supposing this be true the inference of his being only a Metaphorick Priest is not to be avoided and consequently all the Texts where he is any wayes stiled a Priest are to be understood only Metaphorically For if his Priestly and Kingly Offices be not distinct either his Regal Office must be reduced to and included in his Sacerdotal which our Author will not affirm and if he should he would only gain by it the making Christ a Metaphorick King instead of a Metaphorick Priest or else his Sacerdotal Office must belong to and be included in his Regal being only a readiness to exercise that Authority and Power for his Church which as a King appertains to Him And if so then those innumerable places of Scripture which report Christ to be a Priest to have given himself a Sacrifice to God for us to have expiated Sin to have made atonement and to have rendred God propitious are every one of them Metaphorical I have insisted the longer on this Opinion of Mr. Sherlock concerning Christs Priestly Office being only a different part and administration of his Mediatory Kingdome 1 st to make it appear that by Charging Socinianism upon some of our late pretended Rational Divines we do not transform them into any thing but what they are The truth of the imputation rather than the foulness seems to be that which makes them angry As the Historian tels us of Tiberius that he was both the readier to believe the more offended at something which was said of Him because it was the true report of his guilt so I wish it were not as much the Justness as the Odiousness of the Character of Socinian which renders some men stingy But 2 ly the main reason of my insisting upon these passages was to demonstrate that whereas they arraign the Non-Conformists for turning the plainest Scriptures into Metaphors the crime lodgeth especially with themselves and that the principles which they have Espoused are not otherwise defensible but by turning the plainest Scriptures into Metaphors So that here Clodius accusat maechos And providing Mr. Sherlock will abide by his Notion That the Offices of Prophet Priest and King are not properly distinct Offices in Christ I do here undertake to prove by easy trains of deduction that for one Text capable of a proper sense which the Phanaticks pervert by imposing a Metaphorick one upon it he lyes under a necessity if he will preach or write consequentially to his Tenets of wresting twenty in the same manner § 10. But this is not the only opinion imbib'd by our Author which I impeach as pregnant with this mischief His Notion of Justification being attended with the same inconvenience nor is it any ways maintainable but by perverting innumerable Texts from their plain and natural sense to a Metaphorick In the prosecution of this Charge I shall first give a true representation of his thoughts about Justification and then endeavour to demonstrate that besides what else lyes against him it is accompanied with this fatal unhappiness of turning a great part of the Bible into meer insignificant and empty Metaphors His sentiments then in reference to Justification are these That we are only Justified by our believing and obeying the Gospel of Christ. That the Sacrifice of Christs Death and the Righteousness of his life have no other Influence upon our acceptance with God but that to them we owe the Covenant of Grace That is God being well pleased with the Obedience of Christs life and the sacrifice of his Death for his sake entred into a New Covenant with Mankind wherein he promiseth pardon of Sin and eternal life to those who believe and obey the Gospel so that the Righteousness of Christ is not the formal Cause of our Justification but the Righteousness of his life death is the meritorious Cause of that Covenant whereby we are declared Righteous rewarded as Righteous persons The Covenant of Grace which God for Christs sake hath made pardoning our past sins follies and rewarding a sincere though imperfect Obedience The Gospel by its great arguments motives and powerfull assistances forms our minds to the Love and practice of Holiness and so makes us inherently Righteous and the grace of the Gospel accepts and rewards that sincere Obedience which according to the Rigor and severity of the Law could deserve no reward This I take to be a true account of Mr. Sherlocks Judgement about Justification and I have quoted it in his own words that he may neither complain of his being imposed upon nor the Reader question the Truth and sincerity of this representation And as whosoever consults the pages I referr to will find that I treat my adversary with faithfulness so if they compare them with some other places where he hath declared himself with less Modesty they will have reason to say that I have exposed his Opinion in the favourablest manner I could Now I design not any accurate ventilation of this great Theme nor any severe research into Mr. Sherlocks faileurs in the manage of it nor a Critical survey of his neglect of Truth as well as Modesty in treating his Adversaries about it nor yet his partiality in arraigning only the Non-conformists when he could not but know that the most Eminent Persons that ever the Church of England bred as well as the Generality of Protestant Divines are equally involved having appeared in the Defence of that very Notion of Justification which he so invidiously represents and tragically