spirit into you by which ye shall rightly understand all my words vers 23. While men ramble after their many things spend all their labour and money for that which is not Bread Satans divers and strange Doctrines they come to be established in their own Nature with his meats to their final destruction in stead of being established with the Grace and Doctrine of Christ for their everlasting 〈◊〉 Heb. 13. 9. All our Old things Life Light Wisdom Righteousness c. must pass away that we may receive Christ's new 2 Cor. 5. 17. Vers. IX There is no remembrance of former things neither shall their be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after All former things excellencies and perfections found in the natural first-creation state before the fall or gradual restorations of the like since are of no account or remembrance with God Nothing short of his Life of everlasting righteousness set up in Man brings him under his approbation-Seal Men must be unmade broken down and pull'd up by the roots as to that Building and Life they were set up in by God himself in their first-creation-make in order to be new Vessels of his newness of Life by a second God planted in Man an incorrupt seed of corruptible Life that in its utmost flourish and fruitfulness amounts but to a fading flower by his left hand in a first-creation He offers to plant and quicken up in him on the obedient death and removal of all this Root and Branch Tree and Fruit an incorruptible seed of an everlasting Life by his right hand in a new-creation of him See both Seeds with a negative on the former in all born of the latter 1 Pet. 1. 23. This only and man therein will be of everlasting account and remembrance with God the other never in time past in innocency or any restorings of it since or time to come by the like restorings of it in following generations under Satans reign or the full perfection of it under Christ's reign which shall come after Vers. XII I the Preacher was King over Israel in Jerusalem What more contemptible than Satan's mercenary Priests and Preachers of Lies What or who more honourable than the Preachers of God's Truth King Solomon and a far greater than he Christ himself the high Priest of God is the Preacher of his Truths and Declarer of his Counsels to Angels and Men. Preaching Christ's Gospel is the best of Callings Satan's the worst of Trades Solomon the Preacher and Writer of this Book was King over litteral Israel in Jerusalem and therein a Type of Christ King over the whole spirituall Israel of God in the New-Jerusalem In the all-discerning Spirit of Prophecy does Solomon reflect upon his former vain thought for finding true happiness or the way towards it in the single wisdom of his own enlightned nature however eminent as follows Vers. XIII And I gave my heart to seek and search out by Wisdom concerning all things that are done under Heaven This sore travel hath God given to the Sons of Man to be exercised therewith Solomon here in the true preaching Spirit of Jesus reflects upon and gives an account of his own mistaking wisdom and thought about blessedness and of his sad experience therein I gave my heart to search out by my own Wisdom wherein I excelled others concerning all things under Heaven The result was he found this sore travel and labour of his natural mind to be what God has given to the sons of men to exercise afflict or humble them by In the new-creature Wisdom of God he finds the vanity of his own and his vain design thought and labour therein He finds that and all the things or works and fruits thereof to be but earthly from beneath below that Life wisdom and things of God he had now the experience of in him under Heaven So he at once confesses declares and corrects his vain thought of reaching knowing and doing all things relating to his true blessedness therein By way of Recantation toward the close of his Life and day in this World he confesses the vanity of his thought and unprofitableness of all his labour therein calling it as by sad experience he had found it a sore travel He declares also God's design in letting even Saints for a season run their course there to humble and Afflict them and so dispose them to a willing surrender of that for a better Life and Wisdom in which alone they may find what they were under an impossibility seeking for Thus God let Job and his three Friends run to the end of their Line in their own Wisdom and Spirit as Disputers of this world till at an absolute puzzle and period none of them being able to unriddle the design and methods of God's Wisdom towards Job under that dispensation of the Cross. Then he opens the mouth of his fore-runing Messenger 〈◊〉 to instruct them all in another Wisdom and Spirit on which they were 〈◊〉 answered no more but left off speaking Job 32. 2. 15. Enmity to God inseperable from the highest restored Life and Wisdom of Man must needs render his utmost labour therein about happiness a sore travel God in greatest love on Man's fall 〈◊〉 the mystical Ground Earth or earthly state of Man's nature and that for Man's sake so as to render that enmity to him contracted by the Fall unextinguishable otherwise then by the perfect death thereof Thorns and Thistles shall it bring forth say's God to Adam Gen. 3. 17. 18. Both the litteral and also mystical earth of Man's Nature in the very restored Life of the Law Image of the earthy and righteousnes of Man fell immediatly under this Curse All in the best works of their Law-life are under this Curse Gal. 3. 10. What Thorns and Thistles was Paul when eminent herein bringing forth in a fierce persecuting enmity against Christ and all his Gospel Truths and Saints Phil. 3. 6. Act. 26. 11. The death of nature then the right way not in but to sin so that sin becomes dead in them not they in it under the Cross and Gospel-sword is undispensably necessary to the ridding man of all evil and capacitating him to receive a Life of everlasting righteousness wherein he will find himself possessed of all good a state wherein 't is as impossible not to please God in every thing as in his own Life at best ever to please him in any thing This comes Man to by obediently complying with God's design in gladly receiving his sentence of Death within him as Paul and so getting rid of his own Law-spirit of bondage enmity and death and all his sore travel and labour therein to no purpose as to his grand concern in exchange for the Gospel-life of Christ and therein glorious liberty of the sons of God an everlasting freedom to good only and from all Evil of sin or punishment for ever Then all our works are wrought in
As figure and shadow of his meaning herein 't is with many the whole design of all their Labours and Travels to heap up outward treasures to themselves and leave to their Posterity great Possessions call'd after their own Name as if they had any concern therein when deceased or any relief thereby when with Dives tormented in the flames of God's Wrath. And as to any advantage to Posterity how know they but their Successors will blot out and deface by their unwise and sinful practices what they got by their wise and honest labours though great things of that sort are seldom so gotten Such great things puff up and are oft the ruine of those that come after them This was Solomons own case in his foolish Son Rhehoboam who following the rash dictates of ignorant young 〈◊〉 and rejecting the sage counsel of grave Senators that stood before his Father disobliged the People lost ten parts of his Kingdom at first entrance on his Government and he and his Successors held the rest not without great confusions troubles and desolating Wars with the Kings of Israel their Brethren and from such Nations round about as were common enemies to both Moab Ammon 〈◊〉 Edom Philistines c. 1 King 12. Yet is this but the lowest and least part of Solomon's meaning in these and the following words Vers. XIX And who knoweth whether he shall be a wise Man or a fool Yet shall he have Rule over all my labour wherein I have laboured and wherein I have shew'd my self wise under the Sun This is also vanity Here is a deep mystical Truth The fading Laodicean Riches and great Possessions treasured up in and by the fruitful exercise of my own spirit in the restored first-covenant Life of the Law Who knoweth 〈◊〉 a wise Man or a fool shall get and rule over it Whether the supreamly wise man Christ himself by his Gospel-sicle Sword or Cross as freely and obediently surrendred to him or the Man of sin and Son of Perdition the greatest mystical Fool the Devil Those that give up themselves and all Christ's gifts to them of first-covenant Life Wisdom and Ornaments and second-covenant Light with all their fruits and effects brought forth therein mystical Corn Wine Oil Silver and Gold to Baal or Moloch the Lord or King and god of this World are willing he should reap and gather all and so use all Christ's own gifts to them and all the fruits of their own labours therein against Christ and God himself to their own destruction as qualified thereby to be the most gygantick opposers fighters against God Man walk's in a vain shew disquiets himself in vain heaping up Riches and not knowing who shall gather them Psal. 39. 6. Till Man come to a resolution whose Arms he will cast himself into with his changable Life and Riches Christ's or the Devil's in order to be fix'd in the unchangably good Spirit of the former or evil one of the latter He knows not who shall gather all or what will become of him and all he has gotten One of these will certainly gather all in conclusion All puffed up self-exalters against Christ give themselves and all they have into the hands of that Lucifcrian Head and King over all such children of Pride Job 41. 34. receiving his spirit of unchangable enmity to God for the Principle of their Life Desire Thought and Action All fixed first-covenant Kings are absolutely engag'd in Satan's reign in perfect opposition to Christ and his invisible Saints whose saintship or spiritual Life is hid with Christ in God till Christs second appearing and rendring it visible in himself and them which will be the Manifestation of the Sons of God Christ offers true freedom to all even the glorious Liberty of the Sons of God But multitudes of enlightned holy first-covenant Professors and no better whatever they reckon themselves chuse rather for self-preservation against the Cross to be slaves of the Devil the arrantest slave of all and so to have their eares boared as his servants for ever on their willful refusal of true Liberty This is figured out Ex. 21. 5 6. At last Christ by his Cross and spiritual Gospel-Sword or Sicle will reap down and gather or take from all evil Angels and Men all the Riches and Comforts all the fading Glory and Power they have used against him under Satan's reign and tread them all under foot in his reign From a sober Reflexion upon the whole matter in the Spirit of Truth discovering the vanity of all first-creation Life and things of Man with all his vain Labours and uncertain Riches and then the uncertainty as to who shall gather them to his everlasting damage or greatest gain he looks on all Man's Labours and Possessions in the confounded state of his own Nature corrupt or righteous on all these accounts put together to be but a hateful vanity and vexation of spirit So he farther declares Vers. XX. Therefore I went about to cause my heart to despair of all the Labour which I took under the Sun So should every one in union of mind with Christ hate his own Life with all his Labours and Fruits brought forth in the but restor'd natural Principle or Spirit of the first-covenant Law of Works for the Life Wisdom and Righteousness of God in the second the new-covenant spirit of the Gospel The former at best was but changably good and since the Fall enmity to God or filth of spirit is inseperable from it direct enmity to that creature-spirit or holy Ghost in the new Life whereof only 't is possible to please God or be saved A heart set to love that Life in which man hates and is hateful to God is a heart fixed in or set to do evil for ever Solomon therefore sets his heart to hate the whole Life and all the best works done in the single activity of his own nature at best under the twofold first-creation Sun litteral and mystical as abovesaid Of this he gives a farther account vers 21 -23. Vers. XXI For there is a man whose labour is in wisdom and in knowledge and in equity Yet to a man that hath not laboured therein shall he leave it for his portion This also is vanity and a great Evil. Solomon gives an account of himself in the Man here described by him travelling in Wisdom Knowledge and Equity that is in the wise and righteous actings of his own restored enlightned nature All this he finds vain and unprofitable yea a great grief and sorrow to him Here 's the sad result of all man's goodnes and fruitfulnes in his own nature All is vanity the 〈◊〉 tree of good and evil and since the fall of evil only filth of spirit at least which is the greater sort of evil with the Fruits the Root with the Branch Principle and Operations Desires Thoughts Counsels Purposes Words Actions all naught The loss of all as obediently surrendred to the sacrificing hand Gospel-cross Sword
For he can deceive all Men short of the Spirit of Grace and Truth to Worship him as so above and against God himself 2 Thes. 2. 4. Vers. 2. A time to be Born and a time to Die A time to Plant and a time to pluck up that which is Planted Vers. 3. A time to Kill and a time to Heal a time to break down and a time to Build up Vers. 4. A time to Weep and a time to Laugh A time to Mourn and a time to Dance There 's an appointed time for every Man to be Born in a Fleshly Body which is his personal appearance or Manifestation The Body is an Essential Ingredient into the compleat Constitution of every Man which under all Temporary Vicissitudes Alterations and Changes by Decay's Death and Resurrection remain's for ever the distinguishing part of Man from other Created beings in Heaven and Hell Angels are compleated in their personal Constitution without any such thing as Man's Earthly Body or Life The Spirit of Man before it enters the Body or after departed out of it is not the Compleat Person of a Man For Man consists of Spirit Soul and Body as distinct Essential parts of his being which Paul distinctly Pray's may in Saints be Preserved blameless unto the comming of our Lord Jesus Christ 1 Thes. 5. 23. The whole Spirit of Man Comprehends in its make a Dormant Souly Animalish Life So has a Natural tendency of desire to a Union with its fitly Organized Body in order to bring its Latent Soul or Souly Life into actual Exercise and Operation At the death of the Body this Soul or Souly Life ceases as to exercise lies dormant again in the Spirit as before it's entrance thereinto So till the Resurrection of the whole Man the Spirits even of Just Men made perfect in Spiritual New-Creation Life Act and Converse as pure Intellectual Powers Intuitively after the manner of Angels only Now as there 's a time for the Birth of Man's Body so from the frail materials and constituting Ingredients of it is there an appointed time for its dissolution and so for the Death of the Man by a Seperation of his essential parts This is a truth universally experienc'd and known by all And the like Vicissitudes and Seasons are appointed for other parts of this greater Visible World without Man as well as lesser World the Sum and Abridgment of all within him From the Moment of his Bodily Birth may be Dated the Building Planting Laughing Dancing Rejoycing and Embracing season during the growth and Flourishing State of his Bodily Life When this is at its height Approaches God's appointed Season from the perishing Materials thereof for plucking it up breaking it down and Slaying it This Season is attended with Man's Weeping and Mourning as the Consequents thereof These litteral truths are Experienc'd by Man in the Decay's Gray Hairs Old Age and Death inevitably incident to his body In the declining state thereof is he reduced to a kind of equality with Childhood as debilitated in the exercise of his rational Powers in and by bodily Organs or Instruments Brain Animal spirits c. So if he come to 70 or 80 years his decayed strength affords him little but labour and sorrow Psal. 90. 10. as finding himself to have out-lived the brisk and vigorous exercise of that Reason by which distinguished from brute Beasts In this case 't is man's duty and wisest course to fall in and comply with God's twofold dispensation upon his fleshly body by willingly owning and submitting to the decay's thereof in God's latter demolishing work upon it for pulling it down as well as to be found rejoycing and delighting in his former planting and building up of the same 'T is man's gross folly to struggle and contend for an impossibillity even the keeping up of that which he sees by an inevitable Law of necessity must be laid down He is as sure to die as he was born yea to go strip'd and naked out of the World as he came into it Job 1. 21. God has determined the time for both Death comes as an armed man on man's Body and on all that sort of understanding that 's exercised in and by it There 's no discharg in this War The decay's of it all along from the turning declining point preach the death of it and of that organical Understanding exercised in and by it Come we now to the Mystery of all this All the methods of God's wisdom in his dealings with man's body or bodily life the outward part of his natural man are typical to the like methods and dispensations to his immortal spirit considered in the but mortal first-covenant natural righteous Life thereof planted in it by the first creation A birth life death and buriall are incident to this also as God's appointments to it At the birth of the Body the Spirit or inner natural man is dead as to the mortal first-covenant life of the Law of Works it was at first created in But a fresh birth of or quickning up into this shadowy Life and Image of the Earthy wherein the first Adam was created is offered to all and may be actually received and experienced by all as the common or general salvation if they will The far greater part of mankind refuse to part with the corrupt life of their nature for the righteous And many that receive the righteous as the common salvation Jude 3. from the general Saviour of all men 1 Tim. 4. 10. refuse the special or eternal Salvation receivable only by and in a spiritual Faith This cannot be received without the obedient surrender and death of all received twice from Christ's own hand by his first-creation and general-redemption-workmanship Such death according to the declared methods of God's wisdom must undispensably be yielded to and we become as fools and little Children as to all the restored wisdom life and glory of our own Nature as the undispensable way to our receiving the Life Wisdom and Righteousness of God in his Gospel-spirit of Grace and Image of the Heavenly which alone is Eternal The former is but Reformation-Life in restor'd enliven'd naturals This latter a true Regeneration into spirituals by the Birth of such a new Life in us springing up from the quickned incorruptible seed thereof as plants us together in the likeness of Christ's resurrection on our obedient likness to his death Rom. 6. 5. Nor Angel nor Man had any thing of this Life in the Innocency of both by creation but only as objctivetly presented to their understanding in the Mediator As God at first gave Man that that 's natural and call'd his own offering him that which is spiritual God's own So he first restores something of the first-covenant-Light or also Life that 's natural and after that that 's spiritual Paul when eminent in restored naturals holy flesh by knowledg of or conformity to Christ in the flesh or righteous life of the Law quitted such
thereby Vers. VII For in the multitude of Dreams and many Words there are also divers Vanities but fear thou God This concluding Word on this subject is a Character of the first-creation Spirit or State as chosen by men in union of mind with the fallen Angels Solomon calls it many things and businesses a multitude of Dreams as v. 3. a multitude of business whence cometh a Dream The busie boundless wandring gadding Spirit of man cumbers it self as Martha with a heap of first-creation Vanities that can give him no true satisfaction All his conceited happiness therein is but a Dream His many Words and Labours about them are but divers Vanities a variety of glittering nothings things that God says are not perishing vanishing shadows All labour of man in his first creation life of Vanity all his Works Fruits Duties performance to God or Man therein is Vanity All inordinate love to and 〈◊〉 after the outward or inward litteral or mystical Riches and Treasures of that State in the most fruitfull Exercise of a first-covenant Life is but that Love of Mony Paul call's the Root of all 〈◊〉 For from this Love to his own Worldly Life and Riches thereof is man sound in direct enmity to God and his Gospel-Spirit and Riches which alone can make any truly Happy So all he is has or does all his Attainments Works Fruits Riches Possessions rested in will prove a most unhappy destructive Dream out of which when he awakes he will find himself to have bin all along deceived with Imaginary things that have no durable reality in them Christ convincingly shew's men this now and will hereafter convince them he hath so shewed it and fairly warned them thereby of their danger Let him then that Preaches up such a vain State with all the best things of man therein for happiness tell it but as a Dream not considently assert it to be a Gospel-State of Salvation but a Law-Dream Jer. 23. 28. Man's Chaff Dream Vain Glory Shadow Life and Image of the Earthy fix'd in in unchangable enmity to God's Wheat his Word Wisdom Righteousness durable Life Riches Food and Cloathing in the Image of the Heavenly is certain damnation What 's the Chaff to the Wheat the Words of Man's Wisdom in his lying Spirit of divination as to all Gospel things and truths of God into the Room whereof he thrusts the things of Man and says the Lord sayeth Ezek. 13. 6. to the Words of my Wisdom in my Gospel Spirit of Truth What are Man's Law-Dreams to my Gospel-Truths In stead of this dangerous Trade and destructive practice Solomon's advice is Fear thou God This fearing God and keeping his commandments he declar's Eccles. 12. 13. to be the whole Duty of Man the Conclusion and sum of the whole matter in all Books and Words of Right Instruction unto Life Follow after obey and close with the Lord 's own Counsels Teachings Leadings convincing discoveries of his mind and Gracious Offer's of that Gospel-Spirit that 's in unchangable union with his divine Spirit and you 'l ever know and do his whole mind and counsel and Worship him in Spirit and in Truth to his wel-pleasing acceptance and your Salvation His Spirit is that Love that 's the fulfiller of his whole Law Rom. 13. 10. Vers. 8. If thou seest the Oppression of the Poor and violent perverting of Judgment and Justice in a Province marvel not at the matter Heb. will or purpose for he that is higher then the highest regardeth and there be higher than they Her 's encouragement to right Fearers true Believers and beloveds of God that have abandon'd their own first-creation Life of vanity and enmity for his new-creation Spirit of Truth and Love In this are they too hard for all Enemies For the Almighty Divine and irrisistibly mighty new-creation Spirit of Christ and God are on their Side as also the Angels of his Power who in their Spiritual new-covenant Life of everlasting Righteousness and Truth transcendently excell in strength all first-creation Evil Angelical or humane invisible or visible Principalities Powers that are against the Saints of the most high Saints then are sufficiently furnish'd under the great Captain of their Salvation to deal with and be more then Conquerors over all Enemies all worldly Powers of Darkness and Gates of Hell Muster they never so strong Bluster Storm and Look as big as they can Saints Infallibly see and know where they shall have them in conclusion for ever even under their feet as the necks of the five Kings of Canaan were put under the feet of Josua's Captains Jos. 10. 24. Those Kings were a Type of all first-Creation Powers fix'd in Opposition to the second Spiritual Israelites know how to demean themselvs under all Oppressours the great mystical Goliah the Devil with his whole Army of Philistines evil Angels and men They have so learnt Christ in their Spiritual man which no Enemies can touch that they fear not them that can but kill the Body or whole natural man as to a first-covenant first-creation Life of vanity and have no more that they can do They know their great Captain Christ himself turns all Injuries done to their Body or natural man to their great advantage as hastning the Death of what 's to die in them and so compleating their conformity with himself therein the consequent whereof will be a compleating them in his resurrection-Life that 's above all Enemies and Deaths Their Way of ascending into his all-conquering Spiritual Life is the Death of their natural State They overcome by such Death of what can die as found in a state that can never die the certain result and issue of such a Holy obedient Death This way the Captain of our Salvation overcame Heb. 2. 10. And his good and faithfull Souldiers must fight as they have him for an example and not look for a final absolute Conquest any other Way than he obtained it Satan and his Party seem to conquer by killing the natural man or Body of Christ and Saints who finally conquer them all by being so killed They fight with exceedingly differing Weapons Enemies with Weak and Carnal Saints and their Captain-General with Spiritual and Mighty through God for pulling down all their Strong Holds and laying them all in the Dust. Another Riddle Enemies fight against the Spirit of God or Spiritual man in Saints but can hit or touch only their natural which their own Spiritual is fighting against in their own persons So though they have Perfectly contrary designes Christ Saints and all Enemies what'ere they strike at they all hit only flesh and Blood which cannot enter into the Kingdom of God but lets or hinders the Saint's fully entring till it be fully destroyed By suffering Devils and men seemingly to overcome him and his Saints as bringing death on their natural man do Christ and they overcome them all in their Spiritual which is greater then they and which they can never touch V.
