that which Christ in no sort or sense was capable to undergo being every moment of his sufferings the most perfect object of Gods eternal love doing that all along which was most perfectly welpleasing and lovely to the Father even whilst his natural man was the object of his temporary wrath and displeasure But Gods wrath in the first sense hath for its object all sinners whatsoever they be whether elect or non-elect whether such as shall be finally saved or finally damned consisting in that discountenance and rebuke which God hath resolved to put upon sin wheresoever he finds it yea though in his own dear children which therefore is consistent with his peculiar love as himself saith speaking of the spiritual seed to whom the sure mercies belong and with whom his covenant stands fast for ever Psal 89. 30 31 32 33. If his children forsake my law and walk not in my judgements if they break my statutes and keep not my commandments then will I visit their transgression with the rod that is of this wrath and their iniquity with stripes Nevertheless my loving kindness will I not utterly take from him nor suffer my faithfulness to fail With this rod and with these stripes was Christ himself smitten and we healed Isa 53. to the marring of his visage more then any mans and his form more then the sons of men Chap. 52. 14. leaving in him no form or comeliness to the eye of the natural man who therefore when he thus seeth him saith there is no beauty that we should desire him Chap. 53. 2. c. looking on him as despised and rejected of men and therefore hiding the face from him as not valuing or esteeming him at all but judging him as one stricken smitten of God and afflicted or as as one whose name is blotted out of Gods book a phrase usual in scripture to describe those that are under this first dispensation of wrath as accursed and separated from God Rev. 3. to whom God doth in this temporary ministry of wrath attending the breach of the first covenant declare himself as an enemy Thus it was with Christ not only to the judgement and discerning of others whether of his own people the Jews or of the heathens but thus he stood represented to himself in his own natural judgement and sense as a meer man who lay really under this wrath of God as the object of it for the sins and on the behalf of all mankind which seems to be intimated by Moses when in the person of Christ he was mediating with God Exod 32. 32. in behalf of the transgressing children of the first covenant bringing this as his last argument Blot me saith he out of thy book if thou wilt not forgive them as if he should have said Am not I willing to be blotted out of thy book that thou mightest forgive them have not I thus been wounded for their transgressions that by my stripes they might be healed under this wrath or curse Paul also in imitation of Christs affection declares himself willing to fall if thereby he might benefit his brethren his kinsfolks according to the flesh This then is the only sense wherein Christ is capable of bearing Gods wrath and of being made a curse for us And now how innocent and spotless is this precious and most profitable doctrine of Christs sufferings or passive obedience as to the calumnies and unworthy reproaches of those who take upon them to brand it with Popery Socinianism and how unjustly doth this proceed out of their mouths who state the point of justification so as to make it little other or better then that of works or of the first covenant having the imputation of no higher an object then Christs active obedience or legal righteousness singly considered for the matter of it whereas by this doctrine of Christs death and passive obedience we see something farther required by the law of the new covenant over and above the former which as a higher and more acceptable object of imputative righteousness is given to the true and right heirs of salvation viz. that of Christs broken meek crucified spirit the true Isaac as offered up which is before God of great price In this everlasting righteousness all the spiritual seed obtain at once an absolute remission and freedom from sin standing before the throne of God without blame in their spiritual Head the spotless Lamb in whom is no guile to the obtaining an eternal redemption peculiar to themselves from amongst all others the sons of men And forasmuch as herein is asserted that the sinner is thus justified in the spirit and righteousness of his head imputed to him as soon as he is made actually a believer and of that one blessed seed it doth avowedly decry Socinianism which makes the personal obedience of the Saint in conformity only to the death of Christ as his pattern and this but litterally also understood to be that alone which is thesinners justification which withall excludes the secondbranch of Christs passive obedience here asserted as it is the satisfaction to Gods justice and the atonement for the appeasing of his wrath on the behalf of sinners And as thus the true believers have a higher and more excellent objective righteousness offered and imputed to them so have they also a more excellent and precious faith then the other to receive and apply it founded in the spirit of true son-ship and adoption as the spring of that newness of life and operation which the law of the new covenant requires This faith we say is saving and to be of it is inconsistent with our being of works singly considered so that to be and live by this grace is no more to be and live by works otherwise grace is no more grace and if it be of works then is it not of grace otherwise work is no more work Rom. 10. 