Gospel is a true Bethesda a pool of Grace where such poore lame and infirme creatures as we are upon the moving of Gods spirit in it may descend down not onely to wash our skin and outside but also to be cured of our diseases within And what ever the world thinks there is a powerfull Spirit that moves upon these waters the waters of the Gospel for this new Creation the Regeneration of souls the very same Spirit that once moved upon the waters of the universe at the first Creation and spreading its mighty wings over them did hatch the new-born World into this perfection I say the same Almighty spirit of Christ still worketh in the Gospel spreading its gentle healing quickening wings over our souls The Gospel is not like Abana and Pharphar those common Rivers of Damascus that could onely cleanse the outside but it is a true Iordan in which such leprouse Naamans as we all are may Wash and be clean Blessed indeed are they whose iniquities are forgiven and whose sinnes are covered Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sinne but yet rather Blessed are they whose sinnes are removed like a Morning-cloud and quite taken away from them Blessed thrice blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousnesse for they shall be satisfied Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God Our Saviour Christ came as Iohn the Baptist tells us with a Fan in his hand that he might throughly purge his floore and gather his wheat into his garner but the chaff he will burn up with unquenchable fire He came as the Prophet Malachy speaks like a Refiners fire and like Fullers sop to sit as a Refiner and Purifier of silver and to purifie all the sonnes of Levi and purge them as gold and silver that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousnesse Christ came not onely to write Holinesse to the Lord upon Aarons forehead and to put his Urim and Thummim upon his Breast-plate but This is the Covenant saith the Lord that I will make with them in those dayes I will put my Law into their inward parts and write it in their hearts and then I will be their God and they shall be my people they shall be all Kings and Priests unto me God sent his own sonne saith St. Paul in the likenesse of sinfull flesh and by a sacrifice for sinne condemned sinne in the flesh that the righteousnesse of the Law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit The first Adam as the Scripture tells us brought in a reall defilement which like a noisome Leprosie hath overspread all mankind and therefore the second Adam must not onely fill the World with a conceit of Holinesse and meer Imaginary Righteousnesse but he must really convey such an immortall seed of Grace into the hearts of true Believers as may prevaile still more and more in them till it have at last quite wrought out that poison of the Serpent Christ that was nothing but Divinity dwelling in a Tabernacle of flesh and God himself immediatly acting a humane nature he came into the World to kindle here that Divine life amongst men which is certainly dearer unto God then any thing else whatsoever in the World and to propagate this Celestiall fire from one heart still unto another untill the end of the World Neither is he or was he ever absent from this Spark of his Divinity kindled amongst men wheresoever it be though he seem bodily to be withdrawn from us He is the standing constant inexhausted Fountain of this divine Light and Heat that still toucheth every soul that is enlivened by it with an out-stretched Ray and freely lends his Beams and disperseth his influence to all from the beginning of the World to the end of it We all receive of his fulnesse grace for grace as all the Starres in heaven are said to light their Candles at the Suns flame For though his body be withdrawn from us yet by the lively and virtuall Contact of his Spirit he is alwayes kindling cheering quickening warming enlivening hearts Nay this Divine life begun and kindled in any heart wheresoever it be is something of God in flesh and in a sober and qualified sence Divinity incarnate and all particular Christians that are really possessed of it so many Mysticall Christs And God forbid that Gods own Life and Nature here in the World should be forlorn forsaken and abandoned of God himself Certainly where-ever it is though never so little like a sweet young tender Babe once born in any heart when it crieth unto God the father of it with pitifull and bemoning looks imploring his compassion it cannot chuse but move his fatherly bowels and make them yerne and turn towards it and by strong sympathy draw his compassionate arm to help and relieve it Never was any tender Infant so dear to those Bowels that begat it as an Infant new-born Christ formed in the heart of any true believer to God the father of it Shall the children of this World the sonnes of darknesse be moved with such tender affection and compassion towards the fruit of their bodies their own Naturall