admirable means than God manifest in the flesh This is the Wisdom of God in a Mystery 1 Cor. 2.7 a thing more sublime than all the secrets in the Creation Humane reason may by its own innate light go into the outward Temple of Nature but into the Sanctuary of Evangelical mysteries it cannot unless supernaturally illuminated ever enter and when it is there it is capable but of a little portion thereof nay the very Angels who stoop down to pry into it are not able to search it to the bottom nor to tell over the treasures of Wisdom which are in it This is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the manifold wisdom of God Ephes 3.10 Never was such a constellation of Attributes as there is here that Power Wisdom and Goodness which appeared in Creation are here in greater lustre and over and above Holiness Justice and Mercy shine forth in their orient Excellencies never did the glory of God so break forth as it doth in this wonderful Dispensation That we may the better view it it will be requisite to consider first the obstacles in the way and then how admirably the divine Wisdom did pass through them and accomplish the great Work The Obstacles were such as these 1. Man turning apostate from his God and primitive Integrity justly sunk himself into an horrible gulf of sin and misery Sin lay upon him and wrath for sin the broken Law pronounced Death an eternal curse against him divine Justice appeared through the threatning like devouring fire ready to catch hold on him as fit fuel for eternal flames unless Satisfaction were made he must have gone into Hell the proper place for irremediable sinners in this forlorn estate what may he can he do Shall he melt himself into repentant tears or consecrate himself unto perpetual Holiness Alas depraved Nature cannot elevate it self unto these nor will Grace dispense them to an unatoned sinner nay could they be had they would be as finite nothings in comparison of that infinite Satisfaction which Justice calls for Sin is an infinite evil objectively infinite a kind of deicidium a striking at the Majesty Holiness Justice nay the very Life and Being of God and without another deicidium a crucifying the Lord of glory which is a Sacrifice of infinite value not to be expiated Which consideration also tells us that all the Angels in Heaven though creatures without spot could not have been able to have satisfied for the sin of man all that they have is but finite the burden of Gods wrath was much too heavy for them one sin sunk their fellow-Angels into chains of darkness and how could they stand under a world of iniquity The titles of Saviour and Redeemer which equal if not exceed that of Creator were too high for them and how could they who knew their own station and were confirmed therein attempt or so much as
it were out of the fire and breathes out a Death and a Curse against it It further appears when the Threatning comes forth in actual Judgments in which God falls upon his own creature the work of his own hands It more appears when Wrath comes down not upon this or that sinner but upon multitudes and not upon the offending persons only but upon their Infant-relations upon their fellow-creatures upon the very places where they acted their iniquities Adam sinned and Wrath fell upon the whole Race of mankind nay and a Blast and a Curse fell upon the Creation such as makes it groan and travel in pain with an universal Vanity The old World was drowned in sensualities and a Deluge sweeps away them and their fellow-creatures The Sodomites burned in their unnatural lusts and fire and brimstone was rained down upon them Korah Dathan and Abiram turned Rebels and the Earth opened her mouth and swallowed up them and all that appertained to them These are notable Tokens of displeasure but a greater is yet behind The Eternal Son of God cannot assume our flesh and stand as a Sponsor for us but he must bear an infinite Wrath such as was due to the sin of a World Though he were the Wisdom of God he must be sore amazed and ready to faint away in a fit of horror Though the Fathers joy he must be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 surrounded with sorrows even unto death He bore up all things yet now under the burden of Wrath he must fall and grovel upon the ground He must pour out tears and strong cryes to God that the bitter Cup may pass He must be in an Agony a dismal conflict with the Wrath of God and sweat great dropt and clotters of blood under the pressure of it The blessed and beloved One of God he was yet he must be made a Curse and upon a tormenting Cross cry out My God! My God! why hust thou for suken me The Sun must now withdraw his light and the Earth quake in sympathy with their Creator Oh! What a spectacle of displeasure was here What is a Deluge or the groans of a dissolving World in comparison There meer creatures suffer but here God in the flesh The Marks of divine Wrath were now set upon that humane Nature which as assumed into an infmite Person is far above all the Greation Never was there so high a demonstration of Gods infinite hatred and antipathy against sin as there is here No created Understanding of Men or Angels could ever have found out such a wonderful Manifestation as this is Infinite Wifdom did it to make sin look like it self infinitely odious Moreover As it is the nature of Hatred to be a Murderer to seek the not being of the thing hated so it was the great Design of this Mysterie to extirpate sin out of the hearts of men For this purpose was the Son of God mantjested that he might the stroy the works of the devil 1 John 3.8 There are three things in sin the guilt the power and the being The aim of a crucified Christ was to extirpate there all Christ was made Sin and a Curse for us He did by his sweet-sinelling Satrifice fully fatisfie the Law and Justice of God And why did he do it but that the bonds of guilt might be broken off from us The strength of sin in binding us over to Death and Hell is the Law and the Law in its threatning of a Curse and Condemnation is the voice of vindictive Justice these two being fully satisfied in Christ the guilt of sin becomes powerless and unable to hold such sinners as by Faith and Repentance partake in that Satisfaction There was in Christs Sufferings not only a fulness of Satisfaction but a redundance of Merit Thereby he procured the Holy Spirit for us and why so but that the power of sin might be dissolved in us Our own spirit of it self could not would not do this but the divine Spirit which Christ hath procured doth in true Believers effect it Sin is no longer a prevailing-Law in the heart the Holy Spirit takes away its dominion that the Throne of Christ may be set there It is true as Saint Bernard saith Velis nolis infra fines tuos habitat Jebusaeus Sin hath a being in Believers but even that doth the holy Spirit in the Article of Death remove from them that their Souls may fly away into that pure Region where are the spirits of just men made perfect Thus God manirests his hatred of sin in that he laid in the Sufferings of Christ a design for the extirpation of it 4. Gods Holiness as it imports a love of holiness in man is here clearly seen in that when it was lost he did so much for the recovery of it Holiness that divine Life being by the Fall beaten out of the heart of man stood without in the letter of the Law but that it might be recovered into the heart of man again that his heart might be made a Sanctuary an holy Place for the divine Majesty to dwell and take pleasure in God hath done very much and been at a vast expence about it He hath not only wished for Holiness O that there were such an heart in them Deut. 5.29 but he hath sent his own Son into the flesh to be a rare Pattern and Samplar of it nay and to bleed and die upon a Cross that it might be revived in poor fallen man It could not be revived there without the holy Spirit and that could never have been had unless Justice were satisfied and Satisfaction could not be made without a Sacrifice of infinite value Christ therefore was made such an One that the holy Spirit might come and re-imprint Holiness in man again God died in the flesh that man might live in the Spirit One great end of Christs sufferings was Holiness He gave himself for us that he might purifie to himself a peculiar people Tit. 2.14 that he might have a glorious Church not having spot or wrinkle Ephes 5.27 Rather than lose Holiness which is the Glory He would humble himself to the shame of a Cross rather than we should not be sanctified or consecrated to God in Holiness he would sanctifie and consecrate himself to be a sacrifice to Justice Oh! What a rate or value doth God set upon Holiness in man How highly must he delight and take pleasure in it when he will come in the flesh and die rather than suffer it to be extinct in the World a greater demonstration of Love to it than this cannot possibly be imagined Further Gods love to Holiness appears in this that he orders things so that no man can partake of Jesus Christ unless he subject himself to the holy terms of the Gospel he that names the Name of Christ must depart from iniquity What if Christ be a most glorious Saviour and Redeemer What though he fulfilled Righteousness and made Satisfaction What though he opened a
to have it here the consequence must needs be sure and infallible Upon the whole matter it appears that no tolerable account can be given of Christs Sufferings unless Justice were satisfied and declared therein But to explicate this more distinctly I shall a little consider three things 1. God the great Rector who inflicted those Sufferings on Christ 2. Christ the Patient who bore them 3. The Sufferings in themselves and in their fruits 1. God the righteous Rector who inflicted them was one of infinite Mercy Mercy in men though but finite is sometimes a remora to punishment Joseph being 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a just that is as the word there must be taken a merciful man would not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 make Mary a publick spectacle of Justice Matth. 1.19 But though God were one of infinite Mercy and that not meerly resident in his Nature but as it were in motion triumphantly going forth in a most compassionate design towards mankind yet he would have Justice satisfied in the Sufferings of his Son To declare I say at this time his righteousness saith the Apostle Rom. 3.26 Observe it was at this time it was then a day of Salvation a Jubilee of Redemption to Mankind yet for all that Justice must have its due and be declared in the Sufferings of Christ But here the Socinians object That infinite Justice and infinite Mercy are opposites and cannot both be together in God or if they were God who cannot act contrary to any thing in his Nature could neither punish because of his Mercy nor yet pardon because of his Justice But I answer Mercy and Justice are not opposites in Man After the Idolatry of Israel in the Molten Calf Moses would in Justice have every one slay his Brother yet in an high excess of Mercy and Charity he would pray Forgive their sin if not blot me out of thy book Exod. 32.27 32. Neither are they opposites in God when he proclaims his Name in those stately Titles The Lord merciful gracious long-suffering abundant in goodness and truth keeping mercy for thousands forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin He yet adds in the close of all That he will by no means clear the guilty Exod. 34.6 7. Mercy and Justice in God have different objects the Penitents who partake of Mercy are not the objects of Justice the Impenitents who feel Justice are not the objects of Mercy Yet these Attributes are not contrary the one to the other being both Divine Perfections they can no more be contrary the one to the other than the Divine Essence which both of them are can be contrary to it self Cruelty not Justice is opposite to Mercy Injustice not Mercy is opposite to Justice Neither doth God in pardoning or punishing act contrary to any thing in his Nature In pardoning Penitents he acts not against his Justice for that was satisfied in their Sponsor Jesus Christ In punishing Impenitents he acts not against his Mercy for that as the Socinians themselves confess extends not to obstinate sinners neither are they at all capable of it These two Attributes do mutually illustrate one another the Mercy of God is the more Illustrious because when Justice was inexorable it sent his Son to suffer for us The Justice of God is the more glorious in Christs Sufferings because they were inflicted by one whose Mercy was infinite in his nature and in his design towards Men. 2. Christ the Patient who bore those Sufferings may be considered under divers respects each of which shew Justice to be Illustrious in his Sufferings Take him as Man Justice appears in that the penal Sufferings were in the same nature which had sinned The nature of Angels was not assumed the facrifice of Beasts would not serve the turn neither had the same nature with man but that Justice might be exact that the Sufferings might be in the same nature which had sinned the Son of God was made flesh and suffered in it as an expiatory Sacrifice for us Notable is that of the Prophet All their wickedness is in Gilgal there I hated them Hos 9.15 Sin was found in the humane Nature and there it must be punished Take him as the Son of God Justice appears in that so great so dear a person suffered for us David spared Joab because he was a great a potent man in the Army And Absolom because he was a dearly beloved Son In the former he said The Sons of Zerviah are too hard for me and in the latter Deal gently with the young man But though Jesus Christ was very great God and Gods Fellow one who thought it no robbery to be equal with God though he was very dear a Son and an only begotten the Fathers essential Image and eternal joy Yet for all this standing in the room of sinners he must not be spared It was a great Wrath in Henry the Second of France Thuan. l. 20.564 which made him by a passionate throw to smite though but occasionally his own Son then sitting at his feet But oh how great how wonderful was the Justice of God in Christs Sufferings when no greatness no dearness though infinite did obviate or turn away the stroke When he bruised and wounded to death his own Son and that intentionally and on purpose to vindicate the Honour of his Justice and Law In other punishments he falls but upon meer Creatures but here with Reverence be it spoken He falls upon himself the Son of God very God and a dearer or greater person there could not be was the sufferer Further take him as an holy Innocent One Justice which usually hath only to do with sinners will yet appear He was Holiness it self in his Divine Nature He was holy harmless undefiled separate from sinners in his Humane yet if he will stand as a Surety for mankind he cannot be excused It is observable in Scripture that penal Sufferings stay not meerly at the offenders door but run over upon those in conjunction with him Achan sinned in the accursed thing and his Sons and Daughters were stoned and buried with fire David sinned in numbring the people and no less than seventy thousand subjects fell by a Pestilence But the Holy Jesus is an instance above all others their Sufferings fell indeed upon Relations yet still upon sinners here they fell upon the Holy One. Justice is illustrious when sinners suffer in conjunction with sinners but how highly doth it act when Innocency it self suffers in conjunction with them I mean as a Sponsor on their behalf But here the Socinians cry out Nibil divinae justitiae magis contrarium est quà m insontem sontis loco puniri Volk de Sat. Quid hoe aliud est quam saevum tyrannum facere Sclicting cont Mels Insignis immanitas atque saevitia potius quà m liberalitas appellanda est Soc. de Servat pars 3. c. 2. That if God should punish the innocent for the guilty Christ for us Sinners he