6. which with what else hath been said on this subject of Christs obedience doth suffiicently bear witness against the Romish doctrine of works Thus we have treated of the obedience of Christ both active and passive through which he fulfilled all righteousness and underwent all things written of him needful to be by him performed and suffered for the compleating mans redemption and salvation without having inflicted upon him the pain of the damned or the wrath of God in that sense as some groundlesly and without warrant from Scripture do affirm And as thus we have seen Christ mystically as well as litterally laid in the grave and rendred obedient to the death of the Cross so in the third and last particular he remains to be considered as through the progress which the witness and teachings of the Father made in him he comes at length to be declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead the holy one which was so far from being left in the grave or suffered to see corruption that his crucified natural man or dead
threefold nature and spirit proper to each of them In one of which all the nations of the world live and walk as they are distinguished from the earthly Jerusalem the children of Mount Sinai or the first convenant In the second the fleshly seed of Israel or the worldly Church lives and walks distinguished both from the nations of the world and from the heavenly Jerusalem or the true Mount-Sion And in the third the spiritual seed or children of the Jerusalem that is above do live and walk distinguished from both the former each of them therefore are placed by God under a several Rule and law according to which their lives and actions are to be fashioned and conformed and by which they are to be tried and judged at the last day when the secrets of men of all sorts shall be judged by Christ Jesus according to the Gospel which is of that large comprehension as to take in all the three dispensations First for the nations of the world they have judgements given them by God Ezek. 5. 6 7. with which Israel is reproched as having walked short of them so that the uncircumcision did out-doe the circumcision in the righteousness the effect whereof was contained in the law as in a much superiour and more excellent administration These the Apostle cals Rom. 2. 12. such as sin without law and perish without law but yet are acknowledged as such that though they have not the law as it was given to the Jews yet have a law given them from God the work and effect of which sheweth it self in their consciences accusing or excusing them as they walk up to it or short of it even the law of nature in which they are a law unto themselves having that within them that shall witness for them or against them before the Throne and judgement seat of Christ that is to say the law of natural right and just exhibited to them through the ministry of Angels that are invisible Thrones Dominions Principalities and powers set up by God for this very end as his ministers for terrour unto evil works and as encouragers and Protectors of them that do well as will presently more fully be evinced The second Rule or law containing the judgements and ordinances of God given unto the fleshly seed or children of the first covenant is the WORD of God coming forth in his first appearance or the law proceeding from Mount Sinai witnessed unto by the Scriptures of truth and Oracles of God that were committed to the Jews first and afterwards to the Gentiles which in all the degrees and steps of its administration answers the true measure and proportion of Christs natural righteousness and perfection as he is and so hath been here described the head and root thereof to Angels and men being that holy commandment that either may be turned aside from leaving them that have been under it to a far worse state then it found them in and rendring their latter end worse then their beginning as 2 Pet. 2. 20. c. or else be kept without spot and blameless through the power of faith by the true Saint or spiritual seed The third law and Rule is the law of the spirit of life in Christ Iesus the WORD of God in his second appearance which comes forth from Mount Sion the heavenly Jerusalem consisting not in meats and drinks and worldly rudiments but in the power of an endless life and an everlasting righteousness written out in fair characters in the death and resurrection of Christ when he ceased from his own works and became the beginning and author of life from the dead as the first-born among the many brethren whose names are written in heaven and upon whom God hath written his new name and the name of the new Ierusalem The perfection and righteousness of which second appearance is brought to light fully by the brightness of Christs comming the second time the first-fruits whereof are already given and set up in the hearts and spirits of the children of promise and of the free-woman being the