AN EXPOSITION OF Ecclesiastes OR The Preacher The Inspiration of the Almighty giveth Understanding Job 32. 8. The things of God knoweth no Man but the Spirit of God by which he reveal's them 1 Cor. 2. 10 11. The Spiritual Man discern's all things v. 15. If I pleas'd Men I should not be the Servant of Christ Gal. 1. 10. LONDON Printed in the Year 1680. Sold by Samuel Lee at the Feathers in Lombard-Street near Popes-head Alley CHAP. I. Vers. I. The words of the Preacher the Son of David King of Jerusalem THIS Book written by King Solomon about the fourtieth year of his Reign and last of his Life Anno 〈◊〉 3030 is called in Greek Ecclesiastes in Hebrew Choheleth both signifying a caller unto or a gatherer together of Men to declare to them the words of God's Wisdom relating to their everlasting blessedness This is the proper work of the infallible Spirit of Christ in himself and Saints Pro. 1. 20-23 and 8. 1 -9. This living Creature-Word and Wisdom of God is called the Beginning in and by which God created the Heaven and the earth Gen. 1. 1. The purely divine Form of God did by way of emanation or generation not properly creation produce that Supream Creature-form of him in personal Union with it self from everlasting as it self tells us Prov. 8. 22 23. This became his fitted Hand by which to Create the World as also to mediate between meer creaturality in Angels and Men when made and the single infinite Divinity This fountain Creature-Spirit is by Divine Authority called God and asserted to be the immediate Creator of all things John 1. 1 3. Col. 1. 15 16. Yea the Man Christ as the polished Shaft in this hand of God ready to be sent forth in due time is said to be him by whom God made the Worlds Heb. 1 -- 3. Natural and Spiritual by a first and second Creation He gave an Immortality of Being not of Life to Angels and Men by the First but true Life and Immortality are brought to light and set up in them only in and by the Second The First was a mortal Law-life the Second is an everlasting Gospel-Life 2 Tim. 1. 10. Whoever fall short of Christ's Gospel-life as all do that finally refuse to part with their fading Law-life by a holy obedient death of their own Spirit and Nature fall short also of the glory of God never come to see and enjoy the divine glory as Co-heirs with Christ of God This living creating preaching Word and Creature-Wisdom of God is the supream receaver and infallible declarer of the whole counsel of the divine Mind relating to Angels and Men. The words of this living Word will prosper in the thing whereto sent the Eternal Life or Death of the obedient 〈◊〉 or willful rejecters thereof Isa. 55. 11. 2 Cor. 2. 15 16. God effectually makes obedient submitters to and receivers of it Wicked Men and Angels make themselves willful haters final refusers and incorrigible enemies thereof Hos. 13. 9. In this supream Creature-being the original Creature-Book and living Word of God did all things consist or stand up together in a Radical existence before brought forth in their actual subsistencies by Creation In this Book were all our Members written when as yet there was none of them Our substance was not hid from God but seen by him together with all we shall ever come to be or do and all he will do with us to all eternity Psal. 139. 15 16. Seen and known to him were all the works of his hands and all the works of those works Men and Angels towards him before their actual Production or personall Individuation Yea before their said radical Existence There are no Futurities to His infinite Understanding All things past present and to come were ever present to him The Supream Creature-Spirit Word and Wisdom of God is called Man as also are Angels both good and bad The man Gabriel that appeared to Daniel Zachary and Mary Dan. 9. 21. Luk. 1. 19. vers 26 27. was this Creature-Spirit in the Mediator Good Angels also have been frequently represented as and called Men Gen. 18. 2. and other Scriptures Evil Angels also are called Men of sin Sons of Perdition in and with their Luciferian Head 2 Thes. 2. 3. By the communicated Spiritual Light of the Man Christ to Angels and Men can either of them under and with him become true seers of God in his divine and creature-glories so as to be true Preachers and rightly qualified Declarers of his divine and spiritual Things or Truths Such a Seer of God was Solomon the Preacher and Writer of this Book And in the same Light in which a Seer of the things of God was he enabled infallibly to see and declare the Vanity of all first-creation Life and Goodness and the never-fading Glories and excellencies of the Second In the all-penetrating Spirit of true Prophecy did he see the deep things of Gods divinity and the natural and spiritual things of the first and second Creation what each amounted to So could 〈◊〉 with other awakened spiritual Saints infallibly prophesy or foretell what will become of any Men or Angels to Eternity as found rebelliously fixing in their first-creation Life and State of Vanity or obediently surrendring it for the second in Eternal Life or Death In this true spirit of Prophecy did Solomon with his Father David and other Saints find out and set in order many right words words of Truth given from one Shepherd Eccl. 12. 10 11. The spirit of the Lord the rock of Israel spake to and by David His Word saies he was in my tongue 2 Sam. 23. 2 3. Such words only as the Holy Ghost teacheth words of Gods wisdom shew the way of salvation and of scaping damnation Such words only shew those glorious things God hath in everlasting love provided for Saints and the dreadful amazing things he hath in everlasting wrath prepared for incorrigible sinners neither of which can the Eye Ear Heart or Understanding of natural Man or Angel take any right measure or notice of Man and Angel in the utmost wisdom of their own nature are bounded with first-creation vanities for Object of which number its very self is and they therein When view'd in the infallible Light and weighed in the just Ballance of Gods new-creation Sanctuary-Spirit they 'l all be found lighter than vanity t. The Son of David King of Jerusalem So a Type of the Man Christ as Son of the great and originally unchangable Creature-spirit of the Mediator the true King of his New-Jerusalem Saints set up by God on his holy Hill of Zion Psal. 2. 6. John 5. 22. 27. Act. 17. 31 c. Vers. II. Vanity of vanities saith the Preacher Vanity of vanities all is vanity The doubling of the words Vanity of vanities is emphatical more strongly asserting this irrefragable Truth That vain are all things in the first-creation world or natural state of Men and
Angels This say's the Preacher Solomon as turning from his own Wisdom or Understanding and owning the Holy Ghost or New-creature Gospel-spirit of Christ in him the sole dictating Author of this Book Vanity of Vanities in the Hebrew manner of expressing signifies most vain in the superlative degree Man at his best estate and so Angel at his best before the Fall of either were altogether Vanity Psal. 39. 5. and since the Fall are they worse lighter then Vanity it self less then nothing Psal. 62. 9. Isa. 40. 17. Neither of them had at first any durable Life Wisdom 〈◊〉 Glory nothing but what was mortal perishable and vanishing All was but a fading Flower of the first-creation Field or World The utmost growth beauty flourish and fruitfulness of the corruptible seed of God's left-hand planting in them by a first-creation is no more or better And all their best desires births fruits thoughts or actions therein are vanity can never exceed the fading nature and title of the root whence they spring the fleshly Tree of good and evil on which they grow All visible things Glory Riches Power together with the litteral Sun that produces and renders the rest visible are but Vanity of vanities shadows of shadows to wit of the intellectuall 〈◊〉 Sun the first-covenant Spirit with all the inward mystical riches 〈◊〉 wisdom righteousness glories and excellencies produced thereby in the natural first-creation state of Man or Angel at best The most excellent births fruits performances or works of Righteousness brought forth and done but under the impregnating and fructifying influence of the first-covenant Spirit and so of Christ therein as a fleshly Bridegroom to them all these still are but Vanity or vanishing shadows of spiritual heavenly eternal substantial things or truths durable riches everlasting life food and clothing the glory that excells and remains for ever in the New-creation state of Man or Angel All 's but the Life and Image of the earthly in the Spirit of Nature not of the heavenly in the new-creature Spirit of Grace The life wisdom form of godliness righteousness of Man or Angel in their own nature as at first created were real but not true in a Scripture-sense All are but shadows of the everlasting Life power of Godliness wisdom and righteousness of God in the New-creation or Second Covenant Holy flesh cleansed righteous nature and so the common or general Salvation all men are capable since the Fall of being restored into by the Redeemer is but a shadow of true holiness special everlasting salvation in God's holy New-creature spirit of Grace and Truth True godliness the mystery the power of godliness true or everlasting Life Salvation and blessedness the Life Wisdom and Righteousness of God in his New-covenant spirit of Grace none of these true things were possessed by any Angel or Man in the Primitive unstained purity of their 〈◊〉 by the first-creation All these true things of God were represented to them all in the Tree of true Life by way of Object as what God had in reserve to bestow upon them by a new-creation on their obedient surrender and parting with that mortal Life and State they received by the first God calls what he gave them by the first-creation their own their life wisdom righteousness c. What he offers them by a new-creation he calls his own his life wisdom righteousness c. All men that Satan can bring to savour only the natural things of Man or Angel and never at all the spiritual new-creature things of Christ and God Mat. 16. 23. are fixed with him in unchangable enmity to God The New-creature Life and things God calls his own are transcendently superiour to Man's own as the Litteral Heavens are above the Earth The duplication of this Hebrew superlative the double Out-cry or Proclamation here implies the absolute certainty and great importance of the assertion as also that Solomon would have the thing here proclaim'd understood as the sum or compend of this whole Book which he explains by degrees in the various parts thereof What he indistinctly and as in a transport cries out of as Vanity of vanities he begins to lodg and fix his meaning in saying All is vanity And this All yet as somewhat indistinct is after limited within its due bounds yet allowed its full extent and circumference over and over in this first Chapter All things under heaven under the sun all earthly mortal life and goodness received by Man or Angel in their first-creation all below what is heavenly spiritual and everlasting in and by the second are vanity or vanishing perishing things however good in their kind and useful in their place This fixes and compleats this leading Proposition and Foundation of the ensuing Discourse All visible things under the litteral Sun depending on its influence as a concurring second Cause of their Production and Preservation and rendred visible by its light and then all the invisible things of Man and Angel all the Life Wisdom Righteousness Excellencies Glories and all the Desires Thoughts and Operations of their invisible immortal spirits under the mystical first-creation Sun or first-covenant spirit of nature in the Mediator all these things are comprehended under the title Vanity All their counsels studies purposes and contrivances for true happiness within the compass and in the single activity of that natural state or life life and all all is Vanity Vanity is written out upon Tree and Fruit Root and Branch Principle and Operations throughout in that state of both The infallible new-creature spirit of true Prophecy declares this concerning all the goodness life or 〈◊〉 found in the old natural first-creation state of Angel and Man This Spirit in Christ and awakened spiritual Saints can prophesy or certainly fore-tell what will become of any man as finally rejecting or complying with its reproofs of Death on his own spirit of Nature and instructions of Life in God's Spirit of Grace in Eternal Life or Death This New-creature spirit of Life and true Prophesy is below the infinite Divinity but transcendently above all natural first-creation Life and Things in Man or Angel Paul in all the Light Wisdom and Righteousness of his restor'd naturalls Phil. 3. 4 6. Was exceedingly mad against Christ's Gospel Truths and Saints Acts 26. 11. What work then is Man though wise strong and honourable in Christ 1 Cor. 4. 10. as to 〈◊〉 covenant attainments like to make of it at Gospel or shewing the true way of Salvation God knows all the Thoughts of man in his highest wisdom to be 〈◊〉 1 Cor. 3. 20. All purely divine things the deep things of God and all spiritual heavenly new-creation things lye clear out of the reach of all single natural understanding of man or angel 1 Cor. 2. 9-14 Their vain wisdom has nothing but Vanity for its immediately discernable Object If we extend this all is Vanity beyond the sphere of natural to divine or spiritual creature-things we blaspheme If we
whom the Lord abhorreth Psal. 10. 3. as they him and his true What profit then can man expect of all his labour under the Sun in but a first-covenant Life and Righteousness Nothing below the Holy Ghost or new-creature constant right steddy Spirit Psal. 51. 10. and principle of everlasting righteousness signifies any thing as to his true salvation When he reckons he has all he has nothing of durable life riches food or clothing but is wretched miserable poor blind and naked The wisdom of self-confident man misses the design and principal intendment of God in the whole Scripture To preach up the righteousness of man in the first-covenant-law is good in its kind But to assert this to be an everlasting Gospel-life or state of true salvation is the highest evil the very doctrine Satan preach'd to Eve Ye shall not dye at all the Life ye have in the first-creation that 's but natural is eternal This is Man's and Satan's accursed other Gospel handed to men with great confidence in the words of their twisted humane and Serpentine wisdom's To establish and warrant men in their own righteousness holy flesh for salvation is the very doctrine of devils 'T is a setting up of Man and Angel in their spirit of Nature against God's Spirit of Grace and Truth All that finally persist in this Doctrine and way in stead of the Saints everlasting rest will 〈◊〉 the Lake of fire and brimstone prepared for the Devil and his Angels Enmity to God and his Gospel-Spirit is inseperable from the restored first-covenant life of the Law in man yea gets strength courage credit and great authority by the comming of the command or fresh setting up that lost life in him by the Redeemer as Paul found Rom. 7. While then men are heaping up riches and reckon they are doing well to themselves there so as to despise the riches of God's goodness they are treasuring up to themselves wrath against the day of wrath Their moth-eaten cankred rusty corruptible Riches mystical as well as litteral will testify against them in God's day for trusting in them in their day on earth against all his faithful warnings to the contrary Jam. 5. 1-3 Vers. IV. One generation passeth away and another generation commeth but the earth abideth for ever Eternity and Immutability are the requisite Adjuncts of that wherein man's true felicity consists He must look for it in things Eternal or never find it And these are not seen by natural understanding 2 Cor. 4. 18. The litteral sense of these words is evident to the common understanding and universal experience of mankind The spiritual is a mystery to the highest wisdom of the most enlightned righteous party of men in but their own single spirit of nature short of spiritual light Man therein esteems and values only the cleans'd 〈◊〉 rich and fruitful mystical House or Land of his own Nature as that which will continue for ever So desires it may be called by his own Name This is the inward thought of the wise rich and full first-covenant Saint in his holy 〈◊〉 the sandy-foundation'd building though he see such holy wise men perish as well as brutish fools in the corrupt life of nature Psal. 49. 10. 11. Man's calling his Lands or outward possessions by his own Name is the litteral shadow of this mystical folly Yet 〈◊〉 posterity approve 〈◊〉 sayings vers 13. steer the same course do the same things and so generation after generation go to the same 〈◊〉 of 〈◊〉 and death where they never see Light vers 19. Through the unsuspected wiles of the old Serpent are new raw stagers 〈◊〉 one after another in the fame 〈◊〉 They reject the voice and instructions of true Wisdom as the greatest folly They say to true Seers see not prophesy not unto us right things They hate the Lord's Prophets as Ahab Micajah embrace Satan's with their smooth words of deceit Isa. 30. 9 10. Thus one generation of visible Saints in holy flesh after another passes away into the same dismal end eternal death as found from first to last a serpentine generation of vipers fixed in enmity to Gods holy spirit They say they are true spiritual Jews but Christ sayes they are of the synagogue of satan Rev. 3. 9. This generation passes away and yet passes not away Mat. 24. 3 4. though alwayes passing How So Why new commers into this world still keep up the old Trade the same spirit Principles and Perswasions all along Satan's reign from the beginning to the ending thereof A fresh supply of new Teachers and Hearers carry on Satan's work to their own eternal ruine t. But the Earth abideth for ever That is Man 's and Angels immortal Spirits in the earthy leaky first-creation make thereof All of them that refuse to have that first-creation building taken down in order to become new Bottles or Vessels by Christ's new-creation workmanship fitted to hold the new-wine or Spirit of his Kingdom do through the immortality of their beings become the subjects of God's unchangable wrath for their unchangable enmity to him by which they have made themselves Vessels of dishonour and everlasting contempt This is such recompence of their error as is meet even the vengeance of Eternal Fire Rom. 1. 27. Jude 7. on mystical more than litteral Sodom Mat. 11. 24. All that yield up all received in the first-creation to be filled and clothed with the everlasting life and righteousness of the second become Vessels of honour glory immortality and eternal Life Vers. V. The Sun also ariseth and the Sun goeth down and hasteth to or panteth aster his place where he arose The litteral Sun that has a causal influence on all the visible parts of this World is vanity 'T is restless in its motion and revolution direct and periodical And this yet is but a shadow of the invisible first-creation Sun the first-covenant-spirit of the Law under which Men and Angels were created and Christ himself in our flesh was made Gal. 4. 4. Under and by the causal influence of this in Christ's Person as a fleshly-bridegroom to first-covenant Saints in holy flesh are all such righteous fruits and works brought forth and done as have bin found in a restored enlightned sort of Professors and People since the fall or in Man and Angels before the Fall This mystical first-creation Sun is yet but a shadow or figure of the seven-fold and seventy times seven-fold brighter spiritual intellectual new-creation Sun of everlasting righteousness the Holy Ghost or new-covenant new-creature spirit in Christ's person of which all new-creatures are born and under the cherishing influence thereof enabled to bring forth fruits unto God in a newness of Life All thus brought under this Law of the spirit of Life are made new Bottles Vessels of honour and eternal Life and no other This is the Sun Mal. 4. 2. Through this most glorious creature-Sun in the Mediator as the 〈◊〉 Chrystaline Medium or transparent Sea of
