of the Gospel and to give it to the Fopperies and Vanities which they preach S. Paul to put the Colossians out of all doubt and ambiguity indicateth expresly to them what this Gospel is of which he speaketh That saith he which you have heard namely of Epaphras who had preached it among them and to whom he gave before an excellent Testimonial for fidelity and sincerity I mean saith he the Gospel which you receiv'd at the beginning from the mouth of true Servants of GOD and not these vain and dangerous Doctrines which evil workers would make to pass with you for the Gospel of CHRIST though they be nothing less then so But to confirm them the more in the faith he sets before them in the second place an excellent encomium of the Gospel which containeth a clear proof of its truth saying That it is the Gospel which was preached to every creature under heaven It is not the Doctrine which these false Apostles sowed here and there in some out quarters whispering and privily advancing the same among light and unstable spirits It is the true Word of the Son of GOD which had been proclaimed through the whole Universe by His command and according to the Oracles of His ancient Prophets That Word which going forth from Jerusalem did spread its self every way in a very little time and being accompanied with the power of its Author made it self be heard and believed in all the Provinces of the habitable earth in spight of the contradictions of Hell and the world His assertion that the Gospel was preached to every creature which is under heaven may be expounded two manner of ways but both of them amounting to the same sense First by a Figure very common in Divine and Humane speech the word Creature may be taken for Man the noblest and most excellent of all the Creatures And the LORD had so used the word before in the same matter when He commanded His Apostles to do what S. Paul doth magnifie in this place Go ye forth said He to them into all the world and preach the Gospel unto every creature Where it is evident that by every creature He understandeth men who alone are capable of hearing and receiving what is preached In this sense when S. Paul saith that the Gospel was preached to every creature it is as much as if he had said to all mankind and among all sorts of men agreeably to what he saith here a little after speaking of himself that he admonisheth every man Col. 1.28 and teacheth every man in all wisdom Secondly these words To every creature may in my opinion be taken also as signifying in all the world and this the rather because it is literally in the Original in all the creature with the Article the and not simply to every creature Now that S. Paul sometimes useth this term the creature to signifie the world this great body and collection of all things which GOD hath created this is manifestly to be seen in the Epistle to the Romans where he saith Rom. 8.19 20 21. That the great and ardent desire of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the children of GOD and again That the creature was made subject to vanity and more a little after That all the creature groaneth and travelleth in pain together until now where it is clear and confessed by the greatest part of Interpreters that the creature signifies the world and our Bibles to make us understand it the better do change the singular number into the plural rendring it les creatures and toutes les creatures the creatures and all the creatures whereas the Original readeth simply the creature and all the creature Taking it thus therefore in this place when the Apostle saith the Gospel was preached in all the creature which is under heaven he meaneth in all the world wherein we dwell wherein GOD hath seated mankind beneath the heavens I will make no stay here now to shew you how it might be truly said in S. Pauls time that the Gospel of our LORD was then preached to all mankind or in all the habitable world or how this event is a clear and solid proof of its truth We have already heretofore handled both the one and the other of these two particulars in expounding if you remember the sixth Verse of this Chapter which affirmed that the Gospel was come unto all the world Upon that Text which signifies no other thing than what the Apostle saith here namely that the Gospel hath been preached in all the creature which is under heaven We shewed first by good and irrefragable testimonies of Ancient Writers both Christian and Pagan that the heavenly Word had been preached within the Apostles days in all Countreys then known either to Greeks or Romans and receiv'd for the most part with fruit so as taking the word World according to the stile of all Languages not simply and absolutely for all the parts of the Terrestrial Globe but only for those which at that time were known to men and which they understood to be inhabited it might be said with truth and without any over-reaching Hyperbole as S. Paul declareth here that the Gospel had been preached in all the creature which is under heaven that is in all the world And in the second place we proved both by the importance of the thing it self and by the respect it hath to the Oracles of the Old Testament which had predicted it many ages before its event that this so swift so sudden and so admirable running of the Gospel through all the world in so few years is a certain and infallible evidence of the verity and divinity of this holy Doctrine obliging consequently both the Colossians heretofore and us at present to hold fast and persevere in the faith which we have given to it without suffering our selves to be ever mov'd away from it either by the cheating arts of false Teachers and their crafty Seducements or by the Threatnings and Persecutions of the world These things having been heretofore largely deduced and opened to you lest the repition of them should be irksome I will pass to the third head of our Text wherein the Apostle sets before the Colossians another Character of true Christian Doctrine to wit that it is the Word the Ministery whereof was committed to him It is saith he the Gospel of which I Paul have been made a Minister He opposeth his heavenly call to the temerity of the false Teachers who ran without having been sent and preached not what Heaven commanded them but what earth inspir'd them with their impulsions and instructions being from flesh and blood and not from the LORD JESUS It was otherwise with Paul all the faithful knew him to have been called from heaven and suddenly changed by the efficacy of Divine power from a Wolf into a Pastor made an Herald and witness of the Gospel immediately by the LORD JESUS instructed in His
float in your head to be pluckt away by an enemy on the first occasion It must be engraven on your heart with a pen of iron and the point of a diamond that is you should be so firmly perswaded of it as nothing may be able to efface it and enfeeble your belief of it I know well every one boasteth to be so But there is a great difference between words and things themselves Shew it me by your lives and I will credit it If you be fully perswaded of the truth of the Gospel How is it that you have not the charity which it so necessarily commandeth us How do you hate men whom it commandeth you to love and love the vices which it enjoyneth you to hate Let us lay by words and possess in deed that full certainty of understanding which the Apostle wisheth us This is the true way for us to abide all joyned together in charity to conflict with and overcome our enemies to edifie and preserve our friends to attract those that are without to retain those that are within to enjoy much consolation in all the trials of this world and to obtain in the end the Salvation and the glory of the other through the grace of our LORD and Saviour JESUS CHRIST To whom with the Father and the Holy Spirit the true and only GOD be all honour praise and glory to ages of ages Amen The SEVENTEENTH SERMON COL CHAP. II. VER III. Vers III. In whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and Knowledg IGnorance of the natures and qualities of the LORD JESUS is the source of all the errors and heresies which have exercis'd the Christian Church from its beginning down to this day 1 Cor. 2.9 And as S. Paul said of the rulers of the Jews that if they had known the true wisdom they would never have crucify'd the LORD of Glory So may we say of the authors of all the false and pernicious Doctrines which men have lusted to introduce into Religion that if they had duly known JESUS CHRIST they would not have ever troubled the Church I pass by the scourges of the first ages the impiety of the Arrians and the Dokites the extravagancy of the Nestorians and the Eutychians together with the numberless branches of the one and the others they all evidently sprung from ignorance of the true being of our LORD JESUS CHRIST and strike directly at Him ruining either His natures by attributing to Him the one a created and imperfect Divinity the others an imaginary and phantastique Humanity or His Person some of them dividing others confounding the natures which are united in it From the same original its clear have come those abuses and disorders which had the vogue in the following ages and which raising themselves by little and little from weak and obscure beginnings have at last got a superiority and suffocated the genuine simplicity and verity of the Gospel Hence proceeded that invocation of Saints which is at this day practised throughout all the Roman Communion Hence hath issued that second sacrifice which they call of the Altar and wherein the heart of Religion is made to consist If men had rightly known the excellency of our LORD's mediation and the effectual extent of His Cross they would never have address'd them to any other Intercessor never have had recourse to any other oblation From the said ignorance also as from a common spring of error have flowed in among people satisfactions and merits of condignity and congruity and indulgences and the rules and odly various Disciplines of Monks and in summ all Superstitions If people had well known what an one JESUS CHRIST is they would have been assuredly content with His Satisfaction and with his infinite merit and with that eternal indulgence which He hath purchas'd for all that believe and with the perfection of His Gospel Hence again hath come the setting up of another Head in the militant Church to be there as the Vicar and coadjutor of JESUS CHRIST If this JESUS whom the Father hath given over all things for an Head to the Church if the fulness of His power and of His wisdom and His infinite love had been well known never had this second Monarchy been erected in His Kingdom In fine we may say to these and to all others that err in Religion Joh. 4.10 as sometime our LORD Himself said to the Samaritan If you knew the gift of GOD and who this JESUS is that speaketh to you in His Scriptures you would seek all your Salvation in Him alone and demand of none besides Him any of the things that are necessary for the refreshment and consolation of your Souls Judg faithful Brethren how much it concerneth us to know Him well and to have Him still before our eyes Since this knowledg sufficeth to secure us from error Accordingly you see with what care the Apostle S. Paul represents Him to us and with what affection he lays out before us all the marvels of this great and divine Subject He described Him before to the Colâ—ssians in a sublime manner and to fasten their hearts to Him alone shewed them that in Him is found all fulness But he contents not himself with this He now informes them further in the Text which you have heard that in Him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledg In these few words there is a great deal of sense and truth Therefore we will employ this whole exercise in the explaining of them to you if GOD permit noting in order all that shall seem to us necessary both for the understanding of the Text and for the instruction and edification of your Souls I know well that the relative word whom is in the Original indifferently whom or which and may be referred either to JESUS CHRIST or to the Mystery of GOD whereof he spake just before if referred to the latter it is as if he had said that in this Mystery are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and I deny not but the words so construed do make a veritable sense it being certain that our LORD's Gospel here called His mystery is an inexhaustible treasury of all saving wisdom and knowledg But it is not needful to come to this and in my mind it s more pertinent and more fluent to refer this word to the Name of CHRIST which immediately preceded and to account the Apostle's meaning is that in JESUS CHRIST are hid these treasures which he doth intend Yet at the bottom as you shall see the sense is the same which way soever of the two you understand it And for a right conceiving of it we must first refute the exposition which some do give of this Text and then assert the true meaning There are some that take these words as if Paul would say that JESUS CHRIST knoweth all things and hath so rich and so abundant a knowledg that He is ignorant of nothing It 's a mistaking of the Apostle's
so dwelleth in the humanity of JESUS CHRIST that the same one who is man is also truly GOD these two natures being so strictly united that they are but one only and the same person by means whereof it may be rightly said that if the Word of the Father be almighty and eternal as indeed it is omnipotency and eternity and infiniteness are in JESUS CHRIST for He is truly the Word of the Father but it cannot be inferred that S. Peter for example or S. Paul had in them an infinite power or wisdom because GOD dwelled in them for that GOD dwelt not personally in them that is so as each of them was GOD but only by the grace of His Spirit Finally I add in the second place that all this dispute is beside the Apostle's scope whose meaning they have misapprehended For his intention here is not to speak of what JESUS CHRIST knoweth What would this conduce to the end he hath proposed to Himself namely the confirming of us in the Gospel and the fortifying of us against those traditions and speculations which false teachers would add to it that we might reject them and content our selves with this JESUS CHRIST whom the Father presenteth to us in His word Who sees not that the Knowledg which our LORD hath of things that He knoweth in Himself is altogether extraneous to this purpose For the thing in question is what we must know to serve GOD aright and be saved in the sequel But JESUS CHRIST revealeth not unto us in the Gospel all that He knoweth either as GOD or as man And so from His knowing all things it followeth not that it is enough for us to embrace His Gospel For will the false Teachers say though He know all for His own part yet He hath not discover'd in the Gospel which His Apostles do preach unto us all that is necessary for us to believe or to practise What then you will say is the true sense of these words Dear Brethren it is not hard to discern if you afford ever so little attention to the thing The Apostle considers the LORD JESUS here not simply and absolutely but so as He is set forth and revealed to us in His Gospel as far as He is the subject of the Apostle's preaching and the object of our faith It 's in this respect he saith that all the treasures of wisdom and knowledg are hid in Him thereby signifying that this CHRIST who is present to us in the Gospel is an object so rich and so divine as He containeth all the matter of wisdom in Him that all the verities whereof it is composed are found fully and abundantly in Him so as for the having of true wisdom there is no need of studying any thing but CHRIST alone we need but know Him and shall be ignorant of nothing As if I should say that the treasures of wisdom or natural science are hid in the world my meaning would be not that the world knoweth the things and verities which appertain unto this science but that it doth contain them that it is a theatre whereon they are exposed to our view and an object by the contemplation whereof we may acquire and learn them And as if I should say that Man is the treasury of all the knowledg of living Creatures I should understand thereby not what man knoweth of them but what he exhibiteth of it being as an exact model and patern of all that the nature of living Creatures comprehends so as by careful studying and meditating him all that may be known of them may be drawn forth In this very manner the Apostle saying that in Christ are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledg doth shew us what is the knowledg not that CHRIST hath in Himself but which He can give to us not what He knoweth but what He maketh us to know He being as it were an abyss of wonders wherein are found all the riches of that heavenly truth in the knowledg whereof true wisdom consisteth From whence the inference he aims to make upon it doth clearly flow namely that we ought to shut our ear against any other doctrine how plausible and probable soever it be For since JESUS CHRIST is the Magazin and the treasury of all wisdom in whom is found all that we ought to know not only for necessity but even unto plenty who seeth not but that it is an extream folly for men to turn themselves another way or trouble their heads about the study of any other object And so this wisdom and this knowledg of which the Apostle speaks is not that cognisance which the LORD hath of the things He knoweth either as GOD or as Man but it is that knowledg of Divine things which we have need of for our attaining to Salvation and in the having whereof the true perfection of our nature doth consist And when he saith that the treasures of this wisdom are hid in Him his meaning is not that these Divine things are known unto our LORD such a conception would be frigid and impertinent but that they are all displayed and set forth in Him that they dwell in Him that they are found there that they are enclosed and to be seen in Him through the veil of the infirmity of His Cross which in a manner hideth and overspreads them This is in my opinion the true and genuine sense of the Apostle's expression Let us now examine each of the terms of it which are all of them wondrous elegant and rich and afterwards consider the truth of them First he calleth this wisdom and knowledg which is in JESUS CHRIST Treasures to intimate both the Excellency and the Abundance of them the word Treasure importing both the one and the other For as you know we properly call such a collection a treasure as is of things not worthless and of no value as dust or chass but precious and exquisite as gold and silver and precious stones and jewels But besides worth this term signifieth abundance also For you will not say that that man hath a treasure who hath but two or three pieces of gold or silver or a diamond or four or five Emeralds To have a treasure is to have a great and a considerable mass of rare and precious things And hereby the Verities which JESUS CHRIST exhibits and affords us the knowledg of are distinguished from those which are found otherwhere Perhaps a good number of knowledges will be found otherwhere but they are unprofitable and of no value They do not make a treasure This worthy title appertaineth only to things rare and precious But the Verities which JESUS CHRIST teacheth those that study Him are so many pearls of inestimable price they are divine jewels such as neither the barbarous Sea coasts nor the Mines of the new World do yield such as neither the Heavens nor the Earth nor any of the store-houses of Nature can furnish us with But abundance also is
he expresly gives it us in charge For though the duty be not only very just but even most necessary yet we are of our selves so cold and sluggish and so indisposed to the performance of it that we all need the heavenly voice of this Minister of GOD to excite us unto it Presuming that we have the things we need in our own power or shall find them in the sufficiency of nature and not considering how they all depend upon the hands of GOD we remit the assiduous invocating of him and make not use of prayer but on extraordinary occasions when humane succour faileth us as the manner is in tragedies where the Deity is not brought in but at some difficulties which no created power or prudence is able to clear On the other hand we are so proudly delicate and tender that if we are not heard as soon as we have spoken we flye off and are ready to say as that King of Israel once did Why should I wait on the LORD any longer 2 Kings 6.33 For the curing our selves of so pernicious an humour and that we may persevere in prayer according to the Apostle's advice let us consider in the first place the continual need we have of GOD's assistance For since it is in Him that we have being life and motion since it is He who sendeth poverty and maketh rich who sets up and puts down who dispenceth health and sickness who bringeth to the grave and reduceth thence who governs the hearts of men and the elements of nature Since it is He again who beginneth who polisheth and perfecteth all the work of grace and crowneth it with glory who effectually produceth in us both the will and the deed of his good pleasure it is evident that without the help of His holy and most happy hand we can never come to possess any good either in our own persons or in our families either in the State or in the Church nor be preserved and secured or freed and saved from any evil of any kind whatever You cannot refuse belief of this great truth without imputing falshood at once to the Scriptures of GOD and the depositions of Nature both which do harmoniously report and averr it to us on all hands Yet if thou credit it why do you not consider what it necessarily inferrs namely that having continual need of GOD's assistance you are by your own interest obliged to implore it continually And that as you cannot pass a day without His favourable succour so neither should you spend a day without calling on His Name Look I beseech you upon poor beggars with what earnestness with what indefatigable perseverance they spend whole daies nay their whole life a petitioning of us It 's a sense of their necessity that gives them this constancy and inspires this courage into them Dear Brethren we have infinitely more need of the succours of GOD than these poor people have of ours Why are not we at least as earnest as constant and assiduous in beseeching Him as they are in asking alms of us As for them our flintiness is such that for the most part they reap little or no fruit of their perseverance in praying of us whereas the LORD according to the riches of His infinite goodness and power never sends away ashamed such as persevere in prayer to Him He hath so promised He doth daily so perform and the Church's experience in all ages assures us of the truth of the word He hath given us in that behalf I confess He doth not alwaies presently give us what we crave But if we be constant if undismayed at His first denials we press Him with a vigorous and an ardent faith there 's nothing but perseverance will draw it from His bounty Gen. 32.25 26. Hos 12.4 in the end It was thus that Jacob obtained the blessing he desired He wrestled stoutly with GOD all night and had power over Him he wept and begged favour and constantly holding fast his LORD I will not let thee go said he to Him untill thou bless me The Canaanitish woman in the Gospel took the same course and was heard in like manner She bore our Saviour's first put-offs without dismay and those hard words It is not good to cast the childrens bread to dogs Matt. 15.26 astonish'd her not She receiv'd this great blow without giving over and her holy importunity came off victorious having drawn from our LORD's mouth that sweet and desirable answer O woman great is thy faith Be it unto thee as thou wilt Imitate this violence It offends not GOD. It appeaseth Him The LORD Himself commands it us expresly and teacheth us that we ought to pray alwaies and not faint by the parable of that poor widow whose importunity overcame the obdurateness of the unjust Judge and drew that from him in the end which neither fear of GOD nor respect of men could sway him to This Judge was wicked and cruel yet the perseverance of a woman conquered him How much rather shall ours bear away what we desire of GOD who is goodness and clemency its self As for that Judge it was his nature and the disposition of his heart that rendred him cruel and inexorable But if the LORD grant not our first requests 't is not that He means indeed to be sparing of His benefits towards us To say true He is more willing to give them than we are to receive them This in total is but a mysterious act of His wisdome and by such delays He would exercise our faith enflame our desires and make tryal of our constancy He hides himself that we might seek Him He retires that we might press after Him and holds back His blessing that we might pluck it from Him His favours are no boons that should be faintly desired We do not know the value of them if we do not esteem them worthy to be asked with instancy The favours we sue for at the Courts and Palaces of men are verily but terrene things things of little value and of a short and uncertain duration Yet what do we not do to obtain them We besiege their gates in the morning early we abide there till late at night we suffer their put-offs and disdains and oftentimes even their reproaches and the outrages of their domesticks They drive us from them they call us troublesome people they accuse our hardiness of impudence or insolency We swallow all these affronts and after all forbear not to come on again inventing if it be possible some new submission to soften them so great and pressing is our desire of those things which we petition them for Christians do ye not blush at having more passion for things of the earth then for things of Heaven Are you not ashamed to sollicite the justice or the favour of men with more earnestness then the grace of GOD To have more patience and perseverance in seeking to win the heart of a worm of the
last words of this Text whence it is that the Colossians had conceived so high an hope Of which saith he you have heard heretofore by the word of truth to wit the Gospel This Soveraign bliss which is reserved for us in the Heavens is so highly raised above nature that neither subtility of sense nor vivacity of reason nor even the light of the Law could discover it to us much less give us the hope thereof 2 Tim. 1.10 That same JESVS CHRIST who hath destroyed death hath brought to light life and immortality by the Gospel Before this they were either entirely unperceived or imperfectly known and hoped for It 's therefore precisely from the Gospel that we draw both the faith and the hope of them He calleth the Gospel the word of truth not as some will have it because it is the Word of JESUS CHRIST who is the Truth and the life for this exposition is more subtil than solid but because it is the most excellent of all Verities those that are learned in the School of Nature and of the Law being mean and unprofitable in comparison of those which the Gospel doth discover to us It may well be that the Apostle would also secretly oppose the doctrine of the Gospel to those of the seducers which still recommended shadows and figures as we shall hear in the following Chapter whereas the Gospel presenteth us the substance and the truth of things And it seems to be in this sense that St. John after he had said The Law was given by Moses addeth in form of opposition John 1.17 But grace and truth came by JESVS CHRIST because the Law had only dark lineaments and shadows whereas the LORD JESUS brought us the lively image the body and the truth of celestial things The Apostle remindeth the Colossians that they had already heretofore heard this Word of truth as it were to protest unto them that he would promote no novelty among them having no other design but to confirm them more and more in the holy doctrine they had already received with faith from Epaphras and other Ministers of the LORD See well beloved Brethren that we had to say to you for the exposition of this Text. It remaineth that we briefly touch at for you the principal points we should gather of it as well for the instruction of our Faith as the edification of our Charity and the consolation of our souls As for Faith 't is for it's security that St. Paul telleth us at the entrance He is an Apostle of JESVS CHRIST by the will of GOD advertising us by this quality He assumeth to receive no doctrine into our belief which hath not been annunciated by these great and highest Ministers of the LORD Let us examine the Spirits and admit only the word of the Apostles If any one Evangelize beyond what they have preached let us hold him for an Anathema We have their Scriptures Let us assuredly believe all that we read in them Let the doctrine which appears not there be suspected to us and praised be GOD that according to this rule we have banished from our Religion that which error and superstition had thrust into Christianity You know that the GOD the CHRIST the Heaven the Worship and Sacraments we preach have been given us by the Apostles of the LORD established by the Will of GOD and do appear throughout in their Gospels and in their Epistles Whereas the Mediators whom our Adversaries invocate the High Priest they acknowledge the Traditions they maintain the Purgatory they fear the greatest part of the Sacraments they celebrate the adoration of the Host the veneration of Images and the voluntary Worships which they practise are not found at all either in the Old or the New Testament Let us therefore firmly retain our Religion as instituted by the Will of GOD and constantly reject what is beyond it as come of man and not of the LORD from the Earth and not from Heaven But it is not enough to make profession of it we must plant this doctrine in our hearts by a lively belief in such sort as we may be able to say with truth That we have faith in JESUS CHRIST and charity towards all the Saints We render thanks to GOD with the Apostle for that of His great mercies He hath vouchsafed to communicate this treasure of His Gospel to us and not in vain since there are among us that have truly made their profit of these spiritual riches But the life of the greater part renders them unworthy of the praise which St. Paul here giveth the Colossians For is this to have Faith in JESUS CHRIST to serve Him so loosely as we do and testifie so little zeal for His glory so little respect to His Commandments so little belief of his documents and so little affection for the interests of His Kingdom As for Charity I am ashamed to speak of it so cooled is ours For if we loved all the faithful should we leave the life of some of them and the reputation of others without succour Should we injure them instead of defending them Should we take away their substance instead of communicating to them our own Should we black their honour instead of preserving it Would their prosperity offend us Would their miseries content us Faithful Sirs remember they are the Saints of GOD His Children and the Brethren of His CHRIST Respect those so sacred names and spare persons that have the honour to belong so nearly to your LORD He will judge you by the treatment you shall give them and write on his account the good and the evil which they shall receive from your hands recompensing it or punishing in the very same manner as if you had honoured or violated Him in His own person He will cut you off from His communion if you do not carefully regard and practise theirs and will never avouch you for His Children if you acknowledge them not for your Brethren And here alledge not to me I beseech you that you have faith I know well that this divine light cannot be in souls which are cold and destitute of Charity But suppose that this were possible I tell you and declare that all your pretended faith should you have the highest degree thereof that may be in the world without charity would be but a shadow an Idol and an illusion and as St. James saith a stinking carkass James 2.26 Do all you will Have as much faith and knowledge as you please if you have not charity you are not a Christian you are but a false and deceitful image of one Charity is absolutely necessary to the perfection of a Christian It is the badge of this holy Discipline it is the honour and the glory of it and the Apostle as you see sets it down here among it's essential parts Faith shall cease in Heaven when we shall see instead of believing But charity shall remain for ever Have then a
