even now Heirs of a kingdom Jam. 2. 5. The wise that shall inherit Glory Prov. 3. 35. Heads destinated to a Diadem in Tertullian's expression which their Heavenly Father hath prepared for and will at last put upon them who alone too makes them fit to wear it meet to be Partakers of the Inheritance of the Saints in light III. How differently soever the Children of God may share in the same Inheritance This is certain that every one's share therein shall be the Gift of his Heavenly Father The word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 here imports it The Apostle alluding to the Division of the Land of Canaan a Type of Heaven which God had appointed to be done by lot wherein Himself we know had the main hand according to that of Solomon Prov. 16. 33. The lot is cast into the lap but the whole disposition thereof is of the Lord. Thus it was in the Choice of Matthias to the Apostleship Act. 1. And thus it is as to our share in the Inheritance of Glory It falls to us by lot by the disposition of God the Father we have no part here but what he gives us And if so then no merit of Condignity nor so much as of Congruity can be pleaded by us And truly one would think it were sufficient to partake of the Inheritance without making out our own Title to it That we might be content to be Heirs without coming in as Purchasers or if we will needs be so to be Purchasers on Christ's score and not our own But this is too low and mean for some men who come with Counters in their hand ready to reckon with God to shew Him how much he is in their debt and who stick not to tell Him to his face that He is an unjust Master if he pay them not their due wages But 1. Our Lord Himself hath told us That God is beforehand with us That whatsoever we can doe is due from us to Him That when we shall have done all those things which are commanded us we must say that we are unprofitable servants and have done but that which was our duty to doe Luk. 17. 10. And then what merit can there be in paying just debts And 2. St. Paul hath told us That we can doe no good thing without Him too who worketh in us both to will and to doe of his good pleasure Phil. 2. 13. So that He crowns His own gifts in us and rewards not our deservings Besides 3. Our goodness extendeth not to God says David Psal. 16. 2. And being unusefull how can it be meritorious Nay our best works are so imperfect and so sinfull too that the utmost they can expect is but a Pardon and not a Reward And were they never so good and perfect yet what proportion can they bear to such a Reward as an Inheritance in light Our light affliction which is but for a moment to a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory 2 Cor. 4. 17. where we must not let pass an elegant Antithesis For Affliction there is Glory For Light affliction a Weight of glory And for Momentary affliction an Eternal weight of glory to shew the vast disproportion between these things so vast that even Martyrdom it self the highest utmost proof of our love to God is in St. Paul's account nothing in comparison of that Glory we expect For I reckon says he that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us Rom. 8. 18. IV. And lastly The very word Inheritance excludes all Purchase on our part For this were to renounce Succession to cast off all Filial Duty and Affection not to own our selves Sons but mercenary Purchasers yea and Purchasers of an Inheritance already purchased for us by Christ and for his sake freely bestowed upon us by our Heavenly Father out of His own pure Goodness and Bounty to which alone we must ascribe it For we all the best of us have sinned and come short of the glory of God Rom. 3. 23. And we are told ch 6. 23. that The wages of sin our proper wages is death but the gift of God is eternal life The Apostle might have said and indeed the Antithesis or Opposition there seem'd to require it But the wages of Righteousness is eternal life But he altered the Phrase on set-purpose and chose rather to say The gift of God is eternal life That we might from this change of the Phrase learn That although we procure Death unto our selves yet 't is God that bestows eternal life on us That as He hath called us to his kingdom and glory 1 Thess. 2. 12. so he gives that glory and that kingdom for no other reason but because He is pleased so to doe It is your Father's good pleasure for into God the Father's good pleasure Christ resolves it to give you a kingdome Luk. 12. 32. No merit nor so much as any good disposition in us for it He propares it for us Matt. 20. 23. And he prepares us for it too here in the Text by making us meet to be partakers thereof For what meetness could he find in us for such an Inheritance Title to it we have none being by nature the Children of wrath and disobedience Eph. 2. 2 3. Mere Intruders here and Usurpers The Kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence and we the violent take it by force Mat. 11. 12. Qualifications proper for it we have none too That An Inheritance in light we darkness That An Inheritance incorruptible undefiled and that fadeth not away 1 Pet. 1. 4. we corruptible polluted and still decaying 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 cries out our Apostle We are not sufficient not fit for the word signifies either as of our selves but our sufficiency or fitness call it which you will is of God 2 Cor. 3. 5. 2 Pet. 1. 4. who as He makes us Partakers of his divine Nature so meet Partakers of the divine Inheritance not by pouring out the divine Essence but by communicating to us those divine Qualities which will fit and prepare us for the Sight thereof by putting light into our Understandings and holiness into our Wills without which no man shall see the Lord Heb. 12. 14. By cleansing our hearts and washing our hands that so we may ascend into the hill of the Lord dwell and rest in his Tabernacle Psal. 15. 24. He gives us Faith and with that a Prospect of our Inheritance and He gives us Hope and with that an Interest therein And to summ up all in one He gives us his Holy Spirit the earnest of that Inheritance Eph. 1. 14. who worketh all our works in us writes his laws in our hearts and by softning makes them capable of his divine Impressions In short That divine Spirit which by Regenerating makes us new Creatures and so fit Inhabitants for the new Jerusalem calling us first to Vertue and then to Glory to that as
which had such a load as the sins of Mankind and God's wrath due to those sins hanging upon it These were the Arrows of the Almighty that went through his Soul This The poyson thereof that drank up his Spirit These The Terrors of God that did set themselves in Array against Him to use Job's expression The spirit of a Man may well bear his infirmities but a wounded spirit a spirit so wounded as his was by the hand and stroke of an omnipotent God who could bear but He that was God's equal and yet even He complains who yet did bear it How easily could He have vanquished the malice of Hell who stoops at the power and anger of God If any thing could add to this affliction to this piercing of his Soul on Man's part it must have been those bitter taunts those cutting reproaches he suffered from the ungratefull Jews or rather those despights He foresaw Sinners should doe Him who should make a mock of Him and of those Sins which pierced Him or at least so slender a reckoning of all his piercings as to have no sense at all of them and as if they were a matter not worth looking on should never bestow so much as one Thought upon them nay by their constant sinning and that without any remorse should crucifie afresh the Son of God and put him to an open shame treading him under foot and counting the bloud of the Covenant whereby they were sanctified an unholy thing All this and more than our faint apprehensions can reach to our Lord had in his prospect and which pierced his very Heart by that foresight He had of it and so brings us Christians within the compass of those that pierced Him Indeed the Text literally points to the Jews and their Assistants the Roman Souldiers as the Authors of Christ's crucifixion and the immediate Executioners thereof And it cannot be denied but that All of them had a hand or head in this Act. They brought him to they stretcht Him on his Cross They pierced his hands and his feet they stood staring and looking upon Him says the Psalmist Psal. 22. 17. All of them in their several degrees were guilty of the Fact some as procuring his Death as the whole Nation of the Jews some as commanding the Execution as Pilate others as doing it as the Gentile Souldiers And we are ready and not without good cause too to condemn their cruelty But this is only to mind the Evil they did not what Evil Christ suffered This is to be angry with them but not to justifie our selves who pierced him as well as they and some of us more deeply than many of them did Let us not mistake our selves It was their Sin that did practise but it was ours that procured our Lord's Death We would fain shift our Sin on the Jews and Heathens who were but the Instrumental causes here whereas we are the Principals 'T is not the Executioner that properly kills the Man nor yet the Judge Solum peccatum homicida est Sin only is the Murtherer and every Sinner the Executioner of a Saviour All Men are the Meritorious causes for whose Transgressions He was pierced The Lord hath laid on Him the Iniquity of us All says the Prophet Esay 53. 