and Fire of God's High Priest is our only way of being delivered from all evil of sin or punishment for ever And on such obedience we shall certainly receive the promise of the Father the everlasting creature-life and spirit of the Son which will fill us with all good for ever above wonder Is not here great Gain on all hands to encourage us to bear such loss the spiritual Law of the Cross and ordinances of God's new-creation sanctuary call for as undispensably necessary for our admission or entrance thereinto This exchang-traffique of Law for Gospel Life of Nature for Grace Earthly for Heavenly the natural life of the Creature for the spiritual life of the Creator is the highest and best market man can make of all his first-creation vanities Truth or the Gospel-spirit of truth can never be bought but to Man 's unspeakable advantage never sold or parted with from love to what 's to be parted with for it but to Man 's unspeakable loss Buy the Truth therefore at any rate but Sell it at no rate though all the kingdom's of this World and glory of them all natural humane or Angelical excellencies be bidden for it Paul when eminent in first-covenant holines parted with all as dung for this Truth All that have tried this most gainfull traffique have found it so No active obedience performable in Man 's own nature ever does his work for salvation but passive a right ceasing from that life with all its activity and labours Should a Man live a thousand years twice told in the utmost fruitfulnes of his rectified naturals he will still find Solomon's account true all vanity All that 's but Earthly in Man or Angel all first-creation Life and fruits or works thereof will be burnt up by the fire of the second 2 Pet. 3. 10. Christ's new-creature spirit will try by its al-discovering light all principles and works whether natural or spiritual earthly or Heavenly and then all the former that 's changable and perishable will most certainly perish or be burnt up by the fire of this trying spirit All that obediently submit not to this fiery triall fall inevitably under its everlasting burnings in and upon them in final Wrath. All changable goodnes earthly first-creation Life and Fruits first or last must passe away from obedient Saints and incorrigible sinners in God's Love or Wrath. This fiery triall seem's grievous at present to nature in Saints Heb. 12. 11. Our nature in Christ himself was sorrowfull to death cast out a word for scaping the Death-Cup but he instantly called it back His living Soul of the same kind with the first Adam's was sorely put to 't made exceeding sorrowful under the death-work of his second-Adam's quickning-spirit or gospel-sword and fire upon it Mat. 26. 38 39. Obedient submission to God's present temporary Wrath in this case is the only possible way of deliverance from his Eternal the Wrath to come All willful refusers of the former are sure to meet with the latter Those that with Paul received Gods just sentence of Death within them On their naturals at best have unspeakably the best on 't Those that please themselves a-while in resisting and scaping it fall under it for ever The sufferings and shame brought on the natural man of the Saint are not to be compared with the joy and glory of spiritual life that follows Nor does the present false joy stiffnecked resisters of the Cross or holy Ghost in its demolishing operation upon their naturals please themselves with signify any thing in comparision of the griefs torments and vexation of spirit this crosse will bring upon them in Eternal Death The demolishing-work of the Cross is grievous to nature in Saints at present but in no comparison so grievous as 't wil be to it in rebellious resisters and that for ever True Saints soon find the benefit of their obediently sacrificed nature by a resurrection out of the death of that into the everlasting righteous life of the sacrificing high Priest of their Gospel-profession Melchisedeck So have they eternal life abiding in them the Kingdom of Heaven within them live and walk in Christ's kingdom-spirit the Gospel-principle of everlasting righteousness Thus by submitting to the temporary wrath at present brought upon them in God's everlasting kindness do they scape the wrath to come But what mean's Solomon in saying that all his wise labours in his own restored nature must be left to a man that has not laboured therein Who is this Christ in his originally unchangable creature-spirit of everlasting righteousness and truth Himself surrendred the earthly first-covenant righteous life and labours thereof in our flesh to the flames of his own eternal Heb. 9. 14. everlasting righteous creature spirit in sacrifice to his own divine spirit and God most high The sacrifice he offred the sacrificing Priest that offered it and God to whom offered all are comprehended in the worderful person of the Mediatour as the divine and twofold creature form of God originally spiritual and spiritualiz'd transformed regenerate natural baptized into the death and assimilated in the resurrection life of it to the originally spiritual This divine and twofold creature-being image or form of God in Christ is all called God even the spiritualiz'd man Christ Jo. 1. 1. All are the living Word and Oracle of God's infinite divine mind his Wonderfull Counsellor to Angels and Men. And in all stands he in a distinction for ever from God most high in the single and uncompounded divine essence in which the Father to this divine and creature-Son begotten from eternity as the divine and from everlasting Prov. 8 23 as creature-Son of God Hence is it said the Mediatour is not of one nature but God is one Gal. 3. 20. This sacrificing Priestly Gospel-spirit of Christ reapes or gather's cut 's down burns up and utterly consumes all the life and labours or workings of Angel or Man in their natural first-creation make and life as he served our fleshly nature in his own person By his Cross or Gospel-sword he gathers all for sacrifice to God as his due required Tithes and Offerings the mystical truth of the litteral that never laboured or did any thing in that natural state of life but was originally spiritual This also is vanity sayes Solomon or shewes the insignificancy of man's or angel's labours in their earthly first-creation Life of vanity about salvation All must go life and all or they never can be saved And this is a great evil or grieving consideration to man that his life at best and all done in it are but perishing vanities vanishing shadows of things to come or to be brought a-float in men by a new-creation 'T is also Man's great evil his unpardonable Sin if he rob God or withold his Mystical Tithes and Offrings Mal. 3. 8. the most high and criminal Spiritual sacriledg many first-covenant Professours are guilty of in holy flesh Rom. 2. 22. the best fruits or works
Body have we the Shadow of a great Mystical Truth relating to the Spirit living soul or inner Man of Man the life whereof also being Mortal is subject to and therefore figured out by the like changes as are Incident to Bodily Life in the Birth Flourish Decay Death and Resurrection thereof First then to the Figurative Shadow knowable to all and after to the Mystical Truth knowable to few to none aright save such as are of the same Spirit Solomon was when he Writ these Words 1. There' s a set time to all Visible things under the Litteral Heaven and Sun as the Answer and Accomplishment of God's most wise design and purpose concerning them There 's a time alotted for their Appearance and Manifestation and then for their Disappearing and Vanishing again Both these general Dispensations of God to them do Minister Important Instruction to Man The Positive Assertion of this Truth in general v. 1. does Solomon prove by particularizing the Various things Circumstances and Occurrents relating to Man's Bodily part and Life in reference to which the whole Visible Creation in the greater World without Man was set up before hand as requisite for his entertainment Gen. 1. and Ch. 2. 7. and then to the declinings and Death thereof under the Various Dispensations of God to this lower work of his own hand in Man And hereby is signified the like Various Dispensations of God and thence a like Variety of Condition Incident to the Spirit or inner Natural Man as to it s but Mortal First-Covenant-Life put into and 〈◊〉 up in it by Creation Man therein at best was but a Mystical Tree of good and Evil a changable thing a Fading Flower Since the Fall this Fleshy Tree is in a manner only alway's Evil. Man 's fallen nature herein is a Gursed Mystical Earth bringing forth Thorns and Thistles in Filth of Flesh or Spirit Gen. 3. 17 18. His Immortal Spirit in its Unstain'd Mortal First-Covenant Life and State before the Fall with all done or possible to be done in the Activity thereof all Riches Fruits Righteous Works Producible or Performable therein all was Vanity 〈◊〉 but Vanishing Shadows of durable substantial things the Everlasting Righteous New-Creature Life Wisdom 〈◊〉 things of God Man with all his natural First-Created Life and things is in another Sense under Heaven or below the Spiritual Heavenly Life of Christ the New-Creation Sun of Everlasting Righteousness and things of God Nor Man nor Angel in Innocency had any thing of that Life about them or Fruits thereof And in that Life only can any bring forth Fruit unto God They that say Adam should have held fast that Righteous Life he was Possess'd of by Creation kept where he was as Job once through a great mistake said he would hold fast his Restored Righteousness of that sort they that say this what else must they say This. That Man Restor'd by the second Adam to something of the lost Life of the First must hold it fast Establish himself there never part with or let it go again and Heaven is his own this is true Salvation and Eternal Life In their Lying Spirit of Divination do such Teachers warrant their Deluded Hearers safe and truly Blessed here causing them to hope they will confirm their Word Ezek. 13. 6. They follow Heb. walk after their own Spirit of vanity see nothing of God's they are vanity and see nothing but vanity the things of man which they presumptuously call the things of God and so teach Rebellion against the Lord. They establish themselves and others in a life and Righteousness that 's but Vanity a Fading Flower for Salvation And Irrefragably Confident they grow herein All the World wonder and run after them Rev. 13. 3. 1 Jo. 4. 5. Mean while no Man in the but Restor'd Worldly Spirit of Nature the Life Wisdom and Righteousness of man receives Christ Gospel-Testimony given by his Spirit of Truth in himself or followers Jo. 3. 32. That which indeed is the very Unpardonable Sinning after the Similitude of Adam ' s Transgression do Men Preach up as their undispensable Duty for Salvation The holding fast and keeping up what they received by the First-Creation against the everlasting Creature-Life Wisdom Righteousness and things of God cleerly shew'd and offered them by a second was the very Unpardonable Sin that gave the Irrecoverable fall to the Devil and his Angels Their fall evil Change and Punishment lies in this They retain all the Natural Life Glory and Excellencies of their First-Created State as by their wilful Folly and God's Righteous Judgment turn'd into and used in unchangable Enmity to God They kept not their first Estate but left their own Habitation Jude 6. What was that A State of Unstain'd Natural Purity and of changable Obedience in their Wavering Natural Principle to Spiritual Light by which cleerly shew'd and offered an Unchangably Righteous Creature-Life by a New-Creation on the Obedient-Surrender and loss of their Changable The Lord was pleas'd to deal more favourably with Man as of less Natural Capacity and so under lower Spiritual Conviction then Angels and then also as Over-reach'd and Overset by the Superiour Subtilty and Power of the Evil Angel taking from him the Fading Righteous Life Wisdom Excellencies and Corruptible Perfections of his Inferiour Humane Nature not leaving him them to Fight with against himself as he did to the Evil Angels But when this Life with the things thereof is gradually Restor'd by the Redeemer in Men Satan is presently at the same point with them as with Eve 2 Cor. 11. 3. that they shall not die at all they have Eternal Life Though it was not so in the first Adam yet when Restor'd by the Second and Men Confirm'd or Establish'd therein by him it is Indeed this Fixing Establishing Doctrine to and work upon them is Satan's not Christ's For it fixes them in unchangable enmity to Christ's Gospel-spirit and all his Gospel-things or truths Adam's attempt and design for keeping up the Righteous Life he was Created in and thence Refusing to Surrender and part with it for what was Presented to him in the Tree of Life was his very Sin The Losing or falling from the Righteous life he had was his punishment God took from him What he had his fading righteous Law-Life for Preferring it to his Everlasting New-Covenant Gospel-life The day he ate of the tree of good and evil or pleas'd himself with his own changable righteous life and the 〈◊〉 Meats or Delights thereof in preference to God's more excellent Creature-life and never-perishing meats thereof he died as threatned Gen. 2. 17. that is lost that fading righteous Life and so with all his Posterity became dead in trespasses and sins Now if Establishing our selvs in the restor'd Righteous Law-Life of our Nature Called our own be Asserted our duty and security for salvation then a sinning after the similitude of Adam's Transgression which done thus the second time after
all Experience of man and Warnings from God to the contrary is as Unpardonable as the Devils first sin must be the very way of Salvation What-else or less And then as to the second Adam Let his original Creature-nature or Spirit Set up by himself in Personal Union with his divine From Everlasting Prov. 8. 23. be denied and the very Creation in effect or rather in the cause of it is denied For this Living Creature or all comprehensive Creature-nature under the God of Israel Ezek. 10. 20. and in personal Union with him comprehending in it as a Polished shaft in God's Quiver the very man Christ that in the Fulness of time was made flesh was the very immediate hand by which God Made the Worlds By this Creature-Wisdom and word of God which is called God also were all things made Jo. 1. 1-3 and so by the very man Christ as comprehended therein were made both worlds natural and spiritual in a first and second Creation-workmanship of his passing upon them Heb. 1. 2. Col. 1. 13-16 The same WORD also by which all Angels and men were made was the provided means Mouth or Prophet of God to speak forth the whole Counsel of his Divine Mind to them when made and to Mediate between them and Infinite Divinity which without this Interposing Creature-Vail would have been a Consuming fire to them all This Word is also the Executer as well as Declarer to them of the whole Mind and Will of God from first to last on all Angels and Men as Obediently Submitting to the Methods and Terms of his New-Creating Workmanship or Incorrigibly Rebelling against it He is the 〈◊〉 Roll of Woes to the one the Book of Life and Mercy-Seat to the other in which are Treasured and Sealed up all the distinct Measures and Portions of Wrath for the one amongst the distinct Portions and Measures of Grace and Love for the other Deu. 32. 34 35. This Living Book in which all they do towards God and all God will do towards and with them are exactly Recorded and Registred the Living Stone that bear's and know's all on all hands God's Words to them and theirs to him Jos. 24. 26 27. by way of Covenant will be the Infallible Witness for or against them and Irresistible Executor of the Mind and Will of God towards and upon them all in Everlasting Love or Wrath. See then the case of those that deny any Creature-Nature or Spirit in the Mediatour of elder date then his being made Flesh. And then when in that Fleshy State Crucified they that narrow and consine his Crucisixion only to the Violent Death of his Body and Exclude or take no notice of the Death he put his natural Spirit to as to the Spotless but Changable earthy Law-Life thereof by kindling upon it and Offering it up in the Mystical Fire of his Eternal New-Creature Spirit Luk. 12. 49. Heb. 9. 14. What Conformity to his Death will they Preach If the principal thing he Crucified in himself be denied the principal thing that 's to be Crucified in us will be denied And what then Why then the Subduing the Vile Affections of the Corrupt Spirit of Nature must be Reckon'd Conformity to Christs Death whereas he had no such things in him to Crucifie And then Conformity to him in the but gradually restored Righteous First-Covenant Life of the Law Holy Flesh call it what else we will which he Crucified in himself at best must be reckon'd a State of true Salvation the SAINTS EVERLASTING REST. And then the Counter workings of in part restor'd nature and the Corrupt must pass for Flesh Warring against Spirit and Spirit against Flesh 〈◊〉 5. 17. when indeed all 's but Flesh. Paul when Eminent in Holy Flesh was a fierce Fighter against Christ's Gospel-Spirit Here 's your Divinity and Anti-Gospel Teaching in perfect Contradiction to the declared Methods and Words of God's Wisdom for Salvation in every point Some care is taken to Preach down and Subdue the Brutish Lusts of Litteral Sodom in the Corrupt Spirit of Nature but Mystical Sodomy more criminal then Litteral is Preach'd up for Salvation to wit such establishment in Righteousness as is unchangable enmity to God Gross sins in the dark ignorant corrupt Spirit of nature are cried down but all Mystical Uncleanesses Adulteries Idolatries Thefts Murders Sacriledg c. are preach'd up for Salvation A hard saying What is Truth Said Pilate to Christ not waiting the answer Jo. 18. 38. Christ had told him before-hand that he came into this world to Bear witness to the truth V. 37. What truth That ther 's nothing but vanity or vanishing shadow 's in this World the whole first-creation my Kingdom therefore say's he is not of this World or to be managed in my worldly law-spirit of nature Holy flesh where the Jews would fain have had him own himself a King Jo. 6. 15. but as is Implied of the next and to be manag'd in my new-Creation Spirit of truth All things in the first-Creation state of Angels and men are but vanishing shadows of the truth all Substantial durable Eternal things or truths in the second This is the good confession Negative and Affirmative Christ Witnessed before Pontius 〈◊〉 1 Tim. 6. 〈◊〉 as we find Jo. 18. 36 37. the former Expressed the other Implied in the Word Truth Christ Witnessed or Declared in his Infallible Spirit of Truth that there 's nothing of truth or substance in God's sight nothing unchangably good no Eternal good things or Truths but in the New-Creation State and World in and over which he owned himself a King They that will finally and conclusively be Reigning as Kings in the but worldly restored First-Covenant-Life Holy Flesh as 1 Cor. 4. 8. will be found Pseudo-Fift-Monarchists in direct Hostility to the true Reign of Christ and all true Spiritual Saints in his Holy Gospel-Spirit and so in a Flat contradiction to every tittle of his Gospel-Testimony Christ's witnessed good Confession to Pilate my Kingdom is not of this World gives the dash Solomon Proclaim 's on all First-Creation-Life of Man or Angel with all the things and fruits thereof as Vanities or but perishing Shadows of God's durable New-Creation substances things and truths the Everlasting Life Wisdom and Righteousness of God in his Spirit of Grace and Truth with the Blessed Fruits thereof in Men True Love Joy Peace c. to from and with God and all right Fruits brought forth by them therein unto God All these are Everlasting Incorruptible things the Spiritual Tree Root and Branch Fruits Leaves and all Psal 1. 3. In this Spirit of Truth have Men durable Riches Life Food and Cloathing In this Spirit of the Son only can they rightly Worship the Infinite Divine Spirit or Father He must be Worship'd in Spirit and in Truth in a Spirit of Everlasting Righteousness and Truth All Worshippers in any other Spirit Worship they know not what Jo. 4. 22-24 may be the Devil as God