an example of it in the Text which you even now heard For having said afore that the Colossians had heard of the hope which is laid up for us in the Heavens by the word of truth to wit the Gospel from thence he takes occasion to interpose in this verse something to its commendation representing to us the extention and efficacy of this Divine word of life The Gospel saith he which is come unto you as also it is into all the world and bringeth forth fruit as it doth also in you since the day that you heard and knew the Grace of God in truth In the two verses that follow he praiseth Epaphras who had by his Ministry converted the Colossians to the knowledge of the LORD giving him an excellent testimony of fidelity and goodness and mingling therewith some praises of the Colossians themselves As also saith he you have heard of Epaphras our dear fellow servant who is a faithful Minister of CHRIST for you who also hath declared unto us your Charity which you have in the Spirit This shall be if it please the LORD the matter of this action And to proceed upon it in order we will consider one after the other the two particulars that present themselves as you see in the Text of St. Paul to wit the praise of the Gospel in the former verse and that of Epaphras in the two next touching at also upon each what the Apostle intermixeth to the commendation of the Colossians As to the Gospel he toucheth at two points First its admirable progress and its great and sudden spread It is saith he come unto you as also into all the world and secondly its divine effectualness to convert men and change their manners and life And it bringeth forth fruit saith he as also it doth in you since the day that you heard and knew the Grace of GOD in truth He saith therefore first That the Gospel was come to the Colossians secondly That it is also come unto all the World About the first there is no difficulty For since there was a Church in the City of Colosse it is evident that the Gospel by which Christian Churches are founded and builded had been Preached to them Only we should observe in this event the marvels of the goodness of GOD towards the Colossians For they were a barbarous and an Idolatrous people very far off from the Countrey and the Religion of Israel a portion of Phrygia a Province infamous for its abominations from whence had issued the mysteries and infernal devotions of Cibele called by the Gentiles the mother of the GODs the most detestable of all Pagan Idols and in whose service were committed the most unclean and shamefullest horrours The Colossians as other inhabitants of Phrygia were plunged in this gulf of vileness when the LORD vouchsafed to visit them and make the light of His Gospel to arise upon them Whence appears that the knowledge He gives us of His word is a present from His meer grace and not the pay of our pretended merits For what had the Colossians in the condition they then were that might invite Him to communicate this rich treasure to them what had they on the contrary but might have diverted Him from it seeing all among them was full of a profound and inveterate Idolatrousness You see also the Apostle saith not that they were come to the Gospel but that the Gospel was come to them to shew us that it is GOD that cometh to us who preventeth us by His grace according to the determinate purpose of His good pleasure The sick do go or send to the Physician and sollicite the succour of his art Here quite contrary the supream Physitian of souls seeketh to the sick He comes to them in His benignity He sendeth them His Ministers and presenteth to them His remedies when they dream of nothing less Luk. 19.10 than of their malady and the cure necessary for them The Son of man came to seek and save that which was lost He dispatcheth His servants to Colosse and elsewhere to bear thither His salvation to people that thought not save of destroying themselves He makes Himself be found of them that sought Him not Isa 65.11 and saith unto a Nation that was not called by His Name Behold me behold me Let a man search as much as he pleaseth He shall never be able to find any reasonable cause of this dispensation of GOD communicating His Gospel at certain times and to certain places but His sole good pleasure And that we might the better note this truth He often directeth the light of His word to those that governed themselves worst in the state of nature and hideth it from them that seemed less defiled than others He imparteth His Gospel to the Colossians to the Ephesians to the Corinthians and such like the most lost men that were in all kind of superstitions and Vices He saith nothing to the Gymnosophists or the Brachmans or to divers others as well Barbarians as Greeks which were esteemed at that time the most innocent of all mankind as in effect there appeareth much more of justice and honesty in what is reported to us of their manners than in those of any other people Wherefore hath GOD taken this course Because if He had done otherwise if He had called only those in whose policy and life was seen some outward goodness to shine forth passing by those whose manners had nothing which was not damnable we should have believed without all doubt what some cannot yet forbear to say that it is the works of men that oblige GOD to call them and to impart His Gospel to them and that if in rigour they be not worthy of this favour they merit it at least in a seemliness of equity and in congruity as they speak of it in the Schools of Rome Therefore the LORD useth very often a clean contrary procedure to make us understand that those whom He calleth do not more than those he leaveth merit ought at all as in effect it is most true that all men in the corruption wherein they are born do nothing that is of value the most splendid of their pretended vertues in this estate being but a plaister and a deceitful dawbing which under a fair appearance hideth only deformity and filth and that if He vouchsafe to illuminate any with the light of his Gospel it is of the sole good pleasure of His grace He doth it and not at all for merit of theirs It was therefore a miracle of the Divine goodness that this saving Doctrine came to the Colossians who by their nature were so far from it and the Apostle remindeth them of it to animate them more and more in sincere gratitude towards the author of so great a benefit But that which he addeth is much more strange and incredible that the Gospel was come into all the world He testifieth it too elsewhere as here a little after where
he saith that the Gospel is preached to every creature Col. 1.23 that is under Heaven and at the tenth of the Epistle to the Romans where applying to the Ministers of the LORD JESUS what the Psalmist had sung of the Heavens Rom. 10.18 Their sound saith he is gone forth through all the earth and their words unto the ends of the World And elsewhere speaking of himself he saith That from Jerusalem Rom. 15.19 and round about it even to Illyricum he had made the Gospel of JESUS CHRIST to abound and after the time he wrote those words He sowed it besides in the Isle of Malta and at Rome Now if the other twelve Apostles and the seventy Disciples and the Evangelists did labour each according to his measure in proportion with St. Paul as it is not to be doubted but they did no one will have cause to be astonished that all they together should have by that time carryed the Gospel through the whole world We read likewise in the writings of the first Christians Justin Clement Tertullian and others that in their time that is about 130 and 160 years only after the LORD's death all was full of Christian Churches and that there was no Nation either among the Greeks or the Barbarians nay the very Scythians or Tartarians wherein CHRIST JESUS had not servants And though these testimonies cannot be rejected without extream impudence there being no probability that either St. Paul or those other Writers would have spoken of the thing in such sort if it had not been true yet entirely to disarm incredulity I will add that the very same appears by the Books of Pagans of that time that are remaining For Tacitus a Roman Historian a passionate enemy of Christianity Amel. l. 15. though otherwise a grave man and of great esteem among his Countrymen hath left in Writing that in the eleventh year of Nero that is only eight years after the date of this Epistle of St. Paul to the Colossians a severe search having been made after it there was found a very great multitude of Christians at Rome This sufficeth to justifie what the Apostle says For since that Preaching was able to penetrate so far on this side athwart Provinces that made as it were the heart of the Roman Empire it might be much more easily spread towards the East in the Estates of the Parthians and in the Indies even whither St. Thomas went as appears by tracks of it that remain of it to this day in those Countries and towards the South in Egypt and Ethiopia where St. Matthew Preached as the ancients do report and towards the North whither passed some of the other Disciples This was well nigh the whole world then known of the Greeks and Romans and thus without doubt the Apostle understands it in this place For as to those great Countreys discovered in the West about one hundred and fifty years ago which they commonly call the West Indies or the New world it is evident the Ancients had no certain knowledge of them and it is very likely that they were not yet peopled in the Apostle's time the furtherst memory which the Nations there have preserved of things yerst done among them being but for four or five hundred years at most Be it concluded therefore that taking the World as is commonly understood for Countries inhabited and known at that time the Gospel was then already come into all the world The Apostle mentions it to the Colossians First to confirm them the more in the saith they had given to the Gospel I confess that its truth depends not upon the success of the Preaching it nor upon the multitude of them that believe it Though all the world should reject it though Heaven and Earth should persecute it the faith of a Christian ought to abide alwayes firm and unshaken being founded as it is upon the word of GOD and not upon the consent of men as on the contrary though the whole universe should maintain errour we should not be for this either obliged to follow errour or excusable for having followed it this order of GOD subsisting for ever that we must not follow a multitude to do evil But thoug it be thus yet it is a great consolation to a faithful soul to see the truth spread abroad And since the Divine Vertue of the LORD is so much the more powerfully declared by how much the more men it converteth unto his Christ it is evident that this extension of the Gospel helpeth and confirmeth our Faith in as much as it furnisheth us with an excellent testimony of the power of GOD and of the efficacy of His word But I add also that the success here touched by the Apostle contains a manifest argument of the Divinity of the Gospel and that in two respects For first if you consider the thing in its self it is so great and marvelous as that it sheweth sufficiently that this Doctrine is not only true but even Divine and Celestial When St. Paul wrote this Letter it was not full thirty years that JESUS CHRIST had suffered death in Judea and yet the Gospel as he saith was already come into all the world How could it have made so much way in so little time penetrated so many obstacles flown into so many places infinitely distant if it had not been both of a Celestial Original and carryed by a divine force Certainly as the extension of the light of the Sun who inlightens the whole Hemisphere in an instant and the rapidness of its motion who visits all the Climats of the universe in four and twenty hours doth evidently shew us that it is a work of GOD and of a nature altogether different from that of Earthly and Elementary things In like manner this so swift and suddain course of the Evangelique Doctrine that fill'd the world in so little time pierced through and dissipated the darkness and made it self be seen so quickly from one end of the Heavens to the other invincibly proves that it is a divine thing and no humane production Look on all the disciplines that ever had sway in the World You shall not find any of them that was establisht in this sort and made such a progress in so small a time The religions of the Pagans lived only in the Countries where they were born and if sometimes they stretched further it was rather the curiosity of strangers that brought them from the place of their birth than their own design or vigour all those so famous sects of the Philosophy of the Greeks did abide each of them in the soil that bare them And the Doctrine which the Popes of Rome have established in their Communion came not to the estate wherein we see it but by a long succession of time one age gaining one point and another adding a second till after many ages it took in fine the consistence and form it hath at this day and wherein
it is maintained by the terrour of Inquisitions and the pomp of a worldly power and the favour of the Great who find their own interests in it It is only the Gospel of the LORD that from its birth had the courage and the force to fly every way penetrating with incredible swiftness all the Regions of the habitable world in less than five and twenty years And let none alledge unto me here the Seduction of Mahomet which infected the East and the South and a part of the West it self in a very little time For there is nothing alike in the progress of the one and the other of these two doctrines I pass by other differences that may be observed I will only touch at one of the most essential namely that Mahomet and his Successours advanced not their impostures but by force of Arms and dint of Sword not Preaching and establishing their Doctrine save in the Countreys they conquer'd and among the Nations they brought under their Yoke To say true it was their Iron and not their Alcoran that ran through and spoiled the World What was strange or supernatural in their success That a Troop of Robbers whom their own need or others cowardice and confusion emboldened to enterprise could seize them of some Towns by fraud or force That puffed up with the good fortune of their first successes and by a multitude of people joyned with them they pushed further on and issuing out of their Arabia should attempt the outmost quarters of the Roman Empire very ill-garded at that time and in a manner exposed to pillage and that gaining ground by little and little they should fall on further and break in on one side and the other as the division and weakness of their enemies gave them opportunity so as in fine in the space of three or four score years they saw by these progresses the East and the South in their hands Sure there was nothing but humane in all this Alexander the Macedonian had yer-while done as much or more in less than fifteen years and Sesostris and divers others both before and after him It is then no Miracle that the Religion of the Saracens born if I may so say upon the wings of their victorious Ensignes saw much of the World by this means in fifty or sixty years If any marvel be it is that of their armes which did so great exploits in so small time and not that of their Alcoran which never entred but into places whose gates fire and sword opened for it But as to the Gospel of the LORD JESUS it is quite otherwise It had not to sustain it and advance it in the world either the aid of force or the favour of armes or the successes of Warr or the exploits of any Conquerour It had not in its service either the charms of Eloquence or the subtilities of Philosophy in one word it had no humane or terrene succour that you can possibly imagine Those that carryed it were twelve or thirteen Fishermen with a little number of others of the same Cloth without Credit without Armes without courage without Experience the off-scouring and sweepage of the world weakness and imbecillity it self who far from enterprising upon ought of other mens had renounced all that was their own who instead of smiting and slaying where whip'd and ston'd at every turn instead of attaquing did not so much as make resistance to them that ill handled them living in an extreme humility and innocence With this poor equipage the Gospel undertook the world and though it met every where with gates shut up and walls garrison'd with all that was terrible to force it back though the Jews persecuted it the gentiles derided it great and small had it in abomination Magistrates banish'd it and put it under the most cruel punishments though all did rend it with injuries and reproaches yet naked as it was it made it self room and in spight of so many dreadful impediments ran from East to West and from South to North and so constantly despised all earthly means as it reigned every where for sixcore years before it had one Magistrate or Captain on its side disarming and despoiling them when it received any so far was it from making advantage of their arms or authority We may affirm therefore that this progress of the Gospel is a thing altogether singular not at any time else seen or hapning in the world and with which neither Mahumetism nor any other Religion hath any community Consequently that this is a mark of the truth and divinity of this holy doctrine those that are humane neither having nor being able to have that admirable force and vertue which appeareth in it But this event proves the same thing yet again after another manner inasmuch as it was a manifest accomplishment of ancient Oracles yer-while given by the LORD to His former people and registred in His Scriptures which foretell in divers places that the Messiah should spread all abroad the knowledge of the true GOD which was before shut up within the strait limits of Judea Isa 60.3 9.1 that the Nations one day should walk in His light and that people sitting in darkness should see a great light which the LORD JESUS explaining in the dayes of His flesh had said upon it Mat. 24.14 that His Gospel should be Preached in all the world These predictions therefore appearing at that time so punctually and so admirably and in so short a space fulfilled who can doubt any more but that the LORD JESUS is the true CHRIST since never any but He revealed the GOD of Israel and His service to the World and that His Apostles were the servants of this same GOD who having foretold these things so many ages before so mightily executed them by their Ministry in the fulness of time But besides the confirmation of the Colossians faith in general I account that the Apostle would more-over by this Elogy he gives the Gospel to be come into all the world fortifie them in particular against the new doctrines which some seducers were sowing in their Church For since other Churches founded here and their in divers parts of the world had heard nothing of them it was a very evident argument that they were not any part of the Gospel that is of what the Apostles Preached Whence we may draw to give you this advice by the way an invincible proof both of the truth of the doctrine we believe and of the vanity of that which we contest about with our adversaries of Rome For as to that we hold it is evident the Apostles Preached it in all the world both by word of mouth and by writing there being none of the necessary positive and assirmative articles of our faith but doth appear in all the Monuments of Apostolique Preaching to wit both in the Books they wrote and in the Churches they sounded As for our adversaries it is no less evident they can
never shew that the Monarchy or infallibility of their Pope or the Adoration of their Host or the service of their Images or their invocation of Saints or Purgatory or the trafick of their Indulgencies or any other of the points which we debate with them was Preached in all the world at the time of the holy Apostle no track at all of them being found in any of the Books or Memorials that remain of that age or of a long time beyond it only a man may perceive them some ages after growing up one in one place and another in another at divers times and in different Climats an evident sign that they are not parts of the Gospel of JESUS CHRIST which was Preached entire in all the world in St. Pauls life time but inventions and traditions of men that came since After this suddain and admirable spreading of the Gospel the Apostle adds the efficacy it had in the places where it had been preached It is not only come into all the world saith he but which is more it bringeth forth fruit there as it doth also in you It bears the same fruits there which it hath produced among you You discern that these fruits of the Gospel signifie no other thing but that faith charity honesty modesty temperance and the other spiritual vertues which it produceth in the souls of those that hear it and receive it as they ought and in which the Sanctification of men doth consist It is this power and efficacy of the Gospel which the LORD would represent unto us in the Parable of the seed to which He compareth it Matt. 13. and which according to the divers disposition of the places where it fell brought forth more or less fruit in some an bundred fold in other fixty and elsewhere but thirty Never was seen a thing more marvellous The Gospel changed the whole earth in a few years It crowned plants with flowers and fruits that were barren and accursed It filled the desarts the plains and the most desolate heaths with exquisit and delicious trees That which the Laws of Nations that which the most excellent Philosophy had husbanded whole ages in vain no sooner felt the hand of these Evangelique Vine-dressers and labourers but suddainly losing the bitterness of its first juice was sweetned and became loaden with Celestial fruits There was piety sweetness and humanity seen to flourish where never had appeared ought but the horrour of Superstition of Atheism of cruelty and all other kind of Vices This is the change which the LORD had foretold in Isaiah Isa 41.19 in those Allegorical words I will make to grow in the Desart the Cedar the Pine tree the Myrtle and the Olive I will set in the Plains the Firre-tree the Elme and the Box together And elsewhere again comparing the Gospel to a rain that watereth the Earth and makes it bud and bring forth corn and bread So shall my word be saith He it shall not return to me without effect Isa 55.10 11. but it shall do all my pleasure and prosper to the things I shall send it for And this divine fruitfulness of the doctrine of the Gospel which miraculously changed the world is also a most evident argument of it's truth and of it's heavenly original there never having been Religion or Discipline on earth that had so lively and universal an efficacy But the Apostle particularly commendeth here the fruits it had brought forth among the Colossians It fructifieth in you saith he since the day that you heard and knew the grace of GOD in truth He praiseth both their teachableness in that this word had fructified in them from the first day they heard it and their constancy for that it continued still fructifying to that time The earth produceth not fruit as soon as it hath received the seed there must be time to mollifie the grain to make it thrust forth and sprout to raise it up and garnish it with fruits In this spiritual Husbandry it is not so The Gospel if rightly received into your heart will fructifie there from that very moment Receive it then faithful Brethren Defer not till the morrow This day that you hear the voice of the LORD harden not your hearts Psalm 95. It 's one of the most pernicious artifices of the enemy to suggest to men that they put off their conversion to the future Give me saith He this day and thou shalt give God the next Give me the present and Him the future to me the flower and vigour of thy life to Him the remains and thine old age So they find at last when all hath been given to Satan and the world nothing remains for them to give the LORD to whom they have left the future only that is what was not theirs disposing of the present which alone was in their power to the pleasure of their mortal enemy Christians take heed of his wiles and hasten ye out of his snares Imitate these faithful Colossians Receive the Word of GOD so deep into your hearts that it may fructifie there from this very day You cannot be the LORD' 's too soon Put not off the design of being happy to another time consider that time fleeth and life runs out and death comes while you deliberate But if we must begin betimes to bear fruit worthy of the Gospel it is not mean't that we may cease again soon after as forward Trees which make an end first as they did begin The plants of the LORD begin early but never cease to fructifie They bring forth fruit in their through-white old age and are even then in good liking and bide fresh as the Psalmist singeth Psal 92.15 If you have embraced the Gospel with ardour retain it with an invincible constancy For salvation is not prepared save for them that shall persevere that shall keep the verdure of the heavenly sap in them in spight of the scorching heats of Summer and the coolings of Winter so as no season how rude and contrary soever doth ever strip them of their mystical flowers and fruits As to what remains the Apostle calleth the faith of the Gospel The knowledge of the grace of GOD because it is not possible to relish this heavenly doctrine if a man have not received and experimented the mercy which it offereth us in JESUS CHRIST This grace is the heart and substance of the Gospel Whence appears that it is a corrupting it and a changing the nature of it to thrust into it the doctrine of the satisfactions and merits of men things either wholly incompatible with Grace or such as at least extreamly darken and enfeeble it When he faith that they heard and knew the Grace of GOD in truth he meaneth either that they received it truly in sincerity of heart without hypocrisie or that this Grace they knew was delivered them pure and sincere without any mixture either of Pharisaical Superstition or Philosophical Vanity or finally
naturally Let us learn then in the second place to give the LORD alone the whole glory of all that we are in His Son as in reality it belongs to none but Him He hath not only given us this rich inheritance the purchase of the blood of His Son CHRIST He hath even given us the capacity to enter into it and possess our part of it Besides His making us the present He hath also given us the strength to receive it For it is not with the inheritance of GOD as with the honours of earthly Princes these fall often into the hands of persons most uncapable to possess them That Divine honour of the Heavenly inheritance is given to none but those that are capable of it that is who have the conditions requisite for having part in it to wit faith and repentance But the same GOD who hath prepared the heritage for us gives us also the preparation which is necessary for entring into it according to what the Apostle saith elsewhere 2 Cor. 3 5. Joh. 6 44. It is GOD who is our capacity or sufficiency and what our LORD Himself averreth in St. John No man can come unto me except the Father who hath sent me draw him This again is that which the Apostle intendeth Phil. 2.13 in the Epistle to the Philippians That it is GOD who produceth in us with efficacy the will and the deed according to His good pleasure 2 Cor. 5.5 Eph. 2.10 1 Cor. 3.9 And elsewhere he compriseth this whole work of the grace of GOD in one only word saying It is He that formeth us for the self same thing Therefore he calleth us in one place the workmanship of GOD and His Creation in JESVS CHRIST and in another His husbandry and His building Whence it doth appear that the offer of grace which is made to all by the Gospel if there be nothing else doth not give us part in the heavenly inheritance I grant it is sufficient in its self and would produce its effect in man if the badness of his heart had not blinded him But this deplorable blindness he hath obstructeth the effect which these offers of the divine Grace should produce Wherefore GOD himself maketh us capable of them by that inward operation of His Spirit wherewith He accompanieth the preaching of the Gospel in the hearts of His elect by reason whereof they are called the taught of GOD. Joh. 6.45 It 's this teaching which renders them capable of entring into the communion of His Son according to what He saith in St. John Whoever hath heard and learned of the Father Ibid. cometh unto me Thus He made Lydia capable of having part in his inheritance opening her heart to understand the things Paul spake as the sacred History doth report It 's without doubt in the same manner He also made both St. Paul and these Colessians and all the rest of the faithful capable of the same effect enlightning them within and leading captive their hearts into the yoke of the Gospel In fine we may again observe how contrary to Apostolick doctrine the presumption of those is who vaunt them of meriting salvation If there be any thing in us to which merit is attributed without doubt it is our capacity and sufficiency that we are meet to partake of the Kingdom of GOD. But this very thing is a present from GOD for which we owe Him most humble thanks How then and by what right can we in justice demand pay and wages for it Would it not be altogether as if a patient should enter action against his Physitian and compel him to recompence the being cured by his art Or a poor man demand wages of us for receiving our almes or a prisoner for having been redeemed with our money Let a man turn and transform things as much as he will it is clear that gratification and merit are incompatible and that He who is of right obliged to render thanks cannot without folly pretend to have merited by that very thing for which he renders thanks Our sufficiency and capacity is a gift of GOD or it is not If it be a gift of His why pretend you that it is meritorious If it be not why doth the Apostle thank our LORD for having made us capable to have part in His inheritance The word Inheritance which the Apostle employeth here evidently confirms the same truth as an ancient Doctor of the Church hath well observed Chrysostom it loc Why is it saith he that the Apostle useth the word Inheritance To shew us that no man obtaineth the Kingdom of Heaven by his own works or performances But as an Inheritance depends upon happiness and not upon merit so is it in this matter None can exhibit a form of life and conversation exquisite enough to be worthy of the Kingdom The whole proceedeth from the gift of GOD. To proceed I doubt not but St. Paul took this term from the Old Testament wherein the Land of Canaan destined and given to the Children of Israel for an inheritance according to the promises made to their Fathers was the figure of this blessed spiritual and divine life in possession whereof GOD putteth us by the Gospel of His Son beginning it here below by the consolation and sanctification of His Spirit and reserving to complete it on high one day in the Heavens by the communication of His immortal glory For as each Israelite had his portion in the Land of Canaan the same in substance with the rest but diversly qualified so each believer hath his share in celestial life yet after such a manner as though for the main they all possess the same life nevertheless it is diversly proportioned and relished to each of them Again as none but the Children of Abraham had right and title to that ancient inheritance So there are none but the Children of the promise which are born of the word of GOD and not of flesh or of blood that have part in the new For this cause the Apostle entitles it The inheritance of Saints Away ye unbelieving and profane It is not for you that GOD hath prepared this glorious inheritance Deceive not your selves 1 Cor. 6.10 Neither Fornicators nor Idolaters nor Adulterers nor the Effeminate nor Thieves nor Covetous persons nor Drunkards nor Revilers nor Extertioners shall have part in the Kingdom of GOD. It is designed for Saints alone The portion of the profane and ungodly is elsewhere during this generation in the world and in its wretched delights and when it shall pass away in the lake of fire and brimstone But the Apostle having stiled that salvation which GOD communicateth to us in His Son the Inheritance of Saints addeth further in light As light is in Scripture the symbole of two things knowledge and glory so it may be taken here two wayes either for the knowledge of those divine things which GOD revealeth in His Gospel or for that soveraign joy
as being incommunicable to any other besides Him Isa 42.5 45.12 48.13 51.13 It is I saith He who have made the earth and who have stretched out the Heavens Finally the thing speaks of it self For the Power requisite for the creating the world that is to make it of nothing is so great and so infinite that the Philosophers with all the light of their Reason could not comprehend it but were so far from attributing it to any Creature that they deny'd it unto GOD Himself Whence it follows that if there be any part of Divine Glory proper and essential unto GOD it is this same without all doubt Seeing then it is found in the LORD JESUS we must necessarily confess that He is in truth the Great GOD most High Eternal and Blessed for ever above all things As for the distinction they advance to cover their error alledging that the Son was but the Instrument and Minister of the Father in the work of Creation not the first and principal cause it is vain and frivilous For this creative vertue being infinite it cannot be but in an Infinite subject and in a Soveraign and principal Agent It cannot be communicated to an Instrument seeing that every Instrument being finite is consequently uncapable of receiving and containing an Infinite vertue so as since it is in the person of the Son it unavoidably follows that He is not the instrumental as they say but the first and the principal cause in the work of Creation Rev. 1. And S. John clearly shews it in the Revelation where he saith That He is Alpha and Omega the first and the last a thing that cannot be said of an instrumental cause which hath necessarily above it another Agent of a diverse nature The Apostle also clearly refuteth this gloss when he appropiates that to JESUS CHRIST which the Prophet uttered evidently of the first the principal and supreme cause of the Creation LORD thou hast founded the earth at the beginning and the Heavens are the works of thy hands An Application which would be evidently false and impertinent if JESUS CHRIST were only the instrmental cause of the Creation The observation upon which they pretend to ground this distinction is no whit more solid to wit that the Scripture saith indeed the world was created by the Son but not that the Son did create the world For first S. Paul saith in express terms that the Son founded the earth and though he had not said it who sees not but that the one and the other do amount to the same thing and that His saving All things were created by the Son is all one as if he had said That the Son created all things But if this form of Speech would infer that the Son is not the first and principal Efficient of the Creation the same must be concluded also of the Father since S. Paul speaking of Him saith in like manner That All things are of Him and by Him and for Him But that which he saith here of JESUS CHRIST in the second place That all things were created for Him doth further demonstrate the same truth very clearly For these words do signifie that the Son is the last and supreme end of the Creation of things a matter which pertaineth only to the principal cause and not to the instrument it useth for the effecting of its work Sure it is clear that it 's the true GOD who is the ultimate end for which all things were created that the glory of His Divine Vertues might be manifested so as He might be known and served as He is worthy This falls not under contest Since therefore it is for the Son that all things were created it must be acknowledged that He is the true Eternal GOD it being not possible that a Creature should be the end for which all things were created From thence the Apostle concludes in the third place That JESVS CHRIST is before all things For since He created them all it must of necessity be that He should subsist before they were And he noteth it expresly that none might suspect Him of novelty as if he He had not been but since Moses under colour of His having not been manifested till the fulness of time John 8. He is not only before Moses and Abraham as Himself saith in S. John but before all things from the beginning before there was any thing created before the mountains were settled Prov. 8. and before the hills As saith Wisdom that is the Son himself in the Book of the Proverbs But the Apostle after having thus given to the LORD JESUS the glory of creating all things passeth on further and attributeth to Him the preservation of them All things saith he subsist by him It 's this which he expresseth otherwhere in other terms when he saith Hebr. 1.3 That he sustaineth all things by His powerful word that is to say He preserves them by His Providence as He created them by His vertue their being their life and their motion so depending on Him that when He hideth His face they are troubled and fail utterly and return unto their dust or their nothing as the Prophet singeth Whence yet again appears Psal 104.29 that He is the true GOD the Eternal one blessed for ever with the Father forasmuch as this preservation of the Universe is one of the highest and most incommunicable glories of the Deity Let us now consider what are those things whose Creation and Conservation the Apostle doth attribute to the Son of GOD All things saith he were created by Him those that are in heaven and those that are in earth visible and invisible whether they be Thrones or Dominions or Principalities or Powers He leaves not any Creature of higher or of middle or of lower rank without the reach of his assertion and for the enclosing of them all within it he makes use first of a division taken from their elements I mean the places where their natural abode is saying Things in heaven and things in earth The Scripture speaketh often of them in the same manner As when we are forbidden in the Decalogue to make Religious use of any Image or the likeness of any thing whatever Thou shalt not make thee saith the LORD any image of things that are in heaven above or in the earth beneath or in the waters under the earth By Heaven he meaneth not only that vast Region where we see the Sun and the other Stars to be lifted up But also Paradise the Habitation of Angels and of the souls of Saints above and this void space where the Fowls do fly and where the Showers and the Thunders and the other Meteors are formed below By Earth he meaneth this whole Globe wherein we live with the waters that run in stream or do float here There being then no creature but is in one of these two places it is evident he doth comprize them all by saying