6. It was the Hypocrisie of our Hearts that mocked Him It was the Bribery of our Hands that buffeted Him The Oaths of our Mouths that spat in his Face We betrayed Him with our wanton kisses We whipt Him with the cords of our Oppression We gave Him Gall and Vinegar to drink by our luxurious Intemperance Our Pride in vain Apparel and Ornaments platted a Crown of Thorns upon his head and stript him of his garments In a word our mighty Sins were the Nails which pierced his hands and his feet and the Spear that was thrust into his side The glory of the Lord was brought to shame for our shamefull lives The Lord of life was put to death for our deadly sins and the word became speechless for our crying Ones So that I may justly bring this home to every Man in this Congregation with the Prophet Nathan's Tu es homo Thou art the Man that piercedst Christ and every one of us were that question put to us seriously which was once to him scoffingly Matth. 26. 8. Prophecy who smote thee may without the gift of Prophesying return the answer It is We that smote Him We have now found out the Piercers here And who but They ought to be the Spectators of that Tragedy which themselves have occasioned Indeed all Mankind are the They in the Text that have pierced and therefore must look upon him But what is it to look upon him Is it only to gaze upon a Crucifix with the superstitious Papist and have our Minds look one way while our Eyes look another Is it to look upon Him with dry Eyes and unrelenting Hearts Or only to look and no more To afford him a passing glance of our Eye and then fix it perhaps on some vain and sinfull Object Surely the looking here implies more than so it requires the Exercise of all our Senses and Faculties in the judgment of the Hebrew Doctors as Grotius on this place observes out of Exod. 20. 18. and Jer. 2. 31. It requires our Memory to recall our Understanding often to reflect and ruminate on Christ's Passion and engages all our Affections about it It exacts our most serious Attention and our often-repeated Meditations We must so look upon as to look into Christ pierced for us so look on as never to look off Him That by frequent viewing the dimensions of his Cross we may be able to comprehend what is the breadth and length and depth and height thereof and to know the love of Christ there dying for us which passeth knowledge St. Peter speaking of the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow 1 Pet. 1. 12. tells us ver 13. that the Angels desire to look or as the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 there imports curiously to pry into them and the more we doe so the greater benefit shall we reap by it For at every our looking here some new sight will offer it self to us to raise our admiration and exercise our affections It will make us love Him who was pierced for us and it will pierce us through with sorrow for having pierced Him It will move our Pity raise our Faith and exalt our Hopes to their highest pitch That we may then look upon Christ pierced to our benefit and comfort let us doe it these five ways With an eye of Pity and Compassion of Sorrow and Regret of Love Faith and Joy 1. With an eye of Pity and Compassion And this is no more than what we commonly doe to all afflicted persons The misery of Sufferers be they who they will naturally attracts our Eyes and turns our Bowels towards them At least we are apt to pity if not so
two things when I shall have briefly spoken to I shall then in the close endeavour 1. To shew you how the Holy Virgin was in this latter respect Blessed above all her Sex anointed like her Son with the Oyl of Gladness above her fellows in being as much the Mother of God and as properly in a Spiritual as ever she was in a Carnal sense 2. And secondly to stir you up to an imitation of those her Vertues and Perfections which as they entitled her to this more divine and blessed Relation will us too proportionably as they shall be found in every one of us The first thing that offers its self here is the Woman's Testimony allow'd by Christ That she that bare him was Blessed and for that very reason too In the time of the Law 't was accounted a great Blessing to be a Mother in Israel Barrenness being then as infamous as Fruitfulness was honourable To have still preserv'd their Virginity was in most people's conceit as bad as to have betray'd it insomuch that some have more bitterly lamented that than their untimely death or which is more their sins The reason which the Jewish Doctors give us of this strange passion was Because the Messiah being to come every one that was not barren might hope to be that person that should have the honour to bring him into the World And as all the Daughters of Israel were most ambitious of it so about the time Christ came in the flesh the expectation of the Messiah's Revelation was very high and pregnant Whether this Woman in the Text took our Lord for the true Messiah that great Prophet that should come into the World which yet 't is not improbable she might guess him to be by the visible power of his Miracles and which was as admirable the force of his persuasions is altogether uncertain But this is certain that she lookt upon him as an extraordinary person sent from God and as such one that might justly ennoble his Parents and Relations This as it was a great Truth so 't was not all and our Saviour did not only here allow this Woman's Testimony for good but farther improve it by expresly revealing Himself to be the Messiah which is called Christ Joh. 4. 25 the Holy One of Israel and the glory of its People a Monarch but a spiritual one to whose Sceptre all Nations and Souls should bow such a King as had Heaven for his Throne and the Earth for his Footstool That the Desire of Nations was now come so long before promised by God foretold by the Prophets expected by the Patriarchs infinitely wisht by all just Men with a desire equal to their necessities And to be the Mother of such a Prince as this to inclose Him in her bowels whom the Heaven of Heavens could not encircle to be the Mother of God Deipara A Title bestow'd on the Blessed Virgin by a General Council and which we may safely allow her This was more than to have descended from the Loins of the Kings of Judah or the most glorious Monarchs of the Earth An honour which the greatest Queens thereof would willingly have purchas'd even with the loss of their temporal Diadems A thing which never happened but once and can never any more unless a Saviour could again be born so that there can never any more be such a Mother because never again such a Son We reade Gen. 5. 2. that the Sons of God joined themselves to the Daughters of Men but that God himself should vouchsafe a poor Virgin that honour he is pleas'd to bestow upon his Church to call her his Spouse the great Creator He by whom all things were made and do consist not disdain to be made the Son of his own Creature and own himself as it were beholding to that Creature for something which he that has all things had not a garment of flesh such a garment as he can no more put off now than He can his Godhead for quod semel assampsit nunquam dimisit This I say was a strange Condescension in the Almighty and a peculiar honour done to the Holy Virgin who was cull'd out for this purpose from the rest of Women and may therefore very well be styl'd Blessed among yea and above them the top and glory of her Sex as in whom the whole Trinity now met to consult not as at the Creation to make Man but Deum-Hominem to unite God and Man in one Person of the Word so that as the Father bespeaks the Son Psal. 2. 7. Thou art my Son this day have I begotten thee The Blessed Virgin might to her immortal honour say too This day have I conceived thee Nor was this all To be such a Mother was indeed a high Privilege but to be a Mother and yet still a Virgin wonderfull as that Son she brings forth This had the Prophet Esay long before foretold ch 7. 14. Behold a Virgin shall conceive But the Prophet Jeremy not content with that gives it out for a strange and unheard-of thing and so indeed it was more strange than Christ's coming into the house the doors being shut Joh. 20. 26. The Lord says he ch 31. 22. hath created a new thing in the Earth a Woman shall compass a Man i. e. A Virgin still continuing such otherwise sure it were no new thing shall in her Womb inclose a Man child and such a Man as the same Prophet styles Immanuel God with us chap. 8. 8. and chap. 9. 6. The mighty God the everlasting Father the Prince of Peace enough to silence the incredulous blaspheming Jew so that these two Glories like the two Luminaries of Heaven met in the Mother of our Lord which never happened to any before nor shall ever hereafter that of a Mother and of a Virgin the Fruitfulness of the one and the Purity of the other But these things as they were the Holy Virgin 's Privileges and in some sort her Happiness too so there was something that render'd her yet more blessed by being a Blessing to us in conveying to us the greatest good that ever could happen to Men. For as her Son is the Fountain of those living streams which refresh the Sons of Men so was this Mother the golden Pipe to derive them to them 'T is of his fulness we all receive but by her The promise of our Redemption as it was as old as our Fall Gen. 3. 15. The seed of the Woman shall bruise the Serpent's head so was it literally fulfilled in this Woman of whom St. Paul says Christ was made Gal. 4. 4. i. e. from whom He took the matter of that Body wherein He wrought out our Redemption the full import of St. Paul's 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and St. John's too Joh. 1. 14. For however the Anabaptist dream of a Body fram'd in Heaven which pass'd through the Holy Virgin as water through a Conduit-pipe yet cannot this fancy possibly consist with