declaime's against those for The full handling of Justification stands reserved for other hands who in due time will retrive the spoyles wherewith our Author hath enriched his Wardrobe and strip him of the Lawrels wherewith he hath adorned his Temples I shall only bestow one stricture upon him and then apply to the proof of the inconvenience I have already charged his Opinion with and for which in this place I cited it In brief then I see not how the Covenant of Grace is any ways owing to the Sacrifice of Christs Death and the Righteousness of his life providing that Mr. Sherlock will be constant to and write consonantly to some of his other principles For if the Natural Notions which men have of God assure them that he is very Good and that it is not possible to understand what Goodness is without pardoning Grace as our Author elsewhere tells us I say supposing this to be true I see not how the Righteousness of Christs life and Death can be the meritorious cause of Gods forgiving our sins and Follies for as much as his Essential Goodness obliged him to it I take it for a principle of Reason that nothing can be merited which is due upon an Antecedent Title Merit in its essential Notion importing an acquisition of a Right which we had not before there can be no room for it in reference to that which we stood entitled to by the natural goodness of
the cause ground motive with relation to which the things interceded for are procured Christs interposure as Mediator between God and Man took its rise from and bore upon a compact between the Father and Him that he should be Incarnate and give his Life a Ransom for many This the Holy Ghost doth most emphatically instruct us in 1 Tim. 2.6 Heb. 8.6.9.15 12.24 which are all the places where he is in express Terms so styled Now had not the susception of our sins preceded as the Antecedent impulsive cause of Christs sufferings he could neither be said to be made Sin for us nor to bear them nor to have them laid upon him nor to dye for our Offences nor to be our Ransom Nor could the inflicting of sufferings upon him have been either good in it self or an act of Rectoral Justice in God or have had any tendency to his glory or to the honour of his Law or to deterr Sinners from offending yea preclude once the consideration of sin as the meritorious cause of the Agonies which Christ underwent and the Love Wisedom Justice and Rectorship of God are obnoxious to reflexions and stand lyable to be impeached And if it be once obtain'd that our sins are the Meritorious impulsive cause of Christs Death his susception of our Guilt will necessarily follow For Guilt being nothing but an Obligation to punishment it being impossible to conceive such a habitude betwixt a person and sin that it should be the meritorious impulsive cause of his punishment and yet he not be under an obligation to punishment it plainly follows that guilt must be supposed antecedent to a demerit of punishment Guilt and punishment being Relates he that is obnoxious to the latter must be previously under the imputation of the former as Bishop Andrews expresseth it Christ was first made sin in respect of the Guilt and then a Curse in respect of the punishment Serm. of Justification on Jer. 23.6 Where Sin is so charged as to expose a person to a demerit of punishment there is an obligation to it where there is such an obligation to it there is in some sense or other Guilt Those very arguments whereby we overthrow the Popish Dogm of Believers being discharged from the Guilt of Sin but not the punishment do equally disprove Christs undergoing the punishment of Sin without susception of the Guilt In brief 1. Through a convention betwixt the Father and Son our sins are so charged upon and transfered to Christ as to be exacted of him and he hath submitted to the Demerit of them so as to undergoe the penalty in the substance and kind of it though not in the Adjuncts and Consequential accidents which would have accompanied it upon such weak finite depraved subjects as we are that we should have undergone 2. Through Christs interposing as Surety and Mediator by suffering in our stead God hath so vindicated his own Honour asserted the Authority of his Commands and satisfied the ends of Law and Government that he accepts of what Christ hath done and suffered as full satisfaction to his Law and in consideration thereof without any reflexion upon his Attributes or subversion of his Rectorship he makes a tender of pardon to us 3. God having admitted the interposure of Christ on our behalf having inflicted sufferings upon him as a punishment for our sins and having accepted those sufferings as a Sacrifice of Atonement for the expiation of our Guilt and having also agreed with his Son and declared in the Covenant of Grace the Terms on which we are made partakers of the benefits thereof we upon a performance of these conditions come to have all that Christ did and suffered as our Mediator imputed to us in a Law-sence That is the Law owns that Christ intervening in our room hath answered all its demands so that God in consistency with its exactions may be both just in himself and yet be our Justifier And this being all that we intend by a Legal Union with Christ namely that by the Covenant of Redemption Christ so becomes our Surrogate as to have our sins in a Law-sence imputed to Him and that we through fulfilling