Apostle addeth namely that the Church is the body of CHRIST this further clearly sheweth that none but CHRIST is the Head of it For if the Pope for example were head of it the universal Church should be the Popes body as it is the LORD's But where is the Christian ear that doth not tingle at so strange so unheard of and so profane language And so we see how vehement and inordinate soever the passion of men hath been for this title of Head of the Church no man hath ever hitherto called the Church His body every one confessing that it is no ones body but JESUS CHRIST's alone They should then grant in like manner that none is its Head but He only Since it cannot have any for Head but Him whose body it is In the next place note I pray in opposition to another error of the same adversaries of ours that CHRIST His being Head of the Church doth not at all infer that the Church toucheth Him corporeally or that the bodies of the faithful are properly and substantially joyned to Him as the members of a natural body are joyned to their head Every one confesseth that this must be understood figuratively and mystically and after the same manner all men take the other expressions for the most part by which our union with the LORD is represented as when He is called the Foundation of the Church the corner stone the vine-stock of the Faithful and their raiment No one concludeth that it is necessary for the verifying of these passages our bodies should really touch His substance Why then will they infer it from other places where to set forth the same mysterie it is said that He is our bread our meat and our drink If He be our Head if He be our Raiment if He govern and clothe us without touching our bodies with His why may not He be our bread and nourish us without real entring into our bodily throat and stomach If the one be mystically and figuratively understood why will you force me to take the other corporally and literally I say the same upon the Apostles express declaring that the Church is the body of CHRIST Our adversaries do conclude no Transubstantion from hence and they confess that for salving the truth of these words there is no need that either the Church should lose its own substance and nature or be really changed into the substance of the body of CHRIST Nevertheless they will by all means have it that the same words when the Gospel saith of the bread which our LORD took that it is the body of CHRIST As if it were not rational and easie to say that the bread as well as the Church is the body of CHRIST figuratively and in a mystical way If they admit this sense in one of these places why do they reject it in the other where the nature of things themselves and the truth of heavenly doctrine doth no less necessarily require it In fine not to make any longer stay here St. Paul cleareth up to us in two words another question which the passion of Rome hath so horribly embroyled in these latter times namely what is the nature and the true definition of the Church The Church is saith he the body of CHRIST These two words overthrow all the Philosophizing of our adversaries about this subject in order either to the straitning or enlarging the Communion of the Church beyond what ought to be I say the straitning For they admit to the possessing of this name those only that acknowledge the Bishop of Rome whereas St. Paul alloweth it to all those that belong to JESUS CHRIST and that have His Spirit no one of these but being of His body and by consequent of His Church in whatever place and under whatever Pastors he live I say also the enlarging it For these Doctors who are so severe on one hand as that they give the name of the Church only to the Roman Communion are so loose and so very indulgent on the other hand as they yield it up to the most desperate and prophane Hypocrites that are provided they addict themselves to their Pope not requiring as they affirm Bellarm. 3. de Eccl 〈…〉 2. as any interiour vertue in them to be members of the true Church but only an exteriour profession of the Roman belief and Communion But St. Paul fulminates down this no less impious then extravagant doctrine by saying that the Church is the body of CHRIST For no one can be of His body without being quickned by His Spirit Rom. 8.9 He that hath not the Spirit of CHRIST saith the same Apostle elsewhere is none of His. Certainly then it is not true that the prophane or hypocritical are parts of the Church There is no communion between CHRIST and Belial The body and the members of the one cannot be the body and members of the other Forasmuch as the Church is the body of CHRIST it must of necessity be concluded that these people of whom our adversaries compose their Church which have not as they say any piety or internal vertue and by consequence are members of Belial may well be since they will have it so true members of the Roman but assuredly not of the Christian Church And if the Pope do own them for his sheep we are very certain that the LORD JESUS will never avouch them for His. But it is time to come to the two other titles which the Apostle here giveth in the next place to our LORD JESUS CHRIST adding that He is the beginning or the principle and this first-born from the dead Even as when he had said before that JESVS CHRIST is the first-born that is the Lord of every creature he presently brought the reason of it taken from thence that all things were created by Him In like manner now having said that He is the Head of the Church he foundeth this truth upon His being the author of the Church He that formed and constituted it and the Prince of this new generation He that will give it the true and utmost perfection of its being For the word which we have rendred the beginning signifies also the principle that is to say the cause and origine of a thing and first-born denoteth likewise both Him who is born before the rest and him who is the Master or the Prince of the rest he saith therefore first that the LORD JESVS is the beginning or the principle Certainly this appertaineth unto Him upon the account of the first creation inasmuch as He is the Author of it the word and wisdom which did produce the Universe and it may be 't is in this sense that He calleth Himself in the Apocalypse Rev. 3.14 1.8 21.6 22.13 the beginning of the creation of GOD and elsewhere in the same Book Alpha and Omega the beginning and the end But speech here being of the Church and the resurrection the word beginning must
elsewhere That GOD hath reconciled us to Himself by JESVS CHRIST But it seems that this is not precisely that Reconciliation which S. Paul meaneth here First because the things in heaven which he expresly puts among the parties reconciled have no part therein the Angels that dwell in the Heavens pure and holy as they are having never fallen into any alienation from GOD. Secondly because of that Reconciliation the Apostle will speak instantly in the words immediately following in which he saith Having made peace by the blood of His cross so as the former words must of necessity be referred to some other Reconciliation except we will render the language of this Divine Writer culpable of a vain and fruitless repetition The truth is they that understand these words of Reconciliation with GOD do find themselves much intangled in the matter and have recourse to divers means for clearing them of this difficulty Some affirm that though the Angels be holy and blessed yet they were not exempt from needing the death of JESUS CHRIST to merit and obtain their confirmation and perseverance in the estate they had a bold Doctrine and such as it is hard to find any foundation for in the Scripture For by this reckoning JESUS CHRIST should also be the Mediator of Angels a thing that seems to cross the end and the true nature of this Office First because a Mediator should partake of the nature of the parties whom he reconcileth as you see that JESUS CHRIST the Mediator between GOD and men is GOD and man whereas He took not the nature of Angels Secondly because every Mediator interveneth between parties that are at difference whereas the Angels are and ever were at perfect accord with GOD holily obeying His will Lastly because the blood of JESUS CHRIST was shed only to wash away sin and the Scripture every where represents the people of GOD's Covenant His redeemed ones and those whom He hath saved as justified and cleansed from their filth for which there was no place in the nature of Angels they being pure and clean from all sin For as to that of Job That GOD putteth no trust in His servants Job 4.18 and doth set light by his Angels it is evident and acknowledged by all Christians that this is not said to accuse those blessed Spirits or to suggest that if they were tried by the ordinary and legal justice of GOD they would be found guilty and have need of pardon but rather to signifie either that the Authority of GOD over His creatures is so great and so absolute as He oweth nothing to the Angels themselves how exquisite soever their Sanctity be the light of glory wherewith He crowns them being a gift from His own bounty and not the due reward of their merit or else that the infinite purity of this Supreme Majestie is so splendid and so glorious that the light of the most holy Spirits fadeth before Him and is found dusky and defective in comparison of Him as the shining of our lights and of the Stars themselves doth disappear at the brightness of the Sun Others therefore not able to savour and for just cause I think this Doctrine that the Angels were reconciled to GOD by JESUS CHRIST to exclude them from this passage do restrain the Apostle's words to men only understanding by the things that are in Heaven the already hallowed spirits of the faithful which death had taken out of this world and by the things that are on earth the faithful that yet live here beneath in flesh But not to dissemble this Exposition seemeth both forced and frigid Forced because the Scripture by things in heaven ordinarily meaneth the Angels whose element and natural habitation as you know the heavens are whereas souls separated from their bodies are receiv'd in and lodged there by a Supernatural grace and dispensation Frigid because the sense it attributeth to the Apostle no way answers the sublimity and dignity of his words For if his aim were to express nothing but that the faithful are reconciled to GOD what need was there to divide them into two ranks some that are on the earth others that are in the heavens Who doubts but He reconciled these as well as those But without question he purposed to magnifie this work of GOD by JESUS CHRIST and to this end saith that it extendeth not to men alone that are reconciled to the Father by the efficacy of the cross of the LORD but that it hath effect in heaven it self re-uniting and reconciling the things that are there What shall we say then to these difficulties and in what sense shall we take the Apostle's words That GOD hath reconciled all things in Himself both those that are on earth and those that are in heaven Dear Brethren we will leave them in their genuine and ordinary sense and say that these expressions do signifie the recomposing and re-uniting of the creatures both Terrestrial and Celestial not with GOD but among themselves with each other For as in a State the Subjects have a twofold union one with their Prince on whom thy all depend another among themselves being as members of the same Political Body joyned together by the bond of mutual concord amity and correspondence In like manner is it with things Celestial and Terrestrial the two principal parties of this great State of GOD's which we cal the Universe Besides the union they have with GOD as their Soveraign Monarch from whose bounty they receive the being and the life they enjoy they have another alliance and conjunction one with the other as parts of one Corporation having been formed and qualified for mutual commerce It 's in this relation and in this union that the beauty and perfection of the Universe doth consist when Heaven and earth have amicable entercourse and conspire to one and the same end with an holy and a reciprocal affection Sin having broken the first union and separated man from his Creator by the same means dissolved the second loosning us from the creatures For as again in a state when one part of the Subjects riseth against the Sovereign the rest that remain in their duty presently break with the Rebels and instead of the commerce they held before with them do make cruel and implacable war upon them while they continue in their disobedience Such hath the event proved in the world Man had no sooner rebell'd against GOD but heaven and all that remained in His obedience brake with man Whole Nature took up arms against this Rebel and would have even then utterly ruin'd him if the Counsel of GOD who would not destroy us had not hindred it And as from one disorder there never fail to spring up divers others this first rupture of man with GOD and the good Creatures brought forth divers others indeed rending mankind it self into several pieces the one divided from the other by diversity of Religions and the aversions and animosities that attend it
all this for it was founded upon a Rock But on the contrary he compares the second sort to a foolish man that built upon the sand And saith he when the rain fell and the torrents came and the winds blew and smote upon this house it fell and the fall thereof was great Dear Brethren this is an excellent Parable and worthy to be deeply engraven on the hearts of the truly faithful For it shews us first That to have part in the LORD's salvation it is not enough to call Him our Master and make Profession of His Discipline They that have but this will fall sooner or later and be infallibly ruin'd Secondly It further teacheth us That it sufficeth not to have begun except a man do presevere to the end without ever giving back And lastly It declares to us what the cause is both of the perseverance of some and of the revolting and fall of others those that are founded on the rock do stand firm and resist the scandals with which the Devil and the world do combate the truth those that are built only on the sand are easily born down even at the first assaults which the adverse powers make upon them This Doctrine S. Paul yerst represented to the Colossians in the Text we have now read to you In the words foregoing as you heard in its place he did set before their eyes the wonders of the love of GOD which had been gloriously shewed upon them by JESUS CHRIST their Saviour who had called them to His Communion and of strangers and enemies as they were made them friends of His Father reconciling them by the body of His flesh through His death to render them holy without spot and unreproveable before Him But the Apostle knowing there were Seducers and deceitful workers among them who laboured to turn them away from the purity and simplicity of the Gospel that they might be preserv'd from those mens poysons he now advertiseth them that this great salvation whereof he had spoken could not be assured to them without perseverance For qualifying and in some sort correcting His simple and absolute assertion That GOD had reconciled them to Himself he addeth the condition upon which this Divine grace was promis'd them If indeed saith he you continue in the faith being founded and firm c. This Lesson my Brethren is no less necessary for us than it was erewhile for the Colossians since the floods the winds and storms that were then raised against the Edifice of their faith do in like manner at this day beat upon ours divers deceitful workers both without and within endeavouring to overthrow it Take we therefore this sacred Preservative against their malice which the Apostle here giveth us and that we may the better make our profit of it let us meditate in order the three particulars which his Instruction containeth For to confirm the Colossians in perseverance he sheweth them first The necessity and the manner of it in those words If indeed you continue in the faith being founded and firm and be not moved away from the hope of the Gospel which you have heard Secondly He sets before them an excellent Argument of the truth of that Gospel which they had heard to wit That it was preached in all the world And lastly He further alledgeth a second proof of its verity taken from his own Ministry of which saith he I have been made a Minister These are three points we will handle if it please GOD in this action noting briefly upon each of them what we shall judge most proper for our Edification and Consolation As for the first the Apostle explains himself about it in those terms If indeed ye continue c. Where you see he lays down first As Above That Faith is the means by which we enter into possession and use of the good things of OOD which He promiseth us in His Son The old Covenant had also its good things but the condition which it required of men for their obtaining the same was quite different For it demanded of them an exact and perfect obeying of the Law and upon any failure of an entire accomplishing of the same threatned a curse leaving the sinner no hope of life at all according to that dreadful clause Do these things and thou shalt live and Cursed is every one that doth them not But the Gospel beside that the good things which it sets before us are much greater and more Divine than those of the Law differs moreover from the Law in this especially that it demands of men for their having them nothing but Faith * Only 1 alone according to the sentence of our LORD GOD so loved the world that He gave His only Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life This the Apostle sheweth us here with much clearness when having said That GOD hath reconciled us to Himself by the body of the flesh of His Son to render us spotless and unreproveable he addeth If indeed ye continue in the faith This Connexion of the two parts of his Discourse doth evidently infer that it is Faith which makes us to have part in the Reconciliation and Peace of GOD and in the holiness which is by the Gospel So likewise you know that in a multitude of other places the Scripture informeth us expresly that it is by Faith we are justified and have peace with GOD and that it is by Faith our hearts are purified Faith is the means of our union with GOD it is the root of our Charity and the Source of our comfort and in a word the only cause of our felicity For as a Medicine how excellent and healthful soever it be does no good save to those that take it So the LORD's Redemption and the vertue of His Sacrifice how great and infinite soever though able to heal all our sins and to give us Eternity yea not us alone but to all the men in the world yet notwithstanding will communicate none of those benefits to us except we receive it by Faith It is Faith that applies it to us and sheds abroad the efficacy of it into all the parts of our nature But because very many deceive themselves in this matter and take that for true Faith which hath but the shadow and name of Faith the Apostle telleth us that to have part in the salvation of JESUS CHRIST our faith must be constant and such as we do abide and persevere in For as in Games and Combates for Prizes none are crowned but they that hold out to the end So in the heavenly Lists or Race GOD glorifieth them only which run with constancy home to the mark Those that turn aside or stop in the midst of the course lose their labour according to that the LORD did declare Whoever shall persevere to the end shall be saved And therefore the Apostle in another place assuring himself of the Crown among other causes on
receives them gladly The alliance also which there is between them being all of them fruits and productions of the flesh makes them mutually bear with one another And if some jealousy at any time do raise in any of them some aversion for the rest this passion seldom carries them so far as to an open persecution But as soon as Christianity appeared they all turned their hatred and their violence against it as against a Religion that was a stranger and of a quite different original and extraction from theirs Who is able to report the furious excesses of the world against this innocent discipline and the horrid calamities to which it condemned the professors of it banishing them out of all its countries stripping them of all its honours and possessions burning them and massacring them and mercilesly employing its brute creatures and its elements against them Yet these cruelties did not astonish the faithful They bore them generously and would rather lose all that was dear to them even to their very blood and life it self than renounce JESUS CHRIST Of so many false religions as were up in the wind among men heretofore in the time of Paganism name but one that was consecrated in such a manner Of all the sects of Philosophy which Greece yer-while brought forth and the old sages so haughtily boasted of shew me one that gave its disciples the courage to suffer for it or was watered with their blood Indeed I will not deny but that some persons have been and still are found to suffer for false religions But First this happens not save when long use and the superstition of many generations have authorised the belief of them whereas the faithful suffered for Christianity at the first springing forth of it before that the consent of people or the authority of Princes had strengthn'd it or any other of such humane considerations made it plausible Then again those sufferings for error are very rare they be the sufferings of some few persons only one here and another there whom vanity or melancholy may push on so far Whereas Christians suffered by thousands of all ages of each sex of every rank and condition so as their resolution can be attributed to no other motive but their religion Who can doubt but Mahometism and Paganism would have been immediately extinct if they had been exposed to the like trials Whereas Christianity was established by them it flourished in the flames and the ruder shocks that persecution gave it the deeper root it took And this Character is so essential to this Divine discipline that in the time of our fathers when GOD caused it to come forth once again into publick light it escaped not the same treatment that it antiently had nor did it fail to make proof of its truth by the same sufferings confessions and martyrdoms which had accompanied its first birth Hereto I further add that the sufferings of other religions when any be are with constraint and fear or mixed with pride and obstinate ferocity whereas in those of the Gospel there shine forth humilty and modesty charity and sweetness coelestial consolation and joy Such at the erecting of Christianity were the sufferings of the Apostles and of their Disciples For which cause S. Paul mentions his here to the Colossians in pursuance of the design he had to confirm their faith I now rejoyce saith he to them in my sufferings for you c. To keep the faith of the Colossians in its purity and to secure it from the leaven which the seducers would mix with it he represented to them if you remember in the precedent Text two strong arguments of the truth of the Gospel One taken from its extention for that it had been preached through all the world in a very little time whereas the new doctrine wherewith there was endeavour to infect them had been heard but here and there in some by corners The other drawn from the miracles of his own call for that it was the doctrine the ministration whereof our Saviour had authentically and magnificently committed unto him Whereas He had given no person any order to preach those traditions wherewith some would burthen them But because this was a matter of great importance he spends the rest of this chapter in grounding and clearing it shewing by divers means the truth of His Heavenly call And first he confirms it in this verse by the sufferings which he chearfully and willingly bore to answer that call secretly opposing this condition of his to the condition of the false teachers who were exempted from the cross by the profession they made of observing Moses's Law That I saith he am sent of GOD and a true Minister of His these great combats which I sustein and the afflictions which I continually suffer do evidently shew you For insteed of fearing them or being asham'd of them I rejoyce in them and it highly contents me to confirm my preaching with this divine seal of JESUS CHRIST's even the cheerful bearing of His cross because I am not ignorant how necessary this deportment is in His School where no one lives without suffering and how profitable it is for His mystical body that is to say the Church whom He hath united with Himself and of whom He hath made me a Minister This is the summ of what the Apostle delivers to us here in the matter of his afflictions and that we may the better understand it we will consider First the manner how he bore them which he expresseth in these words I now rejoyce in my sufferings for you and next in order the reasons of this his rejoycing taken from the nature of those afflictions which were the rest of the sufferings of CHRIST which I do fill up saith he in my flesh and finally the object or the use of them in that he suffered them for the body of CHRIST which is the Church These are the three points that we will explain the grace of GOD assisting in this action The Apostles joy in the nature of his sufferings and the end or utility of them we will establish and make good the truth of his sentiments and refute the attempts that error makes to force out some advantage from his words the whole with as much perspicuity and brevity as we may Although it be true in general that all those who will live godly in CHRIST JESUS do suffer persecution yet this is particularly verified in the Ministers of the Gospel who not content with the single embracement of this profession do undertake to draw others to it and guide them in it This charge exposeth them more than the rest of the faithful to the hatred and violence of the world S. Pauls's history doth clearly evince it For he had no sooner received this sacred Ministry but he saw the Jews and the Heathen rise against him as by common agreement His whole life from that moment was nothing but a Series of afflictions But the Spirit
is clear that we read nothing in this text either of these satisfactions or of that treasury or of those indulgences whereof they tell us Certainly if they will draw these things from hence it behoveth them to shew us that they are here to discover them to us to constrain us by the force of their proofs to see it here But so far are they from binding us to this that they not so much as endeavour to do it and content themselves with telling us that though our exposition be good and true yet theirs also must be adjoyned Since they urge no other reason of it but their own dictate we may reject it with the same facility that they offer it Nevertheless for your greater edification I will insist a little further upon the illustration of this Text. First the Apostles words do no way oblige us to understand him of their satisfactions it being evident that it may be said of all useful things that they are for those who have the use of them as for example that it is for men the Sun shineth in the heavens that it is for them the clouds poure down the rain and the earth yieldeth its fruits That it is for the Church S. Paul wrote his Epistles that for the same he preached and published the Gospel and a thousand other such things 2 Cor. 12.15 in which never any man dreamt of any satisfaction And when S. Paul professeth to the Corinthians that he would most willingly spend Justinian on the place and be spent for them doth he mean for the satisfaction of their sins No saith a Jesuite but he speaks of his great pains in preaching and teaching which would not have failed of being very useful to the edification of the Church though of no value for the satisfaction of GOD Here therefore in the same manner when the Apostle saith his afflictions are for the Church It follows clearly that his sufferings were of use to the Church which I willingly confess but not that they were satisfactions for the sins of the Church which is precisely the thing we deny and which they should prove But if the words of this Text do not found their exposition the authority of the Fathers of which they are wont to make so great a noise doth not establish it any jot more there being not known any one of them that ever inferred their doctrine from the Text or that interprets it otherwise than we have done Lastly the thing it self doth as little favour their design And to demostrate it to you we must briefly touch at all the points of their pretended mystery It is composed of four propositions all which they advance upon their own credit without founding so much as one of them on Scripture For first they presuppose that when GOD pardoneth us the sins that are committed after Baptism He remitteth to us only the fault and the eternal punishment but not the temporal punishment of our trespasses this they count He obligeth us to expiate either here or in Purgatory Secondly they add that divers Saints as the Apostles and the Martyrs and others have done and suffered much more than themselves needed for the expiating of their own sins And as they are provident thrifty men lest these superfluous satisfactions for so they call them be unprofitably lost they hold that they go into the Churches common treasury where being mixed with the superabundant passions of CHRIST they are conserved for the necessities of penetents And finally after all the rest they give the custody of this treasury to the Bishop of Rome alone who dispenseth it as he judgeth expedient Here 's a chain of immaginations which have no foundation either in reason or in Scripture or any other where but in their own passion and interest For first who taught them to cut in pieces thus the benefits of GOD and to suppose that He remits the guilt without the punishment as if to remit a sin were ought else than not to punish it and that He again remits a part of the punishment to wit the eternal and holds us bound to satisfie for the other How doth this accord with that full and entire grace which He promiseth to repenting sinners and how with His declaring that He will forget their sins that He will do away their iniquities that He will remember them no more and that there is no condemnation to them that are in JESVS CHRIST Would not it be a mocking of men if after all this He should exact of them the punishment of their faults to the utmost farthing And as for the pretended satisfactions of the Saints whence have they drawn them from what Prophets from what Apostles seeing both the one and the others do declare that none of them were justified by their doings or their sufferings that they all had need of grace for the expiation of their sins So far were they from having suffered more than was necessary to expiate them and that all their sufferings are not able to counterpoise the glory wherewith GOD will crown them And if we be indebted unto them for any part of the expiation of our sins what will become of the Apostles assertion that CHRST purged our sins by Himself Heb. 1 3â— and that he did consummate or make perfect them that believe by that one sole oblation which He made on the Cross If S. Paul who is in question did in suffering satisfie for us how doth he protest elsewhere that He was not crucified for us Sure according to our adversaries supposition 1 Cor. 1.13 he could not in truth deny it For if his sufferings do serve not only to the edification of our lives but also to the satisfying for our sins as they pretend there remains no longer any sense in which it may be said that CHRIST alone did suffer for us These two propositions that the Apostle did suffer and did not suffer for us will be irreconcilable whereas in our doctrine it is easie to accord them by saying he suffered for us that is for our edification and suffered not for us that is not to satisfie for our sins this kind of suffering appertaining to the LORD JESUS only Beside if the afflictions which the Apostle speaks of here were satisfactory for the Church as our adversaries will have it S. Paul would not have suffered them with joy it being evident that pains of this nature do necessarily seize those that suffer them with an extream horror and heaviness because they are accompanied with the apprehension of the wrath of GOD against sin as it appears both by the Cross of our LORD which he bore constantly and patiently it is true but without any moving of joy and also by the confession of our adversaries themselves who represent to us the souls that suffer for their sins in their imaginary Purgatory all astonied with horror and full of an excessive sadness In fine how doth this fixtion accord with the