Love and Mercy of God an excellent Motive to stir up our Love towards God and Man HAVING spoken of Gods Justice I now proceed to his Love Mercy and Grace These are eminently ascribed to him in Scripture He is love it self 1 John 4.16 essentially such He is the Father of mercies 2 Cor. 1.3 Mercy is his off-spring and joy He is the God of all grace 1 Pet. 5.10 The fountain of it is in him and all Graces in the Creature issue from thence Love communicates good to the Creature Mercy communicates it to the Creature in misery Grace communicates it to a Creature though unworthy All the drops and measures of goodness in the Creature are from Love when the good is suited to the misery of the Creature 't is Mercy when it exceeds desert and as it were triumphs over unworthiness 't is Grace in a special manner I shall not discourse of these distinctly but as the usage in Scripture is promiscuously these are in a very signal manner manifested in Christ So admirable a Glass is he that not only Wisdom Holiness and Justice are represented in him but Love Mercy and Grace also In these it is that this wonderful Occonomy terminates Wisdom laid the plot Holiness and Justice appeared in our Saviours Passion but the Center of all is Grace and Mercy These are highly exalted in the Reconciliation and Salvation of Men. The first appearance of these stands in this That God did not stand upon the first terms upon the Old Covenant of Works God made Adam a very knowing and righteous Creature he gave him excellent Laws Moral ones inscribed in his heart and over and above one positive Law in the Tree of knowledg He entred into a Covenant with him as the head and root of all mankind the terms were That all his Posterity should stand or fall in him He transgressed the Command of God and so Sin and Death came upon all the humane World Here God might have stood upon the first terms he was not bound to make new ones but might have stood upon the old and prosecuted them to the utter ruin of all Mankind This is plain by these Considerations 1. The Laws given by God to Adam were such as became God to give and Adam to receive very just and righteous The Moral Ones were congruous to his holy Faculties and conducible to his Happiness they were interwoven into his very rational Powers and Obedience might have come forth in the easiness of his Holy Principles The positive one was a just one God who made Man Lord of the lower World might well except one Tree as a token of his Supreme Soveraignty when the thing forbidden was not a thing in it self evil but indifferent Gods Authority appears the more Sacred and Mans Obedience would have been the more pure the Tree as lovely to the eyes was a fit curb to the sensitive appetite And as a Tree of knowledg was a just restraint to intellectual curiosity the prohibition of such a Tree was an excellent Item to man to look to both faculties the terms were just not only as to himself but as to his posterity Had not God made them he would never have told us that all sinned in one and that by one judgment came upon all Rom. 5.12 18. Which without such terms would have been impossible and if he made them it was no less impossible that they should be unjust Adam was the root and head of Mankind we were in him naturally as latent in his loins and legally as comprised within the Covenant His Person was the fountain of ours and his Will the representative of ours The thing therefore was equal unjust Laws should be abrogated but in this case the Laws and Terms being Righteous God might have stood strictly upon them 2. Adam having holy Powers sufficient for Obedience was bound to keep them with all diligence that which was formerly spoken to the Church in Thyatira Hold fast that which thou hast Rev. 2.25 was virtually spoken to Adam Nature dictates that Duty should be returned where benefits are received The Law of fidelity requires that a Trustee should keep the depositum God intrusted man with excellent endowments but if he will by his transgression cast them away must God make them good Must he follow after a Rebel a wasting bankrupt Creature to repair the lost Image and set him up again with a new stock of Grace No He who made him ex beneplacito cannot be bound ex justitiâ to new-frame him being broken He might without the least spot of injustice have left all mankind in the ruins of the Fall 3. The case of the fallen Angels determines this point When they left their Principle or first Estate Did God capitulate or enter into new Articles with them Was there a tabula post naufragium a room for Faith or Repentance Had they a Christ or a Gospel tendred unto them No they were cast down immediately into chains of darkness The sentence was irreversible their misery eternal annihilation would have been a kind of favour to them That God who stood upon the first terms with Angels superior creatures might have done so with man being a little lower than those glorious Creatures I know there are differences assigned between the two Cases Angels were the first transgressors the ring-leaders in sin Man followed after The Angels had a most pure light and that without any allay of flesh Mans intellect was lower and in conjunction with matter The Angels sinned by self-motion and of their own meerly Man sinned by seduction and through the guile of the Serpent In the Fall of Angels all the Angelical nature fell not In Adams Fall all the humane Nature fell no Religion was left in the lower world But not withstanding all this God might in Justice have stood upon the first terms with Man as well as with Angels and that he did not do so it was from meer Grace as the primary Reason thereof 4. Grace is in a very eminent manner lifted up in the Gospel Grace gives Christ and Faith to believe in him Grace justifies and sanctifies Grace faves and crowns with a blessed Immortality Every-where in the Gospel sounds forth Grace Grace but if God might not justly have stood upon the old terms the giving of new ones to Man was not Grace but Debt not Mercy but Justice Those Novatores who say That it would have been unjust for God to have condemned Adams Posterity for the first Sin do thereby overturn the Grace of the Gospel The Apostle who is much rather to be believed saith expresly That by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation Rom. 5.18 that is according to the terms of the old Covenant but if the old terms might not have been stood upon the new ones must be necessary and due to mankind and so no Grace at all They who deny the Justice of the old Covenant overturn the Grace of
in giving his Son for us The Giver is God himself no other could do it And here two things offer themselves to us The one is the earliness of his Love It was no Novel temporary thing but ancient nay eternal upon the Prescience of the Fall he eternally designed that his Son should assume our Nature and in it dye as an expiatory Sacrifice for us Christ was the Lamb foreordained before the foundation of the world 1 Pet. 1.20 He was set down for a Redeemer in the eternal Volumes before the world was up and slain above in Decree long before he was slain below in Time A Plaister was provided before the wound a Saviour before the Fall of Man When David would set forth Gods Mercy in the highest strain He doth it thus His mercy is from everlasting to everlasting Psal 103.17 Such is his Love in Christ reaching as I may say from one end of eternity to another Each one of us may cry out as that Ancient did Sero te amavi Domine Lord 't was late e're I loved thee Our love is but of yesterday a temporary thing but his was as early as eternity it self The other is the freeness of it Love 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Arist Rhet. l. 2. c. 4. as the Philosopher speaks wills good to another for his sake not for our own In that wonderful Gift of Christ the Love was Gods the profit ours Mercy in man hath a kind of respect to the Donor frail Humanity and the wheel of a mutable world tell him That himself the now giver may peradventure come to be a receiver Hence the Apostle would have us remember them in adversity as being in the body Heb. 13.3 and restore the lapsed considering thy self Gal. 6.1 It may be our own case There is in such acts of Mercy a kind of respect to our future self which possibly may become an object for Mercy But Mercy in God which is the suavity of his Essence issues out in a pure gratuitous way no such respect can fall upon him who is immutable and blessed for ever In the freeness of his Love there are two things considerable On Gods part there was no want on Mans no attractive On Gods part there was no want of us or our Services were there want with him he could not be God Could we supply him we should be greater than himself in furnishing him with that which he could not do for himself He is All-sufficient and what want can be in him Infinite and what can be added to him An Ocean though vast yet because finite may receive an addition from a little drop But what can be added to infinity which in its unmeasurable excellency comprizes all things within it self All nations to him are but as the drop of the bucket and as the small dust of the ballance Isa 40.15 Their Righteousness cannot add one beam to his essential Glory neither can their iniquity in the least eclipse it However it be with the Creature he is still himself His own happiness a sphere of all Perfections a Theatre of Glory to himself Hence it appears that Gods Love in giving his Son for us was not a Love of indigence but of fulness and redundance flowing out in a pure gratuitous manner towards us that the honour might be his and the profit ours He gives like himself out of super-effluent goodness as becomes one who is a Donor only but no Receiver On Mans part there was no attractive to move God to give his Son for us Mans Love is usually drawn out by some excellency or other in the object but what can draw out Gods Could the Origine of all goodness be attracted by any thing in the Creature Yet is it possible that any thing should be found in a fallen Creature to attract it Mans misery was indeed the occasion but what was the attractive Was our Love first and a charm to his Oh! no to say that a Creature is first in Love is to blaspheme the Supreme Goodness which sets up Love in it The Apostle is express Herein is love not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins 1 John 4.10 Between men Love is ordinarily reciprocal he that loves is beloved again but here the Love was on one side only 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Arist Rhet. l. 2. c. 4. God loved his very Enemies so far as to give his Son for them to raise up their Love to its great Original Among men an harmony of spirits a sameness of tempers is a motive to Love But what was there could there be any such thing in fallen man as such How then was he fallen What need was there of a Saviour That holy Harmony was Mans Primitive rectitude and whilest it lasted there was no need of any restorer Alas fallen man was a very Chaos of corruption his very rational Powers were depraved there was flesh in his spirit enmity in his mind against him who lighted up a pure Reason in him at the first There was bondage in his Will it could not nay such was its horrible perversness it would not elevate it self to the fountain of its liberty Among men goodness is an allective to Love but what goodness was there in a fallen degenerate Creature full-fraught with sin and opposite to its Maker The very reliques of the Divine Image which sin could not utterly expel out of the humane Nature were yet so captivated and imprisoned there that gross Idolatry filled the world in spight of all the notions of a Deity implanted in the hearts of men We see cleerly there was no attractive on our part Why then did God give his Son for us The only reason was from himself it was meer Grace self-moving Mercy a pure emanation of Love towards us unworthy Creatures who might have been made the objects of his Wrath and that for ever The next thing considerable is the Gift it self and that was the Son of God very God a greater a dearer person could not be given if we measure Gods Love by the Gift it is like that altogether unmeasurable Hence the Apostle tells us That there is a breadth and length and depth and height infinite dimensions in it such as pass the knowledg of men and angels Eph. 3.18 19. When God gave us the Creatures for our use he gave us but the drops and models of his Goodness but when he gave his Son for us he gave himself God was the Giver and God the Gift When God could swear by no greater he sware by himself when he could give no greater he gave himself Here was Love acted to the uttermost elevated to the highest point a greater Gift there could not be 'T was great Love in Jonathan to David that for him he would strip himself of his Robe nay and venture the cast of a Javelin from an angry Father But what manner of Love was it in God that