16. T. Also he hath set the World in their Heart c. When Men 〈◊〉 six or set up for themselves in their worldly nature and Life of the Law and so set up the World in their Hearts as the only Object of their desire and delight then does God Judicially harden and six them there or set the World in their Hearts And then is their highest Wisdom a Black Darkning Vail upon their Hearts disabling them for ever finding out the Work of God from the beginning of it in the first-creation to the Blessed end of it in the second The God of this World fixing Mens hearts in the love of this World that 's Enmity to God blind's their minds that the light of the Glorious Gospel may not shine into them They see not to the end of that which is abolish'd 2 Cor. 3. 13. So set up for Salvation in that Law-Life that 's to be abolish'd that Glory that 's to be done away v. 7. Fleshly 〈◊〉 t s were not able to behold the spiritual Glory of Moses his true face of Spiritual Saint-ship He therefore put a Vail on it that is came forth in the appearance of the Righteousness of Man or the Law to them They that set up in the Light and Life of the Law for Salvation set up in the Vail Such never see to their comfort the true Face inward Beauty and Spiritual Glory of Moses or other Saints nor the true inward Face or spiritual meaning of any Scripture All Spiritual things or truths in Scripture all spiritual Light Life Wisdom Understanding all things of God in his Saints lie quite out of their sight as meer nothings in their day their Judgment They no more skill or ken them than a Beast the Rational Powers and things of a Man 1 Cor. 2. 11. So they absolutely deny all Gospel things and Truths and positively assert there 's no more excellent Creature-Life or things Man is capable of then what were set up in the first-creation-state of Angel and Man What work will such make at Gospel specially if fixed here and so hardned in unchangable Enmity thereto Thus Christ found the Righteous Scribes Pharisees c. in a Murdering Enmity to the truth that is the Gospel-Spirit and so of their Father the Devil who abode not in that truth or Obedience to the said Gospel-Light in which Created but quitted that his Habitation or first Estate Jo. 8. 44. Jude 6. They that Rebelliously set up this Shadowy World in their Hearts can't receive the Spirit of truth nor words thereof Jo. 14. 17. 1 Cor. 2. 14. They provoke God to give them their desire in Wrath to set up the World in them or them in their worldly Law-spirit of Enmity and Death to chuse their Delusions Isai. 66. 4. send them strong delusion that they should believe Stan's Lie and be damn'd because they chose rather to beleeve that than his Spirit of truth 2 Thes. 2. 10-12 So God Christ Themselves and the Devil all concur and center in one point the setting the World in their heart or fixing them in their own worldly spirit but upon very differing accounts Then is their case as desperate as that of the Evil Angels Heb. 10. 26 27. Though yet highly Esteemed of Men as owners yea Ministers of the Gospel are they most abominable to God Mystical Sodomit's the most Criminal Sinners in the whole World By being set or fixed in their worldly Spirit they become wholly Strangers and Enemies to the spirit of the World to come which will be upon them at last in Irresistible Wrath. Vers. XII I know that there is no good in them but for a Man to rejoyce and to do good in his life Solomon at a dear rate had experienc'd that there 's no durable unchangable good to be found in all first-creation Life and most Righteous Actions or things thereof No true Joy or Happiness to be had in this World but by doing what is truly good in God's sight in the Life and Spirit of the next True Godliness or power of 〈◊〉 exerciseable only in the Gospel-spirit of Christ is profitable to all things having the promises of this and the Life to come 1 Tim. 4. 8. that is it comprehend's the promised Spiritual Life of Christ and Comforts thereof in this and the World to come the daily encreasing first Fruits of it here and fulness there Yea also the promises even of this life or worldly things thereof such as 〈◊〉 seek belong to true seekers of the Righteousness of God in 〈◊〉 Kingdom spirit All these shall be added to you say's Christ himself Mat. 6. 31-33 The only right rejoycing in and doing good in its kind with such things of this Life is as receiv'd on the said account and manag'd in the Kingdom-spirit of the World to come Vers. 13. And also that every Man should eat and drink and enjoy the good of all his Labour it is the gift of God 'T is in the unspeakable gift of God only the spirit of Christ the inmost man of the Saint in the Life hid with Christ in God can feed upon the hidden Manna the divine Glory as vailed by that Spirit of Christ and thereby also unvailed or rendred visible in a sutableness only to 〈◊〉 not natural understanding in Man or Angel The never-perishing Meats and Drinks the Bread and Wine of the Kingdom the divine and creature-glories of God in the Mediator are the things true Saints eat drink feed and live upon enjoy rejoyce and delight in even in the peculiar delights of the Sons of God divine spiritual heavenly substantial things things eternal All this is the comfortable fruit of all their right labours in that Spirit that 's the peculiar gift of God distinct from the natural spirit or state of Life with all the Fruits brought forth by Man's utmost and best labours therein Vers. XIV I know that whatsoever God doth it shall be for ever Nothing can be put to it nor any thing taken from it And God doth it that Men should fear before him Whatever is the immediate Divine Workmanship shall be for ever that is the new-creature Spirit set up by the Divine from everlasting Prov. 8. 23. in personal union with it and also called God that made the worlds Jo. 1. 1-3 Heb. 1. 2. Both Worlds Natural and Spiritual and all in both were comprehended in it and brought forth by it This Fountain creature-Spirit in Christ and Streamings forth of the Living Waters thereof into Saints is of an unchangable nature The Gift thereof to Men or heavenly call of them into The Life thereof is without Repentance Variableness or chang The natural first-covenant principle of life and action set up in Man and Angel by the first-Creation is a Starting Variable Wavering thing Ps. 78. 57. Man breaks that Covenant with God and then God his Promise therein with him Numb 14. 34. Though Men be Children and Spouses to Christ therein Jer. 3. 14.
that doth truth cometh to the light that his deeds may be manifest that they are wrought in God Jo. 3. 21. Deeds wrought by God in Man and Man in God Thus God Judges of and calls such works the Labours of Man in Christ's Gospel-Life See what is said in this case on Ch. 2. 24. and v. 12 13 of this Chap. Solomon does not here countenance Man's rejoycing in such Labours of his own Spirit as he reckon's vain in themselves and unprofitable to himself Ch. 1. 3. as to any final good to him therein or by Nothing short of the new-Creature-State and Man's Labours therein signify any thing towards eternal Life Gal. 6. 15. Neither Circumcision nor Uncircumcision righteous or corrupt nature or any thing done by Man in either can be of any avail or 〈◊〉 thereunto So have we found out these works of Man he is to 〈◊〉 in done in that Life which is his peculiar portion and new-Creation Birth-right gift from God If works wrought in Man's own spirit will and way were meant t' would be a Flat contradiction to the main scope of this whole book which Proclaim 's the absolute Vanity and insignificancy of all first-Creation Life and things at best as to Man's pleasing God or finding true blessedness for himself Such works are meant as Man may ought will cannot but rejoyce in with Joy unspeakable and Glorious Here 's Man 's inward Summum bonum a Life wherein he can do all things after God's own Heart Steddily Infallibly Eternally and so enjoy the transcendently yet higher Summum bonum without him the Divine Glory in Favour and Love shining upon him for ever First-Covenant Divines as well as Evil Angels and Heathen Philosophers place Man's Summum bonum in but first-Creation excellencies whatever other title they give it within the compass of natural Objects and in the activity of their natural State that 's a fading flower altogether Vanity The Spirit of truth by its Penmen acquaints us with other matters for hapiness another Life other excellencies objects and works Man is capable to be found in the possession and exercise of The spiritual Man's Joy and delight meets and center 's in the same works or things with God's True Saints are in a Union with his Divine Spirit in Will Understanding Desire Thought Love and Hatred They love what he loves with a perfect love Hate what and whom he hates with a perfect hatred Ps. 139. 21 22. All Man's Labours are vain in his own Spirit of Vanity Not so in the Lord 1 Cor. 15. 58. Paul rejoyc'd in that Gospel-Life he had by the Faith of the Son of God Gal. 2. 20. and his Labours therein but found his Law-Life and best works therein Dung when touching the Righteousness which is the Law or to be found in that Law-State blameless Philip. 3. 6. Enmity to God Tinctur's Sullies and desiles all that Life and Works at best with filth of Spirit T. For who shall bring him to see what shall be after him If Man Submit not to God's terms for receiving his new-Creation-Life who can bring him to see what shall be after him Either what will become of good or Evil Angels or Men in Eternal Life or Death after their fading Life of Vanity with all the things thereof is over and gone These grand and most concerning futurities things no natural Eye Heart or Understanding can see or imagine on all hands the things provided in Heaven for those that truly fear God or in Hell for incorrigible haters of him lie quite out of the reach of Man or Angel in their natural first-Creation State of Enmity and Vanity Darkness and Death The Spiritual Man in the true Preaching Spirit of Prophecy discern's or judges all things 1 Cor. 2. 15. and can declare Infallibly what all Men and Angels will come to as finally Obedient or Disobedient to God's term's of receiving Eternal Life He knowing the Terrours of the Lord 2 Cor. 5. 11. and what a fearful thing it is to fall into the hands or under the final Wrath of the Living God does Might and Main Labour in the Spirit of Christ to warn and caution Men as to the only way of entring into the Joy and escaping the Wrath of the Lord the Wrath to come By refusing so great Salvation as God offers them come they to Eternal Death Want and Vexation of Spirit Prov. 8. 34-36 They 'l want every thing that 's good and have every thing that 's evil in and upon them in Extreamity for ever unchangable Wickedness in them and positive Inflictions of God's Wrath as Punishment upon them without any Interruption or Relief Luk. 16. 24 25. to Eternity They have chosen rather in the declar'd known causes and way thereto to be Vessels of Dishonour and Everlasting Contempt then on God's term's to be made Vessels of Glory Honour Immortality and Eternal Life By Enmity to God's Divine and New-Creature Holy Ghosts or Spirits do they bring siery Indignation on their unpardonably guilty heads Heb. 10. 26 27. Ro. 2. 6-10 These great things that will be found and felt hereafter do evidence the great weight of these Words of Solomon and grand concern of Men to be circumspect in taking the true meaning of them Who but the awak'ned Spiritual Saint can foresee and tell the unutterable Confusions final Refusers of God's Counsel will be found in for ever The Cares and Pleasures of this Life choke Mens understandings as to any right and hearty enquiry after their grand concerns in the next The Noble Bereans did set themselvs to search the Scriptures for the Gospel-Kingdom and Righteousness of God Who does so now Those that in this World seek not the Kingdom and Righteousness of God in the next Mat. 6. 33. will never find it let them flatter themselvs in their Loose Negligent Inadvertent course while they will The most trifling outward Vanities of this World do universally amuse and take up Peoples time and thought so as to detain them in a deep oscitancy and regardlesness as to the unutterable Woes prepar'd in Tophet for Incorrigible sinners or unspeakable Joys in the Kingdom of God for Spiritual Saints Believe not your own Thoughts O ye Sons of Men about Salvation Lean not to your own Understandings Conferr not with Flesh and Blood Regard not the Voice of Strangers the Words of Man's Wisdom about it CHAP. IV. Vers. I. So I returned and considered all the Oppressions that are done under the Sun And behold the tears of such as were oppressed and they had no Comforter And on the side of their Oppressors there was power but they had no Comforter I Returned Heb. was Converted from my fallible wisdom to see the Affairs of Mankind in the infallible wisdom of God particularly to consider duely the manifold Oppressions under the Sun Even himself through his vastly expensive extravagancies had given occasion to his oppressed Subjects to bespeak his soolish Son 〈◊〉 after his Decease on this wise
Levit's and a Plague on some others of the People Exod. 32. They said v. 4. and Jeroboam said after them in the like case behold thy Gods O Israel which brought thee up out of the Land of Egypt O Madness To the Egyptian God's that could not deliver their own People from them do they ascribe their deliverance from their Egyptian Bondage and Task-Masters So Ahaz Sacrificed to the God's of Damascus which were the ruine of him and all Israel 2 Chron. 28. 22 23. and 2 King 16. 10-13 So also Amaziah set up the Edomit's Gods to be his Gods and sought after them which could not deliver their own People out of his hands 2 Chro. 26. 14 15. and was destroy'd for his pains as threat'ned by the Prophet for not hearkning to his Counsell though against and contrary to the King 's Wicked Idolatrous Council v. 16. 27. And what became of Jeroboam for his Calf-worship erected on a self Interested Reason of State See 1 King 14. 10 11. I le cut of Jeroboam and take away the Remnant of his House as a Man takes away Dung till it be all gone Him that dieth of him in the City shall Dogs Eat and him that dies in the Field shall the Fowls of the Air Eat For the Lord hath spoken it Is not here enough When Christ shall take possession of and actually reign over all the Earth his right always Psal. 2. 8. all Visible and Invisible Principalities and Powers of this World Evil Men and Angels will be laid in the Dust. Nothing but Righteousness of one sort or other Man's or God's in Man will be found in the whole World his Holy Mountain or Kingdom by his Executing that Judgment and Justice in the Earth Jer. 23. 5. always all along his peaceable Righteous Reign that they allway's perverted Saints also that he will bring with him to Reign will do the like in Harmony with their Universal Fift Monarch Dan. 7. 18 -- 27. Jude 14 15. Rev. 5. 10. Solomon in Spiritual Light sees and mean's not only nor chiefly the oppression of the Body in the concerns thereof by Heathen Governments violating the Common Law or Light of rational nature in mankind but the Oppression and Violence exercis'd by first-Covenant Brethren against the second the only true Heirs and Saints of the most high The new Light and Life they are found in under the fructifying Influence and Beamings forth of the Mystical New-Creation Sun of everlasting Righteousness Christ as a Spiritual Bride-groom is Scorn'd Hated contradicted Blasphem'd and they Persecuted and kill'd for 't by none so much as by their envious Brethren in Holy Flesh restor'd Law-Life under the Mystical first-Creation Sun or First-Covenant Spirit wherein Christ has bin a sleshly Law-Bride-groom to them Thus are true Saints the Oppressed peculiarly and most properly here and Chap. 5. 8. meant by Solomon And then shall we find the vast number of Dead Heathens in the corrupt Life or Spirit of nature dead in Trespasses and Sins and the far smaller number of enliven'd first-Covenant Brethren professing Saints in Holy Flesh in all variety of Judgment Form or way in one kind or other Oppressours of the smallest number of all Christ's little Flock the few that are saved true Saints of the most High in God's Holy New-Creature-Spirit stripp'd and destitute of all Worldly Power or help All in this World against them No thing No body for them They are Men Wonder'd at Scorn'd Hated by all Men of Contention with the whole Earth The whole Earth or wordly party of Angels and Men fix'd in their earthy natural first-Creation-make and State despiteful Enemies to the Spirit of Grace and all in the second are their Implacable Adversaries in every thing The but first-Covenant Righteous Professour call himself what he will sometimes gets a considerable Share in the Civil Sword or Power and uses it with greatest fierceness against the new-Covenant professing Spiritual Saint who with Christ look's not after the Kingdom of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Heavenly managable only in the Spirit of 〈◊〉 not the most enlight'ned righteous Principles or State of nature and not actually commencing till Man's and Satan's be at a Period Such a Kingdom such a King or Kings as Christ and his true Disciples lay claim to or own themselvs of right to be as Sons of God even Heathen Pilate was able to see and Judg carries no clash in it at all with Worldly Ceasars or Magistracies John 18. 