leaving it and that which He hath purchased so very glorious that some have mistaken it for his Eternal one To all this which He hath obtained for Himself let us add what He hath merited for us in that flesh He this day took upon Him and wherein He wrought out our Redemption offering up Himself to God and giving Himself for us the greatest gift He could give or we receive whereof in the next place II. Who gave Himself for us Every word here has its weight 1. He gave 2. Gave Himself and 3. For us 1. He gave A Gift this as much above Man's Desert as 't was above his Comprehension 'T was a free gift too no Attractive here but misery no Motive but his own goodness The Romanists indeed to establish their rotten Doctrine of Merit will needs persuade us that some Ancient Fathers before and under the Law did ex congruo if not ex condigno merit Christ's Incarnation or at least the hastning of its accomplishment This conceit of theirs they mainly ground on Gen. 22. 18. where 't is said to Abraham In thy seed shall all the Nations of the Earth be blessed Because thou hast obeyed my voice As if that Because denoted the meritorious Cause of Christ's Incarnation to have been Abraham's Obedience whereas Zachary ascribes it not to the Merits of any the most holy persons of old but to God's mercy and free promise to the Forefathers Luke 1. 72. St. Paul to the riches of God's mercy Ephes. 2. 4. To his benignity and loving-kindness to mankind here Tit. 3. 4. As our Lord Himself does also John 3. 16. God so loved the World that He gave his only begotten Son and so well did that his Son love it too that He gave Himself for us says the Text. 2. Himself And surely more He could not give For as the Apostle speaks in another case Because God could swear by no greater He sware by Himself So may we here because He had no greater thing to give us He gave us Himself The Almighty could go no higher than this Infinite goodness was here at its non ultra He who is All in All could bestow no more than that All. More then He could not give but could He not have given less and that less have been enough Or might not the party offended have freely remitted the Offence without any farther satisfaction or have obliged some other to make it Sent some glorious Creature some blessed Spirit of the noblest Order of created Beings to be a sufficient expiatory Sacrifice for Mankind and so have sav'd Himself the trouble of an Incarnation 'T is not for us here to be too inquisitive what God might have done let us rather admire and extoll his Goodness for not contenting Himself with less than what He did and withall dread the severity of his Justice not to be atton'd by any other Sacrifice than that of his own Son And indeed the most glorious the most innocent and perfect Creature God could make being but Finite it cannot possibly be conceived how it could satisfie an infinite Justice much less was it in the power of Man to satisfie for himself of the party guilty to expiate its own guilt This knot was too hard for any but a God to untie Nay the Godhead its self it seems could not doe it without the assistance of the Manhood For as the divine Nature could not suffer so the humane one could not merit This furnished the bloud but that made it passable and valuable None then but He who united both Natures in the Person of the word Incarnate He who was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God and Man could be a perfect Reconciler of both Parties This as his Justice and our Necessities required so his alone Goodness prompted him unto and his as infinite Wisedom found out the only way to doe it by taking our Nature upon Him and so giving Himself for us 3. For Us. This circumstance does yet very much heighten the Blessing and set off God's infinite Love to Mankind That He should give Himself for us us Sinners and Rebels and for us alone Were there no other Objects for his Mercy besides us Were there not Angels to be redeemed as well as Men Or were they not worth the Redeeming who were by Nature so much above them That God should pass by them and only vouchsafe to look upon us This is the great Mystery of his Love And that He did so is clear from Heb. 2. 16. Verily He took not on Him the Nature of Angels but He took on Him the Seed of Abraham whereupon He is called the Saviour of all Men but not of Angels 1 Tim. 4. 10. Whether it was because the sin of Angels had more of Wilfulness in it and less of Temptation or because they did not All fall as we did some of them still preserving their Station let the Schools dispute These may serve for plausible Conjectures but to find the true cause hereof we must go out of the World and seek it in the bosom of the Father and in the bowels of his own Son whose Love did even transform him into us this day whereon He was born for no other purpose but to dye for us and by his meritorious Death rescue us from the slavery of Sin the primary end of his Incarnation and the third Thing to be spoken to III. That He might redeem us For the better comprehending the benefit we reap from the Incarnation of our blessed Lord We must consider the main end and design of it which the Text says was to redeem us Now Redemption being a Relative supposes Bondage For we cannot say his Irons are struck off who never had them on or pronounce him releas'd who never was a prisoner Now such was all Mankind till Christ delivered it by taking upon Him the form of a servant and being made in the likeness of men For as Aristotle hath made some men born slaves and as others tell us of a Law whereby all the Posterity of Captives were Bondmen So in Divinity 't is a certain truth that not some but all Mankind are born under the Fork and that the Womb of our first Parent was like that in Tacitus Subjectus servitio Uterus a Womb from which issues a race of Slaves Christ then found us in Captivity and that according to the Divinity of the Schools a threefold one 1. To Sin as the Merit obliging 2. To Death as the Reward or Punishment 3. To the Devil as to the Executioner And to each of these the Scripture hath assign'd a Dominion over us and that in terms of the greatest subjection and which in the conveyance of Power give the strongest Empire For the first St. Paul hath told us That we are the servants of Sin so far 't is our Master And in another place 't is said to reign in our mortal Bodies That makes it our Prince And indeed as some
have found out a platform of Government among the fallen Angels who though their Principles be crooked yet being obey'd by Wills as crooked observe an irregular Rule and a perverse Order even in Hell so Sin rules in us too by Principles For there is saith St. Paul a Law of Sin But then 't is such a Law as if it should be Treason for any Subject not to Murther his Natural Prince or Adultery not to Ravish or Blasphemy not to take God's Name in vain 'T is such a Law as if two Anti-Tables should be written which should make it Sin not to break the Commandments Lastly Let the Apostle tell you what Law it is 'T is a Law of the Members warring against the Law of the Mind and not only warring but bringing it into Captivity Rom. 7. 23. Sin herein far exceeding the Author of it For he only aspir'd to be like the Highest but Sin hath made an inversion in the Soul advancing Sense into the Chair of Reason and placing the Beast above the Man And though it may leave us to a natural liberty in moral actions for 't is harsh to think that Justice and Temperance are but guilded Sins yet for actions of Grace it has so glewed and settered the Soul that it cannot possibly mount up to Heaven 2. Next for Death Men have made a Covenant with that saith the Scripture and if Contract be not enough we reade Wisd. 1. v. 14. of a Kingdom of Death so that Christ did not only find us Captives but Captives slain Teneo à primordio homicidam culpam says Tertullian Adam's Throat was our open Sepulchre who in that fatal Apple did not only murther his Children like Saturn but like Thyestes in the Tragedy did eat them After that Transgression there pass'd an Act upon us It is appointed for all Men once to dye Nay it were a degree of happiness to dye but once if nothing remained for punishment for nothing can suffer nothing But we were to be raised to another Death and like drowsie Malefactors that had lain down with their Sentence were to be awakened out of sleep to be put upon the Rack 3. The Scripture almost every-where styles the Devil the Prince of this World His Kingdom had enlarg'd its self from that place about which the Schools dispute to every rebellion and disorder of the Soul where as in a conquer'd Province per cupiditates regnavit saith St. Augustine He reigned by his Proconsul Sins There also making himself the Prince of Darkness by our ignorance and the Prince of the Air by raising Tempests through all the Regions of Man and exercising an universal and absolute Power over him For such was his power in the World when the Saviour of it came into it There was then a general defection from God Satan's Synagogue had in a manner swallowed up God's Church who had but one corner of the World left him and therein for a long time but a moving Tabernacle and when a fix'd habitation but one house wherein a very few to serve him while the Devil's Temples were every-where crowded with Priests and Sacrifices and his Altars smoak'd in all places with Incense so that the Earth and the fulness thereof seem'd now his and he though cast out of Heaven to have reveng'd himself in some sort of God by thus dispossessing him as it were of the Earth Nor was the Devil's power more Universal than 't was Absolute over men's Bodies and over their Souls too Their Bodies he possest and tormented at pleasure insomuch that his very Priests might have receiv'd Death with as much ease as they did his Oracles entring into Men as he did into the Hoggs hurrying them violently into perdition commanding Parents to make their Sons and Daughters pass through the fire to him tearing and bruising those he had got into and casting them sometimes into the water and sometimes into the fire Nor did he tyrannize less over Men's souls than bodies blinding their understanding putting out the light of natural reason in them first corrupting their Judgments and then their Manners from Error in judgment the passage being natural and easie to Error in practice and accordingly St. Paul tells us how vain men became in their imaginations even to worship the Creature instead of the Creator to change the glory of the uncorruptible God into Images made like to corruptible Men and to birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things which made God give them up to all manner of uncleanness as you may reade at large Rom. 1. 