Scarcely for a righteous man will one dye yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to dye But God commended his love towards us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us Rom. 5.7 8. Sometimes possibly though but rarely one may dye for a righteous good Man who is a blessing to the place where he lives But this was Christs Prerogative to dye for Sinners this was the supereminency of Divine Love to give him so to do Greater love hath no man than this that a man lay down his life for his friends Joh. 15.13 Thus our Saviour A greater proof or effect of Love than death there cannot be but Love is then in an higher and more excellent degree when that death is as in our Saviours case it was for Enemies than it is when the death is for Friends Damon and Pythias two intimate friends were willing to dye one for another but Christ died for Enemies In Creation God overcame Nullity but in Redemption he overcomes Enmity it self and that in a wonderful way He assumes an humane Nature and in it pours out his precious blood to melt and break that horrible Enmity which was in us against him If we would see more of this Love let us turn our eyes upon the evils removed and the good procured by our Saviour Christ All evils are either Moral such as sin or which waits upon the other Physical such as punishment all of them are removed by our Saviour who saves from Sin and Wrath. Man was under the guilt of Sin and so under the Wrath of God Wrath in the threatning hung as an horrible Tempest over his head and within there was the dreadful Eccho of it in Conscience But the Sufferings of Christ were so satisfactory and meritorious for us that as soon as we return and believe on him all our guilt is done away It 's true the guilt in it self in the intrinsecal desert of punishment is perpetual because sin cannot cease to be sin but it doth no longer redound upon our persons to oblige us to punishment The heavy burden is now lifted off from Conscience the black Cloud of Wrath is dissolved the cursing Law hath nothing to say against us There is no condemnation to them which are in Christ Rom. 8.1 It 's true afflictions may fall upon a Believer but there is no Condemnation there is not a jot of Wrath in them they are rather Castigatory than Penal managed in the hand of Mercy rather than Justice In the issue it appears that there was Love and Faithfulness in them that even in those afflicting paths Mercy and Truth are found all things shall work together for good unto the Believer Afflictions and all These serve for excellent purposes to fan off his Vanity melt away his Corruption alarm his spiritual Watch refine his golden Graces cast him into the Image of a meek suffering Christ unearth unself him and elevate his affections towards the everlasting rest which is above Affliction after it hath budded and blossomed with such precious fruits is no longer evil but an excellent good It 's true also that death Temporal will seize upon him but the curse is gone the sting out death which at first was a punishment now hath a blessing in it It was Originally introduced by sin but through the admirable Grace of our Saviour it carries away those reliques of sin which no Tears Prayers Watchings Pious endeavours could utterly extirpate whilest we are in the body it throws down the earthen walls into their mother-dust But who would not dye and with Hilarion bid his Soul Go out that he might be rid of sin There is indeed a passage out of a Temporal life but it is into an Eternal one The soul when it leaves its old friend the body flies into the blessed Region there to enjoy God in an immediate manner to read truth in its Original and taste goodness in the Fountain the body which at present dissolves into dust shall wake again and be made like to the glorious body of Christ Mortal shall put on immortality corruptible incorruption death shall be swallowed up in victory it is no longer an evil to the Believer Again Man was under the Power of Sin and so under the Tyranny of Satan Sin was a Lord a Ruler over him not only over his outward man whose members were the weapons of it but over the inward too It had strong-holds in his Reason and a throne in his Will he was a drudg a slave to his lusts hurried up and down by one Corruption or other wandring in error or swelling in pride or pining in envy or boiling in malice or burning in lust or drowning in sensual pleasures some way or other serving his Iniquity Satan the Ruler of darkness hath a Palace in his heart and keeps possession there upon all occasions he blows up Original Corruption into sinful motions motions into consents consents into acts acts into habits Thus he carries on the sinner in a circle of sinning till inevitable ruin overtake him but in and through Christ there is deliverance from this horrible servitude The Holy Spirit comes and rescues the sinner it opens his eyes to see himself standing as he doth at the brink of Hell and Death it melts him into tears and godly sorrows for sin it breaks down the strong-holds and throne of sin in the heart it casts out Satan and the hellish furniture it translates the poor sinner from the power of darkness into the Kingdom of Christ into a Region of Grace and Power where Sin and Satan cannot have the Victory Those precious Promises that sin shall not have Dominion that Satan shall be bruised under our feet are now sealed and experimented in the heart The poor Captive is now brought out of Bondage into the true liberty of Holiness and Obedience Here we see the matchless incomparable Love of God which delivered us from so many great Evils Hezekiah being rescued from Death made his acknowledgments O Lord thou hast in love to my soul delivered me from the pit of corruption or as the Original hath it Thou hast loved my soul from the pit of corruption Every Believer who hath tasted of the great Salvation may say Lord thou hast loved me from Sin Satan Death Hell by delivering me from all these evils Moreover as all evils were removed so all good things were procured by Christ Temporals were so the world owes its standing to him Justice but for his expiatory Sacrifice would have dashed it down about the sinners â—ears Sin but for the Cement of his blood would have unframed all things in nature that right to the Creature which we forfeited by our iniquity was restored again by his Merits The Believer shall now have so much of the world as infinite Wisdom and Mercy more competent Judges than humane Reason and Will shall think a fit portion for him and what he hath he shall have with the Love
an hand that is our Saviour tells us None can pluck them out of my Fathers hand John 10.29 I know some take these words with a limitation None can pluck them away without their own voluntary consent but this limitation makes the words altogether insignificant it is not possible that they should be plucked away without their consent The words therefore with that limitation run thus None can pluck them but in such a way as the same is possible to be done and thus they signifie nothing That which our Saviour makes impossible in the Text becomes in the Gloss as possible as any other thing Here we see the incomparable Love of God to his People there is in Christ an everlasting Covenant ordered in all things and sure they are preserved in Christ and that unto salvation This infinite immense Love of God in Christ can do no less than call for a return What was it not enough for him to give us a World of Creatures Hath he given his Son his only begotten dearly beloved Son for us Hath he given him so far as to be made flesh and made under the Law the command and curse of it Hath he thereby removed all Evils and procured all good things for us Hath he done this for Sinners for Enemies and that out of an eternal design of Grace out of such Love as was an impulse to it self without any attractive on our part to move him thereunto And after all this shall not our hearts take fire and burn within us with Love to him again When his Love was up in Eternity shall not ours appear in time When he loved us worthless meritless Creatures shall not we love him upon the highest and greatest attractives When he gave his Son when the Giver and the Gift were both infinite shall our finite affections be shut up from him or denied unto him Our Love to his is but a little drop a poor inconsiderable nothing and with what face or reason can we withhold it when infinite Love calls for it Hath God himself come down as it were from his altitude and in admirable Grace followed us First into our flesh and then into a Law-subjection and at last into a Curse and Penal Sufferings and all this upon an errand of Peace and Reconciliation to reduce us again to himself and to happiness in him and shall we yet fly away from him and by an horrible indignity turn our backs upon such admirable pursuits of Love and Grace After such a deliverance from Sin and Hell as this May we think our selves our own or turn away our hearts so much as in the glance of a thought from so great a Saviour After such a purchase of Grace and Heaven should we not lye down at his feet in extatical admirations and send up our dearest affections to the great Donor If Creatures if Laws if Ordinances move us not shall we yet be unaffected at the spectacle of a God incarnate obeying bleeding dying for us Sinners and Enemies It 's horrible ingratitude having such a prospect of infinite Love before our eyes Let us do as becomes us give God our heart not a piece or corner of it but all not in some weak languid velleities but in the highest strains and raisures of spirit not in some drops or rivulets but in a full stream and current of affections such as is due to him who is the Original of souls Our desires before vagrant on Earth should now take Wing and fly up to Heaven our Love once in corrupt conjunction with Creatures should now aspire after a pure Union with him who is Love it self Our delights should no longer toy or sport with vanity but spread and sweetly dilate themselves in the Beams of infinite Goodness All the Powers of our Souls should now be gathered in from the World and upon on a full deliberate choice should be placed upon the Center of Perfections The proof of all this must be in a life of Obedience without this it is meer vanity to say that we love him Holy Love goes not alone or without a train of good works following after it the warmth and ardor of it in the heart purifies the life the inward suavity of it facilitates the outward Command and naturalizes us to Obedience as it sets a high rate and estimation upon God himself so upon every jot and tittle of his Law The complacency which we find in him makes us take pleasure in all the pure ways which he hath set before us if we esteem him above Worlds and Creatures we will allow his Will to be above all Wills and subject ours to it Moreover the Love of God moves us to love our Neighbour What hath God gone before us in such admirable steps of Love and shall we not be followers of him as dear children and walk in love as the Apostle speaks Eph. 5.1 2 Can there be an higher or nobler pattern than Love it self Shall he do good in the sphere of Nature and more and higher good in the sphere of Grace and we do none in our little sphere Shall infinite Bowels and Mercies be open and finite ones shut When God hath given so great a Gift as his own Son May we withhold our little Pittances of Charity Would we receive all and give nothing Exact pence from our Brother when Talents are forgiven to our selves Is God come into our flesh and shall we hide our selves from it I mean in the neglect or contempt of the poor Did he take humanity that we should put it off No in so doing we should reproach not our Maker only but our Redeemer too Inhumanity is now double treble to what it was before our Saviour took an humane Nature to read us a Lecture of Love and Goodness in the old Commandment of Love is now a new one urged upon us by a new Motive The incomparable Love of God in his giving his Son for us If we now shut up our Bowels and Mercies from others how dwelleth the Love of God in us What sense can we have of it upon our hearts Charity was the badg of the Primitive Christians The impress of Gods Love upon Mr. Fox was so great that he never denied any that asked for Jesus sake Our Love towards men should be a little picture or resemblance of Gods Love towards us Our Mercies and Compassions should tell the world that we have tasted of that infinite Grace and Mercy which is above Our Charity towards all should bear witness that we have been great receivers from God Our Love towards Enemies should be a thankful acknowledgment that we being such were reconciled to God by the Death of his Son CHAP. VI. Chap. 6 The Power of God manifest in Christ In his Incarnation and Conception In his Miracles These were true in the History True in the Nature of Miracles They were numerous and great They were suited to the Evangelical design Divine Power manifest in converting the
present evil one The Philosophers with all their Arts and Eloquence could not decoy them from supernatural Mysteries or induce them to take up their repose in humane Learning or Wisdom The whole World was annihilated to them and they unto themselves they became fools that they might be wise and Nothing that God might be All the Ornaments and Self-excellencies were put off that they might be compleat in Christ They lay at Gods feet for Mercy and lived in a continual dependance upon the influences of his Spirit and Grace In such a work as this the Arm of God must needs be revealed in a very eminent manner Here we have just cause to say What hath God wrought The Divine Power will yet more appear if we look upon the instruments in this Work In making the World there were none at all no Leavers or Engines to rear up the great Fabrick An Almighty word absolved it in converting it instruments were used but such that by the no-proportion between them and the great effect it might appear that the Power was of God only He sent not the glorious Angels to Preach up a crucified Christ but Men. The treasure was in Earthen-vessels in poor frail Mortals who carried about bodies of Clay That the excellency of the power might be of God 2 Cor. 4.7 that it might be clearly seen that the great Work was Gods Among men he sent not the Anshe Shem Persons of Renown for Learning or Wisdom but mean illiterate men Hence the Apostle saith God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise and the weak things of the world to confound the mighty 1 Cor. 1.27 that the Divine Power might appear in the Work These mean men preached not with excellency of speech or wisdom 1 Cor. 2.1 with the charms of Eloquence or the pomp of humane Wisdom but with plain words their Preaching was look't upon as foolishness That salvation should be by a crucified Christ seemed foolish that it should be communicated by Preaching Sclat in Pools Synop. seemed more foolish that it should be done by Preaching in a low simple plain manner seemed most foolish of all Yet in this way it was that Christ would ride conquering and to conquer the World to himself The great success of their Preaching was a signal proof that God was with them of a truth At Peters first Sermon three thousand souls were converted unto God Act. 2.41 and at his second they were encreased to five thousand Act. 4.4 multitudes of Believers came in to Christianity In a little time the