to mock him than worship him When we believe that we ought to be satisfied rather than God glorified we set God below our selves imagin that he should submit his own honour to our advantage We make our selves more glorious than God as though we were not made for him but he hath a Being only for us this is to have a very low esteem of the Majesty of God Whatsoever any man aims at in worship above the glory of God that he forms as an Idol to himself instead of God and sets up a Golden-Image God counts not this as a Worship The Offerings made in the Wilderness for forty years together God esteemed as not offered to him Amos 5.25 Have you offered to me Sacrifices and Offerings in the Wilderness forty years oh House of Israel They did it not to God but to themselves for their own security and the attainment of the possession of the promised Land A spiritual Worshipper performs not worship for some hopes of carnal advantage he uses ordinances as means to bring God and his Soul together to be more fitted to honour God in the world in his particular place When he hath been inflamed and humble in any address or duty he gives God the glory his heart sutes the doxology at the end of the Lords-prayer ascribes the Kingdom Power and Glory to God alone and if any viper of Pride starts out upon him he endeavours presently to shake it off That which was the first end of our framing ought to be the chief end of our acting towards God But when men have the same ends in worship as Brutes the satisfaction of a sensitive part the service is no more than brutish The acting for a sensitive end is unworthy of the Majesty of God to whom we address and unbecoming a rational Creature The acting for a sensitive end is not a rational much less can it be a spiritual service though the Act may be good in it self yet not good in the Agent because he wants a due end We are then spiritual when we have the same end in our redeemed services as God had in his redeeming love viz. his own Glory 12. Spiritual service is offered to God in the name of Christ Those are only spiritual Sacrifices that are offered up to God by Jesus Christ * 1 Pet. 2.5 that are the fruits of the Sanctification of the Spirit and offered in the mediation of the Son As the Altar sanctifies the gift so doth Christ spiritualize our services for Gods acceptation as the Fire upon the Altar separated the airy and finer parts of the sacrifice from the terrene and earthly This is the Golden Altar upon which the Prayers of the Saints are offered up before the Throne * Revel 8.3 As all that we have from God streams through his blood so all that we give to God ascends by vertue of his merits All the blessings God gave to the Israelites came out of Sion * Psal 134.3 The Lord bless thee out of Sion that is from the Gospel hid under the Law all the duties we present to God are to be presented in Sion in an evangelical manner All our worship must be bottomed on Christ God hath intended that we should honour the Son as we honour the Father As we honour the Father by offering our service only to him so we are to honour the Son by offering it only in his name In him alone God is well pleased because in him alone he finds our services spiritual and worthy of acceptation We must therefore take fast hold of him with our Spirits and the faster we hold him the more spiritual is our worship To do any thing in the name of Christ is not to believe the worship shall be accepted for it self but to have our eye fixed upon Christ for the acceptance of it and not to rest upon the work done as carnal people are apt to do The Creatures present their acknowledgments to God by Man and man can only present his by Christ It was utterly unlawful after the building of the Temple to sacrifice any where else The Temple being a type of Christ it is utterly unlawful for us to present our services in any other name than his This is the way to be spiritual If we consider God out of Christ we can have no other notions but those of horror and bondage We behold him a Spirit but environ'd with Justice and Wrath for Sinners But the consideration of him in Christ vails his Justice draws forth his Mercy represents him more a Father than a Judge In Christ the aspect of Justice is changed and by that the temper of the Creature so that in and by this Mediator we can have a spiritual boldness and access to God with confidence * Eph. 3.12 whereby the Spirit is kept from benummedness and distraction and our Souls quickned and refined The thoughts kept upon Christ in a duty of worship quickly elevates the Soul and spiritualizeth the whole service Sin makes our services black and the blood of Christ makes both our persons and services white To conclude this Head God is a Spirit infinitely happy therefore we must approach to him with cheerfulness He is a Spirit of infinite Majesty therefore we must come before him with reverence He is a Spirit infinitely high therefore we must offer up our Sacrifices with the deepest humility He is a Spirit infinitely holy therefore we must address with purity He is a Spirit infinitely glorious we must therefore acknowledge his excellency in all that we do and in our measures contribute to his glory by having the highest aims in his worship He is a Spirit infinitely provoked by us therefore we must offer up our worship in the name of a pacifying Mediator and Intercessour 3. The third general is why a spiritual worship is due to God and to be offered to him We must consider the Object of Worship and the Subject of worship the Worshipper and the Worshipped God is a spiritual Being Man is a reasonable Creature The nature of God informs us what is fit to be presented to him our own nature informs us what is fit to be presented by us Reason 1. The best we have is to be presented to God in worship For 1. Since God is the most excellent Being he is to be served by us with the most excellent thing we have and with the choicest veneration God is so incomprehensibly excellent that we cannot render him what he deserves We must render him what we are able to offer the best of our affiections the flower of our strength the Cream and Top of our Spirits By the same reason that we are bound to give to God the best worship we must offer it to him in the best manner We cannot give to God any thing too good for so blessed a Being God being a great King slight services become not his Majesty * Mal. 1.13 14. 'T is unbecoming the
a Wilderness become Waters and speak a Chaos into a beautiful frame of Heaven and Earth He can act our souls with infinite more ease than our souls can act our bodies he can fix in us what motions frames inclinations he pleases he can come and settle in our hearts with all his Treasures 'T is an encouragement to confide in him when we petition him for spiritual Blessings As he is a Spirit he is possessed with spiritual Blessings * Eph. 1.3 A Spirit delights to bestow things sutable to its Nature do Bodies are to communicate what is agreeable to theirs As he is a Father of Spirits we may go to him for the Welfare of our Spirits he being a Spirit is as able to repair our Spirits as he was to create them As he is a Spirit he is indefatigable in acting The members of the body tire and flagg but whoever heard of a Soul wearied with being active Whoever heard of a weary Angel In the purest Simplicity there is the greatest Power the most efficacious Goodness the most reaching Justice to affect the Spirit that can insinuate it self every where to punish wickedness without weariness as well as to comfort goodness God is active because he is Spirit and if we be like to God the more spiritual we are the more active we shall be 6. Inference God being a Spirit is immortal His being immortal and being invisible are joyned together * 1 Tim. 1.17 Spirits are in their nature incorruptible they can only perish by that hand that framed them Every compounded thing is subject to mutation but God being a pure and simple Spirit is without corruption without any shadow of change * James 1.17 Where there is composition there is some kind of repugnancy of one part against the other and where there is repugnancy there is a capability of dissolution God in regard of his infinite spirituality hath nothing in his own nature contrary to it can have nothing in himself which is not himself The world perishes friends change and are dissolved bodies moulder because they are mutable God is a Spirit in the highest excellency and glory of Spirits nothing is beyond him nothing above him no contrariety within him This is our comfort if we devote our selves to him this God is our God this Spirit is our Spirit this is our all our immutable our incorruptible support a Spirit that cannot die and leave us 7. Inference If God be a Spirit we see how we can only converse with him by our Spirits Bodies and Spirits are not sutable to one another We can only see know embrace a Spirit with our Spirits He judges not of us by our corporeal actions nor our external devotions by our masks and disguises He fixes his eye upon the frame of the heart bends his ear to the groans of our Spirits He is not pleased with outward pomp He is not a Body therefore the beauty of Temples delicacy of Sacrifices fumes of Incense are not grateful to him by those or any external action we have no communion with him A Spirit when broken is his delightful Sacrifice * Psal 51.17 We must therefore have our Spirits fitted for him be renewed in the spirit of our minds * Eph. 4.23 that we may be in a posture to live with him and have an intercourse with him We can never be united to God but in our Spirits Bodies unite with Bodies Spirits with Spirits The more spiritual any thing is the more closely doth it unite Air hath the closest union nothing meets together sooner than that when the parts are divided by the interposition of a body 8. Inference If God be a Spirit he can only be the true satisfaction of our Spirits Spirit can only be fill'd with Spirit Content flows from likeness and sutableness As we have a resemblance to God in regard of the spiritual nature of our Soul so we can have no satisfaction but in him Spirit can no more be really satisfied with that which is corporeal than a beast can delight in the company of an Angel Corporeal things can no more fill a hungry Spirit than pure Spirit can feed an hungry Body God the highest Spirit can only reach out a full content to our spirits Man is Lord of the Creation nothing below him can be fit for his converse nothing above him offers it self to his converse but God We have no correspondence with Angels The influence they have upon us the protection they afford us is secret and undiscern'd but God the highest Spirit offers himself to us in his Son in his Ordinances is visible in every Creature presents himself to us in every providence to him we must seek in him we must rest God had no rest from the Creation till he had made Man and Man can have no rest in the Creation till he rests in God * Psal 90.1 God only is our dwelling place our Souls should only long for him our Souls should only wait upon him * Psal 63.1 The Spirit of Man never riseth to its original glory till it be carried up on the wings of Faith and Love to its original Copy The face of the Soul looks most beautiful when it is turned to the face of God the Father of Spirits when the derived Spirit is fixed upon the original Spirit drawing from it Life and Glory Spirit is only the receptacle of Spirit God as Spirit is our Principle we must therefore live upon him God as Spirit hath some resemblance to us as his Image we must therefore only satisfie our selves in him 9. Inference If God be a Spirit we should take most care of that wherein we are like to God Spirit is nobler than Body we must thererefore value our Spirits above our Bodies The Soul as Spirit partakes more of the Divine Nature and deserves more of our choycest cares If we have any love to this Spirit we should have a real affection to our own Spirits as bearing a stamp of the spiritual Divinity the chiefest of all the works of God as it is said of Behemoth Job 40.19 .. That which is most the Image of this immense Spirit should be our Darling So David calls his Soul Psal 35.17 Shall we take care of that wherein we partake not of God and not delight in the Jewel which hath his own Signature upon it God was not only the Framer of Spirits and the End of Spirits but the Copy and Exemplar of Spirits God partakes of no corporeity he is pure Spirit But how do we act as if we were only matter and body We have but little kindness for this great Spirit as well as our own if we take no care of his immediate offspring since he is not only Spirit but the Father of Spirits * Heb. 12.9 10. Inference If God be a Spirit let us take heed of those sins which are spiritual Paul distinguisheth between the filth of the Flesh and that of
that we might now serve God in a more spiritual manner and with more spiritual frames 6. Proposition The Service and worship the Gospel settles is spiritual and the performance of it more spiritual Spirituality is the Genius of the Gospel as Carnality was of the Law the Gospel is therefore called Spirit We are abstracted from the imployments of Sense and brought neerer to a Heavenly State The Jews had Angels Bread poured upon them we have Angels Service prescribed to us the Praises of God Communion with God in Spirit through his Son Jesus Christ and stronger foundations for spiritual affections 'T is called a reasonable service * Rom. 12.1 t is suted to a rational nature tho it finds no friendship from the Corruption of reason It prescribes a service fit for the reasonable faculties of the Soul and advanceth them while it employs them The word reasonable may be translated word service * V. Hammond in loc as well as reasonable service an Evangelical service in opposition to a Law service All Evangelical service is reasonable and all truly reasonable service is Evangelical The matter of the worship is Spiritual it consists in love of God faith in God recourse to his goodness Meditation on him and Communion with him It lays aside the Ceremonial Spiritualizeth the moral The Commands that concerned our duty to God as well as those that concerned our duty to our Neighbour were reduced by Christ to their Spiritual intention The Motives are Spiritual t is a state of more grace as well as of more truth * John 1.17 supported by Spiritual promises beaming out in Spiritual priviledges heaven comes down in it to Earth to Spiritualize Earth for Heaven The manner of worship is more Spiritual higher flights of the Soul stronger ardours of affections sincerer aims at his glory mists are removed from our minds Cloggs from the Soul more of love than fear faith in Christ kindles the affections and works by them The assistances to Spiritual worship are greater The Spirit doth not drop but is plentifully poured out It doth not light sometimes upon but dwells in the heart Christ suted the Gospel to a Spiritual heart and the Spirit changeth a carnal heart to make it fit for a Spiritual Gospel He blows upon the Garden and causes the spices to flow forth And often makes the Soul in worship like the Chariots of Aminadab in a quick and nimble motion Our blessed Lord and Saviour by his death discovered to us the nature of God and after his ascension sent his Spirit to fit us for the worship of God and converse with him One Spiritual Evangelical believing breath is more delightful to God than millions of Altars made up of the richest pearls and smoaking with the costliest oblations because it is Spiritual And a mite of Spirit is of more worth than the greatest weight of flesh One holy Angel is more excellent than a whole world of meer bodies 7. Proposition Yet the worship of God with our bodies is not to be rejected upon the account that God requires a Spiritual worship Tho we must perform the weightier duties of the Law yet we are not to omit and leave undone the lighter precepts Since both the Magnalia and minutula legis the greater and the lesser duties of the Law have the stamp of Divine authority upon them As God under the Ceremonial Law did not Command the worship of the body and the observation of outward rites without the engagement of the Spirit so neither doth he Command that of the Spirit without the peculiar attendance of the body The Schwelk sendians denied bodily worship And the indecent postures of many in publick attendance intimate no great care either of Composing their bodies or Spirits A morally discomposed body intimates a tainted heart Our Bodies as well as our Spirits are to be presented to God * Rom. 12.1 Our bodies in lieu of the Sacrifices of Beasts as in the Judaical institutions body for the whole man a living Sacrifice not to be slain as the Beasts were but living a new life in a holy posture with Crucified affections This is the inference the Apostle makes of the priviledges of Justification Adoption Coheirship with Christ which he had before discoursed of Priviledges conferred upon the person and not upon a part of man 1. Bodily worship is due to God He hath a right to an Adoration by our bodies as they are his by Creation his right is not diminisht but increased by the blessing of Redemption 1 Cor. 6.20 For you are bought with a price therefore glorifie God in your bodies and your Spirits which are Gods The Body as well as the Spirit is redeemed since our Saviour suffered Crucifixion in his body as well as Agonies in his Soul Body is not taken here for the whole man as it may be in Rom. 12. But for the material part of our nature it being distinguisht from the Spirit If we are to render to God an obedience with our bodies we are to render him such Acts of worship with our bodies as they are capable of As God is the Father of Spirits so he is the God of all flesh Therefore the flesh he hath framed of the Earth as well as the noble portion he hath breathed into us cannot be denyed him without apalpable in justice The service of the body we must not deny to God unless we will deny him to be the author of it and the exercise of his providential care about it The mercies of God are renewed every day upon our bodies as well as our Souls and therefore they ought to express a fealty to God for his bounty everyday * Sherman's Greek in the Temple pa. 61.62 both are from God both should be for God Man consists of Body and Soul the service of Man is the service of both The body is to be Sanctified as well as the Soul and therefore to be offered to God as well as the Soul Both are to be glorified both are to glorifie As our Saviours Divinity was manifested in his body so should our Spirituality in ours To give God the service of the body and not of the Soul is hypocrisie to give God the service of the Spirit and not of the body is sacriledge to give him neither Atheism If the only part of man that is visible were exempted from the service of God there could be no visible Testimonies of piety given upon any occasion Since not a moiety of man but the whole is Gods Creature he ought to pay a homage with the whole and not only with a moiety of himself 2. Worship in societies is due to God but this cannot be without some bodily expressions The law of nature doth as much direct men to combine together in publick societies for the acknowledgment of God as in Civil Communities for self preservation and order And the notice of a society for Religion is more Ancient than the mention of
All Spiritual acts must be acts of reason otherwise they are not human acts because they want that principle which is constitutive of man and doth difference him from other Creatures Acts done only by sense are the acts of a brute acts done by reason are the acts of a man That which is only an act of sense cannot be an act of Religion The sense without the conduct of reason is not the subject of Religious acts for then beasts were capable of Religion as well as Men There cannot be Religion where there is not reason and there cannot be the exercise of Religion where there is not an exercise of the rational faculties Nothing can be a Christian act that is not a human act Besides all worship must be for some end the worship of God must be for God t is by the exercise of our rational faculties that we only can intend an end An Ignorant and Carnal worship is a brutish worship Particularly 1. Spiritual Worship is a Worship from a spiritual Nature Not only Physically spiritual so our Souls are in their frame but morally spiritual by a renewing principle The heart must be first cast into the Mould of the Gospel before it can perform a Worship required by the Gospel Adam living in Paradice might perform a spiritual worship but Adam fallen from his rectitude could not We being Heirs of his Nature are Heirs of his Impotence Restoration to a spiritual Life must precede any act of spiritual Worship As no work can be good so no worship can be spiritual till we are created in Christ * Eph. 2.10 Christ is our Life * Col. 3.4 As no natural action can be performed without life in the root or heart so no spiritual act without Christ in the Soul Our being in Christ is as necessary to every spiritual act as the union of our Soul with our Body is necessary to natural action Nothing can exceed the limits of its nature for then it should exceed it self in acting and do that which it hath no principle to doe A Beast cannot act like a Man without partaking of the nature of a Man nor a Man act like an Angel without partaking of the Angelical nature How can we perform spiritual acts without a spiritual principle Whatsoever worship proceeds from the corrupted nature cannot deserve the title of spiritual worship because it springs not from a spiritual habit If those that are evil cannot speak good things those that are carnal cannot offer a spiritual service Poyson is the fruit of a Vipers nature Mat. 12.34 Oh Generation of Vipers how can you being evil speak good things For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks As the root is so is the fruit If the Soul be habitually carnal the worship cannot be actually spiritual There may be an intention of Spirit but there is no spiritual principle as a root of that intention A heart may be sensibly united with a duty when it is not spiritually united with Christ in it Carnal motives and carnal ends may fix the mind in an act of worship as the sense of some pressing affliction may enlarge a mans mind in Prayer Whatsoever is agreeable to the nature of God must have a stamp of Christ upon it a stamp of his grace in performance as well as of his mediation in the acceptance The Apostle lived not but Christ lived in him * Gal. 2.20 the Soul worships not but Christ in him Not that Christ performs the act of Worship but enables us spiritually to worship after he enables us spiritually to live As God counts not any Soul living but in Christ so he counts not any a spiritual Worshipper but in Christ The goodness and fatness of the fruit comes from the fatness of the Olive wherein we are engrafted We must find healing in Christs wings before God can find spirituality in our services All worship issuing from a dead nature is but a dead service A living action cannot be performed without being knit to a living root 2. Spiritual Worship is done by the influence and with the assistance of the Spirit of God A Heart may be spiritual when a particular act of Worship may not be spiritual The Spirit may dwell in the Heart when he may suspend his influence on the act Our worship is then spiritual when the fire that kindles our affections comes from Heaven as that fire upon the Altar wherewith the Sacrifices were consumed God tasts a sweetness in no service but as it is drest up by the hand of the Mediator and hath the Air of his own Spirit in it They are but natural acts without a supernatural assistance Without an actual influence we cannot act from spiritual motives nor for spiritual ends nor in a spiritual manner We cannot mortifie a Lust without the Spirit * Rom. 8.13 nor quicken a service without the Spirit Whatsoever corruption is killed is slain by his Power whatsoever duty is spiritualized is refined by his Breath He quickens our dead bodies in our Resurection * Rom. 8.11 He renews our dead Souls in our Regeneration He quickens our carnal services in our adorations The choicest acts of worship are but infirmities without his auxiliary help * Rom. 8.26 We are Loggs unable to move our selves till he raise our faculties to a pitch agreeable to God puts his hand to the duty and lifts that up and us with it Never any great act was performed by the Apostles to God or for God but they are said to be filled with the Holy-Ghost Christ could not have been conceived immaculate as that holy thing without the Spirits overshadowing the Virgin nor any spiritual act conceived in our heart without the Spirits moving upon us to bring forth a living Religion from us The acts of worship are said to be in the Spirit Supplication in the Spirit * Eph. 6.18 not only with the strength and affection of our own Spirits but with the mighty operation of the Holy-Ghost if Jude may be the Interpreter * Jude 20. The Holy-Ghost exciting us impelling us and firing our Souls by his divine flame raising up the affections and making the Soul cry with a holy importunity Abba Father To render our worship spiritual we should before every ingagement in it implore the actual presence of the Spirit without which we are not able to send forth one spiritual breath or groan but be Wind-bound like a Ship without a Gale and our worship be no better than carnal How doth the Spouse solicite the Spirit with an awake oh North-wind and come thou South-wind c. * Cant. 4.16 3. Spiritual Worship is done with Sincerity When the heart stands right to God and the Soul performs what it pretends to perform When we serve God with our Spirits as the Apostle Rom. 1.9 God is my Witness whom I serve with my Spirit in the Gospel of his Son This is not meant of the
was a Type of Christ and a look to him is necessary in every spiritual Sacrifice As there must be Faith to make any act an act of obedience so there must be Faith to make any act of worship spiritual That service is not spiritual that is not vital and it cannot be vital without the exercise of a vital Principle All spiritual life is hid in Christ and drawn from him by Faith * Gal. 2.20 Faith as it hath relation to Christ makes every act of worship a living act and consequently a spiritual act Habitual unbelief cuts us off from the Body of Christ Rom. 11.20 Because of unbelief they were broken off and a want of actuated belief breaks us off from a present communion with Christ in Spirit As unbelief in us hinders Christ from doing any mighty work so unbelief in us hinders us from doing any mighty spiritual duty So that the exercise of Faith and a confidence in God is necessary to every duty 2. Love must be acted to render a worship spiritual Though God commanded love in the Old-Testament yet the manner of giving the Law bespoke more of Fear than Love The dispensation of the Law was with Fire Thunder c. proper to raise horror and benum the Spirit which effect it had upon the Israelites when they desired that God would speake no more to them Grace is the Genius of the Gospel proper to excite the affection of Love The Law was given by the disposition of Angels with signs to amaze the Gospel was usher'd in with the songs of Angels composed of peace and good-will calculated to ravish the Soul Instead of the terrible voice of the Law do this and live The comfortable voice of the Gospel is Grace Grace Upon this account the principle of the Old testament was Fear and the Worship often exprest by the Fear of God The principle of the New-testament is Love The Mount Sinai gendreth to Bondage * Gal. 4.44 Mount Sion from whence the Gospel or Evangelical Law goes forth gendreth to Liberty and therefore the Spirit of Bondage unto Fear as the Property of the Law is opposed to the State of Adoption the principle of Love as the property of the Gospel * Rom. 8.15 And therefore the worship of God under the Gospel or New-testament is oftner exprest by Love than Fear as proceeding from higher principles and acting nobler passions In this State we are to serve him without fear * Luke 1.74 without a Bondage-fear not without a fear of unworthy treating him with a fear of his goodness as it is prophesied of * Hos 9.9 Goodness is not the object of terror but reverence God in the Law had more the garb of a Judge in the Gospel of a Father The name of a Father is sweeter and bespeaks more of affection As their services were with a feeling of the thunders of the Law in their Consciences so is our worship to be with a sense of Gospel-grace in our Spirits Spiritual worship is that therefore which is exercised with a spiritual and heavenly affection proper to the Gospel The heart should be enlarged according to the liberty the Gospel gives of drawing neer to God as a Father As he gives us the nobler relation of Children we are to act the nobler qualities of Children Love should act according to its nature which is desire of Union desire of a moral union by Affections as well as a mystical union by Faith as flame aspires to reach flame and become one with it In every act of worship we should endeavour to be united to God and become one Spirit with him This Grace doth spiritualize Worship In that one word Love God hath wrapt up all the devotion he requires of us 'T is the total sum of the first Table Thou shalt love the Lord thy God 'T is to be acted in every thing we do But in Worship our hearts should more solemnly rise up and acknowledge him amiable and lovely since the Law is stript of its cursing power and made sweet in the blood of the Redeemer Love is a thing acceptable of it self but nothing acceptable without it The gifts of one man to another are spiritualized by it We would not value a Present without the affection of the Donor Every man would lay claim to the love of others though he would not to their Possessions Love is Gods right in every service and the noblest thing we can bestow upon him in our adorations of him Gods gifts to us are not so estimable without his love not our services valuable by him without the exercise of a choice affection Hezekiah regarded not his deliverance without the love of the Deliverer In love to my Soul thou hast delivered me * Isa 38.17 So doth God say in love to my honour thou hast worshipped me So that Love must be acted to render our worship spiritual 3. A spiritual sensibleness of our own weakness is necessary to make our worship spiritual Affections to God cannot be without relentings in our selves When the eye is spiritually fixed upon a spiritual God the heart will mourn that the worship is no more spiritually sutable The more we act love upon God as amiable and gracious the more we should exercise grief in our selves as we are vile and offending Spiritual worship is a melting worship as well as an elevating worship It exalts God and debaseth the Creature The Publican was more spiritual in his humble address to God when the Pharisee was wholly carnal with his swelling language A spiritual love in worship will make us grieve that we have given him so little and could give him no more 'T is a part of spiritual duty to bewail our carnality mixed with it as we receive mercies spiritually when we receive them with a sense of Gods goodness and our own vileness in the same manner we render a spiritual worship 4. Spiritual desires for God render the service spiritual When the Soul follows hard after him * Psal 63.8 pursues after God as a God of infinite and communicative goodness with sighs and groans unutterable A spiritual Soul seems to be transformed into hunger and thirst and becomes nothing but desire A carnal Worshipper is taken with the beauty and magnificence of the Temple a spiritual Worshipper desires to see the glory of God in the Sanctuary * Psal 63.2 He pants after God As he came to worship to find God he boyls up in desires for God and is loth to go from it without God the living God Psal 42.2 He would see the Vrim and the Thummim the unusual sparkling of the stones upon the High-priests Breast-plate That deserves not the title of spiritual worship when the Soul makes no longing inquiries saw you him whom my Soul loves A spiritual worship is when our desires are chiefly for God in the worship As David desires to dwell in the House of the Lord but his desire is not terminated