21 c. In such slavery had the Devil not only Heathens his own people as I may call them but even the Jews themselves God's chosen people who after so many Miracles of Power and Mercies so many excellent Statutes and Ordinances to direct them in the true manner of his Worship as had not been delivered to any Nation besides did not for all this fall short of the worst of Heathens either in matter of erroneous judgment or vitious practices The profane Sadducee had corrupted all good Manners and the hypocritical Pharisee perverted the Law by his false Glosses and Comments on it so that when our Saviour appeared on Earth an universal deluge of Wickedness had over-spread the face of it And thus all Mankind being the Devil 's by right of Conquest 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 taken by him as it were in War the true import of that word and bound fast to him with his Chains of darkness of gross error and vitiousness 't was high time for the Son of God to come down to rescue miserable Men from these several Captivities which he did three manner of ways 1. By Commutation 2. By Conquest and 3. By way of Ransome or Purchase 1. By Commutation For when we were prisoners to Death by sin God made an exchange delivered his Son over to it for us became our Scape-goat like the Ram substituted in the place of Isaac and as the Apostle speaks tasted death for every man that we might not be devoured and swallowed up by it 2. By Conquest as it referrs to Power and thus our Lord offered violence to Hell snatcht us as brands out of its fire and rescued us as so many preys out of the teeth of the roaring Lion delivering us from the power of darkness and translating us into his kingdom vanquishing death and him that had the power of death the Devil and treading him under our feet And not content with that he spoiled principalities and powers making a shew or as the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 imports an example of them openly and triumph'd over them in himself or in his Cross. 3. By way of Purchase or Ransome as it referrs to Justice Thus Christ made a perfect satisfaction to God by laying down a price for us and paying the very utmost farthing of our debt and so came not only to give us an Example as Socinians
fondly dream which the Prophets of old might nay every good and vertuous Man may still doe and in this sense become our Saviour as well as He And therefore St. Peter plainly distinguishes these things between Christ's suffering for us and his leaving us an example 1 Pet. 2. 21. And the Scripture every-where is express to this purpose That Christ came to give himself a ransome for all so says St. Paul 1 Tim. 2. 6. Nay so says Christ Himself Mat. 20. 28. He came to satisfie for us the clear import of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the like words so frequently occurring in Scripture and of those expressions of St. Paul of Christ's being made sin and a curse for us his blotting out the hand-writing of Ordinances that was against us and the like These were the several ways whereby Christ freed us and this was the main design and end of his coming in the flesh this day and we can never truly value the Blessing of it but by reflecting on the Misery of our former slavery whereby we became Servants to Corruption and so beneath and viler than Corruption its self as the Servant is below his Master the Condition of every one that committeth sin and is at the mercy and under the power thereof its eternal drudge forc'd to go and come as it bids him and consequently lay under the guilt of Sin and so obnoxious to God's Judgment and under the sentence and condemnation of Death all our life-time subject to this bondage too and at the mercy of our most cruel and implacable enemy the Devil who could have no power over us but what our Sin gave him And now that we are restored to this glorious Liberty of the Sons of God let us stand fast in this our Liberty The Son of God has done his part He has made us free indeed if we will be so for nothing can re-enslave us but our own wills and 't is strange we should desire to be slaves when we may be free nay a strange choice this rather to be Sin and Satan's slaves than God's free-men To be not so much conquered by Hell as willingly subject to it not so much Press'd men as Volunteers in its Service To be led by Satan at his will and with our own too in love with his chains of darkness and desirous to have our Ears bored through with his Awl in token of our Eternal vassalage Doubtless Christ by coming down from Heaven never design'd Redemption for such willing Slaves never intended to buy them who sell him and that for naught as every Sinner doth nay who sell themselves with Ahab to doe wickedly He did not put such a price into fools hands that will not sue out their freedom with it nor give men this liberty only to be licentious and so no otherwise free than as St. Paul expresseth it from righteousness Did He therefore break off Sin and Satan's yoke from our necks that we should cast off his or make us the Sons of God that we should make our selves the Sons of Belial impatient of any yoke though it be of his own most easie and light one Did He therefore cancel our old debts that we should study to make new ones as if the end of his coming in the flesh had not been to redeem us from our old Conversation but to it No sure He came to buy us Ye are bought with a price says our Apostle and therefore ought we to glorifie God in our bodies and in our spirits which are Gods God's as well by right of Redemption as of Creation If we be delivered by Him from the hand of our Ghostly Enemies 't is that we should serve Him without fear indeed but not cast off his fear And surely the obligation is very strong and binding and the Consequence unavoidable He hath saved us and therefore we must serve Him promote the honour of our Deliverer and advance the interest of this our great Lord and Master Servants says the Philosopher are but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 living Tools or Instruments to be used or employed at the discretion of their Masters They are not sui juris not their own Men and all that they acquire is for him they serve Nay by the Civil Law ingratitude to their deliverer did make Men forfeit the benefit of their freedom And surely if we abuse Ours and Him that bestows it Our Lord may justly return us to our former slavery make us Satan's slaves once more who refuse to be God's freemen and his slaves we are while bound unto him by any one of his Chains and since the least of them will be strong enough to tie us fast to him let us break all his bonds asunder and cast away all his cords from us An Obligation which lyes upon us as at all times so now especially when we are to partake of the benefit of that Redemption Christ has wrought out for us His Bloud was the price of it In whom we have Redemption through his bloud the Remission of sins Ephes. 1. 7. and the Cross the Altar where that price was paid or else there could have been no perfect reconciliation for us So the same Apostle Col. 1. 20. Having made peace through the bloud of his Cross by him to reconcile all things So that remission of sins peace with God and with our selves freedom from the slavery of Sin Death and Satan all this is the purchase of Christ's bloud shed upon his Cross and apply'd to us in his blessed Sacrament to which we are now invited Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden and I will refresh you says Christ Mat. 11. 28. In like manner does he bespeak us here too Come unto me all ye that are in bondage to Sin and Satan and I will release you Subdue the power of them by my grace and restore you at last to the glorious Liberty of the Sons of God Let the door-posts of your Hearts be sprinkled with my bloud and the destroying Angel shall pass and not hurt you O let us then hearken to His most gratious invitation and having such encouragement draw near to his Holy Table with a true heart in full assurance of faith and for the time to come wholly give up our selves to Him who gave Himself for us this day of his Birth by taking our Flesh and now offers up Himself again for us at his Passion whereof this Sacrament is so lively a representation and seal of our Redemption In a word as Christ has redeemed us so let us for the time to come walk as the redeemed of the Lord and his peculiar people that so we may obtain those Blessings which belong to such both here and hereafter Which God of his infinite Mercy grant c. Amen A SERMON PREACHED The Sunday after Christmas TITUS II. 14. Who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity
and purifie to himself a peculiar people zealous of good works I Need not be very exact in repeating what I so lately delivered hence to you on these words it being so fresh in your Memories Only give me leave for the better carrying on of this Second Part of my Discourse to name the Heads I then proposed which were these 1. The Person Who gave himself Christ Jesus God and Man 2. His infinite Bounty and Goodness in the clearest highest and more endearing Expresses thereof His giving himself for us A free Gift a great one too for surely a greater thing God could not give than Himself and an undeserved Gift the parties on whom it was bestowed being Sinners and Enemies to God and so in no manner of capacity to receive or deserve it 3. The Design or End of that Gift and that twofold 1. Redemption from the slavery of Sin Death and Satan And thus far I then proceeded That which now remains to be spoken to is First What Christ chiefly design'd to redeem us from and that is said to be Iniquity and withall the extent of that Redemption All iniquity 2. The other great End of Christ's giving himself for us namely Sanctification To purifie to himself a peculiar people zealous of good works Of these in their Order Who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from iniquity From our slavery and bondage to Sin not from our subjection to Men. This was no part of that liberty Christ came to purchase for us The Servant is still obliged to perform Obedience to his Master nor does Christianity give Him here any Manumission Servants be obedient to them that are your Masters according to the flesh with fear and trembling in singleness of your heart as unto Christ that is with all diligence and sincerity as unto Christ who sees your hearts and lays this Command on you Nor 2dly does the Law of Christ exempt Subjects from that subjection they owe to their natural and lawfull Princes A Jewish conceit which many primitive Christians were too ready to entertain especially such as having newly shaken hands with Moses thought that at the same time they cast off his Yoke they might lawfully renounce all Obedience to Heathen Governors We know the Jews expected such a glorious conquering Messiah as should give them the Necks of their Enemies and the Empire of the whole World and accordingly to strengthen this fancy they wrested all those obscure passages of the Prophets to a literal which were only meant in a spiritual Sense A conceit more excusable in a people so long enured to a Carnal Oeconomy which made their Thoughts so low that they could rise no higher than the Milk and Honey of a Temporal Canaan But our Saviour has expresly confuted this their gross error Joh. 18. 36. by telling Pilate that his kingdom was not of this World no more than it was his business to cancel any natural or civil Obligations between Men or break those bonds wherein they stood related and engag'd one to another He came to save his people indeed but as the Angel expresses it from their sins and no otherwise Mat. 1. 21. That is not only from the guilt of them and the punishment due to that guilt but also to rescue and free them from the power and dominion of their sins from that course of vitious living wherein themselves with the rest of Mankind had before been engaged A slavery which of all others being the saddest it being a kind of liberty to be given up to the lusts of Men in comparison of being delivered up to those of our own hearts nothing but the Son of God could deliver us from it and we find all his Attributes engaged in that task his infinite Wisdom to find out a way to glory between God's Justice and Man's Sin his infinite Power employed in accomplishing that way his infinite Mercy discovered in pardoning and his infinite Grace in subduing and conquering Sin And that this was the great design of God's sending his Son into the World and of his giving Himself for us we learn from the 11 and 12 Verses of this very Chapter The grace of God says our Apostle there that bringeth salvation hath appeared unto all men teaching us to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts So Acts 3. 26. St. Peter tells the Jews that God having raised up his Son Jesus sent him to bless them how not in saving them from their Temporal enemies but in turning every one of them from his iniquities St. John says the very same thing too though in different words 1 Joh. 3. 8. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested that he might destroy the works of the Devil the word there is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that he might dissolve or loosen those chains of Satan wherewith he had fast bound and kept all men in captivity to Himself And ver 5. of that chapter Christ is said to be manifested to take away our sins i. e. as to free us from the guilt of them by his Bloud so from the filth and stain of them by his Spirit Thus you see 't was iniquity Christ came to redeem us from and how as much as in us lyes we frustrate the very end of his coming and of his redeeming us if we enslave our selves to those sins from which he came to free us If our own interest even that of our eternal Salvation be not enough let the kindness and infinite love of God in stooping so low as to become one of us to redeem us from those sins which make us worse than the beasts that perish oblige us to quit them By undertaking the Faith of Christ every Christian ties himself to a strict life Let every one says the Apostle that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity 2 Tim. 2. 19. and not only from some but all kinds of it from All iniquity even as Christ redeemed us from All. 2. Without which addition our Redemption had been but lame and imperfect but our Slavery had not been so since any one unmortified Sin is enough to render us its Vassal There are indeed too many Rimmonists among us that would be content to allow Christ something but not all to part with many but not every sin to defie grosser ones and utterly inconsistent with their Christian profession but not such as they are pleas'd to call their failings of Infirmity and the spots of Children These Men consider not what the Text says That Christ having redeemed us from all iniquity to retain any one known sin is to despise and make void his Redemption at least to themselves and that to allow themselves in that one be it never so small to their apprehension is still to remain in the bond of iniquity any part of Sin 's wages entitling them to its service For this at best is but partial Obedience to God and every partial Obedience does as well imply our partial
thereof and yet all this still dull and flat till he quickens it with an active Verb 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which he wrought in Christ when he raised him up from the dead An act proper to God the Father who is entitled to it ver 33. and by St. Paul too Gal. 1. 1. Yet so as that he has communicated this Power to his own Son Joh. 10. 17 18. and 5. 21 26. As the Father raiseth up the dead and quickneth them even so the Son quickneth whom he will who had a Power to lay down his life and to take it again to dissolve the Temple of his Body and in three days to raise it up so that Christ here did as much rise as was raised up and this the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in St. Luke imports a Verb of an active signification implying a Power in himself to rise and in that respect a certain argument of his being the co-essential and con-substantial Son of God as the Apostle concludes him hence to be Rom. 1. 4. in spight of all those his adversaries who by denying him this Power prove themselves worse enemies to him than the Jews were who robb'd him of his Life whereas these of his Divinity also as far as in them lyes III. The principal and sole Agent then in this great Work was God the Father and the Son And such an Agent was necessary since the task was so difficult the knot which Death had tied being so hard required no less than a God to unloose it Now by Death here is meant not only a seperation of Soul and Body though that be the most natural import of the word but all those sad things that preceded as so many Prologues to his last Tragedy styled Propassiones All those ingredients in the bitter cup he drank of Such as were Christ's natural apprehensions of the terrors of Death the curse of the Law the load of our Sins upon him and a lively sense of God's wrath due to those Sins which put him into an Agony and made him sweat great drops of bloud and to close up all the bitter pangs of that cruel death he underwent to satisfie God's Justice All which are compar'd here to the Pangs of a Woman in travail from which God at last freed him by raising him up to a life uncapable of pain or sorrow making him forget his former Sufferings as a Woman does her Pains when delivered of her Child Joh. 16. 21. This is implied in the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 But because to loose the Pains seems a hard expression and unloosing properly denoting the untying of some knot and so supposing some chain or cord wherewith Christ was bound and which God dissolved which the following word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 seems to make good some conceive it better to interpret the word Pains by Bonds as the Syriack does calling them Funes Sepulchri those adamantina mortis vincula in the Poet And the rather because the Psalmist promiscuously useth these words Psal. 116. 3. The snares of Death compassed me round about and the pains of Hell gat hold upon me Both of them signifie no more but the power of death those Shackles and Manacles which the Angel of the Covenant struck off from himself and then from us which could no more hold him than the withy bands could Sampson herein a Type of Christ being but as Flax and Tow to him who was the Power of God and though he might suffer himself to be entangled yet could not possibly be holden of them And that 1. In respect of the Truth of God's Word viz. those many Predictions and Types of Christ's Resurrection which else must have been voided The Predictions are many and clear relating to this point That of Esay 53. 