the Terms of the Covenant of Grace have all that which He as substituted in our place and stead did and suffered imputed in a Law-sense to us He must not only disclaim Christs being Mediator in any proper sense but renounce the whole Gospel that denys it Having not only declared but justified that there is a Legal Union between Christ and Believers and having also stated and defined what it is and wherein it consists all that remains incumbent upon me relating to this Head is to shew that the whole of a Christians Union with the Lord Jesus is not comprehended in this nor hereby expressed And 1st There are many Scripture Texts manifestative of an Oneness that the Saints have with Christ which a Legal Union doth not come up to the heighth and grandeur of As there is not any one thing in the Gospel which the Holy Ghost hath judged meet to express in greater variety of phrase than the mystery of our cohesion with Jesus Christ so this Legal Union can no ways sustain the weight of most of them 'T is not consistent with the Wisdom and Goodness of God to entertain us with pompous words or to treat us with Hyperbolical expressions when he is declaring to us the Mysteries of Faith to which he not only requires our assent but hath made much of our comfort and duty dependent upon them Who can think that a Legal Union is all that the Holy Ghost intends by our being one Spirit with the Lord and being ingraffed into Him as Branches are into a stock or root cemented to Him as the building is to the Foundation incorporated with him as our Aliment and Food is with our fleshly substance ligu'd and connected to him as the Bodily Members are to their Natural and Vital Head I know all these expressions are Metaphorical yet I also know that they must be declarative of something that is not only real but whose greatness it is not easy to conceive As the variety of Metaphors which the Spirit makes use of to decipher it by declare its importance so the quality of them serves to intimate that it is not meerly a Legal Union If there be no other Oneness between Christ and sincere Christians but that which we have been discoursing of there could not be a Symbole worse chosen to express it by there being no Analogy between what the phrases originally signifie and that which they are designed and brought to illustrate 2dly Those things being distinct and different whose ideas are so the formal Conception of our Legal Union with Christ being hugely different from the Notion which we have of our Spiritual Union with Him it plainly follows that our Mystical coherence to Him imports some thing besides a Legal Oneness Now that the Idea which we have
Declaration come from God but admitting once that it is His there is no room left to suspect its being True To make promises is the Issue of Gods arbitrary and soveraign Will but to keep and fulfil them being made proceeds from the Eternal Rectitude and Sanctity of his Nature To deny his Being is a lesser disparagement put upon him than to imagine that he can falsifie his Word Christ needed a Testimony from God to confirm his Mission but God needed none from Him to establish his being True and Unchangable Though we need good assurance that they who pretend to be the Heralds of Heaven be not Impostors yet the only reason of believing what God saith is his own Infallibility 2. The Apostle reckoning up all the evidences of the Immutability of God's Counsel hath omitted this and thereby precluded it from the number of them Other security in order to our Consolation we need not nor hath God thought fit to give any but his Promise and Oath And as by the first he gives us a Right providing we answer the Conditions annexed to them So he assures us by the second that there are no latent reserves 3. Had the Apostle been introducing Christ in the place of and advancing him above Moses who acted for and from God to the People there might have been some probability in Mr. Sherlock's gloss but by introducing him into the room of and exalting him above Aaron who acted in behalf of the People towards God there is a plain overthrow given to it Schlichtingius who useth not to be over liberal in concessions relating to the honour of Christs Priest-hood yet grants credibile esse in voce sponsoris sacerdotium Christi intelligi That the Priesthood of Christ is in all probability implied in his Sponsorship 'T is true he takes a course by the Notion which he assigns of Christs Priesthood namely that in eo praecipue Christi sacerdotium consistit quod per Christum Deus promissa sua nobis exhibeat that his concession shall little avail us but as I dare not think that Mr. Sherlock will espouse it so If he do I shall know whom to list him among and what to reply to him but in the mean time I forbear It being once evinced that the Vadimony of Christ relates to his Priesthood we do thereby immediately obtain that the ratifying of the Covenant is no part of his Suretyship For all that Christ does under the reduplication of a Priest is for us and in our behalf towards God but to undertake that the promises of the Covenant shall be made good is to act from God to us In brief that Christs Sponsorship relates to his Priesthood there needs no more but the consideration of the context to convince such as are teachable and for others I know no means sufficient to instruct them neither have I the vanity to attempt it His