Gospel was propagated over a great part of the World one Paul spread it from Jerusalem to Illyricum And what did all the rest of the Apostles who carried about this Evangelical light do What did the seventy Disciples do who as Ecclesiastical Writers say had their several Provinces to Preach the Gospel in The word did then run and was glorified it passed through many Countries with a Divine swiftness and success at the sound of the Gospel the World was spiritually turned upside down and of Pagan became Christian Tertullian enumerates divers Nations and at last adds touching us Britannorum inaccessa Romanis loca Christo tamen subdita sunt the Evangelical Power entred there where the Roman could not By such weak means to produce so great an effect was a work worthy of Omnipotence Moreover the Divine Power will yet more appear if we consider the things proposed in the Gospel Narces the Roman-General discontented at the Empress Sophia to invite the Lombards into Italy sent them many sorts of excellent fruits from thence The Present being congruous to sense the project took effect The Gospel indeed proposes very excellent things to us But they are so great and so far above humane Nature that the proposal if not accompanied with a Divine Power would have been altogether ineffectual I shall instance in two or three things 1. It proposes super-rational Mysteries such as the Doctrine of the Sacred Trinity The Incarnation of the Son of God The Satisfaction made to Justice by his Blood These are objects of Faith and so depend one upon another that unless we believe the Trinity we cannot believe the Incarnation and unless we believe that we cannot believe a Satisfaction and without believing that we cannot fulfil the condition of the Gospel which requires us to rest upon Christ for salvation These therefore are necessary objects of Faith but without an Act of Divine Power Faith in these cannot be had Two things evidence this the one is ex parte objecti the things are above Reason As the things of Reason are above Sense so the things of Faith are above Reason without a Revelation Reason could not have found out these Mysteries after it Reason cannot comprehend them It may shadow them out by similitudes but there is in them a light unapproachable such as Reason cannot look into an infinite Abyss such as Reason cannot measure The other is ex parte subjecti man who is to believe these things is fallen and in his fall not one or two faculties fell but all of them and among the rest his intellectual and believing faculties fell also The intellect hath lost its subjection to God the Supreme Truth The believing faculty centers in the Creature and without the Power of Grace cannot lift up it self to supernatural Truths A Divine Power is requisite to captivate the understanding to the first Truth to elevate the believing faculty to super-rational Mysteries Hence in Scripture Faith is called the Gift and Work of God such an one as is the product of Divine Power it is wrought by Power Eph. 1.19 it is fulfilled and consummated by Power 1 Thes 1.11 it is stiled the spirit of faith 2 Cor. 4.13 It is not from our own spirit but Gods outwardly revealing the mysterious object in Scripture and inwardly inlightning and elevating the heart to entertain it Hence Fulgentius compares the production of Faith in the heart Carnem illam nec concipere Virgo posset nec parere nisi ejusdem carnis Spiritus Sanctus operaretur exortum in hominis corde nec concipi sides poterit nec augeri nisi eam Spiritus Sanctus infundat nutrint ex eodem Spiritu venati sumus ex spuo natus est Christus Fulg. de Incar cap. 20. with the conception of Christ in the Virgins Womb both are by one and the same Spirit Christ is no less formed in the heart by it than his flesh was in the Virgin It is therefore a work of Power to raise up the mind of man to believe those supernatural Mysteries which are far above it self 2. It proposes super-moral Virtues It would have us to be humble and deny our selves To sanctifie the Lord in our hearts To have a love for his Goodness a fear for his Majesty and Greatness a faith for his Truth and Mercy a sincerity for his all-seeing eye and such a posture of soul
gush out with water all the Creatures should muster up themselves to defend the body of Christ Thus that excellent person One thing more as a seal to all the rest may be noted Christ the head of the Church hath all the power in heaven and in earth Mat. 28.18 He is head over all things to the Church Eph. 1.22 The Church is the primary mark and scope of his Government therefore he rules with an eye upon it and orders other things in a way subservient to it Having seen the Divine Providence manifested in Christ I shall now consider what Objections or Exceptions have been made against Providence and how and in what manner they are solved in Christ First Epicurus denied a Providence God saith he hath no business at least not in the lower world This he said as Gregory Nyssen observes because he would not have God to be Creator of the World and if he were not Creator how should he be a Provisor The fundamental reason why Epicurus denied a Providence was that opinion of his that an infinite number of Atoms dancing in inanity did at last by a fortunate chance meet together in a world To this opinion a no-Providence best accords a world made by chance should be ruled so Why should God rule in a world not of his own making But that opinion in it self is very monstrous and absurd Atoms did by good fortune make a world But as an ancient hath it Vnde ista corpuscula whence came these lucky Atoms Are they Temporal or Eternal things If Temporal they must own a Maker whom they oppose If Eternal they must be invariable that is dance on in their inanity and never sit down in a world How should Atoms if eternal produce so imperfect a thing as chance or chance so irregular in it self produce such an harmonious order as is in the world May the blind Particles of matter rally themselves into a world or which way should they sink into an Earth melt into a Sea spread into a Firmament inflame themselves into a Sun Moon and Stars and subtiliate themselves into Life Sense and Reason It is far easier to believe that Letters should casually cast themselves into an accurate Poem or that Stones and Timber should happily lay their heads together in a delicate structure than that Atoms should chance to meet and settle in a world incomparably transcending all humane Arts and Composures And could a world be so made how should it be secured Who shall clip the Wings of those Atoms or chain them to their seats that they may not fly away from their bodies and dance again in inanity It being most rational that a world made by chance should be so dissolved Reason tells us that in this opinion we have nothing but an heap of absurdities but Scripture tells us That the World was not made by Chance but by Christ the Eternal Word and Wisdom of the Father in whom as the Schoolmen say was the Eternal Idea of all things according to which as the grand Exemplar all were made The Eternal Wisdom which comprized all in it self produced all in time Another objection which Epicurus made against Providence was this God being blessed in himself must not trouble or disparage himself by taking care of these inferior things But this is as great non-sense as the other What! can there be trouble in a pure Act in one who can do every thing by a word of power who needs only to speak and the thing is done May there be a disparagement in ruling over what he hath made Are not these inferior things the works of his hands If not how came they out of nullity If so how doth he disparage himself by ruling over his own works If it be a disparagement to care for them was it not so to create them Nay Non secisse nulla injustitia non curare summa inclementia Officior l. 1. c. 13. as St. Ambrose hath observed not to make them was no injustice not to care for them being made is great inclemency But the greatest solution of all we have in Christ in him we plainly see the Son of God very God not only taking care about his creatures but which is a condescension infinitely lower though without disparagement assuming a creature an humane nature into his own Sacred Person No man may now dream that Providence doth in the least disparage the Deity Leaving Epicurus I pass unto another exception There may be a Providence over some things but surely not over the free acts of men Epicurus thought some things too low for Providence others think human acts because free too high for it Thus Cicero thought Aust de civ Dti l. 5. c. 9. that if there were a certain order of things and causes human Liberty would be subverted there would be no room for Laws or Exhortations or Virtues or Vices or Rewards or Punishments This made St. Austin pass that censure upon him Dum vult facere liberos sacit sacrilegos While he would make men free he made them sacrilegious Thus the Pelagians affirmed That the will is destroyed if it want the help of another That Jerom ad ctesiphont c. 3. there being a free-will God is no further necessary to us indeed the posse or power is from God but the velle or willing August de Grat. Christi cap. 4. is only from our selves Thus Socinus distinguishes between the internal and external acts of men Pralect Theol. cap. 7. the internal are only in mans power as not belonging to the administration of the world the external may fall under Providence but not the internal Volkelius and others go the very same way This Opinion to me is a very impious one it highly disparages Divine Providence it is in effect as much as to say God hath nothing to rule over but the Brutal World the Rational is lost out of his dominions It takes away the glory and crown of Providence which rules over free Agents in so rare and admirable a manner that they though moving upon the wings of liberty do infallibly hit the mark It subverts the certainty of Providence and that in those things which were positively decreed by God and of the highest moment to men What more positively decreed or more highly momentous to the Jewish Church than those two famous deliverances from Egypt and Babylon Or what more positively decreed or more highly momentous to the whole world than the sufferings of our Saviour Yet these things being to come to pass by the free acts of men and those free acts not being under Providence the event must needs be pendulous and uncertain as those free acts upon which the event depends are Providence having no soveraign dominion over those free acts doth not ascertain the Event but leave it dubious and fluctuating till the human Will determines it self And what is this but to make Providence nothing and man an independent Agent And whither
doth this tend but to the utter subversion of Piety We should say in piety If the Lord will Ames Bell. Ener de lib. Arb. c. 2. we will do this or that Jam. 4.15 but according to this opinion God himself may say If man will I will do this or that This made the famous Bradwardine justly cry out De Causa Dei l. 2. c. 30. Quis enim Theologicus aut Catholicus imo vel Haereticus Schismaticus aut Paganus audeat se praeponere Deo suo dicere seipsum Dominum Deum suum servum seipsum superiorem Deum inferiorem seipsum architectum principalem artificem Deum vero subservientem suum quodammodo instrumentum What Divine or Catholick yea what Heretick Schismatick or Pagan dares prefer himself before his God to say that he is Lord God the servant he Superior God inferior he the Architect and principal Artificer God subservient and a kind of instrument under him Moreover it directly contradicts Scripture God touched their hearts and Saul had a band 1 Sam. 10.26 God opened the heart of Lydia and the Gospel had entrance Acts 16.14 God turneth the Kings heart and that whither he will Prov. 21.1 God draws men and they come to Christ John 6.44 God put it into the Kings heart and the Temple was beautified Ezra 7.27 God worketh to will and to do of his own good pleasure Phil. 2.13 None of these can be true if Providence rule not over the wills and hearts of men but that it doth so is not only clear in these instances but in an eminent manner appears in Jesus Christ his humane Will was free and yet infallibly guided by his divine Hence he tells us That he did nothing of himself Joh. 8.28 nay and that he could do nothing of himself Joh. 5.19 The divine Will inclined the whole suppositum and moved the humane and that as the learned Professor speaks Dr. wards Deter fol. 120. Non suasoriè tantum sed efficienter physicè that man therefore who thinks his humane Will above Providence presumes his Liberty to be above that in the humane Nature of our Saviour But here it is objected that if Providence rule over the Will humane Liberty is destroyed I answer Humane Liberty is so highly magnified by some that they speak very strangely touching the things of God Hence Penottus dreams that the divine Decrees touching humane Acts are not to be conceived as definitive sentence but as a pendent one till the human Will have determined it self God must wait till he see what Man will do Nay hence Schlictingius confidently lays it down Contr. Meisn de Praed fol. 10. that the infallible Prescience of God infers a necessity upon humane Acts as well as his absolute Decree that necessity if granted takes away all Piety It seems that man may be free God must not only suspend his Eternal Decrees but part with his Prescience also Thus presumptuous is the pride of Man in asserting his own Liberty but for the thing it self Providence and humane Liberty do very well consist together Providence is not destructive but salvative of humane Liberty it imposes upon humane Acts not a necessity of Coaction but of Immutability only such as no way trenches upon the creatures Freedom Some I suppose will not admit that distinction but that it is a necessary one appears thus On the one hand it is impossible that any act of mans Will should fall under a necessity of Coaction for then it should will nolent on the other 't is impossible that any act of mans Will should come to pass in any other way than under a necessity of Immutability For whatever comes to pass before its existence was future and whatever is future comes to pass immutably if it was not future before it cannot come to pass at all if it was future before it comes to pass immutably for a future cannot cease to be future till it come into actual existence But to pass this I shall lay down some Considerations touching the consistence of Providence and humane Liberty 1. It is to be noted that God is infinite in all Perfections incomparably transcending all creatures that all creatures are finite but as a little drop or dust a vanity or quasi nothing before him This Consideration