8. That Christ should be taken from his prison That of Hosea 6. 2. After two days will he revive us and in the third day he will raise us up and we shall live in his sight see Esay 26. 19. But most expresly that of the Prophet David Psal. 16. 10 11. That his flesh should rest in hope and that God would not suffer his Holy One to see Corruption which Prophecy could not be apply'd to David himself as St. Peter here in the Verses immediately following tells his Auditors because he did see Corruption but only to Christ who did not and who did rise the third day according to the Scriptures Luk. 18. 33. As for those Types too which shadow forth Christ's Resurrection they are many and exactly representative of it As Adam's awaking from sleep a Type of the second Adam's from death Sarah's conceiving when old Isaac's being sacrificed and yet living Gen. 22. 12. An express figure of Christ's Resurrection Heb. 11. 14 17 Joseph's being taken out of the Pit and lifted up out of the Dungeon as Jeremy was too and Daniel out of the Den of the Lions Dan. 6. 23. And more clearly by Christ's own application Jonah's being taken out of the belly of the Whale Mat. 12. 40. All which Types would be meer shadows without their substance and insignificant Types if they had wanted their Anti-types and should not exactly have answer'd them which they could not doe if Christ could have been holden by the pains or cords of death 2. Not possible by reason of that indissoluble tye of Christ's Personal Union so strait that Christ's Body even in the Grave was inseparably united to the Deity which drew it to it For although Death could dissolve his Natural yet not his Personal Union and therefore necessary it was that his Body and Soul should be re-united that so he might become a perfect Man which could not be without his rising 3. Not possible in respect of God's immutable Decree so determining it which being still of force nothing could render ineffectual God had anointed his Son from all Eternity as to be a Prophet and a Priest so a King to accomplish the work of Man's Redemption none of which Offices could be fully executed but upon supposition of his rising from the dead 1. The preaching of the Gospel was to follow that Luk. 24. 47. 2. As was also the preaching of Repentance and Remission of sins through his bloud the Expiation whereof as well as our Justification the not imputing our Sins to us was an effect of his Resurrection Rom. 4. 25. Who was delivered for our Offences and raised again for our Justification God having declared by raising his Son from the dead that he had accepted of his Death as of a sufficient ransome for our Sins For if Christ had remained still under the power of Death his satisfaction could not have been perfect neither could he have applied the Vertue thereof to us And in like manner was Christ's Resurrection our Justification For Christ being our true pledge after he had satisfied for us by his Death returning unto Life gives us a clear Evidence and affords us a
turn'd Men into destruction to say Come again ye Children of Men. If the Disputer of this World the conceited Rationalist should deny a possibility of a return from a privation to a habit a re-production of the same thing once corrupted Let me ask him why that God who created our Bodies out of nothing cannot be able to recall them out of something For since even Philosophy its self will grant that in every dissolution the parts dissolved doe not perish the Materials still continuing All the Skill here will be but to join and reunite the scattered parcels Quasi non majoris miraculi sit animare quà m jungere Tertullian's reasoning here is very concluding and we cannot resist the argument Utique idoneus est reficere qui fecit quanto plus est fecisse quam refecisse initium dedisse quà m reddidisse Ita restitutionem carnis faciliorem credas institutione An Artificer can take a Watch or Clock asunder and put it together again and shall not the great Creator be able to doe as much here to re-unite what he has severed having still reserved the loose scattered pieces and fragments The separation of our Bodies and Souls by death as 't was violent so their desire of re-union being natural shall not be frustrated They are incompleat Substances in that state and long for their perfection which is their re-union for by that are the spirits of just Men departed made perfect and God will not leave them in an imperfect condition lest a power and inclination should for ever be in the root and never rise up to fruit This may suffice to silence though not to satisfie Natural reason especially if we consider that many Philosophers have had strong apprehensions of a Resurrection upon the dissolution of the World by fire a reduction of all things to a better state as Seneca terms it Nor was there any Article of the Faith more generally believed among the Jews than this as appears by Joh. 12. 24. and Act. 23. 8. The Patriarchs were certain of it witness their great care before their death to have their Bones carried away by the Children of Israel out of Egypt that they might be buried in Abraham's Field out of a hope no doubt of being the first that by vertue of Christ's Resurrection might rise from the dead as 't is very probable they were of the Number of those many Saints which arose and came out of their Graves after his Resurrection and went into the holy City and appeared unto many Matth. 27. 53. But then to the Faith of a Christian nothing is so easie as a Resurrection since God's Word clearly tells us That Christ is our Resurrection and our Life Joh. 11. 25. and that our life which is now hid with him in God shall one day be revealed Colos. 3. 3. That God is not the God of the dead but of the living Matth. 22. 32. Nay the Lord of dead and living Rom. 14. 9. For that he will one day raise them up to life again For the dead Bodies of Saints while they lye rotting in the Grave being still united to Christ as his Body there was to the Deity cannot be for ever separate from him the Members must at last be joined to their Head If the first-fruits be risen the whole lump shall follow Not one hair of our head shall perish He that numbers the sand of the Sea numbers our dust nor can the least Attom escape him All our members are written in God's book He that puts our tears into his bottle locks up the pretious dust of his Saints in his Cabinet can recall our dispers'd Ashes and require our Bloud of every Beast that has drunk it fetch those several parcels of us which have been buried in a thousand living Graves and been made a part of those Graves which have devoured them God can make the Earth cast out her dead cause the Sea to disgorge them and our dry bones to gather together as in Ezekiel's Vision ch 37. He that calleth all the Stars by their names knows his by name for their names are written in Heaven and will call them by their names as he did Lazarus bid them come forth and by bidding enable them to doe so in spight of all their bands Now that we may be of the number and partake of the lot of these happy ones we must hear Christ's voice here calling us to repentance and newness of life that we may hear that with comfort which shall hereafter call us to Judgment and be able to answer it with joy and confidence Here we are Let us be sure of our part in the first Resurrection that the second death may have no power over us All shall one day be raised All must one day appear before the Judgment-seat of Christ good and bad But there is a Resurrection of damnation for these and for those of life Both shall come out of their Dungeons but the one like Pharaoh's Baker to an Execution the other like his Butler to an Exaltation The former shall have 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the latter only 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Sinners shall arise but the godly be quickned How happy would it be for wicked Men if they should never have been born or should never rise again since they shall rise no otherwise than as drowsie Malefactors who lying down with their Sentence are afterwards awakened to be set on the Rack But 't is not so with the Godly who sleeping in Christ doe rest in hope I would not have you ignorant Brethren concerning them which are asleep says St. Paul that ye sorrow not even as other which have no hope For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him What doest thou fear then O good Christian Sin Behold the Resurrection of thy Redeemer publishes thy discharge Thy Surety has been arrested and cast into the prison of his Grave for thee Had not the utmost farthing of thine Arrearages been paid he could not have come forth But now that thou seest he is come forth now that the summ is fully satisfied what danger can there be of a discharged debt Or is it the Wrath of God thou dreadest Wherefore is that but for Sin And if thy Sin be defrayed that quarrel is at an end And if thy Saviour suffered it for thee how canst thou fear to suffer it in thy self Surely that infinite Justice hates to be twice paid He is risen and therefore he hath satisfied Who is he that condemneth It is Christ that died yea rather that is risen again Rom. 8. 34. Lastly Is it Death that affrights thee Behold thy Saviour overcoming Death by dying and triumphing over it in his Resurrection And canst thou fear a conquered Enemy What harm is there in this Serpent but for his sting The sting of death is sin And when thou seest