susception of Suretyship is the rise and basis of his Sacerdotal Office and whatsoever he did in discharge of his Priestly Function it was in pursuance of his having substituted himself our Sponsor and accordingly the Nature and Boundaries of his Suretiship are to be defined by a survey of what he became lyable to and performed as our High Priest For though the compact and convention between Him and the Father be the foundation and fountain of both yet his Priesthood is immediately erected upon his susception to be our Praes or Surety And forasmuch as his being our Sponsor ariseth from an agreement which interven'd between the Father and Him and exerteth it self in the works of his Sacerdotal Function we must therefore have recourse to these as the Standar◠and Measure by which the full import and extent of his being our Surety is to be regulated and determined The importance and derivation of the Term as applyed to Transactions amongst men falls infinitely short of expressing the Vadimony which Christ entred into and undertook For besides that the one relates to Crimes the other to pecuniary debts and that the party to whom the Security here is given stands considered as a Rector whereas elsewhere we consider him as a meer Creditor there are also other essential differences namely that in transactions amongst men he who gives the Security supposeth the Debtor Solvent but in the case before us our inability to satisfie lay as the ground-work of the whole of Christs susception The Law of Creation which had a threatning annexed to it denouncing wrath against all manner of transgression being by us violated and broken it pleased God though he did not relax the punishment at least in its essentials which was threatned for the exalting the honour of his Grace to dispense with the Law so far as concerned the immediate subject and to allow a substitution Upon this in complyance with the Call of the Father doth the interposure of the Son enter And the great end of his concerning himself being the advancement of the Glory of Gods Wisdom and Mercy in our recovery in such a way and manner as that not only none of the Divine Attributes should be impeached or eclipsed nor the Decorum of Gods Government spoiled but that through Sins having a meet recompence measured out to it God might appear the Protector of his Laws it was thereupon necessary that He should undergoe the punishment which the Justice and Law of God made due to sin And forasmuch as this could not be effected without having our sins transferred upon him he therefore substituted himself in our room and became our 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and Surrogate And this is all that we mean by our Legal Union with Christ which the Term and Notion of his being our Surety doth not only display and illustrate but confirm and prove And whereas Christ is styled the Surety of a better Covenant it is because the Enacting of the Covenant of Grace respects his undertaking to be made Sin and to undergoe the Curse as the Moral cause and Condition without which there had been no overtures of mercy made to the Sons of men It was in consequence of Christs susception to be our Sponsor and with respect to the Obedience of his Life and Sacrifice of his Death as the procuring and deserving Cause that God entred into a Covenant with Man-kind promising to pardon their sins receive them into favour crown them with life upon such terms conditions as the Father Son thought fit to prescribe What these are the Gospel declares nor is any man actually forgiven justified or admitted into friendship with God but upon a performance of the conditions and having the qualifications there required Christs own discharge was an Immediate consequent of his sufferings and they for whom he suffered had also immediately a Fundamental Right of being acquitted but their actual deliverance was to be in the way order that He who had substituted himself in our room and he who had both admitted and been the
1 Joh. 4.9 10. In a word it is Love which is eminently ascribed to the Father in the Oeconomy of the Blessed Trinity about the Work of Mans Salvation And this property of his Nature which he chose to display in the work of Redemption he hath acted to the uttermost whereas he did not so by his Power which he manifested in the Works of Creation it being within the compass of his Omnipotence and Exuberant Bounty to produce a World more glorious than this And though all this respects Gods Love of Compassion to the Elect yet we may hereby guess what his Love of Delight in Believers is on whom his Love of Goodness hath compassed its designs When his Love of Benevolence hath attained so much of its End as the renewing us in part to his Image and the recovering us back to our obedience He views over with delight the births that his compassion went with and beholds the effects of his good Will with unspeakable complacence That similitude which his Love in its first consideration designed anâ—â—ntended his Love in the second Notion of it embraceth and settles its delight upon And that Believers do embrace the Father with a Love equal and proportionate to that which they have for Jesus Christ I hope I need not spend time to prove Besides the Allective and attractive perfections which the illuminated Understanding discovers in both as they partake of the same Divine Nature and Essence