Man if he stand thy Bounty will be eminent yet there is no room for Mercy to act unless by the Commission of sin he exposeth himself to Misery and if sin enter into another World I have little hopes to be heard then if I am rejected now Worlds will be perpetually created by Goodness Wisdom and Power Sin entring into these Worlds will be perpetually punished by Justice and Mercy which is a Perfection of thy Nature will for ever be commanded silence and lye wrapt up in an eternal Darkness Take occasion now therefore to expose me to the knowledge of thy Creature since without Misery Mercy can never set foot into the World Mercy pleads if man be ruined the Creation is in vain Justice pleads if man be not sentenced the Law is in vain Truth backs Justice and Grace abets Mercy What shall be done in this seeming Contradiction Mercy is not manifested if man be not pardoned Justice will complain if man be not punished 3. An expedient is found out by the wisdom of God to answer these Demands and adjust the Differences between them The wisdom of God answers I will satisfie your Pleas. The Pleas of Justice shall be satisfied in punishing and the Pleas of Mercy shall be received in pardoning Justice shall not complain for want of Punishment nor Mercy for want of Compassion I will have an infinite Sacrifice to content Justice and the Vertue and Fruit of that Sacrifice shall delight Mercy Here shall Justice have punishment to accept and Mercy shall have Pardon to bestow The Rights of both are preserved and the Demands of both amicably accorded in punishment and pardon by transferring the punishment of our Crimes upon a Surety exacting a Recompence from his Blood by Justice and conferring life and salvation upon us by Mercy without the expence of one drop of our own Thus is Justice satisfied in its Severities and Mercy in its Indulgences The riches of Grace are twisted with the terrors of Wrath. The bowels of Mercy are wound about the flaming Sword of Justice and the Sword of Justice protects and secures the bowels of Mercy Thus is God righteous without being cruel and merciful without being unjust his Righteousness inviolable and the World recoverable Thus is a resplendent Mercy brought forth in the midst of all the Curses Confusions and Wrath threatned to the Offender This is the admirable temperament found out by the wisdom of God His Justice is honoured in the Sufferings of Man's Surety and his Mercy is honoured in the application of the Propitiation to the Offender Rom. 3.24 25. Being justified freely by his Grace through the Redemption that is in Jesus Christ Whom God hath set forth to be a Propitiation through faith in his blood to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past through the forbearance of God Had we in our Persons been Sacrifices to Justice Mercy had for ever been unknown had we been solely fostered by Mercy Justice had for ever been secluded had we being guilty been absolved Mercy might have rejoyced and Justice might have complained had we been solely punished Justice would have triumphed and Mercy grieved But by this medium of Redemption neither hath ground of Complaint Justice hath nothing to charge when the Punishment is inflicted Mercy hath whereof to boast when the Surety is accepted The Debt of the Sinner is transferred upon the Surety that the Merit of the Surety may be conferred upon the Sinner so that God now deals with our sins in a way of consuming Justice and with our Persons in a way of relieving Mercy 'T is highly better and more glorious than if the Claim of one had been granted with the exclusion of the Demand of the other It had then been either an unrighteous Mercy or a merciless Justice 'T is now a righteous Mercy and a merciful Justice 2. The Wisdom of God appears in the Subject or Person wherein these were accorded The second Person in the blessed Trinity There was a congruity in the Sons undertaking and effecting it rather than any other Person according to the order of the Persons and the several functions of the Persons as represented in Scripture The Father after Creation is the Law-giver and presents man with the Image of his own Holiness and the way to his Creatures happiness But after the Fall man was too impotent to perform the Law and too polluted to enjoy a Felicity Redemption was then necessary not that it was necessary for God to redeem man but it was necessary for man's happiness that he should be recovered To this the second Person is appointed that by Communion with him man might derive a happiness and be brought again to God But since man was blind in his Vnderstanding and an Enemy in his will to God there must be the exerting of a Vertue to enlighten his mind and bend his Will to understand and accept of this Redemption And this work is assigned to the third Person the Holy Ghost 1. It was not congruous that the Father should assume Human Nature and suffer in it for the Redemption of man He was first in order he was the Law-giver and therefore to be the Judge As Lawgiver it was not convenient he should stand in the stead of the Law-breaker and as Judge it was as little convenient he should be reputed a Malefactor That he who had made a Law against sin denounced a Penalty upon the commission of sin and whose part it was actually to punish the sinner should become sin for the wilful Transgressor of his Law He being the Rector how could he be an Advocate and Intercessor to himself How could he be the Judge and the Sacrifice A Judge and yet a Mediator to himself If he had been the Sacrifice there must be some Person to examine the validity of it and pronounce the Sentence of acceptance Was it agreeable that the Son should sit upon a Throne of Judgment and the Father stand at the Bar and be responsible to the Son That the Son should be in the place of a Governour and the Father in the place of the Criminal That the Father should be bruised * Isa 53.10 by the Son as the Son was by the Father †Zach. 13 70. that the Son should awaken a Sword against the Father as the Father did against the Son that the Father should be sent by the Son as the Son was by the Father * Gal. 4.4 The order of the Persons in the blessed Trinity had been inverted and disturbed Had the Father been sent he had not been first in order the Sender is before the Person sent As the Father begets and the Son is begotten Joh. 1.14 so the Father sends and the Son is sent He whose order is to send cannot properly send himself 2. Nor was it congruous that the Spirit should he sent upon this Affair If the Holy Ghost had been sent to redeem us and the Son to apply
that Redemption to us the order of the Persons had also been inverted The Spirit then who was third in order had been second in Operation The Son would then have received of the Spirit as the Spirit doth now of Christ and shew it unto us Joh. 1.15 As the Spirit proceeded from the Father and the Son so the proper Function and Operation of it was in order alter the Operations of the Father and the Son Had the Spirit been sent to redeem us and the Son sent by the Father and the Spirit to apply that Redemption to us the Son in his acts had proceeded from the Father and the Spirit the Spirit as sender had been in order before the Son whereas the Spirit is called the Spirit of Christ as sent by Christ from the Father Gal. 4.6 Joh. 15.27 But as the order of the Works so the order of the Persons is preserved in their several Operations Creation and a Law to govern the Creature precedes Redemption Nothing or that which hath no being is not capable of a redeemed being Redemption supposeth the existence and the misery of a Person redeemed As Creation precedes Redemption so Redemption precedes the application of it As Redemption supposeth the being of the Creature so application of Redemption supposeth the efficacy of Redemption According to the order of these Works is the order of the Operations of the three Persons Creation belongs to the Father the first Person Redemption the second work is the Function of the Son the second Person Application the third work is the Office of the Holy Ghost the third Person The Father orders it the Son acts it the Holy Ghost applies it He purifies our Souls to understand believe and love these Mysteries He forms Christ in the womb of the Soul as he did the Body of Christ in the womb of the Virgin As the Spirit of God moved upon the waters to garnish and adorn the World after the Matter of it was formed Gen. 1.2 so he moves upon the heart to supple it to a complyance with Christ and draws the Lineaments of the new Creation in the Soul after the Foundation is laid The Son pays the price that was due from us to God and the Spirit is the earnest of the Promises of Life and Glory purchased by the Merit of that Death * Amyraâ—t Moral Tom. 5. p. 478 479 480. 'T is to be observed that the Father under the dispensation of the Law proposed the Commands with the Promises and Threatnings to the Understandings of Men and Christ under the dispensation of Grace when he was upon the Earth proposeth the Gospel as the Means of Salvation exhorts to Faith as the Condition of salvation but it was neither the Function of the one or the other to display such an efficacy in the Understanding and Will to make men believe and obey and therefore there were such few Conversions in the time of Christ by his Miracles But this work was reserved for the fuller and brighter appearance of the Spirit whose Office it was to convince the World of the necessity of a Redeemer because of their lost Condition of the Person of the Redeemer the Son of God of the sufficiency and efficacy of Redemption because of his righteousness and acceptation by the Father The Wisdom of God is seen in preparing and presenting the Objects and then in making impression of them upon the Subjects he intends And thus is the order of the three Persons preserved 2. The second Person had the greatest congruity to this work He by whom God created the World was most conveniently imployed in restoring the defaced World Who more fit to recover it from it s lapsed state John 1.4 than he that had erected it in its primitive state Hebr. 1.2 He was the light of men in Creation and therefore it was most reasonable he should be the light of men in Redemption Who sitter to reform the Divine Image than he that first formed it Who fitter to speak for us to God than he who was the Word Joh. 1.1 Who could better intercede with the Father than he who was the only begotten and beloved Son Who so fit to redeem the forfeited Inheritance as the Heir of all things Who fitter and better to prevail for us to have the right of Children than he that possessed it by Nature We fell from being the Sons of God and who fitter to introduce us into an adopted state than the Son of God Herein was an expression of the richer Grace because the first sin was immediately against the wisdom of God by an ambitious affectation of a wisdom equal to God That that Person who was the wisdom of God should be made a Sacrifice for the expiation of the sin against Wisdom 3. The wisdom of God is seen in the two Natures of Christ whereby this Redemption was accomplished The Union of the two Natures was the Foundation of the Union of God and the fallen Creature 1. The Vnion it self is admirable The Word is made Flesh Joh. 1.14 One equal with God in the form of a Servant Phil. 2.7 When the Apostle speaks of God manifested in the flesh he speaks the wisdom of God in a Mystery 1 Tim. 3.16 That which is incomprehensible to the Angels which they never imagined before it was revealed which perhaps they never knew till they beheld it I am sure under the Law the Figures of the Cherubims were placed in the Sanctuary with their faces looking towards the Propitiatory in a perpetual posture of Contemplation and Admiration Exod. 37.9 to which the Apostle alludes 1 Pet. 1.12 Mysterious is the wisdom of God to unite Finite and Infinite Almightiness and Weakness Immortality and Mortality Immutability with a Thing subject to Change to have a Nature from Eternity and yet a Nature subject to the Revolutions of Time a Nature to make a Law and a Nature to be subjected to the Law to be God blessed for ever in the bosom of his Father and an Infant exposed to Câ—lâ—mities from the Womb of his Mother Terms seeming most distant from union most uncapable of conjunction to shake hands together to be most intimately conjoyned Glory and Vileness Fulness and Emptiness Heaven and Earth the Creature with the Creator he that made all things in one Person with a Nature that is made Immanuel God and Man in one That which is most Spiritual to partake of that which is Carnal flesh and blood * Heb. 2.14 One with the Father in his Godhead one with us in his Manhood The Godhead to be in him in the fullest Perfection and the Manhood in the greatest Purity The Creature one with the Creator and the Creator one with the Creature Thus is the incomprehensible Wisdom of God declared in the Word being made Flesh 2. In the manner of this Vnion A Union of two Natures yet no Natural Union It transcends all the Unions visible among Creatures †Savana triâ—mp
of a Woman ‖ Gal. 4 4. That part of the Flesh of the Virgin whereof the Humane Nature of Christ was made was refin'd and purifi'd from Corruption by the overshadowing of the Holy Ghost as a skilful Workman separates the Dross from the Gold Our Saviour is therefore called that Holy thing * Luke 1.35 though born of the Virgin He was necessarily some way to descend from Adam God indeed might have created his Body out of Nothing or have formed it as he did Adams out of the Dust of the Ground But had he been thus extraordinarily formed and not propagated from Adam though he had been a Man like one of us yet he would not have been of kin to us because it would not have been a Nature deriv'd from Adam the Common Parent of us all †Amyrald in Symbol p. 103 c. It was therefore necessary to an affinity with us not only that he should have the same Humane Nature but that it should slow from the same Principle and be propagated to him But now by this way of producing the Humanity of Christ of the Substance of the Virgin He was in Adam say some Corporally but not Seminally of the Substance of Adam or a Daughter of Adam but not of the Seed of Adam And so he is of the same Nature that had sinned so what he did and suffered may be imputed to us which had he been created as Adam could not be claim'd in a Legal and Judicial way 2. It was not convenient he should be born in the Common order of Nature of Father and Mother For whosoever is so born is polluted A Clean thing cannot be brought out of an unclean ‖ Job 14.4 And our Saviour had been uncapable of being a Redeemer had he been tainted with the least Spot of our Nature but would have stood in need of Redemption himself Besides it had been inconsistent with the Holiness of the Divine Nature to have assumed a tainted and defiled Body He that was the Fountain of Blessedness to all Nations was not to be subject to the Curse of the Law for himself which he would have been had he been conceiv'd in an ordinary way He that was to overturn the Devils Empire was not to be any way captive under the Devils Power as a Creature under the Curse nor could he be able to break the Serpents head had he been tainted with the Serpents breath Again supposing that Almighty God by his Divine Power had so order'd the matter and so perfectly sanctified an Earthly Father and Mother from all Original spot that the Humane Nature might have been transmitted Immaculate to him as well as the Holy Ghost did purge that part of the flesh of the Virgin of which the Body of Christ was made yet it was not convenient that that Person that was God blessed for ever as well as Man partaking of our Nature should have a Conception in the same manner as ours but different and in some measure conformable to the Infinite dignity of his Person which could not have been had not a supernatural Power and a Divine Person been concern'd as an active Principle in it Besides such a Birth had not been agreeable to the first Promise Gen. 1.15 which calls him The Seed of the woman not of the Man and so the Veracity of God had suffer'd some detriment The seed of the woman only is set in opposition to the seed of the Serpent 3. By this manner of Conception the Holiness of his Nature is secur'd and his fitness for his Office is assur'd to us 'T is now a pure and unpolluted Humanity that is the Temple and Tabernacle of the Divinity The Fulness of the Godhead dwells in him bodily and dwells in him Holily His Humanity is supernaturaliz'd and elevated by the activity of the Holy Ghost hatching the Flesh of the Virgin into Man as the Chaos into a World Though we read of some sanctified from the Womb it was not a pure and perfect Holiness it was like the Light of Fire mixed with Smoak an infus'd Holiness accompanied with a Natural tâ—int But the Holiness of the Redeemer by this Conception is like the Light of the Sun pure and without spot The Spirit of Holiness supplying the place of a Father in a way of Creation His Fitness for his Office is also assur'd to us for being born of the Virgin one of our Nature but conceived by the Spirit a Divine Person the guilt of our Sins may be imputed to him because of our Nature without the stain of Sin inherent in him because of his Supernatural Conception he is capable as one of Kin to us to bear our Curse without being toucht by our Taint By this means our sinful Nature is assum'd without Sin in that Nature which was assum'd by him Flesh he hath but not Sinful flesh Rom. 8.3 Real Flesh but not really Sinful only by way of Imputation Nothing but the Power of God is evident in this whole Work By the ordinary Laws and course of Nature a Virgin could not bear a Son nothing but a Supernatural and Almighty Grace could intervene to make so holy and perfect a Conjunction * Amyrant sâ—r â—imole p. 292. The generation of others in an ordinary way is by Male and Female But the Virgin is overshadow'd by the Spirit and Power of the Highest Man only is the product of Natural generation this which is born of the Virgin is the Holy thing the Son of God In other generations a Rational Soul is only united to a Material Body But in this the Divine Nature is united with the Humane in one Person by an indissoluble Union II. The Second Act of Power in the Person Redeeming is the Union of the two Natures the Divine and Humane The designing indeed of this was an act of Wisdom but the accomplishing it was an act of Power 1. There is in this Redeeming Person a Union of two Natures He is God and Man in one Person Heb. 1.8 9. Thy Throne O God is for ever and ever God even thy God hath anointed thee with the Oil of Gladness c. The Son is called God having a Throne for ever and ever and the Unction speaks him Man The Godhead cannot be Anointed nor hath any Fellows Humanity and Divinity are ascrib'd to him Rom. 1.3 4. He was of the Seed of David according to the Flesh and declared to be the Son of God by hiâ— Resurrection from the dead The Divinity and Humanity are both Prophetically joyn'd Zach. 12.10 I will pour out my Spirit the pouring forth the Spirit is an Act only of Divine Grace and Power And they shâ—ll look upon me whom they have pierced the same Person pours forth the Spirit as God and is pierced as Man The Word was made Flesh John 1.14 Word from Eternity was made Flesh in time Word and Flesh in one Person a great God and a little Infant 2. The
or Wisdom to have let Man perpetually wallow in that Sink wherein he had plung'd himself since he was Criminal by his own will and therefore Miserable by his own fault Nothing could necessitate this Reparation If Divine Goodness could not be obliged by the Angelical Dignity to repair that Nature he is further from any Obligation by the meaness of Man to repair Humane Nature There was less necessity to restore Man than to restore the fallen Angels What could Man do to oblige God to a Reparation of him since he could not render him a Recompence for his Goodness manifested in his Creation He must be much more impotent to render him a Debtor for the Redemption of him from Misery Could it be a salary for any thing we had done Alass we are so far from Meriting it that by our daily Demerits we seem ambitious to put a stop to any further Effusions of it We could not have complain'd of him if he had left us in the Misery we had courted since he was bound by no Law to bestow upon us the Recovery we wanted When the Apostle speaks of the Gospel of Redemption he giveth it the Title of the Gospel of the Blessed God †2 Tim. 1.11 It was the Gospel of a God abounding in his own Blessedness which receiv'd no addition by Mans Redemption If he had been blessed by it it had been a goodness to himself as well as to the Creature It was not an Indigent Goodness needing the receiving any thing from us but it was a pure Goodness streaming out of it self without bringing any thing into it self for the Perfection of it There was no Goodness in us to be the Motive of his Love but his Goodness was the Fountain of our Benefit 3. It was a distinct Goodness of the whole Trinity In the Creation of Man we find a general Consultation * Gen. 1.26 without those distinct Labours and Offices of each Person and without those rais'd Expressions and Marks of Joy and Triumph as at Mans Restoration In this there are distinct Functions The Grace of the Father the Merit of the Son and the Efficacy of the Spirit The Father makes the Promise of Redemption the Son Seals it with his Blood and the Spirit applies it The Father Adopts us to be his Children the Son Redeems us to be his Members and the Spirit Renews us to be his Temples In this the Father testifies himself well pleased in a Voice The Son proclaims his own delight to do the will of God and the Spirit hastens with the Wing of a Dove to fit him for his work And afterwards in his apparition in the likeness of Fiery Tongues manifests his zeal for the propagation of the Redeeming Gospel 4. The Effects of it proclaim his great Goodness 'T is by this we are deliver'd from the Corruption of our Nature the Ruine of our Happiness the deformity of our Sins and the punishment of our Transgressions He frees us from the Ignorance wherewith we were darkned and from the Slavery wherein we were fetter'd When he came to make Adams Process after his Crime instead of pronouncing the Sentence of Death he had merited he utters a Promise that Man could not have expected His Kindness swells above his provoked Justice and while he chaseth him out of Paradise he gives him hopes of regaining the same or a better Habitation and is in the whole more ready to prevent him with the Blessings of his Goodness than charge him with the horrour of his Crimes †Gen. 3.17 'T is a Goodness that pardons us more Transgressions than there are Moments in our Lives and overlooks as many Follies as there are Thoughts in our Heart He doth not only relieve our wants but restores us to our Dignity 'T is a greater Testimony of Goodness to instate a Person in the highest Honour than barely to supply his present Necessity 'T is an admirable Pity whereby he was inclin'd to Redeem us and an incomparable Affection whereby he was resolv'd to exalt us What can be desir'd more of him than his Goodness hath granted He hath sought us out when we were lost and Ransom'd us when we were Captives He hath Pardon'd us when we were Condemn'd and rais'd us when we were Dead In Creation he rear'd us from nothing in Redemption he delivers our Understanding from ignorance and vanity and our Wills from impotence and obstinacy and our whole Man from a Death worse than that nothing he drew us from by Creation 5. Hence we may consider the height of this Goodness in Redemption to exceed that in Creation He gave Man a Being in Creation but did not draw him from unexpressible Misery by that act His Liberality in the Gospel doth infinitely surpass what we admire in the Works of Nature His Goodness in the latter is more astonishing to our belief than his Goodness in Creation is visible to our Eye There is more of his Bounty exprest in that one Verse * Joh. 3.16 So God loved the World that he gave his only begotten Son than there is in the whole Volume of the World 'T is an incomprehensible so a so that all the Angels in Heaven cannot Analyze and few Comment upon or understand the dimensions of this so In Creation he form'd an Innocent Creature of the Dust of the Ground in Redemption he restores a Rebellious Creature by the Blood of his Son It is greater than that Goodness manifested in Creation 1. In regard of the difficulty of effecting it In Creation meer nothing was vanquisht to bring us into Being In Redemption sullen Enmity was conquer'd for the enjoyment of our Restoration In Creation he subdued a Nullity to make us Creatures In Redemption his Goodness overcomes his Omnipotent Justice to restore us to Felicity A word from the Mouth of Goodness inspir'd the Dust of Mens Bodies with a living Soul but the Blood of his Son must be shed and the Laws of Natural Affection seem to be overturn'd to lay the Foundation of our renew'd Happiness In the first Heaven did but speak and the Earth was form'd In the second Heaven it self must sink to Earth and be clothed with dusty Earth to reduce Mans Dust to its Original State 2. This Goodness is greater than that manifested in Creation in regard of its Cost This was a more expensive Goodness than what was laid out in Creation The redemption of one Soul is pretious †Psal 49.8 much more costly than the whole Fabrick of the World or as many Worlds as the understandings of Angels in their utmost extent can conceive to be Created For the effecting of this God parts with his dearest Treasure and his Son Eclipses his choicest Glory For this God must be made Man Eternity must suffer Death the Lord of Angels must weep in a Cradle and the Creator of the World must hang like a Slave he must be in a Manger in Bethlehem and die upon a Cross on
a man of them succeeded in the Throne but the Crown is transferr'd to Jehu by Gods disposal In Warrs whereby flourishing Kingdoms are overthrown God hath the cheif hand in reference to which it is observed that in the two Prophets Isaiah and Jeremy God is called the Lord of Hosts 130 times 'T is not the Sword of the Captain but the Sword of the Lord bears the first rank The Sword of the Lord and of Gideon Judg. 7.18 The Sword of a Conqueror is the Sword of the Lord and receives its Charge and Commission from the great Soveraign Jerem. 47.6 7. VVe are apt to confine our thoughts to second Causes lay the fault upon the miscarriages of persons the Ambition of the one and the Covetousness of another and regard them not as the effects of Gods soveraign Authority linking second Causes together to serve his own purpose The skill of one man may lay open the folly of a Counsellour an earthly force may break in peices the power of a mighty Prince But Job in his consideration of those things referrs the matter higher Job 12.18 He looseth the bond of Kings and girdeth their Loyns with a girdle He looseth the Bonds of Kings i. â— takes off the yokes they lay upon their Subjects and girds their Loyns with a girdle A Cord as the Vulgar he lays upon them those fetters they fram'd for others such a girdle or band as is the mark of Captivity as the words ver 19. confirm it He leads Princes away spoil'd and overthrows the mighty God lifts up some to a great height and casts down others to a disgraceful ruine All those changes in the face of the World the revolutions of Emâ—ires the desolating and ravaging wars which are often immediately the birth of the Vice Ambition and fury of Princes are the Royal Acts of God as Governour of the World All Government belongs to him he is the Fountain of all the Great and the Petty Dominions in the World And therefore may place in them what substitutes and Vicegerents he pleaseth As a Prince may remove his Officers at pleasure and take their Commissions from them The highest are setled by God durante bene placito and not quamdiu bene se gâ—ssâ—rint Those Princes that have been the Glory of their Country have sway'd the Scepter but a short time when the more Wolvish ones have remain'd longâ—r in Commission as God hath seen fit for the ends of his own Soveraign Government Now by the revolutions in the World and Changes in Governours and Government God keeps up the acknowledgment of his Soveraignty when he doth arrest grand and publick offenders that wear a Crown by his Providence and employ it by their pride against him that plac'd it there When he arraigns such by a signal hand from Heaven he makes them the publick examples of the rights of his Soveraignty declaring thereby that the Cedars of Lebanon are as much at his foot as the Shrubs of the Valley that he hath as Soveraign an Authority over the Throne in the Palace as over the Stool in the Cottage 2. The Dominion of God is manifested in raising up and ordering the Spirits of men according to his pleasure He doth as the Father of Spirits communicate an influence to the Spirits of men as well as an existence he puts what inclinations he pleaseth into the will stores it with what habits he please whither natural or supernatural whereby it may be render'd more ready to act according to the divine purpose The will of man is a finite principle and therefore subject to him who hath an infinite Soveraignty over all things and God having a Soveraignty over the will in the manner of its acting as causeth it to will what he wills as to the outward act and the outward manner of performing it There are many examples of this part of his Soveraignty God by his Soveraign conduct ordered Moses a Protectoress as soon as his Parents had form'd an Ark of Bulrushes wherein to set him floting on the River Exod. 2.3 4.5.6 They expose him to the waves and the waves expose him to the view of Pharoahs Daughter whom God by his secret ordering her motion had posted in that place and though she was the Daughter of a Prince that inveterately hated the whole Nation and had by various Arts endeavour'd to extirpate them yet God inspires the Royal Lady with sentiments of compassion to the forlorn Infant though she knew him to be one of the Hebrews Children ver 6. i. e. one of that race whom her Father had devoted to the hands of an Executioner yet God that doth by his Soveraignty rule over the Spirits of all men moves her to take that Infant into her protection and nourish him at her own charge give him a liberal Education Adopt him her Son who in time was to be the ruin of her race and the Saviour of his Nation Thus he appointed Cyrus to be his Shepherd and gave him a Pastoral Spirit for the Restauration of the City and Temple of Jerusalem Isaiah 44.28 And Isaiah 45.5 Tells them in the Prophesie that he had girded him though Cyrus had not known him i. e. God had given him a military Spirit and strength for so great an attempt though he did not know that he was acted by God for those divine purposes And when the time came for the House of the Lord to be re-built the Spirits of the people were rais'd up not by themselves but by God Ezra 1.5 Whose Spirit God had rais'd to go up And not only the Spirit of Zerubbabel the Magistrate and of Joshua the Priest but the Spirit of all the people from the highest to the meanest that attended him were acted by God to strengthen their hands and promote the work Hag. 1.14 The Spirits of men even in those works which are naturally desirable to them as the Restauration of the City and rebuilding of the Temple was to those Jews are acted by God as the soveraign over them much more when the wheels of mens spirits are lifted up above their ordinary temper and motion It was this Empire of God good Nehemiah regarded as that whence he was to hope for success he did not assure himself so much of it from the favour he had with the King nor the reasonableness of his intended Petition but the absolute power God had over the heart of that great Monarch And therefore he supplicates the heavenly before he petitioned the earthly Throne Nehem. 2.4 So I pray'd to the God of Heaven The Heathens had some glance of this 't is an expression that Cicero hath some where That the Roman Common-wealth was rather Govern'd by the Assistance of the supream Divinity over the Hearts of Men than by their own Counsels and Management How often hath the feeble courage of men been heightned to such a pitch as to stare death in the face which before were dampt with the least thought or glance of