36-38 True Saints are not for throwing down all Heathen Magistracies in the corrupt Spirit of nature that they may rule over all in the renew'd worldly spirit thereof They that design and drive at this are the Pseudo-Fift-Monarchists who in all their Zeal and high Pretences for the King Jesus are the highest and fiercest Enemies and Opposers of the very Jesus the very Christ in his very Gospel-reigning Spirit of Grace and Truth They are themselvs the most signal part and Branch at least of that little Horn with the Mouth speaking very great things Dan. 7 8. 11. 20 21. 24 25. Rev. 13. 3. 5 -- 8. 11 -- 17 which they would wholly fix upon and appropriate unto a corrupt and grosly Idolatrous Heathen party in the Fourth Roman Monarchy under the name Christian. These are they with the deadly Wound Healed given by the first Sin that laid all Mankind dead in Trespasses and Sins who with a great mouth speak great things blasphemous words against God and his new-name or Gospel-Spirit the Holy Ghost God's Heavenly Sanctuary or Tabernacle and them that dwell in it even the Saints of the most high that dwell or have their conversation in Heaven Christ's Heavenly Gospel-Spirit of Grace By the false Fift-Monarchist is to be understood not only a party peculiarly and apart from their Fellows at Munster or lately amongst us or in any former Generations and other Countries pretending this way by throwing down all corrupt Worldly Monarchies or Governments to set up themselvs but the whole fixed first Covenant-Spirited Generation and Party of Professours in all times and places found in the same uniform Spirit of unchangable Enmity to the true Spiritual Saint on the one hand and a self-confident Disturbing Traiterous Opposition to corrupt worldly Cesars on the other This troublesome Spirit is charactred by the Apostle in the Jewish Professours that both kill'd the Lord Jesus and their own Prophets and Christ's Apostles And therein please not but indeed highly displease and Provoke God and are contrary to all Men on their right and left hand Spiritual Saints and polluted Heathens For this Wrath came upon those Jews to the uttermost and will upon all in like case 1 Thes. 2. 15 16. These are they that speak great swelling Words of Vanity with their self-exalting Luciferian Master Satan the old great Bloody-minded Red Dragon against the most high himself and all his true Spiritual Saints These are they that said of Christ himself the Supream Preacher and
with false hopes and confidences here and come what will think they hereafter At length they must leave their false present rest and lie down in everlasting sorrow Who can help Satan's twofold party corrupt and righteous men fixed in nature with him will on in their fools Paradise in their various pathes under Satan's counsel and steerage to the same Tophet Saints ought to do their best in all meekness to recover any out of the snares of the Devil till evidently fix'd in Enmity God's method with men is that none should usually have two Heavens or two Hells All Good is the Saints all Evil the incorrigible sinners in the world to come All Saints tears are put into God's bottle of remembrance to requite all hereafter as Enemies oppressive madnesses shall also be paid off with such recompence of their Errors as is meet the vengeance of Eternal Fire Jude 7. All will come to their rights at last Friends and Foes This very Argument does Paul comfort oppressed Saints with 2 Thes. 1. 4 -- 10. At Christ's second coming will Saints ride in their Triumphal Chariots as more then final Conquerors over the Heads of their Oppressors Devils and Men who have had their turn to ride over their heads Ps. 66. 12. The Lord regards every sigh and groan of his Prisoners appointed to death under worldly Powers Psal. 12. 5. and 69. 33. and 79. 11. 146. 7. He will make his despised oppressed ones a praise in the Earth in the sight of all that have scorn'd and trampled on them Psal. 102. 13. 16. 19. 20. The true Saint pants after final deliverance from all Enemies within him Rom. 7. 24. as well as without All will be 〈◊〉 at last in Answer to their Prayer Psal. 74. 10. and ver 〈◊〉 Saints groan after deliverance from their mortal righteous earthly life of Enmity as well as from that of the Body 2 Cor. 5. 1 2. All in nature within and without them is in a universal confederacy against them What matter If God be for them who can be against them Or who can hurt them Rom. 8. 31. Here 's enough The whole first-creation world lies in wickedness litteral and mystical filth of flesh or spirit 1 Joh. 5. 19. and so in a universal daring affront and contradiction to all words and things of God in the next Jer. 44. 16 17. But God will hear or deliver Saints from the horns of the Unicorns Psal. 22. 21. That is from all oppressive Powers of this World visible and invisible without and within So have we in some small measure the meaning of these words Vers. II. Wherefore I praised the Dead which are already Dead more than the living which are yet alive The weight of these words lies not in the Litteral Sense For no miseries or oppressions incident to bodily Life in this world are comparable to the sad condition of the wicked after death under final wrath The spiritual truth here relates to Saints Saints departed are in a far better condition than those left behind them in the Body that have not fully passed through the twofold inward and outward oppression or suffering-work that 's to be undergon by them Saints departed out of the Body or while in the Body out of the Law-life of their own spirit are those A voyce from Heaven command's John to write as a most certain Truth blessed Blessed are the dead in the Lord Rev. 14. 13. All so dead with Christ will live with him for ever in his Immortal Gospel-life All others will perish in their own corruption or corruptible Law-life and state which they have rebelliously chosen and trusted in for blessedness against the Lord's known commands and warnings to the contrary By keeping up what Paul cast away as dung for Christ's spiritual Life will they perish as their own dung for ever Job 20. 7. A perfect death of the natural Spirit and Principle of Life and Action in man an everlasting cessation and rest from all the desire thought and unprofitable labour thereof and so the honourable burial of it in the mystical grave of Christ is true conformity to his death Christ came not to do his own Will nor speak his own words the Dictat's of his own understanding though spotlessly perfect in our fleshly nature but Crucified and ceas'd from all We must follow his suffering steps through the same fire of his eternal Spirit Heb. 9. 14. kindled by him on us as on himself Luk. 12. 49. Spiritual Circumcision and fire-Baptism put nature corrupt or righteous to death cut off and burn up all flesh even Holy Flesh Col. 2. 11 12. Man in the restor'd righteous Life of his own nature has nothing but a Body of Sin and Death about him which Paul pray'd for deliverance from Ro. 7. 24. Phil. 3. 6-8 Since the fall filth of Spirit Enmity to God is inseperable from the Life of nature corrupt or righteous Nature in whatever condition and Enmity to God Live or Die breath or expire together Paul when eminent in Holy Flesh breath'd out Enmity Threatnings and Slaughter against God's Holy Gospel-Spirit Saints and Truths Act. 9. 1. From the time this Spirit of Enmity was Death-struck by Christ in his way to Damascus he lived and brought forth Fruits unto God in a newness of Life In the restor'd Life of nature the great Sin of Enmity revives gather's Strength Credit and Authority By the death of it under the Cross that and all other Sins are pluck'd up by the Roots He that is so Slain and dead is freed from all Sin for ever Ro. 6. 7. When Planted together in the likeness of Christ's Death and Resurrection the Old Man is Crucisied the Body of Sin destroy'd v. 5 6. Man's natural Body or whole natural Man at best as a Righteous Living Soul 1 Cor. 15. 44 45. is by the twofold death and Life-work of Christ's quickning Spirit Transformable into the likeness of his Glorious Body or the glorified Body Soul and Spirit of our nature in his person Phil. 3. 21. On such death of nature Man ceases from sin for ever 1 Pet. 4. 1. If Obedient to the Slaughter-work of Christ's Gospel-Spirit on our Lawless or Law-Spirit in corrupt or righteous nature shall we by the second operation of it be quick'ned up into the Life of his Gospel-Spirit All dead with Christ shall after their season of dwelling in Dust arise with his dead Body into a newness of Life and Sing for ever Isai. 26. 19. Paul's argument in this case looks both way's If the Dead rise not Christ is not Risen 1 Cor. 15. 12-19 implying if Christ be Risen the Dead with him shall be Rais'd into that 〈◊〉 of Life our Crucisied nature in him Lives in for evermore Rev. 1. 18. Our nature in Christ is rais'd also into and possess'd of the very Divine Life So the fulness of the very Godhead dwells in him bodily in personal Union with his Manhood This is his peculiar Prerogative
spirit CHAP. V. Vers. I. Keep thy Foot when thou goest to the House of God and be more ready to hear then to give the Sacrifice of Fools For they consider not that they do evil HEre 's the Result and Use of all declar'd in the fore-going Chapters as to the Vanity and vain Labour of Man under the Light of the Mystical first-Creation Sun or Spirit of the Law in and under which Man and Angel were at first Created and Christ Born Gal. 4. 4. Paul draw's the same useful Instruction from the doctrin of the 11 former Chapters to the Roman's Chap. 12. 1. for quitting or giving up the same earthly natural State the same thing with the Foot here when restor'd or made again Holy Flesh the righteous natural Body in Sacrifice to God as our reasonable Service and true free-will Offring even the Offring up of our free-will to good and evil that we may receive his free-will to Good only the Glorious Liberty of the Sons of God with which the Son makes free indeed all that are Born of his Gospel-Spirit of overlasting righteousness and truth First then consider what this Foot is or signifies and secondly what 's the House of God it 's to be kept out of as not fit to enter 1. This Foot 〈◊〉 the whole Man in a first-Covenant Life The Heel Satan is permitted to bruise Gen. 3. 15. is of the same extent and comprehensive significancy And so were the Shoes Moses was Commanded to put from off his Feet where the ground was Holy Exod. 3. 5. This Foot or natural Spirit of Man corrupt or righteous being found in Enmity to God at best as in Paul before his Gospel-Conversion can bear no part in the right Worshipping of God which is wholly to be perform'd in Spirit and Truth Christ's new-Creature Gospel-spirit of everlasting righteousness and truth The infinite Divine Spirit and Father requires all Men and Angels to Worship him in the Son's Gospel-Creature-Spirit of truth How can Man please him in duties of Worship or any other Performances towards him or Man in his own Spirit of Enmity Such Enmity as is no otherwise extinguishable but by 〈◊〉 death of nature being absolutely inseperable from the Life of it at best Christ's Gospel-Spirit of Love in unchangable Union of Mind and Will Desire and Thought with God when it becom's the sole Principle of Life Desire Thought and Action in Man will perfectly and compleatly fulfil all Law perform all duty to God and Man to God's well-pleasing and the Performer's certain and everlasting Salvation Man is not to come in his own Spirit of nature however Wise Strong Rich and Honourable in Christ by his first-Covenant-Communications to him as a fleshly Bride-groom and 〈◊〉 at his earthly Table into the new-Creation Sanctuary of God the everlasting Righteous Fountain Gospel-Spirit of Christ. The Courts of this Sanctuary are too Holy Ground for any thing that 's but changably good as Man and Angels before the fall or also positively evil as nature corrupt or righteous in all Men since the fall to tread on For a Man in a Spirit that 's a Root of Bitterness bearing Gall and Wormwood Briars and Thorns in a continued Enmity to God every Imagination Purpose Desire and Thought thereof being only evil continually the old World's case before the Flood Gen. 6. 5. to appear in the unchangably righteous new-Creation Sanctuary of God what a strang incongruous thing and sight would it be If any fill'd and Clothed by Satan's 〈◊〉 and their own consent or choice with a Spirit of unchangable Enmity to God do as 't were crowd in and appear at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb and his Bride in the Kingdom of his Father see what 's like to become of him Mat. 22. 11 12. Friend will the King Jesus say how cam'st thou in hither not having a Wedding Garment And he was Speech-less had nothing to say Then say's the King to his Servants the Holy Angels of his Power that excel in strength all fixed first-Creation Enemies of God and the second bind him Hand and Foot and cast him into outer Darkness where shall be Weeping and Gnashing of Teeth to all Eternity Let the fixed first-Creation Sinner and Enemy of God in his form of Godliness Righteousness of Man do what he can get where he will he is gone for ever No Stranger was to come into the Litteral Sanctuary under the Law the Type of this Spiritual Gospel-Sanctuary-Spirit of God in Christ's Person and in his Saints the lively stones of the House upon the Rock that Christ is the living head-corner Stone and Foundation of He spirit 's influences and enliven's all the rest hold's them fitly compacted together and firmly cimented in his one Gospel-spirit of new-Creature-Life that 's a Universal Bond of Love and Peace to and with God Christ and one other for evermore The Foot Heel or Shoe that 's to be kept back laid aside or put off that we may be shod with the preparation of the Gospel of Peace and so walk orderly with a right Foot according to the Gospel of the Grace of God or on a new foot of account in the single-ey'd discerning strength and Power of Christ's Gospel-spirit is that Flesh and Blood which cannot enter into and inherit the Kingdom of God 1 Cor. 15. 50. or tread the Courts of his Heavenly Sanctuary Angels in the purity of their first-Creation-make and changable Life were to cover their Faces as not fit to appear before God to behold or be beheld by him therein And say's God to the Jews when ye come to appear before me who hath requir'd this at your hands to tread my Courts Isai. 1. 12. No right acceptable Worshipping God or doing any thing else but in the Gospel-spirit of Truth that spirit of Love that 's the compleat fulfiller of the whole Law even of all that God requires of us Sure the natural spirit at best that 's a spirit of Enmity to God and a bloody-minded Spirit against his true Saints can do no such thing It 's hands are full of blood It breath'd out Threatnings and Slaughters against the Disciples of the Lord even in Paul who had therein lived according to his light in all good conscience Act. 23. 1. exerciseable in the activity and restor'd Life thereof as a strict circumspect Opposer and Suppressor of the vile Affections and Lusts of his corrupt nature This Foot then is to be cut off cast away laid aside by us as not fit to perform any part in the true Worshipping of God Man is not to come alive into the House of God but be brought into it by the High Priest Christ himself dead as to his own Law-Life and principle of active obedience and quick'ned up into his Gospel-Life and Principle of active obedience wherein alone 't is possible to please God or be saved Passive obedience is the highest service performable in or with Angel's or Man's natural first-Creation Life