in an humble heart is able to solve even seeming contradictions Gods immensity though as indivisible as a point comprizes the world without crushing the least quantity together Gods Eternity though an instant environs ages without confounding the least sand of temporal succession And why may not Gods Will De Gen. ad Liter l. 6. c. 15. though in St. Austins phrase it be rerum necessitas comprehend created Wills within its Decrees without any violence or unkind pressure upon their liberty God is infinite the creature finite infinite cannot but unmeasurably transcend finite finite cannot but be every way ruleable by infinite Let us remember that God is God and if men deifie their own Free-will that he is a God above all gods Psal 135.5 And then the next verse will be an easie consequence Whatsoever the Lord pleased that he did in heaven and earth Vers 6. As the Heavens are higher than the Earth so his thoughts are above ours and therefore the one may easily be conceived to encircle the other to say that the humane Will without a damage to its liberty is not ruleable by Providence is to say that infinite Wisdom and Power have posed themselves in making such a creature as they could not govern without destroying its faculties and to say that the humane Will though ruleable by Providence is not so ruled is to say that the great King of kings and Lord of lords hath voluntarily and without any necessity for it waved his Principality over his noblest creatures over the wills and hearts of men 2. That Providence and humane Liberty should consist together is necessary on all hands On Gods part that he may rule like a God over the noblest creatures that the great things which were to be brought forth through the free acts of men might come to pass as became Providence in a sure and infallible way on mans part that he may act though as a man rationally yet as a creature dependently upon God that he may humbly acknowledg that all his liberty is but a drop or little beam from him who is the fountain of Power and therefore must hang upon him in its being and working Free-will is a principle to his own operations yet as the Schoolmen speak it is principium sub Deo post Deum Bon. in Sent. l. 2. dist 25. a principle under God and after God 3. The suavity and congruity of Providence reconciles the matter God doth not ruin his creatures in the ruling of them nor destroy his works that he may fulfil his will 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Providence so applies it self to every thing as to preserve its nature
from the fountain of light Leaving the first Truth it wanders and loses it self in a wilderness of Errors Forgetting its great Original it gropes in the dark about the Supreme End and cannot of it self find the dore to true happiness It doth and that by a singular priviledg above other creatures know its Maker and yet in an unreasonable manner it turns away from him and seeks an happiness in the lower World or at best in it self It should like the Celestial bodies move circularly and after a survey of all creatures return back to the same point from whence it came which is the bosom of God himself and yet it flies away from him and makes its nest in one Creature-vanity or other It hath a natural and indelible instinct after happiness and perpetually cryes out Who will shew us any good And yet it is not able so much as by a holy thought to aspire after the great Blessedness set forth before it in the Gospel Heavy things descend by a right line to their center Brutes hasten to those things which are congruous and convenient to their natures Only Man though endowed far above these with Reason and Liberty falls short and misses the mark Pure Precepts excellent Promises heavenly Mysteries are set before him in the Gospel yet without a supernatural illumination he cannot perceive or receive them at most he sees them only in the image or picture of the Letter but not in their liveliness and spiritual glory a form or shell of knowledg he may have but he doth not tast or savour the sweetness of them And all this because his Reason though active enough in naturals is in spirituals but as an eye without an optick faculty dark nay darkness it self The Will though its proper object be good turns away from God who is Goodness it self and seeks its chief good somewhere else It opens it self in a free choice to every vanity that passes by yet is it shut to God and all the offers of grace forsaking God the Fountain of Liberty it becomes an arrant Slave and Drudg to sin and which is wonderfully prodigious it is in love with its chains and loth to be made free indeed All the goodness in God Christ Heaven Blessedness outwardly proposed move it not to stir a foot towards such attracting objects still it hangs in vanity and lyes upon the dunghill of the world and rowls it self in the mire of one lust or other It hath an enmity against God who made it free it would be above his Will who is Supreme rather than its inordinate lusts should be restrained it would have God cease to be There is in every man De Civit. l. 14. cap. 28. as St. Austin speaks Amor sui usque ad contemptum Dei a love of himself even to the contempt of God The Affections are all vain earthly carnal mutinous against reason insomuch that they by an unnatural violence depose it and so unman the man Hence he becomes as the beasts that perish The Reason saith this or that is good but the Affections repugn and resist The Soul is paralytick Reason moves to the right hand Affection to the left and carries all before it Hence that saying Video meliora proboque deteriora sequor The Affections which primitively were servants to Reason are now upon the Throne Reason though once a Royal Prince is dethroned and become servile That which is the glory of our nature and proves us to be men that is hurried up and down by the rude rabble of lusts and malapert passions This being the natural frame and temper of man let us sit down and consider Was it thus from the beginning Was humane nature such in the first impression Did God put his Reason under a Cloud or his Will into chains and servitude Was it from God that the one turns away from the first truth and the other from the chief good Did God put into man an instinct after happiness in vain or inspire into him an immortal spirit that it might creep upon the earth and pour out it self to every vanity Did God create man at variance with himself and at first set up that unnatural intestine war which is between the rational and sensitive powers Was it his pleasure that the inferior faculties in man should contumaciously reluct against the superior or that the superior should basely serve the inferior Without doubt it cannot be God is light purity Wisdom it self these things are darkness corruption ataxy and cannot be from him No other account can be given of them but this That they are the bruises of the fall the wounds of corrupt nature 3. No man who looks abroad into the World can with any colour oppose this truth The millions of actual sins which as a mighty deluge overspread the world are as so many pregnant proofes of that original pravity which is in us In the old world all flesh had corrupted its way Gen. 6.12 Afterwards all nations walked in their own ways Acts 14.16 That is in sinful ones sin is the course of the world Ephes 2.2 It is the element and proper ubi of it the whole world lies in it 1 Joh. 5.19 And whence is it that sin is so universal that iniquity abounds in all times and places Our Saviour opens the bloody fountain of it Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts murders adulteries fornications thefts false-witness blasphemies Matt. 15.19 All these black troops of wickedness issue out from the corrupt heart of man the inherent pravity which is there is seminally all the monsters of vice The Apostle Paul proving all under sin doth thus describe the corrupt estate of men There is none righteous no not one There is none that understandeth none that seeketh after God They are all gone out of the way they are together become unprofitable there is none that doeth good no not one Their throat is an open sepulcher with their tongues they have used deceit the poison of asps is under their lips Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness Their feet are swift to shed blood Destruction and misery are in their ways The way of peace have they not known There is no fear of God before their eyes Rom. 3. Here the Apostle paints out corrupt nature not that all men actually do these things but that there is in every one even from their infancy a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an universal seminary of iniquity a venemous root of all actual sins In this respect the description appertains to all even to little infants and the scope of the Text requires that it should be so interpreted for before this description the Apostle tells us that all are under sin vers 9 and after it that every mouth is stopped that all the world is guilty before God that by the deeds of the law no flesh shall be justified in his sight vers 19 20 and afterwards that all have sinned and come short of the
glory of God vers 23. If the description did not reach all men his conclusions drawn from thence would not hold the description might extend to some yet others at least little Infants might not be sinners or guilty and consequently might be justified by the Law as having nothing against them The Apostle therefore here by the actual sins of some proves original sin in all and upon that account proves all to be guilty under sin and unjustifiable by the Law because all have that inherent pravity which is the root of actual sins St. James tells us That every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed Jam. 1.14 Lust or original concupiscence is the great tempter it doth not only entice as an object but by a kind of impetus and importunity it draws us away from God the infinite goodness to one creature-vanity or other by its motions and titillations it wooes for a consent and afterwards it brings forth the outward act of sin The world tempts outwardly but this is domesticus hostis a traitor within in our own bosom it tempts not objectively only but effectively really inclining us to sin it is a perpetual tempter Resist the Devil and he will fly from you Jam. 4.7 but make never so great a resistence against this lust it will not in this life fly from you neither can you fly from it This is that which conceives and brings forth all the actual sins in the world Nay it is that which distils sinfulness into the best actions of Saints all the crying abominations in the world and all the defects in the Church are the progeny of it This is the root of all bitterness the fomes peccati the nest and womb of all actual sins It may be thought perhaps that all this discourse is besides the intended scope original sin was not exemplified in Christ But I answer It was not indeed exemplified in him but the Doctrine of it may be undeniably drawn from him To this end I shall offer these particulars 1. The conception of Christ is very considerable He was conceived in the Virgins womb not in the ordinary way of nature not by the conjunction of man and woman but in a Divine and extraordinary manner in a way above all the power and law of nature Hence the Angel tells the Virgin Mary The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee and the power of the highest shall overshadow thee Luk. 1.35 Hence it is said that she was found with child of the Holy Ghost Matt. 1.18 That is the body of Christ was formed by the infinite power and virtue though not out of the substance of the Holy Spirit The substance of Christs flesh was taken out of the Virgin and like unto ours but the structure and manner of framing of it was infinitely surmounting that of ours Hence his flesh is said to be a tabernacle not made with hands not of this building Heb. 9.11 It was not set up in the natural way of generation but in a miraculous supernatural manner and why was it thus but that his humane nature might as St. Luke speaks be an holy thing pure from the least tincture of sin All men who come from Adam in a natural way contract guilt and pravity in their original but his flesh was formed out of the substance of a Virgin in a miraculous and extraordinary manner that so he though like to us in all things might not be like to us in sin that he might partake of our flesh and blood in a pure and unspotted way here we see purity was his prerogative the common lot of our nature is corruption It 's true the Pelagians are not afraid to assert That Christ was free from all contagion of sin Aust ad Bon. l. 4. c. 2. Non excellentia propria gratia singulari sed communione naturae quae omnibus inest infantibus Not by any proper excellency and singular grace but by a communion of that nature which is in all Infants But this is in effect to say that the coming of the Holy Ghost upon the Virgin the overshadowing her by the power of the Highest were superfluous and vain all might have been as well in an ordinary way this is to rob Christ of his prerogative to bring down the Saviour to the common level of the saved which can never indeed come to pass There is a great difference between Christ and us in this point our bodies are formed in the ordinary course of nature but his was formed in an extraordinary supernatural way We were in Adam secundum rationem seminalem We descended from the seminal vertue in him But he was in Adam only secundum substantiam corporalem He took the materials of a body from the Virgin but the modus conceptionis the manner of framing of it was supernatural We come forth into the world by that common benediction Increase and multiply but he came into the flesh by that singular promise The seed of the woman shall break the Serpents head We see here a plain difference Hence it appears that purity was a singular priviledg in Christs birth and pollution is the common lot of ours 2. The capacity Christ stood in is to be noted He was set up to be a common head of righteousness and life and that tells us that before him there was another who by his fall was a common head of sin and death Famous is that place Rom. 5 If by one mans offence death reigned by one much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one Jesus Christ As by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men to justification of life As by one mans disobedience many were made sinners so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous We see here two heads Adam and Christ both are set before us the one cannot be well known without the other the Pagans know neither Christians must confess both If they say Christ is an head communicating righteousness and immortality to us they must also say Adam was an head communicating sin and death to us else the Apostles Parallel is vain and frivolous in that Christ who obeyed in a publick capacity is opposed to Adam who sinned only in a private one Both these heads must be admitted or neither if both then there is sin from Adam as well as righteousness from Christ Epist 190. Thus St. Bernard saith Alius qui peccatorem constituit alius qui justificat a peccato alter in semine alter in sanguine One Adam makes us sinners another makes us righteous the one by his seed the other by his blood if neither then the obedience of Christ is made fruitless and to no purpose Hence St. Austin saith De Nat. Grat. c. 6. 7. That the Doctrine of Original sin