crucifie their flesh with it's affections and who forgetting the things which are behind do advance some steps daily towards the mark and prize of their calling such as Paul whose speech about it you are now hearing hath prevailed to render by the efficaciousness of his Preaching perfect in CHRIST JESVS It 's a mistake it 's a folly to fancy any others These double or middling Christians that would at once be both Christians and worldlings disciples of Heaven and of Earth have no more place in reality of nature than in the Scriptures of GOD. If you would have place among the perfect ones of the life to come be betimes among the perfect of this life There 's no ascending to the one of these perfections but by the other If you will be one day in the number of full-grown men of JESUS CHRIST be now in the number of His Children Walk in faith and in love during this Pilgrimage if you pretend to the vision and glory of the heavenly Country But it is now time My Brethren to say something to you of the Apostle's labour and combats having spoken of his Preaching Whereunto I also labour saith he combating according to His efficacy which worketh powerfully in me Sure there is no Christian but meets in the way to Heaven with many thorns which the flesh the World and the Devil do sow there for that they cannot suffer that any one should undertake so glorious a design but they must cross him 〈◊〉 utmost of their power Yet among all the faithful there are none that have more labours and combats to undergo than the Ministers of the Gospel This high Office besides that it is first very painful in its self doth next draw the hatred and persecutions of the enemy upon them more than others and again among all those whom GOD hath honoured with this divine employment it must be acknowledged that the Apostles are the men who had most difficulties to surmount and afflictions to wade through All our pains to say true are but Childrens play in comparison of the combats that these great Warriers had to fight For who doth not know that in every work of importance the beginning is ever much more difficult than the progress and prosecution The Apostles brake up the ground wherein we labour They opened and planed the race in which we run They with infinite pain laid the foundations of the house which we build The business at that time was to overthrow Paganism to demolish Judaism to fill up great deeps and to make plain mountains whereas we enter upon a work already setled and fixed They went through a Country where was neither way nor path nor any thing favourable to them whereas we go in the track they have made To all this we must also adde the great extent of their charges which enclosed the whole universe and obliged them to take care of all the Nations of the World whereas we labour each of us in a small parcel of this great and vast heritage of the Son of GOD. What shall I say of the persecutions which Satan raised up and brought upon them in all quarters animating all the powers of the world against them and subtily engaging them in this war some by a zeal for the Religion of their Fathers others by reasons of State some by a jealousie for reputation others by their passion for pleasures and vices To overcome so many difficulties and to advance as they did a work whose success was in appearance as impossible as if they had undertaken to displace the bounds of the world and to change mountains and seas it was evidently necessary that these holy men should toil in an extraordinary manner and strive with a quite other vigor than any of all the rest of the faithful ever had But though they all applied themselves to such service with an indefatigable and couragious earnestness and with an admirable constancy of mind yet sure S. Paul did particularly signalize himself among those blessed Patriarks of the new people and Israel of GOD For as to labour which he mentions first none of them all preached CHRIST with more fervour none of them pressed men to yield themselves to Him with more vehemency none began with more allacrity nor went on with more assiduity There never was tongue more active nor pen more Divine nor mind more vigilant He alone travelled well-nigh as many countries as all the rest together He visited all nations sowing the Gospel every where watering it night and day by His speech by his tears and by his cares with incredible pains He had no sooner achieved one conquest but he enterprized another and the end of one labour was to him but the beginning of another Never did ambition or avarice though the most restless of our passions put men of the world to half the pain that the design of bringing mankind to the perfection which the LORD JESUS promised caused unto him And as the inclination which the Sun hath to communicate his comfortable beams to all creatures keeps him in a perpetual motion without permitting him to have one moments rest So S. Pauls charity and the passion he had to shed abroad every way the light and life and blessedness wherewith his Master had filled him pressing him alike both day and night made him take his course without ceasing and roul continually about mankind presenting his treasures sometimes to one country and sometimes to another passing all the days he lived in this glorious unquietness Neither did he overlash at all when he said somewhere being compelled to it 1 Cor. 15.10 by the unequitableness of his Calumniators that he had laboured more abundantly than any of the rest That part of his story which S. Lake hath told us in the Acts doth justifie the truth of those words of his and these fourteen divine Epistles which he hath left us and which do themselves make up part of his admirable labours do as clearly shew us how the case stood indeed His combats were no less than his ministerial labours For by them he meaneth the perils and the sufferings upon which his discharging his Apostleship and the preaching of the Gospel did cast him every hour which he frequently compares to the combats that were at that time solemnized in Greece because those that entred into them had divers pains and inconveniences to suffer as he sheweth at large towards the end of the ninth Chapter of the first Epistle to the Corinthians He had more enemies to sustain 1 Cor. 9.25 26 27. than any of the rest Jews and Pagans without Seducers and false brethren within It may make us tremble but to read the persecutions and the crosses he received from the one and the others Himself hath drawn up a little Catalogue of them wherein he represents to us through what depths of afflictions he had passed and did still daily pass being pursued out of measure both by his own
countrymen and also by the Gentiles He was beaten imprisoned scourged stoned He was in shipwracks on the Sea in dangers and deaths upon the Land He was brought to be at the mercy of robbers in desarts beset round in cities both with weapons of enemies and the ambushments of false friends He was reduced to nakedness to cold to hunger and thirst It 's this hard and terrible chain of labours and sufferings which he meaneth here when he saith Whereunto I also labour combating But Oh the deep humility of this holy Soul he immediately gives the glory of these merveilous exploits to the sole vertue and assistance of the LORD JESUS I labour and combat saith he according to His efficacy which worketh powerfully in me He exerciseth the like modesty elsewhere when having said that he had laboured abundantly more than they all he presently takes up himself and adds yet not I but the grace of GOD which is with me It is the invincible force of this grace of the LORD JESUS which he calleth here his efficacy and he saith it worketh powerfully in him or with power to signifie the admirable effects which it produced in him first in that it raised up in Him the light of knowledge the love of holiness charity towards the LORD's flock such prudence and wisdom as were necessary for the instruction and government of souls Secondly in that it endued him with a more than humane courage with an immoveable constancy and firmness both that he might not sink under the burden of such great and continual labour and that he might patiently and cheerfully bear the persecutions and tentations which were still let loose upon him the LORD making things tend to His glory and the advancement of his work which seemed so contrary thereto as He promised him elsewhere that His power should be made perfect in his infirmity Thirdly in accompanying the Apostles preaching with diverse miracles which ravished men and authorised his words Rom. 15.18 19 as he expresly testifies in another place I will not dare to speak of any of those things which CHRIST hath not wrought by me saith he to make the Gentiles obedient by word and work through mighty signs and wonders Lastly this Divine vertue of our Saviour did also magnificently appear in the success he gave to Pauls labour opening the hearts of those that heard him and causing his voice to enter into them notwithstanding all the impediments of nature with such a miraculous blessing that he made his Gospel to abound from Jerusalem and round about even to Illyricum subduing nations and converting them gloriously to the service of His Master It 's this that he represents here to the Colossians in these words even that he laboureth and combateth according to the efficacy of CHRIST which worketh powerfully in him And it excellently conduceth to his design which is to shew the truth of the Gospel he preached which shined forth clearly in those many miracles they being as seals by which the LORD confirmed it I confess now that this great example doth particularly reflect on such as GOD hath called to the sacred Ministry of His house and it sheweth them on one hand how painful their office is that it is a work as the Apostle faith otherwhere a work I say rather than a dignity 1 Tim. 3.1 2 Tim. 4.5 a labour and not a recreation For the discharging of it worthily they must toil and strive watch in all things endure afflictions and do the work of Evangelists And it teacheth them on the other hand that they must not recoil for those great difficulties but trust in the grace of CHRIST and expect from the sole efficaciousness of His assistance that light that strength that patience and constancy which is requisite for the finishing of so laborious a course since it is He alone who rendreth us meet for these things strengthning us in weakness comforting us in trouble encouraging us in difficulties susteining us under assaults and so conducting us that though we be nothing of our selves 2 Cor. 3.5 yet in Him we can do all things who maketh us able to be Ministers of the new Testament But though S. Pauls example do particularly respect Pastors yet it appertaineth also to all true Christians in general since there is no one of them but is also in some sort the LORD's servant hath of Him the managing of some of His Talents and is called to labour and combat Let us consider then all of us in common and joyntly make our improvement both of the preaching and of the labouring of this great Apostle He still at this day declares to us the same CHRIST whom he preached heretofore to all the nations of the world Though the Organs that sound it to you be incomparably weaker than his were yet it is his word that you hear the same word and the same CHRIST that yer-while converted the universe The same Paul whose voyce had then so much efficacy speaks yet to you daily He addresseth to you the same doctrine He sets before you the same wisdom He admonisheth and teacheth every man among you Do not abuse so great a blessing do not frustrate the labour of this holy man of it's true and just effect The end of His preaching is that you all may be perfect This is the mark to which he calls you all in common Say not to me that he speaks but to some only I admonish saith he and teach every man that I may render every man perfect in JESVS CHRIST Object not the employments which you have in the world nor the cares to which your family and your affairs do bind you up If they be incompatible with that perfection which the Apostle requires of you you must renounce them It 's an extreme folly to excuse ones self from being happy This ought to be the first and last of our cares and if we cannot attain it but by quitting of honours by losing of riches by retrenching our delights yea as the LORD saith by plucking out our own eyes and cutting off of our feet and our hands it is better to forego all this than keep it to be cast at our departure hence into the torment of eternal fire But these are vain and meer frivolous pretences to palliate our slackness If we have truly received JESUS CHRIST into our hearts neither a wife nor children nor a family nor an estate nor the honest and lawfull employments of the world will hinder you from being perfect The fear of GOD honest deportment plain-dealing and justice charity and beneficence and in a word the fanctity wherein our perfection consisteth is not incompatible with any of these things For I beseech you is it your business or your calling which obligeth you to offend GOD and injure men to pollute your body with the filth of infamous pleasures to defraud or to rob your neighbour to drown your whole life in luxury in debauches and in
him by a person that know it not to be poyson who perchance took of it himself thinking it a remedy so error from whatever hand it come hath still a bad effect and the opinion they have of it who present it to us doth not change the venom of it nor impede its corrupting of our souls and extinguishing Divine life in us if we do receive it But the Apostle in this place pointeth out the means also which false Teachers use for the setting up of their errors That none saith he may deceive you by words of perswasions These he calls elsewhere in the same case sweet and flattering words Rom. 16.18 saying in his Epistle to the Romans that Schismaticks and such as make divisions contrary to the doctrine we have learned do seduce the hearts of the simple by sweet and flattering words 1 Cor. 2.4 And this he nameth again elsewhere the enticing words of man's wisdom Under these terms he comprehendeth all the advantages and attractives of discourse all that it hath in it which is apt to touch and win hearts as either probable reasons wherewith it is furnisht or beauty of terms and expressions or artificial disposition and graceful pronunciation There is none but knows how potent these charms of eloquence are They sometimes dazzel the best eyes and do deceive the firmest minds It 's a kind of Magick and Enchantment which makes things appear quite otherwise than they are and gives them colours and qualities that are not their own which maketh Honey pass for Wormwood and Wormwood for Honey black for white and white for black There is no cause so good but this kind of illusion overthrows nor so bad but it establisheth There is no affection which it doth not allay nor bâ—lâ—â—f which it doth not shake nor resolution which it doth not break It hath often 〈◊〉 the innocent to be condemned and the nocent absolved with applause 'T is by its sleights that truth how invincible soever it be hath sometimes seemed to be vanquished 'T is to its dexterity and its stratagems that error and falshood do we the greatest part of their lying-triumphs For feeling themselves in reality weak they have recourse ordinarily to this kind of Sorcery that they may carry by its illusions what they could never win by true and legitimate strength 'T is it that maintaineth Sophisters and Wranglers and Mountebanks and Seducers With the sophistry and prattle which it lendeth them they have the hardiness to shew themselves and to oppose the clearest truths and recommend the grossest errors But among all the busie people that use it there are none that employ it more perniciously than Hereticks and corrupters of Religion This false Rhetorick is the principal instrument they seduce withall Accordingly it is evident that they have always taken it up and scarce ever attempted upon Truth but with this sort of weapons And it must be confessed that they help themselves by them with wonderful dexterity Never was cause in matter of Religion more sordid or shameful or seeble than that of the Pagans yet they that pleaded it against the ancient Christians knew so well how to fard it with the colours of their false reasons and the gloss of their brave words that they made it pass for plausible among the multitude and rendered Christianity ridiculous to them how holy and lightsome soever its truth was Those Hereticks which arose from among Christians had no less ability and artificialness to recommend their impostures borrowing for this purpose from the Philosophers and Orators of the world the subtilties of their Logick and all the colours of their Rhetorick There are still left us some pieces of the one and the other in the Books of Antiquity as the Discourses of one Celsus in Origen of one Caecilius in Minutius of Porphyrius and Symmachus for Paganism divers writings of Tertullian for Montanism of Fanstus for the Manichees and of Julian for the Pelagians in S. Augustine It 's wonderful with what dexterity and with what grace and eloquence they do manage such bad and infamous subjects nor can I read them without lamenting the unhappiness of so many excellent and highlyapprovable things to be miserably profaned in the service of error as one cannot chuse but groan to see Marble and Gold and Azure and precious Stones employed in adorning the Temple of an Idol And I note it expresly to you my Brethren that you may not think it strange if those of Rome at this day do speciously defend a very bad Cause nor be much moved at the ostentation they make of it who are not ashamed to boast of the eloquence and subtilty of their Teachers as if this were one of the marks of truth I freely consent to the praises they give them and do acknowledg that words of perswasion as the Apostle here calls them do abound on their side but I dare affirm notwithstanding and am assured that every intelligent and unpassionate person will accord with me herein That how subtil and eloquent soever their Masters be and how much pains soever they have taken for the better plastring over and colouring and burnishing of their Doctrine in conclusion their works are not more neat nor more polite nor more specious and fair-seeming than the works of those Pagans and Hereticks whom I but now named yea to speak without passion I believe they are far inferior to them Let them forbear therefore to urge unto us for a mark of truth an advantage which is common to them with Pagans and Hereticks an advantage which the most infamous Causes do employ which the worst do ordinarily seek after more earnestly than the best so much more cunning being used in their defence by how much less strength they have in themselves Not that I would decry eloquence and acuteness or render them suspect with you as if they never were in other service than of error I willingly acknowledg they are excellent graces of GOD and that he gives them to men properly for the defence of Truth and sure they have not always had the hard hap to contend for Falshood They have often done good service to the Gospel and employed their might for its glory both heretofore against the Pagans and the old Hereticks and in our times against those of Rome as appears by the writings both of the Fathers and of our own Doctors a good number of them being found who even in this respect come no whit behind their adversaries besides their having the principal advantage that is the truth on their side This Paul himself who here condemneth words of perswasion when they recommend error doth not reject them when they are labouring for truth And though he was not much versed in the art of prophane eloquence whence it comes that he saith of himself that for speech he was as one of the Vulgar yet his discourses want no strength nor grace that rich heavenly knowledg which abounded in his heart giving
its tincture to the words of his mouth and that great personage indeed felt how it was who hearing him speak was press'd with the force of his discourse and said aloud Thou almost perswadest me to be a Christian All my aim is Acts 26.28 that since error oftentimes abuseth eloquence and acuteness against the truth as evil men do other gifts of God to evil ends we should not judg of the main of any cause by this advantage nor hastily embrace that party that defends it self with the best and most perswafive words nor reject that which hath least of these ornaments in view As Innocence is not always the best clothed so Truth frequently is not the most decked And though of it self it be always more probable more likely and more easily maintainable than falshood Arist. Rhetor. l. 1. c. 6. as one of the ancient Sages well observed yet sometimes it comes to pass through the sleight of seducers by the false light they set it in and the colours they shadow it with that it looks worse in the eyes of the ignorant than a lye doth Take we heed then of their surprising us and so well fortifie our minds against their illusions that they may never make us reject the truth how foul and ugly soever they paint it out nor receive a delusion how specious and plausible soever they do render it Remember that that Babylon the Mother of Error who is pourtrayed before us in the Apocalyps Rev. 17.4 doth present its abominations unto men in a golden Cup that is she gives her poysons in a pleasing Vessel and shuts up and hides the horridness of her impostures under very fair and specious words it 's this that those seducers yerwhile did who sollicited the Colossians their errors were attended with perswasive words for the beguiling of them This is the danger from which S. Paul would here preserve them Let us now consider the means he puts into their hands for their safe guarding themselves from it This I say unto you saith he that no one may deceive you with enticing words Since he thus speaks it 's evident that what he saith is able if we improve it as we ought to keep us from falling into the misleadings of seducement and to frustrate all the charms of its good and perswasive words What then is it that he saith and what at last is that so holy and so efficacious a speech which can dissipate the illusions and enchantments of error Dear Brethren you heard it in the exposition of the precedent Text where this holy man told us that all the treasures of wisdom and knowledg are hid in JESVS CHRIST It 's that he understandeth here This is that Celestial Oracle to which he attributes this great vertue This is the remedy which he giveth us against all the poysons and all the charms of seduction None of the weapons or of the wiles of error can bear up before this sacred word It alone is sufficient if we use it as we ought to confound and annihilate all the pretended wonders of the eloquence and subtilty of false Teachers as heretofore the Rod of Moses swallowed up all the Rods of the Egyptian Magicians For whosoever shall hold fast this principle in his heart that all true wisdom and knowledg is in JESUS CHRIST he will receive nothing out of CHRIST Being content with this treasure he will despise all other things how specious and plausible soever they may be Seduction will do well to display its arts and to gild and paint over its inventions with the fair colours either of ratiocination or of eloquence It will get no ground upon such a one since after all the thing it doth so carefully polish is not in JESUS CHRIST out of whom he will know nothing He will not so much as hear the babling of error so far will he be from being affected with it He will shut his car against its fine words so far is he from being seduced by them Or if he please to cast his eye upon the works of its subtilty and its eloquence he will look upon them as Spiders webs or as jugling and Gipsies feats which amuse us and beguile our senses but make no impression on our hearts We well know they do deceive us though we cannot tell how So the faithful man will hold that for a deceit and an illusion that leads him out of JESUS CHRIST though otherways he do not see wherein the sophism of the error doth consist nor is able clearly to unty the knots thereof This dear Brethren is the sure and infallible means to exclude and to expel all error from among us Seducement winneth nothing but upon those that betray this gate and yeild it that there may something be of good and saving importance out of JESUS CHRIST and his Scriptures When once it hath this ground given it never wanteth paint and pretences to colour its delusions and render even those plausible and likely which are otherways grossest and most extravagant Thus those Traditions and Ceremonies which have still the vogue among our Adversaries were by little and little obtruded upon Christians The invocation of Angels and of Saints departed the Sacrifice of the Altar and the veneration of Reliques and of Images the visible Head and the Hierarchy and the infallibility of the Church Satisfactions and the merit of works Prayers and Services in a language not understood the adoration of the Host Communion in one kind only Purgatory Suffrages for the dead and many other such like things A thousand and a thousand colours are found to paint them out and recommend either the belief or the practise of them to poor people There are huge Books made about them full of wit and eloquence that drive the matter so far as to make these things pass for the principal and most useful part of Christian devotion But this short Saying of S. Paul's is enough to ruin all their labours and to secure us from all their snares In JESVS CHRIST are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledg It sufficeth me to have Him since having Him I have all appertaineth to true wisdom How well disputed and how eloquently soever pleaded all your traditions be I am not concerned in them seeing I have the treasure of all Science in CHRIST JESUS And it is not here alone that the Apostle giveth us this lesson for the freeing our selves from the intanglements and snares of error Elsewhere instructing the Hebrews and exhorting them that they would not be carried to and fro with divers and strange doctrines he lays before them at the entrance this divine principle That JESVS CHRIST is the same both yesterday and to day and for ever But it 's now time to come to the second part of our Text in which the Apostle declares to the Colossians the cognizance he took of the state of their Church For saith he though I be absent in body yet in spirit
makes him disgust it immediately and betake himself to seek out novelties for the seasoning and rendring of it more grateful The Apostles had scarce sown this sacred doctrine in the Church as in the Camp of Israel but evil workers presently rose up who to remedy men's disdain and accommodate this Celestial verity to their palate would needs add to it divers inventions and novelties of their own forgging And S. Paul foretold that more such would arise as bad or worse than the first 2 Tim. 4.3 4. Having saith he itching ears they shall assemble to themselves Teachers according to their own desires and shall turn away their ears from the truth and turn unto fables O prophecy too true How punctually hast thou been fulfilled This foolish itch of the ear hath caused a thousand and a thousand fantasies and novelties to be by little and little entertained among Christians which have so born down and as it were overwhelm'd the Gospel that it is hardly to be discerned any longer as you may see in the Doctrine of Rome which is but an heap of Traditions Errors and Superstitions partly copied out from Judaism and some from Paganism it self partly issuing from the private speculations of some particular persons In our Fathers days the Gospel having been brought out of the dark caverns of ignorance into the light of men it was receiv'd in like manner with ardor and admiration But that disgusting of the best and most wholesom things which is fatal to us overtook it quickly and did stir up as also it full doth divers spirits who for remedy do strive to sophisticate this pure Doctrine and dress up its simplicity with their own inventions to make it please the world To cure us of this fastidiousness the Apostle at this time addresseth to us the exhortation you have heard the same which he sometime made to the Colessians for the same end forbidding them novelties and strange doctrines and enjoining them to stand fast in JESUS CHRIST who had been preached to them without admitting or desiring any thing beyond His Gospel Therefore saith he as you have received the LORD JESVS CHRIST so walk in Him c. Upon these words for the giving you a full and entire exposition of them we have two things to consider First The Apostle's enjoining the Colossians to keep and fasten to the LORD JESUS this is the sense and intention of the first verse Secondly The manner how he would have them fasten to the LORD namely by the confirmation and abounding of their faith in his Gospel with thanksgiving These two particulars we purpose to treat of in this Exercise by the assistance of CHRIST for your edification and consolation And for the first You may remember that in the precedent Text the Apostle praised the faithful people of Coloss and rejoyced at the good order he saw in their Church and at the firmness of their faith in JESUS CHRIST But because it is not sufficient to begin well except we do continue in as much as salvation is promised only to those that shall persevere unto the end with good reason and very pertinently doth he now add to the praise he gave them an exhortation to continue and to abide firm in that good and happy state wherein they were and this so much the rather for that there were about them certain busie and unquiet spirits who with their inventions and subtilties endeavoured to vitiate the sincerity of their belief as you have already heard and shall again more particularly hear in the sequel of this Chapter Therefore saith he to them as you have received the LORD JESVS CHRIST so walk in Him JESUS CHRIST is the Subject in which he would have them to abide For He is the way the truth and the life neither is there salvation in any other But because these false Teachers for the better putting off their vain traditions were wont to colour them with our Saviour's Name knowing well that every faithful person would soon hiss at them if they spake openly of our quitting JESUS CHRIST or our distancing our selves from him The Apostle anticipates this danger and expresly shews the Colossians how he intends they should abide firm in JESUS CHRIST saying As you have received the LORD JESVS so walk in Him And to this also that which he adds in the following Verse hath relation As you you have been taught By this he clearly signifies that the doctrine which had been delivered them either by himself if it be true that he preached the Gospel to them and founded their Church as some think or by Epaphras as most are of opinion He signifies I say that this Doctrine which had been preached to them and believed by them was so holy and divine and sufficient to salvation that it was their duty constantly to adhere thereto and to admit nothing beyond what they had heard under any pretext whatsoever Here is the way Isa 30.21 walk in it whether ye turn to the right hand or to the left as Isaiah sometime said But by these words the Apostle not only marketh out to them and stateth that Doctrine which they ought to hold he obligeth them also thereto by their own interest For since they had receiv'd it they could not again part from it without condemning themselves either of imprudence or of levity For he that quits the Faith he once embraced doth thereby evidently shew either imprudence in having sometime taken a false or imperfect Doctrine for good or levity in quitting and altering now a Doctrine good sufficient when he received it If your belief be good why do you change it If it be otherwise why did you entertain it It follows of necessity either that there was error and precipitation in the one or that there is weakness and sickleness in the other So you see that the interest of their own reputation did oblige these Christians to that constancy which the Apostle enjoins them Besides though it be an hainous sin not to receive the LORD JESUS when He presents Himself to us by His Gospel yet it is much more enormous to cast Him out after reception given Him as it is by far a greater outrage to thrust forth a man from your House when you have admitted him than to have shut your doors against him at the first The one is a simple offence the other is an affront In like manner it is a much more injurious treatment to desert CHRIST JESUS after having follow'd him than never to have given ear to or follow'd him at all And observe here I pray the efficacy of sound doctrine it is such as that in receiving it we receive JESUS CHRIST himself For this Highest LORD comes in to all such as embrace his Gospel And we may apply to this purpose what he said to his Apostles on a like occasion Whoso receiveth them receiveth him whoso gives credit to their preaching shall have their Master to be with him