hidden Manna which they feed on the new name which they can read and the holy anointing whereby they judge all things whilst themselves are judged of no man CHAP. XII Shewing wherein the three Rules and forms of administration in Christs mediatorial Kingdom do differ one from another and maintain an entire jurisdiction within themselves but in due subordination and subserviency still of the lower to the higher over the respective subjects that live under them THE first of these is the law and Rule which is given by God to all nations even to the whole world in their corrupt degenerate and fallen state occasioned by the entrance which sin made by Adam overrunning his whole posterity like a spreading leprosie whereby man that by his creation was made a temple of God became a habitation for Dragons a court for owls or birds of the night a hold for every foul spirit and a cage for every unclean and hateful bird so that although there was a natural being life and motion left unto man it was in the next degree to no being at all if not in some respects far worse Yet how great soever this desolation was and how thick soever the darkness be in this howling and barren wilderness-condition of mankind the blood of Christ is of vertue to make the heart of man again rejoyce and blessom as the Rose and the voice of the Mediator can make it self to be heard in the remotest and darkest corners of the world to the opening of the eyes of the blind and unstopping the ears of the deaf to the making the lame to leap and the dumb to sing to the causing the waters of his manifestation to break forth and stream in this desert in one word to the letting in the sound of the Gospel it-self in the shadowy dark appearances thereof upon the very ends of the world in pursuance of the extent of the reconciliation made through the blood of his Cross by whom all things are reconciled unto God whether they be things in earth or things in heaven so as the very creation it self is made capable to serve unto the ministry of the Gospel the heavens to declare the glory of God the firmament to shew his handy work day unto day to utter speech and night unto night to shew knowledge by means whereof there is no speech nor language where Christs voice is not heard their sound going into all the earth and their words unto the end of the world as Psal 19. 1 2 3 4. compared with Rom. 10. 18. doth evidence Thus the invisible things of God even his eternal power and Godhead shining forth in the face of the Mediator may be seen by the things that are made Rom. 1. and that either inwardly by the influence and operations of the holy Angels maintaining and keeping up the witness of Christ in the manifestation of natural justice
face in his own similitude apparently conversing with him as friend speaks with friend having the natural powers faculties of their mind which they still possess in common with other men so subdued and made subject to this higher birth of the divine will and presence in them that they are taught to do the will of their father in earth as it is done in heaven and to be the fulfillers of all righteousness not only of that which is according to the rule and law of the spirit of life that they are under exclusive to the rest but what is according to the law and rule of Gods judgements given either to the Jew worldly Christian or to the heathen in the right way of subordination wherein they ought to be practised and observed according to the will of God when we are so made one with Christ as he is made one with the Father ever doing that which is pleasing and acceptable in his sight These are they then in the general whom we mean by those that are born after the spirit and of the free-woman that are from above of the Jerusalem that is above the heavenly City whose builder and maker is God by his own immediate hand forming and setting it up for that end in the person of the mediator as that wherein Christ as the first begotten from the dead might become the head to this whole seed of spiritual believers whose names are written in heaven This divine birth is that through which we believe to the saving of the soul and therefore is described Heb. 11. 1. c. under the name of faith and is said to be the substance of things hoped for and evidence of things unseen giving the sight of him that is unseen to every natural eye and bringing the soul to the knowledge of the inward living WORD through the knowledge of whom we come to understand that the worlds were framed and how they are since upheld and governed By the power of this divine birth Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice then Cain and the famous men of God in old times whose genealogy as all partaking of this spiritual seed is derived in that Chapter from Abel downward through all the old Testament obtained a good report or lived that life which was in repute with God and which he owned as wel-pleasing and acceptable unto him These are they that throughout the new Testament also are to be understood for the seed of true believers there spoken of unto whom as their pattern in spirit these worthies Heb. 11. are propounded that they might run the same race having so great a cloud of witnesses set before them looking also to Jesus not only as he is the author