of God in the Earth as if one heart acted every Man in the world The great Apostle cites the Text to verefie the charge he brought against all mankind * Rom. 3.9 10.11.12 In his interpretation the Jews who owned one God and were dignified with special priviledges as well as the Gentiles that maintained many Gods are within the compass of this Character The Apostle leaves out the first part of the Text the fool hath said in his heart but takes in the latter part and the verses following He charges all because all every man of them was under sin There is none that seeks God and ver 19. He adds what the law saith it speaks to those that are under the Law That none should imagine he included only the Gentiles and exempted the Jews from this description The Leprosie of Atheism had infected the whole Mass of human nature No Man among Jews or Gentiles did naturally seek God and therefore all were void of any spark of the practical sence of the Deity The effects of this Atheism are not in all externally of an equal size Yet in the fundamentals and radicals of it there is not a hairs difference between the best and the worst men that ever traversed the world The distinction is laid either in common Grace bounding and suppressing it or in special Grace killing and crucifying it T is in every one either triumphant or militant reigning or deposed No Man is any more born with sensible acknowledgments of God than he is born with a clear knowledge of the nature of all the Stars in the Heavens or Plants upon the Earth None seeks after God * Coccei None seek God as his rule as his end as his happiness which is a debt the Creature naturally owes to God he desires no communion with God He places his happiness in any thing inferior to God He prefers every thing before him glorifies every thing above him he hath no delight to know him he regards not those paths which lead to him he loves his own filth better than Gods Holiness his actions are tinctured and dyed with self and are void of that respect which is due from him to God The noblest Faculty of Man his Understanding wherein the remaining Lineaments of the Image of God are visible the highest Operation of that Faculty which is Wisdom is in the Judgment of the Spirit of God Devilish whiles it is earthly and sensual * Jam. 3.15 and the Wisdom of the best man is no better by Nature a legion of impure Spirits possess it Devilish as the Devil who though he believe there is a God yet acts as if there were none and wishes he had no Superior to prescribe him a Law and inflict that punishment upon him which his Crimes have merited Hence the Poyson of Man by Nature is said to be like the Poyson of a Serpent alluding to that serpentine temptation which first infected Mankind and changed the nature of Man into the likeness of that of the Devil * Psal 58.4 So that notwithstanding the Harmony of the World that presents men not only with the Notice of the Being of a God but darts into their minds some remarks of his Power and Eternity yet the thoughts and reasonings of Man are so corrupt as may well be called Diabolical and as contrary to the Perfection of God and the original Law of their Nature as the actings of the Devil are For since every natural Man is a Child of the Devil and is acted by the Diabolical Spirit he must needs have that Nature which his Father hath and the Infusion of that Venom which the Spirit that acts him is possessed with though the full Discovery of it may be restrained by various Circumstances Eph. 2.2 To conclude though no man or at least very few arrive to a round and positive Conclusion in their hearts that there is no God yet there is no man that naturally hath in his heart any reverence of God In general before I come to a particular Proof take some Propositions Proposition 1. Actions are a greater discovery of a Principle than Words The Testimony of Works is louder and clearer than that of Words and the Frame of mens hearts must be measured rather by what they do than by what they say There may be a mighty distance between the Tongue and the Heart but a Course of Actions is as little guilty of lying as Interest is according to our common saying All outward Impieties are the branches of an Atheism at the root of our Nature as all pestilential sores are expressions of the Contagion in the Blood Sin is therefore frequently called Ungodliness in our English Dialect Mens Practices are the best Indexes of their Principles The Current of a Mans Life is the counter-part of the Frame of his Heart Who can deny an Error in the Spring or Wheels when he perceives an Error in the hand of the Dial Who can deny an Atheism in the Heart when so much is visible in the Life The Tast of the water discovers what Mineral 't is strained through A practical Denial of God is worse than a verbal because deeds have usually more of deliberation than words words may be the fruit of a Passion but a set of evil actions are the fruit and evidence of a predominant evil Principle in the Heart All slighting words of a Prince do not argue an habitual Treason but a succession of overt treasonable Attempts signifie a setled treasonable disposition in the Mind Those therefore are more deservedly termed Atheists who acknowledge a God and walk as if there were none than those if there can be any such that deny a God and walk as if there were one A Sense of God in the Heart would burst out in the Life Where there is no reverence of God in the Life 't is easily concluded there is less in the Heart What doth not influence a Man when it hath the addition of the Eyes and censures of outward Spectators and the care of a Reputation so much the God of the world to strengthen it and restrain the action must certainly have less power over the Heart when it is single without any other concurrence The Flames breaking out of a house discover the Fire to be much stronger and fiercer within The Apostle judgeth those of the Circumcision who gave heed to Jewish Fables to be Denyers of God though he doth not tax them with any notorious Prophaness Tit. 1.16 They profess that they know God but in works they deny him he gives them Epithites contrary to what they arrogated to themselves * Illyric They boasted themselves to be holy the Apostle calls them abominable They bragged that they fulfilled the Law and observed the Traditions of their Fathers the Apostle calls them disobedient or unperswadable They boasted that they only had the Rule of Righteousness and a sound Judgment concerning it the Apostle said they had a
violated Law When God is the object of such a wish t is a vertual undeifying of him Not to be able to punish is to be impotent not to be willing to punish is to be unjust Imperfections inconsistent with the Deity God cannot be supposed without an infinite Power to act and an infinite Righteousness as the Rule of acting Fear of God is natural to all men not a Fear of offending him but a Fear of being punished by him The wishing the Extinction of God has its degree in men according to the degree of their Fears of his just Vengeance And though such a Wish be not in its Meridian but in the Damned in Hell yet it hath its starts and motions in affrighted and awakened Consciences on the Earth Under this Rank of Wishers that there were no God or that God were destroyed do fall 1. Terrified Consciences that are Magor missabib see nothing but matter of fear round about As they have lived without the bounds of the Law they are affraid to fall under the stroak of his Justice Fear wishes the destruction of that which it apprehends hurtful It considers him as a God to whom Vengeance belongs as the Judge of all the Earth * Psal 94.12 The less hopes such a one hath of his Pardon the more joy he would have to hear that his Judge should be stript of his Life He would entertain with delight any reasons that might support him in the conceit that there were no God In his present State such a Doctrine would be his Security from an Account He would as much rejoyce if there were no God to enflame an Hell for him as any guilty Malefactor would if there were no Judge to order a Gibbet for him Shame may bridle mens words but the Heart will be casting about for some Arguments this way to secure it self Such as are at any time in Spira's Case would be willing to cease to be Creatures that God might cease to be Judge The Fool hath said in his heart there is no Elohim no Judge fancying God without any exercise of his judicial Authority And there is not any wicked man under anguish of Spirit but were it within the reach of his power would take away the Life of God and rid himself of his fears by destroying his Avenger 2. Debaucht Persons are not without such wishes sometimes An obstinate Servant wishes his Masters death from whom he expects Correction for his Debaucheries As Man stands in his corrupt Nature 't is impossible but one time or other most debaucht persons at least have so me kind of velleities or imperfect wishes 'T is as natural to men to abhor those things which are unsuteable and troublesome as it is to please themselves in things agreeable to their minds and humours And since Man is so deeply in love with Sin as to count it the most estimable good he cannot but wish the abolition of that Law which checks it and consequently the change of the Law-Giver which Enacted it and in wishing a change in the holy Nature of God he wishes a destruction of God who could not be God if he ceased to be immutably holy They do as certainly wish that God had not a holy Will to command them as desparing Souls wish that God had not a righteous Will to punish them and to wish Conscience extinct for the molestations they receive from it is to wish the power Conscience represents out of the world also Since the State of Sinners is a State of distance from God and the Language of Sinners to God is departed from us * Joh. 21.14 They desire as litle the continuance of his Being as they desire the knowledge of his Ways The same reason which moves them to desire Gods distance from them would move them to desire Gods not Being Since the greatest distance would be most agreeable to them the Destruction of God must be so too Because there is no greater distance from us than in not Being Men would rather have God not to be than themselves under controle that sensuality might range at pleasure He is like a Heifer sliding from the Yoke Hos 4.16 The Cursing of God in the Heart feared by Job of his Chidren intimates a wishing God despoild of his Authority that their pleasure might not be dampt by his Law Besides is there any natural man that sins against actuated knowledge but either thinks or wishes that God might not see him that God might not know his actions And is not this to wish the Destruction of God who could not be God unless he were immense and omniscient 3. Under this rank fall those who perform external Duties only out of a Principle of slavish Fear Many Men perform those Duties that the Law enjoyns with the same Sentiments that Slaves perform their Drudgery and are constrained in their Duties by no other considerations but those of the Whip and the Cudgel Since therefore they do it with reluctancy and secretly murmur while they seem to obey they would be willing that both the Command were recall'd and the Master that commands them were in another world The Spirit of Adoption makes men act towards God as a Father a Spirit of Bondage only eyes him as a Judge Those that look upon their Superiors as tyrannical will not be much concerned in their welfare and would be more glad to have their Nails pared than be under perpetual fear of them Many men regard not the infinite goodness in their service of him but consider him as cruel tyrannical injurious to their Liberty Adam's Posterity are not free from the Sentiments of their common Father till they are regenerate You know what Conceit was the Hammer whereby the Hellish Jael struck the Nail into our first Parents which conveyed Death together with the same Imagination to all their Posterity Gen. 3.5 God knows that in the day you eat thereof your eyes shall be opened and you shall be as Gods knowing Good and Evil Alas poor Souls God knew what he did when he forbad you that Fruit He was jealous you should be too happy It was a cruelty in him to deprive you of a Food so pleasant and delicious The apprehension of the severity of Gods Commands riseth up no less in desires that there were no God over us than Adam's apprehension of Envy in God for the restraint of one Tree mov'd him to attempt to be equal with God Fear is as powerful to produce the one in his Posterity as Pride was to produce the other in the Common-Root When we apprehend a thing hurtful to us we desire so much evil to it as may render it uncapable of doing us the hurt we fear As we wish the preservation of what we love or hope for so we are naturally apt to wish the not being of that whence we fear some hurt or trouble We must not understand this as if any man did formally wish the destruction of God as God God in
a posture to be his Mate Other sins Adultery and Theft c. could not be committed by him at that time but he immediatly puts forth his hand to usurp the power of his Maker This Treason is the old Adam in every man The first Adam contradicted the Will of God to set up himself The second Adam humbled himself and did nothing but by the Command and Will of his Father This principle wherein the venom of the Old Adam lies must be Crucified to make way for the Throne of the humble and obedient principle of the New Adam or quickning Spirit Indeed sin in its owns nature is nothing else but a willing according to self and contrary to the Will of God Lusts are therefore called the Wills of the flesh and of the mind * Eph. 2.3 As the precepts of God are Gods Will So the violations of these precepts is mans Will And thus man usurps a God-head to himself by giving that Honour to his own Will which belongs to God appropriating the right of rule to himself and denying it to his Creator That Servant that acts according to his own Will with a neglect of his Masters refuseth the duty of a Servant and invades the right of his Master This Self-love and desire of Independency on God has been the root of all sin in the World The great controversy between God and man hath been whether he or they shall be God whether his Reason or theirs his Will or theirs shall be the guiding principle As Grace is the union of the Will of God and the Will of the Creature so sin is the opposition of the Will of self to the Will of God Leaning to our own understanding is opposed as a natural evil to trusting in the Lord * Pro. 3.5 a supernatural grace Men commonly love what is their own their own inventions their own fancies therefore the ways of a wicked man are called the ways of his own heart * Eccl. 11.9 and the ways of a superstitious man his own devices Jer. 18.11 We will walk after our own devices We will be a law to our selves And what the Psalmist saith of the tongue our tongues are our own who shall controul us is as truly the language of mens hearts our Wills are our own who shall check us 2. This is eviden in the dissatisfaction of men with their own Consciences when they contradict the desires of self Conscience is nothing but an actuated or reflex knowledg of a superior power and an equitable law a law imprest and a power above it impressing it Conscience is not the law-giver but the remembrancer to mind us of that law of nature imprinted upon our Souls and actuate the considerations of the duty and penalty to apply the rule to our acts and pass Judgment upon matter of fact T is to give the charge urge the rule enjoyn the practice of those notions of Right as part of our duty and obedience But man is much displeased with the directions of Conscience as he is out of love with the accusations and condemning sentence of this officer of God We cannot naturally endure any quick and lively practical thoughts of God and his Will and distast our own Consciences for putting us in mind of it They therefore like not to retain God in their knowledge * Rom. 1.28 that is God in their own Consciences they would blow it out as it is the Candle of the Lord in them to direct them and their acknowledgments of God to secure themselves against the practice of its principles They would stop all the avenues to any beam of light and would not suffer a sparkle of Divine knowledge to flutter in their minds in order to set up another directing rule suited to the fleshly appetite And when they cannot stop the light of it from glaring in their faces they rebel against it and cannot endure to abide in its paths * Job 24.13 He speaks not of those which had the written word or special Revelations but only a natural light or traditional handed from Adam Hence are all the endeavors to still it when it begins to speak by some carnal pleasures as Sauls evil Spirit with a fit of Musick or bribe it with some fits of a glavering devotion when it holds the Law of God in its commanding Authority before the mind They would wipe out all the impressions of it when it presses the advancement of God above self and entertain it with no better Complement than Ahab did Elijah hast thou found me O my Enemy If we are like to God in any thing of our natural fabrick t is in the superior and more Spiritual part of our Souls The resistance of that which is most like to God and instead of God in us is a disowning of the Soveraign represented by that Officer He that would be without Conscience would be without God whose Vicegerent it is and make the sensitive part which Conscience opposes his Law-giver Thus a man out of respect to sinful self quarrels with his natural self and cannot comport himself in a friendly behaviour to his internal implanted principles He hates to come under the rebukes of them as much as Adam hated to come into the presence of God after he turned Traytor against him The bad entertainment Gods deputy hath in us reflects upon that God whose cause it pleads T is upon no other account that men loath the upright Language of their own reasons in those matters and wish the eternal silence of their own Consciences but as they maintain the rights of God and would hinder the Idol of self from usurping his God-head and prerogative Tho this power be part of a mans self rooted in his nature as essential to him and inseparable from him as the best part of his being yet he quarrels with it as it is Gods Deputy and stickling for the honour of God in his Soul and quarrelling with that sinful self he would cherish above God We are not displeased with this faculty barely as it exerciseth a self-reflection but as it is Gods Vice-gerent and bears the mark of his Authority in it In some cases this self-reflecting act meets with good Entertainment when it acts not in contradiction to self but sutable to natural affections As suppose a man hath in his passion struck his Child and caused thereby some great mischeif to him the reflection of Conscience will not be unwelcome to him will work some tenderness in him because it takes the part of self and of natural affection But in the more Spiritual concerns of God it will be rated as a busy body 3. Many if not most actions materially good in the world are done more because they are agreeable to self than as they are honourable to God As the word of God may be heard not as his word * 1 Thes 2.13 but as there may be pleasing Notions in it or discourses against an opinion or
* â—â—r 20. Their Fathers Worshipping in that Mountain and the Jews affirming Jerusalem to be a place of worship She pleads the Antiquity of the worship in this place Abraham having built an Altar there Gen. 12.7 and Jacob upon his return from Syria And surely had the place been capable of an exception such persons as they and so well acquainted with the Will of God would not have pitched upon that place to Celebrate their worship Antiquity hath too too often bewitched the minds of Men and drawn them from the revealed Will of God Men are more willing to imitate the outward actions of their famous Ancestors than conform themselves to the revealed Will of their Creator The Samaritans would imitate the Patriarchs in the place of worship but not in the faith of the worshippers Christ answers her that this question would quickly be resolved by a new state of the Church which was neer at hand and neither Jerusalem which had now the precedency nor that Mountain should be of any more value in that concern than any other place in the world * ver 21. But yet to make her sensible of her sin and that of her Country-men tells her that their Worship in that Mountain was not according to the Will of God he having long after the Altars built in this place fixed Jerusalem as the place of Sacrifices besides they had not the knowledge of that God which ought to be worshipped by them but the Jews had the true object of Worship and the true manner of worship according to the declaration God had made of himself to them * ver â—â— But all that service shall vanish the vail of the Temple shall be rent in twain and that Carnal worship give place to one more Spiritual shadows shall fly before substance and truth advance it self above figures and the worship of God shall be with the strength of the Spirit such a worship and such worshippers doth the Father seek * ver 23. For God is a Spirit and those that Worship him must Worship him in Spirit and in truth The design of our Saviour is to declare that God is not taken with external worship invented by men no nor Commanded by himself and upon that this reason because he is a Spiritual essence infinitely above gross and Corporeal matter and is not taken with that pomp which is a pleasure to our Earthly imaginations 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Some translate it just as the words lie Spirit is God * Vulgar lat Illyrc Clav. But it is not unusual both in the old and new Testament languages to put the predicate before the subject as Psal 5.9 Their throat is an open Sepulchre in the Hebrew a Sepulchre open their throat So Psa 111.3 His work is honourable and glorious Heb. Honour and glory his work And there wants not one example in the same Evangelist Joh. 1.1 And the word was God Greek and God was the word In all the predicate or what is ascribed is put before the subject to which it is ascribed One tells us and he an head of a party that hath made a disturbance in the Church of God * Eâ—â—â—â—â—p Institut lib. 4. cap. 3. that this place is not aptly brought to prove God to be a Spirit And the reason of Christ runs not thus God is of a Spiritual Essence and therefore must be worshipped with a Spiritual worship for the Essence of God is not the Foundation of his worship but his Will for then we were not to worship him with a Corporal worship because he is not a body but with an invisible and Eternal worship because he is invisible and eternal But the nature of God is the foundation of worship the Will of God is the Rule of worship the matter and manner is to be performed according to the Will of God But is the nature of the object of worship to be excluded No as the object is so ought our Devotion to be Spiritual as he is Spiritual God in his Commands for worship respected the discovery of his own nature in the Law he respected the discovery of his mercy and justice and therefore Commanded a worship by Sacrifices a Spiritual worship without those institutions would not have declared those Attributes which was Gods end to display to the world in Christ And tho the nature of God is to be respected in worship yet the obligations of the Creature are to be considered God is a Spirit therefore must have a Spiritual worship The Creature hath a body as well as a Soul and both from God and therefore ought to worship God with the one as well as the other since one as well as the other is freely bestowed upon him The Spirituality of God was the foundation of the change from the Judaical carnal worship to a more Spiritual and Evangelical God is a Spirit That is he hath nothing Corporeal no mixture of matter not a visible substance a bodily form * Melancton He is a Spirit not a bare Spiritual substance But an understanding willing Spirit holy wise good and just Before Christ spake of the Father * ver 23. the first person in the Trinity Now he speaks of God Essentially The word Father is personal the word God essential So that our Saviour would render a reason not from any one person in the blessed Trinity but from the Divine nature why we should worship in Spirit and therefore makes use of the word God the being a Spirit being Common to the other persons with the Father This is the reason of the proposition verse 23. Of a Spiritual Worship Every nature delights in that which is like it and distasts that which is most different from it If God were Corporeal he might be pleased with the victims of beasts and the beautiful Magnificence of Temples and the noyse of Musick But being a Spirit he cannot be gratified with carnal things He demands something better and greater than all those that Soul which he made that Soul which he hath endowed a Spirit of a frame sutable to his nature He indeed appointed Sacrifices and a Temple as shadows of those things which were to be most acceptable to him in the Messiah but they were imposed only till the time of Reformation * Heb. 9.10 Must Worship him Not they may or it would be more agreeable to God to have such a manner of worship But they must T is not exclusive of bodily worship for this were to exclude all publick worship in societies which cannot be performed without reverential postures of the body * Terniti The Gestures of the body are helps to worship and declarations of Spiritual acts We can scarcely worship God with our Spirits without some tincture upon the outward-man But he excludes all acts meerly Corporeal all resting upon an external service and devotion which was the Crime of the Pharisees and the general persuasion of the Jews
as well as Heathens who used the outward Ceremonies not as signs of better things but as if they did of themselves please God and render the worshippers accepted with him without any sutable frame of the inward man * Amirald in loc It is as if he had said now you must separate your selves from all carnal modes to which the service of God is now tyed and render a worship chiefly consisting in the affectionate motions of the heart and accommodated more exactly to the condition of the object who is a Spirit In Spirit and Truth * Amirald in loc The Evangelical Service now required has the advantage of the former that was a Shadow and Figure this the Body and Truth * Muscul Spirit say some is here opposed to the legal Ceremonies Truth to hypocritical services or * Chemnit rather truth is opposed to shadows and an opinion of worth in the outward action 't is principally opposed to external Rites because our Saviour saith v. 23. The hour comes and â—oâ— is c. Had it been opposed to Hypocrisy Christ had said no new thing For God always required Truth in the inward parts and all true Worshippers had served him with a sincere Conscience and single Heart The old Patriarks did worship God in Spirit and Truth as taken for sincerity Such a Worship was always and is perpetually due to God because he always was and eternally will be a Spirit * Musâ—al And it is said the Father seeks such to worship him not shall seek He always sought it it always was performed to him by one or other in the world And the Prophets had always rebuked them for resting upon their outward Solemnities Isa 58.7 and Micah 6.8 But a Worship without legal Rites was proper to an Evangelical State and the times of the Gospel God having then exhibited Christ and brought into the world the substance of those shadows and the end of those institutions There was no more need to continue them when the true reason of them was ceased All Laws do naturally expire when the true reason upon which they were first framed is changed Or by Spirit may be meant such a Worship as is kindled in the heart by the breath of the holy Ghost Since we are dead in sin a spiritual light and flame in the heart sutable to the nature of the object of our worship cannot be raised in us without the operation of a supernatural Grace And though the Fathers could not worship God without the Spirit yet in the Gospel-times there being a fuller effusion of the Spirit the Evangelical State is called the administration of the Spirit and the newness of the Spirit 2 Cor. 3.8 in opposition to the legal Oeconomy entitled the oldness of the Letter * Rom. 7.6 The Evangelical State is more suted to the Nature of God than any other Such a Worship God must have whereby he is acknowledged to be the true Sanctifier and Quickner of the Soul The nearer God doth approach to us and the more full his manifestations are the more spiritual is the Worship we return to God The Gospel pares off the rugged parts of the Law and Heaven shall remove what is material in the Gospel and change the Ordinances of Worship into that of a Spiritual Praise In the words there is 1. A Proposition God is a Spirit The Foundation of all Religion 2. An Inference they that worship him c. As God a Worship belongs to him as a Spirit a spiritual Worship is due to him in the inference we have 1. The manner of Worship in Spirit and Truth 2. The necessity of such a Worship must The Proposition declares the Nature of God the Inference the Duty of Man The Observations lie plain Ob. 1. God is a pure spiritual Being He is a Spirit 2. The Worship due from the Creature to God must be agreeable to the Nature of God and purely spiritual 3. The Evangelical State is suted to the Nature of God For the first D. God is a pure spiritual Being 'T is the Observation of one * Episcop insti tut l. 4. c. 3. that the plain assertion of Gods being a Spirit is found but once in the whole Bible and that is in this place which may well be wondred at because God is so often described with hands feet eyes and ears in the form and figure of a Man The spiritual Nature of God is deducible from many places but not any where as I remember asserted totidem verbis but in this Text Some alledge that place 2 Cor. 3.17 the Lord is that Spirit for the proof of it but that seems to have a different sense In the Text the Nature of God is described in that place the operations of God in the Gospel * Amyrald in loc 'T is not the Ministry of Moses or that old Covenant which communicates to you that Spirit it speaks of but it is the Lord Jesus and the Doctrin of the Gospel delivered by him whereby this Spirit and Liberty is dispensed to you He opposes here the Liberty of the Gospel to the Servitude of the Law 'T is from Christ that a Divine Vertue diffuseth it self by the Gospel 't is by him not by the Law that we partake of that Spirit * Suarez de Deo vol. 1. P. 9. Col. 2. The Spirituality of God is as evident as his Being If we grant that God is we must necessarily grant that he cannot be corporeal because a Body is of an imperfect Nature It will appear incredible to any that acknowledge God the first Being and Creator of all things that he should be a massy heavy Body and have Eyes and Ears Feet and hands as we have For the explication of it 1. Spirit is taken various ways in Scripture It signifies sometimes an aereal substance as Psal 11.6 A horrible Tempest Heb. A Spirit of Tempest Sometimes the breath which is a thin substance Gen. 6.17 All Flesh wherein is the breath of Life Heb. Spirit of Life A thin substance though it be material and corporeal is called Spirit And in the bodies of living Creatures that which is the principle of their actions is called Spirits the animal and vital Spirits And the finer parts extracted from Plants and Minerals we call Spirits Those volatile parts separated from that gross matter wherein they were immerst because they come nearest to the nature of an incorporeal substance And from this notion of the word 't is translated to signifie those substances that are purely immaterial as Angels and the Souls of Men. Angels are called Spirits Psal 104.4 who makes his Angels Spirits * Heb. 1.14 And not only good Angels are so called but evil Angels Mark 1.27 Souls of men are called Spirits Eccl. 12. And the Soul of Christ is called so John 19.30 whence God is called the God of the Spirits of all Flesh Numb 22.16 and Spirit is opposed to Flesh Isa