offspring and shall God who is the Father of lights the fountain of all goodnesse be moved with no compassion towards his true Spirituall Offspring and have no regard to those sweet Babes of Light ingendered by his own beams in mens hearts that in their lovely countenances bear the resemblance of his own face and call him their father Shall he see them lie fainting and gasping and dying here in the World for want of nothing to preserve and keep them but an Influence from him who first gave them life and breath No hear the language of Gods heart heare the sounding of his bowels towards them Is it Ephraim my dear sonne Is it that pleasant child since I spake of him I do earnestly remember him my bowels my bowels are troubled for him I will surely have mercy upon him saith the Lord If those expressions of goodnesse and tender affection here amongst creatures be but drops of that full Ocean that is in God how can we then imagine that this Father of our spirits should have so little regard to his own dear Ofspring I do not say our souls but that which is the very Life and Soul of our souls the Life of God in us which is nothing else but Gods own Self communicated to us his own Sonne born in our hearts as that he should suffer it to be cruelly murdered in its Infancy by our Sinnes and like young Hercules in its very cradle to be strangled by those filthy vipers that he should see him to be crucified by wicked Lusts nailed fast to the crosse by invincible Corruptions pierced and gored on every side with the poisoned spears of the Devils temptations and at last to give up the Ghost and yet his tender heart not at all relent
nor be all this while impassionated with so sad a spectacle Surely we cannot think he hath such an adamantine breast such a flinty nature as this is What then must we say that though indeed he be willing yet he is not able to rescue his crucified and tormented Sonne now bleeding upon the crosse to take him down from thence and save him Then must Sinne be more powerfull then God that weak crasie and sickly thing more strong then the Rock of ages and the Devil the Prince of Darknesse more mighty then the God of Light No surely there is a weaknesse and impotency in all Evil a masculine strength and vigour in all Goodnesse and therefore doubtlesse the Highest Good the {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} as the Philosophers call it is the strongest thing in the World Nil potentius Summo Bono Gods Power displaied in the World is nothing but his Goodnesse strongly reaching all things from heighth to depth from the highest Heaven to the lowest Hell and irresistibly imparting it self to every thing according to those severall degrees in which it is capable of it Have the Fiends of Darknesse then those poore forlorn spirits that are fettered and locked up in the Chaines of their own wickednesse any strength to withstand the force of infinite Goodnesse which is infinite Power or do they not rather skulk in holes of darknesse and flie like Bats and Owls before the approching beams of this Sun of Righteousnesse Is God powerfull to kill and to destroy to damne and to torment and is he not powerfull to save Nay it is the sweetest Flower in all the Garland of his Attributes it is the richest Diamond in his Crown of Glory that he is Mighty to save and this is farre more magnificent for him then to be stiled Mighty to destroy For that except it be in the way of Justice speaks no Power at all but mere Impotency for the Root of all Power is Goodnesse Or must we say lastly that God indeed is able to rescue us out of the Power of sinne Satan when we sigh grone towards him but yet sometimes to exercise his absolute Authority his uncontrollable Dominion he delights rather in plunging wretched souls down into infernall Night everlasting Darknesse What shall we then make the God of the whole World Nothing but a cruell and dreadfull Erynnis with curled fiery Snakes about his head and Firebrands in his hands thus governing the World Surely this will make us either secretly to think that there is no God at all in the World if he must needs be such or else to wish heartily there were none But doubtlesse God will at last confute all these our Misapprehensions of him he will unmask our Hypocriticall pretences and clearly cast the shame of all our sinfull Deficiencies upon our selves and vindicate his own Glory from receiving the least stain or blemish by them In the mean time let us know that the Gospel now requireth far more of us then ever the Law did for it requireth a New Creature a Divine Nature Christ formed in us but yet withall it bestoweth a quickening Spirit an enlivening Power to inable us to expresse that which is required of us Whosoever therefore truly knows Christ the same also keepeth Christs Commandments But he that saith I know him and keepeth not his Commandments he is a liar and the truth is not in him I Have now done with the First part of my Discourse