it meets with enforcing Motives of Love in the Oeconomical actings of each as they are represented in the Scripture operating towards about our Redemption with different peculiarities in the manner of their acting How doth the Father's Love in being the Author and Fountain of our recovery in his contriving the means of it in giving his Son to be our Ransom and Propitiation in order to the effecting it and in pursuance of his accepting the Sacrifice of his Death as an Atonement for sin and a meritorious price of sanctification his being the Original disposer in way of Authority and Order of all that Grace by which we are rendred meet objects of Gods delight inflame the souls of renewed Ones with Love to him 4. This Love-Union as it terminates upon Christ from us or as it implies our Affections being set upon him is so far from being the formal Reason of our Mystical Union that it doth suppose us already cemented to him There can be no true Love to Christ without a previous conformity seeing all love includes a supposition of likeness Now to imagine either a resemblance between us and Christ without a New Nature previously form'd and wrought in us or to conceive that there are any principles communicated to us as the ground and matter of similitude and yet we remain unconnected to Christ are fancies that the Gospel obligeth us to account absurd To apprehend a Person renewed by Grace and not implanted into Christ is to bid defiance to the Gospel and to conceive a soul cleaving to Christ by a Love that is sincere without an Antecedent Principle of Grace adapting and connaturalizing it is not only to contradict the Scripture but to denounce War against Metaphysicks which tell us that every Effect presupposeth a cause proportion'd to it In brief As we are not naturally imbued with a Love to Christ so no man will by a prevalent Love embrace him till he be first connaturalized attempered brought into a suitable habitude of mind to him Every act supposeth a Power nor is there hopes of Fruit where there is not a Root that can communicate sap to the branches that are to bear it Though the soul be the Vital Principle of all actions and Affections yet it is Grace that gives holy actions and affections their constituent form The Union which we have with Christ by love saith the Reverend Bishop Reynolds presupposeth an Unity we have in him by Faith Faith is the immediate tye between Christ and a Christian but Love a secondary Union following upon and grounded on the former By Nature we are all Enemies to Christ and his Kingdom of the Jews mind we will not have this Man to raign over us therefore till by Faith we are throughly perswaded of Christs love to us we can never repay love to him again Herein is love saith the Apostle not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son 1 Joh. 4.10 Now between Gods Love and ours comes Faith to make us one with Christ. § 12. That there ought to be nothing in Religion which is incomprehensible or of which we are not able to form adequate Notions is a fancy espoused by the Socinians Hence it is that though they do not wholly renounce the Gospel yet by designing to accommodate the mysteries of it to the Level of Humane apprehensions they supplant the prime Articles of it That there are Doctrines in the Christian Religion which our Understandings cannot fathom seems to have been the chief thing that influenced Celsus Hierocles Porphyrius Lucian and other Heathen Philosophers of old in their opposition of it This their upbraiding the primitive Believers for receiving things 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with an Irrational Faith and their styling them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 persons of easie belief that had no reason for the things which they embraced abundantly declare And truly admitting the Principle which they proceeded upon namely that there ought not to be any thing in Religion but what our Intellects bear a proportion to they seem to me to have acted more rationally in refusing the Gospel altogether than those do who embrace it and yet 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Model the Oracles of God to their private fancies that so they may level the Mysteries of Christianity to our weak and shallow capacities That there are Mysterious Doctrines in the Gospel and particularly that our Union with Christ is of that Number the Holy Ghost who should best know the complexion of every truth in it hath plainly informed us We are Members of his Body of his Flesh and of his Bones This is a great Mystery says the Apostle Eph. 5.30.32 Mr. Sherlock who seems to judg all such things foolish and fanciful Notions which men cannot fully conceive comprehend is pleased to tell us that there is nothing more easie to be understood than our Union and Communion with Christ but how he can reconcile himself to Paul unless great Mysteries be of easie conception and comprehension I know not 'T is true he hath taken care to present us with such a Notion of Believers Union with Christ as may be understood on this side Heaven and without sending for Elias to unriddle it that I may use his own expression Now what that Notion is and whether it fully answer the account which the Scripture gives us in the Matter of Christians Union with the Lord Jesus is that which we are now addressing to the ventilation of And that neither he