and beginner of our faith in the ministry of his first appearance but as he is also the finisher of it making it the faith that fails not which is attained in and by the new covenant or ministry of his second appearance through which he doth not only appear a King of righteousness conveying a seed of righteousness answerable to the perfection commanded by the law but also a King of peace conveying a seed of everlasting peace and absolute reconciliation between God and the soul through the blood of the Cross wherein the perfection of the life of faith consists For wherever the single seed of righteousness is in any without this other seed of peace blessing will not stay or long abide in that heart nor will the profession of faith and a good conscience be held fast and without wavering and danger of falling away But where both these seeds are cast in together to live together as brethren in unity the elder serving the younger they are the two that are better then one mentioned Eccles 4. 9 10. who shall have a reward for their labour and when one falleth the other shall help him up but woe to him that is single and alone For the wavering unstable principles of the first holy and righteous seed are never rightly fixed nor made durable or abiding unto life eternal but by this higher divine birth whereby the first hearing of the word becomes mixed with faith and produceth in the heart that ground which brings forth the good seed in abandant fruitfulness without any danger of miscarrying This new-creature-life and glory is signified by the white stone and new name that none can read but those that have it who feed upon the hidden Manna and are admitted to sit down at table and meat with the Son in the Kingdom of the Father having the seal of the living God in their foreheads by which they escape out of all trials and spiritual dangers and are brought forth as gold refined by the fire These are they that are baptized with the Holy Ghost and with fire into the name of the Father Son and Spirit in the truth of the thing in the living WORD and not only in the shadow and figure held forth in worldly rudiments and carnal ordinances being the chosen vessels which God selects out of those many which he hath called causing them to bear his own name his new name whom he makes pillars in his house never to go forth more These are the true seed of the promise as it is written not to seeds as of many but that one seed which is Christ who are now sons though for a season under the veil and form of servants unseen in their true and proper appearance yet at last they must be like unto Christ their head in their heavenly glorified man-hood as saith the Scripture we shall be like him and see him as he is And as thus the spiritual seed considered as living by the faith that fails not are one sort of the subjects under this third dispensation of Christs Rule so there is a counterfeit spiritual seed that are described Jude ver 12 13. who are to be numbred under this third rank of subjects as the second sort under this third administration intruders into this spiritual society of true believers being spots in those feasts of love wherein they feast with them sporting themselves with their own deceivings feeding without fear clouds they are without water carried about of winds foaming out their own shame wandring stars and 2 Pet. 2. 14 15 17 18 19. having eyes full of adultery and that cannot cease from sin beguiling unstable souls cursed children who have for saken the right way and are gone astray who speaking great swelling words of vanity allure through the lusts of the flesh through much wantonness those that had clean escaped from them who live in errour being themselves the servants of corruption whilst they promise liberty to others unto whom is reserved the mist or blackness of darkness for ever Thus man in a threefold respect is the subject of these three kingdoms and dominions of Christ and is so vastly distinguished from himself in these three states that he seems to have as it were a
a Name given him above every name either in this world or in the world to come according to that description we find of him Isaiah 4. 2. c. where Christ the BRANCH is held forth in both these capacities called also Zach. 4. the two olive trees or sons of oyl that stand by the Lord of the whole earth by means of the one emptying out the golden oyl of all natural perfection as he is the Son of man singly considered Christ according to the flesh Head and Root of the renewal of natural purity and perfection by vertue of his blood unto Adams fallen posterity and by means of the other emptying forth the oyl of Gods new Name and of all Spiritual perfection as he is the beginning and first born from the dead made Head to the Heavenly body the Church that general Assembly of the first-born whose names are written in Heaven In both these respects this BRANCH of the Lord is to be made beautifull and glorious so as the very fruit of the earth or the earthly Adam shall be excellent and comely for them that are escaped of Israel Isa 4. 