Paul's or the other Apostle's preaching can they ever shew us that Mass and that Purgatory and that worshipping of Saints and in one word any of those other Articles which they retain and we have relinquished Every one seeth how all these things do vary from the Lord JESUS CHRIST and make void his Cross and his Kingdom causing men to seek the expiation and purging away of their sins other-where than in His Sacrifice and attributing to Creatures the honour of Invocation and of presiding over the whole Church which belongs to Him alone But that other mark which S. Paul gives of the Doctrine which ought to be held fast doth less yet accord with them namely its having been receiv'd from the Apostles it being manifest that not one word of them is found in those holy mens writings which are the publike and authentick records of what they preached and that those traditions of Rome grew up in after-ages some at one time some at another issuing by little and little out of the forges of men according as error gathered strength as they know that read the Volumes of Antiquity without prejudice and prepossession Let our adversaries therefore leave these odious accusations They must either shew that those Doctrines of theirs which we have relinquish'd are Apostolical or confess that we had reason to relinquish them This very command of S. Paul's which they are not ashamed to object to us necessarily obliging us to adhere to that LORD JESUS CHRIST alone whom he preached and whom the Colossians believed on according to his preaching And it may not be insisted on that the Doctrine we contest with them hath been their belief for a thousand years or more Time is no prescription against any truth and least of all against the truth of CHRIST and his Apostles That which he hath pronounced continues in force for ever If any one preach ought as Gospel to you Gal. 1.8 9. besides what we have preached were it my self were it an Angel from Heaven let him be an anathema I enquire not of what date your opinions are It is sufficient for me to anathematize them that were not preached as Gospel by the Apostle Time cannot have conferred on them the advantage of being true which they had not at their rise What is not now veritable or Apostolical will never be so You are not the only men among whom Error hath grown old that gross one of Idolatry liv'd among the Pagans well nigh Two thousand years and their Rome hereto alledg'd * Symmachus her hoary hairs as well as yours doth at this day and said as now again Rome doth that it is an Undertaking ill-timed to correct old age and that to charge it with error is to affront those years It 's a thousand years and more since Mahomet's perfidy hath been up yet is never a whit the better for that You your selves observe Errors in the same antiquity whose authority you cry up so loud and you cannot deny but that those which you condemn in the communions of the Grecians of the Armenians of the Jacobites and of the Cophties are very old It 's an extreamly bad defence when men are convict of error to say that they have been a long time of that opinion How ancient soever your Doctrine is it 's young in comparison of S. Paul's since it was born after his days Neither its pretended antiquity nor any other consideration can secure it from his fulmination Since he would have us keep to that which he preached without receiving ought beside how stale and mouldy soever with age your traditions can be they all ought to perish under pain of an anathema seeing they are without the compass of S. Paul's preaching We are at this day in the same case the Colossians yer while were They stood bound by this exhortation to reject the worshipping of Angels the distinction of meats justification by the Law all that any way tended to add to that LORD JESUS CHRIST whom they had received from the hand of Paul and who had been taught them by him Let us then also freely reject the same things keep we constantly to that JESUS CHRIST whom we have received of him who did fill up all his Sermons and doth still fill up all his Epistles Content we our selves with that primitive and truly ancient Doctrine and boldly despise all the novelties that the world hath presum'd to add thereto in after-times Let us walk as the Apostle gives us order in this LORD JESUS Let Him be our only way the rule of our faith and of our manners You know the Scripture ordinarily useth this term to signifie the ordering and conduct of our life It compareth the various Disciplines and Perswasions which men follow unto Ways which lead some to one end some to another For it speaks of the way of sinners and of the way of the righteous meaning thereby the apprehensions and maxims by which they lead their lives Therefore it saith walk to signifie living or leading and ordering the life As therefore our Lord and Saviour saith that He is the Way so his Apostle enjoineth us to walk in Him that is to lead our lives both in regard of knowledg and perswasions of mind and also in respect of affections and actions according to his holy Gospel without any forsaking it to take another course judging all that varies from it to be folly how plausible soever it may appear otherways And as a prudent and advised traveller never leaves his road but puts on in it constantly till he come to his journey's end how smiling soever the Meadows look how green and fresh soever the shades be how fair and large soever the ways are that lye in view In like manner are we ordered to keep continually to the Doctrine of our Lord and Saviour and not relinquish it or assume any other of what nature or colour or appearance soever it be still resolving in our selves that whatsoever is without the dimensions of this model of Truth cannot but be dangeorus and apt if we follow it to lead us to perdition I pass by the observation which some make namely That the Apostle commanding us to walk in CHRIST doth intimate we should advance still and make progress therein For though this conception be for substance veritable it being the duty of each true believer to go forward and not pass a day without improvement 〈◊〉 piety yet it seems to me to be without the reach of the Apostle's words 〈◊〉 scope of which is simply to oblige us unto perseverance in the Gospel of JESUS CHRIST Beside what he addeth in the following verse doth sufficiently 〈…〉 commend this duty to us where he shews us after what manner we are to 〈◊〉 in JESUS CHRIST Being rooted saith he and built up in him and 〈◊〉 the faith as you have been taught and abounding therein with thanksgiving In these words he prescribeth us three things Firmness of faith the abounding
it And for as much as in material Edifices it is the Foundation that sustaineth all the Building thence it comes that the Scripture gives that name to our LORD and Saviour as to him upon whom this spiritual Structure doth entirely depend Other foundation saith the Apostle can no man lay 1 Cor. 3.11 than that which is laid even JESVS CHRIST And this the Prophets foretold in saying of him that God would set in Sion a chief Corner-stone Isa 28.16 Psal 118.22 elect and precious And that the stone which the builders rejected should be made head of the corner The Apostle therefore desiring to fortifie his dear Colossians against the danger of falling prosecuting this figure so common in Scripture commands them to be built up in JESUS CHRIST And the same expression he makes use of elsewhere as when he saith that we are built upon the foundation of the Prophets and Apostles Eph. 2.20 21. JESVS CHRIST himself being the chief Corner-stone it whom saith he all the building proportioned and fitly set together riseth up unto an holy Temple in the Lord. What is it then to be built up in JESUS CHRIST Dear Brethren we say an House is builded on a Rock when a Rock is the Foundation that bears and sustains it wholly A soul is builded in JESUS CHRIST when it wholly relieth upon Him so as its Faith its Hope its Love and the other parts of its mystical structure are all set upon Him and immediately fastned to Him it believeth the Gospel because 't is the word of CHRIST is assured of the remission of sins because they were expiated by CHRIST it expects the Kingdom of Heaven because he purchas'd it loveth neighbours because they are his workmanship meekly beareth affliction because it is a part of his Cross in sum layeth and setleth upon him alone the designs the thoughts the enjoyments and the expectations wherein consisteth both its present life and that which is to come One so built up in JESUS CHRIST is right that wise man commended by our Saviour's own mouth Mat. 7.24 2â— who buildeth his House on a Rock so as no violence is able to effect its fall For indeed what can overthrow a soul seated on this Rock of Ages which is so firm and unmoveable for ever Where is the tentation or the persecution that can beat it down What is built upon this Foundation is not subject to natural accidents It 's a celestial and an eternal Edisice But the misery of men and the true cause of their weakness and ruin is that they build elsewhere either wholly or for the greatest part The World is the ground whereon they set and raise up the designs of their lives and this ground being nought but weak and floating Sand the first force that assaults them brings them down and their fall saith our Saviour is great Lastly The Apostle expresseth in proper terms what he had represented under these two Metaphors adding and established in faith For it is properly by faith that we are rooted in JESUS CHRIST and 't is by it also that we are founded and built up in him all these phrases signifying only the spiritual union and conjunction which we have with the LORD the sole tye whereof faith is Let us labour therefore continually to confirm our faith if we would resist the enemy Let us meditate the truth of the Gospel study all its mysteries taste the excellency of it Let us carefully hear and read that word wherein GOD hath reveal'd it to us By it faith hath its being as the Apostle tells us Rom. 10.17 Faith comes of hearing and bearing of the word of God Whence you may judg how contrary to the Apostle's injunction the command of the Church of Rome is who will not grant that the faithful should read Scripture How shall they be confirmed in faith if they have no commerce with this sacred word the only parent and nurse of faith How again can they without it acquit themselves in that which the Apostle commands in the second place even that we abound in faith It is not enough that we be established in it that we have of it for necessity he would have us furnish'd even unto plenty possess'd of a great and rich measure of it have this sacred light to go on still encreasing and augmenting as he saith elsewhere from faith to faith Some are of the mind that this word must be reserred not singly to the thing but also to the sentiment that we have of it As if the Apostle's meaning were when he speaks of abounding in faith that we should account our selves to have abundantly in the faith of JESUS CHRIST alone all the saving-knowledg we can desire without needing the addition of ought any other way This exposition is elegant and ingenious and very pertinent to the Apostle's design But because it is followed by few and the former is more simple I will not insist upon it In fine the Apostle adds in the third and last place giving of thanks abounding in faith saith he with thanksgiving His scope is that we do tenderly resent the excellency and plenty of the benefits which are communicated to us by the Gospel and do remember the spring whence they flow to wit the sole Grace of GOD who taking us out of the darkness of error and ignorance wherein we were plunged hath made us enter into the Kingdom of Light by the power of his Word and Spirit that we may continually render him our grateful acknowledgments of it Besides that this duty is most reasonable of it self it is also necessary to ensure the faith of the Gospel unto us For as on the one hand GOD augmenteth his gifts to the thankful so he taketh them away from the unthankful withdrawing his light from their souls and giving them up to themselves as you know he threatneth ingrateful Churches to take his Candlestick from them And the Apostle informs us elsewhere that to them who receiv'd not the love of the truth he sendeth the efficacy of error so as they believe a lye which is the most dreadful punishment wherewith he avengeth himself on the iniquity of men Dear Brethren that we fall not into so dismal a judgment let us possess this treasure of knowledg which GOD hath given us in his Son with all the gratitude we can humbly blessing him for that he hath vouchsafed to impart a thing so precious and of such saving-importance unto us to us I say who were so unworthy of it Let it be all our love and all our glory Let others boast of their might and their skill of their riches and their greatness As for us glory we only in the knowledg of GOD and of his holy Gospel the sole supream happiness of man Let us be jealous of this holy Doctrine keeping it pure and sincere and carefully taking heed of the Leaven of Superstition and Error Let us be content with our LORD JESUS
CHRIST the Prince of Life and with that fulness of grace we have received and the holy Apostles preached Mix nothing forreign with it To add to it is to accuse it of imperfection and insufficiency Instead of losing time in the inventions of Error and in the laborious but childish exercises of Superstition Let us employ all hours in good and holy works walking in JESUS CHRIST rooting and building up our selves more and more in him establishing our selves and abounding in faith and testifying and proving the truth of it by a pure piousness towards GOD and an ardent love towards our Neighbour by the fervency of our Prayers the liberality of our Alms the humility of our Deportments the modesty of our Persons the honesty justness and integrity of all our Words and Actions to the glory of the LORD JESUS whom we serve and own for our Master to the edification of men and our own salvation Amen THE TWENTIETH SERMON COL CHAP. II. VER VIII Ver. VIII Beware lest any man make prey of you through Philosophy and vain deceit after the tradition of men after the rudiments of the world and not after CHRIST OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST comparing the society of his faithful ones in the tenth Chapter of S. John to a Flock of Sheep doth advertise us that there are Thieves who coast about this mystical Fold and do come only to steal to kill and to destroy as also that there are Wolves which take away and scatter the Sheep You are not ignorant dear Brethren that under the names of these spiritual Thieves and Wolves he doth represent unto us evil Spirits and the false Teachers whom they set on work who both together earnestly promote the same design though by divers means namely the debauching and alienating of the faithful from the Communion of JESUS CHRIST their only Pastor getting them and appropriating them to themselves as the Thief who takes what is another's and makes it his own Whence ensues their death and destruction For as the Wolf kills the Sheep he hath seized so these Ministers of Satan do bereave of life those whom they pull away from the Flock of Christ out of whose communion there is nothing but death and perdition But these wretched workers do employ as I said many different means to compass their cruel and bloody design Some they take away by downright force making them leave the bosome of the Church by the violence of persecutions or drawing them into the world by the pleasures of the flesh and do bring them even to a renouncing of the very Name of JESUS CHRIST the Prince of Life Against others they make use of fraud training them forth and distancing them by little and little from JESUS CHRIST under fair and plausible pretences so as in the end they have nothing of his left them but a name and a vain unprofitable profession remaining indeed under the power and in the possession of his Enemy It 's against these mystical Thieves and Robbers that the Apostle doth awaken the Colossians in the Text we have read exhorting them to take heed of ' em Before he prayed them to establish to build up to root themselves more and more in the Communion of the LORD JESUS acknowledging with humble gratitude the excellency of his gift mâ—de them 〈…〉 ensure this Treasure to them he adviseth them to watch against th◠〈…〉 ambushes of their Enemies who sought to surprise them and pluck by 〈…〉 tifice of their subtilities and fair discourses JESUS CHRIST out of their hearts and render themselves Masters of them and of their life Beware saith he lest any man make prey of you c. For it is the duty of a good Pastor such a one as the Apostle was not only to seed the mystical Sheep which the chief Shepherd hath committed to his care by giving them the pure and wholsom doctrine of the Gospel the only pasture of souls but also to preserve them with all his power from the paws of Wolves and the hands of Robbers advertising them of the danger and dextrously delivering them out of it by the saving-tone of his voice But as your Pastors are obliged to this care so you see dear Brethren that it is your duty to watch for your own safety to open your eyes and senses that ye may discern a stranger from a domestick a thief from the shepherd the hand of a robber from that of a friend Beware saith the Apostle to you He would not have the faithful be silly sheep that let themselves be led away by the first commer and indifferently embrace all that is offer'd them His will is that we have our senses exercised and habituated in discerning between truth and falshood able to prove all things that we may hold fast what is good and not suffer our selves to be surprised either by the dignity of a Robe or the blaze of Wit or some appearances of Deportment seeing that Angels of Satan do sometimes clothe themselves with light The prudence of the Beraeans is praised by the Holy Ghost Acts 17.11 who examined S. Paul's preaching comparing what he had spoken to them with the Scriptures that they might assuredly know the state of the matter The salvation of our souls is too precious for us to trust any other than GOD in it Whence appears how dangerous that security of implicit faith as they call it is which without any scruple receives all that its Teachers deliver and is so far from examining it that it vouchsafes not so much as to understand it believing it true without knowing it provided only that the mouth which publisheth it hath been opened by the Pope's hand If the question were only of a title those of whom the Apostle adviseth the Colossians here to take heed were Teachers and he contesteth not with them about their dignity in any part of this Epistle He deals with them only about their Doctrine Accordingly the case is concerning Doctrine whether we ought to believe it or no and whatever may be the hand that delivereth it to us if it be false it will not fail to destroy us as poyson doth not forbear to kill though he that prescribed it hath taken his degrees with all the formalities requisite S. Paul too elsewhere with one word overthrows all the prepossessions that might be for any Preachers upon any ever so eminent quality of their persons when he proclaims twice together If we our selves Gal. 1.8 or an Angel from heaven do preach another Gospel to you beside what we have preached let him be an Anathema Be you all that you will you cannot be more than S. Paul or an Angel of Heaven Since their Doctrine ought to be examined by the Gospel for its having reception or being accursed as it should be found conform or contrary thereto it will be no wrong done you if yours be put to the same trial But consider I pray with what emphasis the Apostle recommendeth to us
or avarice or any of those loathsome defilements that do disfigure the whole life of worldlings The LORD JESUS who hath given us this excellent Divine Doctrine who hath founded it by his death and set it up by his resurrection who also hath in these latter times purged it afresh both of the vanities of Philosophy and of the traditions of men and of the elements of the world please to confirm us in it for ever by his good Spirit and to make it so efficacious for the sanctification of our life that after we have finished this earthly pilgrimage we may receive one day at our going forth of this vale of tears from his merciful hand the Crown of immortality which he hath promis'd and prepar'd for all true observers of his Discipline Amen The Twenty-first SERMON COL CHAP. II. VER IX Ver. IX For in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily AS the Christian Religion doth consist in Principles and Practises incompably more sublime and salutiferous than any that the world ever learned in the Schools of Nature and the Law so was it delivered and instituted by an Author infinitely more excellent than any of those were who ever erected other Disciplines among men I will not insist upon the Authors of those various Religions which bore sway heretofore in the time of Paganism who though they were in esteem among Nations and raised to an high reputation of wisdom and vertue yet had the taint of an extream ignorance and vanity as their own Institutions sufficiently discover to any one that will take the pains to examine them in the light of Reason It would be injurious to the LORD JESUS the Founder and Prince of Christianity to compare him with such people But even Moses himself the great Teacher of the Hebrews and the Prophets who commented on explained and confirmed his Law are all insinitely beneath the dignity of this new Law-giver They were I grant Ministers of GOD the Mouth and Organs of his Majesty the Interpreters of his Will and Heralds of his Truth being endued as was suitable to so high Offices with an excellent sanctity a rare and extraordinary Wisdom and an heavenly Power which evidenced it self in them by miraculous effects But after all they were men and never pretended to be ranked above that feeble nature which was common unto them and us nor did receive any of those Honours which belong to the Divine whereas the LORD JESUS is so Man as he is likewise GOD blessed for ever and was so far from refusing Divine Honours that he hath expresly required them at our hands and enjoined us to adore him with the Father and to acknowledg him his Eternal Son This same difference the Apostle observes between the LORD JESUS and those other Ministers which GOD made use of in the former Ages God saith he having at sundry times and in divers manners in time past spoken unto the fathers by the Prophets hath in these last days spoken to us by his Son Ebr. 1.1 Moses and the rest were Prophets of GOD JESUS is his Son The others were his Ministers JESUS is his Heir The others were faithful as Servants Ebr. 3.5 6. JESUS as Son is over the whole House In the others there did shine forth some marks of the commerce they had with GOD that Soveraign Majesty imprinting on their faces as upon Moses's in particular some sparklings of his glory But JESUS is His very Light the resplendency of his glory and the character of his Person Dear Brethren it doth highly concern us to know rightly this great dignity of our LORD and Saviour not only for the rendring to his Person the worship we owe him and of which we may not fail without offending the Father as himself hath told us John 5.23 He that honoureth not the Son honoureth not the Father who hath sent him but also for our embracing with so much the more zeal the Religion he hath delivered us without ever admitting the perswasion that either men on earth or even Angels from Heaven can add any thing to the light the goodness and the perfection of the discipline of so great and so perfect an Author For this cause doth S. Paul here hold forth to the Colossians the Divinity of our LORD JESUS CHRIST In the precedent Verses he exhorted them to constant perseverance in the belief of his Gospel confirming themselves in it more and more and taking heed they gave no car to Philosophy and the vain traditions of seducers who endeavoured to corrupt sound doctrine by the mixing of divers inventions which they would add to it as if it were not perfect enough of it self to guide us to salvation The Apostle to bereave Error of this pretext and shew the faithful not only the sufficiency but even abounding of the Gospel represents unto them the soveraign perfection and divinity of its Author For in him saith he dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily Since you have JESUS CHRIST saith he there is no need of recourse to others In Him as in a living and inexhaustible spring is all good necessary to your happiness a divine Authority to found your Faith an infinite Wisdom to direct you in all truth an incomprehensible Goodness and Power to give you grace and glory a quickning Spirit to sanctifie and comfort you All other things compared to Him are but poverty and weakness See how the Apostle fortifies the faithful in the doctrine of the LORD and in few words overthrows all that the presumption of flesh and blood may dare to set up beside or against his perfect truth For a right understanding of his words we must consider them exactly For though the number of them be small their weight is great they are rich and magnifick in sense and do contain within their narrow compass one of the noblest and fullest descriptions of JESUS CHRIST that is found in Scripture Let us see then first what all this fulness of the Godhead is whereof the Apostle speaketh And then in the second place how it dwells in JESUS CHRIST to wit bodily The LORD please to conduct us by the light of his own Spirit in so high a Meditation that of his fulness we may receive grace for grace and draw from it what may fill our souls with that life and salvation which overfloweth in him and can be no where found at all but in him As for the subject it self whereof S. Paul speaketh and in which he saith that all the fulness of the Godhead dwelleth none can doubt but that it is our LORD JESUS CHRIST For having said at the end of the verse immediately foregoing that the traditions of men and rudiments of the world are not after CHRIST he now addeth For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead Whence it is clear that the LORD JESUS CHRIST whom he had even then named is the Person of whom he speaks and to whom he attributes
all this fulness As little could any man be to seek who this JESUS was of whom the Apostle speaks All knew him at least confusedly and in gross and did conceive him a man born of Mary in Judea who having liv'd some years among the Jews had been at length crucified by the sentence of Pontius Pilate and who being risen from the grave to a new life had sent forth his Apostles to preach his Gospel and afterwards afcended up into Heaven And though all did not believe that he was risen again and glorisi'd yet all well knew that this was said of him so that both the one and the other hearing JESUS CHRIST named did presently conceive in their mind the Idea of this Person born and dying in Judea at such times and at such places with some retinue of Disciples during his life and after his death This then is the subject of which S. Paul speaks even JESUS CHRIST considered under this form of a man in which he manifested himself to the world and in which he was conceiv'd and figured in the minds of those that heard him named In this man whose appearance was like that of other men who was born and bred on earth sustained during his life with our common food subject to our infirmities who passed through the differences of our ages suffer'd our griefs felt our inconveniences and experimented the rigour of death yea the cruellest that was in this man I say whose body was nailed to a Cross and deprived of its soul and buried in a Sepulcher in this man under so mean and contemptible a form dwelleth faith the Apostle all the fulness of the Godhead It is ordinary in the Hebrew Language to signifie by the fulness of any thing that which the thing containeth as by the fulness of the earth Men and other living creatures Psal 24. which do fill it and by the fulness of the Sea the Isles which the Sea containeth After this manner of expression the qualities and perfections of any one nature may be call'd its fulness because they are the things that fill it and with them it is as it were furnished and adorned as the movables and ornaments of a room or an house are the fulness of it Therefore as if I should say that in Adam as he was at first created was found all the fulness of Manhood every one would easily perceive that my intention were to say the perfections of human nature the faculties and properties and beauties which it is full of and without which it cannot sustain the dignity of that name were all in Adam â—an immortal soul a vigorous understanding a free-will a body of excellent 〈◊〉 acute senses and in sum all the other faculties that have any place among the perfections of the nature of man So here when we hear the Apostle saying that the fulness of the Godhead is in JESUS CHRIST let us account that by this clause he meaneth those perfections and qualities which fill up the Divine nature in which this great and soveraign Beeing doth consist and which Theologues commonly call the Attributes of GOD. You know what the word Godhead doth signifie even the Nature and Essence of GOD. The fulness of the Godhead then is that rich and incomprehensible abundance of perfections whereof the supream and adorable Nature is full as His Life His Power His Wisdom his Justice His Goodness His Immensity His Eternity His Holiness and all the other Properties which it hath in an ineffable manner and which our understandings according to their mean capacity do conceive in it as the form of the Deity that is necessary for its having that Name a nature that wanteth it being incapable of being called GOD otherwise than falsly and improperly I grant some resemblances or rather some touches and lineaments of these Perfections of the Godhead do appear in the noblest of the Creatures as in the Angels for instance who are immortal and endowed with an admirable sanctity vertue and power But the fulness of them is not in any Creature at all neither can it be found that ever the Scripture spake in this manner of Angels and said that the fulness of the Godhead was in them Besides these blessed Spirits and other Creatures how excellent soever you can imagine them to be do participate of these divine perfections but in a very little measure Whereas the LORD JESUS hath them wholly And to make this evident to us the Apostle thought it not enough to say that the fulness of the Godhead is in Him but hath expresly declared that ALL this fulness dwelleth in Him that we might be assured there is not at all any Perfection or Excellency or Accomplishment in the Divine Nature but is found in Him Thus in these two or three words he hath comprised all that the Scripture teacheth us in divers places of the richness of the Perfections of our LORD and Saviour For instance it tells us That he is full of grace and truth that he is the Wisdom and the Power of the Father that he hath the words of life that he is the Way the Truth and the Life that in him are hid the treasures of wisdom and knowledg that he hath that might and strength which sustaineth all things now and which created them at first that he is the Everlasting Father and hath immortality and incorruption hath an infinite understanding whereby he soundeth the reins and discerneth all the thoughts of the hearts of men that he hath a super-eminent Glory to which all Creatures ought to do homage yea the Angels themselves who indeed adore Him the Empire and dominion over all the world the right and authority to judg all men and a multitude of such things as these Verily S. Paul hath comprised it all in one word saying here that all the fulness of the Godhead is in JESUS CHRIST it being evident that if he wanted any of these Names Rights and Attributes He could not have all the fulness of the Godhead which is ascribed here unto Him But let us now see in what manner he possesseth these things the Apostle expresseth it very briefly saying that all this fulness of the Godhead dwelleth in him bodily First the term dwelleth is illustrious signifying that all this copious abundance of perfections doth not reside in JESUS CHRIST for some time only appearing a little while and then withdrawing again so making some transient stay in Him a few moments and no more but that it abideth in Him constantly and for ever for so the word dwell in Scripture-use doth import The Word and the glory of GOD appeared in Moses and the Prophets when being moved by the power of his Spirit they uttered and acted Divine things but it dwelt not in them It only rested on them some hours space for the LORD 's recommending those Servants of His and for the setling their authority by these marks of his Providence and of his communicating with
them Whereas the whole fulness of the Godhead was and is and ever shall be in CHRIST JESUS Therefore the Apostle speaketh expresly in the present tense and saith dwelleth in Him not that it had dwelt in him that no one might imagine it did at any time retreat But how great and admirable soever the signification of the word dwelleth is the Scripture yet doth frequently make use of it to express the continual sollicitudes that the Divine Providence hath of the faithful as when it is said in so many places that GOD dwelleth in the midst of his people and when the LORD himself saith in reference to his Ark whereon he sometime manifested himself to his ancient people I will dwell in the midst of the children of Israel Exod. 29.45 and will be their GOD. And when again speaking of Sion he saith It is my rest for ever there will I dwell because I have taken pleasure therein The Apostle therefore to distinguish and sever the dwelling of the Godhead in JESUS CHRIST from the now-mentioned and all other kind of its dwelling otherwhere addeth that the fulness thereof dwelleth in Him bodily He opposeth BODY to a shadow or an image as when he saith afterwards of the Ceremonies of the Law that they were shadows of things to come but the Body is in CHRIST The BODY that is the Truth and thing it self The shadow is but a slight and imperfect representation of it I think therefore that it is in this sense the Apostle saith here that the fulness of the Godhead dwelleth bodily in CHRIST that is to say really and truly in substance and not in shadow in truth and not in figure The Godhead dwelt in time past in the Ark of the Covenant but in shadow only For it was not this Supream Majesty its self that was present there but a Symbol only and some token of its glory whereas it is the Body it self if I may so speak of the Divinity and not its shadow only that resides in JESUS CHRIST all the perfections thereof being in Him really and in their whole truth And hereby is excellently expressed to us that admirable and inessable union of the Divinity with the flesh of our Saviour which the Church ordinarily calls Personal so close an union that this Flesh and the Word which assumed it do make but one and the same Person the Human nature of JESUS CHRIST subsisting only in the Person of the Son For if it were otherwise it could not be said that the fulness of the Godhead dwelleth bodily in CHRIST He would not have the Body of it any more than the Creatures have to whom it communicates its self He would have but some lineaments and shadow of it not the very thing For example GOD dwelt heretofore in his Ark inasmuch as he manifested his presence in it But because the things whiâ—h he set and made to be seen there were not very Nature or the self-same Perfections wherewith it is filled but some simple effects of his Power whereby the Images of some of his Perfections were in some sort delineated it is evident that it cannot be truly said that the fulness of his Godhead dwelt there bodily Thus also maâ—â—sted he himself to Moses in the Burning-bush and afterwards to the Apostles in Cloven-tongues as of fire and before that the Holy Ghost appeared in the form of a Dove But besides that these manifestations being but transient it cannot upon them be affirmed that GOD dwelt in the Bush or in the places where those other Symbols appeared besides this I say it is evident that the flame at the bush was not at all the Divine Nature or any one of its Perfections and that neither the Dove nor the fiery Tongues were any more the proper essence of the Holy Ghost or any one of his real and divine perfections all these things being but forms created of GOD and consequently Productions and Works of his wherein he represented to his Servants as in a Pourtrait or a rough-draught some slight resemblance of what he is indeed Whence it follows that though it might be said which yet may not of the places where these things appeared That the fulness of the Godhead dwelt in them nevertheless it would be false to say that it dwelt in them bodily it being clear that the things by reason whereof it should be said to have dwelt there were not the Body and the truth of his Nature but its shadow and symbol only I say the same of Prophets and of Saints and of Angels themselves to whom GOD most intimately communicates himself For the things by reason whereof the Scripture saith that he dwelleth in them are that holiness that joy and that knowledg which he works and preserves in them in a great measure Now every one seeth that neither the knowledg nor the piety nor the charity nor the joy nor the constant and uninterrupted felicity of the Saints are the very nature of GOD or the Body its self if I may so speak of his immense and incomprehensible Perfections in which the fulness of his Godhead doth consist these things are only effects and works of GOD engravings and impressions of his hand marks of his operation so as how high soever their excellency be and how exact soever the Image of GOD in these Saints is yet it cannot be said that the fulness of the Godhead dwelleth in them bodily since it is clear by the things now spoken that it dwelleth in them by shadows only by the illustrious and glorious traces which his operation hath left in them and not in substance It remains then we conclude since the Apostle here expresly asserteth that all the fulness of the Godhead dwelleth bodily in CHRIST that the Divinity is in him after a quite other manner than either in the Symbols by which it is represented or the Creatures on which it sheds forth its grace and glory that it so dwells in JESUS CHRIST as he hath in him not some dâ—â—â—eations and models by which it is figured forth not those qualities and dispositions alone which it worketh by the presence of its grace in the most holy of its Creatures but its very self that he hath the body and verity of it that is as the Church expresseth this mystery in one word That the Godhead is personally united with his Flesh it being not otherwise possible that the fulness of the Godhead should dwell in him bodily Now that such is this divine union of the Eternal Word with the Flesh of JESUS CHRIST doth appear First from that neither the Apostle nor any other of the Sacred Writers ever said of Saints or Angels what we here read of our Lord namely That all the fulness of the Godhead dwelleth in him bodily an evident sign that this is a glory which appertains to none but him alone Secondly From that the qualities the actions and the attributes of the Divinity are communicated to the Man