Grace is pure Grace his Love is meerly from himself Hence is that emphatical reduplication The elect whom he hath chosen Matt. 13.20 As if our Saviviour had said in Election there is nothing but pure Election nothing on mans part all is from the good pleasure of God This Truth is notably set forth in our Saviour Christ he was Gods chosen Servant Matt. 12.18 The Lamb fore-ordained 1 Pet. 1.20 And as St. Austin stiles him praeclarissimum lumen praedestinationis gratiae the most famous light of Praedestination and Grace He was as man predestinated to the superlative glory of the Hypostatical Union and that not out of any foreseen holiness in his human nature for all that did flow out of that union but out of meer grace the human nature did not do or merit ought to be advanced into that ineffable excellency neither may any man say Cur non ego Why were not I so advanced Nature is common but Grace is singular Here we have the Prototype and grand Exemplar of Predestination Christ was predestinated to be the Head we are predestinated to be his members He as man was predestinated that by an admirable assumption he should be the natural Son of God We are predestinated that we should be adopted ones He was predestinated to be such without any precedent merits or works We are predestinated to be such without them Hence the Apostle saith That we are predestinated to be conformed to the image of his Son that he might be the first-born among many brethren Rom. 8.29 Both Predestinations were free and in our Predestination there was a kind of imitation of his De bono persever l. 2. c. 24. Hence St. Austin saith Et illum nos Praedestinavit quia in illo ut esset caput nostrum in nobis ut ejus corpus essemus non praecessura merita nostra sed opera sua futura praescivit He predestinated him and us that he should be our Head and we his Body was not from our merit but the work of God It is certain that the Members cannot be above the Head they were not elected to a Beatifical Vision out of foreseen faith and perseverance when the Head was elected to the Hypostatical Union out of meer grace 3. It is of free grace that God calls men There is a double call an External and an Internal one both are of grace 1. The External call is of grace The Gospel is not a debt but a meer gift freely given to men It may be substracted from a Nation for their sins but it is never given to a Nation for their worthiness for all men are unworthy of it When God gives it to some it is not for their dignity when he denies it to others there is always in them a concomitant indignity of it No natural man can be worthy of it It is meerly of Gods good pleasure that the Sun of Righteousness shines in one part of the world and not in another that the Evangelical dew falls in some places and not in others Here the only solution is that of our Saviour Even so Father for so it seemed good in thy sight Mat. 11.26 I know it is here said by some That facienti quod in se est Deus non denegat gratiam To him who doth what he can God denies not grace The promise is Habenti dabitur To him that hath that is rightly useth what he hath more shall be given Upon the right use of naturals the Pagans might have supernaturals The Gospel in such a case should be revealed to them But as Bishop Davenant observes experience confutes this Proferant ab orbe condito vel unius Pagani exemplum saith he Determ f. 236. Let them bring forth if they can the example of one Pagan since the world began who by the right use of naturals attained to Evangelical Grace One would think that such as Socrates and Plato might if any rightly use naturals but they had not the Gospel manifested to them which yet hath been revealed to the poor Americans who comparatively to the other were brutish and barbarous That of the Schools Facienti quod in se est Deus non denegat gratiam Serm printed An. Dom. 1632. fol. 286. is as Bishop Saunderson in his Sermons calleth it the rotten principle and foundation of the whole frame of Arminianism ultimately it resolves all into nature Salvation is resolved into Faith Faith into the Gospel preached that into the use of naturals Nature may now lift up its hand and touch the Crowns of Glory above Grace may fall down to so low a rate as to be earned at the fingers ends of Nature And what is this but pure impure Pelagianism In the Palestine Synod Pelagius but for his counterfeit recantation had had a just anathema for that saying Gratiam dari secundum merita Secundum merita with the Fathers is all one with secundum opera and secundum opera all one with facienti quod in se est The Apostle flatly opposes this opinion He hath called us with an holy calling not according to our works but according to his own purpose and grace 2 Tim. 1.9 The call is not according to works or according to the use of naturals but meerly purely totally from Grace Rightly to use naturals is to live up to the light of nature that tells us that God is the Supreme good and therefore in all reason to be loved with a supreme love We should not give him part of the price but all the mind heart soul spirit and that in pure perfection and who where is the Saint on earth that doth so Their purest acts of love come forth ex laeso principio out of an heart sanctified but in part and in their egress from thence cannot but have a taint or tincture from the indwelling corruption and may we imagine that God should offer the Pagans a Gospel on such terms as no Saint on earth ever arrived at Or that he would have them go about by the way of perfection to enjoy a Gospel of Grace It cannot be But suppose that they may have it upon a sincere love of him Can a Pagan out of natural Principles truly love God May true Love be without Faith the Root or without the Spirit the inspirer of all Graces Or doth the Holy Spirit work in a supernatural way without a Gospel or Ordinances Or if it did doth it work and not effect so much as the first element in Christianity I mean a sense of the want of Grace May the Spirit converse in those unclean places where nothing appears but Error Pride Idolatry Impiety and Wickedness of all sorts It is not reasonable to believe it If Nature could lift up it self to a sincere love of God the Spirit and the Gospel seem to be superfluous thereunto And as for habenti dabitur it speaks not to the point in hand because it speaks not of the use of natural
he ought the greatest Saint though a man full of divine principles stands in need of assistance And doth a natural man one void of good fraught with evil need no more Is regenerating quickning renewing new-creating grace nothing but an assistance only May any one believe that the holy Spirit in Scripture should give such high stately titles to an assistance only May a man be a co-operator or co-partner with God in the raising up faith and a new creature in himself It 's true a natural man may by a common grace enter upon preparatories he may attend upon the means but what can he contribute to the work it self he is meerly natural the new creature is totally supernatural and what can he do towards it could he contribute ought what would the new creature be must it not be part natural as from man part supernatural as from God part old as from nature part new as from grace Thus it must be if this great work be divided between God and man Notable is that of Lactantius De fal Rel. Lib. 1. Cap. 11. Jovem Junonemque a juvando esse dictos Cicero interpretatur Jupiter quasi Juvans Pater dictus quod nomen in Deum minimè congruit quia juvare hominis est opis aliquid conferentis in eum qui sit egens alicujus beneficii nemo sic Deum precatur ut se adjuvet sed ut servet ut vitam salutemque tribuat nullns pater dicitur filios juvare cum eos generat aut educat illud enim levius est quam ut eo verbo magnitudo paterni beneficii exprimatur quanto id magis est inconveniens Deo qui verus est Pater per quem sumits cujus toti sumus a quo fingimier animamur illuminamur And at last he concludes Non intelligit beneficia divina qui se juvari modo a Deo putat He understands not divine benefits who thinks himself only helped by God Jehovah must not be transformed into a Jupiter or a meer helper man must not share with him in this great work it is God who makes us new creatures and not we our selves We are his workmanship not our own Ephes 2.10 Born not of the will of man but of God Joh. 1.13 As soon as a man is regenerate it may be truly said of him Hic homo jam naâ—ns est ex Deo this man is now born of God but to say that he is in part born of mans will is to blaspheme the Author of our spiritual being and to crown Nature instead of Grace 3. The holy principles of Grace are produced by an act of Divine power God lays the foundations of faith and the new creature as it were in mighty waters in the very same heart in which there is a fountain and torrent of corruption and no power less than the Divine can put back the stream of nature and set up the Heavenly structure of Grace in such an heart The production of gracious principles is in Scripture set forth in glorious titles such as do import power 't is called a Transtation Col. 1.13 it transplants and carries us away out of a state of sin into a state of grace 'T is a Generation Jam. 1.18 it begets us to a participation of the Divine Nature 'T is a Resurrection Ephes 2.5 It quickens us and inspires into us a Supernatural life of which the fall had left no spark or relick at all 'T is a Creation Eph. 2.10 it raises up a new creature out of nothing and gives us a spiritual being which before we had not and if these things do not speak power nothing can Hence the Apostle speaks of the Gospel coming in power 1 Thes 1.5 Nay that in the success of it there is an excellency of power 2 Cor. 4.7 and an exceeding greatness of power towards Believers Eph. 1.19 The work of faith is said to be fulfilled with power 2 Thes 1.11 How much more must it be an act of power to lay the Primordials and first principles of faith in a fallen unbelieving creature When there was nothing appearing in our lapsed nature but a vacuum a chaos of sin a spiritual death and nullity only the Divine power was able to repair the ruins of the fall and rear up the Heavenly life and nature in us This great truth was notably set forth in the conception of our Saviour Christ it was not in the course of nature his Mother knew not a man but the Holy Ghost came upon her the power of the highest overshadowed her that the holy thing might be born of her Luk. 1.35 In like manner when Christ is formed in the heart when the new-creature is set up in us it is not in the way of nature we know not the humane power in this work here is no less than dextra excelsi the right hand of the most High to effect it here are vestigia spiritus sancti the footsteps of the holy Spirit to bring it to pass the same power and spirit which formed Christ in the womb formes him in the heart as in his participation of the humane nature there was a Supernatural operation so is there in our participation of the Divine This is the first efficacy of Grace it new creates the heart and imprints the Divine image there it inspires holy Principles and so lays a foundation for obedience 2. There is an efficacy of Grace as to actual believing and willing St. Bernard asks the question Quid agit liberum arbitrium What doth Free-will do and then answers De Lib. Arbit Grat. Salvatur it is saved And Agatho in his Epistle lays down this as a rule Quod a Christo non susceptum est 6. Gen. Conc. Act. 4. nec salvatum est si ab eo humana voluntas suscepta est salvata est That which was not assumed by Christ is not saved by him If an humane will was assumed then it is saved and it is saved first in that principles of holy rectitude are instilled into it and then in that those principles are drawn forth in actual willing both these are necessary the first implants the vital principles of Grace in the heart the second makes them blossom and bring forth precious fruit without those vital principles the will however assisted ab extra is internally in it self but a faculty meerly natural and void of spiritual life it hath no proportion to the vital supernatural acts of Faith and Love Neither is it possible that any such should issue out from thence no not by any extrinsecal assistance whatsoever an act if vital and supernatural must be from an internal principle that is such Again unless those vital principles bring forth actual believing and willing they must needs lie dead and come to nothing And yet if we estimate things according to their worth and excellency we cannot but think it much more easie and eligible for the wise and good God to suffer an