his own Spirit offer 's but the sacrifice of fools in God's judgment however highly he esteem the sacrifice or himself for it He does not rightly know what he does what he is whither he goes whom he 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ospel things and truths the whole Counsel of God the 〈◊〉 and only way of salvation the methods of God's wisdom in order thereunto all the law's ordinances statut's and judgments of his new creation-sanctuary describ'd in the nine last chapters of Ezekiel all these things lie quite out of his sight How can Man in his own best Wisdom that 's foolishness to God's in his own Spirit that at best is enmity to God's perform do any thing or offer up any sacrifice acceptable to God any but the sacrifice of fools These fools consider not will not consider that they do evil Stiff-necked are they in their own self-confident understandings which are not only blear-ey'd and dimm-sighted but stark blind and wholly ignorant of all Gospel-things and truths yet on they will turning their deaf ear to or setting their mouth against the heavens Ps. 73. 9. all heavenly Gospel-doctrin and instruction They 'l listen to nothing that may induce them to consider the great mischief they are doing to themselvs and others by preaching promising and warranting peace with God in a spirit of direct enmity to him Ezek. 13. 6. 10. and decrying might and main that which is the only way of salvation and the only spirit in which any can be saved with all the words thereof This desperate work are these blind leaders with their self-confident followers at all reck'ning they are doing very pleasing and acceptable service to God Act. 26. 9. Having nothing of Christ's very Gospel-Spirit or doctrin in their Church do they with great indignation and scorn cast all that are wholly for the very Christ and his very Gospel out of their church Isai. 66. 5. Ps. 50. 20 yes and out of the world too when they can as not fit to live any longer in it Act. 22. 22. All this do these Gospel-Wolvs in Sheep's Clothing reckon to be a doing God service Jo. 16. 2. in a blind zeal for him and his law against every word of his Gospel Rom. 10. 2 3 for the first-covenant life of the law in their own restor'd spirit of nature against the second-covenant life of the Gospel in his own spirit of grace So think they do God service when they joyn with the Devil to do despite to the spirit of grace Heb. 10. 29 casting all the words thereof behind their backs and all contempt they can on all such words and all the speakers and right hearers of them as the worst of blasphemies and blasphemers What was Saul's Sin in letter and mystery too is their's in mystery They must be brought to acknowledg with Saul that what the wisdom of God and the words or commands thereof require to be destroy'd their foolish wisdom in the words thereof preaches keeps up and warrants currant for salvation The Spirit of nature in Man recovered and restored by Christ out of the fall into the life wisdom and ruling power thereof over all inferiour sensual brutish power of life and operation in him amounts to no more in mystery and truth then the Amalekite King Agag and best of the cattel The refuse of the cattel the vile affections the disorderly unruly lusts of the corrupt state of nature they have subdued yet not fully but the King and best of the Cattel the rational and sensual powers reduced to good order in the ruling authority of the former and due subjection of the latter these they judg fit to be spared And what are these both king and subjects All but still the Amalekite spirit of nature and Man therein the direct enemy of God and all his Gospel-Saints and truths Was not Paul in and with all these fighting against God when he thought his had bin fighting for him With Saul will all such self-confident justifiers of themselvs be condemn'd out of their own mouth even amid'st their self-justifying plea against the Lord's and his true spiritual Prophet's charge drawn up against them as Samuel's against Saul They 'l be found partial in God's Law The refuse things the vile affections of their polluted nature they are content should be subdued in obedience to it But the choicer things thereof nature at best in the Glory Wisdom and righteousness thereof that all this must go up in sacrifice by a just and holy death to God being an unholy life or state of enmity to God however in a sense holy as cleansed from filth of flesh though convinc'd God's Wisdom requir's this also do they with Saul under a self-condemning light refuse to obey c. and yet stoutly assert with him that they have obeyed the voice of the Lord. All this find we 1 Sam. 15. 18-23 This get men by setting up their own Wisdom and Spirit as judg or interpreter of the Oracles dictat's or words of God's in a known contrariety to the spiritual meaning and intendment of all In their restor'd righteous inlight'ned nature that 's God's required Gospel-sacrifice sigured out by all clean law-sacrifices in the old Testament do they presumptuously with Saul and King 〈◊〉 intrude or thrust themselvs into the priests office 1 Sam. 13. 8-14 2 Chron. 26. 16-21 In their own Foolish Wisdom and Spirit of Enmity to God and all the Words of his Wisdom do they pretend to the Office of Christ's Priestly Gospel-spirit of Infallible Truth and Everlasting Righteousness as the only true declarers of the Will and Words of God that rightly take not his meaning in any of his Words nor ever can understand them This Presumptuous course persisted and fix'd in will render the contagious over-spreading Leprosy the Sin of Enmity to God filth of Spirit that 's no otherwise curable then by the compleat and full death of nature absolutely incurable and mortal as the case was with the Litteral Leprosy on Uzzia's Body to his dying day though said for a season to have done that which was right in the sight of the Lord in his long Reign of two and fifty Yeers 2 King 15. 2 3. The true Priestly Gospel-Spirit of Christ offer'd up our nature in himself at best in Sacrifice to God When Samuel Reprov'd Saul for Sacrificing his answer was The Philistins were ready to come upon me to Gilgal and I had not made Supplication to the Lord so I forc'd my self and Offer'd a Burnt-Offring These 〈◊〉 Pleas and Apologies of nature go for nothing when thorowly search'd by the Spirit of Christ in his seers Thou hast done foolishly say's Samuel and shalt lose thy Kingdom Life and all for 't by those Philistin's through the fear of whom thou did'st Offer this Sacrifice of Fools And what befel Adam and all his Posterity with King Uzziah for Presumptuously setting or keeping up his Law-State or changable first-Covenant righteous Life of his own nature as therein
in preference to and exclusion of God's heavenly Spiritual Eternal creature-things as not worthy his regard or minding They deny they decry them They call them blasphemous 〈◊〉 and therein do they blaspheme devised fables only to 〈◊〉 diminish and disparage their conceited natural things perishing vanities which they reckon the only creature-things that are in a perfect contrariety to the 〈◊〉 of God By those very Spiritual Saints and things man's Wisdom count's Fools and foolishness will God confound all their foolish-Wisdom and self-exalting power By these foolish Persons and despised things Man looks on as worse then nothing will God bring to nought things that in man's Judgment are in God's not 1 Cor. 1. 9. and v. 27 28. who 'l be Judg at last God and wise holy first-covenant Saints are of a directly contrary Judgment in this great case Those that with Paul have Praise with God are such as the Lord commendeth go for no body worse than nothing with them They that are meer dreamers and please themselvs with their dream Jer. 23. 25-32 or dreamish hapiness call all Gospel-truths a dream 〈◊〉 a delusion of the Devil and say to Gospel-Saints as Joseph's brethren to him behold these dreamish-heirs that pretend to the everlasting inheritance in a Spirit and doctrine we hate let 's kill them all and see what will become of them and their dream's Gen. 37. 18-20 They reckon their doctrin Wheat and Christ's Chaff But he will say what 's your Chaff to my Wheat The true Spiritual circumcision-Saint seem's a fool a mad Man in the house of God or to and amongst first-covenant brethren Hos. 9. 7 8 yea the filth of the world the off-scouring of all things 1 Cor. 4. 10. 13. 2 Cor. 10. 12. Those that rejoyce in Christ Jesus or in his Gospel-Spirit the Holy Ghost with joy unspeakable and Glorious are despised and trampled on by their first-covenant brethren whose confidence is wholly in their holy slesh or restor'd naturals The first and second-covenant Saint are properly the natural and Spiritual man The enlightned moral heathen obedient to the restor'd rational first-covenant light or law of nature may be comprehended under the title natural man But the corrupt heathen living and walking wholly in the brutish lusts of his degenerate fallen nature is a beast He has not what is properly in a Scripture-sense the life of a man or any part of it That Death in Sin threatned and accomplish'd upon Adam and all his posterity they delight in rather then accept of deliverance out of it But the enlightn'd restor'd natural man in the light or also life of the first-covenant is of a distinct contrary palate desire appetite and thought or judgment from and to the Spiritual All his regard desire love and delight is for after and in worldly perishing vanities passant shadows dreams that come from a multitude of busines that he vainly makes to himself about such empty perishing nothings So will they themselvs even these first-covenant kings the mystical Princes of this world such as 〈◊〉 Christ come to nought yea worse then nothing with all their trusted in nothings They 'l be at a total loss for ever pining and starving in everlasting poverty and nakedness under the positive Inflictions and Burnings of unchangable and unquenchable Wrath. T. And a Fool 's voice is known by a multitude of words good words fair speeches as the only Ministers of Christ's Gospel deceiving the hearts of the simple or undiscerning that can't discern or at least 〈◊〉 own the difference between Christ's and Satan's Gospel All the while are they gratifying or serving their own palate appetite desire or belly of their natural Spirit in the perishing Life and with the perishing Meats of a first-Covenant State as the true Salvation and blessedness of any These Wise-Fools are the fiercest enemies of the very Christ the very Gospel of all men A multitude of Words and Books do they come forth in And nothing must pass for Orthodox right or true Gospel-Doctrin but what the wisdom of Man that 's a flat enemy to all Christ's Gospel sitting in its Magisterial Chair of Infallibility gives its ratifying nod or Imprimatur to Be such what they will they do and will yet pass for the only signal owners and Trumpeters of Christ's everlasting Gospel whereas indeed they are the most careful shutters up of the Kingdom of Heaven the most industrious decriers of the very Christ the very Gospel or Spiritual sense of all Scripture in the World This was the Pharisees case in Christ's own time Mat. 23. 13. The first-covenant law-spirit or principle fixed in enmity to the second is the 〈◊〉 same leaven with that of the Pharisees under the outward dispensation of the Gospel as well as under the Law They for a pretence made long Prayers compassed Sea and Land left no means unattempted no stone unturn'd to proselyte or fetch back any from Christ's gospel-Gospel-truth to Satan's lie and falshood his accursed other Gospel and so to make them two-fold more the Children of Hell then themselvs as sinning against cleerer discerning greater Light and Conviction then they ever had as to Gospel-truths And this done they Triumph as having done God Service in converting them from Christ's to their 〈◊〉 which Man's wisdom styles Orthodox So all run's smooth and fine 〈◊〉 keep 's silence and they please themselvs to imagine he is of their mind and judgment such a one as 〈◊〉 Psal. 50. 20 21. But he warn's them before-hand he will find a time to 〈◊〉 them in pieces so as none shall be able to deliver them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And as he 〈◊〉 them he comforts Saints abused by 〈◊〉 with this 〈◊〉 Pl. appear 〈◊〉 your Joy and they shall be ashamed These threat's 〈◊〉 the one and promises to the other will be accomplish'd at one and the same time Christ's second comming 〈◊〉 66. 5. If such 〈◊〉 were used to keep off people from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 himself what may the true Ministers of his 〈◊〉 now 〈◊〉 from the like legal-spirited Generation of 〈◊〉 and Professors The Pharisees said among themselvs 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 nothing To wit as to the gaining and keeping off the people from listning to his Ministry 〈◊〉 the World is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Jo. 12. 19. Indeed the World goes after 〈◊〉 1 Jo. 4. 5. hear's and own 's them and their Doctrin People a 〈◊〉 People 〈◊〉 after the Beast admire his Apostles praise reward and follow them The deadly Wound given mankind by the first Sin being 〈◊〉 in these Teachers and 〈◊〉 by which they are recovered out of that Death in Trespasses and Sins they were born in they reckon all 's their own And who but they Rev. 13. 3. With what a wry Mouth and scornful Indignation did the Pharisees take up theirs and the Chief Priest's Officers who were sent to Apprehend Christ but did not Never Man spake like this Man said the Officers Are ye also deceiv'd said the Pharisees Have any
his spirit of unchangable enmity to God then by Christ's new-creation workmanship baptized into his Gospel-spirit of unchangable union with God What 's the meet recompence of such errour The same Tophet punishment lake of mystical fire and brimstone the litteral is but a Shadow of unquenchable wrath fiery indignation the vengeance of eternal fire In this and other variety of language does the Holy Ghost or Spirit of truth in the Scriptur's of truth clothe the joynt everlasting torment and vexation of both For such a covenant with the Devil is a covenant of oath a swearing everlasting allegiance to him and a taking also his oath of supreamacy owning him as the supream ruler and infallible dictatour in Church and State in the room of the holy ghost or Christ in Spirit and God most high himself 2 Thes. 2. 4. And so his bored Servants they are for ever whom they have sworn to obey for ever on all accounts and own for their Supream Paramount-Ruler and guide so as to place themselvs under his protection wing and conduct Rom. 6. 16. They agree to Obey Sin and the Man of Sin Satan the unchangably sinning Spirit of Eternal Darkness and Death Can this be lesse then the sin unto death eternal death They 'l be sure of the portion they have chosen They unchangably hate Christ's Gospel new-Creature Spirit of everlasting righteousness chuse and love a Spirit of unchangable enmity to it and death to themselvs Prov. 8. 36. Can they miss of what they love and have chosen Rebellious Children are they They take counsel not of me saith the Lord but of the Devil They cover with a covering not of my Spirit but the Devil 's for their clothing and protection They are willing to be dress'd up in his furniture and armour to fight against God All this for this very end that they may add sin to sin unchangable enmity to God the unpardonable sin to the pardonable changable state of enmity and death they were born in So come they to a latter end worse than their beginning by their own choice when offer'd a better end then ever nature in its beginning at best before the fall amounted to in the the changable spotless life thereof They are now in a known chosen confederacy with the Devil for ever against God Christ all Gospel-Saints and truths They have greedily drunk down the poyson'd wine of the very Spirit of the old Serpent Their wine is the poison of Dragons the cruel venom of Asps Deut. 32. 33. The poison of Asps is under their lips Rom. 3. 13. They spit venom breath out slaughter against the Saints of the most high They are establish'd by Satan made men fully after his own heart So unchangable irreconcileable implacable enemies of all after God's own heart as Saul to David In these two fixed states after God's or the Devil 's own heart will all men in conclusion be found in heaven or hell everlasting joy or sorrow under the final favour or unquenchable wrath of God Neither say before the Angel 't was an errour This Angel is Christ the supream Apostle or Messenger of God's Covenant the living Creature-word and book of God which is God Jo. 1. 1 So the Septuagint render it neither say before God it was an errour and therefore why should he be angry c. To what porpose is it for any to pretend ignorance as having done all this by a mistake and surprize before this Angel or word of God that 's of an all-penetrating sight so as infallibly to discern and discover the bottom-thoughts and intents of all hearts Heb. 4. 12 13. He will undeniably evidence all this wickedness to have bin wilfully and knowingly done against his cleer declarations of the mind of God to them and most faithfull warnings of them to the contrary and of the unspeakable danger thereof No good words fair speeches plausible pretences whereby they have deceiv'd their fellow-creatur's will signify any thing towards their defence or excuse before this infallible Angel's judgment-seat He will silence and stop every mouth of iniquity and fill all that have thus caused their flesh to sin thereby with everlasting shame and confusion of face Peter in the Holy Ghost or that Spirit of this Angel Christ wherein he will judg the world detected the falshood of Ananias and Saphira and executed God's sentence of death upon them as having suffer'd Satan to fill their hearts their undeniable guilt Act. 5. 1-10 Such Spots are not the Spots of God's Children They are never guilty of unpardonable Sins And then do those guilty of such errours think to get any thing by 〈◊〉 why should God be angry and destroy our works Or Solomon in the Spirit of God asks them why should God be angry at thy voice or mouth that hath agreed with Satan to cause thy flesh or whole man to sin 〈◊〉 and so destroy the Work of thine hands But let this Question be put by whom it will the Works which have been wrought in a Spirit of unchangable enmity to God will be 〈◊〉 If put by the Holy Ghost in Solomon 't is by way of counsel to 〈◊〉 such madness in Men whereby to receive such a Spirit of unchangable enmity into them for the principle of all their Desires Thoughts and Works as will most certainly expose them and all such Works to be burnt up and destroyed for ever They have done all such wicked Works and the leading wicked Work to all the rest in receiving the Devil's Spirit of unchangable enmity for their working Active Principle before the said Angel or under his convincing Spiritual Light and cleer discoveries of himself to them in his Spiritual Life of Truth wherein alone they can be Saved He will at last undeniably convince them that they were convinced and fairly warn'd of all these things before-hand in his gracious exhibitings and offers of himself to them doing all they could desire he should do for preventing such a self-ruining wilfull unpardonable errour All has been done by them against the known commands of his Spiritual law And will they say it was an errour a mistake of meer ignorance And so think to prevail with this Angel to plead for their Pardon Alas Alas He will make them see it most Just for him to intercede against them as his and his Father 's incorrigible wilfull Enemies and to say to his mighty Angels slay these mine Enemies before my face Luke 19. 27. that would not I should Reign over them but the Devil God or this Angel is most Justly angry at their Voice or Mouth by which they have chosen and declared their consent for unchangable union with the Devil rather then with him And he will destroy all the works of their Hands that in such union they have done against him in whatever nearest resemblance of his Gospel-Spirit and Truths by the transforming Arts and Skill of their Master-Workman purposely to express their utmost Malice against him