that was born of the blessed Virgin and reciprocally the sufferings the qualities and the actions of the Flesh that was born of Mary are attributed to the Eternal Son of GOD as when the Scripture saith That GOD hath redeemed the Church with his own blood that the Lord of Glory was crucified that JESUS CHRIST is before Abraham was that he founded the Earth at the beginning and the Heavens are the work of his hands and other like expressions Dear Brethren such is the sense of these divine words of the Apostle Admire ye the force and the richness of the Scripture which hath in so few words blasted and beaten down all the inventions and dogmatizings of Error against the Truth both of the two Natures of our LORD and Saviour and of the union of them in His Person First These words do overthrow the impiety of those who bereave JESUS CHRIST of his Divinity and reduce Him to the degree and condition either of a meer Man or of a Person raised indeed above man yet made notwithstanding and created at the beginning as well as other Celestial and Terrestrial Creatures How can such blasphemy subsist before this Sacred Oracle which proclaimeth not simply the Divinity but that the Godhead and not this simply neither but that the fulness of the Godhead yea to omit nothing that all the fulness of the Godhead dwelleth in him bodily If He be but a Man and no more no part of this fulness of the Godhead dwells in Him neither its Power nor its Wisdom neither its Goodness nor its Justice neither its Glory nor its Eternity For none of these Divine qualities do dwell in one who is but a man We must avouch that he hath in him verily those Perfections that fill up the Godhead that is the Divine Nature or deny that all the fulness of the Godhead dwelleth in him But if you grant me as deny it you cannot without giving the Apostle the lye that all the fulness of the Godhead dwelleth in him you must of necessity confess also that he is GOD no one if he be not GOD being capable of receiving holding and having in himself the fulness of GOD. For this fulness being infinite there is none but GOD that can contain it since there is not any but he alone who is infinite Now it dwelleth all in our LORD JESUS CHRIST It must therefore of necessity be confessed That He is GOD of a Nature infinite Whereby the frigid and frivolous evasions of those impious men are refuted who taking away from JESUS CHRIST the reality and true glory of Divinity do leave him the name of it and make a titular GOD of him a GOD as they speak created and raised up a while since who hath but the title of GOD not the nature the office not the essence Who can sufficiently detest the audaciousness of these Wretches that by this impiety of theirs do overthrow all the ground-work of the Scripture which hath insinuated nothing more clearly or more expresly than the one-ness of the true GOD Who is too so jealous of his glory as that he forbiddeth us upon pain of death to give his Name or his Worship or his Attributes unto any Creature of what quality soever If JESUS CHRIST be not the true Eternal GOD Creator of the Heavens and the Earth how will you miserable men avoid this condemnation you that give him the name and the adoration of the true GOD But S. Paul lays all their subtilty in the dust by saying formally here that all the fulness of the Godhead dwelleth in him bodily The fulness of the Godhead is not an empty name or a titular dignity It is that which fills it it is that gloriousness it is that light it is that nature that truth and that perfection wherewith the Godhead is full It 's this therefore that dwells in JESUS CHRIST the substance of a true and real Divinity not an hollow and a vain shadow it 's the thing and not the title of Deity But as the Apostle doth by these words convince the impiousness of such as bereave our LORD and Saviour of the glory of his Divinity so doth he likewise confound the extravagancy of others who deprive him of his human nature foolishly affirming that he had but a false appearance in that kind For here are two subjects clearly represented to us one that dwelleth to wit the fulness of the Godhead another in which this fulness dwelleth to wit JESUS CHRIST the one is the Temple the other is the GOD that resideth in the same the one our Saviours Human nature the other the Eternal Son of the Father Two real and veritable subjects by the wonderful uniting whereof this sacred and adorable Sanctuary of GOD is made up and composed To take away the truth either of his Godhead with the former or of his Flesh with the latter is to destroy the Fabrick Again these words of the Apostle do in like manner overthrow the error of those who have corrupted the union of these two natures in JESUS CHRIST on one hand by dividing them as did the Nestorians on the other by confounding them as did the Eutycheans For if we sever JESUS CHRIST into two Persons the fulness of the Godhead will not dwell bodily in his Flesh This Man will have but gifts of the Divinity which are as it were some draughts and lineaments of it He will not have the Truth and the very Body of it Neither may it be reply'd That the Temple in which GOD resideth is a substance different from his Person For the Body is the residence of the Soul yet Soul and Body have but one and the same subsistence and do constitute but one and the same Person So as the dwelling of the Son in his Human nature as in his Temple doth not hinder but that this Human nature of his doth subsist with him in one and the same Person Yet though we may not divide these two Natures of our LORD it doth not follow that we must mix and confound them as they do who define the union of them by the Human nature its being made equal with the Divine and will have it to be become infinite and immense and endowed really in its self with all the properties of the Divine nature The Apostle saith indeed that the fulness of the Godhead dwells in CHRIST but he saith not that his Flesh was really chang'd into the Godhead The body by being personally united to the soul doth not thereby become soul It conserveth its own nature and hath only this advantage by that strict conjunction which knits it with the soul that they subsist together and make up but one and the same person Just so the Flesh of our LORD by the Word 's dwelling in it becomes one self-same Person with it being truly the body and the soul and in one word the nature of the Son of GOD yet it still keeps its original beeing and essential properties
the New Testament were then but fore-told and promised not fully and clearly revealed as now by their accomplishment they have been by means whereof it was meet that during all that time they should be exercis'd in the observing of these typical rites and held in and kept under the Pedagogie of Moses until the fulness of time according to the Apostle's Doctrine in the Epistle to the Galatians Now that JESUS CHRIST hath openly exhibited the very body of truth and fully brought to light all the causes and motives of true sanctification these exercises of the Church's infancy are no longer seasonable and they that still stick to them are no less ridiculous than he that would still keep up the centries of a vault or the models of a building even after the Fabrick is finish'd and brought to its perfection or retain under a School-master's Ferule and in the restraints of childhood a man grown up and come to ripeness of years This is that we had to say for the exposition of this Text. It remaineth for a conclusion that we extract those instructions and consolations which if we meditate on it attentively it will afford us First Since the Apostle assureth us that we are compleat in CHRIST you see how vain those mens pretensions are who set forth certain rules of perfection as they call them beyond the Gospel Let us content our selves with our LORD's fulness and seek our perfection in him alone And instead of amusing our selves about the inventions of men embrace and practise CHRIST's Discipline advancing daily towards the utmost degree of perfectness For we may not flatter our selves with an imagination that a man may nevertheless appertain to him though he lead an wholly vicious and corrupt life S. Paul here protesteth plainly to us that all such as are in him are made compleat Whence it necessarily follows that such as are not compleat are without his communion and by consequence should not promise themselves any share in his salvation it being prepared for those only that are in him If this Doctrine do trouble us let us impute it to our vices and our loosness and taking once this truth to heart with all our might endeavour after that perfection which is in JESUS CHRIST accounting that without it we cannot possess either his grace in this world or his glory in the world to come I well know that to speak absolutely no one is perfect and that if we compare our condition on earth with that in heaven all our perfections are but weaknesses Yet it is true that JESUS CHRIST doth even in this life in some sense compleat his faithful ones and this perfection which he giveth them is not a vain name or an imagination It 's a thing and a most real truth it is a piety and charity sincere and free and without hypocrisie which though it sometimes fail doth notwithstanding produce true fruits and works quite different from those of Worldlings and Hypocrites according to what our LORD said even that if your righteousness do not exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees you shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven Object not that you are yet on earth and that perfection is not to be found but in heaven and that to live as an Angel one should be without a body It is not the perfection of Heaven that we demand of you The LORD will not reject you for having not had in this life the transcendent brightness of the next But though a child be not obliged to conduct his life with as much prudence and reason as a man of years it doth not follow that he hath licence to live without rule and in the debanches and disorders of slaves Every Age hath its bounds and its measures and its perfection Our childhood here below must not be without discipline under the pretence that it is not come to full growth Christians I complain not that there are defects in your knowledg and practice which have no place in Heaven but that there are in you vices which ought to have no place on earth I blame you not for that there is a great difference between you and Angels but that there is none between you and worldly men I require not what is above the strength of your age but what is worthy of your profession and doth not at all exceed your light I beseech you only to labour as much for JESUS CHRIST as the children of this generation do for the interests of their lusts This doth not exceed the capacity of our nature since you see what the servants of sin do and it s necessarily your duty except you imagine that we owe less to JESUS CHRIST than Worldlings do to their foolish and vain passions The first piece of that compleatness which we have in him is this Divine Circumcision which is not made with hand but by the efficacy of his Spirit Without it we can have neither place in the communion of his people nor right to his Inheritance It 's a Circumcision of which we may truly say that every soul that shall not have receiv'd it shall be cut off from his people The Apostle shews us wherein it consists to wit in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh JESUS CHRIST hath put the sword in our hand that 's necessary to cut away this wretched flesh namely his sacred word wherein he discovers the horridness of sin and infernal venom of vices and the vanity and iniquity of all the lusts of the flesh He hath shew'd us the perdition which they that serve it fall into and hath put it to death on his Cross and buried it in his Sepulcher He hath spread before our eyes the wonders of GOD's love and the eternity of the Kingdom appointed for faithful servants He hath given us rules and examples of this part of our sanctification in his Gospel and in his life and offereth us the lights and consolations of his Spirit to lead us in this work Grasp we then this Divine Knife of his Gospel Thrust it hardily in to our hearts and cut out thence all the impurity of the vices that are there Let us rid our selves of them and cast them behind us Exterminate all the productions of the flesh as execrable things Leave not one of them in our selves Having subdued Avarice combat Ambition Pluck out Luxury and all its passions from our inward parts Root up Hatred and Wrath and Cruelty and spare the life of none of these Monsters Let us not rest until we have cleansed our hearts of all this cursed brood For it is not enough to have cut off some of them One sole Enemy abiding in our bosome is able to destroy us The body of the sins of the flesh must be put off saith the Apostle and not one or two of its sins only I confess the labour is hard but it is necessary and that at all times for it is the
cause that S. Paul here gives the name of an Obligation to the Law or Testament of Moses The word he makes use of in the Original doth signifie generally any acknowledgment written or at least signed with our hand by which we confess our selves to owe a man such or such a sum and oblige our selves to pay him it at such time and in such manner as we have agreed upon Such are those which be commonly called Bills and Schedules But because of all Contracts of this kind an Obligation that passeth before Notaries with certain solemn forms is the most juridical the French Bible hath made use of the name thereof in particular An obligation then in Civil matters is a Creditor's Title and an evidence of the power he hath upon his Debtor to convince him of his debt and compel him to make payment if he do refuse It 's an authentick testimony of his owing such a sum which condemns him to pay and makes his body and goods liable in this behalf unto his Creditor Whence it appears that this Obligation whereof the Apostle speaks in the Text is the instrument of our condemnation and an authentick declaration and demonstration of our sin which gives valid testimony that we are guilty and subjecteth us by this means to the avenging Justice of GOD giving him a clear and undisputable right to prosecute and punish us All agree that the word Obligation must be so taken in this passage of the Apostle But when question is of founding the bottom and of determining what properly and precisely the thing is to which this quality agreeth and whereunto S. Paul's meaning was to give it there is found some difference among Expositors some conceiving it one particular and others another I will not stay to report their several opinions it being no way necessary for your edification I will content my self with representing to you that sense which I account the truest and which hath likewise been follow'd by divers eminent servants of GOD. I say then that this Obligation whereof the Apostle speaketh is no other thing than the old Law given in time past to the Israelites by the Ministry of Moses and of them accepted at Mount Sinai This appears first from S. Paul's saying that this obligation lay in ordinances For every one knows that this doth properly belong to the Law of Moses which consisted in a great many moral ceremonial and political Ordinances The Jews who are very exact and scrupulous in such matters reckon them up to Six hundred R. Moses ben Majm and their learned'st Authors divide them into fourteen Classes or ranks The whole body of these Ordinances is precisely the Law of Moses so as it is evident 't is this Law the Apostle means since he saith that what he meaneth lay in ordinances He thus explains it himself in a passage that hath great alliance with the Text in hand where speaking of the re-uniting of the Gentiles with the Jews into one only people done by our LORD JESUS CHRIST he saith that he abolished the enmity in his flesh to wit saith he the law of commandments which lay in ordinances where it is evident that he signifies the Law of Moses both by those express words the law of commandments and also by the nature of the thing it self it being certain that this enmity of the Jews and Gentiles that is the thing which separated them before our Saviour's dispensation was nought else but the Mosaical Law which the one of them had and the other had not The same appears again clearly from that conclusion which the Apostle inferrs from this Doctrine in the sixteenth and the following Verses of this Chapter For from his position here namely That the obligation which is in ordinances hath been effaced he concludeth that none ought to condemn us in eating or in drinking or in distinguishing of a Festival or of a new Moon or of Sabbaths and again that it is impertinent for any to burthen us with ordinances such as are Eat not Col. 2.21 tast not touch not Now every one seeth that these ordinances do make up a part of the Law of Moses Certainly then it 's that Law he doth mean here because otherwise it would not follow from the abolishing of our obligation that we are no longer subject to such things But the truth of this interpretation will be fully perceived by an exposition of the Apostle's own words themselves there being no other subject but the Mosaical Law to which all the circumstances and qualities he here attributes to it do properly agree First He termeth it an obligation against us Secondly He saith that it lay in ordinances In the third place he addeth that it was contrary to us And finally in the fourth and last place he saith that it hath been effaced abolished and fastned to the cross things these which cannot all of them together be verified of any other subject First The Law of Moses was an obligation against such as liv'd under its dispensation that is as we have explained it an evidence and â—â—â—alible argument of their sin and of the just power that GOD had to condem them unto punishment For the Law of Moses proclaiming aloud that all such as failed to observe any one of its ordinances are accursed it is manifest that they all who accepted it for the terms of their Covenant with GOD did by the same pass condemnatory sentence on themselves and submit to the curse both the conscience of each one in particular and the common experience of all in general shewing that there was not a man who punctually observed all things written in the Law And as he that passeth an obligation to his Creditor doth condemn himself to make payment and if he fail therein doth make his goods and sometimes his very person liable unto him in like manner they that receiv'd the Law and sign'd it if I may so say after they had heard and understood it these I say condemned themselves unto the curse of GOD and did put their persons and all their goods into the hands of Divine Justice since it is clear that none of them did ever fully satisfie all the clauses which that Contract doth contain Therefore as a Bond given by a Debtor to his Creditor in acknowledgment of what he ows him is an obligation which makes it clearly appear that he is responsible to him and deprives him of all excuse and leaves him no defence to thâ— contrary So the Law of Moses is an authentick obligation which demonstrates and invincibly proves that the sinner is guilty and liable to the avenging Justice of GOD without having any considerable means left him to defend himself from that punishment which it ordaineth for all such as violate its commands As for the ceremonies I grant they promised in appearance some satisfying of the Justice of GOD and some expiation of sin inasmuch as they prefigured the mysteries of CHRIST who was
other But now the LORD JESUS hath abrogated this adhering to places to times and to the elements of this world as a low and childish exercise and appointed for his people a service altogether spiritual and divine proportioned to that admirable light of knowledg which he hath shed into the hearts of the faithful a service that wholly consisteth in love to GOD charity and beneficence towards our Neighbour and in honesty and purity in respect of our selves This is the true service of the Deity worthy of man that presents it and of GOD that receives it since man is a reasonable Creature and GOD a Spirit infinitely good and holy according to what our Saviour addeth that the Father seeketh such to worship him and that being a Spirit they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth But though this kind of service be so just and so rational in its self and though the LORD JESUS have so clearly instituted it by his Divine Authority yet on the other part the inclination of our nature is so violent towards gross and earthly things that even among those who make profession of acknowledging JESUS CHRIST for the Son of GOD a multitude is found that cannot let go these bodily exercises in which a part of Divine Service did heretofore consist The Apostle testifies in divers places that there were such in his time 1 Tim. 4.3 and he advertiseth us in others that there would also be such in after-ages and the event hath precisely answered his prediction an evident sign it was the Spirit of Truth that is the Spirit of GOD which illuminated his understanding and caused him to see in those days things hidden in a time to come so far beyond the reach of the natural sight of men It 's against these people that he laboureth in this Chapter for to defend from their abusing them not only the Colossians to whom he writes but also the faithful of all Ages He laid firm and unmovable foundations of the truth in his foregoing discourse and the same as his manner is with great strength and glorious evidence shewing us that we have all those advantages plentifully in JESUS CHRIST upon pretence of which error would introduce its inventions and carnal observations that in him we have all fulness necessary to compleat us that his Resurrection and his Spirit do divest us of all the vices of the flesh and that his Cross doth give us full remission of our sins since it hath both made void the obligation concerning all the punishments we owed to Divine Justice and triumphed of all those powers that were capable of accusing or tormenting us Whence it clearly followeth that it 's a vanity for any to go about to oblige us unto legal and material observations seeing that we most perfectly have in the death and resurrection of our LORD all that sanctification and justification for the advancing of which it is pretended that these things do serve This is Dear Brethren the direct conclusion that the Apostle doth now deduce from that excellent and divine Doctrine which he established afore Therefore saith he let no man condemn you in meat or in drink or in the distinction of a festival day or of a new moon or of sabbaths Which things are shadows of those that were to come but the body of them is in CHRIST He first forbids them to suffer themselves to be put in subjection to these legal things and next he brings them a reason for it taken from their nature for that these things were but shadows of which JESUS CHRIST hath exhibited to us and given the true body These shall be by the will of GOD the two points we will handle in this Exercise observing in the one and the other of them what we shall judg conducible to your edification Those Seducers whom the Apostle opposeth in this place had drawn the devotions which they would add to the Gospel partly from the Mosaical Law partly from Heathen Philosophy and partly out of their own imagination whence it comes that in one of the precedent Verses he advised the Colossians to beware that no one made a prey of them by philosophy and vain deceit Col. 2.8 after the tradition of men and the rudiments of the world They had borrowed from Moses circumcision and the distinction of meats and days They had beg'd from the Schools of Philosophy the worshipping of Angels and the vain discourses wherewith they colour'd over this abuse and they had invented of themselves certain austerities and pretended mortifications of which they made great account in Religion See I beseech you what an heap of strange things the Spirit of Superstition did even at that time thrust into Christianity that you be not amazed if men in so many ages as have rouled down since those days pursuing the same design unheeded according to the passion of their flesh have by little and little quite fill'd up Religion with the like services and observations and as it were foul'd and dirted that pure and clear Fountain of our Saviour's Discipline with the dregs and sediment of their inventions For if flesh had the impudence to promote such abuses during the lives and under the eyes of the Apostles how much more would it have the boldness to enterprise and facility to execute it during the night of so many ages which were not only destitute of the light of those great Tapers but also overspread with the darkness of grossest ignorance But let us see how S. Paul condemneth the Traditions of those of his age to the end we may preserve our selves from those of our own by the example and authority of his Doctrine He spake before of circumcision to which they would have had Christians still submit themselves He now takes to task their other abuses and first the distinction they made of days and of meats and next in the verses following their Doctrine touching Angels and the worship they gave them and last of all their Disciplines and Mortifications from the 20th Verse to the end of the chapter We will see by the grace of GOD the two other parts of His dispute each of them in its place As for the former the Apostle taxeth here two sorts of destinctions or observations which these men made in religion the one of meats the other of days And as to the latter he noteth particularly and by name some of the days which they observed to wit Festivals new Moons and Sabbaths But about the other he expresseth himself in general only saying simply Let no man condemn you in meat or in drink without declaring particularly the kind of meat or drink which they prohibited or permitted so as the Apostle not telling it us and we having no light in it neither any other way it is not easy for us to know precisely what the meats were the distinction whereof these people did set up For first the Law of Moses whence they
pleasuâ—â— by an humility of spirit and the service of Angels intruding into things which be hath not seen being rashly puffed up with the sense of his flesh Dear Brethren Here is a notable sentence pronounced which overthrows in express words all the worship that the superstition of men whether ancient or modern doth attribute unto creatures it being clear that there is not any one of them whom we may lawfully serve in Religion since the Apostle forbiddeth us to serve the Angels themselves who are without difficulty of all creatures the most excellent You know the interest we have in this cause those of Rome anathmatizing us in it under colour that content to adore and serve GOD our Creator and Redeemer only we refuse to render unto Angels and Saints departed that Religious Worship and those Divine honours which they decree and deferr daily to them to the great prejudice of the glory of GOD and the irreparable offence of men Let us therefore exactly consider this Oracle of the holy Apostles and that we may leave nothing in it behind us we must see first what the Doctrine of those Seducers is which he condemneth He expresseth it in these words Let 〈◊〉 man master it over you by an humility of spirit and the service of Angels and then we are to examine in the second place the marks he gives these false Teachers which are contained in the following words intruding into things he hath not seen being rashly puffed up with the sense of his flesh and not holding the head But we will satisfie our selves for this time with the former of these parts remitting the second to another opportunity by reason of the cavils and inventions our adversaries make use of to corrupt this passage which we must refute as briefly as we can The word that S. Paul useth at the entrance and which we have translated Master it is difficult and seldom found in the Authors of the Greek Tongue S. Hierom one of the learnedst of the ancients sayes Ep. ad Alg. 9 10. it was peculiar to the Country of Cilicia whereof S. Paul was as being born at Tarsus the Capital City of that Proviâ—ice However it be the derivation of the word is clear and doth sufficiently discover what is well-nigh its signification For such as understand the Greek do know that this term comes from another which signifies the reward that was given to those who won the victory in those games or combats for prize at which certain Judges and Moderators did at that time preside who had the superintendance of the whole action regulating and bounding the race assigning the ground and receiving the Champions into it judging of their courses and combats proclaiming that man victorious to whom they yielded the advantage and solemnly putting a Crown upon his head Whence it comes that themselves were called by a name that signiâ—ies Givers of the reward and the term which signifies what they did on such occasions is generally used to express governing regulating ruling and having the superintendance of a matter It is expresly from this term that that which the Apostle useth here is formed saving that it seems to signifie governing and ordering not simply but to the prejudice and damage of the concerned Therefore some have thought that S. Paul comparing here the Faithful unto Racers or Combatants as he very often doth elsewhere does exhort them not to let the prize or reward of the Victory to be taken from them by the artifice of Seducers who made it their business to turn them out of the true and lawful lists of their race which are no other than believing and obeying the doctrine of the Gospel and make them enter into another carriere to wit that of their own inventions and services in the same sense that he elsewhere said to the Galatians who were abused by a like imposture Gal. 5.7 Ye did run well who did turn you aside that you should not obey the truth If this exposition were adapted as well as to the Apostles phrase as it is to his sense it would be excellent shewing us that I may say it by the way how this serving of Angels here forbidden us is an error of no small importance since it maketh those who turn aside unto or employ themselves in it to lose the prize of their Heavenly calling The Latin Interpreter Canonized by those of Rome having respect to the effect of such false doctrine which is a driving of the faithful out of the right way doth Translate it simply Let no man seduce you There is no need to report the thoughts of all others But I do affirm that there can be hardly found an expression more proper more commodious and according better with either the term or the scope of the Apostle then that of the French Bible Let no man master it over you which doth naturally express the magisterial authority that these Seducers assumed to themselves enjoyning and commanding their fancies to the faithful as if they had been installed Superintendants of their Religion and their lives and willing them to understand that without practising what they prescribed it was not possible to obtain the prize of their high calling Wherein the Apostle giveth them a blow and renders them ridiculous as men who having in truth no lawful authority would yet make it be believed that they had and did speak and command with as much confidence as if it belonged to them to distribute the Crown of Heaven at the last day or that they had it already in their hands to impart it to whom it should seem them good But that which S. Paul addeth doth discover their folly much more let no man saith he master it over you at his pleasure or at his will which may be referred either to their office or to their Doctrine or as I think to them both To their Office meaning that they are voluntary Superintendents and that their own will alone not the voice of GOD or men did elevate them to this pretended Mastership well night as the Roman Orator calls a certain man a Voluntary Senator who did thrust himself into the rank of the Senators but had no right to be there having been elected only by himself But this respects also their Dectrine and signifies that the serving of Angels which they commanded was founded meerly on their own good-pleasure and not upon any precept of GOD that their will alone was the reason and ground of it not the will of the LORD that it was nothing but an imagination of their own head and a fruit either of their melancholy or their malice Whence we may observe by the way That those that teach in the Church ought to set forth nothing but what is founded on the word of GOD. Isa 8.20 To the Law and to the Testimony but if they speak not according to this word of a truth there shall be no morning for them This rule is enough to