It was the design of his Spirit to imprint his Image in their Hearts which consisted in true holiness and righteousness But how could that Image be imprinted on them till they were first adopted his Children Or how could they be owned for his Children but in and through Christ his only begotten and beloved Son That Peace which his Holy Spirit brings into and settles in our Consciences is founded in that other which our Mediator hath procured and merited for us by his Death and Sufferings nor could our Minds ever have been calmed had not the Lamb of God taken away the sins of the World Our Peace was to be prepared by the Father ere it could be purchased by the Son and purchased by the Son ere it could have been applied by the Spirit The Gift of the Comforter was an effect of Christ's Intercession I will pray the Father and He shall send you another Comforter And it was requisite that He should go away to send that Comforter since he was the Effect of his Intercession and that Intercession the last Act of his Sacrifice in the Heavenly Sanctuary But then 2dly it was not fit that Christ should bestow his best and most excellent Gifts on us till he had recovered his first Majesty or that the Members should be thus adorned till the Head was perfectly glorious 'T is at the time of their Coronation and Triumph that Kings and Emperors scatter their Largesses When our Lord had ascended up on high and had led Captivity captive then was it a proper time for him to give gifts unto men and among the rest of his Gifts the Fountain and Giver of all Gifts and Graces the Holy Spirit it self This St. Peter tells his Auditors Act. 2. 33. That Christ being by the right hand of God exalted and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost he hath shed forth this which ye now see and hear Christ was first to rise from the dead and to be glorified before he could send down the Spirit And this we learn from Joh. 7. 39. where 't is said That the Holy Ghost was not yet given because that Jesus was not yet glorified nor could he be fully glorify'd without the descent and testimony of the Spirit For 1. It had been some impeachment to Christ's equality with the Father had our Lord still remained on Earth for as much as the sending of the Spirit would have been ascribed to the Father alone as his sole Act. This would have been the most That the Father for his sake had sent Him but He as God had had no honour of sending Him 2. Nor indeed till he ascended up to Heaven could he have been fully glorified on Earth his appearance here having been very mean void of all pomp and state nothing about Him to strike men's Senses nothing of worldly grandeur to affect them who conversed with him neither wealth nor honour exposed he was to want and other inconveniencies of life and put at last to a cruel and an ignominious Death What strong prejudices had both Jews and Gentiles against Him upon this account And how could those prejudices be removed so long as he continued in that low state and condition But they were now quite taken away by the descent of the Holy Ghost which he had so often promised to send after his departure and which when they saw he made good their mean opinion of him was soon changed into veneration when they saw him who was made a little lower than the Angels nay who had appeared on Earth lower than the lowest of Men for the suffering of death crowned with such glory and honour And how can we but adore Him as God when we now behold Him that once stood before Herod and Pilate as a criminal exalted above all the Kings and Potentates of the Earth whose pride and glory now it is to be his Disciples to doe him homage and to lay down their Crowns and Scepters at the foot of his Cross We now see Temples every-where erected to his honour The most remote obscure Regions of the World enlightned by his beams That Jesus once so much despised become now the glory of the Earth His Name dreadfull to Devils adored by Turks and Infidels so that his Kingdom knows no bounds as it shall never have an end Had he still remained here below he had been lookt upon as no better than what the Arrians once styled Him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 But now his Godhead is as visible to each Christian as his Manhood heretofore was to each Man the Spirit of God whom He sent down having born witness to Him in all those wonderfull Signs and Miracles that were wrought by his Apostles through his Name And thus we see how that Christ could not have been glorify'd on Earth as God had he not ascended up into Heaven and from thence sent down the Holy Ghost Nor 3. could the Holy Ghost himself otherwise have been discovered Christ's stay here would have been a lett to the manifestation of his Godhead also which appearing in those many great signs and wonders done by Him had not our Lord gone away those glorious Works would in all probability have been wholly ascribed unto him and so the Holy Ghost should have lost that honour which was due to him while his Deity should have been concealed from the notice of the World 4. A fourth reason of the necessity of Christ's departure respects his Apostles and all other his Disciples 1. His Apostles who we know were to be sent abroad into all Coasts to be dispersed over the whole Earth to preach the Gospel and not to stay in one place Now Christ's corporal Presence could herein have availed them little in order to this purpose He could not have been with St. James at Jerusalem and St. John at Ephesus whatever Ubiquitaries Papists or Lutherans say to the contrary in flat contradiction to all Philosophy and Scripture too which allows not this priviledge to Christ's Body now glorified Whom the Heavens must receive saith St. Peter untill the times of Restitution of all things Act. 3. 21. There He must be till He comes to fetch us to Him and when He promised his Apostles to be with them always even to the end of the World Mat. 28. 20. He meant no otherwise than by his Holy Spirit who should comfort and guide them into all Truth And therefore it was expedient for them as our Lord says here in the Text that himself should go away to make room for the Spirit as fitter for his Disciples in their dispersed disconsolate condition since He could be and was present with them all and with every one of them by himself as filling the compass of the whole World which cannot be affirmed of our Lord 's bodily Presence 2. Besides had this manner of Christ's Presence been possible without confounding the Properties of his humane and divine Nature it had been very
the World and is as ancient as Religion it self 'T was so before and under the Law Abel Noah Job sacrificed then And under the Law the Jews were expresly commanded so to doe Exod. 8. 20. 10. 26. And as Nature did of old so does it still prompt Heathens to this way of worship thereby doing homage to the great Creator and acknowledging him Lord of all things and themselves absolutely depending on Him For Almighty God from whom we had all our subsistence hath in all Ages required one thing of us back again that we should repay something as an acknowledgment that he deserv'd all and hence probably came the Original of Sacrifices But the Jews were instructed in another super-added meaning of that custome besides viz. That God was not only to be adored as a Lord but to be appeased as a Judge his Empire by being so owned was to be dreaded too When we slew our Beasts we were to remember that our selves deserv'd that death we inflicted and punished only what we were to have endured That innocent Beasts were to be offered up for guilty Men and what was due to the Sacrificer was to be laid on the head of the Sacrifice Et viles animas pro meliore damus Poor man whose sin hath brought him to so great a distance from his Maker that the very Beasts must set him nearer Sin hath strangely transform'd us that we are not to approach Heaven unless a Brute make way Man is plac'd in a strange order of being when 't is a disputable case whether Beasts are below or above him On the one hand we command them on the other they attone for us Here we give Laws to them There we beg pardon by them We feast upon and we sacrifice by them They are our luxury and they expiate it by them we sin and we pray who make up so much of our crime and our devotion too make up a great part of our guilt and then remove it Here God hath certainly represented unto us the meanness of sin by the vileness of the price that is paid for it and Man is fallen into an order below that out of which he takes his Intercessor But however the Jews or other Nations might think that Sacrifices could remove the guilt certainly they did but upbraid it and rather signifie our death than remove it It is not possible that the bloud of Bulls and of Goats should take away sin There is need of better bloud to satisfie the God that is offended and there must be other Purgations for the Conscience that is defiled The Law was in its Ways and Institutions too weak for so high a purpose It could little more than adumbrate what the Gospel did perform St. Paul who understood the Nature of Judaism handles that argument in all his Epistles especially in this and that to the Hebrews and there useth those terms which express not how the Law of Christ doth oppose that of Moses but how it doth exceed it how it does accomplish what that did barely signifie and by their figures expresses our duties He does not take away Sacrifice for without Sacrifice no Religion but only change it For the Law being changed it is necessary that the Sacrifice should be so too That what was before Carnal should now be wholly Spiritual That now Men should be sacrificed instead of Beasts That Innocence and Meekness should be the Dove or the Lamb and Lust the Goat The Heart the only