patience and not marvel or be dismayed seeing cleerly the mind will purpose and method of God's wisdom in all at the most daring presumptuous practicers of highest wickedness against God or them They are sure of advantage by all they can do against them now And they are sure of having them under their feet hereafter for ever What would they have or can they wish more in this point God is for them who can be against them They must needs be more then conquerers If this threefold Cord will hold conjunctive divine and new-creature power in Christ the conjunctive personally united new-creature power in Christ and Elect Angels and Saints also for their security against all worldly Powers all 's safe Vers. IX Moreover the profit of the earth is for all the king himself is served by the field The chief intendment of this litteral truth which hit upon is properly and truly right interpretation is the fruits and products of man's nature in the renew'd old earthly or first-creation state thereof the Image of the earthy The profit of this is for all And this is figured by the fruits profits and products of the litteral Earth by which King and Subjects Rulers and Ruled even all Mankind are supported and maintain'd in their bodily life The fruits of the said mystical Earth or righteous earthly Life and state afford a natural food and clothing to the immortal spirit or inner man of man in his first-creation make and fashion of being In this make and life is man to serve or obey God as the fruits thereof serve or preserve him both but for a season till called out of this man 's own earthly life make and fashion of being into God's Heavenly which with the fruits and meats thereof is everlasting The Earthly state of man or Angel before the fall in a first-covenant law-life was figuratively represented by the Tree of good and evil signifying the corruptibility thereof and the danger incident to man or Angel by their own evil choice and use of it To prevent this evil both were strictly prohibited the feeding upon terminating delighting and establishing themselvs therein with a confidence to find true blessedness there to their immortal beings The so doing then was rebellion against the command of God and turned their natures into a direct enmity to that more excellent and durable creature-life of God spiritual and heavenly a Gospel-state of everlasting righteousness and truth And the same miscarriage and abuse of all turned their earthly-state life or mystical field into a uselesness to themselvs so as to be of no true avail or profit to them but indeed a prison-state of darkness and death rendring their nature an accursed earth bringing forth nothing but Briars and Thorns Gall and Wormwood from a root of bitterness or enmity to God This brought the sinning Angels on their first sin under an absolute unchangable Curse and everlasting Burnings and man's mystical Earth or earthly life and state it brought nigh unto Cursing as bearing Thorns and Briars also and if he persist finally therein against all offered Grace and Mercy his end will be also to be burned in the same Lake of mystical Fire and Brimstone the unquenchable slames of God's wrath for evermore Heb. 6. 8. Adam's first sin left no profit in this mystical field or earth of man's nature All men since are born dead in trespasses and sins Their nature is a wast howling barren Wilderness full of ravenous devouring wild Beasts bestial thoughts foolish noisom lusts that hurt wound sink and drown them in destruction and perdition 1 Tim. 6. 9. The King or kingly superiour Angelical nature and the subject inferiour humane nature by their fall lost the right use and true profit of the mystical earthly first-creation field life or natural state Both were brought to feed on dust or the perishing vanities of this World or Worldly state having turn'd their Backs on God's never-perishing Life and Meats figured in the Tree of Life and offered to them both and all They forth-with forfeited and lost the paradisical-state of their corruptibly perfect natural in Subjection to that Light that shew'd and offer'd them God's incorruptibly perfect spiritual creature-Life State and Meats which was their first habitation or state of Innocency Fallen Angels as their greater punishment for their greater and more criminal first Sin against higher and clearer Light than man have the Dust of their not only corruptible but corrupted first-creation Field or natural State left them to feed on and are permitted to use all their Strength and advantages therein against God and his Saints But Man as a lesser punishment was instantly deprived of all both of the righteous Earthly Life of his nature and of the proper Food and cloathing thereof He is ever since born Naked Dead Helpless and Loathsome Ezek. 16. 5 6. He has nothing left but a meer bestial bodily Life and the lowest part of the Dust of this World in common with Brutes to feed upon even the gratifying contentments of bodily lust only He has nothing proper to him as a man left him to feed on But he is pardonable and recoverable into the righteous Life of a Man again by the Redeemer And when actually recovered into and set up afresh therein if he as wilfully against conviction abuse it again in sinning against and rejecting God's more excellent new-creature Gospel-Life at first represented in the Tree of Life he is gone for ever as fallen Angels at first were Yet is he left for a season after so irrecoverably and unpardonably gone to the self-confident exercise of his restor'd changable righteous first-covenant Law-Life and feeding on the meats and fruits thereof handed now to him from the Evil Angel that 's higher than he in that fading Life and Meats And so is he permitted by Christ to have more than Heart can Wish Psal. 73. 〈◊〉 therein to his dying hour yea and dye with great 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and satisfaction to by-Standers that all 's well with him And thus goes the inferiour humane Beast into the Arms of the superiour and more subtil evil-angelical Beast of the first-creation World whom he has taken to be his God Gen. 3. 1. 2 Thes. 2. 4. Man's second personal sinning after the similitude of Adam's Transgression in restor'd nature against God's Spirit of Grace and Light thereof brings him to the same point with Devils a fixure or establishment in his own changably righteous nature which is unchangable enmity to God and his everlasting righteous Gospel-spirit of Grace If men suspect the offe'rd serpents 〈◊〉 as earthly he will gild over his earthly natural excellencies with the nearest resemblance of Christ's Spiritual and heavenly and then they 'l down for right heavenly never-perishing meat 's with all but the very elect And he wants not for apostles from amongst men transform'd by him and themselvs into the likeness of Christ's the supream Wolv's in sheeps clothing to carry on his work
with a whiff 'T is deceitful above all things and desperatly wicked who can know or discover it The wisdom of God in himself and Saints this only can search it out and cause it to know it self teach it or bring it to the true 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Jer. 17. 9 10. Nothing in Nature nothing below the all-searching Gospel-Spirit in Christ and Saints can discover all its Meanders and Wiles anatomize and unriddle it to the full The holy Ghost in and by Peter found out the falshood of Ananias and Saphira and slew them Act. 5. 1 -- 10. The first-Covenant wise Jew or Christian Gentile boasts himself as a fit Teacher and Guide to the common sinner in corrupt Nature little dreaming that himself in 〈◊〉 Nature is guilty of a more criminal sort of mystical 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 against God and his Spirit of Grace Rom. 2. 17 -27. He sits in his majesterial Chair as an instructor of fools insulting over the gross sinner with a touch me not stand by keep off for I am 〈◊〉 than thou This renders the proud Pharisee an abomination to God Isa. 65. 5. To such self-confidents Paul puts divers searching questions which discover him more deeply guilty of mystical sins against the Gospel bearing the same title with the literal Adulteries Thefts Idolatries and Sacriledg he justly reproves in the common sinner against the Law The death and loss of all such boast in is absolutely necessary in the methods of God's Wisdom to Salvation the receiving that Gospel-Spirit of life in which any can be saved Miss this and miss all Come short of the Grace and ye fall short of the Glory of God never enjoy the beatisical vision thereof An exact observer of the letter of the Law may be a most criminal breaker of its spiritual mind or meaning as Paul once The Law-Saint or legal-spirited Christian Believer finds the corrupt Heathen a no-body to him and he is a no-body to the true Gospel-Saint a meer blind Ignoramus as to all-gospel-all-Gospel-truths yea worse a mortal hater of and enemy to all Gospel-Saints as no-bodies to him the worst of Men the 〈◊〉 of the World The circumcis'd cleans'd first-covenant wise Man by opposing the second becomes a greater sinner and worse Man than the uncircumcis'd polluted Heathen If he and the Heathen fix themselves in righteous and corrupt Nature the 〈◊〉 righteous Man will have the worst on 't for ever T will be easier for the literal than mystical Sodomite in Hell Mat. 11. 23 24. But what then hath the wise Man or first-Covenant holy Man more than the fool in corrupt Nature What advantage has he Much every way says Paul in answer to his own question Rom. 3. 1 2. The Law or restor'd life of it rightly us'd is of great benefit to Man in suppressing and keeping under the vile affections of corrupt Nature but if abused against spiritual conviction in a 〈◊〉 enmity to the Gospel 't is render'd by Man worse than nothing and he is thereby rendered worse than the fool or common sinner 〈◊〉 in polluted Nature For he is absolutely excluded God's Rest on his wilfully contracted incurable Leprosy or disease of unchangeable enmity to God the other not so But leaving both their cases what hath the poor that knoweth to walk before the living What has the poor broken-spirited Saint beyond both and all the the said wise and fools that are levell'd at the death of the body and come all to the same sad end a being cover'd with darkness for ever This truly poor in spirit is a blessed Heir of the Kingdom of God The natural Man of the true Saint impoverish'd and run down by the cross as to that wisdom life riches and fading glory the self-exalting first-Covenant Princes of this World keep up in rebellion against God and enmity to the cross is the poor and needy the Scripture so ring's of specially the Psalms And occasionally has this mystical poor bin plentifully spoken of and charactered in this and the like discourses on Job Timothy c. Christ pronounces such poor blessed Mat. 5. 3. the opposit rich or wise cursed Wo to the rich Luk 6. 24. Such mystical rich go merrily without regarding this wo they are under with their whole Soul or unbroken natural spirit to Hell while the true Saint in the broken crucified impoverish'd mourning state thereof is following the slain Lamb to Heaven Blessed are such mourners Mat. 5. 4. Both the wise and fool in the restor'd or corrupt spirit of nature set by and laid aside Solomon ask's in reference to this third Man distinct from both What hath or is the poor c. What has he got in the room of all the lost life wisdom and riches of his own Nature spiritual everlasting Gospel-life and riches This is the case of such as with Paul are content to become fools weak and despicable as to all the first-Covenant rich and wise boast and glory in What this mystical fool and poor has is plain durable riches and life in God What has the opposit wise then no more to speak on than the fool in polluted nature All are fools one and 'tother as to their eternal concerns mind no such things Spiritual and Heavenly These go for nothing with them but are all in all The Spirit of God asks and resolv's his own question negatively and 〈◊〉 Isa. 66. 1 2. God delights not in any thing of the first creation where all is corruptible and altogether vanity even all the life goodness and top-excellencies thereof in Man and Angel But in the second where all the goodness materials and ingredients are incorruptible and unperishable Hence delights he in one poor broken-spirited man in the first in order to his being quicken'd up into the second incomparably beyond all the unbroken glory and excellency of all natural Men or Angels though not found in enmity changeable or unchangeable to that Gospel-Spirit or cross that will break down all fading good in all Angels and Men in Love or 〈◊〉 Wrath. What God delights not in he requires our obedient submitting to his destroying in order to be brought forth in what he does delight in and will delight in for evermore So of the work of his hands by a first-creation come we to be the Sheep of his Pasture in and by a second All first-creation or Covenant-Life Wisdom Righteousness c. are but Law-Ceremonies not Grace or Gospel-Truths meer transient vanities perishing next to nothings When they have serv'd their season away they are to go as dung for Gospel-life Phil. 3. 8. The Poor here as to all Law-life and riches are the only true wise Men that know how to walk before the living even before the living God unto all-pleasing in the living Word Wisdom New-creature Gospel-Spirit of the Son of God They are taught principled or spirited so as infallibly to know the whole mind and do the whole will of the Father They have obediently quitted and
everlasting was figur'd by the Tree of life after which they were all to seek as that wherein the Kingdom and Righteousness of God is to be found Mat. 6. 33. By meer natural light in their first-creation-make could neither Angel nor Man in innocency reach the truth of this Mystery But by convincing spiritual light both had the conviction-sight of it in their higher and lower spheres The Angels higher natural capacities fitted them for stronger and clearer conviction-sight thereof which render'd their resusal to submit to the terms of receiving it absolutely unpardonable at first Man 's through mercy was not so But 't was the fault of both to lean to their own fallible understanding rather than follow and obey God's spiritual convictions and commands to them forbidding them so to do The sad consequence of such foolish choice will the fallen Angels experience to eternity And so will as many Men as fix there Man's true concern for preventing all this is to listen to that voice of true Wisdom which declares the vanity of all natural first-creation life and then also another life above and beyond that a life of everlasting Righteousness and Truth This brings with it durable riches and goodness delights of the Sons of God and so takes Man off from his wandring desires and pursuits after first-creation vanities the delights of the Sons of Men where 't is impossible for them ever to find any true rest or satisfaction All such seeking for a happiness tends to everlasting torment and vexation of spirit Solomon's concluding advice then to Man in this verse is not to contend with him that is mightier than he by keeping up his own fading life in a direct known rebellion against God's convincing discoveries of a more excellent That he call's his own and his express command for parting with that he calls our own For Hast thou an arm like God Job 40. 9. contend not with him then For who hath directed his spirit or bin his Counseller Isa. 40. 13. Shall he that contends with the Almighty instruct him he that reproves him must answer it Job 40. 2. This silenc'd Job Once have I spoken yea twice but I 'le proceed no further vers 5. Presume not then to keep up thy own forbidden life to thy known certain eternal Damnation and to refuse so great Salvation as is offer'd in God's own Wo to him that strives with his Maker Isa. 45. 9. Let the potsherds of the Earth Men in their but earthly-Jerusalem or first-Covenant spirit strive contend and dispute with one another as to this or that way of Salvation in their toss'd fluctuating understandings under the various winds and blasts of diabolical Inspirers and Suggesters on the troubled mystical Sea of their weaker humane nature while all of them equally that is wholly miss the only true path of life one and t'other But let them all take heed of striving with their Maker about the way of Salvation proudly exalting the conceptions and words of their foolish wisdom against the plainly and abundantly declar'd word's and methods of his Shall an earthy clay-Man say to God why hast thou made me thus Rom. 9. 20. whv hast thou set me up in a life I may not keep as my 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 thee and concern to my self Why did'st not give 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 creature-life thou call'st thy own at first So might I have escap'd the hearing of all the hard sayings of the Cross and the Death-blows thereof upon mine Can any Man hope to prosper in such contest and dispute with his Maker Nay but O Man who 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that thus repliest 〈◊〉 God Job presently on such 〈◊〉 did silence his own quarrelling spirit that darkn'd the counsels of God's Wisdom with the ignorant words of his own Job 42. 3. What a noise have we heard among toss'd humane earthy understandings pro and con and the same Men off and on therein about Free-will Water-Baptism with many other besides the cinque-points in the 〈◊〉 ' 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 new Arminian Controversy while all are in a tumult against God's Free-will in his new-creation life and against his Fire-Baptism on their free-will or cleans'd natural state In what unutterable confusion are mortals tugging and sweating against their own Salvation and for their everlasting destruction A deep silence and inadvertency we sind amongst them as to the true life and glorious liberty of the Sons of God in all their Skirmishings and Polemical quarrelling Divinities so call'd They are one and all without controversie for the same righteous first-creation life freewill and delights of the Sons of Men call all by what disguising Names they will and as one Man against the spiritual life glorious liberty and delights of the Sons of God They all unanimously with a full mouth set themselves to hunt and run down the only Gospel-Divinity and Doctrine of true Salvation the very Christ the very Gospel as the most dangerous destructive Doctrine in the whole World To a seed of unawakn'd spiritual Saints engag'd for a season thro' ignorance as Paul once among these wicked Confederate's Devils and Men is it said Say ye not a confederacy in a resolv'd union with them that are fix'd in this Confederacy against God to their eternal ruine Isa. 8. 12. Fix not your foot with them in this desperate quarrel against God As for others they will on in the proud waves of their own understandings under the inspirations and doctrines of Devils swelling up in their words of vanity to the highest pich of presumption against Christ all Gospel-Saints and Truths So will they hasten the wrath of God upon their own guilty Heads The corner-stone of that rocky new-creation building they reject will fall on them at last and grind them to powder dash them all to shivers as a potters vessel On these accounts Solomon continues his advice to Men saying Vers. 11. Seeing there be many things that encrease vanity what is Man the better These many things that with Martha Man cumbers himself about are all variety of things relating to his outward or inner Man in his natural state which he covet's greedily seeks after and feed's upon The whole round of this vast heap of vanities Men march up and down amongst to get Satan walks up and down in to give them as he sees occasion to carry on his interest among them All this is his circuit sphere walk and permitted dominion as God and Prince of this World Job 1. 7. Luk. 4. 6. Joh. 12. 31. He is the master-Prince of all such Mystical humane first-covenant Princes of this World as crucified Christ 1 Cor. 2. 8. for his Doctrine of the World to come as treason against the peace of their joynt worldly dominion and tyranical domineering over and against the Saints of the most high A fix'd self-confident righteous first-Covenant People will unanimously vote true Saints to death as they serv'd Christ himself rather than robbers and murderers By such did the Prince of darkness and death carry