the service or Religious worship of Angels We are now to consider by the assistance of GOD that which the shortness of time hindered us from explicating then to wit the marks of these false Teachers and the pernicious consequence of their errour For though the Apostles intimation of the thing it self be sufficient His authority in the Church being such as it is not lawful for any man whoever he be to teach or believe any thing in Christian Religion contrary to the sentiment of this great servant of GOD Yet not content with injoyning the Colossians that they should not let themselves be master'd over by these pretended Doctors who would cause them to serve Angels for the adding of more weight to his exhortation he discovers to them those Seducers their true motives and the cause of their errour and remonstrates also the dismal issue in which it did engage them For as you have heard he noteth first their audaciousness and ignorance when he saith that they intrude into things they have not seen Next he shews the source of them to wit their foolish presumption when he adds that they are rashly puffed up with the sense of their flesh And lastly he represents us the pernicious consequence of their doctrine the fruit and success wherein all their striving did terminate which was that in effect by their glorious services they debauched and disunited men from JESUS CHRIST the true and only Head of believers and so depriv'd them of that life that light and salvation which this Divine Head influxeth into the members of His mystical body For this is in substance the sense of the latter part of the Text in which the Apostle saith that these people did not hold the head from which the whole body being furnished and fitly knit together by joints and bands encreaseth with the encrease of GOD. In these three heads the whole meaning of this Text seems to me to consist Wherefore if it please GOD we will examin them distinctly one after another and in the Apostles order treat first of these Seducers boldness secondly of their presumption and lastly of the consequence of their doctrine which tendeth to the disuniting of men from JESUS CHRIST the Head of the whole body of the Church As for the first point this temerity to intrude into things one hath not seen is ordinary enough with all sorts of men ever since the venom of pride impoisoned their hearts and in special with all hereticks But it is remarkable particularly in those that teach the service of Angels it being manifest that those blessed Spirits whose worship they erect are of a nature much superior to us the order and operations whereof are open to no sense of ours But when the Apostle saith they have not seen the things into which they intrude his meaning is not simply that the eyes either of their body or of their natural reason never received the Species of these objects nor apprehended or conceived the consequences and conduct of their being but moreover that they neither had nor could have by the word or revelation of GOD any certainty of the things they affirmed For though the greater part of the matters of Religion be above our senses yet when GOD hath discover'd them to us and as it were rendered them visible in His word it becomes easie for us to know them by this means and the Scripture too doth call the knowledge that we have of them this way a sight of them Ezek. 13.3 Thus Ezekiel means when he reprocheth the false Prophets with following their own hearts when they had seen nothing that is they predicted and assured things for true which the foolish imagination of their own Spirit suggested to them though in truth GOD had shewed them no such matter in the light of His revelation It is just so that those Seducers did whom the Apostle taxeth in this place They dogmatized and affirmed it as a clear case that Angels were to be serv'd and invocated and to perswade men of it they delivered many things concerning their nature and their intervention between GOD and us Yet the truth is that of all this they neither had nor could have any certainty as being things which they had never seen either in the School of nature or the revelation of GOD. All our knowledge and assurance necessarily comes from one of these three sources namely either from sense and such is the knowlege we have of the things we see hear smell touch and taste or from reason and so doth humane science which is acquired or formed by discourse and natural reasoning or lastly from the revelation of GOD who discovereth to us by the light of His word divers objects and divers verities which neither our sense nor our reason could perceive in nature Now though reason doth cause men by the consideration of things that are or are done in the world to discern some principles and verities of Religion yet the whole of this is so small a matter and withal so confused and imperfect by reason of the corruption of our understandings that the Word of GOD ought to be held for the sole assured foundation of Religion according to that which the Apostle signifies to us elsewhere Rom. 10.17.1 even that faith cometh by hearing and hearing from the word of GOD. When therefore he saith here that the Seducers do intrude into things they have not seen he doth it 's true respect in general all those Sources of our knowledge and absolutely deny that these men had by them any of the things they dogmatized but he does particularly referr to the third that is the revelation of GOD. And his meaning is that the LORD had not shewed them nor made them see by His Word any of the things they preached and would set up in the Religion of Christians And though indeed they neither had nor could have any certain knowledge of them nevertheless they discours'd of them blindfold and did divulge their phantasies the visions of their brain and dreams of their own Spirit for indubitable necessary and wholesome truths A carriage which the Apostle doth excellently well set forth by that word of his which we have translated intruding a word that properly signifies entring into setting foot on and marching forth in some quarter as in ground we have title to Whereby he noteth out the vanity of these false Teachers who did not meerly busie themselves in a research of things above their capacity which is in it self a vain and ridiculous labour but also dared to speak of them and make peremptory decisions about them so going above ground and walking as may be said in the vacuum of their own imaginations mounting their thoughts unto a Region far above them like that poor Phrenetick of whom the Poets speak who having presumed to enter upon a strange Element and fly there soon found his rashness punished with his ruine The Prophet makes use of a like phrase
when to represent his modesty Psal 131.1 he saith that he hath not walked in great things and too high for him Dear Brethren we have no need to ascend so far back as the Apostle's time for examples of this vanity Our Adversaries of the Communion of Rome do afford us a sufficient store who as they retain the errour of those whom the Apostle here taxeth serving Angels as they did so do inherit their temerity intruding into things they have not seen They do magisterially pronounce that men must serve and invoke Angels and Saints departed They boldly define the Religious Worship that is to be given and divide it us into its kinds naming one of them Dulia and the other Hyperdulia all with as much confidence as if they spake of things most obvious to sence I urge not for the present that Scripture doth blast this whole errour every where intimating that we ought to serve no one in Religion but GOD alone and with loud voice anathematizing the Worship of any creature I pretermit what it saith particularly against the Adoration and Worshipping of Angels as also that S. Paul doth expresly prohibit it in the Text. I keep singly to the rule he here gives me that no belief be afforded those who intrude into things they have not seen and do demand of these hardy Doctors in what Region in what part of Divine Revelation have they seen these Services these Dulia's and these Hyperdulia's of which they so positively speak Where is it that the Holy Ghost hath shewed them these brave Doctrines To what Prophet hath He revealed them To what Apostle hath He signified them Of what Evangelist have themselves learnt them Sure they must here be husht of necessity They have not seen one of these pretended mysteries in the Book of GOD. They cannot shew us any track of them any where except it be in the fancies of Plato and of the Heathen Philosophers the Disciples of Daemons and not of GOD men taught in the School of errour and not in that of truth They proceed further yet and make us discourses about the Orders of Angels and distribute to them their business and cut them out their Ministrations they rank the Saints and give to them each his Charge and employment And if you ask them how these Spirits being in Heaven do hear our Prayers and requests and by what means they see the secret motions of our hearts They answer some of them that the mirrour of the Trinity upon which they incessantly have their eyes doth present them all the Idea's of them others that GOD reveals them to them some other way But whence do they know this It is neither sense nor natural reason that hath shewed it them If therefore they have seen it any where it must be in the Revelation of GOD. Yet it is clear and they cannot deny it that neither this pretended mirrour nor any one of their other conjectures do appear there at all Cajetan in 22. q. 88. a. â— And one of their most famed Authors sufficiently declares it We do not know saith he by any certain reason whether the Saints do perceive our Prayers or no although we do piously believe it as if it were piety and not pittiful credulity to believe things of which we have no assurance But let him make what account of it he pleases This is evident that since he confesseth they have no assurance of these things it must of necessity be confessed also that it is extreamly ill done of them to intrude into them except he will reject the Authority of the Apostle in his condemning those here most expresly who intrude into things they have not seen This vanity doth further shew it self in the things they give out concerning the state of Souls in their fabulous Purgatory the scituation the structure and partitions whereof they represent together with the fire and torments of the Spirits that are there imprisoned with such a deal of confidence as if they were just now come from thence after many years stay in the place Nevertheless the truth is that neither they nor their Ancestors euer saw one jot of it either in the Scriptures of GOD or in the nature of things there being not a word any where of any one of these imaginations That which they say of their Transubstantiation with its conditions and circumstances and of the manner how the body of CHRIST is present in every crumb of their Hoste and in every drop of their Chalice Their positions likewise concerning their pretended Sacrifice of the Mass and concerning the relative or Analogical adoration of Images and concerning the Characters which some of their Sacraments do imprint upon the souls of men and in one word all the points of doctrine that we contest with them are of the same nature All of them are things they have not seen they intrude into them walk in them and strout vainly commanding the belief or practice of them under pain of damnation how doubtful and uncertain soever they be and furiously anathematizing all those who make the least doubt to receive them As for us Dear Brethren who through the grace of GOD have learned to preferr His voice before the imaginations of men and to fear the thundrings of Heaven more than the fulminations of Rome let us leave them in this vain humour or to say better pray to GOD to bring them out of it and give them to distinguish their own dreams from His declarations And for our further acquitting of our selves let us religiously keep to the Apostles direction Intrude we never into things we have not seen Neither be so simple as to follow those that do or to suffer our selves to be mastered over by them Let us rest in the things which GOD hath clearly revealed to us in His word which He hath so set before our eyes in that Divine Treasury of His truth as very children may there behold them This portion is sufficient for us if we cultivate it well we shall find in it abundantly wherewith to inform our understandings wherewith to calm our Consciences and sanctifie our hearts and perfect all the faculties of our souls Let no man presume above that which is written 1 Cor. 4.6 Rom. 12.3 Take heed of being wise above what is meet but be wise to sobriety Let the word of GOD be the rule of our science and His Book the bound of all our curiosity All knowledge is had without knowing any thing beyond it This consideration alone is enough to preserve us from all the errours of Rome For since the intruding into things we have not seen is a temerity condemned here by the Apostle and in matter of Religion we can have seen none but such as GOD hath revealed in His Word it evidently follows that we are obliged not only to forbear believing but also to proceed to the rejecting of all the Doctrines about which we are in contest with Rome
CHRIST hath given us in raising us again with Himself doth oblige us These thoughts and works of Heaven are necessary productions of the principles and faculties of that life unto which we have been raised up You can neither be Christians without having part in the resurrection of our LORD nor have part in His resurrection except you walk with Him and wear that lightsome robe of sanctity wherewith He vesteth all the associates of His resurrection He Himself calleth us hereto from that lofty Throne whereon He sitteth at the right hand of GOD Faithful soul saith He to each of us look unto me and I will give thee light Fear not for I govern the Heavens and the earth Only fix thine eyes thy thoughts and thine heart on me and I will guide thee by my counsel and receive thee one day into my glory Dear Brethren this He doth promise us and of this He will give us earnest next LORD's-day at His holy table Let us do what He demands of us or to say better let us pray Him to do it in us and He will assuredly do what He promiseth us Unto Him unto the Father and unto the Holy Spirit the true and only GOD blessed for ever be honour praise and glory to ages of ages Amen THE THIRTY THIRD SERMON ON COLOSSIANS CHAP. III. VER III IV. Verse III. For ye are dead and your life is hid with CHRIST in GOD. IV. When CHRIST who is your life shall appear then shall ye also appear with Him in glory DEAR Brethren The LORD JESUS being not only the author and the cause but also the pattern and exemplar of that great Salvation which GOD of His infinite mercy offereth to mankind in the Gospel it is not possible that we should have part in it or assuredly enter into this rich possession without having in us a resemblance of the same soveraign LORD and being as so many copies of this Divine Original where all His features and lineaments may appear though in a form and measure much less perfect and eminent than His. Rom. 8.28 Of this the Apostle expresly informeth us in his Epistle to the Romans saying that those whom GOD did fore-know that is love and discriminate from the rest of men according to His good pleasure to communicate really faith and eternal salvation unto them He did also predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son Heb. 2.12 13. For this cause He doth us the honour to call us sometimes His children and sometimes His brethren by reason of the resemblance we have with Him the nature the condition the quality and as 't is commonly termed the fortune of children following the fathers and of brethren being like their elder brothers Whence the Apostle concludes in the Epistle to the Hebrews that He who sanctifyeth that is the LORD JESUS Heb. 8.11 and they who are sanctified that is the faithful are all of one that is of one and the same mass of one and the same form and nature And to make it plain to us the Scripture compareth Him sometimes to a Vine-stock Jo. 15. Rom. 11. otherwhile to an Olive-tree of each of which we are branches all of them things between which there is by nature a strict communion the one and the others having the same constitution and qualities And thence again it is that Saint Paul calleth Him our first-fruits when speaking of our death and the resurrection which is to succeed it he saith that CHRIST was made the first fruits of them that slâ—ep 1 Cor. 15.20 the first-fruits as you know being of the same condition and nature with the rest of those things out of the mass whereof they are taken Now although this consormity of the faithful with the LORD JESUS be of a large extent yet it doth principally appear in two heads wherein the Scripture doth particularly consider it to wit in His Death and in His Resurrection the happy remembrance whereof we have celebrated this morning For the death of JESUS CHRIST hath produced a death like it in all true believers reducing them by its efficacy and virtue unto a state conform to His when He was stretched out on the Cross and lay in the Sepulchre In like manner His Resurrection transmitteth into them a life like that which He resumed when having overcome death He issued out of His grave His Death is not only the cause but also the pattern of ours and likewise His Life is both the principle and exemplar of ours It 's of this death and this life Dearly beloved Brethren the effect and the image of the Death and Resurrection of the LORD that we make account to entertain you in this action For after our having celebrated the memory of the death and resurrection of this Great Saviour and participated of the one and the other by the vertue of His Spirit and our Faith what can we more pertinently meditate than the precious fruit which each of them produceth in us and the images of the one and the other of these mysteries which this Divine dead and again risen perâ—â—â— doth draw and form in us inasmuch as He changeth us after a sort into Himself by an impression of His omnipotent vertue so as if we have truly receiv'd Him we are become dead and risen again with Him St. Paui teacheth us this excellent and saving truth in the series of our ordinary Texts by these words which we have read for the subject of this exercise In those that preceded which we expounded eight daies since this great Apostle drew us from the earth that he might elevate us to Heaven where JESUS sitteth at the right hand of the Father Seek saith he the things which are above and not the things which are on the earth But because he knew how difficult such a transportation would be for persons who are still so many waies fastned to the earth to work so high a design thoroughly into us besides the reasons already represented which were taken from our resurrection with the LORD and from His presence and glorious soveraignty in the places he would elevate us to he further proposes two more for that end in this passage The one taken from our death For saith he ye are dead and the other from that new life which we have received a life hidden it 's true for the present in GOD but such as will be plainly and plenarily discovered one day at the manifestation of the LORD JESUS Your life saith he is hid with CHRIST in GOD. When CHRIST c. These are the two principal points we will treat of in this action the grace of our LORD assisting and Him we invocate praying that this word of His may be effectually in us His power to salvation throughly changing us into the similitude both of His salutary death and of His glorious life that being dead unto our selves we may not live henceforth but in Him unto His honour and the edification
us from holynesse and from sin as we shall be addicted to the one or the other He represents to us on one hand the happinesse to which the Saints are advanced who obey His will and on the other hand the dreadful torments into which vice doth assuredly precipitate all the wicked And though His Spirit doth in part cure this ignorance and this sordid disposition in as many as He doth regenerate yet while we are on earth there do abide some reliques of them in us Whence it comes that He forbears not to use this method even with the faithful themselves You have a notable instance of it in this lesson of the Apostle upon which we now are For having exhorted us to mortifie our members which are upon the earth that is to renounce the defilements of luxury and avarice for the inclining of us to so just a duty he represents unto us in this Text the judgements of GOD upon the obstinate slaves of these vices They are things saith he for which the wrath of GOD cometh upon the children of rebellion For he compriseth in these few words the fearful and inevitable but just judgement of Heaven upon all those who despising its goodnesse do abandon themselves to the one or the other of these vices And then in the following verse he sets afresh before our eyes for the same purpose the miserablenesse of our fore-pass'd life which even as the life of children of rebellion was e're-while sunk in the turpitude of these same sins and withal the infinite kindness GOD hath done us in drawing us out thence in which things saith he ye also walked sometimes when ye lived in them This he doth to the end that being seized with a just horrour at our former state and ravish'd in the sense of our present happiness we might heartily renounce the service of our former masters and live henceforth in that purity honesty and charity which this new LORD calleth us unto who hath vouchsafed to take us to Himself and to shed into us a new life and nature as distant from our former one as Heaven is from the earth Now as these are the two reasons that St. Paul urgeth for the withdrawing of us from those two principal vices of the prophane so shall they be by the will of GOD the two parts of this action In the first we will consider the judgements of GOD upon obstinate adulterers and covetous persons and in the second the misery of our former state when we lived in the same vices and could expect nothing in the sequel but the same effects of the wrath of GOD upon us The LORD JESUS please so to accompany our words with the vertue of His blessing that such as the loathsomness the injustice and horror its self of these vices hath not been yet able to withdraw from them may now at least be pluck'd from them by the fear and terror of those dreadful judgements of Heaven which are unavoidably prepared for all the children of rebellion The first part is expressed in these words that the wrath of GOD cometh for these things upon the children of rebellion I will not stand to tell you that to speak properly wrath hath no place in the Divine nature For who is there of you but knoweth that GOD is a Spirit most pure most simple and most blessed enjoying an infinite calm and tranquility whose knowledge can never be surprised nor felicity disturbed as we learn both from Scripture and from reason it self Now wrath and such other passions do consist in the agitation and emotion of the blood and of the spirits that stir it they being caused in us by our imagination diversly as the objects which it doth conceive are troublesome or contentful present or to come the one producing in us sorrow others joy some fear and others hope those of one sort wrath those of another contentment or complacency None of this as you see can arrive but where there is some mixture of humors and spirits which being not in GOD at all whose essence is most simple it is also impossible that any of these passions should take place in Him and least of all wrath which is one of the most troubled and most boyling of them But the Scripture which useth the dialect of children with us as with children doth often attribute these passions unto GOD figuratively to represent thus grosly the mysteries of Him under the images of those things that are familiar with us because they belong properly to our nature It 's thus we must understand that which it calls the wrath of GOD. For it signifieth by this term not the perturbation of a commoved Spirit which cannot be in GOD because of the soveraign perfection of His nature but a just and reasonable will to punish the person that deserves it This it termeth wrath by reason of some resemblance that appears to be between these two things For a man who is in wrath doth eagerly desire to avenge himself upon the person that troubles him and he doth it if it be in his power causing him displeasure and afflicting him So doth GOD treat those who violate his laws He makes them suffer evil and punisheth or chastiseth them according to their deserts But He doth it without any perturbation with a calm and composed will whereas a man in wrath doth it with emotion And because we are seldome wont to do otherwise there being few that avenge themselves without some trouble and boyling of choler it seems to us that it is so with the LORD too Wherefore we say He is angry when He avengeth His laws and punisheth the crimes of His creatures though at the bottom and in very deed there be nothing in His action but the purpose and effect of an avengement and not the disturbance of any passion Thence it comes that the Scripture also speaketh in like manner frequently attributing wrath in this sense unto GOD. And if you narrowly heed it you will find that it gives this name either to the will that GOD hath to punish men the arrest and order He passeth for it or to the effects themselves that follow thereupon that is the punishments He makes culpable persons suffer by His order And it 's in this second sense the Apostle intends it here when He saith that the wrath of GOD cometh upon the children of rebellion The wrath that is the avenges of GOD His judgements the evils and executions wherewith He punisheth their rebellion according to the decrees of His avenging justice He speaks in the same manner else-where when he saith that the wrath of GOD is openly reâ—ealed from Heaven Rom. 1.18 upon all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men for that they with hold the truth in unrighteousness His saying that the wrath of GOD cometh some referr unto the judgements which He doth not seldome execute upon the voluptuous and covetous in this World as if he had said that for these vices GOD
their reason do them little more service than if they had none at all Whereas now speech brings it forth and renders it useful to us communicating unto many and almost infinitely multiplying what was at first but in one soul alone For as a seal imprinteth the form that 's cut on it upon all the drops of wax to which you apply it so Speech gliding through the ear into the hearts of all that hear it engraveth on them that image which it carries with it of the mind and will of the speaker It guideth and keeps up the negotiations the treaties the alliances the arts the sciences and the disciplines of men and is the soul of their commerce and of their conversation and in a word of all their humanity 'T is by it that superiors make themselves to be obeyed and inferiors obtain the assistances they need since 't is it that makes both the wills of the one and the necessities of the other to be understood 'T is it that unites the souls of equals and discovers to the one and the other what each hath of reason and wisdom in himself or of sympathie and aversion for others It transfuseth the souls of the one into the others pouring into them their sentiments their reasonings their inventions and their affections But as the abuse of the excellentest things is much more dangerous than that of things mean and common so it is plain that the efficacy of speech is not less pernicious when applied to evil than useful and beneficial when employ'd to good It is as powerful to destroy as to edifie to infect as to cure and is equally capable of communicating unto men health and sickness life and death as the springs and intentions be from which it is dispensed Speech being of so great importance in the life of men it 's with great reson that the Apostle hath taken care in the rule he here gives us for our deportment to cleanse it of the vices which sin hath sowl'd it with You may remember that in the precedent text he purged it of the poisons of detraction and of pollutions contrary to honesty commanding us to put away evil-speaking and dishonest talk out of our mouth Now to the end it may be throughly pure and legitimate and truly worthy of a Christian mouth he taketh out of it lying also the most shameful of its defilements and that which is most directly contrary to its natural constitution Lie not saith he one to another And because in the precedent action shortness of time permitted us not to say all that we desired upon the two former vices of speech we will resume that discourse now with your permission and treat if the Lord please of all those three sins of the tongue which the holy Apostle hath here forbidden us first evil-speaking then in the second place filthiness contrary to honesty and thirdly lying May it please GOD to guide us in this discourse and so purifie our lips with the Divine fire of that heavenly coal wherewith He sometime touched those of a Prophet of His that henceforth our mouths may be so many living sources of benediction and edification from whence shall issue none but good and innocent pure and honest sincere and veritable speeches unto His glory and our neighbours benefit and our own salvation Amen The Apostle in the original of this text makes use of the word blasphemy to signifie that which we have rendred evil-speaking For though that term in our vulgar tongue doth import words spoken to the offence of GOD when things unworthy of His greatness and His holiness and truth are attributed unto Him or those that belong unto Him are denied of Him or when that which is proper to His Divinity is communicated to creatures yet so it is that in Greek that is in the language the Apostle speaks the word blasphemy doth generally signifie any offensive injurious speech whomsoever it concerns whether GOD or Angels or men The truth is this word if we respect its origination or etymologie doth simply denote an hurting of the reputation an offending of some one's honour as the Greek Grammarians have observed Whence it comes that St. Paul useth it not here only but also else-where to signifie such revilings and detractions as are directed properly unto men and not unto GOD as when he saith in the first Epistle to the Corinthians We are blamed and do intreat it is in the original 1 Cor. 4.13 we are blasphemed And when he enjoyns Titus to admonish the faithful that they speak evil of no man It is word for word in the Greek that they blaspheme no man Tit. 3.2 That evil speaking which he doth in this place so severely banish from all Christians mouths is a vice so common that no one can be ignorant of it The world is full of it and the Church it self beholds but too many examples of it in those that make profession of her communion But that no man may deceive himself it will not be impertinent to represent the principal kinds of it For as the pestilence is not all of a sort but great diversity is found in the poisons it comprehends and in the manner after which they seize on humane bodies so is it with evil-speaking It 's a poison that hath under it many different species a mischief that puts forth divers branches from one and the same root of bitterness If you regard the form of it one smites uncovered another deals its blows in secret the former revileth openly and rends the honour of a neighbour in his presence the latter manageth its self subtilly and blackens his reputation in private with so much the more effect for that it is in a place where no person appears to ward off its blows If you consider the causes and occasions of the thing some are push'd on to it by choler others by hatred some by a close envy the most by a secret malignity of nature In fine if you respect their design some do it to avenge themselves of offences which they believe they have receiv'd others to satisfie their naughty humour and a third sort meerly to pass away the time It may well be that the Apostle here did particularly aim at open evil-speaking which being pressed by the violence of anger breaks out into revilings since it is of this passion expresly that He spake in the precedent words Yet we may not imagin that he permitteth us any one of the kinds of this evil For what difference soever there be in other respects this is common to them all that they offend our neighbour and deprive him either in whole or in part of the preciousest of his goods that is his reputation If it be then a mortal sin to rob a man of his money or his movables or his lands how much more grievous is his crime who attempts to bereave him of his honour which is more to be esteemed than life it self To
without His death we could not have had the pardon of our sins nor the grace of the Holy Spirit nor the hope of immortality all which are things absolutely necessary to the devesting us of the old man and to the revesting us with the new Whereas now JESUS CHRIST dying on the Cross hath there pierced through and fastned up our old man and by the vertue of His sufferings created and formed in us another new man as different from the old as Heaven from the Earth and Life from Death Therefore the Apostle doth elsewhere conclude from the death of JESUS CHRIST the death of the old man in us and the life of the new 2. Cor. 5.15.17 If one died for all saith he then are all dead and He died for them that they might live henceforth in Him and no more unto themselves If any man be in CHRIST he is a new creature And in another place he saith expresly Rom. 6.6 11. that our old man was crucified with CHRIST that the body of sin might be destroyed and that we being dead with Him might live to GOD in Him Thus the death of CHRIST is at once the destruction of the old man and the production of the new the one was abolish'd by it and the other created This flesh of the mystical Lamb which GOD to day presents us hath slain our flesh and enlivened our spirit and from that Divine blood of His wherein the old man is drown'd is issu'd forth the new created in righteousness and holiness like as heretofore the Israelite was seen to come alive and glorious out of that very gulf of the Red-sea wherein the Egyptian lay sunk and overwhelm'd But oh new wonder as our LORD's flesh and blood is the principle that gives being to our new man so is it his nutriment And as in nature things are sustained by the same means that they were set up so in grace the new man is conserved and increased and strengthened by the same blood of JESUS CHRIST out of which he was formed And that heavenly meat and divine drink which you shall anon receive from the hand of GOD are not given you but for the feeding and perfecting of your new man I go yet further and durst say that this new man whom the Apostle would at this time vest you with is none other rightly considered than the same JESUS CHRIST whom we have put on at Baptism and whom we receive in the Supper propagated if I may so speak and pourtrayed in us by His own vertue who transformeth us into the likeness of His death and resurrection by reason that entring into and dwelling in us He formeth in us a man like Himself that as He did dyeth unto the flesh and with him leaveth in his sepulchre all his old life as an infirm and useless offal and being enlivened with Him and adorned with His light and endowed with an heavenly nature leads thenceforth a spiritual and glorious life Thus you see that the body of CHRIST was crucified and His blood shed and that the one and the other are given us in the Supper to devest us of the old man and vest us with the new This is the end and fruit of all that mysterie unto the participation whereof you are this day called Make account then that the best preparation you can bring unto it is a serious meditating of what the Apostle doth here inform us He exhorted the Colossians afore to mortifie the vices of their flesh and all the infamous passions of that Pagan life they had sometime led in the darkness of their ignorance as fornication covetousness anger evil speaking impurity of language and lying Now to cut up these and other like vices by the root and to comprise all the parts of sanctification in few words he commandeth us to put off the old man with his deeds c. There are others that take these words for a reason of his precedent exhortation drawn from that estate which JESUS CHRIST had put them into by Baptism as if his meaning were that they are obliged to renounce the vices he had been forbidding them since in their Baptism they did put off the old man on which these vices depend and of which they make up a part and put on the new which is contrary to them and incompatible with them Whether you understand it thus or take the text simply for a prosecution of the precedent command shewing us that for the due execution of it we must perform what is here added all amounteth to well-nigh the same sense And for the right comprehending of it we will treat if GOD permit of the three points which offer themselves in the Apostle's words first of the old man which we must put off secondly of the new which we must put on and the form it consisteth in to wit a renewing in knowledge after the image of Him who created it and in fine of that indifferency of nations and ceremonies and conditions which the Apostle affirmeth in this matter requiring nothing in reference to it but CHRIST who is the all of it and in all May it please GOD so to inlighten our understandings for the right discerning of this saving truth and touch our hearts to love and practise it effectually sanctifying us by the vertue of His word and precious Sacrament that we may all go out hence new men conformed in purity and charity and every vertue to that LORD JESUS in whose name and communion we by His grace do glory The Scripture sets before us the person of Adam and of JESUS CHRIST as two different stocks of mankind or as it were two opposite heads or principles of this nature which we call humane They have this in common that both the one and the other hath a great number of children which are issued from them and do depend upon them and that each of them doth communicate to his own his being his form his life and his condition imprinting his image on them which every of them beareth according to the quality of his extraction They differ or to say better are opposite in that the one is earthy the other heavenly the one hath a carnal vicious infirm nature full of ignorance and error and subject to death and the curse The other hath a spiritual holy nature full of light and wisdom acceptable unto GOD immortal and inheriting eternity The one propagateth in his children sin and death The other communicates to his righteousness sanctity and life The one transmits his nature by a carnal generation the other imparteth his to his descendents by a spiritual generation and such an one as hath nothing in common with flesh and blood The nature of the one is deprav'd by the empoisoned breath of the old Serpent which creepeth on the ground and liveth on the dust thereof That of the other hath been formed and conserved by the Eternal and coelestial Spirit It 's for these reasons that