31.3 the Egyptians are Flesh and not Spirit And our Saviour gives us the notion of a Spirit to be something above the nature of a Body Luke 24.39 not having flesh and bones extended parts loads of gross matter 'T is also taken for those things which are active and efficacious because activity is of the nature of a Spirit Caleb had another Spirit Num. 14.24 an active affection The vehement motions of sin are called Spirit Hos 4.12 the Spirit of Whoredoms in that sense that Pro. 29.11 a Fool utters all his mind all his Spirit he knows not how to restrain the vehement motions of his mind So that the notion of a Spirit is that it is a fine immaterial substance an active being that acts it self and other things A meer Body cannot act it self as the Body of Man cannot move without the Soul no more than a Ship can move it self without Wind and Waves So God is called a Spirit as being not a Body not having the greatness figure thickness or length of a Body wholly separate from any thing of flesh and matter We find a Principle within us nobler than that of our Bodies and therefore we conceive the Nature of God according to that which is more worthy in us and not according to that which is the vilest part of our Natures God is a most spiritual Spirit more spiritual than all Angels all Souls * Gerhard 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 As he exceeds all in the nature of Being so he exceeds all in the nature of Spirit He hath nothing gross heavy material in his Essence 2. When we say God is a Spirit 't is to be understood by way of Negation There are two ways of knowing or describing God By way of affirmation affirming that of him in a way of eminency which is excellent in the Creature as when we say God is wise good The other by way of negation when we remove from God in our conceptions what is tainted with imperfection in the Creature * Gamacheus Tom. 1. q. 3. Cap. 1. P. 42. The first ascribes to him whatsoever is excellent the other separates from him whatsoever is imperfect The first is like a Limning which adds one Colour to another to make a comely Picture the other is like a Carving which pares and cuts away whatsoever is superfluous to make a compleat Statue This way of negation is more easie we better understand what God is not than what he is and most of our knowledge of God is by this way As when we say God is infinite immense immutable they are negatives He hath no limits is confined to no place admits of no change * Coccei sum Theol. Cap. 8. When we remove from him what is inconsistent with his Being we do more strongly assert his Being and know more of him when we elevate him above all and above our own capacity And when we say God is a Spirit 't is a negation he is not a Body he consists not of various parts extended one without and beyond another He is not a Spirit so as our Souls are to be the form of any Body A Spirit not as Angels and Souls are but infinitely higher we call him so because in regard of our weakness we have not any other term of excellency to express or conceive of him by We transfer it to God in honour because Spirit is the highest excellency in our nature Yet we must apprehend God above any Spirit since his Nature is so great that he cannot be declared by human speech perceived by human sense or conceived by human understanding The second thing That God is a Spirit * Thes Sedan Part. 2. P. 1â—â—â— Some among the Heathens imagined God to have a Body some thought him to have a Body of Air some a Heavenly Body some a human Body * Vossius Idolol lib. 2. cap. 1. Forbes Instrument l. 1. c. 36. And many of them ascribed bodies to their Gods but bodies without blood without corruption bodies made up of the finest and thinnest Atomes such bodies which if compared with ours were as no bodies The Saddures also who denied all Spirits and yet acknowledged a God must conclude him to be a Body and no Spirit Some among Christians have been of that opinion Tertullian is charged by some and excused by others And some Monks of Egypt were so fierce for this Error that they attempted to kill one Theophilus a Bishop for not being of that Judgment * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 But the wiser Heathens were of another mind and esteemed it an unholy thing to have such imaginations of God * Plutarch incorporalis ratio divinus spiritus Seneca And some Christians have thought God only to be free from any thing of body because he is omnipresent immutable he is only incorporeal and spiritual all things else even the Angels are clothed with bodies though of a neater matter and a more active frame than ours a pure spiritual Nature they allowed to no Being but God Scripture and Reason meet together to assert the spirituality of God Had God had the Lineaments of a Body the Gentiles had not fallen under that accusation of changing his Glory into that of a Corruptible Man * Rom. 1.23 This is signified by the name God gives himself Exod. 3.14 I am that I am a simple pure uncompounded Being without any created mixture as infinitely above the being of Creatures as above the conceptions of Creatures Job 37.23 Touching the Almighty we cannot find him out He is so much a Spirit that he is the Father of Spirits Heb. 12.9 The Almighty Father is not of a Nature inferior to his Children The Soul is a Spirit it could not else exert actions without the assistance of the body as the act of Understanding it self and its own nature the act of willing and willing things against the incitements and interest of the Body It could not else conceive of God Angels and immaterial substances It could not else be so active as with one glance to fetch a compass from Earth to Heaven and by a sudden motion to elevate the understanding from an earthly thought to the thinking of things as high as the highest Heavens If we have this opinion of our Souls which in the nobleness of their acts surmount the Body without which the Body is but a dull unactive piece of clay we must needs have a higher conception of God than to clogg him with any matter though of a finer temper than ours We must conceive of him by the perfections of our Souls without the vileness of our Bodies If God made Man according to his Image we must raise our thoughts of God according to the noblest part of that Image and imagine the Exemplar or Copy not to come short but to exceed the thing copyed by it God were not the most excellent substance if he were not a Spirit Spiritual substances are more excellent than bodily
Civil associations for Politick Government Gen. 4.26 Then began men to call upon the name of the Lord viz. In the time of Seth. No question but Adam had worshipped God before as well as Abel and a Family-Religion had been preserved but as mankind increased in distinct Families they knit together in Companies to solemnize the worship of God * Stillingfleet's Irenicum cap. 1. § 1. pa. 23. Hence as some think those that incorporated together for such ends were called the Sons of God Sons by profession tho not Sons by Adoption As those of Corinth were Saints by profession tho in such a Corrupted Church they could not be all so by regeneration yet Saints as being of a Christian society and calling upon the name of Christ that is worshipping God in Christ tho they might not be all Saints in Spirit and Practise So Cain and Abel met together to worship Gen 4.3 at the end of the days at a set time God setled a publick worship among the Jews instituted Synagogues for their Convening together whence call'd the Synagogues of God * Psa 74.8 The Sabbath was instituted to acknowledge God a Common Benefactor Publick worship keeps up the Memorials of God in a world prone to Atheism and a sense of God in a heart prone to forgetfulness The Angels sung in Company not singly at the Birth of Christ * Luke 2.13 and praised God not only with a simple elevation of their Spiritual nature but audibly by forming a voice in the air Affections are more lively Spirits more raised in publick than private God will Credit his own ordinance Fire increaseth by laying together many Coals on one place so is devotion inflamed by the union of many hearts and by a joynt presence Nor can the approach of the last day of Judgment or particular Judgments upon a Nation give a Writ of ease from such assemblies Heb. 10.25 Not forsaking the assembling our selves together but so much the more as you see the day approaching Whether it be understood of the day of Judgment or the day of the Jewish destruction and the Christian persecution the Apostle uses it as an argument to quicken them to the observance not to encourage them to a neglect Since therefore natural light informs us and Divine institution Commands us publickly to acknowledge our selves the Servants of God it implies the service of the body Such acknowledgments cannot be without visible Testimonies and outward exercises of devotion as well as inward affections This promotes Gods honour checks others prophaness allures men to the same expressions of duty And tho there may be hypocrisy and an outward garb without an inward frame yet better a moiety of worship than none at all better acknowledge Gods right in one than disown it in both 3. Jesus Christ the most Spiritual worshipper worshipt God with his body He Prayed orally and kneeled Father if it be thy Will c. * Luke 22.41 42. He blessed with his mouth Father I thank thee * Mat. 11.26 He lifted up his eyes as well as elevated his Spirit when he praised his Father for mercy received or begged for the blessings his Disciples wanted * John 11.41 John 12.1 The strength of the Spirit must have vent at the outward members The holy men of God have employed the body in significant expressions of worship Abraham in falling on his face Paul in kneeling employing their Tongues lifting up their hands Tho Jacob was bedrid yet he would not worship God without some devout expression of Reverence t is in one place leaning upon his staff * Heb. 11.21 in another bowing himself upon his beds head * Gen. 47.31 The reason of the diversity is in the Heb. word which without vowels may be red Mittah a bed or Matteh a staff howsoever both signifie a Testimony of adoration by a reverent gesture of the body Indeed in Angels and separated Souls a worship is performed purely by the Spirit but whiles the Soul is in conjunction with the body it can hardly perform a serious act of worship without some tincture upon the outward man and reverential composure of the body Fire cannot be in the clothes but it will be felt by the members nor flames be pent up in the Soul without bursting out in the body The heart can no more restrain it self from breaking out than Joseph could enclose his affections without expressing them in tears to his Brethren * Gen. 45.1 2. We Believe and therefore speak * 2 Cor. 4.13 To conclude God hath appointed some parts of worship which cannot be performed without the body as Sacraments we have need of them because we are not wholly spiritual and incorporeal Creatures The Religion which consists in externals only is not for an intellectual nature A worship purely intellectual is too sublime for a nature allyed to sense and depending much upon it The Christian mode of worship is proportioned to both It makes the sense to assist the mind and elevates the spirit above the sense Bodily worship helps the spiritual The members of the body reflect back upon the heart the voice bars distractions the tongue sets the heart on fire in good as well as in evil T is as much against the light of nature to serve God without external significations as to serve him only with them without the intention of the mind As the invisible God declares himself to men by visible works and signs so should we declare our invisible frames by visible expressions God hath given us a soul and body in conjunction and we are to serve him in the same manner he hath framed us 2. The second thing I am to shew is what Spiritual worship is In general the whole Spirit is to be employed The name of God is not sanctifyed but by the engagement of our Souls Worship is an Act of the understanding applying it self to the knowledge of the excellency of God and actual thoughts of his Majesty recognizing him as the supreme Lord and Governour of the world which is natural knowledge beholding the glory of his Attributes in the Redeemer which is Evangelical knowledge This is the sole act of the Spirit of Man The same reason is for all our worship as for our thanksgiving This must be done with understanding Psal 47.7 Sing ye praise with understanding with a knowledge and sense of his greatness goodness and Wisdom T is also an act of the Will whereby the Soul adores and reverenceth his Majesty is ravisht with his amiableness embraceth his goodness enters it self into an intimate Communion with this most lovely object and pitcheth all his affections upon him We must worship God understandingly t is not else a reasonable service The nature of God and the Law of God abhor a blind offering we must worship him heartily else we offer him a dead Sacrifice A reasonable service is that wherein the mind doth truly act something with God
Holy-Ghost for the Apostle would never have called the Spirit of God his own Spirit but with my Spirit that is a sincere frame of heart A Carnal-worship whether under the Law or Gospel is when we are busied about external rites without an inward compliance of Soul God demands the heart * Pro. 23.26 my Son give me thy heart not give me thy tongue or thy lips or thy hands these may be given without the heart but the heart can never be bestowed without these as its attendants A heap of services can be no more welcome to God without our Spirits than all Jacobs Sons could be to Joseph without the Benjamin he desired to see God is not taken with the Cabinet but the Jewel He first respected Abels Faith and Sincerity and then his Sacrifice he disrespected Cains Infidelity and Hypocrisie and then his Offering * Moulin Sermons Decad. 4. Ser. 4. P. 80. For this cause he rejected the Offerings of the Jews the Prayers of the Pharisees and the Alms of Ananias and Sapphira because their hearts and their duties were at a distance from one another In all spiritual Sacrifices our Spirits are Gods portion Under the Law the Reins were to be consumed by the Fire on the Altar because the secret intentions of the heart were signified by them Psal 7.9 The Lord trieth the Heart and the Reins It was an ill Omen among the Heathen if a Victim wanted a heart The Widows Mites with her heart in them were more esteemed than the richer Offerings without it Not the quantity of service but the will in it is of account with this infinite Spirit All that was to be brought for the framing of the Tabernacle was to be offered willingly with the heart * Exod. 25.7 The more of Will the more of Spirituality and Acceptableness to God Psal 119.108 Accept the Free-will-offering of my lips Sincerity is the Salt which seasons every Sacrifice The heart is most like to the object of worship The heart in the body is the spring of all vital actions and a spiritual Soul is the spring of all spiritual actions How can we imagin God can delight in the meer service of the Body any more than we can delight in converse with a Carcass Without the heart 't is no worship 'T is a Stage-play an acting a part without being that person really which is acted by us A Hypocrite in the notion of the word is a Stage-player We may as well say a man may believe with his body as worship God only with his body Faith is a great ingredient in Worship and it is with the heart Man believes unto Righteousness * Rom. 10.10 We may be truly said to worship God though we want perfection but we cannot be said to worship him if we want sincerity A Statue upon a Tomb with eyes and hands lifted up offers as good and true a service it wants only a voice the gestures and postures are the same nay the service is better 't is not a mockery it represents all that it can be framed to But to worship without our Spirits is a presenting God with a Picture an Eccho Voice and nothing else a Complement a meer Lye a compassing him about with Lyes * Hos 11.12 Without the heart the tongue is a Lyar and the greatest Zeal dissembling with him To present the Spirit is to present with that which can never naturally dye to present him only the Body is to present him that which is every day crumbling to dust and will at last lye rotting in the Grave To offer him a few Raggs easily torn a Skin for a Sacrifice a thing unworthy the Majesty of God a fixed eye and elevated hands with a sleepy Heart and earthly Soul are pitiful things for an ever blessed and glorious Spirit Nay it is so far from being spiritual that it is Blasphemy To pretend to be a Jew outwardly without being so inwardly is in the Judgment of Christ to blaspheme * Revel 2.9 And is not the same title to be given with as much reason to those that pretend a worship and perform none Such a one is not a spiritual Worshipper but a blaspheming Devil in Samuel's Mantle 4. Spiritual Worship is performed with an unitedness of heart The heart is not only now and then with God but united to fear or worship his name * Psal 86.11 A spiritual duty must have the engagement of the Spirit and the thoughts tyed up to the spiritual Object The union of all the parts of the heart together with the body is the life of the body and the moral union of our hearts is the life of any duty A heart quickly flitting from God makes not God his treasure he slights the worship and therein affronts the Object of Worship All our thoughts ought to be ravished with God bound up in him as in a bundle of life But when we start from him to gaze after every feather and run after every bubble we disown a full and affecting excellency and a satisfying sweetness in him When our thoughts run from God 't is a testimony we have no spiritual affection to God Affection would stake down the thoughts to the Object affected 'T is but a Mouth-love as the Prophet phraseth it * Ezek. 33.31 But their hearts go after their Covetousness Covetous Objects pipe and the heart danceth after them and thoughts of God are shifted off to receive a multitude of other imaginations The heart and the service stayed a while together and then took leave of one another The Psalmist * Psal 39.18 still found his heart with God when he awak'd still with God in spiritual affections and fixed meditations A carnal heart is seldom with God either in or out of worship If God should knock at the heart in any duty it would be found not at home but straying abroad Our worship is spiritual when the door of the heart is shut against all Intruders as our Saviour commands in Closet-duties * Mat. 6.6 It was not his meaning to command the shutting the Closet-door and leave the Heart-door open for every thought that would be apt to haunt us Worldly affections are to be laid aside if we would have our worship spiritual This was meant by the Jewish custom of wiping or washing off the dust of their feet before their entrance into the Temple and of not bringing mony in their girdles To be spiritual in worship is to have our Souls gathered and bound up wholly in themselves and offered to God Our Loyns must be girt as the fashion was in the Eastern Countries where they wore long Garments that they might not waver with the Wind and be blown between their leggs to obstruct them in their travel Our faculties must not hang loose about us He is a carnal Worshipper that gives God but a piece of his heart as well as he that denies him the whole of it that hath
Zech. 4.1 The Angel that talked with me came again and awaked me as a man is awaked out of sleep He had been rouzed up before but he was ready to drop down again his heart was gone till the Angel jogged him We may complain of such imaginations as Jerem. doth of the Enemies of the Jews * Lam. 4.19 Our Persecutors are swifter than Eagles they light upon us with as much speed as Eagles upon a Carcass they pursue us upon the Mountain of Divine institutions and they lay wait for us in the Wilderness in our retired addresses to God And this will be so while 1. There is natural corruption in us There are in a Godly man two contrary principles Flesh and Spirit which endeavour to hinder one anothers acts and are alway stirring upon the offensive or defensive part * Gal. 5.17 There is a body of death continually exhaling its noysom vapours 'T is a body of death in our worship as well as in our natures it snaps our resolutions asunder * Rom. 7.19 it hinders us in the doing good and contradicts our wills in the stirring up evil This corruption being seated in all the faculties and a constant Domestick in them has the greater opportunity to trouble us since it is by those faculties that we spiritually transact with God and it stirs more in the time of religious exercises though it be in part mortified As a wounded Beast though tired will rage and strive to its utmost when the Enemy is about to fetch a blow at it All duties of worship tend to the wounding of corruption and it is no wonder to feel the striving of sin to defend it self and offend us when we have our Arms in our hands to mortifie it that the blow may be diverted which is directed against it The Apostles had aspiring thoughts and being perswaded of an earthly Kingdom expected a Grandeur in it And though we find some appearance of it at other times as when they were casting out Devils and gave an account of it to their Master he gives them a kind of a check * Luke 10.20 intimating that there was some kind of evil in their rejoycing upon that account Yet this never swelled so high as to break out into a quarrel who should be greatest * Luke 22.24 until they had the most solemn Ordinance the Lords Supper to quell it* Our corruption is like Lime which discovers not its fire by any smoke or heat till you cast water the Enemy of fire upon it Neither doth our natural corruption rage so much as when we are using means to quench and destroy it 2. While there is a Devil and we in his Precinct As he accuseth us to God so he disturbs us in our selves He is a bold Spirit and loves to intrude himself when we are conversing with God We read that when the Angels presented themselves before God Satan comes among them * Job 1.6 Motions from Satan will thrust themselves in with our most raised and Angelical frames He loves to take off the edge of our Spirits from God He acts but after the old rate He from the first envied God an obedience from man and envied man the felicity of communion with God He is unwilling God should have the honour of worship and that we should have the fruit of it He hath himself lost it and therefore is unwilling we should enjoy it and being subtil he knows how to make impressions upon us sutable to our inbred corruptions and assault us in the weakest part He knows all the avenues to get within us as he did in the temptation of Eve and being a Spirit he wants not a power to dart them immediatly upon our fancy And being a Spirit and therefore active and nimble he can shoot those darts faster than our weakness can beat them off He is diligent also and watcheth for his Prey and seeks to devour our services as well as our Souls and snatch our best morsels from us We know he mixed himself with our Saviours retirements in the Wilderness and endeavoured to Fly-blow his holy converse with his Father in the preparation to his mediatory work Satan is Gods Ape and imitates the Spirit in the Office of a Remembrancer As the Spirit brings good thoughts and divine promises to mind to quicken our worship so the Devil brings evil things to mind and endeavours to fasten them in our Souls to disturb us And though all the foolish starts we have in worship are not purely his issue yet being of kin to him he claps his hands and sets them on like so many Mastives to tear the service in pieces And both those distractions which arise from our own corruption and from Satan are most rise in worship when we are under some pressing affliction This seems to be David's Case Psal 86. when in v. 11. He prays God to unite his heart to fear and worship his Name he seems to be under some affliction or fear of his Enemies Oh free me from those distractions of Spirit and those passions which arise in my Soul upon considering the designs of my enemies against me and press upon me in my addresses to thee and attendances on thee Job also in his affliction complains Job 17.11 That his purposes were broken off He could not make an even thread of thoughts and resolutions they were frequently snapt saunder like rotten Yarn when one is winding it up Good Men and spiritual Worshippers have lain under this trouble Though they are a sign of weakness of grace or some obstructions in the acting of strong grace yet they are not alway evidences of a want of grace What ariseth from our own corruption is to be matter of humiliation and resistance what ariseth from Satan should edge our minds to a noble conquest of them If the Apostle did comfort himself with his disapproving of what rose from the natural spring of sin within him with his consent to the Law and dissent from his Lust and charges it not upon himself but upon the sin that dwelt in him with which he had broken off the former League and was resolved never to enter into Amity with it By the same reason we may comfort our selves if such thoughts are undelighted in and alienate not our hearts from the worship of God by all their busie intrusions to interrupt us 2. These distractions not allowed may be occasions by an holy improvement to make our hearts more spiritual after worship though they disturb us in it By answering those ends for which we may suppose God permits them to invade us And that is 1. When they are occasions to humble us 1. For our carriage in the particular worship There is nothing so dangerous as spiritual pride It deprived Devils and Men of the presence of God and will hinder us of the influence of God If we had had raised and uninterrupted motions in worship we should be apt to be lifted
circumstances We honour the Majesty of God when we consider him with due reverence according to the greatness and perfection of his works and in this reverence of his Majesty doth worship chiefly consist Low thoughts of God will make low frames in us before him If we thought God an infinite glorious Spirit how would our hearts be lower than our knees in his presence How humbly how believingly pleading is the Psalmist when he considers God to be without comparison in the Heavens to whom none of the Sons of the Mighty can be likened when there was none like to him in strength or faithfulness round about * Psal 89.6 7 8. We should have also deep impressions of the Omniscience of God and remember we have to deal with a God that searcheth the heart and tryeth the reins to whom the most secret temper is as visible as the loudest words are Audible that though man judges by outward expressions God judges by inward affections As the Law of God regulates the inward frames of the heart so the eye of God pitches upon the inward intentions of the Soul If God were visibly present with us should we not approach to him with strong affections summon our Spirits to attend upon him behave our selves modestly before him Let us consider he is as really present with us as if he were visible to us let us therefore preserve a strong sense of the presence of God No man but one out of his wits when he were in the presence of a Prince and making a Speech to him would break off at every Period and run after the catching of Butter-flyes Remember in all worship you are before the Lord to whom all things are open and naked Direction 4. Let us take heed of inordinate desires after the world As the world steals away a mans heart from the Word so it doth from all other worship It chokes the Word * Mat. 13.27 it stifles all the spiritual breathings after God in every duty The edge of the Soul is blunted by it and made too dull for such sublime exercises The Apostles rule in Prayer when he joyns sobriety with watching unto Prayer 1 Pet. 4.7 is of concern in all worship sobriety in the pursuite and use of all wordly things A man drunk with worldly fumes cannot watch cannot be heavenly affectionate spiritual in service There is a magnetick force in the Earth to hinder our flights to Heaven Birds when they take their first flights from the Earth have more flutterings of their wings than when they are mounted further in the Air and got more without the Sphear of the Earths attractiveness the motion of their wings is more steady that you can scarce perceive them stir they move like a Ship with a full Gale The world is a clog upon the Soul and a bar to spiritual frames 'T is as hard to elevate the heart to God in the midst of a hurry of worldly affairs as it is difficult to meditate when we are near a great noise of waters falling from a Precipice or in the midst of a Volly of Muskets Thick claiy affections bemire the heart and make it unfit for such high flights it is to take in worship Therefore get your hearts clear from worldly thoughts and desires if you would be more spiritual in worship 5. Let us be deeply sensible of our present wants and the supplies we may meet with in worship Cold affections to the things we would have will grow cooler Weakness of desire for the communications in worship will freez our hearts at the time of worship and make way for vain and foolish diversions A Begger that is ready to perish and knows he is next door to ruin will not slightly and dully began Alms and will not be diverted from his importunity by every slight call or the moving of an Atom in the Air. Is it Pardon we would have Let us apprehend the blackness of sin with the aggravations of it as it respects God Let us be deeply sensible of the want of pardon and worth of mercy and get our affections into such a frame as a condemned man would do Let us consider that as we are now at the Throne of Gods grace we shall shortly be at the Bar of Gods Justice and if the Soul should be forlorn there how fixedly and earnestly would it plead for mercy Let us endeavour to stir up the same affections now which we have seen some dying men have and which we suppose despairing Souls would have done at Gods Tribunal * Guliel Paris Rhetor. Divin cap. 26. p. 350. Col. 1. We must be sensible that the life or death of our Souls depends upon worship Would we not be ashamed to be ridiculous in our carriage while we are eating and shall we not be ashamed to be cold or garish before God when the Salvation of our Souls as well as the Honour of God is concerned If we did see the heaps of sins the eternity of punishment due to them If we did see an angry and offended Judge If we did see the riches of mercy the glorious outgoings of God in the Sanctuary the blessed Doles he gives out to men when they spiritually attend upon him both the one and the other would make us perform our duties humbly sincerely earnestly and affectionately and wait upon him with our whole Souls to have misery averted and mercy bestowed Let our sense of this be encouragâ—d by the consideration of our Saviour presenting his merits With what affection doth he present his merits his blood shed upon the Cross now in Heaven And shall our hearts be cold and frozen flitting and unsteady when his affectioâ—s are so much concerned Christ doth not present any Mans case and duties without a sense of hiâ— wants and shall we have none of our own Let me add this let us affect our hearts with a sense of what supplies we haâ—â— met with in former worship The delightful remembrance of what converâ—â— we have had with God in former worship would spiritualize our hearts for the present worship Had Peter had a view of Christs glory in the Mount fresh in his thoughts he would not so easily have turned his back upon his Master Nor would the Israelites have been at leasure for their Idolatry had they preserved the sense of the Majesty of God discovered in his late Thunders from Mount Sinai 6. If any thing intrudes that may choak the Worship cast it speedily out We cannot hinder Satan and our own Corruption from presenting Coolers to us but we may hinder the success of them We cannot hinder the Gnats from buzzing about us when we are in our business but we may prevent them from setling upon us A man that is running on a considerable Errand will shun all unnecessary discourse that may make him forget or loyter in his business What though there may be something offered that is good in it self yet if it hath a