is it imputed to us it is derived down upon us as Members of him else the want of Righteousness in us is not a privative want of what we once had in Adam and afterwards lost in him but a meer negative want as being only of that we never had or forfeited Adam's Righteousness being not imputed to us we never had it Adam's sin being not imputed to us we never forfeited it such a meer negative want is no sin Nay if Adam's sin be not imputed to us our inherent pravity is no sin it cannot be sin in unfallen Creatures it is no sin to be born into the World there is no foundation in us to make it sin and the consequence of this is that there is no such thing as original sin at all in us which to say is to oppose the Doctrine of the Church in all Ages We see here that such an imputation to those in conjunction is possible because it is actually done and it must needs be true because it is done by God who is Truth it self and cannot err You will say It cannot be true primitive Righteousness was never in us we never committed Adam's sin I answer This is one thing which over-turns Religion we are apt to reject that as false which our weak Reason cannot comprehend Is not an internal sin in the Will imputed to the Members of the Body if not why must the Body rise and suffer for it if so sin may be imputed to that which it never resided in in this case the conjunction salves the matter and by a parity of Reason Adam's Righteousness and Sin may be imputed to us as being parts and Members of him and the Imputation is true because it is to those in conjunction and according to a just constitution God set Adam to be a Head of Mankind we are propagated from him as Branches from the Root his fin therefore may be justly imputed to us the Imputation of it is according to the Divine Constitution But the reason of that Imputation is because Adam the Head of Mankind sinned and all in him It is a pretty question which is started in Anselm De Concept Virg. cap. 4. how the Senses and Members in Man should be guilty of sin when God himself subjected them to Man's Will I answer God's order was meet and congruous in so subjecting them yet the act of the Will renders them guilty as being in conjunction with it in like manner God's Constitution that Adam should be the Head of Mankind was just and equitable but this transgression of Adam derives a guilt upon us as being parts and Members of him 2ly The Conjunction between Christ and us must be considered and that is double The one is that Conjunction which is between Christ and Mankind in common the Titles given to Christ will manifest it he is a Mediator not only an internuntial one but a satisfying and atoning one a Mediator above all Peer or Parallel and that in all his Offices in which he acted not as a private Person or in his own name only But as the Office was in Gods or ours in his Prophetical and Kingly Offices he acted in God's Name towards us in his Priestly Office he acted in our Name towards God hence the Apostle saith that every Priest is ordained 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for Men Heb. 5.1 to act in their behalf towards God he was our Sponsor or Surety he undertook to satisfie Justice for us Loe I come to do thy will O God saith he Heb. 10.7 Burnt-offerings and Sacrifices could not pay our Debts but he would do it and for that purpose he took an Humane Nature to do it in never was there such a Surety as he he undertook to satisfie for us not as common Sureties do upon a meer contingency but upon a certain determinate Counsel not when we were solvents or able to reimburse him again but when we were known utter bankrupts under a perfect impossibility to expiate the least sin So plenary was that satisfaction that if we receive him by Faith we are Debtors no longer all our debts are blotted out of God's Book no more to be charged upon us a second payment cannot be demanded of us he was the representative of Mankind He did sustinere nostram personam he stood in our room he suffered in our stead not only nostro bono but nostro loco it may be thought perhaps that Christ was not a proper substitute but it was well said by the Learned Rivet in another case Regulis Legibus humanis Deum alligare vult pulvis cinis We are apt to limit the Holy one to our Rules and measures But if the Mysteries of Christ may be put into the straights of humane Laws and Reason he can scarce be properly any thing of that which the Scripture ascribes to him he cannot properly be a Surety and a Mediator too much less a Priest and a Sacrifice too least of all these and a Redeemer too in the same sufferings A Mediator doth not pay as a Surety doth nor a Surety offer as a Priest doth nor a Priest die as a Sacrifice doth neither is a Redeemer the very same with these but distinct from them all may there be a proper Priest and Redeemer a proper Offering and Paying a proper Sacrifice and Price in the same sufferings these conjunctions seem to carry difficulty in them Nevertheless I verily believe that he was properly all these yet in a way of transcendency above humane Law and Reason it is observable in Scripture that one notion of Christ runs into another the notion of a Mediator into that of a Redeemer he is a Mediator who gave himself a ransom 1 Tim. 2.5 6. the notion of a Mediator into that of a Priest he is a Mediator for the Redemption of Transgressions Heb. 9.15 that is for the expiation of them by offering up himself to God as it is in the precedent verse the notion of a Priest into that of a Surety hence in the midst of a Divine Discourse touching his Priesthood comes in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the surety of the Covenant Heb. 7.22 nay it is observable that these notions of Christ are interwoven with that of a Substitute as the mode of performing them Thus as a Priest he gave himself an Offering and a Sacrifice for us Ephes 5.2 as a Redeemer he was made a Curse for us Gal. 3.13 as a Mediator and Redeemer he gave himself a ransom for all 1 Tim. 2.5 6. in each of which the substitution comes in hence it appears that Christ is properly all these or else as Socinus would have it all seems to be but a Metaphor To add no more these Conjunctions tell us that Christ was so far one with us that those things fell upon him which otherwise he was utterly incapable of The Holy One was made sin the Blessed One a curse his sufferings were properly penal such as were not
in that case is treated in point of punishment as a righteous Man but he is not such indeed his plea is only a pardon he is free only à paenâ not à culpâ the Judge doth not esteem him as righteous but as one exempt from punishment nay an immunity which is ex Justitiâ as in the case of an innocent person though it suppose a Righteousness in him yet it is no more it self a righteousness than in the other case it is distinct from his Righteousness as a consequent is from its antecedent Now if a pardon or immunity from punishment be not our Righteousness then Christ's Righteousness which was penal and obediential to an infinite value and did compensate the very culpâ and free us from it is as soon as it is made ours by Imputation our Righteousness against the Law Thirdly If a pardon might be called Justification it is but improperly such there are then as I will suppose for Discourse sake three sorts of Justification to be distinguished one by the idem the very same perfect Righteousness which the Law calls for another by the tantundem a Righteousness which is a plenary satisfaction to the broken Law a third by Remission only the first is more strictly Justification than the second because the very Letter of the Law is fulfilled in it which it is not in the other the second is more properly Justification than the third because there is a plenary compensation to the Law in it when in the other there is nothing but a meer condonation the third is the most improper Justification of all the rest because it communicates not Righteousness but an Indulgence Now in our case had there been no satisfaction at all Justification if possible must have stood in remission only but a great and glorious satisfaction being made it seems very strange that Justification should consist only in the less proper in remission which frees us à paenâ whilst the proper Christ's Satisfaction which in a way of compensation frees us à culpâ is waved It is true it is not totally waved it is allowed to be an antecedent meritorious cause of Justification but being no Ingredient in it Justification still consists in the less proper while the more proper in that respect is waved Before I pass on I must consider one objection pardon takes away reatum penae the obligation to punishment and what more can be done to a sinner still the reatus culpae abides the fault will be a fault the Sinner a Sinner that is one who sinned and if no more can be done to a sinner why is not immunity from punishment his Righteousnes or what can be Righteousness if that be not so In answer to this great Objection I shall offer two or three things First It is indeed a rule of reason that factum infectum fieri non potest yet it is worthy the consideration of the Learned whether the culpâ which ever continues in facto in it self may not yet cease in jure so far as not to redound upon the Person to make him culpable I shall only mention one instance and so leave it the Blessed Virgin not being as her Son was conceived of the Holy Ghost was no doubt fubject to Original Sin that put a culpâ upon every part of her and factum infectum fieri non potest Nevertheless when the Word was made Flesh when his Body was framed out of the Substance of the Virgin no culpâ did remain or redound upon his Humane Nature much less upon his Sacred Person which assumed it in Sacred Mysteries we must not be too peremptory upon our reason but speak with all caution and reverence Secondly Beatus culpae or guilt of fault may be considered under a double notion either in it self in its intrinsecal desert of punishment or else in its redundancy upon the sinner which consists in three things First it so redounds upon him as to denominate him a sinner that is one who hath sinned then it so redounds as to make him continue worthy of punishment and again it so redounds as actually to oblige him to punishment Now the reatus in its self in its intrinsecal desert must needs be perpetual because sin cannot cease to be sin the denominating him a sinner one who hath sinned must be perpetual too because factum infectum fieri non potest but as I take it that redundancy which makes him worthy of punishment is removed in Justification and that which actually obliges him to punishment is removed in remission it is usually said in the Schools transit actus manet reatus after the Act of Sin is passed and gone the guilt abides we may say of the sinner that he hath sinned in praeterito nay and in praesenti that he is filius mortis worthy to die and suffer punishment but after he hath received the great atonement after Christ's satisfaction which is more than an aequipondium to his unworthiness is Imputed and made over to him he continues no longer worthy of punishment the sin it self is worthy of it but he is not he was once worthy of it but now he is no longer so I cannot imagine that Christ's 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or worthy ones Rev. 3.1 should remain 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 worthy of Death Rom. 1.32 Or that the pure Heavens should be inhabited by such as still continue worthy of Hell Christ's Righteousness so much out-weighs and counterpoises the meritum paenae that is in sin that though the worthiness of punishment cannot be separated from the sin it self yet it ceases to redound upon the sinner as soon as he believes and hath an interest in that Righteousness It s true the sinner as he is in himself is worthy of punishment but as he is in Christ a part or Member of him a participant of his Satisfaction he is not worthy thereof Thirdly If we look distinctly upon a satisfaction or plenary compensation for sin of the one hand and upon a pardon or immunity from punishment of the other it will be easily seen where our Righteousness lies and what is our justifying Plea and matter against the Law a pardon frees from punishment but a Satisfaction salves the honour of the broken Law repairs the damage done to it compensates for the violations of it and comes in the Room of that perfect conformity which the Law did primarily aim at in this therefore not in the other stands our Righteousness as to the Law Thus much touching my fifth Reason that Justification consists not in a pardon Sixthly Christ suffered nostro loco in our place and stead those pregnant Scriptures that he gave his Life a ransom 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the stead of many Matth. 20.28 that he gave himself 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a counterprize for all 1 Tim. 2.6 that he suffered the just for the unjust 1 Pet. 3.18 are no cold improprieties but full proofs of it he did sustinere
in Christ and then there is a Progeny of good Works first he quickens and gives us a Spiritual Being and then we walk and live an holy Life first there is a good Treasure of Grace in the Heart and then the good things are brought forth out of it Matth. 12.35 Ye have obeyed from the heart that form of Doctrine whereto or into which you were delivered saith St. Paul Rom. 6.17 Here we see whence an holy Life springs the Gospel was not only delivered to them but by the Regenerating Spirit they were delivered into it and cast into the holy Mould of it and this was the true Reason of their Obedience in an holy Life Of his own Will begat he us with the Word of Truth that we should be a kind of First-fruits of his Creatures Jam. 1.18 The Apostle in the precedent verse shews us the infinite Sun or Fountain of all good things and in this Verse he gives us a famous instance in Regeneration opposing it to that concupiscence which is immediately before spoken of conpiscence is the Fountain of sin and so is Regeneratition of holy Obedience the very end of Regeneration is that we might be a kind of First-fruits of his Creatures separate from the World and consecrated unto God in an holy Life living as those who by Regenerating Grace are made a choice portion and peculiar People to him It is observed by some Divines That the Holy Patriarchs had barren Wives that their Posterity might shadow out the Church which is not produced by the power of Nature but of Grace the end of which production is that Fruit might be brought forth unto God in an Holy Life The Hebrew Doctors say That God out of his great Name Jehovah added the Letter He to the Names of Abraham and Sarah Hence that of the Cabalists Abram non gignit sed Abraham Sarai non parit sed Sarah In allusion to this I may say It is not the Humane Principles but the Divine Nature which Believers the Children of Abraham partake of that makes them bring forth the Fruits of an holy Life We have this exemplified in a greater than Abraham even in Jesus Christ he was first conceived of the Holy Ghost and then gave us that incomparable Pattern of Holiness in his excellent Life Sutably we are first supernaturally begotten to a Spiritual Being and then we live an Holy life He that Sanctifieth and they who are Sanctified are all of one Hebr. 2.11 Hence Camero observes De Eccles 223. that between Christ and Believers there is a wonderful Communion of Nature Both have an humane Nature Sanctified by the Holy Spirit he was conceived by the Holy Spirit they are regenerated by it that they may live unto God but to make this point the clearer I shall consider the two parts of the new Creature that is Faith and Love I call them so because the Apostle who saith Neither Circumcision availeth any thing nor uncircumcision but a new Creature Gal. 6.15 saith also Neither Circumcision availeth nor uncircumcision but Faith which worketh by Love Gal. 5.6 intimating that Faith and Love are two great parts of the new Creature an holy Life flows from both these Hence some Learned Divines observe that the good Acts of Heathens have an essential defect in them the good Acts of Believers