concerning those Observations which arise naturally from the Words and offer themselves to us I shall in the next place proceed to make some generall Application of them all together NOw therefore I beseech you Let us consider whether or no we know Christ indeed Not by our acquaintance with Systems and Modells of Divinity not by our skill in Books and Papers but by our keeping of Christs Commandments All the Books and writings which we converse with they can but represent spirituall Objects to our understandings which yet we can never see in their own true Figure Colour and Proportion untill we have a Divine light within to irradiate and shine upon them Though there be never such excellent truths concerning Christ and his Gospel set down in words and letters yet they will be but unknown Characters to us untill we have a Living-spirit within us that can decypher them untill the same Spirit by secret Whispers in our hearts do comment upon them which did at first endite them There be many that understand the Greek and Hebrew of the Scripture the Originall Languages in which the Text was written that never understood the Language of the spirit There is a Caro and a Spiritus a Flesh and a Spirit a Bodie and a Soul in all the writings of the Scriptures it is but the Flesh and Body of Divine Truths that is printed upon Paper which many Moths of Books and Libraries do onely feed upon many Walking Scheletons of knowledge that bury and entombe Truths in the Living Sepulchres of their souls do onely converse with such as never did any thing else but pick at the mere Bark and Rind of Truths and crack the Shels of them But there is a Soul and Spirit of divine Truths that could never yet be congealed into Inke that could never be blotted upon Paper which by a secret traduction and conveiance passeth from one Soul unto another being able to dwell and lodge no where but in a Spirituall being in a Living thing because it self is nothing but Life and Spirit Neither can it where indeed it is expresse it self sufficiently in Words and Sounds but it will best declare and speak it self in Actions as the old manner of writing among the Egyptians was not by Words but Things The Life of divine Truths is better expressed in Actions then in Words because Actions are more Living things then words Words are nothing but the dead Resemblances and Pictures of those Truths which live and breath in Actions and the Kingdome of God as the Apostle speaketh consisteth not in Word but in Life and Power {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} saith the Morall Philosopher {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} Sheep do not come and bring their Fodder to their Shepheard and shew him how much they eat but inwardly concocting and digesting it they make it appear by the Fleece which they wear upon their backs and by the Milke which they give And let not us Christians affect onely to talk and dispute of Christ and so measure our knowledge of him by our words but let us shew {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} our knowledge concocted into our lives and actions and then let us really manifest that we are Christs Sheep indeed that we are his Disciples by that Fleece of Holiness which we wear and by the Fruits that we dayly yield in our lives and conversations for herein saith Christ is my Father glorified that ye bear much fruit so
shall ye be my Disciples Let us not I beseech you judge of our knowing Christ by our ungrounded Perswasions that Christ from all Eternity hath loved us and given himself particularly for Us without the Conformity of our lives to Christs Commandments without the reall partaking of the Image of Christ in our hearts The great Mysterie of the Gospel it doth not lie onely in Christ without us though we must know also what he hath done for us but the very Pith and Kernel of it consists in Christ inwardly formed in our hearts Nothing is truly Ours but what lives in our Spirits Salvation it self cannot save us as long as it is onely without us no more then Health can cure us and make us sound when it is not within us but somewhere at distance from us no more then Arts and Sciences whilst they lie onely in Books and Papers without us can make us learned The Gospel though it be a Sovereigne and Medicinall thing in it self yet the mere knowing and believing of the history of it will do us no good we can receive no vertue from it till it be inwardly digested concocted into our souls till it be made Ours and become a living thing in our hearts The Gospel if it be onely without us cannot save us no more then that Physitians Bill could cure the ignorant Patient of his disease who when it was commended to him took the Paper onely and put it up in his pocket but never drunk the Potion that was prescribed in it All that Christ did for us in the flesh when he was here upon earth From his lying in a Manger when he was born in Bethlehem to his bleeding upon