Hills are said to leap and the Mountains to rejoyce The Creature is said to groan as the Heavens are said to declare the glory of God passively naturally not rationally 'T is not likely Angels are here meant though they cannot but desire it since they are affected with the dishonour and reproach God hath in the world they cannot but long for the restoration of his honour in the restoration of the Creature to its true end And indeed the Angels are employed to serve man in this sinful state and cannot but in holiness wish the Creature freed from his corruption Nor is it meant of the new Creatures which have the first fruits of the Spirit those he brings in afterwards groaning and waiting for the Adoption * Verse 23. where he distinguisheth the rational Creature from the Creature he had spoken of before If he had meant the believing Creature by that Creature that desired the liberty of the Sons of God what need had there been of that additional distinction and not only they but we also who have the first fruits of the Spirit groan within our selves Whereby it seems he means some Creatures below rational Creatures since neither Angels nor blessed Souls can be said to travail in pain with that distress as a Woman in travail hath as the word signifies who perform the work joyfully which God sets them upon * Mestraezat fur Heb. 1. If the Creatures be subject to vanity by the sin of man they shall also partake of a happiness by the restoration of man The Eâ—â—â—h hath born Thorns and Thistles and venemous Beasts The Air hath had its Tempests and infectious Qualities The Water hath caused its Flouds and Deluges The Creature hath been abused to luxury and intemperance and been tyranniz'd over by Man contrary to the end of its creation 'T is convenient that some time should be allotted for the Creature 's attaining its true end and that it may partake of the peace of Man as it hath done of the fruits of his sin otherwise it would seem that sin had prevailed more than grace and would have had more power to deface than grace to restore and things into their due order 5. Again upon what account should the Psalmist exhort the Heavens to rejoyce and the Earth to be glad when God comes to judge the world with Righteousness * Psal 96.11 12 13. if they should be annihilated and sunk for ever into nothing It would seem saith Daille to be an impertinent figure if the Judge of the world brought to them a total destruction an entire ruin could not be matter of triumph to Creatures who naturally have that instinct or inclination put into them by their Creator to preserve themselves and to affect their own preservation 6. Again The Lord is to rejoyce in his works Psal 104.31 The Glory of the Lord shall endure for ever the Lord shall rejoyce in his works not hath but shall rejoyce in his works In the works of Creation which the Psalmist had enumerated and which is the whole scope of the Psalm And he intimates that it is part of the glory of the Lord which endures for ever that is his manifestative glory to rejoyce in his works The Glory of the Lord must be understood with reference to the Creation he had spoken of before How short was that joy God had in his works after he had sent them beautified out of his hand How soon did he repent not only that he had made Man but was grieved at the heart also that he made the other Creatures which Man's sin had disordered What joy can God have in them * Gen. 6.7 since the Curse upon the entrance of sin into the world remains upon them If they are to be annihilated upon the full restoration of his Holiness what time will God have to rejoyce in the other works of Creation 'T is the joy of God to see all his works in their due order every one pointing to their true end marching together in their excellency according to his first intendment in their Creation Did God create the World to perform its end only for one day scarce so much if Adam fell the very first day of his Creation What would have been their end if Adam had been confirm'd in a state of happiness as the Angels were 'T is likely will be answered and performed upon the compleat restoration of Man to that happy state from whence he fell What Artificer compiles a work by his skill but to rejoyce in it And shall God have no joy from the works of his hands Since God can only rejoyce in goodness the Creatures must have that goodness restored to them which God pronounced them to have at the first Creation and which he ordained them for before he can again rejoyce in his works The goodness of the Creatures is the glory and joy of God Inference 1. We may infer from hence what a base and vile thing Sin is which lays the foundation of the worlds change Sin brings it to a decrepit age Sin overturned the whole work of God * Gen. 3.17 so that to render it useful to its proper end there is a necessity of a kind of a new creating it This causes God to fire the Earth for a purification of it from that infection and contagion brought upon it by the apostacy and corruption of Man It hath served sinful man and therefore must undergo a purging Flame to be fit to serve the holy and righteous Creator As Sin is so riveted in the body of man that there is need of a change by death to rase it out so hath the Curse for sin got so deep into the bowels of the world that there is need of a change by fire to refine it for its Masters use Let us look upon Sin with no other notion than as the Object of Gods hatred the cause of his grief in the Creatures and the Spring of the pain and ruin of the World 2. How foolish a thing is it to set our hearts upon that which shall perish and be no more what it is now The Heavens and Earth the solidest and firmest parts of the Creation shall not continue in the posture they are they must perish and undergo a refining change How feeble and weak are the other parts of the Creation the little Creatures walking upon and fluttering about the world that are perishing and dying every day and we scarce see them clothed with life and beauty this day but they wither and are despoyl'd of all the next and are such frail things fit Objects for our everlasting Spirits and Affections Though the daily employment of the Heavens is the declaration of the glory of God * Psal 19.1 yet neither this nor their harmony order beauty amazing greatness and glory of them shall preserve them from a dissolution and melting at the presence of the Lord Though they have remained in the same posture from
him So it is impossible but that the seed of God by his Eternal purpose should be brought to a Spiritual life and that calling cannot be retracted for that gift and calling is without repentance * Rom. 11.29 And when repentance is removed from God in regard of some works the immutability of those works is declared And the reason of that immutability is their pure dependance on the Eternal favour and unchangeable grace of God * Eph. 1.9 11. purpos'd in himself and not upon the mutability of the Creature Hence their happiness is not as Patents among men quam diu bene se gesserint so long as they behave themselves well but they have a promise that they shall behave themselves so as never wholly to depart from God Jer. 32.40 I will make an everlasting Covenant with them that I will not turn away from them to do them good but I will put my fear in their hearts that they shall not depart from me God will not turn from them to do them good and promiseth that they shall not turn from him for ever or forsake him And the bottom of it is the everlasting Covenant and therefore believing and sealing for security are linkt together Eph. 1.13 And When God doth inwardly teach us his Law he puts in a Will not depart from it Psalm 119.102 I have not departed from thy Judgments what is the reason For thou hast taught me 3. By this Eternal Happiness is ensured This is the Inference made from the Eternity and Unchangeableness of God in the verse following the Text verse 28. The Children of thy Servants shall continue and their Seed shall be established before thee This is the sole conclusion drawn from those Perfections of God solemnly asserted before The Children which the Prophets and Apostles have begotten to thee shall be totally delivered from the reliques of their Apostacy and the punishment due to them and rendred partakers of Immortality with thee as Sons to dwell in their Fathers house for ever The Spirit begins a spiritual Life here to fit for an immutable Life in Glory hereafter where Believers shall be placed upon a Throne that cannot be shaken and possess a Crown that shall not be taken off their heads for ever 3. Use Of Exhortation 1. Let a sense of the changeableness and uncertainty of all other things beside God be upon us There are as many changes as there are figures in the world The whole fashion of the world is a transient thing every man may say as Job * Job 10.17 Changes and War are against me Lot chose the Plain of Sodom because it was the richer Soyl He was but a little time there before he was taken Prisoner and his substance made the Spoyl of his Enemie That is again restored but a while after Fire from Heaven devours his Wealth though his Person was secur'd from the Judgment by a special Providence We burn with a desire to settle our selves but mistake the way and build Castles in the Air which vanish like bubbles of Sope in water And therefore 1. Let not our thoughts dwell much upon them Do but consider those Souls that are in the possession of an unchangeable God that behold his never fading Glory Would it not be a kind of Hell to them to have their thoughts starting out to these things or find any desire in themselves to the changeable trifles of the Earth Nay have we not reason to think that they cover their faces with shame that ever they should have such a weakness of Spirit when they were here below as to spend more thoughts upon them than were necessary for this present Life much more that they should at any time value and court them above an unchangeable Good Do they not disdain themselves that they should ever debase the immutable perfections of God as to have neglecting thoughts of him at any time for the entertainment of such a mean and inconstant Rival 2. Much less should we trust in them or rejoyce in them The best things are mutable and things of such a Nature are not fit Objects of confidence Trust not in Riches they have their wanes as well as increases they rise sometimes like a Torrent and flow in upon men but resemble also a Torrent in as suddain a fall and departure and leave nothing but slime behind them Trust not in Honour all the Honour and Applause in the World is no better than an Inheritance of Wind which the Pilot is not sure of but shifts from one corner to another and stands not perpetually in the same point of the Heavens How in a few Ages did the house of David a great Monarch and a man after Gods own heart descend to a mean condition and all the glory of that house shut up in the stock of a Carpenter David's Sheep-hook was turned into a Scepter and the Scepter by the same hand of Providence turned into a Hatchet in Joseph his Descendent Rejoyce not immoderately in wisdom That and Learning languish with Age. A wound in the head may impair that which is the Glory of a Man If an Organ be out of frame Folly may succeed and all a mans Prudence be wound up in an irrecoverable Dotage Nebuchadnezzar was no Fool yet by a suddain hand of God he became not only a Fool or a mad Man but a kind of Brute Rejoyce not in strength that decays and a mighty Man may live to see his strong Arm withered and a Grass-hopper to become a Burthen * Eccles 12.5 The strong men shall bow themselves and the Grinders shall cease because they are few * V. 3. Nor rejoyce in Children they are like Birds upon a Tree that make a little chirping musick and presently fall into the Fowlers Net Little did Job expect such sad news as the loss of all his Progeny at a blow when the Messenger knocked at his Gate And such changes happen oftentimes when our expectations of comfort and a contentment in them are at the highest How often doth a string crack when the Musitian hath wound it up to a just height for a Tune and all his pains and delight marr'd in a Moment Nay all these things change while we are using them like Ice that melts between our fingers and Flowers that wither while we are smelling to them The Apostle gave them a good title when he called them uncertain riches and thought it a strong argument to disswade them from trusting in them * 1 Tim 6.17 The wealth of the Merchant depends upon the Winds and Waves and the revenue of the Husbandman upon the Clouds and since they depend upon those things which are used to express the most changeableness they can be no fit Object for trust Besides God sometimes kindles a Fire under all a mans Glory which doth insensibly consume it * Isa 10.16 and while we have them the fear of losing them renders us not very happy in the
thus That he is not every where by parts as Bodies are as Air and Light are He is every where i. e. his Nature hath no bounds he is not tyed to any place as the Creature is who when he is present in one place is absent from another As no place can be without God so no place can compass and contain him 2. There is an influential Omnipresence of God 1. Vniversal with all Creatures He is present with all things by his Authority because all things are subject to him By his power because all things are sustained by him By his Knowledge because all things are naked before him He is present in the World as a King is in all parts of his Kingdom Regally present Providentially present with all since his Care extends to the meanest of his Creatures His Power reacheth all and his Knowledge pierceth all As every thing in the World was Created by God so every thing in the World is preserved by God and since Preservation is not wholly distinct from Creation 't is necessary God should be present with every thing while he preserves it as well as present with it when he Created it * Psal 36.6 Thou preservest man and Beast †Heb. 1.3 He upholds all things by the word of his Power There is a vertue sustaining every Creature that it may not fall back into that nothing from whence it was elevated by the Power of God All those natural Vertues we call the Principles of Operation are Fountains springing from his Goodness and Power all things are acted and managed by him as well as preserved by him and in this sense God is present with all Creatures for whatsoever acts another is present with that which it acts by sending forth some vertue and influence whereby it acts If free Agents do not only live but move in him and by him * Acts 17.28 much more are the motions of other natural Agents by a vertue communicated to them and upheld in them in the time of their acting This vertual presence of God is evident to our sense a presence we feel his essential presence is evident in our Reason This influential presence may be compar'd to that of the Sun which though at so great a distance from the Earth is present in the Air and Earth by its Light and within the Earth by its influence in concocting those Metals which are in the Bowels of it without being substantially either of them God is thus so intimate with every Creature that there is not the least particle of any Creature but the marks of his Power and Goodness are seen in it and his Goodness doth attend them and is more swift in its effluxes than the breakings out of Light from the Sun which yet are more swift than can be declar'd but to say he is in the World only by his Vertue is to acknowledge only the effects of his Power and Wisdom in the World That his Eye sees all his Arm supports all his Goodness nourisheth all but Himself and his Essence at a distance from them * Zanch. and so the Soul of man according to its measure would have in some kind a more excellent manner of Presence in the body than God according to the Infiniteness of his Being with his Creatures for that doth not only communicate Life to the Body but is actually present with it and spreads its whole Essence through the Body and every Member of it All grant That God is efficaciously in every Creek of the World but some say he is only substantially in Heaven 2. Limited to such Subjects that are capacitated for this or that kind of Presenâ—e Yet it is an Omnipresence because it is a Presence in all the Subjects capacitated for it thus there is a special Providential Presence of God with some in assisting them when he sets them on work as his Instruments for some special Service in the World As with Cyrus * Isa 4â— 2 I will go before thee and with Nebuchadnezzar and Alexander whom he Protected and Directed to execute his Counsels in the World such a presence Judas and others †Mat. 7.22 that shall not enjoy his glorious Presence had in the working of Miracles in the world In thy name we have done many wonderful works Besides * Cajetan in Aquin Par. 1. Qu 8 Artic. 3. as there is an effective Presence of God with all Creatures because he produced them and preserves them so there is an objective Presence of God with rational Creatures because he offers himself to them to be known and loved by them He is near to Wicked men in the offers of his Grace * Isa 55.6 call ye upon him while he is near Besides there is a gracious Presence of God with his People in whom he dwells and makes his abode as in a Temple Consecrated to him by the Graces of the Spirit †John 14.23 We will come i. e. the Father and the Son and make our abode with him He is present with all by the Presence of his Divinity but only in his Saints by a Presence of a gracious Efficacy he walks in the midst of the Golden Candlesticks and hath Dignifi'd the Congregation of his People with the Title of Jehovah Sbammah * Ezek. 48.35 The Lord is there In Salem is his Tabernacle and his dwelling place in Sion †Psal 76.2 As he filled the Tabernacle so he doth the Church with the Signs of his Presence this is not the Presence wherewith he fills Heaven and Earth His Spirit is not bestowed upon all to reside in their hearts enlighten their minds and bedew them with refreshing Comforts When the Apostle speaks of Gods being Above all and through all * Eph. 4.6 Above all in his Majesty Through all in his Providence he doth not appropriate that as he doth what follows and in you all in you all by a special Grace as God was specially present with Christ by the Grace of Union so he is specially present with his People by the Grace of Regeneration So there are several manifestations of his Presence he hath a Presence of Glory in Heaven whereby he Comforts the Saints a Presence of Wrath in Hell whereby he Torments the Damned in Heaven he is a God spreading his Beams of Light in Hell a God distributing his Strokes of Justice by the one he fills Heaven by the other he fills Hell by his Providence and Essence he fills both Heaven and Earth 3. There is an Essential Presence of God in the World He is not only every where by his Power upholding the Creatures by his Wisdom understanding them but by his Essence containing them That any thing is essentially present any where it hath from God God is therefore much more present every where for he cannot give that which he hath not 1. He is Essentially present in all places * Ficin 'T is as reasonable to think the
before it was Immense before it had no bounds and would God make a World that he would be ashamed to be present with and continue it to the diminution and lessening of himself rather than annihilate it to avoid the disparagement This were to impeach the Wisdom of God and cast a blemish upon his infinite Understanding that he knows not the consequences of his Work or is well contented to be impaired in the immensity of his own Essence by it No man thinks it a dishonour to Light a most excellent Creature to be present with a Toad or Serpent and tho' there be an infinite disproportion between Light a Creature and the Father of Lights the Creator Yet * Gassend God being a Spirit knows how to be with Bodies as if they were not Bodies And being jealous of his own Honor would not could not do any thing that might impair it 4. Nor will it follow That because God is Essentially every where that every thing is God God is not every where by any conjunction composition or mixture with any thing on Earth when Light is in every part of a Chrystal Globe and encircles it close on every side do they become one No the Chrystal remains what it is and the Light retains its own nature God is not in us as a part of us but as an efficient and preserving Cause 't is not by his Essential Presence but his efficacious Presence that he brings any person into a likeness to his own Nature God is so in his Essence with things as to be distinct from them as a Cause from the Effect as a Creator different from the Creature preserving their Nature not communicating his own his Essence touches all is in conjunction with none Finite and Infinite cannot be joyn'd he is not far from us therefore near to us so near that we live and move in him * Acts 17.27 Nothing is God because it moves in him any more than a Fish in the Sea is the Sea or a part of the Sea because it moves in it Doth a man that holds a thing in the hollow of his hand Amyrald de Trinit p. 99. 100. transform it by that action and make it like his hand The Soul and Body are more straitly united than the Essence of God is by his Presence with any Creature The Soul is in the Body as a form in matter and from their Union doth arise a man yet in this near conjunction both Body and Soul remain distinct the Soul is not the Body nor the Body the Soul they both have distinct natures and essences the Body can never be changed into a Soul nor the Soul into a Body no more can God into the Creature or the Creature into God Fire is in heated Iron in every part of it so that it seems to be nothing but Fire yet is not Fire and Iron the same thing But such a kind of arguing against Gods Omnipresence that if God were Essentially present every thing would be God would exclude him from Heaven as well as from Earth By the same reason since they acknowledge God essentially in Heaven the Heaven where he is should be chang'd into the nature of God and by arguing against his Presence in Earth upon this ground they run such an inconvenience that they must own him to be no where and that which is no where is nothing Doth the Earth become God because God is Essentially there any more than the Heavens where God is acknowledged by all to be Essentially present Again if where God is Essentially that must be God then if they place God in a Point of the Heavens not only that Point must be God but all the World because if that point be God because God is there then the Point touched by that Point must be God and so consequently as far as there are any Points touched by one another We live and move in God so we live and move in the Air we are no more God by that than we are meer Air because we breathe in it and it enters into all the Pores of our Body Nay where there was a straiter Union of the Divine Nature to the Humane in our Saviour yet the Nature of both was distinct and the Humanity was not chang'd into the Divinity nor the Divinity into the Humanity 5. Nor doth it follow that because God is every where therefore a Creature may be worshipt without Idolatry Some of the Heathens who acknowledged Gods Omnipresence abus'd it to the countenancing Idolatry because God was resident in every thing they thought every thing might be Worshipped and some have usd it as an Argument against this Doctrine the best Doctrines may by mens corruption be drawn out into unreasonable and pernicious conclusions Have you not met with any That from the Doctrine of Gods Free Mercy and our Saviours satisfactory Death have drawn Poyson to feed their Lusts and consume their Souls a Poyson compos'd by their own corruption and not offer'd by those Truths The Apostle intimates to us that some did or at least were ready to be more lavish in sinning because God was abundant in Grace Rom. 6.1 2.15 Shall we Sin because we are not under the Law but under Grace Shall we continue in Sin that Grace may abound when he prevents an Objection that he thought might be made by some But as to this Case since tho' God be present in every thing yet every thing retains its nature distinct from the Nature of God therefore it is not to have a Worship due to the Excellency of God As long as any thing remains a Creature 't is only to have the respect from us which is due to it in the rank of Creatures When a Prince is present with his Guard or if he should go Arm in Arm with a Peasant is therefore the Veneration and Honor due to the Prince to be paid to the Peasant or any of his Guard would the Presence of the Prince excuse it or would it not rather aggravate it he acknowledged such a person equal to me by giving him my Rights even in my Sight Tho' God dwelt in the Temple would not the Israelites have been accounted guilty of Idolatry had they Worshipped the Images of the Cherubims or the Ark or the Altar as objects of Worship which were erected only as means for his Service Is there not as much reason to think God was as Essentially present in the Temple as in Heaven since the same Expressions are used of the one and the other the Sanctuary is called the Glorious High Throne * Jer. 17.13 and he is said to dwell between the Cherubims †Psal 80.1 i. e. the two Cherubims that were at the two ends of the Mercy Seat appointed by God as the two sides of his Throne in the Sanctuary Exod. 25.18 where he was to dwell ver 8. and meet and commune with his people ver 22. Could this excuse Manasseh's Idolatry
Intention and quell wandring and distracting fancies Who would come before God with a careless and ignorant Soul under a sense of his infinite Understanding and Prerogative of searching the heart Oh thou that sittest in Heaven was a Consideration the Psalmist had at the beginning of his Prayer * Psal 123.1 Whereby he testifies not only an apprehension of the Majesty and Power of God but of his Omniscience as one sitting above beholds all that is below Would we offer to God such raw and undigested Petitions would there be so much flatness in our services should our hearts so often give us the slip Would any hang down their Heads like a Bulrush by an affected or counterfeit Humility while the Heart is filled with Pride if we did actuate Faith in this Attribute No our Prayers would be more sound our Devotions more vigorous our Hearts more close our Spirits like the Chariots of Aminadab more swift in their motions Every thing would be done by us with all our might which would be very feeble and faint if we conceived God to be of a Finite Understanding like our selves Let us therefore before every Duty not draw but open the Curtains between God and our Souls and think that we are going before him that sees us before him that knows us * Gen. 16.13 And the stronger Impressions of the Divine Knowledge are upon our Minds the better would our preparation be for and the more active our frames in every service And certainly we may judge of the suitableness of our preparations by the strength of such Impressions upon us 4. This would tend to make us sincere in our whole Course This prescription David gave to Solomon to maintain a soundness and health of Spirit in his walk before God 1 Chron. 28.9 And thou Solomon my Son know the God of thy Fathers and serve him with a perfect heart for the Lord understands all the imaginations of the thoughts * Antiquit. lib. 1. cap. 3. Josephus gives this reason for Abels Holiness That he believed God was ignorant of nothing As the Doctrine of Omniscience is the foundation of all Religion so the Impression of it would promote the practice of all Religion When all our ways are imagin'd by us to be before the Lord we shall then keep his Precepts * Psal 119. â—68 And we can never be perfect or sincere till we walk before God Gen. 17.1 as under the Eye of Gods Knowledge What we speak what we think what we act is in his sight He knows every place where we are every thing that we do as well as Christ knew Nathaniel under the Fig-tree As he is too Powerful to be vanquisht so he is too Understanding to be deceived The sense of this would make us walk with as much care as if the understanding of all Men did comprehend us and our actions 5. The Consideration of this Attribute would make us humble How dejected would a Person be if he were sure all the Angels in Heaven and Men upon Earth did perfectly know his Crimes with all their aggravations But what is Created Knowledge to an infinite and just Censuring Understanding When we consider that he knows our actions whereof there are multitudes and our thoughts whereof there are millions That he views all the Blessings bestow'd upon us all the injuries we have return'd to him That he exactly knows his own Bounty and our ingratitude all the Idolatry Blasphemy and secret enmity in every Mans heart against him all Tyrannical Oppressions hidden Lusts omissions of necessary Duties violations of plain Precepts every foolish Imagination with all the Circumstances of them and that perfectly in their full Anatomy every mite of unworthiness and wickedness in every Circumstance and add to this his Knowledge the wonders of his Patience which are miraculous upon the score of his Omniscience that he is not as quick in his Revenge as he is in his Understanding but is so far from inflicting Punishment that he continues his former Benefits arms not his Justice against us but sollicites our Repentance and waits to be Gracious with all this knowledge of our Crimes should not the Consideration of this melt our hearts into Humiliation before him and make us earnest in begging pardon and forgivenss of him Again Do we not all find a Worm in our best Fruit a Flaw in our soundest Duties Shall any of us vaunt as if God beheld only the Gold and not any Dross as if he knew one thing only and not another If we knew something by our selves to chear us do we not also know something yea many things to condemn us and therefore to humble us Let the sense of Gods infinite Knowledge therefore be an Incentive and Argument for more Humiliation in us If we know enough to render our selves vile in our own Eyes how much more doth God know to render us vile in his 6. The Consideration of this Excellent Perfection should make us to acquiesce in God and rely upon him in every strait In publick in private He knows all Cases and he knows all Remedies He knows the Seasons of bringing them and he knows the Seasons of removing them for his own Glory What is contingent in respect of us and of our fore-knowledge and in respect of second causes is it not so in regard of Gods who hath the knowledge of the futurition of all things He knows all Causes in themselves and therefore knows what every Cause will produce what will be the event of every Counsel and of every Action How should we commit our selves to this God of infinite Understanding who knows all things and fore-knows every thing that cannot be forced through ignorance to take new Counsel or be surpriz'd with any thing that can happen to us This use the Psalmist makes of it Psal 10.14 Thou hast seen it the poor committeth himself unto thee Though some trust in Chariots and Horses * Psal 20.7 some in Counsels and Counsellors some in their Arms and Courage and some in meer vanity and nothing yet let us remember the Name and Nature of the Lord our God his Divine Perfections of which this of his infinite Understanding and Omniscience is none of the least but so necessary that without it he could not be God and the whole World would be a mear Chaos and Confusion A DISCOURSE UPON THE Wisdom of God Rom. XVI 27. To God only Wise be glory through Jesus Christ for ever Amen THis Chapter being the last of this Epistle is chiefly made up of charitable and friendly Salutations and Commendations of particular Persons according to the earliness and strength of their several Graces and their labour of Love for the Interest of God and his People In verse 17. he warns them not to be drawn aside from the Gospel Doctrine which had been taught them by the plausible Pretences and Insinuations which the Corrupters of the Doctrine and Rule of Christ never want from