have only a gradual defect but the good Acts of Heathens have an essential one in that they do not flow from Faith and Love and so cannot Center in the Glory of God Therefore St. Austin retracts that Speech wherein he said Retr lib. 1. cap. 3. Philosophos virtutis luce fulcisse that the Philosophers did shine with the light of virtue But to speak distinctly of these two Graces First An Holy Life-issues out of Faith an holy Life is virtually in Faith and proceeds actually from it Faith sees the commands of God to be as they are richly Engraven with the Stamps and Signatures of Divine purity and equity such as Proclaim that God is in them of a truth and that they are the very Counterpains of his Heart and from hence it presses the Believer unto obedience and secretly dictates that these are the very Will of God and must be done Thy word is very pure therefore thy Servant loveth it Saith David Psal 119.140 The Emphatical therefore in the Text cannot be practically understood by any thing but Faith the Carnal Mind which is enmity to God would argue from the purity of the command to the hatred of it but Faith such is its Divine Genius argues from thence to Love and Obedience It doth not only point out the Divine Authority which is stampt upon the command but shew the purity and rectitude which is there to attract us into our duty and that we may do it in a free filial manner Faith derives a free Spirit from Christ to make obedience easie and natural to us a Man with his old Heart drudges in the ways of God and brings forth duties as the Bond-woman did her Son in a dead Servile manner but when Faith comes the commands are easie and the Will is upon the Wheel ready to move sweetly and strongly in compliance thereunto The Believer is Spirited and new Natured for Obedience his Heart is in a posture to do the Will of God every where Faith finds Arguments and Impulsives for it Doth it look upon the Life of Christ it immediately concludes these are the steps of our dear Lord and shall we not follow him After whom shall we walk if not after him It 's true he walked in pure sinless perfection such as we cannot reach but the gracious Covenant hath stooped to our frailty and made us sure that sincerity will be aceepted and how can we deny it or refuse to comply with such condescending Grace Doth it look upon Christs wounds and bloody Death these will cast shame and confusion upon an unholy life May any one imagine that our Saviour bore the Curse and Wrath of God that we might provoke it or expiated our sins at so dear a rate as his own Blood and Life that we might indulge them who sees not now that Sin is bloody and holiness amiable and what easie terms are proposed to us when the Death and Curse was only Christ's and the sincere Obedience is all that is required to be ours Doth it look up for the Spirit the purchase of Christ's death We well know where that is to be found the more we walk in the holy Commands and ways of God the more are we like to have of the gales and Divine comforts of it while we are obeying and doing the Will of God that Spirit will usher in assistances and Heavenly consolations upon us to give us an experimental proof of that Promise That the Holy Spirit is given to them that obey him doth it look within the vail to the Rivers of pleasures and plenitudes of joy in Heaven where pious Souls see Truth in the
good will he opens his heart as well as his hand he doth not only draw out his Alms but his Soul to the hungry he doth not only give outward things but himself in real compassions to the afflicted he knows that Sacrifice is not acceptable to God without Mercy no more is the outward Alms-deed without inward Pity he therefore as the Elect of God puts on Bowels of Mercy that when his hand is distributing his Bowels may be moved towards those in misery that he may not give a meer external thing but aliquid sui ipsius something of himself I mean his Compassion Si nihil habes da lacrymulam magnum enim solatium afflicto est misericordia Naz. Orat. 16. it doubles the Alms to give it with Pity meer Mercy in it self is a comfort to the afflicted but when it comes with a supply of necessaries in its hand it is then a comfort in matter and manner Moreover the holy Man hath not only humane Bowels but Christian in all his acts of Charity he moves from an high Principle and unto an high end and upon that account the Apostle calls those acts Pure Religion Jam. 1.27 And St. Ipsa misericordia si propter Deum non fit non est Sacrificium Sacrificium res divina est Aust de Civ Dei l. 10. c. 6. Austin call them a Sacrifice a Divine thing First I say He acts from an high Principle he doth not extend Mercy to Men in misery only out of humanity but out of love to God he doth not respect them meerly because they are his own Flesh such as are in conjunction of Nature with him but chiefly because they are rational Creatures such as stand in Relation to God and are capable of union with him the love of God who alone is to be loved for himself is the great Wheel which moves our Love and Mercy towards our Neighbour St. John argues thus Whoso seeth his Brother have need and shutteth up his Bowels of compassion from him how dwelleth the Love of God in him 1 Joh. 3. 17. It is all one as if he had said There is no Love of God at all in him for if there were any that would open his Bowels towards his Brother Piety towards God is the right Fountain of Charity towards Men. Again De Doctr. Christ l. 3. c. 10. He acts unto an high end Charitas est motus animi ad fruendum Deo propter ipsum se proximo propter Deum saith St. Austin Charity is the motion of the Soul to enjoy God for himself and it self and its Neighbour for God The holy Man in his acts of Charity hath a Supream respect unto God he would resemble and glorify God in them there is nothing wherein he can shew himself more like unto God than in Mercy and Love God when he proclaims his Name Exod. 34.6 insists very much upon Mercy He is good and doth good Psal 119.68 Therefore the holy Man would be still a doing of good that he might in his Sphear though but a little one resemble that God who doth good in the great Sphear of Nature God makes his Sun to shine and rain to fall every where and the holy Man who would be like him endeavours to shine in good works and drop in Charities upon all occasions in all he would have no other center than God and his Glory his aim is that those drops and models of Mercy which are in him may bear witness to the infinite Fountain and Ocean of Mercy which is above still he desires that God in all things may be glorified Take him in prosperity he is holy there I may say of him what the Historian saith of Mauritius the Emperour His Prosperity doth not make him leave his Piety He esteems himself less than the least of God's Mercies he holds all that he hath in capite of God the great Donor he desires to see free Grace in every crum of Bread drop of drink and moments patitience when there is a Table spread and a Cup running over and an affluence of all good things he suffers nothing to be lost but returns all in a thankful acknowledgment unto the giver Thus holy David All things are of thee 1 Chr. 29.14 Life Health Peace Prosperity the whole Catalogue of Blessings are from God the holy Man looks on it as no less than Sacriledge to substract the least fragment from him He looks upon Blessings in dependance upon their Original he sees the sence and meaning of them to be this that our hearts may be guided and directed by them to the infinite Fountain of Goodness He possesses them but he will not be possessed by them they may flow round about him but they must keep their distance and not enter into the heart which is reserved as an holy place for God while they stand without and minister to the outward Man they are Blessings and Glasses of the Divine Goodness but if once they lean their station and are taken into the Heart they are Idols and Vanities there is a blast and a curse upon them because they turn away the Heart from God the Fountain of Living Waters In the midst of all outward Blessings the holy Man is but a Pilgrim in this World here is not his Happiness his happiness or center of rest he looks after far greater and nobler things thaâ— those which grow here below Corn and Wine and Oil are in his Eyes but poor things in comparison of God's favour Heaven is his Country and by a Divine touch from thence his Heart though courted by the World will point thither he resolves with himself he will be happy only in God and in nothing else whilst he is here he uses his outward good things in the fear of God He knows that The Earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof God is the absolute Proprietor and Man but a Steward only The poor Man in his necessities hath a right to have supply out of the superfluities of the Rich the Charity of the Rich is but Fidelitas in alieno Faithfulness in that which is another Man's Luke 16.12 Riches are a Talent and must be accounted for if oppression make the beam cry out of the wall or if outward things become the fuel of of lust or if the non-user bring a rust upon them it will be a very ill reckoning at the last day therefore the holy Man endeavours to perform his trust he is what his Riches call for rich in good Works the Goodness of God to him makes him good to others the open hand of the great Donor makes him ashamed to shut his own his great interest lies in the other World and upon that account the exchanges his outwards things thither by such acts of Charity as follow him and live for ever Take him in adversity he is holy there as in prosperity his answer is what was so much in the mouth of the ancient Christians Deo
from God the chief Good and Ultimate End if we consecrate our selves to God we must needs cast away sin from us the Spirit and Flesh are contrary Principles and cannot rule together the Works of the one and of the other cannot be compounded the great Centers Heaven and Hell are at a vast distance and cannot meet We must therefore die to Sin or else we cannot live to God let us labour to be Holy in all manner of Conversation let us go forth and meet God in every dispensation in Ordinances let us meet him with Devotion and holy Affection in Alms with Love and a free Spirit in Prosperity with Praises and Good Works in Adversity with Patience and Silence in our Dealings with Justice and Righteousness in our Callings with Faithfulness and Diligence In every thing let us walk 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 worthy of God as becomes those who are consecrated unto him Let us so exercise our selves unto Piety that we may grow in all Graces that our Faith may be more lively our Love more ardent our Humility more low our Heavenliness more high our Obedience more full our Patience more perfect that we may have our fruit unto Holiness and the End Everlasting Life Let us be ever making our selves ready for that Blessed Region where there are plenitudes of Joy Crowns of Immortality Rivers of Pleasures where God is the Light Life Love All in all to the Saints FINIS ERRATA'S PAge 57. Line 10. read burned p. 72. l. 27. formally p. 75. l. 4. Vajored p. 90. l. 19. ears p. 138. l. 14. Sun p. 141. l. 6. Vos p. 148. l. 14. plenal p. 150. l. 17. Carnal Ordinances p. 167. l. 6. often cast p. 203. l. 10. heart p. 247. l. 7. possibly p. 327. l. 20. none for the Promise Ib. l. 21. capable of p. 330. l. 2. true p. 339. l. 3. Righteousness of God p. 343. l. 1. is it a Jus Impunitatis p. 355. in the marg Note r. consecratum est p. 366. l. 4. its subject p. 371. l. 12. the Glory of it it is ours p. 420. l. 10. expression p. 428. l. 2. ray Reader the misplaced Points or Stops do sometimes very much alter or obscure the Sence let such places be read without any respect to them and then the Sence will appear Books sold by Thomas Cockerill at the Three Legs in the Poultry over against the Stocks-Market Books publish'd by the same Author PRecious Faith considered in its Nature Working and Growth in 80. The Divine Will considered in its Eternal Decrees and holy Execution of them in 80. An Answer to a Discourse of Mr. William Sherlock touching the Knowledg of Christ and our Union and Communion with him in 80. Morning Exercise at Cripple-Gate or several Cases of Conscience practically resolved by sundry Ministers in 40. A Supplement to the Morning Exercise at Cripple-Gate Or several more Cases of Conscience practically resolved by sundry Ministers in 40. The Court of the Gentiles in 4 Parts by Theophilus Gale in 40. Pseudodoxia Epidemica Or Enquiries into very many Received Tenets and commonly presumed Truths Together with the Religio Medici by Tho. Brown Knight M. D. 40. A Discourse of Patronage Being a modest Enquiry into the Original of it and a further prosecution of the History of it by Zachariah Cowdry in 40. The Poor Man's Family-Book by Rich. Baxter in 80. The Faithfulness of God considered and cleared in the great Events of his Works or a Second Part of the fulfilling of the Scriptures by the same Author in 80. The English School or The readiest way for teaching Children or Elder Persons to spell and read rightly pronounce and write true English containing also a Catalogue of all the words in the Bible c. by Tobias Ellys in 80. A New Book of Spelling with Syllables or an Alphabet and plain Path-way to the Faculty of Reading the English Roman Italian and Secretary Hands with several Copies of the same divised chiefly for Children that thereby with the less loss of their time they may be able to pass from Reading to the Latin Tongue Also this Book is very necessary for the Ignorant to teach them to write true Orthography in short time A Week of Soliloquies and Prayers with a Preparation to the holy Communion and other Devotions added to this Edition in two Parts by Peter Du Moulin D. D. in 12. De Causa Dei Or A Vindication of the common Doctrine of the Protestant Divines concerning Predetermination i. e. The Interest of God as the first Cause in all Actions as such of all Rational Creatures from the invidious consequence with which it is burden'd by Mr. John Howe in a late Letter and Postscript of God's Prescience in 80. A Dialogue between a Popish Priest and an English Protestant wherein the principal Points and Arguments of both Religions are truly proposed and fully examined by Matthew Poole Author of the Synopsis Criticorum in 12. The Spiritual Remembrancer Or A Brief Discourse of the Duty of those who attend upon the preaching of the Gospel by Samuel Welley in 80. God a Christian's Choice compleated by particular Covenanting with God wherein the Lawfulness and Expediency is cleared by Samuel Winney in 12. The Reüniting of Christianity Or The manner how to rejoyn all Christians under one sole Confession of Faith in 80.