the name and title they have in Christian Morality Works that are the same as to the external action do sometimes prove nevertheless very different and even contrary one good another bad because the Spirit that produceth them is not the same As for instance the alms of an ambitious man and of a true believer have no external difference the ones act in that regard is the same the others is yet if you consider the inward springs of them both you will find that the one is a piece of vanity and the other a fruit of charity Whence it comes that notwithstanding all the resemblance they have in open view they are yet at the bottom works of a quite different nature the one evil and condemned of GOD the other good and acceptable to the LORD The one with all its outside paint and colour is an act of vice the other of vertue The same is to be said of those two kinds of Preaching which the Apostle mentions in the Epistle to the Philippians the one of those that Preached CHRIST through envy Phil. 1.15 16. and of contention the other of such as preached Him of good will and of love The language of them both was the same but the diversity of their designs render'd their actions so different that the one 's to say the truth was a sacriledge and an abomination the other 's on the contrary one of the best and most excellent works of Christian piety and charity Thus you see the rule which S. Paul gives us to order all the external actions of our lives our words and works even that we do all in the Name of the LORD JESVS The rule is short and easie but of vast and almost infinite use As a little square serve 's an Artificer to design and mark out a multitude of lines and to discover and correct all those that are amiss so by this little rule which the Apostle puts in our hands there is no humane action but we may certainly perceive whether it be right or wrong good or evil and conform to the will of GOD or otherwise neither is there any part of our lives but this rule if we take care to adjust them by it is capable of guiding and forming unto perfection Now as the name of GOD in Scripture signifies sometimes that Ebrew word of four Letters which the LORD takes for His name and memorial distinguishing Himself by that appellation from all those GODs to whom the error of Nations wrongfully gave that quality and the honours due to it so likewise the name of JESUS is sometimes taken for this very word JESUS which as you know is the name that was given Him by the express command of GOD. And so those of the communion of Rome seem to understand it Phil. 2.10 in that passage of S. Paul where it is said that in the Name of Jesus every knee should bow of things in Heaven and things in Earth and things under the Earth uncovering as oft as they hear the word JESUS pronounced as if the Apostles meaning were that all creatures coelestial terrestrial and infernal should do reverence when those two Syllables JESUS are uttered Wherein verily they are much mistaken the import of that passage beeing quite otherwise It 's not thus neither that S Paul takes the name of JESUS in our Text as if he simply intended that in our actions and discourses we should not fail to intermix alwayes the word JESUS having it incessantly in our mouths and never doing nor saying any thing without pronouncing it first Far be it from us to imagine that such a thought should fix upon the Apostles mind It is not the word nor the letters or syllables of this name that he recommends unto us I grant we cannot have it too much in our mouths provided it flow into them from the heart and that it be a religious and respectful consideration which makes us mention it and not a vain and childish superstition as if there were some secret vertue annexed unto words We are to note then in the second place that as the Name of GOD is very often taken in Scripture for the power the authority the will respect and consideration of GOD in like manner is the Name of JESUS Thus Moses foretelling the coming of the Messiah Deut. 18.19 And it shall come to pass saith he that whosoever will not hearken unto my words which He shall speak in my Name I will require it of him Which He shall speak in my Name that is by my order and authority and in acquitting himself of the charge which I have committed to Him And it 's thus we frequently read that the Prophets spake in the name of GOD that is by His express command they being sent and dispatched from Him 2 Kings 2.24 And it 's said of Eliah that he cursed the children that reviled him in the name of the LORD that is by His authority And this form of speech was so common among the Jews that the Priests and Elders demanded of the Apostles in the fourth Chapter of the Acts Acts 4.7 in whose name they had done that miracle meaning upon whose authority and by whose order they had undertaken it The same exposition is to be given of that which the Psalmist singeth We will boast in the name of the LORD our GOD Psal 20.8.25 that is in His help and power and speaking of the faithful unto GOD They shall rejoyce saith he in thy name that is in the confidence they have in thy power and goodness of like import is that which he addeth that the Horn of His anointed shall be exalted in His name that is by His might and by the vertue and order of His providence So David entring into combat with the Philistin 1 Sam. 17 4â— Thou comest against me saith he with a sword and with a spear and with a shield but I come against thee in the name of the LORD of hosts whom thou hast defied In the name of the LORD that is for His glory which thou hast reproached and in assurance of His protection and succour in the same sense that King Asa mean't it on a like occasion Help us saith he O LORD our GOD. For we rely on Thee 2 Chr. 14.11 and are come forth in Thy name against this multitude that is in Thy quarrel and with confidence in Thee It 's therefore in the same manner we are to take this phrase in the name of CHRIST which often occurs in the Books of the New Testament as in S. Matthew Prophecying and casting out Devils in the name of the LORD that is Mat. 7.22 24.5 Acts 5.28 by His authority and in His might and when men are said to come in His name that is to avouch themselves His and to affirm themselves sent by His order to speak and teach in the name of JESVS CHRIST and likewise to be assembled in His name
give them unto whom they ascend in the heavens and in whom is the propitiation for our sins Ibid. Paulo post as excellently saith St. Austin It 's the express doctrine of St. Paul who having said that there is but one Mediator between GOD and men even the man JESVS CHRIST immediately adds for a reason of this quality that He gave Himself a ransome for all But let us now see what prayers the Apostle requires of the Colossians and what particular he would have them crave of GOD for him Being prisoner at Rome one would think he should desire above all things to be set at liberty But behold I beseech you the generosity of this holy man and how nobly he despiseth the interests of the flesh He says nothing of this He would have them entreat GOD to open him the door not of his prison but of the word that he may publish the mysterie of CHRIST This is all his heart is set upon He takes no thought for his ease or liberty He hath no sentiment nor desire but for the exercise of his ministery that is for the advancement of the glory of GOD and for the edification of men He is content provided he may disseminate his Master's Gospel with fruit If his prison hinder that he doth it not with such conveniency and to such a latitude as he would were he free in this case only and out of no other design would he have prayer made to GOD to take him out of bonds If not his chain is indifferent to him provided it obstruct not the course of the Gospel and that notwithstanding his bonds the word of GOD be not bound 2 Tim. 2.9 This is all he craves of the LORD and all that he desires others should crave for him that He open saith he the door of this word that is give him in His providence the opportunity and ability to preach it removing from before him the aversion and hatred and fury of men against this holy doctrine and those other scandals which the Devil never faileth to raise in its way as so many thick and impenetrable gates to hinder this Divine scepter of CHRIST from entring in among men and accomplishing the good pleasure of GOD upon them He useth the same phrase otherwhere also in the same sense and the reason of it is evident 1 Cor. 16.9 For speaking of the fair occasion he had to preach at Ephesus he saith that a great door and an effectual was opened to him by the LORD and again to signifie the same thing in reference to the Countrey about Troas he affirms that being come thither on the account of the Gospel of CHRIST he found the door opened to him by the LORD 2 Cor. 2.12 In process he addeth the end for which he desires the LORD would grant him such an opening For the declaring of the mysterie of CHRIST saith he for which also I am a prisoner The mysterie that is the secret of CHRIST is precisely the very thing which even now he termed after his wonted manner the word that is the Gospel the sublimest and most admirable of all the revelations of GOD. It is called a mysterie both here and also often elsewhere because it is a wisdom hidden of its self to men and Angels Eph. 6.19 Rom. 16.25 Col. 1.26 2.3 such as no created understanding could have ever penetrated This counsel which GOD had taken to save men by the cross of His only Son being above the conception of all creatures and one may say of it in truth with the Apostle in another place that it is things which eye hath not seen 1 Cor. 2.9 nor ear heard and which never ascended into the heart of man 1 Tim. 3.16 He gives us the summ of it in another Text where he clearly explaineth what this mysterie of CHRIST is Without contradiction saith he great is the mysterie of godliness GOD manifested in flesh justified in Spirit seen of Angels preached to the Gentiles believed on in the World and raised up into glory Now he calls this grand secret the mysterie of CHRIST first because JESUS CHRIST is all the fulness thereof that is the sole subject that fills up the whole of it Whence it comes also that the Apostle who was an excellent and most consummate Preacher of it 1 Cor. 2.2 for the right discharging of his Office does determine to know nothing among those he preached to but JESVS CHRIST crucified Secondly because it 's the LORD JESUS who first reveal'd it unto men who brought it out of the abysses of the Divine wisdome Rom. 16.25 Eph. 3.9 and from under the figures and obscurities of the old Law where it lay hid during precedent generations and communicated it to the holy Apostles in the light of that heavenly Spirit with which they were baptized on the day of Pentecost and afterward set it by their ministry before the eyes of Jews and Gentiles It 's not in vain that the Apostle says here by the way he is a prisoner for this Gospel of his Master's For what allegation could be more proper or more potent to affect the Colossians and render them prompt and earnest to pray unto GOD for him and for the progress of the Gosspel than a remonstrance that it 's for this holy and glorious cause he suffers And that this mysterie of CHRIST which he so passionately desires he may report is so divine a thing as he stuck not to seal the truth of it by a constant and couragious enduring of the captivity he was in But after this opening the door of the word the Apostle would have the faithful crave of GOD further that he may manifest the Gospel as he ought to speak that is preach it in such a manner as may be worthy of so sublime a subject with meet liberty diligence and fidelity For it 's not enough to have once receiv'd of GOD gifts necessary for the executing of this holy office except he conserve them in us by a continual influx of His light and give us the courage the zeal and spiritual prudence to use them in such sort as is proper for the edification of men Thus you see Beloved Brethren what the Apostle e're-while demanded of the Colossians both in general and for himself in particular Make account that this great Minister of CHRIST doth now demand the same things of you by our mouths in general that ye persevere in prayer watching thereto with thanksgiving and in particular that ye pray for us who have the honour to preach the Gospel to you As for prayer we have afore sufficiently justified the necessity of it to you It remains only that you make your profit of it that this holy exercise be ordinary in your families that this sacrifice be there daily offered unto GOD morning and evening that ye do not undertake nor begin any thing before ye have dedicated it unto GOD by prayer Instruct
together with that good intention he bringeth with him unto such encounters diligently discern the persons he is engaged with not only in respect of the different conditions they are of in the world or in respect of their diverse capacity but also principally in regard of their humour and their disposition in reference to religion For they that are without have not all of them an equal aversion for ours There are some that have a sweet and an humane and tractable spirit and that hate not our persons though they approve not our sentiments There are others that are furious and look not upon us but as monsters whom they could with all their hearts as one may say devour For it 's the property of errour and of superstition to inspire their zealots oftentimes with these cruel and inhumane passions You shall again meet with spirits who though perhaps they rise not to this excess of rage yet are retchless and obstinate and having smothered or as St. Paul speaks fear'd up with an hot iron all sentiments of true conscience reason and honour are wilfully become a prey to errour and have stop'd up their ears and all the entrances into their understandings against the words and lights of truth with a determinate resolution not to admit any thing that crosseth their opinions and rather to renounce the quality of reasonable creatures then the maxims of their false religion That there must be very different demeanour towards these diverse sorts of persons there is no one but sees And our saviour plainly tells us as much when notwithstanding the order He gives His Apostles to publish His truth on the house tops He yet adviseth them expresly elsewhere Mat. 7.6 not to cast their pearl before swine and the reason He annexeth is considerable lest saith He they tread them under their feet and turn again and rend you plainly signifying by these words as experience sufficiently confirms that the spirits of those He speaks of are irritated and inflamed by that very endeavour which is used to cure them and that they are so far from amending as they become more fierce and more cruel upon it But now this discrimination of persons is not made for the having in sequel the liberty to hate the one and love the other For a Christian's religion permitteth him not to hate any man it indispensibly obligeth him to love all whatever be their nature or their religion or their disposition towards us yea it requireth him even to bless those that curse him Mat. 5.44 and do good to them that persecute him and make prayers and votes for them that crucifie him He considers not these differences of men but for the regulation of his deportment for the diversifying not of the passions of his heart but of the actions of his life towards them For though his carriage be different in one manner to some and in another manner to others yet his heart is the same towards all and to say true it 's the love he hath for them rather than any other reason that makes him to deal diversly with them To come then unto the choice of such means as are necessary and may be sutable for the end that we propose unto our selves in this kind of carriage Christian wisdome excludes from the number first all evil actions all actions that are contrary to piety or justice We owe this respect not only to GOD and our own consciences but also to men and especially to such as are without that we at no time do any ill before them For unjust or impious actions beside the venome they have in themselves have also this bad property that they are directly contrary to the end we ought to have in our deportment towards persons without which is as we have said the winning them to CHRIST Instead of attracting and bringing them on such actions drive them off and disgust them at the thing inducing them to judge ill of our religion by the ill fruits it produceth in us and to suspect that our belief is like our works and our Gospel as false as our lives are foul It was one thing that Nathan noted in King David's sin Thou hast made enemies saith he 2 Sam. 12.14 to blaspheme the Name of GOD And St. Paul in the evil lives of the Jews Thou saith he that makest thy boast of the law Rom. 23.24 by transgressing the law dishonourest thou GOD For the Name of GOD is blasphemed because of you among the Gentiles The Heathen heretofore took like offence at the debauches of bad Christians and did not forbear to reproach them with it The men vant said they that they are delivered from the tyrannie of Satan and dead unto the world yet their affections and lusts do no less overcome and master them than ours do us whom they call slaves of Satan For what serves this Baptisme wherewith as they pretend they have been wash'd and that Spirit which as they say doth govern them and that Gospel which they make so great a noise withal since their whole life is full of filth and flesh and disorder Accordingly you see how the Apostle among other reasons which he alledgeth to divert the faithful from things contrary to justice and honesty doth not forget to urge this for one that the Name of GOD saith he and his doctrine be not blasphemed 1 Tim. 6.1 and in another place that the word of GOD be not blamed and a little after that ye may make the doctrine of GOD our Saviour honourable in all things So the first thing we owe to those that are without is a pure and constant innocence in all our treating with them The beginning and the first point of prudent converse in this behalf is that we neither say nor do any thing in all the communication we have with them which they may justly accuse of wanting devotion towards GOD or of covetousness or cruelty or any other unseemly or unjust passion towards themselves But after abstinence from evil we owe them also the performing and practising of that which is good first by rendring to them readily and uprightly all that is their due by the laws of GOD and of Nations to Princes fidelity and obedience to Magistrates respect to Kindred and Countrey-men amity each in their degree Rom. 13.7 and as St. Paul saith else-where tribute custome fear honour to whomsoever either of 'em doth belong not defrauding any one of his right nor lying indebted unto any Let Soveraigns see us zealous for their service private men round and sincere and trusty in all the affairs we have with them religious observers of our contracts and our words honest debtors milde and humane creditors courteous and helpful neighbours Let them not find us faulty in reference to any of the offices of an honest and a civil life For GOD forbid that we should ever admit into our hearts so impious and barbarous and inhumane a conceit as
reason to take the pains himself to form our speech on such occasions namely when we are to entertain those without about our sentiments in matter of religion For certainly this is the tenderest part of all our converse with men and that which would be managed with greatest exactness It is a very slippery passage and the events frequently are of great importance and have long and considerable consequences for good and for evil according to mens different carriage in it And if there be any case in which the tongue hath any reason to vant of great matters Jam. 3.6 as St. James saith without doubt it is in this an answer here as it is qualified being capable of amending or empairing the condition of an whole Christian people a sage and moderate discourse having sometimes averted or stayd the persecution of the Church and appeased the rage of its enemies whereas on the other hand a speech though for substance true yet being indiscreet and ill-placed hath often inflamed the hatred of the mighty and troubled the Church's peace and caused a thousand disorders and devastations The Apostle then would have us on this occasion that is when we speak with those without more than on any other govern our lips with so much judgement that there may not a word break out but what is seasoned as it ought to be Let your speech saith he be alwaies with grace seasoned with salt He presupposeth in the first place and precedently to other things that it have its principal vertue to wit truth which is the soul of it according to that general rule he elsewhere gives us Eph. 4.25 to speak truth every one with our neighbour But in conjunction herewith his intention is that our speech have these two further qualities first that it be with grace and secondly that it be seasoned with salt The grace he requires in it is not that which is given to a discourse by the ornaments of Rhetorick which respecteth only the pleasing of the ear and consisteth in a choice of elegant words and in a sweet and grateful composition The grace a Christian ought to seek for and have in his speech is so to utter truth as it offend not the hearer that it express our minds without exulcerating his that it have neither gall nor venome nor virulency that it be simple humble and modest without reviling without scoffing and other such stings as may inflame those whom we speak to The other particular he addeth namely that it be well salted that is prepared and as it were seasoned with an exquisite prudence does referr to the same thing for substance For as salt doth desiccate meats and eat out the moisture and putrid humour of them leaving a sharpness in them pleasing to the taste so this Christian prudence which he would have all our speech imbued with works out of it all that it might have in it superfluous and noxious and tempers it in such sort that the sorce and vigour which it leaves it pleaseth the spirit and enters gratefully into it The masters of common Rhetorick would too that there be salt in their Scholars speeches But it is not that which must season a Christian's deliveries By this salt which they make such account of they mean certain pleasantnesses that border upon raillery and jesting Expressions that are quick but offend not and touch the Spirit but do not gall it We for our part do pass by this artifice and draw the salt wherewith our speeches are to be impregnated from a quite other vein even an holy Christian prudence which avoids all that may displease or scandalize our neighbour and chooseth what is proper to edifie him so seasoning discourse that nothing unsavoury or insignificant be uttered which might disgust him at our persons or our religion This salt cleanseth our talk first of all discourses that are either noxious and dangerous as those that lead to viciousness or vain and fruitless and secondly of all that may offend those we talk with and alienate them from our religion For this end that knowledge is necessary which the Apostle speaks of in the following clause that you may know saith he how ye ought to answer every one It 's clear that this grace of speech seasoned with salt doth not teach us how we ought to answer every one but on the contrary this science or knowledge when we have it seasoneth our speech with its necessary grace So that whereas the Apostle saith that ye may know it it must be understood of the event and success as if he had said let your speech be with grace and seasoned with salt so as it may appear you know how to answer every one Or the word know which he useth in the original must be taken for as knowing and as judging and discerning how we ought to answer every man First his calling our discourses an answering does intimate that we should not cast our selves upon such kind of conferences inconsiderately nor enter on them but with judgement and advisednesse being called to it either by some one's demand or by the voice of such a necessary occasion as obligeth us to speak Then again he shews us that we ought to diversifie our speech according to the difference of persons and in this it is that that discerning of persons which we touched at afore must do us service There are those to be met with whom it would be best not to speak to at all The dispositions of some may suffer a firm and free discourse The temper of others requireth a more soft and tender treatment As you see that meats for several bodies must be diversly prepared according to their different constitution so we should diversly season our speech according to the diversity of spirits Such Dear Brethren is the holy and wholsome lesson that the Apostle gives us in this place Practice we it diligently and regulate by it our speech and deportment in all the commerce we have with those without Hide we not our sentiments in religion from them but explain our selves to them in such a manner as may be proper both for their edification and our own satety First let us never speak of them but in season and when occasion offers its self for it do it with that gravity and decency that 's due unto so high and so important a subject Next let us take out of our speech all the stings that might incense those that hear us Let not it have in it any thing reproachful or offensive any thing that scenteth of hatred or contempt Let it be sweet and full of affection and respect Let it bear the image of a well-disposed and a truly charitable soul and breath nothing but the good and the edification of our neighbour And as for truths themselves let it discover and with full liberty expose such as are grateful to our adversaries as thanks be to GOD there are many in particular I make bold to
afford the Colossians since Tychicus left him in prison at Rome that is in the mouth of the Lyon as himself speaks in another place Dear Brethren it is true the Apostle did abide still in that sad estate for that time and it 's true this was it the Colossians were in pain for But yet these two messengers had many things to say unto them that were proper to mitigate their trouble and to ease their pain first that the Apostle was still alive safe and sound as Daniel otherwhile in the den of Lyons nay that he was not without hope of being set at liberty Then again and which is the principal that is faith and piety were so far from being weaken'd by this rude tentation that they were become more firm and lively then ever shining in this tryal as fine gold in the furnace that instead of being afflicted at it himself he comforted others the spirit of GOD continually maintaining Christian joy and peace in his heart and this tribulation and conserving the same fresh and full as otherwhile the bush of Moses in the midst of the fire And lastly that if his body was bound yet the Gospel was not so the Apostle with an high and invincible courage frankly preaching in his irons and changing by a Divine miraculousness his prison into a School of JESUS CHRIST opening too by the efficacy of his example the mouths of many brethren to preach the word boldly without fear his whole affliction serving by the providence of GOD to a much greater advancement of the Gospel Phil. 1.12 as himself saith elsewhere This relation as you see was very proper to consolate the hearts of the Colossians not to speak of the knowledge and capacity of Tychicus in the things of the Kingdom of Heaven which furnished him abundantly wherewith to do these faithful people this good office in representing to them the doctrine and the promises of our LORD and Saviour the necessity and utility of the cross 2 Cor. 4.17 the life and the crowns to which it leadeth us and that eternal weight of an excellent glory which this light and transient affliction worketh for us and the like intimations of which the whole Gospel is full For you may not imagine that this Tychicus and this Onesimus whom he sent them were simple messengers that had no other ability then to make faithful report of what they had seen and heard of St Paul's affairs They were two excellent persons endowed with great gifts of GOD and well instructed in the knowledge of him yea as it is certain of the one and very probable of the other called to the holy ministry And it further heighthens the Apostles charitable affection towards the Colossians that he would deprive himself for their consolation of the presence and assistance of two such persons at a time when they were so sweet and so necessary to him But his prudence appears no less in this choice then his affection and goodness First more generally in that he employ'd about this affair persons proper for the end for which he sent them And secondly in particular that one of the two whom he chose to wit Onesimus beside other qualities he had was a Colossian and therefore a person that should have the more credit with them as their own countryman It is true that Epaphras of whom he will afterward speak had the same quality But it seems that a particular consideration withheld the Apostle from employing him in this commission Even that he had already exercis'd the holy Ministry among the Colossians and preached that very Evangelical doctrine to them which was now troubled by false teachers as we understand by the first Chapter of this Epistle He then being interessed and as it were a party in the quarrel the Apostle do's very prudently in employing other persons namely Tychicus and Onesimus that so their faith and doctrine appearing conform to Epaphras's the Colossians might the more easily perceive that his was not particularly his own but in truth the LORD CHRIST's and his Apostles and that as the Scripture faith in the mouth of these two or three witnesses the word might be established But the Apostle to give them credit with the Colossians and render their Ministry fruitful to them advertiseth them of the good and recommendable qualities each of them As for Tychicus he calleth him his beloved Brother and a faithful Minister and Fellow-servant in the LORD titles as you see very honourable He qualifies him after the same manner in the Epistle to the Ephesians to whom he employ'd him in the very same sort as he doth here to the Colossians Whence it appears that this holy man was one of those extraordinary Ministers which the Scripture of the New Testament do's particularly stile Evangelists These were as aids to the Apostles assisted them followed them and were diversly employed by them according to the necessities of the Church sometime in one place sometime in another without being fixed to any particular flock as ordinary Pastors are and making no longer stay any where then the Apostles orders did require Such a one for instance was Titus whom St. Paul left in Crete to finis the erection of the Church Tit. 1.5 and afterward sent into Dalmatia to preach the Gospel there 2 Tim. 4.10 Such a one again was Timothy and Crescens and many others And truly the charge the Apostles had being of such a vast extent as to embrace the whole universe it is evident that it did of necessity require they should be assisted by such Helpers and inferiour Ministers who might be employed in such places as they themselves could not go to or tarry in Our adversaries to give you this intimation by the way do commit an errour in this matter when they apply to Bishops what they read in the New Testament of this sort of Ministers For it 's true indeed that the Evangelists were superior unto the common and ordinary Pastors of each Church and held the next place to the Apostles whose Lieutenants in a manner they were But it 's false that any such Ministers were or were to be in the Church after the Apostles decease Their Ministry was extraordinary and subsisted no longer then the Apostleship did for which properly it was instituted And hence it plainly appears that the Bishops of the Roman communion can by no means pass for Ministers of this order since they have each of them their Title or Diocess to which they are fastned and have no power to exercise their Ministry elsewhere whereas the Evangelists had no flock that was properly and particularly assigned them but were as general intendants who by the Apostles order and according to the necessities of Churches did transport themselves sometime to one and sometime to another unto countries and people very far asunder as you see by the example of Titus who having been employ'd in ordering the Churches of Crete when that was done came