Pet. 1.12 It was publish'd in Paradise but in such words as Adam did not fully understand It was both discover'd and clouded in the Smoke of Sacrifices It was wrapped up in a Vail under the Law but not open'd till the Death of the Redeemer It was then plainly said to the Cities of Judah Behold your God comes The whole Transaction of it between the Father and the Son which is the Spirit of the Gospel was from Eternity the Creation of the World was in order to the manifestation of it Let us not then regard the Gospel as a Novelty the consideration of it as one of Gods Cabinet Rarities should enhance our Estimation of it No Traditions of Men no Inventions of vain Wits that pretend to be wiser than God should have the same Credit with that which bears date from Eternity 8. Observe That Divine Truth is Mysterious According to the revelation of the mystery Christ manifested in the flesh The whole Scheme of Godliness is a Mystery No Man or Angel could imagine how two Natures so distant as the Divine and Human should be united how the same Person should be Criminal and Righteous how a Just God should have a Satisfaction and Sinful Man a Justification how the Sin should be punish'd and the Sinner saved None could imagine such a way of Justification as the Apostle in this Epistle declares It was a Mystery when hid under the Shadows of the Law and a Mystery to the Prophets when it sounded from their Mouths they searched it without being able to comprehend it †1 Pet. 1.10 11. If it be a Mystery 't is humbly to be submitted to Mysteries surmount Human Reason The study of the Gospel must not be with a yawning and careless frame Trades you call Mysteries are not learned sleeping and nodding Diligence is required we must be Disciples at Gods Feet As it had God for the Author so we must have God for the Teacher of it the Contrivance was his and the Illumination of our Minds must be from him As God only manifested the Gospel so he only can open our Eyes to see the Mysteries of Christ in it In Verse 26. we may observe 1. The Scriptures of the Old Testament verifie the substance of the New and the New doth evidence the Authority of the Old By the Scriptures of the Prophets made known The Old Testament credits the New and the New illustrates the Old The New Testament is a Comment upon the Prophetick part of the Old The Old shews the Promises and Predictions of God and the New shews the Performance What was foretold in the Old is fulfilled in the New the Predictions are cleared by the Events The Predictions of the Old are Divine because they are above the Reason of Man to foreknow None but an Infinite Knowledge could foretell them because none but an Infinite Wisdom could order all things for the accomplishment of them The Christian Religion hath then the surest Foundation since the Scriptures of the Prophets wherein it is foretold are of undoubted Antiquity and owned by the Jews and many Heathens which are and were the great Enemies of Christ The Old Testament is therefore to be read for the strengthning of our Faith Our Blessed Saviour himself draws the Streams of his Doctrine from the Old Testament He clears up the Promise of Eternal Life and the Doctrine of the Resurrection from the words of the Covenant I am the God of Abraham c. Mat. 22.32 And our Apostle clears up the Doctrine of Justification by Faith from Gods Covenant with Abraham Rom. 4. It must be read and it must be read as it is writ It was writ to a Gospel End it must be studied with a Gospel Spirit The Old Testament was writ to give Credit to the New when it should be manifested in the World It must be read by us to give strength to our Faith and establish us in the Doctrine of Christianity How many view it as a bare story an Almanack out of date and regard it as a dry Bone without sucking from it the Evangelical Marrow Christ is in Genesis Abrahams Seed in Davids Psalms and the Prophets the Messiah and Redeemer of the World 2. Observe the Antiquity of the Gospel Is made manifest by the Scriptures of the Prophets It was of as Ancient a date as any Prophesy The first Prophesy was nothing else but a Gospel Charter it was not made at the Incarnation of Christ but made manifest It then rose up to its Meridian lustre and sprung out of the Clouds wherewith it was before obscur'd The Gospel was preached to the Ancients by the Prophets as well as to the Gentiles by the Apostles Heb. 4.2 Vnto us was the Gospel preached as well as unto them To them first to us after to them indeed more cloudy to us more clear but they as well as we were Evangeliz'd as the word signifies The Covenant of Grace was the same in the Writings of the Prophets and the Declarations of the Evangelists and Apostles Though by our Saviours Incarnation the Gospel Light was clearer and by his Ascension the Effusions of the Spirit fuller and stronger yet the Believers under the Old Testament saw Christ in the Swadling Bands of Legal Ceremonies and the Lattice of Prophetical Writings they could not else offer one Sacrifice or read one Prophesy with a Faith of the right stamp Abrahams Justifying Faith had Christ for its Object though it was not so Explicit as ours because the Manifestation was not so clear as ours 3. All Truth is to be drawn from Scripture The Apostle refers them here to the Gospel and the Prophets The Scripture is the Source of Divine Knowledge not the Traditions of Men nor Reason separate from Scripture Whosoever brings another Doctrine coyns another Christ nothing is to be added to what is written nothing detracted from it He doth not send us for Truth to the Puddles of Human Inventions to the Enthusiasms of our Brain not to the See of Rome no nor to the Instructions of Angels but the Writings of the Prophets as they clear up the Declarations of the Apostles The Church of Rome is not made here the Standard of Truth but the Scriptures of the Prophets are to be the Touch-stone to the Romans for the Trial of the Truth of the Gospel 4. How great is the Goodness of God The Borders of Grace are enlarged to the Gentiles and not hid under the Skirts of the Jews He that was so long the God of the Jews is now also manifest to be the God of the Gentiles The Gospel is now made known to all Nations according to the Commandment of the Everlasting God Not only in a way of Common Providence but Special Grace in Calling them to the Knowledge of himself and a Justification of them by Faith He hath brought Strangers to him to the Adoption of Children and lodged them under the Wings of the Covenant that were before alienated from
Justice abus'd his Goodness done injury to all those Attributes which are necessary to his relief It was not so in Creation nothing was uncapable of disobliging God from bringing it into Being The Dust which was the Matter of Adams Body needâ—d only the extrinsick Power of God to form it into a Man and inspire it with a living Soul It had not render'd it self obnoxious to Divine Justice nor was capable to excite any disputes between his Perfections But after the entrance of Sin and the merit of Death thereby there was a resistance in Justice to the free Remission of Man God was to exercise a Power over himself to answer his Justice and pardon the Sinner as well as a power over the Creature to reduce the Run-away and Rebel Unless we have recourse to the Infiniteness of Gods Power the infiniteness of our Guilt will weigh us down We must consider not only that we have a mighty Guilt to press us but a mighty God to relieve us In the same act of his being our Righteousness he is our Strength In the Lord have I righteousness and strength Isai 45.24 2. In the sense of Pardon When the Soul hath been wounded with the sense of sin and its Iniquities have star'd it in the face the raising the Soul from a despairing condition and lifting it above those Waters which terrified it to cast the light of Comfort as well as the light of Grace into a heart covered with more than an Egyptian Darkness is an act of his Infinite and Creating Power Isai 57.19 I create the fruit of the lips peace Men may wear out their Lips with numbring up the Promises of Grace and Arguments of Peace but all will signifie no more without a Creative Power than if all Men and Angels should call to that White upon the Wall to shine as splendidly as the Sun God only can create Jerusalem and every Child of Jerusalem a rejoycing * Isai 65.18 A Man is no more able to apply to himself any word of Comfort under the sense of Sin than he is able to Convert himself and turn the proposals of the Word into gracious Affections in his heart To restore the joy of Salvation is in Davids Judgment an act of Soveraign Power equal to that of creating a clean heart Psal 51.10 12. Alas 't is a state like to that of Death as Infinite Power can only raise from Natural death so from a Spiritual death also from a Comfortless death In his favour there is life in the want of his Favour there is death The Power of God hath so placed Light in the Sun that all Creatures in the World all the Torches upon Earth kindled together cannot make it Day if that doth not rise so all the Angels in Heaven and Men upon Earth are not competent Chirurgions for a wounded Spirit The cure of our Spiritual Ulcers and the pouring in Balm is an Act of Soveraign Creative Power 'T is more visible in silencing a Tempestuous Conscience than the Power of our Saviour was in the stilling the stormy Winds and the roaring Waves As none but Infinite Power can remove the Guilt of Sin so none but Infinite Power can remove the Despairing sense of it III. This Power is evident in the preserving Grace As the Providence of God is a manifestation of his Power in a continued Creation so the preservation of Grace is a manifestation of his Power in a continued Regeneration To keep a Nation under the Yoke is an act of the same Power that subdu'd it 'T is this that strengthens Men in suffering against the Fury of Hell †Colos 1.13 't is this that keeps them from falling against the force of Hell the Fathers hand John 10.29 His strength abates and moderates the violence of Temptations his Staff sustains his People under them his Might defeats the Power of Satan and bruiseth him under a Believers feet The Counterworkings of Indwelling Corruption the reluctances of the Flesh against the breathings of the Spirit the fallacy of the Senses and the rovings of the Mind have ability quickly to stifle and extinguish Grace if it were not maintain'd by that Powerful blast that first inbreathed it No less Power is seen in perfecting it than was in planting it ‖ 2 Pet. 1.3 no less in fulfilling the work of Faith than in ingrafting the Word of Faith 2 Thess 1.11 The Apostle well understood the Necessity and Efficacy of it in the preservation of Faith as well as in the firâ—t infusion when he expresses himself in those terms of a Greatness or Hyperbole of Power his Mighty Power or the Power of his Might Ephes 1.19 The Salvation he bestows and the Strength whereby he effects it are joyned together in the Prophets Song Isai 12.2 The Lord is my strength and my salvation And indeed God doth more magnifie his Power in continuing a Believer in the World a weak and half-rigg'd Vessel in the midst of so many Sands whereon it might split so many Rocks whereon it might dash so many Corruptions within and so many Temptations without than if he did immediately transport him into Heaven and cloth him with a perfectly Sanctified Nature To Conclude What is there then in the World which is destitute of Notices of Divine Power Every Creature affords us the Lesson all acts of Divine Government are the marks of it Look into the Word and the manner of its propagation instructs us in it your Changed Natures your Pardoned Guilt your Shining Comfort your quell'd Corruptions the standing of your staggering Graces are sufficient to preserve a sense and prevent a forgetfulness of this great Attribute so necessary for your support and conducing so much to your comfort Vses I. Of Information and Instruction 1. If Incomprehensible and Infinite Power belongs to the Nature of God then Jesus Christ hath a Divine Nature because the Acts of Power proper to God are ascribed to him This Perfection of Omnipotence doth unquestionably pertain to the Deity and is an incommunicable Property and the same with the Essence of God He therefore to whom this Attribute is ascribed is essentially God This is challenged by Christ in conjunction with Eternity Revel 1.8 I am Alpha and Omega the beginning and the ending saith the Lord which is and which was and which is to come the Almighty This the Lord Christ speaks of himself He who was equal with God proclaims himself by the Essential title of the Godhead part of which he repeats again verse 11. and this is the Person which walks in the midst of the seven Golden Candlesticks the Person that was dead and now lives vers 17 18. which cannot possibly be meant of the Father the first Person who can never come under that denomination of having been dead Being therefore adorn'd with the same Title he hath the same Deity and though his Omnipotence be only positively asserted v. 8. yet his Eternity being asserted v. 11 17. it inferreth
God is able to make him to stand Rom. 14.4 5. From this Attribute of the Infinite Power of God we have a ground of comfort in the lowest estate of the Church Let the state of the Church be never so deplorable the condition never so desperate that Power that created the World and shall raise the Bodies of men can create a happy state for the Church and raise her from an overwhelming Grave Though the Enemies trample upon her they cannot upon the Arm that holds her which by the least motion of it can lift her up above the heads of her Adversaries and make them feel the thunder of that Power that none can understand By the blast of God they perish and by the breath of his nostrils they are consumed Job 4.9 they shall be scattered as Chaff before the wind If once he draw his hand out of his bosom all must fly before him or sink under him * Psal 74.11 And when there is none to help his own Arm sustains him and brings salvation †Isa 63.5 and his fury doth uphold him What if the Church totter under the underminings of Hell What if it hath a sad heart and wet eyes In what a little moment can he make the night turn into day and make the Jews that were preparing for death in Shushan triumph over the necks of their Enemies and march in one hour with Swords in their hands that expected the last hour ropes about their necks Esth 9.1.5 If Israel be pursued by Pharoah the Sea shall open its arms to protect them If they be thirsty a Rock shall spout out Water to refresh them If they be hungry Heaven shall be their Granary for Manna If Jerusalem be besieg'd and hath not Force enough to encounter Senacherib an Angel shall turn the Camp into an Aceldema a Field of Blood His People shall not want deliverances till God want a power of working Miracles for their security He is more jealous of his Power than the Church can be of her Safety And if we should want other Arguments to press him we may implore him by virtue of his Power For when there is nothing in the Church as a Motive to him to save it there is enough in his own Name and the illustration of his Power Psal 106.8 Who can grapple with the Omnipotency of that God who is jealous of and zealous for the honour of it And therefore God for the most part takes such opportunities to deliver wherein his Almightiness may be most conspicuous and his Counsels most admirable He awakened not himself to deliver Israel till they were upon the brink of the Red Sea nor to rescue the three Children till they were in the fiery Furnace nor Daniel till he was in the Lions Den. 'T is in the weakness of his Creature that his strength is perfected not in a way of addition of perfectness to it but in a way of manifestation of the perfection of it As it is the perfection of the Sun to shine and enlighten the World not that the Sun receives an increase of light by the darting of his Beams but discovers his Glory to the admiration of Men and pleasure of the World If it were not for such occasions the World would not regard the Mightiness of God nor know what Power were in him It traverses the Stage in its fulness and liveliness upon such occasions when the Enemies are strong and their strength edg'd with an intense hatred and but little time between the contrivance and execution 'T is a great comfort that the lowest Distresses of the Church are a fit Scene for the discovery of this Attribute and that the Glory of God's Omnipotence and the Churches Security are so straitly link't together 'T is a promise that will never be forgotten by God and ought never to be forgotten by us that in this Mountain the hand of the Lord shall rest ‖ Isa 25.10 that is the Power of the Lord shall abide and Moab shall be trodden under him even as Straw is trodden down for the Dunghill And the Plagues of Babylon shall come in one day death and mourning and famine for strong is the Lord who judges her Rev. 18.8 Use III The Third Vse is for Exhortation 1. Meditate on this Power of God and press it often upon your Minds We conclude many things of God that we do not practically suck the comfort of for want of deep thoughts of it and frequent inspection into it We believe God to be true yet distrust him we acknowledge him powerful yet fear the motion of every straw Many Truths though assented to in our Understandings are kept under hatches by corrupt Affections and have not their due influence because they are not brought forth into the open air of our Souls by meditation If we will but search our hearts we shall find it is the Power of God we often doubt of When the heart of Ahaz and his Subjects trembled at the Combination of the Syrian and Israelitish Kings against him for want of a confidence in the Power of God God sends his Prophet with Commission to work a miraculous sign at his own choice to rear up his fainting heart and when he refus'd to ask a sign out of diffidence of that Almighty Power the Prophet complains of it as an affront to his Master * Isa 7.12 13. Moses so great a Friend of God was overtaken with this kind of unbelief after all the Experiments of God's miraculous Acts in Egypt the Answer God gives him manifests this to be at the Core Is the Lord's hand waxed short Numb 11.23 For want of actuated thoughts of this we are many times turned from our known duty by the blast of a Creature as though man had more power to dismay us than God hath to support us in his commanded way The belief of God's Power is one of the first steps to all Religion without settled thoughts of it we cannot pray lively and believingly for the obtaining the Mercies we want or the averting the Evils we fear we should not love him unless we are persuaded he hath a Power to bless us nor fear him unless we were perswaded of his Power to punish us The frequent thoughts of this would render our Faith more stable and our Hopes more stedfast it would make us more feeble to sin and more careful to obey When the Virgin stagger'd at the Message of the Angel that she should bear a Son he in his Answer turns her to the Creative power of God Luke 1.35 The Power of the highest shall over-shadow thee Which seems to be in allusion to the Spirits moving upon the face of the Deep and bringing a comely World out of a confus'd Mass Is it harder for God to make a Virgin conceive a Son by the power of his Spirit than to make a World Why doth he reveal himself so often under the title of Almighty and press it upon us but
the battle when they will rebell against the light God doth often leave them to their own course sentence him that is filthy to be filthy still ‖ Reve. 22.11 which is a righteous act of God as he is Rector and Governor of the World Man's not receiving or not improving what God gives is the cause of Gods not giving further or taking away his own which before he had bestowed This is so far from being repugnant to the Holiness and Righteousness of God that it is rather a commendable act of his Holiness and Righteousness as the Rector of the World not to let those gifts continue in the hand of a man who abuses them contrary to his glory Who will blame a Father that after all the good Counsels he hath given his Son to reclaim him all the Corrections he hath inflicted on him for his irregular practice leaves him to his own courses and withdraws those assistances which he scoft at and turned the deaf Ear unto Or who will blame the Physician for deserting the Patient who rejects his Counsel will not follow his Prescriptions but dasheth his Physick against the Wall No man will blame him no man will say that he is the cause of the Patients death but the true cause is the fury of the Distemper and the obstinacy of the diseased Person to which the Physician left him And who can justly blame God in this case who yet never denied supplies of Grace to any that sincerely sought it at his hands and what man is there that lies under a hardness but first was guilty of very provoking sins What unholiness is it to deprive men of those assistances because of their sin and afterwards to direct those counsels and practices of theirs which he hath justly given them up unto to serve the ends of his own glory in his own methods 4. Which will appear further by considering that God is not oblig'd to continue his Grace to them It was at his liberty whither he could give any renewing Grace to Adam after his fall or to any of his Posterity He was at his own liberty to withold it or communicate it But if he were under any Obligation then surely he must be under less now since the multiplication of Sin by his Creatures But if the Obligation were none just after the fall there is no pretence now to fasten any such Obligation on God That God had no Obligation at first hath been spoken to before He is less obliged to continue his Grace after a repeated refusal and a peremptory abuse than he was bound to proffer it after the first Apostacy God cannot be charg'd with unholiness in withdrawing his Grace after we have received it unless we can make it appear that his Grace was a thing due to us as we are his Creatures and as he is Governor of the World What Prince looks upon himself as oblig'd to reside in any particular place of his Kingdom But suppose he be bound to inhabit in one particular City yet after the City rebells against him is he bound to continue his Court there spend his Revenue among Rebels endanger his own Honour and Security inlarge their Charter or maintain their Ancient Priviledges Is it not most just and righteous for him to withdraw himself and leave them to their own Tumultuousness and Sedition whereby they should eat the fruit of their own doings If there be an Obligation on God as a Governor it would rather lie on the side of Justice to leave Man to the Power of the Devil whom he courted and the prevalency of those Lusts he hath so often caressed and wrap up in a Cloud all his common Illuminations and leave him destitute of all common workings of his Spirit 8. Proposition Gods Holiness is not blemisht by his commanding those things sometimes which seem to be against Nature or thwart some other of his Precepts As when God commanded Abraham with his own hand to Sacrifice his Son * Gen. 22.2 there was nothing of Unrighteousness in it God hath a Soveraign Dominion over the lives and beings of his creatures whereby as he creates one day he might annihilate the next and by the same right that he might demand the life of Isaac as being his Creature he might demand the Obedience of Abraham in a ready return of that to him which he had so long enjoy'd by his grant 'T is true killing is unjust when it is done without cause and by a private Authority But the Authority of God surmounts all private and Publick Authority whatsoever Our lives are due to him when he calls for them and they are more than once forfeit to him by reason of Transgression But howsoever the case is God commanded him to do it for the trial of his Grace but suffered him not to do it in favour to his ready Obedience But had Isaac been actually slain and offer'd how had it been unrighteous in God who enacts Laws for the Regulation of his Creature but never intended them to the prejudice of the Rights of his Soveraignty Another Case is that of the Israelites borrowing Jewels of the Egyptians by the order of God †Exod. 11.2.3 Exod. 12.36 Is not God Lord of mans goods as well as their lives What have any they have not received that not as Proprietors independent on God but his Stewards and may not he demand a portion of his Steward to bestow upon his Favourite He that had power to dispose of the Egyptians Goods had power to order the Israelites to ask them Besides God acted the part of a just Judge in ordering them their wages for their Service in this method and making their Task-masters give them some recompence for their unjust oppression so many years It was a Command from God therefore rather for the preservation of Justice the Basis of all those Laws which link human Society than any infringement of it It was a material recompence in part though not a formal one in the intention of the Egyptians It was but in part a recompence It must needs come short of the dammage the poor Captives had sustained by the tyranny of their Masters who had inslav'd them contrary to the rules of hospitality and could not make amends for the lives of the poor Infants of Israel whom they had drowned in the River He that might for the unjust oppression of his People have taken away all their Lives destroy'd the whole Nation and put the Israelites into the possession of their Lands could without any unrighteousness dispose of part of their Goods And it was rather an act of Clemency to leave them some part who had doubly forfeited all Again the Egyptians were as ready to lend by Gods influence as the Israelites were to ask by Gods order And though it was a loan God as Soveraign of the World and Lord of the Earth and the fulness thereof alienated the property by assuming them to the use of the
†Heb. 7.26 so they must be in us 2. In his Christ As the Law is the Transcript so Christ is the Image of his Holiness The glory of God is too dazling to be beheld by us The acute eye of an Angel is too weak to look upon that bright Sun without covering his Face We are much too weak to take our Measures from that Purity which is infinite in his Nature But he hath made his Son like us that by the imitation of him in that temper and shadow of human Flesh we may arrive to a resemblance of him ‖ 2 Cor. 3.18 Then there is a conformity to him when that which Christ did is drawn in lively Colours in the Soul of a Christian when as he died upon the Cross we dye to our sins as he rose from the Grave we rise from our Lusts as he ascended on high we mount our Souls thither When we express in our lives what shined in his and exemplifie in our hearts what he acted in the world and become one with him as he was separate from sinners The holiness of God in Christ is our ultimate pattern As we are not only to believe in Christ but by Christ in God * John 14.1 so we are not only to imitate Christ but the holiness of God as discovered in Christ And to enforce this upon us let us consider 1. 'T is this only wherein he commands our imitation of him We are not commanded to be mighty and wise as God is mighty and wise but be holy as I am holy The declarations of his power are to enforce our subjection those of his wisdom to encourage our direction by him but this only to attract our imitaâ—ion When he saith I am holy the immediate inference he makes is be yee so too which is not the proper instruction from any other Perfection †In 〈◊〉 saith 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Man was created by Divine Power and harmoniz'd by Divine Wisdom but not after them or according to them as the true Image this was the Prerogative of Divine Holiness to be the Pattern of his Rational Creature ‖ Eph. 4.24 Col. 3 1â— Wisdom and Power were subservient to this the one as the Pensil the other as the Hand that mov'd it The condition of a Creature is too mean to have the communications of the Divine Essence the true Impressions of his Righteousness and Goodness we are only capable of 'T is only in those moral Perfections we are said to resemble God The Devils those impure and ruin'd Spâ—rits are nearer to him in strength and knowledge than we are yet in regard of that natural and intellectual Perfection never counted like him but at the greatest distance from him because at the greatest distance from his Purity God values not a natural Might nor an acute Understanding nor vouchsafes such Perfections the glorious Title of that of his Image * Eugub 〈◊〉 de perenni Philos. Lib. 6. cap 6. Plutarch saith God is angry with those that imitate his Thunder or Lightning his works of Majesty but delighted with those that imitate his Vertue In this only we can never incur any reproof from him but for falling short of him and his glory Had Adam endeavour'd after an imitation of this instead of that of Divine Knowledge he had escap'd his fall and preserv'd his standing And had Lucifer wish'd himself like God in this as well as his Dominion he had still been a glorious Angel instead of being now a ghastly Devil To reach after a Union with the Supream Being in regard of holiness is the only generous and commendable Ambition 2. This is the prime way of honouring God We do not so glorifie God by elevated Admirations or eloquent Expressions or pompous Services of him as when we aspire to a conversing with him with unstained Spirits and live to him in living like him The Angels are not called holy for applauding his Purity but conforming to it The more perfect any Creature is in the rank of Beings the more is the Creator honoured As it is more for the honour of God to create an Angel or Man than a meer Animal because there are in such clearer Characters of Divine power and goodness than in those that are Inferiour The more perfect any Creature is morally the more is God glorified by that Creature t is a real declaration that God is the best and most amiable Being that nothing besides him is valuable and worthy to be the Object of our imitation 'T is a greater honouring of him than the highest acts of Devotion and the most religious bodily Exercise or the singing this Song of Moses in the Text with a triumphant spirit As it is more the honour of a Father to be imitated in his Vertues by his Son than to have all the glavering Commendations by the Tongue or Pen of a vicious and debauch'd Child By this we honour him in that Perfection which is dearest to him and counted by him as the chiefest glory of his Nature God seems to accept the glorifying this Attribute as if it were a real addition to that holiness which is infinite in his Nature and because infinite cannot admit of any increase And therefore the word sanctified is used instead of glorified Isa 8.13 Sanctifie the Lord of Hosts himself and let him be your fear and let him be your dread And Isa 29.23 They shall sanctifie the holy One of Jacob and fear the God of Israel This sanctification of God is by the fear of him which signifies in the Language of the Old Testament a reverence of him and a righteousness before him He doth not say when he would have his Power or Wisdom glorified empower me or make me wise but when he would have holiness glorified by the Creature 't is sanctifie me that is manifest the purity of my Nature by the holiness of your lives But he expresseth it in such a term as if it were an addition to this infinite Perfection so acceptable it is to him as if it were a contribution from his Creature for the inlarging an Attribute so pleasing to him and so glorious in his Eye 'T is as much as in the Creature lies a preserving the life of God since this Perfection is his Life and that he would as soon part with his Life as part with his Purity It keeps up the Reputation of God in the World and attracts others to a love of him whereas unworthy carriages defame God in the eyes of men and bring up an ill report of him as if he were such a one as those that profess him and walk unsutably to their Profession appear to be 3. This is the excellency and beauty of a creature The title of beauty is given to it in Psal 110.3 beauties in the plural number as comprehending in it all other beauties whatsoever What is a Divine excellency can not be a Creatures Deformity The natural beauty of