the Crosse on Golgotha it will not save us from our sinnes unlesse Christ by his Spirit dwell in us It will not avail us to believe that he was born of a Virgin unlesse the power of the most High overshadow our hearts and beget him there likewise It will not profit us to believe that he died upon the Crosse for us unlesse we be baptized into his death by the Mortification of all our lusts unlesse the old man of sinne be crucified in our hearts Christ indeed hath made an Expiation for our sinnes upon his Crosse and the Bloud of Christ is the onely sovereign Balsame to free us from the guilt of them but yet besides the sprinkling of the bloud of Christ upon us we must be made partakers also of his spirit Christ came into the World as well to redeem us from the power and bondage of our sinnes as to free us from the guilt of them You know saith S. Iohn that he was manifested to take away our sinnes whosoever therefore abideth in him sinneth not whosoever sinneth hath not seen nor known him Loe the end of Christs coming into the World Loe a designe worthy of God manifested in the flesh Christ did not take all those paines to lay aside his Robes of Glory and come down hither into the World to enter into a Virgins wombe to be born in our humane shape and be laid a poore crying infant in a Manger having no form nor comlinesse at all upon him to take upon him the Form of a servant to undergo a reprochfull and ignominious life and at last to be abandoned to a shamefull death a death upon the Crosse I say he did not do all this merely to bring in a Notion into the World without producing any reall and substantiall effect at all without the changing mending and reforming of the World so that men should still be as wicked as they were before and as much under the power of the Prince of Darknesse onely they should not be thought so they should still remain as full of all the filthy sores of sinne corruption as before onely they should be accounted whole Shall God come down from heaven pitch a Tabernacle amongst men Shall he undertake such a huge Designe and make so great a noise of doing something which when it is all summed up shall not at last amount to a Reality Surely Christ did not undergo all this to so little purpose he would not take all this paines for us that he might be able at last to put into our hands nothing but a Blanck He was with child he was in pain and travel and hath he brought forth nothing but wind hath he been delivered of the Eastwind Is that great designe that was so long carried in the Wombe of Eternity now proved abortive or else nothing but a mere windy birth No surely The end of the Gospel is Life and Perfection 't is a Divine nature 't is a Godlike frame and disposition of spirit 't is to make us partakers of the Image of God in Righteousnesse and true Holinesse without which Salvation it self were but a Notion Christ came indeed into the World to make an Expiation and Atonement for our sinnes but the end of this was that we might eschew sinne that we might forsake all ungodlinesse and worldly lusts The Gospel declares pardon of sinne to those that are heavy laden with it and willing to be disburdened to this end that it might quicken and enliven us to new obedience Whereas otherwise the Guilt of sinne might have detained us in horrour and despair and so have kept us still more strongly under the Power of it in sad and dismall apprehensions of Gods wrath provoked against us and inevitably falling on us But Christ hath now appeared like a Day-starre with most cheerfull beames nay he is the Sun of Righteousnesse himself which hath risen upon the World with his healing wings with his exhilarating light that he might chase away all those black despairing thoughts from us But Christ did not rise that we should play and sport and wantonize with his light but that we should do the works of the day in it that we should walk {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} as the Apostle speaketh not in our Night-clothes of sinfull Deformity but clad all over with the comely Garments of Light The Gospel is not big with child of a Phancie of a mere Conceit of righteousnesse without us hanging at distance over us whilst our hearts within are nothing but Cages of unclean birds and like Houses continually haunted with Devils nay the very Rendezvouz of those Fiends of Darknesse Holinesse is the best thing that God himself can bestow upon us either in this World or the World to come True Evangelicall Holinesse that is Christ formed in the hearts of believers is the very Cream and Quintessence of the Gospel And were our hearts sound within were there not many thick and dark fumes that did arise from thence and cloud our understandings we could not easily conceive the substance of Heaven it self to be any thing else but Holinesse freed from those encumbrances that did ever clog it and accloy it here neither should we wish for any other Heaven besides this But many of