Altar Mortification the Knife and Charity the true Fire In a word Devotion now is the proper Sacrifice of a Christian and Himself the Temple the Priest and Sacrifice too Whereby we may clearly see how much more favourably God deals with us Christians than he did with the Jews among whom certain persons had right to sacrifice and at certain places and times whereas now those distinctions are quite taken away every Christian being a Priest of a nobler order than that of Aaron and not confin'd either to time or place 2ly In that God requires not now of us such an expensive Devotion as formerly he did of the Jews no herds of Bulls and Rams nor Rivers of oil no such costly Sacrifice as Solomon offered up at the Dedication of the Temple and such as would perhaps undo us We need not go to the herds to fetch an Offering were we now to sacrifice as did the Jews the loss of a Beast would perhaps restrain us more than the sense of God's anger or our own demerit But here he that cannot give a Lamb for his Transgression may give some of himself offer hunger for shew-bread and thirst for a drink-offering consecrate a meal instead of a beast and shed a sowr fasting sigh for incense And such an easie way no doubt we will well like of who as we can object that legal Sacrifices were an insufficient expiation can at the same time quarrel with them too for being an expensive one When we rejoice that we are to be atton'd by a nobler Sacrifice we are better pleased perhaps that it is also a cheaper one But are our Beasts spared from the Altar think we only to glut our Tables Hath the great God remitted them only for the sake of our other God our Bellies Is our devotion chang'd only to gratifie our lusts or shall we be content to offer up to God what costs us nothing God did indeed once say That He did not eat the flesh of Bulls or drink the bloud of Goats But there is a sense in which he does doe both viz. when a poor Man feeds upon them Then do we attone for Gluttony when we feed the Hungry Restitution expiates for Injustice and Charity for Rapine And thus St. Paul calls Alms An odour of a sweet smell A sacrifice acceptable well-pleasing to God Phil. 4. 18. Heb. 13. 16. And not only our Charity but our Prayers our Faith our Praises our Obedience our Repentance and Mortification are in Scripture language Sacrifices too and such as without them all others are but abominations to the Lord Prov. 15. 8. Dead Carkasses not living Sacrifices which is the first property here required to render them acceptable I beseech you Brethren that you present your bodies a living Sacrifice And that 't will be 1. If it be a dying one The Beasts heretofore we know dyed when they were sacrificed Mortification is the life of a Christian If ye through the spirit do mortifie the deeds of the body ye shall live says our Apostle Rom. 8. 13. 2. A living That is A quick and active Sacrifice The Soul of a Christian as well as of a Man is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a kind of perpetual motion And therefore those Blessed spirits whose activity in God's service Christ proposeth to our imitation are by the Psalmist styled a flaming fire active and restless for God's glory That Maxim in Tully De natura deorum Qui nihil agit
wrought before us How should we be ravished at a second Transfiguration and say with the Apostles who beheld it It is good for us to be here Should Christ ascend up again into Heaven in our sight as he did in that of his disciples and followers should we not need an Angel as they did to check us for our too much gazing And yet let me tell you that such a prospect as that would not be more glorious than of a Christ nailed to his Cross nor yet perhaps so usefull It would rather raise our curiosity than inflame our affections rather amaze and astonish than benefit us The Text therefore gives us a more advantageous one of Him It bids us look on him as pierced and pierced even for us who pierced him It bids us view this Sun of Righteousness more glorious in himself more benign to us in his Setting than in his Rising More beautifull in his Eclipse than in his full Lustre To look unto Jesus the Author and Finisher of our Faith who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross and despised the shame and to consider him who endured such contradiction of sinners against himself This was the aim of all St. Paul's preaching We preach Christ crucified 1 Cor. 1. 23. This the top of his Knowledge I determined not to know any thing among you save Jesus Christ and him crucified 1 Cor. 2. 2. This his only Glory God forbid that I should glory save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ Gal. 6. 14. And here to our joy and comfort may we view him Redeeming us from the curse of the Law Gal. 3. 10. Abolishing in his flesh the Enmity the Law of Commandments Ephes. 2. 14 15. Blotting out the hand-writing of Ordinances that was against us and nailing it to his Cross Col. 2. 14. Reconciling the World to Himself making our peace expiating our offences satisfying the Justice of an offended God repairing our loss and restoring us to a better condition than we had forfeited by our Transgression In a word vanquishing Hell and opening Heaven for us And ought not this to be matter of glorying to us Can any sight be more worthy our beholding Any object more deserve to be lookt on than such a one as this At this time especially when the Church solemnly invites us to this Spectacle When as St. Paul speaks Gal. 3. 1. Jesus Christ is evidently set forth crucified among us This the Text prophetically tells us Christ's crucifiers should doe and indeed All that expect to have their part in the Merit of his Death and Passion must doe that is by a serious and often-repeated Meditation have Christ crucified always before their eyes For we are not to look upon the words of my Text only as a Prophecy but as a necessary Duty obliging us to fix our eyes constantly on this object Christ pierced for us and that we may the better doe it let us take a more particular and exact view of Him and consider Him as pierced both in his Body and in his Soul In every Member of That in every Faculty of This the better to estimate his Sufferings and raise our Devotion and Admiration Consider we then Christ as pierced 1. In his Body Let us behold the Man as Pilate exposed him to the eyes of the Jews all in Bloud all as it were one Wound pierced in every part of his Body His Head torn with thorns his Face bruised with buffetings his Shoulders crusht with the weight of that Cross which he first bare before it bare Him His Back plowed up with Whips his Feet and Hands bored with Nails and his very Heart pierced with the point of the Spear I am not able to paint out those dire Sufferings Christ endured in his Body but must draw a Veil over them and leave them to your own Meditations And yet this is but the least part of what our Lord suffered for us that which our bodily eye can discern All this is but the outward piercing and but as it were skin-deep in comparison of the piercing of his 2. Soul For what is the pain of the Body to that of the Soul And this had its piercing too What Simeon said of the Mother by way of Prophecy That a Sword should go through her Soul Luke 2. 35. was more signally verified of the Son of God The Arrows of the Almighty did not only stick in his Flesh but pierced his very Soul through That Bloud which streamed from him in his Agony was not so much the Bloud of his Body as of his very Soul And 't was this piercing which drew that sad and lamentable complaint from Him Matth. 26. 38. My Soul is exceeding sorrowfull even unto death Surely it was the apprehension of somewhat more horrible than either Pain or Death that made him so heavy and sorrowfull of Soul Evils are wont to crucifie the Mind in the expectation rather than in the suffering It is a double misery both to fear and undergo it God hath mercifully provided this ease for our Souls in the often ignorance of things that happen that they streighten not our Thoughts ere they load our Backs Who of us embraceth not Pain before Perplexity How often doe we groan and cry for a ready dispatch in our lingerings Defiring rather to dye than to feel or fear death and live Yet was our Saviour both terrified and crucified Terrified in the apprehension of Wrath and in the perpession of Death crucified Not only the sorrows of Death but the very pains of Hell came about him and God's dereliction was that which made up the greatest part of those pains Mat. 27. 46. My God my God why hast thou forsaken me was That which most tortured Him Christ's Enemies had now mocked scourged pierced Him so that from head to foot every Member was deformed and dislocated yet He opened not his mouth He is silent and patient at all the violence Man offered him He only complains of the absence of his God He bewails not what He feels but what He misses and could have endured any misery that could not abide to want his God And what a loss think we was this to want the presence and favour of God though but for a moment which where it is perpetual does in the judgment of Divines make up the greatest part of Hell But you will say How could God forsake Christ unless Christ forsook Himself Certainly God and Man were so unchangeably so inseperably combined in Him that so strict an Union could not possibly suffer the least Divulsion or Desertion True indeed And therefore the Godhead at this time denied the Manhood not his Person but his Patronage not his Presence but his Protection Divinity here winks and withdraws it self from Humanity that our Lord might now be bereft of all comfort and favour who took upon Him to sustain the wrath of all Well then might his Soul be heavy unto death