beautify our Dwellings furnish our Closets or store our VVardrobes * Psal 104.24 The whole Earth is full of his Riches Nothing but by the rich Goodness of God is exquisitely accomodated in the numerous brood of things immediately or mediately for the use of Man All in the issue conspire together to render the VVorld a delightful Residence for Man And therefore all the living Creatures were brought by God to attend upon Man after his Creation to receive a Mark of his Dominion over them by the imposition of their Names †Gen. 2.19 20. He did not only give variety of Senses to Man but provided variety of delightful Objects in the VVorld for every Sense The Beauties of Light and Colours for our Eye the Harmony of Sounds for our Ear the Fragrancy of Odours for our Nostrils and a Delicious Sweetness for our Palates Some have qualities to pleasure all every thing a quality to pleasure one or other He doth not only present those things to our view as Rich Men do in Ostentation their Goods He makes us the Enjoyers as well as the Spectators and gives us the Use as well as the Sight And therefore he hath not only given us the Sight but the Knowledge of them He hath set up a Sun in the Heavens to expose their outward Beauty and Conveniencies to our Sight and the Candle of the Lord is in us to expose their inward Qualities and Conveniencies to our Knowledge that we might serve our selves of and rejoyce in all this Furniture wherewith he hath garnisht the World and have wherewithal to employ the inquisitiveness of our Reason as well as gratifie the pleasure of our Sense And particularly God provided for Innocent Man a delightful Mansion-house a place of more special Beauty and Curiosity the Garden of Eden a delightful Paradise a Model of the Beauties and Pleasures of another World wherein he had placed whatsoever might contribute to the felicity of a Rational and Animal Life the Life of a Creature composed of Mire and Dust of Sense and Reason * Gen. 2.9 Besides the other Delicacies consign'd in that place to the use of Man there was a Tree of Life provided to maintain his Being and nothing denied in the whole compass of that Territory but one Tree that of the knowledge of Good and Evil which was no Mark of an ill will in his Creator to him but a Reserve of Gods absolute Soveraignty and a Trial of Mans voluntary Obedience What blur was it to the Goodness of God to reserve one Tree for his own propriety when he had given to Man in all the rest such numerous Marks of his Rich Bounty and Goodness VVhat Israel after Mans Fall enjoyed sensibly Nehemiah calls great Goodness †Neh. 9.25 How inexpressible then was that Goodness manifested to Innocent Man when so small a part of it indulg'd to the Israelites after the Curse upon the Ground is call'd as truly it Merits such great Goodness How can we pass through any part of this great City and cast our Eyes upon the well Furnisht Shops stor'd with all kinds of Commodities without reflections upon this Goodness of God starting up before our Eyes in such varieties and plainly telling us that he hath accommodated all things for our use suited things both to supply our need content a reasonable Curiosity and delight us in our aims at and passage to our Supream End 3. The Goodness of God appears in the Laws he hath given to Man the Covenant he made with him It had not been agreeable to the Goodness of God to let a Creature governable by a Law be without a Law to regulate him his Goodness then which had broke forth in the Creation had suffer'd an Eclipse and obscurity in his Government As Infinite Goodness was the Motive to Create so Infinite Goodness was the Motive of his Government And this appears 1. In the fitting the Law to the Nature of Man It was rather below than above his strength he had an integrity in his Nature to answer the Righteousness of the Precept * Eccles 7.29 God Created Man upright his Nature was suited to the Law and the Law to his Nature it was not above his understanding to know it nor his will to embrace it nor his passions to be regulated by it The Law and his Nature were like two exact streight Lines touching one another in every part when joyned together God exacted no more by his Law than what was written by Nature in his Heart He had a knowledge by Creation to observe the Law of his Creation and he fell not for want of a Righteousness in his Nature He was enabled for more than was commanded him but wilfully indisposed to less than he was able to perform The Precepts were easie not only becoming the Authority of a Soveraign to exact but the Goodness of a Father to demand and the Ingenuity of a Creature and a Son to pay †1 John 5.3 His Commands are not grievous the observance of them had fill'd the Spirit of Man with an extraordinary Contentment It had been no less a pleasure and a delightful satisfaction to have kept the Law in a Created State than it is to keep it in some measure in a Renew'd State The Renewed Nature finds a suitableness in the Law to kindle a delight * Psal 1.2 It could not then have anywise shook the Nature of an upright Creature nor have been a burden too heavy for his Shoulders to bear Though he had not a Grace given him above Nature yet he had not a Law given him that surmounted his Nature It did not exceed his Created strength and was suited to the Dignity and Nobility of a Rational Nature It was a just Law †Rom. 7.12 and therefore not above the Nature of the Subject that was bound to obey it And had it been impossible to be observed it had been unrighteous to be Enacted It had not been a matter of Divine Praise and that seven times a day as it is * Psal 119.164 Seven times a day do I praise thee because of thy Righteous Judgments The Law was so Righteous that Adam had every whit as much reason to bless God in his Innocence for the Righteousness of it as David had with the Reliques of Enmity against it His Goodness shines so much in his Law as merits our Praise of him as he is a Soveraign Law-giver as well as a Gracious Benefactor in the imparting to us a Being 2. In fitting it for the Happiness of Man For the satisfaction of his Soul which finds a Reward in the very act of keeping it †Psal 119.165 Great peace in the loving it for the preservation of Human Society wherein consists the External felicity of Man It had been inconsistent with Divine Goodness to enjoyn Man any thing that should be oppressive and uncomfortable Bitterness cannot come from that which is altogether Sweet
Calvary Unspotted Righteousness must be made Sin and unblemisht Blessedness be made a Curse He was at no other Expence than the Breath of his Mouth to form Man the Fruits of the Earth could have maintained Innocent Man without any other Cost but his broken Nature cannot be heal'd without the invaluable Medicine of the Blood of God View Christ in the Womb and in the Manger in his weary Steps and hungry Bowels in his Prostrations in the Garden and in his clodded drops of Bloody Sweat View his Head pierced with a Crown of Thorns and his Face besmeared with the Soldiers Slabber View him in his march to Calvary and his Elevation on the painful Cross with his Head hanged down and his Side streaming Blood View him pelted with the Scoffs of the Governours and the Derisions of the Rabble And see in all this what Cost Goodness was at for Mans Redemption In Creation his Power made the Sun to shine upon us and in Redemption his Bowels sent a Son to die for us 3. This Goodness of God in Redemption is greater than that manifested in Creation in regard of Mans desert of the contrary In the Creation as thre was nothing without him to allure him to the Expressions of his Bounty so there was nothing that did damp the Inclinations of his Goodness The nothing from whence the World was drawn could never merit nor demerit a Being because it was nothing As there was nothing to engage him so there was nothing to disoblige him As his Favour could not be merited so neither could his Anger be deserved But in this he finds ingratitude against the former Marks of his Goodness and Rebellion against the sweetness of his Soveraignty Crimes unworthy of the dews of Goodness and worthy of the sharpest stroaks of Vengeance And therefore the Scripture advanceth the honour of it above the Title of meer Goodness to that of Grace * Rom. 5.2 Tit. 2.11 because Men were not only unworthy of a Blessing but worthy of a Curse An Innocent Nothing more deserves Creation than a Culpable Creature deserves an exemption from Destruction When Man fell and gave occasion to God to repent of his Created Work his ravishing Goodness surmounted the occasions he had of repenting and the provocations he had to the destruction of his Frame 4. It was a greater Goodness than was exprest towards the Angels 1. A greater Goodness than was exprest towards the standing Angels The Son of God did no more expose his Life for the confirmation of those that stood than for the restoration of those that fell The Death of Christ was not for the holy Angels but for sinful Man They needed the Grace of God to confirm them but not the Death of Christ to restore or preserve them They had a beloved Holiness to be established by the powerful Grace of God but not any abominable Sin to be expiated and blotted out by the Blood of God They had no Debt to pay but that of Obedience but we had both a Debt of Obedience to the Precepts and a Debt of Suffering to the Penalty after the Fall Whether the holy Angels were confirm'd by Christ or no is a question some think they were from Colos 1.20 where things in Heaven are said to be reconcil'd but some think that place signifies no more than the Reconciliation of things in Heaven if meant of the Angels to things on Earth with whom they were at enmity in the Cause of their Soveraign or the Reconciliation of things in Heaven to God is meant the glorified Saints who were once in a State of Sin and whom the Death of Christ upon the Cross reached though dead long before But if Angels were confirm'd by Christ it was by him not as a slain Sacrifice but as the Soveraign head of the whole Creation appointed by God to gather all things into one which some think to be the intendment of Ephes 1.10 where all things as well those in Heaven as those in Earth are said to be gathered together in one in Christ Where is a syllable in Scripture of his being Crucified for Angels but only for Sinners Not for the Confirmation of the one but the Reconciliation of the other So that the Goodness whereby God continued those Blessed Spirits in Heaven through the effusions of his Grace is a small thing to the restoring us to our forfeited Happiness through the Streams of Divine Blood The preserving a Man in life is a little thing and a smaller benefit than the raising a Man from Death The rescuing a Man from an ignominious Punishment lays a greater obligation than barely to prevent him from committing a capital Crime The preserving a Man standing upon the top of a steep Hill is more easie than to bring a Crippled and Tissical Man from the bottom to the top The continuance God gave to the Angels is not so signal a Mark of Goodness as the deliverance he gave to us since they were not sunk into Sin nor by any Crime fallen into Misery 2. His Goodness in Redemption is greater than any Goodness expressed to the Fallen Angels 'T is the wonder of his Goodness to us that he was mindful of Fall'n Man and careless of Fall'n Angels That he should visit Man wallowing in Death and Blood with the Day-spring from on high and never turn the Aegyptian darkness of Devils into a chearful day When they Sinn'd Divine Thunder dasht them into Hell When Man Sinn'd Divine Blood wafts the Fallen Creature from his Misery The Angels wallow in their own Blood for ever while Christ is made partaker of our Blood and wallows in his Blood that we might not for ever corrupt in ours They tumbled down from Heaven and Divine Goodness would not vouchsafe to catch them Man tumbles down and Divine Goodness holds out a hand drencht in the Blood of him that was from the Foundations of the World to lift us up Heb. 2.16 He spared not those dignified Spirits when they Revolted and spared not punishing his Son for dusty Man when he offended when he might as well for ever have let Man lie in the Chains wherein he had intangled himself as them We were as fit Objects of Justice as they and they as fit Objects of Goodness as we they were not more wretched by their Fall than we and the poverty of our Nature rendred us more unable to recover our selves than the dignity of theirs did them They were his Reuben his first born they were his Might and the beginning of his Strength yet those Elder Sons he neglected to prefer the Younger They were the Prime and Golden Pieces of Creation not laden with gross Matter yet they lie under the Ruines of their Fall while Man Lead in comparison of them is refin'd for another World They seem'd to be fitter Objects of Divine Goodness in regard of the eminency of their Nature above the Humane One Angel excelled in Endowments of Mind and Spirit vastness of
Goodness to have given one of the lofty Seraphims A greater Goodness to have given the whole Corporation of those glorious Spirits for us those Children of the most high But he gave that Son whom he commands all the Angels to Worship * Heb. 1.6 and all Men to adore and pay the lowest Homage to †Psal 2.12 that Son that is to be honoured by us as we honour the Father * Joh. 5.23 that Son which was his delight his delights in the Hebrew †Prov. 8.30 wherein all the delights of the Father were gathered in one as well as of the whole Creation and not simply a Son but an only begotten Son upon which Christ lays the stress with an Emphasis †Joh. 3.16 He had but one Son in Heaven or Earth one Son from an unviewable Eternity and that one Son he gave for a degenerate World this Son he Consecrated for evermore a Priest * Heb. 7 28. The word of the Oath makes the Son The peculiarity of his Sonship heightens the Goodness of the Donor It was no meaner a Person that he gave to empty himself of his glory to fulfil an obedience for us that we might be rendred happy partakers of the Divine Nature Those that know the natural affection of a Father to a Son must judge the affection of God the Father to the Son infinitely greater than the affection of an Earthly Father to the Son of his Bowels It must be an unparallell'd Goodness to give up a Son that he loved with so ardent an Affection for the Redemption of Rebels Abandon a glorious Son to a dishonourable Death for the security of those that had violated the Laws of Righteousness and endeavoured to pull the Soveraign Crown from his head Besides being an only Son all those Affections center'd in him which in Parents would have been divided among a multitude of Children So then as it was a Testimony of the highest Faith and Obedience in Abraham to offer up his only begotten Son to God * Heb. 11.17 So it was the Triumph of Divine Goodness to give so great so dear a Person for so little a thing as Man and for such a piece of nothing and vanity as a Sinful World 3. And this Son given to Rescue us by his Death It was a gift to us For our sakes he descended from his Throne and dwelt on Earth For our sakes he was made Flesh and infirm Flesh For our sakes he was made a Curse and scorcht in the Furnace of his Fathers Wrath For our sakes he went naked arm'd only with his own Strength into the Lists of that Combat with the Devils that led us Captive Had he given him to be a Leader for the conquest of some Earthly Enemies it had been a great Goodness to display his Banners and bring us under his Conduct but he sent him to lay down his Life in the bitterest and most inglorious manner and exposed him to a cursed Death for our Redemption from that dreadful Curse which would have broken us to pieces and irreparably have crusht us He gave him to us to suffer for us as a Man and Redeem us as a God to be a Sacrifice to expiate our Sin by translating the Punishment upon himself which was merited by us Thus was he made low to exalt us and debased to advance us made poor to enrich us * ◠Co◠8.9 and Eclipsed to brighten our sullied Natures and Wounded that he might be a Physician for our languishments He was ordered to taste the bitter Cup of Death that we might drink of the Rivers of Immortal Life and pleasures To submit to the frailties of the Humane Nature that we might possess the Glories of the Divine He was order'd to be a Sufferer that we might be no longer Captives and to pass through the Fire of Divine Wrath that he might purge our Nature from the dross it had contracted Thus was the Righteous given for Sin the Innocent for Criminals the Glory of Heaven for the Dregs of Earth and the Immense Riches of a Deity expended to re-stock Man 4. And a Son that was exalted for what he had done for us by the order of Divine Goodness The Exaltation of Christ was no less a signal Mark of his miraculous Goodness to us than of his Affection to him since he was obedient by Divine Goodness to die for us his advancement was for his obedience to those Orders †2 Phil. 8 9. The Name given to him above every Name was a repeated Triumph of this Perfection Since his Passion was not for himself he was wholly Innocent but for us who were Criminal His advancement was not only for himself as Redeemer but for us as Redeem'd Divine Goodness center'd in him both in his Cross and in his Crown for it was for the purging our Sins he sat down on the Right hand of the Majesty on high * Heb. 1.3 And the whole blessed Society of Principalities and Powers in Heaven admire this Goodness of God and ascribe to him Honour Glory and Power for advancing the Lamb slain †Revel 5.11 12 13. Divine Goodness did not only give him to us but gave him Power Riches Strength and Honour for manifesting this Goodness to us and opening the passages for its fuller conveyances to the Sons of Men. Had not God had thoughts of a perpetual Goodness he would not have setled him so near him to manage our Cause and testified so much Affection to him on our behalf This Goodness gave him to be debas'd for us and order'd him to be Enthron'd for us As it gave him to us Bleeding so it would give him to us Triumphing that as we have a share by Grace in the Merits of his Humiliation we might partake also of the glories of his Coronation that from first to last we may behold nothing but the Triumphs of Divine Goodness to fallen Man 5. In bestowing this Gift on us Divine Goodness gives whole God to us Whatsoever is great and excellent in the Godhead the Father gives us by giving us his Son The Creator gives himself to us in his Son Christ In giving Creatures to us he gives the Riches of Earth In giving himself to us he gives the Riches of Heaven which surmount all understanding 'T is in this Gift he becomes our God and passeth over the Title of all that he is for our use and benefit that every Attribute in the Divine Nature may be claim'd by us not to be imparted to us whereby we may be deified but employ'd for our welfare whereby we may be blessed He gave himself in Creation to us in the Image of his Holiness but in Redemption he gave himself in the Image of his Person He would not only communicate the Goodness without him but bestow upon us the infinite Goodness of his own Nature That that which was his own End and Happiness might be our End and Happiness viz.
for our selves What are we dead Dogs that he should behold us with so gracious an Eye This Goodness is thus inhanced if you consider the State of Man in his first Transgression and after 4. This Goodness further appears in the high advancement of our Nature after it had so highly offended By Creation we had an affinity with Animals in our Bodies with Angels in our Spirits with God in his Image but not with God in our Nature till the Incarnation of the Redeemer Adam by Creation was the Son of God * Luke 3.38 but his Nature was not one with the Person of God He was his Son as Created by him but had no affinity to him by vertue of union with him But now Man doth not only see his Nature in multitudes of Men on Earth but by an astonishing Goodness beholds his Nature united to the Deity in Heaven That as he was the Son of God by Creation he is now the Brother of God by Redemption for with such a Title doth that Person who was the Son of God as well as the Son of Man honour his Disciples †Joh. 20.17 And because he is of the same Nature with them he is not ashamed to call them Brethren Heb. 2.11 Our Nature which was infinitely distant from and below the Deity now makes one Person with the Son of God What Man sinfully aspired to God hath graciously granted and more Man aspired to a likeness in knowledge and God hath granted him an affinity in union It had been astonishing Goodness to Angelize our Natures but in Redemption Divine Goodness hath acted higher in a sort to Deifie our Natures In Creation our Nature was exalted above other Creatures on Earth in our Redemption our Nature is exalted above all the Host of Heaven We were higher than the Beasts as Creatures but lower than the Angels * Psal 8.5 But by the Incarnation of the Son of God our Nature is elevated many steps above them After it had sunk it self by Corruption below the Bestial Nature and as low as the Diabolical the fulness of the Godhead dwells in our Nature Bodily †Colos 2.9 but never in the Angels Angelically The Son of God descended to dignifie our Nature by assuming it and ascended with our Nature to have it crown'd above those standing Monuments of Divine Power and Goodness * 1 Ephes 20.21 That Person that descended in our Nature into the Grave and in the same Nature was raised up again is in that same Nature set at the right hand of God in Heaven far above all Principality and Power and Might and Dominion and every Name that is named Our Refined Clay by an indissoluble union with this Divine Person is honoured to sit for ever upon a Throne above all the Tribes of Seraphims and Cherubins and the Person thâ—t wears it is the head of the good Angels and the conqueror of the bad The one are put under his Feet and the other commanded to adore him that purged our Sins in our Nature †Heb. 1.3 6. That Divine Person in our Nature receives Adoration from the Angels but the Nature of Man is not order'd to pay any Homage and Adorations to the Angels How could Divine Goodness to Man more magnifie it self As we could not have a lower descent than we had by Sin How could we have a higher ascent than by a substantial participation of a Divine Life in our Nature in the unity of a Divine Person Our Earthly Nature is joyned to a Heavenly Person our undone Nature united to one equal with God * Phil. 2.6 It may truly be said that Man is God which is infinitely more glorious for us than if it could be said Man is an Angel If it were Goodness to advance our Innocent Nature above other Creatures the advancement of our degenerate Nature above Angels deserves a higher Title than meer Goodness 'T is a more gracious act than if all Men had been transformed into the pure Spiritual Nature of the loftiest Cherubins 5. This Goodness is manifest in the Covenant of Grace made with us whereby we are freâ—d from the rigor of that of Works God might have insisted upon the terms of the old Covenant and requir'd of Man the improvement of his Original Stock but God hath condescended to lower terms and offer'd Man more gracious Methods and mitigated the rigor of the first by the sweetness of the second 1. 'T is Goodness that he should condescend to make another Covenant with Man To Stipulate with Innocent and Righteous Adam for his Obedience was a stoop of his Soveraignty Though he gave the Precept as a Soveraign Lord yet in his Covenanting he seems to descend to some kind of equality with that Dust and Ashes with whom he treated Absolute Soveraigns do not usually Covenant with their People but exact Obedience and Duty without binding themselves to bestow a Reward and if they intend any they reserve the purpose in their own breasts without treating their Subjects with a solemn declaration of it There was no obligation on God to enter into the first Covenant much less after the violation of the first to the settlement of a new If God seem'd in some sort to equal himself to Man in the first he seem'd to descend below himself in treating with a Rebel upon more condescending terms in the second If his Covenant with Innocent Adam was a stoop of his Soveraignty this with Rebellious Adam seems to be a stripping himself of his Majesty in favour of his Goodness As if his happiness depended upon us and not ours upon him 'T is a Humiliation of himself to behold the things in Heaven the glorious Angels as well as things on Earth mortal Men †Psal 113.6 much more to bind himself in gracious bonds to the glorious Angels and much more if to Rebel Man In the first Covenant there was much of Soveraignty as well as Goodness In the second there is less of Soveraignty and more of Grace In the first there was a Righteous Man for a Holy God In the second a polluted Creature for a pure and provoked God In the first he holds his Scepter in his hand to Rule his Subjects In the second he seems to lay by his Scepter to Court and Espouse a Beggar * Hosea 2.18 19 20. In the first he is a Lord in the second a Husband and binds himself upon Gracious Conditions to become a Debtor How should this Goodness fill us with an humble astonishment as it did Abraham when he fell on his face when he heard God speaking of making a Covenant with him †Gen. 17.2.3 And if God speaking to Israel out of the Fire and making them to hear his voice out of Heaven that he might instruct them was a Consideration whereby Moses would heighten their admiration of Divine Goodness and engage their affectionate Obedience to him * Deut. 4.32 36 40. How much more
Bread in a distress by a Miracle as he did to Elijah by the Ravens it would have stuck longer in our memories but the sense of daily favours soonest wears out of our minds which are as great Miracles as any in their own Nature and the products of the same Power But the wonder they should beget in us is obscur'd by their frequency 2. The Goodness of God is contemn'd by an impatient murmuring Our repinings proceed from an inconsideration of Gods free liberality and an ungrateful temper of Spirit Most Men are guilty of this 'T is implied in the commendation of Job under his Pressures * Job 1.22 In all this Job sinned not nor charged God foolishly as if it were a Character peculiar to him whereby he verified the Elogy God had given of him before v 8. That there was none like him in the Earth a perfect and an upright Man What is imply'd by the Expression but that scarce a Man is to be found without unjust complaints of God and charging him under their Crosses with Cruelty when in the greatest they have much more reason to bless him for his Bounty in the remainder Good Men have not been innocent Baruch complains of God for adding grief to his sorrow not furnishing him with those great things he expected whereas he had matter of thankfulness in Gods gift of his life as a prey * Jer. 45.3 4. But his Master chargeth God in a higher strain †Jer. 20.7 Oh Lord thou hast deceiv'd me and I was deceived I am in derision daily When he met with reproach instead of success in the execution of his Function he quarrels with God as if he had a mind to cheat him into a mischief when he had more reason to bless him for the honour of being employ'd in his Service Because we have not what we expect we slight his Goodness in what we enjoy If he Cross us in one thing he might have made us successless in more If he take away some things he might as well have taken away all The unmerited remainder though never so little deserves our acknowledgments more than the deserved loss can justifie our repining And for that which is snatcht from us there is more cause to be thankful that we have enjoyed it so long than to murmur that we possess it no longer Adams Sin implies a repining He imagin'd God had been short in his Goodness in not giving him a knowledge he foolishly conceived himself capable of and would venture a forfeiture of what already had been bountifully bestow'd upon him Man thought God had envied him and ever since Man studies to be even with God and envies him the free disposal of his own Doles All murmuring either in our own Cause or others charges God with a want of Goodness because there is a want of that which he foolishly thinks would make himself or others happy The language of this Sin is that Man thinks himself better than God and if it were in his Power would express a more plentiful Goodness than his Maker As Man is apt to think himself more pure than God * Job 4.17 so of a kinder Nature also than an Infinite Goodness The Israelites are a wonderful Example of this contempt of Divine Goodness They had been Spectators of the greatest Miracles and partakers of the choicest deliverance He had sollicited their Redemption from Captivity and when words would not do he came to blows for them Musters up his Judgments against their Enemies and at last as the Lord of Hosts and God of Battles totally defeats their Pursuers and drowns them and their proud hopes of Victory in the Red Sea Little account was made of all this by the Redeem'd ones They lightly esteem'd the Rock of their Salvation and lanch into greater unworthiness instead of being thankful for the breaking their Yoak They are angry with him that he had done so much for them They repented that ever they had complied with him for their own deliverance and had a regret that they had been brought out of Egypt They were angry that they were Freemen and that their Chains had been knockt off They were more desirous to return to the Oppression of their Egyptian Tyrants than have God for their Governor and Caterer and be fed with his Manna It was well with us in Egypt Why came we forth out of Egypt which is call'd a despising the Lord * Numb 11.18 20. They were so far from rejoycing in the expectation of the future benefits promis'd them that they murmur'd that they had not enjoyed less They were so sottish as to be desirous to put themselves into the Irons whence God had deliver'd them They would seek a Remedy in that Egypt which had been the Prison of their Nation and under the Successors of that Pharaoh who had been the Invader of their Liberties They would snatch Moses from the place where the Lord by an extraordinary Providence hath establisht him * Numb 16.3 9 10 11. They would stone those that minded them of the Goodness of God to them and thereupon of their Crime and their Duty They rose against their Benefactors and murmur'd against God that had strengthen'd the hands of their Deliverers they despised the Manna he had sent them and despised the pleasant Land he intended them * Psal 106.24 All which was a high contempt of God and his unparallell'd Goodness and Care of them All murmuring is an accusation of Divine Goodness 3. By unbelief and impenitency What is the reason we come not to him when he calls us but some secret imagination that he is of an ill Nature means not as he speaks but intends to mock us instead of welcoming us When we neglect his Call spurn at his bowels slight the riches of his Grace As it is a disparagement to his Wisdom to despise his Counsel so it is to his Goodness to slight his Offers as though you could make better provision for your selves than he is able or willing to do It disgraceth that which is design'd to the praise of the glory of his Grace And renders God Cruel to his own Son as being an unnecessary shedder of his Blood As the Devil by his Temptation of Adam envied God the glory of his Creating Goodness so unbelief envies God the glory of his Redeeming Grace 'T is a bidding defiance to him and challenging him to Muster up the Legions of his Judgments rather than have sent his Son to suffer for us or his Spirit to sollicit us Since the sending his Son was the greatest act of Goodness that God could express the refusal of him must be the highest Reproach of thâ—t Liberality God design'd to commend to the World in so rare a Gift The ingratitude in this refusal must be as high in the Rank of Sins as the Person slighted is in the Rank of Beings or Rank of Gifts Christ is a Gift * Rom. 5.16 the Royallest