2. For in them the very being of the first Adams perfection considered as built up again in fellowship and harmony with the second Adams perfection through the Resurrection of the dead is as the Ark of the Testament which is to be seen in this Temple whereby the Song of Moses shall be sung as perfectly as the Song of the Lamb as the musick and harmony requisite to be made by the inhabitants of the NEW JERUS ALEM those that are left in Zion and that remain in Jerusalem when God shall have cleansed them and purged them by the spirit of Judgement and burning by the baptism of the fire of the sacrifice of Christs death wherby they are written among the living in Jerusalem that is do become a Heavenly Tabernacle as built up into a life from the dead for a shadow in the day time from the heat and for a place of refuge and for a covert from storm and from rain in which dwelling places of Mount Zion and upon her Assemblies the Lord will create a cloud and a smoke by day and the shining of a flaming fire by night for upon all the glory shall be a defence ver 3 4 5 6. From this Scripture it appears that after men have had that work pass upon them which baptizeth them into one living Body with Christ making them living Members of his fleshly Manhood and enabling them to bring forth the excellent comely fruits of the renewed earthly Adam ver 2. unless they yet further abide the trial of fire which is to pass upon them by the Spirit of Judgement and burning of the day of Christs second appearance they will not continue long in ZION nor remain members of this earthly Jerusalem but will defile and pollute the Temple and Tabernacle of God set up in them in conformity to the flesh of Christ and so make themselves fit subjects for God to destroy and to swear in his wrath that even this Generation thus far advanced out of Egypt toward the Land of Promise shall never enter into his Rest as those that are but after such a manner Christs house as is intimated Heb. 3. 6. whose house are we if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoycing of the hope firm unto the end And as those Paul speaks of amongst the Corinthians that walked like men 1 Cor. 3. 3 17. If any man defile the Temple of God him shall God destroy for the Temple of God is holy which Temple ye are Those then are the Children of the first Covenant who are Christs seed and off-spring as he is the Head of the first Adams natural perfection and doth renew the Spirit and power of that perfection in the purity thereof as a seed in fallen man that shall grow up and prosper even into a Kingdom in the soul so as to be the prevailing principle there and carry the Rule and sway over the corrupt and prophane part causing men clean to escape the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of him after the flesh only and with this flesh as the true Manna and bread given them from heaven nourishing them up in the beauty and strength of his natural life The character of this sort of Christs children by the first covenant is lively set down by the Prophet Ezekiel instancing in the children of Israel whom God took by the hand and led out of Aegypt under the ministry of the first covenant wherein he was a husband unto them as appears Jer. 31 32. and had made them beautiful and of great renown in the sight of the Heathens round about them from whom they were separated as made perfect through his comliness which he had put upon them Ezek. 16. 13 14. which sort of Gods children Paul ranks those Galatians amongst that still desired to be under the Law in the time of the Gospel Gal. 4. calling them children of that covenant given from Sinai gendring to bondage or of the Ierusalem that now is to wit the earthly Jerusalem in distinction from the children of the other covenant or of the Jerusalem that is above viz. the heavenly For we must not think that this generation of men passeth away through the coming in of the Gospel but is rather much more improved and compleated forasmuch as by the means of Christ death the Holy commandment is now spoken by the Son himself delivered more immediately by the dawning of the light of Christs first appearance in the heart which was in the time of the ministry of the Law the word only spoken by Angels as committed unto them to mannage through whose ministry or disposition Acts 7. 53. the circumcised seed of Abraham Isaac and Jacob received it who were as figures of this circumcision to be made immediately by Christ himself among the Gentiles without hands by the pouring forth of his spirit upon all flesh and building them up with him into one living body as the true Israel of God after the flesh all which amounts but to the compleating of Christs living body through this first-covenant-work of his set up in the heart and conscience called in Scripture the FIRST FAITH which may be departed from and prove a faith that fails as being held upon wavering and uncertain principles until it be fixed by the baptism of fire and have that brought forth in fellowship with it which accompanies salvation to wit the incorruptible and immortal seed of the perfection of the second Adam causing them to dwell on high and placing them upon the munitions of Rocks where bread is given to them and waters that do not fail The Rule that is given unto this fleshly seed or children of the first covenant is the pattern of Christs natural life and perfection as he appeareth in the fashion of a man and form of a servant like unto us in all