especially this dominion in the peculiarity of its extent is seen in the exercise of it over the Spirits and Hearts of Men. Earthly Governours have by his indulgence a share with him in a dominion over mens bodies upon which account he graceth Princes and Judges with the Title of Gods Psal 82.6 But the highest Prince is but a Prince according to the Flesh as the Apostle calls Masters in relation to their Servants Colos 3.22 God is the Soveraign Man rules over the Beast in Man the Body and God rules over the Man in Man the Soul It sticks not in the outward surface but peirceth to the inward Marrow 'T is impossible God should be without this if our wills were independent on him we were in some sort equal with himself in part Gods as well as Creatures 'T is impossible a Creature either in whole or in part can be exempted from it Since he is the fashioner of hearts as well as of Bodies He is the Father of Spirits And therefore hath the right of a paternal dominion over them When he established man Lord of the other Creatures he did not strip himself of the propriety And when he made man a free Agent and Lord of the acts of his Will he did not devest himself of the Soveraignty His Soveraignty is seen 1. In Gifting of the Spirits of Men. Earthly Magistrates have hands too short to inspire the Hearts of their Subjects with worthy sentiments When they conferre an employment they are not able to convey an ability with it fit for the station They may as soon frame a Statue of liquid water and guild or paint it over with the costliest colours as impart to any a State-Head for a State-Ministry But when God chooseth a Saul from so mean an employment as seeking of Asses he can treasure up in him a Spirit fit for Government And fire David in Age a stripling and by Education a Shepherd with Courage to Encounter and skill to defeat a massy Goliah And when he designs a person for Glory to stand before his Throne he can put a new and a Royal Spirit into him Ezek. 36.26 God only can infuse habits into the Soul to capacitate it to act nobly and generously 2. His Soveraignty is seen in regard of the inclinations of mens Wills No Creature can immediately work upon the will to guide it to what point he pleaseth though mediately it may by proposing reasons which may Master the understandiâ—g and thereby determine the Will But God bows the Hearts of men by the 〈◊〉 of his dominion to what Centre he pleaseth When the more overweeniâ—g sort of men that thought their own heads as fit for a Crown as Sauls scornfully dâ—spis'd him yet God touched the hearts of a band of men to follow and adhere to him 1 Sam. 10.26 27. When the Anti-Christian Whore shall be ripe for destruction God shall put it into the Heart of the ten Horns or Kings to hate the Whore burn her with Fire and fulfil his Will Rev. 17.16 17. He Fashions the Hearts alike and tunes one string to answer another and both to answer his own design Psal 33.15 And while men seem to gratifie their own ambition and malice they execute the Will of God by his secret touch upon their Spirits guiding their inclinations to serve the glorious manifestation of his Truth While the Jews would in a reproachful disgrace to Christ Crucifie two Theives with him to render him more uncapable to have any followers they accomplisht a Prophesie and brought to light a mark of the Messiah whereby he had been charactered in one of their Prophets Isaiah 53.12 That he should be numbred among Transgressors He can make a man of not willing willing the wills of all men are in his hand i. e. under the power of his Scepter to retain or let go upon this or that Errand to bend this or that way as Water is carried by Pipes to what house or place the owner of it is pleas'd to order Prov. 21.1 The Kings Heart is in the hand of the Lord as the Rivers of waters he turns it whithersoever he will without any limitation He speaks of the Heart of Princes Because in regard of their height they seem to be more absolute and impetuous as waters yet God holds them in his hand under his dominion turns them to acts of clemency or severity like waters either to overflow and dammage or to refresh and fructifie He can convey a Spirit to them or cut it off from them Psal 76.12 'T is with reference to his efficacious power in graciously turning the Heart of Paul that the Apostle breaks of his discourse off the story of his conversion and breaks out into a magnifying and glorifying of God's dominion 1 Tim. 1.17 Now unto the King eternal c. be Honour and Glory for ever and ever Our Hearts are more subject to the divine Soveraignty than our members in their motions are subject to our own wills As we can move our hand East or West to any quarter of the World so can God bend our Wills to what mark he pleases The second Cause in every motion depends upon the first and that will being a second Cause may be furthered or hindered in its inclinations or executions by God he can bend or unbend it and change it from one actual inclination to another 'T is as much under his Authority and Power to move or hinder as the vast engine of the Heavens is in its motion or standing still which he can effect by a word The work depends upon the workman the Clock upon the Artificer for the motions of it 3. His dominion is seen in regard of Terror or Comfort The Heart or Conscience is Gods special Throne on Earth which he hath reserv'd to himself and never indulg'd humane Authority to sit upon it He solely orders this in ways of conviction or Comfort He can flash terror into mens Spirits in the midst of their Earthly jollities and put death into the pot of Conscience when they are boyling up themselves in a high pitch of worldly delights and can raise mens Spirits above the sense of torment under Racks and Flames He can draw a hand Writing not only in the outward Chamber but the inward Closet bring the Rack into the inwards of a Man None can infuse Comfort when he writes bitter things nor can any fill the heart with Gall when he drops in Hony Men may order outward duties but they cannot unlock the Conscience and constrain men to think them duties which they are forced by humane Laws outwardly to act And as the Laws of earthly Princes are bounded by the outward man so do their executions and punishments reach no further than the case of the Body But God can run upon the inward man as a Gyant and inflict wounds and gashes there 5. Proposition 'T is an Eternal Dominion In regard of the exercise of it it was not from Eternity Because
must be resolved into his own will Yet not into a Will without Wisdom God did not choose hand over head and act by meer Will without Reason and Understanding an infinite Wisdom is far from such a kind of procedure but the reason of God is inscrutable to us unless we could understand God as well as he understands himself the whole ground lies in God himself no part of it in the Creature Rom. 9.15 16. Not in him that Wills nor in him that Runs but in God that shews Mercy Since God hath revealed no other cause than his will we can resolve it into no other than his Soveraign Empire over all Creatures 'T is not without a stop to our curiosity that in the same place where God asserts the absolute Soveraignty of his mercy to Moses he tells him he could not see his face Exod. 33.19 20. I will be Gracious to whom I will be Gracious and he said Thou canst not see my face The rayes of his infinite Wisdom are too bright and dazling for our weakness The Apostle acknowledged not only a Wisdom in this proceeding but a riches and treasure of Wisdom not only that but a depth and vastness of those riches of Wisdom but was unable to give us an Inventory and Scheme of it Rom. 11.33 The secrets of his Counsels are too deep for us to wade into in attempting to know the reason of those acts we should find our selves swallowed up into a bottomless Gulf. Though the understanding be above our capacity yet the admiration of his Authority and Submission to it are not We should cast our selves down at his feet with a full resignation of our selves to his Soveraign pleasure * This was Dr. Goodwins Speech when he was in trouble This is a more comely carriage in a Christian than all the contentious endeavours to measure God by our line 2. In bestowing Grace where he pleases God in Conversion and Pardon works not as a natural Agent putting forth strength to the utmost which God must do if he did renew man naturally as the Sun shines and the fire burns which always act ad extremum virium unless a Cloud interpose to eclipse the one and water to extinguish the other But God acts as a voluntary Agent which can freely exert his power when he please and suspend it when he please Though God be necessarily good yet he is not necessitated to manifest all the Treasures of his Goodness to every Subject he hath power to distill his dews upon one part and not upon another If he were necessitated to express his Goodness without a liberty no thanks were due to him Who thanks the Sun for shining on him or the fire for warming him None Because they are necessary Agents and can do no other What is the reason he did not reach out his hand to keep all the Angels from sinking as well as some or recover them when they were sunk What is the reason he engrafts one man into the true Vine and lets another remain a wild Olive Why is not the efficacy of the Spirit always linkt with the motions of the Spirit Why doth he not mould the Heart into a Gospel frame when he fills the Ear with a Gospel sound Why doth he strike off the chains from some and tear the vail from the Heart while he leaves others under their natural slavery and Aegyptian darkness Why do some lie under the bands of death while another is rais'd to a spiritual life What reason is there for all this but his absolute Will The Apostle resolves the question if the question be askt why he begets one and not another Not from the Will of the Creature but his own Will is the determination of one James 1.18 Why doth he work in one to will and to do and not in another Because of his good pleasure is the answer of another Phil. 2.13 He could as well new create every one as he at first created them and make Grace as universal as Nature and Reason but it is not his pleasure so to do 1. 'T is not from want of strength in himself The power of God is unquestionably able to strike off the chains of unbeleief from all he could surmount the obstinacy of every child of wrath and inspire every Son of Adam with Faith as well as Adam himself He wants not a vertue superior to the greatest resistance of his Creature a victorious beam of light might be shot into their understandings and a flood of Grace might overspread their Wills with one word of his mouth without putting forth the utmost of his power What hinderance could there be in any created spirit which cannot be easily peirced into and new moulded by the Father of Spirits Yet he only breaths this efficacious vertue into some and leaves others under that insensibility and hardness which they love and suffers them to continue in their benighting ignorance and consume themselves in the embraces of their dear though deceitful Dalilahs He could have conquered the resistance of the Jews as well as chased away the darkness and ignorance of the Gentiles No doubt but he could over power the Heart of the most malicious Devil as well as that of the simplest and weakest man But the breath of the Almighty Spirit is in his own power to breath where he lists John 3.8 'T is at his liberty whither he will give to any the feeling of the invincible efficacy of his Grace He did not want strength to have kept man as firm as a Rock against the temptation of Satan and pour'd in such fortifying Grace as to have made him impregnable against the powers of Hell as well as he did secure the standing of the Angels against the Sedition of their fellows But it was his will to permit it to be otherwise 2. Nor is it from any prerogative in the Creature He converts not any for their natural perfection Because he seizeth upon the most ignorant Nor for their moral perfection Because he converts the most sinful Nor for their Civil perfection Because he turns the most despicable 1. Not for their natural perfection of knowledge He opened the minds and hearts of the more ignorant Were the nature of the Gentiles better manur'd than that of the Jews or did the Tapers of their understandings burn clearer No the one were skil'd in the Prophesies of the Messiah and might have compared the Predictions they own'd with the Actions and Sufferings of Christ which they were spectators of He let alone those that had expectations of the Messiah and expectations about the time of Christ's appearance both grounded upon the Oracles wherewith he had intrusted them The Gentiles were unacquainted with the Prophets and therefore destitute of the expectations of the Messiah Eph. 2.12 They were without Christ Without any Revelation of Christ because aliens from the Commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the Covenant of Promise having no hope and without God in
by theft from the Christian Granting many years indulgences upon slight performances the repeating so many Ave-Maries and Pater-Nosters in a day Canonizing Saints claiming the Keyes of Heaven and disposing of the honours and glory of it And proposing Creatures as objects of Religions Worship wherein he answers the Character of the Apostle 2 Thes 2.4 Shewing himself that he is God in challenging that power which is only the right of Divine Soveraignty exalting himself above God in indulging those things which the Law of God never allow'd but hath severely prohibited This controuling the Soveraignty of God not allowing him the rights of his Crown is the Soul and Spirit of many errors Why are the decrees of election and praeterition denyed because men will not acknowledge God the Soveraign disposer of his Creature Why is effectual calling and efficacious grace denyed because they will not allow God the proprietor and distributer of his own goods Why is the satisfaction of Christ deny'd because they will not allow God a power to vindicate his own Law in what way he pleaseth Most of the errors of men may be resolv'd into a denyal of God's Soveraignty All have a tincture of the first evil sentiment of Adam 2. The Soveraignty of God is contemned in the practices of men 1. As he is a Law-giver 1. When Laws are made and urg'd in any State contrary to the Law of God 'T is part of God's Soveraignty to be a Law-giver not to obey his Law is a breach made upon his right of Government But it is Treason in any against the Crown of God to Mint Laws with a stamp contrary to that of Heaven whereby they renounce their due subjection and vy with God for Dominion snatch the supremacy from him and account themselves more Lords than the Soveraign Monarch of the World When men will not let God be the Judge of good and evil but put in their own vote controuling his to establish their own Such are not content to be as Gods subordinate to the supream God to sit at his feet Nor co-ordinate with him to sit equal upon his Throne but paramount to him to over-top and shadow his Crown A boldness that leaves the serpent in the first temptation under the Character of a more commendable modesty who advised our first Parents to attempt to be as Gods but not above him and would enervate a Law of God but not enact a contrary one to be observ'd by them Such was the usurpation of Nebuchadnezzar to set up a Golden Image to be ador'd Dan. 3. as if he had power to mint Gods as well as to conquer men to set the stamp of a Deity upon a peice of Gold as well as his own Effigies upon his currant Coyn. Much of the same nature was that of Darius by the motion of his flatterers to prohibit any Petition to be made to God for the space of 30 dayes as though God was not to have a Worship without a License from a doting peice of clay Dan. 6.7 * Trap. in loc So Henry the Third of France by his Edict silenced Masters of Families from praying with their Houshoulds And it is a farther contempt of God's Authority when good men are opprest by the sole weight of power for not observing such Laws * Faucheur vol. 2. p. 663. 664. as if they had a real Soveraignty over the Consciences of men more than God himself When the Apostles were commanded by an Angel from God to preach in the Temple the Doctrine of Christ Act. 5.19 20. they were fetcht from thence with a Guard before the Councel v. 26. And what is the Language of those States-men to them as absolute as God himself could speak to any Transgressors of his Law ver 28. Did not we straitly command you that you should not teach in this Name 'T is sufficient that we gave you a command to be silent and publish no more this Doctrine of Jesus 'T is not for you to examine our decrees but rest in our order as Loyal Subjects and comply with your Rulers They might have added though it be with the damnation of your souls How would those over-rule the Apostles by no other reason but their absolute pleasure And though God had espous'd their cause by delivering them out of the Prison wherein they had lockt them the day before Yet not one of all this Councel had the wit or honesty to entitle it a fighting against God but Gamaliel ver 39. So foolishly fond are men to put themselves in the place of God and usurp a jurisdiction over mens Consciences And to presume that Laws made against the interest and command of God must be of more force than the Laws of God's enacting 2. The Soveraignty of God is contemn'd in making additions to the Laws of God The Authority of a Sovereign Law-giver is invaded and vilified when an inferior presumes to make orders equivalent to his Edicts 'T is a Praemunire against Heaven to set up an Authority distinct from that of God or to enjoyn any thing as necessary in matter of worship for which a Divine Commission cannot be shewn God was alway so tender of this part of his prerogative that he would not have any thing wrought in the Tabernacle not a Vessel not an instrument but what himself had prescribed Exod. 25.9 According to all that I shew thee after the pattern of the Tabernacle and the pattern of all the Instruments thereof even so shall ye make it which is strictly urg'd again ver 40. Look that thou make them after their pattern Look to it beware of doing any thing of thine own head and justling with my Authority It was so afterwards in the matter of the Temple which succeeded the Tabernacle God gave the model of it to David and made him understand in writing by his hand upon him even all the works of this pattern 1 Chron. 28.19 Neither the Royal Authority in Moses who was King in Jesurun nor in David who was a man after God's own heart and called to the Crown by a special and extraordinary providence nor Aaron and the High Priests his Successors invested in the Sacerdotal Office had any Authority from God to do any thing in the framing the Tabernacle or Temple of their own heads God barr'd them from any thing of that nature by giving them an exact pattern so dear to him was alwayes this flower of his Crown And afterwards the power of appointing Officers and Ordinances in the Church was delegated to Christ and was among the rest of those Royalties given to him which he fully compleated for the edifying of the body Ephes 4.11 12. And he hath the Elogy by the Spirit of God to be faithfull as Moses was in all his house to him that appointed him Heb. 3.2 Faithfulness in a trust implyes a punctual observing directions God was still so tender of this that even Christ the son should no more do any thing in this
concern without appointment and pattern than Moses a servant ver 5.6 It seems to be a vote of nature to referr the Original of the modes of all worship to God and therefore in all those varieties of Ceremonies among the Heathens there was scarce any but were imagin'd by them to be the Dictates and Orders of some of their pretended Deities and not the resolves of meer Humane Authority What intrusion upon God's right hath the Papacy made in regard of Officers Cardinals Patriarchs c. not known in any Divine Order In regard of Ceremonies in worship prest as necessary to obtain the favour of God Holy-water Crucifixes Altars Images Cringings reviving many of the Jewish and Pagan Ceremonies and adopting them into the Family of Christian Ordinances as if God had been too absolute and arbitrary in repealing the one and dashing in peices the other When God had by his Soveraign order fram'd a Religion for the heart men are ready to usurp an Authority to frame one for the sence to dress the Ordinances of God in new and gaudy habits to take the eye by a vain pomp thus affecting a Divine Royalty and acting a silly childishness and after this to impose the observation of those upon the Consciences of men is a bold ascent into the Throne of God To impose Laws upon the Conscience which Christ hath not imposed hath deservedly been thought the very Spirit of Antichrist It may be call'd also the Spirit of Anti-God God hath reserv'd to himself the sole Soveraignty over the Conscience and never indulg'd men any part of it he hath not given man a power over his own Conscience much less one man a power over another's Conscience Men have a power over outward things to do this or that where it is determined by the Law of God but not the least Authority to controul any dictate or determination of Conscience The sole Empire of that is appropriate to God as one of the great marks of his Royalty What an usurpation is it of God's right to make Conscience a slave to man which God hath solely as the father of Spirits subjected to himself An usurpation which though the Apostles those extraordinary Officers might better have claim'd yet they utterly disown'd any imperious dominion over the faith of others 2 Cor. 1.24 Though in this they do not seem to climb up above God yet they set themselves in the Throne of God envy him an absolute Monarchy would be sharers with him in his Legislative power and grasp one end of his Scepter in their own hands They do not pretend to take the Crown from Gods head but discover a bold ambition to shuffle their hairy Scalps under it and wear part of it upon their own that they may rule with him not under him And would be joint Lords of his Mannour with him who hath by the Apostle forbidden any to be Lords of his Heritage 1 Pet. 5.3 And therefore they cannot assume such an Authority to themselves till they can shew where God hath resign'd this part of his Authority to them If their Exposition of that place Matth. 16.18 Vpon this rock I will build my Church be granted to be true and that the person and Successors of Peter are meant by that Rock it could be no Apology for their Usurpations 't is not Peter and his Successors shall build but I will build others are instruments in building but they are to observe the directions of the grand Architect 3. The Soveraignty of God is contemned when men prefer Obedience to mens Laws before Obedience to God As God hath an undoubted right as the Law-giver and Ruler of the World to enact Laws without consulting the pleasure of men or requiring their consent to the verifying and establishing his Edicts so are men oblig'd by their Allegiance as subjects to observe the Laws of their Creator without consulting whither they be agreeable to the Laws of his revolted Creatures To consult with Flesh and Blood whither we should obey is to Authorize Flesh and Blood above the purest and most soveraign spirit When men will obey their superiors without taking in the condition the Apostle prescribes to Servants Col. 3.22 In singleness of heart fearing God and post-pone the fear of God to the fear of man 't is to render God of less power with them than the drop of a Bucket or dust of the Ballance When we out of fear of punishment will observe the Laws of Men against the Laws of God 't is like the Egyptians to Worship a ravenous Crocodile instead of a Deity when we submit to humane Laws and stagger at Divine 't is to set man upon the Throne of God and God at the footstool of man to set man above and God beneath to make him the tail and not the head as God speaks in another case of Israel Deut. 28.13 When we pay an outward observation to Divine Laws because they are backt by the Laws of Man and humane Authority is the motive of our observance we subject Gods soveraignty to Mans Authority what he hath from us is more owing to the pleasure of men than any value we have for the Empire of God When men shall commit Murders and imbrue their hands in blood by the order of a Grandee when the worst sins shall be committed by the order of Papal dispensations When the use of his Creatures which God hath granted and sanctifi'd shall be abstain'd from for so many days in the week and so many weeks in the year because of a Roman Edict the Authority of man is acknowledg'd not only equal but superior to that of God The dominion of dust and clay is preferr'd before the undoubted right of the soveraign of the World The Commands of God are made less than humane and the orders of men more authoritative than Divine and a grand Rebels usurpation of Gods right is countenanced When men are more devout in observance of uncertain Traditions or meer humane inventions than at the hearing of the unquestionable Oracles of God When men shall squeeze their countenances into a more serious figure and demean themselves in a more religious posture at the appearance of some mock Ceremony clothed in a Jewish or Pagan garb which hath unhappily made a rent in the Coat of Christ and pay a more exact reverence to that which hath no Divine but only a humane stamp upon it than to the clear and plain Word of God which is perhaps neglected with sleepy nodds or which is worse entertain'd with prophane scoffs this is to prefer the Authority of man employ'd in trifles before the Authority of the wise Law-giver of the World Besides the ridiculousness of it is as great as to adore a Glo-worm and laugh at the Sun or for a Courtier to be more exact in his cringes and starcht postures before a puppet than before his soveraign Prince In all this we make not the Will and Authority of God our rule but the
Understanding greatness of Power all the Sons of Men they were more capable to praise him more capable to serve him and because of the Acuteness of their Comprehension more able to have a due Estimate of such a Redemption had it been afforded them yet that Goodness which had Created them so Comely would not lay it self out in restoring the Beauty they had defaced The Promise was of bruising the Serpents head for us not of listing up the Serpents head with us Their Nature was not assum'd nor any command given them to believe or repent Not one Devil spar'd not one Apostate Spirit recover'd not one of those eminent Creatures restor'd Every one of them hath only a prospect of Misery without any glimps of Recovery They were ruin'd under one Sin and we repair'd under many All his Redeeming Goodness was laid out upon Man Psal 144.3 What is Man that thou takest knowledge of him and the Son of Man that thou makest account of him Making account of him above Angels As they fell without any tempting them so God would leave them to rise without any assisting them I know the Schools trouble themselves to find out the reasons of this peculiarity of Grace to Man and not to them because the whole Humane Nature fell but only a part of the Angelical The one Sinned by a Seduction and the other by a sullenness without any Tempter Every Angel Sinned by his own proper will whereas Adams Posterity Sinned by the will of the first Man the common Root of all God would deprive the Devil of any glory in the satisfaction of his envious desire to hinder Man from attainment and possession of that Happiness which himself had lost The weakness of Man below the Angelical Nature might excite the Divine Mercy And since all the things of the lower World were Created for Man God would not lose the honour of his Works by losing the immediate End for which he framed them And finally because in the Restoration of Angels there would have been only a Restoration of one Nature that was not comprehensive of the Nature of Inferior things But after all such Conjectures Man must sit down and acknowledge Divine Goodness to be the only Spring without any other Motive Since Infinite Wisdom could have contrived a way for Redemption for Fallen Angels as well as for Fallen Man and restor'd both the one and the other Why might not Christ have assumed their Nature as well as ours into the unity of the Divine Person and suffer'd the Wrath of God in their Nature for them as well as in his Humane Soul for us 'T is as conceivable that two Natures might have been assum'd by the Son of God as well as three Souls be in Man distinct as some think there are 3. To Enhance this Goodness yet higher It was a greater Goodness to us than was for a time manifested to Christ himself To demonstrate his Goodness to Man in preventing his Eternal Ruine he would for a while with-hold his Goodness from his Son by exposing his Life as the price of our Ransom not only subjecting him to the Derisions of Enemies Desertions of Friends and Malice of Devils but to the unexpressible bitterness of his own Wrath in his Soul as made an offering for Sin The Particle so John 3.16 seems to intimate this Supremacy of Goodness He so loved the World that he gave his only begotten Son He so loved the World that he seem'd for a time not to love his Son in comparison of it or equal with it The Person to whom a Gift is given is in that regard accounted more valuable than the Gift or Present made to him Thus God valued our Redemption above the worldly Happiness of the Redeemer and sentenceth him to an Humiliation on Earth in order to our Exaltation in Heaven He was desirous to hear him groaning and see him bleeding that we might not groan under his Frowns and bleed under his Wrath He spared not him that he might spare us refused not to strike him that he might be well pleased with us drencht his Sword in the Blood of his Son that it might not for ever be wet with ours but that his Goodness might for ever triumph in our Salvation He was willing to have his Son made Man and die rather than Man should perish who had delighted to ruine himself He seem'd to degrade him for a time from what he was * Lingend de Eucharist p. 84 85. But since he could not be united to any but to an intellectual Creature he could not be united to any viler and more sordid Creature than the Earthly Nature of Man And when this Son in our Nature prayed that the Cup might pass from him Goodness would not suffer it to shew how it valued the manifestation of it self in the Salvation of Man above the preservation of the Life of so dear a Person In particular wherein this Goodness appears 1. The first Resolution to Redeem and the means appointed for Redemption could have no other inducement but Divine Goodness We cannot too highly value the Merit of Christ but we must not so much extend the Merit of Christ as to draw a value to Eclipse the Goodness of God Though we owe our Redemption and the Fruits of it to the Death of Christ yet we owe not the first Resolutions of Redemption and assumption of our Nature the means of Redemption to the Merit of Christ Divine Goodness only without the association of any Merit not only of Man but of the Redeemer himself begat the first purpose of our Recovery He was singled out and predestinated to be our Redeemer before he took our Nature to Merit our Redemption God sent his Son is a frequent Expression in the Gospel of St. John †John 3.34 Joh. 9.24 Joh. 17.3 To what end did God send Christ but to Redeem * Lessius The purpose of Redemption therefore preceded the pitching upon Christ as the means and procuring Cause of it i. e. of our actual Redemption but not of the Redeeming purpose the end is always in intention before the means God so loved the World that he gave his only begotten Son The love of God to the World was first in Intention and the Order of Nature before the will of giving his Son to the World His Intention of saving was before the Mission of a Saviour So that this Affection rose not from the Merit of Christ but the Merit of Christ was directed by this Affection It was the Effect of it not the Cause Nor was the union of our Nature with his Merited by him All his Meritorious acts were performed in our Nature The Nature therefore wherein he performed it was not Merited that Grace which was not could not Merit what it was He could not Merit that Humanity which must be assumed before he could Merit any thing for us because all Merit for us must be offer'd in the Nature which had offended