noise made in the Wisdom thereof is but an uncertain sound of a tinkling Cymbal 1 〈◊〉 13. 1. 14. 8. It gives no aim at the right way toward Salvation or at the right armour to undertake Satan in Yea no greater or siercer Enemies blustring contradicting Blasphemers of the very 〈◊〉 of Salvation and right Armour for the Lord's battels then these 〈◊〉 Sirens first-covenant Singsters Such literal-wise mysticalfools will meet with a total disappointment of all their 〈◊〉 for ever Vers. 7. Surely oppression maketh a wise Man mad and a gift destroyeth the heart In letter the unreasonable Injustice and Oppression practis'd 〈◊〉 the corrupt spirit of nature in all worldly Governments may 〈◊〉 here meant The root and cause of all is an evil false self-interest by which Men in Government and Judicature are mercenarily seeking advantages to themselves in the outward riches and honours of 〈◊〉 World This is implyed in saying a gift destroyeth the heart 〈◊〉 Joel and Abiah Samuel's Sons turn'd aside 〈◊〉 lucre 〈◊〉 gain took bribes and perverted Judgment turn'd their bench 〈◊〉 Justice into a seat of Iniquity whence wrong Judgment proceeded This gave occasion to Israel's asking a King under which 〈◊〉 they found themselves much worse and that without remedy 〈◊〉 could not shake off that new and grievous yoke God would 〈◊〉 hear own or help them therein as he had threat'ned and forewarn'd them His Spirit in Samuel rul'd over them which was a Theocracy So God was rejected Sin their choice of a King like the Heathens round about them 1 am 8. They have rejected me that I should not reign over them says God Yet gave he them their national evil choice in his anger after he had said I will be thy King and told them they had destroy'd themselves by their own foolish choice but in him was their help Hos. 13. 9 -- 11. So gives he particular persons their foolish choice to be reigning as Kings mystical in the restor'd first-covenant 〈◊〉 of nature in preference to his Spirit of Grace the principle of life and action in the second a Theocracy where God would undertake to rule over and work all their works of obedience to himself in them and for them Such an evil self-chosen kingly Power he gives them in anger as a Judgment and will take it away in final wrath as he did 〈◊〉 For preventing or at least allaying the cammon evil and general calamity under the oppressive outward Governments of this World God gives Laws and enables wise Men in moral Heathenism or but legal-Christianity by the knowledg of Christ only after the flesh to make Laws prohibiting all in places of government or judicature to take gifts The reason alledg'd for this Exod. 23. 8. is because a gift blinds the Eyes of the Wise Heb. Seeing and perverts the words of the righteous So they pass sentence contrary to their own discerning Light Thought and Conscience This brings unreasonable oppression upon the innocent A foundation is laid and occasion given to this oppression in selling places of Judicature Whoever buy such places are under a temptation on that very account to sell Justice that they may reimburse themselves as to their own bribe for the place by taking bribes of others in it In the counsel of Jethro to his Son in law Moses approved by God we find the right qualifications for Men in such places that they be able Men fearing God Men of truth 〈◊〉 covetousness Exod. 18. 2. They were to be wise understanding Men such as should not respect persons in judgment nor fear the face of Man but hear and do justice to the small as well as great Deut. 1. 13 -17. Thus did Job I put on righteousness deliver'd the poor and fatherless that had none to help them I caus'd the Widows heart to sing for joy I search'd out the cause to the bottom brake the jaws of the wicked and pluck'd the spoil out of his teeth Job 29. 12 -17. Did I fear a great multitude or did the contempt of Families terrifie me so as to hinder my doing Justice to the poor needy and helpless Job 31. 34. So of the literal now to the mystical meaning of these Words A deeper and sorer evil among Men because a greater sin against God then the former is here pointed at as the principal intendment The truly wise Man is the spiritual Saint By the oppression of him are signified the additional ingredients and aggravating circumstances of bitterness by Satan's wiles put into the cup of suffrings given his natural Man to drink In the weakness and barrenness thereof under the demolishing work of the cross causing an hour and power of darkness all the former flourish and fruitfulness joy and feasting thereof in the first-covenant is turn'd into comes the roaring Lion the Prince of darkness to oppress devour and sink him quite Till brought to the test under the cross he accuses him to God be he never so faithful to his first-covenant Light that all his obedience is but mercenary from a self-interest wherein gratified to the utmost and not at all from any regard or love to God Put forth thy hand and touch all he has and he will curse thee to thy face says he of Job to God Let me be thy hand or employ'd instrument herein and see where Job will be then All he has is in thy hand or power says God Job 1. 9 12. When this dispensation of the cross and trial of Job thereby was begun Satan wind 's about and employs his Serpentine craft and malice against both God and Job another way He endeavours to bring Job to espouse his quarrel against God as dealing most injuriously with him He represents to Job the cross-blows on his righteous natural man body and spirit which himself was the permitted hand and commission'd manager of upon him as a most unreasonable oppression And by thus casting all the seeming oppressing-work upon God does he hide his own real oppression wicked counsel and suggestions from Job's natural Man now brought into darkness and not knowing what matters would come to what God would do with him or what would become of him Till new spiritual day-light was caused to spring up in him he could not interpret the riddle of the cross how this devourer of a fading life goodness clothing belly and meats should be the very means of giving all again with usury in a more excellent life and way Samson's riddle was the type of this Out of the eater came meat and out of the strong sweetness Judg. 14. 14. hony out of the Lion by him kill'd ver 6. 18. Samson as a type of the Priestly Spirit of Christ in its crucifying sacrificing-work upon nature rent that Lion as a Kid which was a usual sacrifice to God under the Law The natural Man of the Saint while in the dark under the cross is ready to strike in with Satan against God The Devil stirr'd up Job's three Friends
Christ's new and heavenly his natural for Christ's spiritual creature-life and possessions A conclusive refusal to part with all we have is a final parting-blow between God and Man Paul found Corinthian Professors bewitch'd Galatians and belly-God Philippians dangerously engag'd towards a sixure in this most presumptuous Sin and Error 1 Cor. 4. 8. 2 Cor. 11. 2 3. Gal. 3. 1 -4. Phil. 3. 18 19. And Christ found a first-Covenant party in enmity to the second in most or all the seven Churches Rev. 2. 3. In Laodicea scarce any other and all this under the outward dispensation and ministry of the Gospel owning themselves as Gospel-Professors And what or who else in a manner at this day can we find but such anti-Gospel-Gospellers in all variety of opinion form and way All the highly pretending and conceited Children of the Kingdom in the most sublimated Church-forms or purest Churches in but restor'd first-covenant Law-principles without advance by exchange and Gospel-conversion will be found at a loss and cast or kept out of the Kingdom of Christ as not at all of his new-Covenant Gospel-spirit of Grace and Truth 'T is in the heavenly Wisdom of this only Men can attain the sight and inheritance of the most glorious divine Sun and of the new-creation Sun of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Mal. 4. 2. in the Mediator's person which is the greatest gain the highest prosit and advantage Man or Angel can receive or enjoy to all eternity This 〈◊〉 proves ver 12. Vers. 12. For Wisdom is a defence Heb. shadow and mony is a desence but the excellency of knowledg is that Wisdom giveth life to them that have it Here 's a distinguishing character of the first and second covenant spirits Lives Wisdoms with or by the effects riches and priviledges of each The Wisdom and mystical mony or riches of the first are a defence against the rude assaults the unruly brutish motions of the corrupt state of nature and do make up to Man all he thinks he needs for eternal life 1 Cor. 4. 8. Rev. 3. 17. But through the fading nature of all that life and riches and evil use of it in preference and opposition to the durable life and true riches in the Gospel-spirit of God all 's spoil'd Man's inordinate love to the former is that love of mony that 's the root of all evil against God and to himself evil of sin and punishment It renders all the mammon of unrighteousness as preferr'd to the 〈◊〉 riches of Christ in his infinite divine and everlasting righteous new-creation Life First-creation Life with the riches thereof is to be allow'd its due as good in its kind and lawful use for suppressing the unruly desires thoughts and motions of the corrupt state of Nature Man so using it is faithful to the Light afforded him by Christ in the first Covenant as a fleshly Bridegroom But then farther is he to follow this Bridegroom in the death and loss of all this fading life and riches Wisdom and Mony for what in spiritual conviction-Light is shew'd and offer'd him by Christ as a better Bridegroom and Comforter in the second This second and principal thing done as the passive part of obedience requir'd in the right and lawful use of all in the first Covenant law-state God is well-pleased and Man saved But be Man never so faithful in the active obedience performable in his law-life if he refuse to perform or yield to the requir'd passive obedience all his active turns in conclusion to no account at all Himself is turn'd out of God's house for ever as but that servant in his own law-spirit of bondage that refus'd to become a Son of God in his Gospel-spirit of glorious liberty that makes free indeed Jo. 8. 35 36. The truth the Gospel-spirit of Truth makes Man truly free ver 32. Where or in whomsoever that Spirit is is liberty 2 Cor. 3. 17. The Gospel-law of the Spirit of life is the perfect law of liberty It renders Man free not to but from all sin and death at last Rom. 8. 2. Jam. 1. 25. Man's spirit of bondage chosen before and against God's spirit of true freedom becom's a house a prison a state of eternal death to him If Man use his law-life aright as to the first end for which restor'd and miss the appointed and declared second all comes to worse then nothing for ever He misses that true Wisdom that gives and is eternal life to them that have it This the Law-life and best Wisdom of Man can never give or be to him Gal. 3. 21. Vers. 13. Consider the work of God for who can make that straight which he hath made crooked Consider well the life and state of Men and Angels as the first-creation Workmanship of God's hand and you 'l find it crooked first comparatively To the second make of them by his new-creating Workmanship all the fading goodness Life Wisdom Glory and Righteousness of the first are as nothing no Glory 2 Cor. 3. 10. If the Glory and other things of Man in the first be not only presumptuously compared with but preferr'd and exalted into a jusling competition with and opposition to the Life Glory Wisdom Righteousness Works Fruits and things of God offer'd them by a new and second Creation this renders all such things worse then nothing Yea if this be finally wilfully and conclusively done the Glory Wisdom Light Life Righteousness all things of Man are turn'd into unspeakable shame utmost folly and highest wickedness to which belong utter Darkness and eternal Death The corruptible seed 1 Pet. 1. 23. of God's left-hand planting in Man's or Angel's natural first-creation-make and state at its utmost growth flourish and fruitfulness amounts but to a fading flower Man in all at best is altogether Vanity This fleshly state of Life was figur'd by the tree of good and evil before the fall Since the fall 't is always evil root and branch tree and fruit silth of 〈◊〉 or spirit are found in all its operations fruits products or performances root and branch When Paul was eminent in the restor'd righteous law-life of Man how fiercely did he persecute the Gospel or new-Creature life of Christ in himself and Saints That was filth of Spirit enmity and despite to the very Gospel spirit of Grace in which any can be saved 't was a sinning against the holy Ghost but ignorantly When done knowingly and so wilfully t is the presumptuous unpardonable Sin unto Death God made Man upright set up in him a first-Covenant-life perfect in its kind but fallible corruptible changeable loseable as all mankind have sadly experienc'd by the first error of humane nature at best in the first Man Now what is corruptible God calls corruption The natural seed of a first-Covenant life cast into Man in his natural first-creation make and fashion of being was sown in corruption dishonour weakness By the obedient death of Man therein 't is rais'd in Incorruption Glory Power a spiritual
〈◊〉 bad his highest all the Kingdoms of this World and Glory of them all first-creation excellencies humane and angelical and that as transform'd into the gilded likeness of the second to purchase the life of Truth out of Christ's own hands How Christ handled him we find Mat. 4. Luk. 4. But he prevails with a World of professors that have put their hand to the Gospel-Plough as brought by Gospel conviction-Light to see their concern in running down Nature at best to look back Luk. 9. 62. to his first-creation offers withdraw their hands from and turn their backs upon Christ and his Kingdom-Spirit with the bewitch'd Galatians Gal. 3. 1 3. 5. 7 8. which alone could secure them from the destruction the over-much righteous or wicked come to That dungy-life Paul quitted which many hold fast unto damnation are we to withdraw our hand from and let go our hold of in order to lay hold on that unchangeably good thing that is eternal Salvation Those that having begun in the Gospel-spirit withdraw their hand from that Gospel-plough or cross upon their cleans'd enlightn'd natural Spirit and return to the love of and self-deceiving 〈◊〉 in their holy flesh or righteous Law-life of their restor'd Nature are in a dangerous way towards final Apostacy and Damnation Paul found the bewitch'd Galatians not so absolutely gone as to 〈◊〉 no room for his Gospel-endeavours and intercessions towards their recovery Gal. 4. 19. But many 〈◊〉 Gospel-convictions owning and following Gospel-Truths for a 〈◊〉 play false and turn final Apostates sell Christ's Gospel-spirit for their holy 〈◊〉 take off their hand and let go their hold 〈◊〉 Christ's Spirit of Truth for Satan's Spirit of lies on his engaging to advance them in their own nature will and way after their own heart Such oft become his most pregnant eminently accomplish'd Instruments to oppose those very Gospel-Truths that for a season they profess'd and own'd They knowingly part with or sell Christ his Gospel Spirit of Truth and his great Salvation therein offer'd them for themselves or their holy flesh restor'd Nature the Devil and Damnation They part with Christ's great Spiritual Gospel-Pearl for their lesser natural after they had agreed to and vow'd the parting with all for that one thing necessary They 'l not stand to their new-covenant bargain not go through as to the cost for a new building the utter demolition of their old They 'l not part with all their old things for Christ's new They like them not so well So hold fast what they have and lose all whereas they that obediently lose all they have find all again with usury in what the others refuse Mat. 16. 25. After all fair warning of this thus they do What help To begin in the Spirit and finally apostatize to a false confidence for Salvation in the flesh fits Men for the hottest Hell the greatest portion of Wrath for evermore This exposes such bidders at the new-building to everlasting derision and contempt Luk. 14. 28 30. When Men have yielded a little to cross-work suffer'd something of the old building to be pull'd down Gal. 3. 4. Stood the shock of some reproach from scorners for it and then are offer'd by Satan not only to be repair'd and made whole again as ever but also to have their old natural first-creation building rais'd higher and made larger and wider by the super-additions of superiour angelical excellencies and brightnesses of the same first-creation sort with their humane they are willing to take this for the right new-building for the Kingdom of God the true Gospel-state When Satan has them at this lock in this snare he lays his confirming paws upon them fixing them in unchangeable enmity to the very Gospel-Life and Spirit in which any can be saved or ever could They are then fully engaged in the sin against the holy Ghost or Gospel-Spirit of Truth beyond retreat leaving no place for repentance Heb. 6. 4 -- 6. 10. 26 27. This get all such Esau's by greedily catching at Satan's first-creation morsel in preference to Christ's offer'd new-creation birth-right Heb. 12. 16 17. They let go Christ's new-creation all things for Satan's glittering gilded first-creation nothings perishing vanities Christ's heavenly for his earthly things dust the old Serpent's diet Gen. 3. 14. This trade many thousands have driven and do drive in this World to their eternal ruine in the next There 's no helping them that will not be help'd Finally to refuse the things of God for the things of Man and Devil deliberately on a fair view of both is unpardonable folly They see how matters go on all hands see what they refuse and for what so their sin remains upon them for ever as Christ told the Pharisees Joh. 9. 40 41. They that refuse to part with their earthly life as dung Phil. 3. 8. for Christ's heavenly will perish as their own dung for ever Job 20. 7. All fading first-creation Vanities are dung to Chrst's heavenly spiritual things things of God offer'd by a new-Creation The best services in their own life on this fatal miscarriage will he spread as dung upon their faces Mal. 2. 3. To withdraw their hand from Christ's offers to comply with and accept Satan's is a drawing back to perdition Heb. 10. 39. This Solomon warns against farther declaring he that fears God shall come forth of them all shall escape out of all sin all evil company and ways every evil path that mystical Sodomites are in ver 16. or literal ver 17. He shall be delivered from the presumptuous unpardonable sin of both and all a sixture in their differing evil ways of death and be finally deliver'd and acquitted as to all his other sins on the death of the guilty sinner the evil-doer in him He shall surmount all sins and sinners come out of all literal or mystical Sodomies and Sodomites in corrupt or righteous Nature and so partake of none of their plagues under final Wrath Rev. 18. 4. 2 Cor. 6. 17. The Saint is highly concern'd to watch and fight against the Belial-party in him flesh or nature corrupt or righteous with the affections and lusts that war against his own Soul Gal. 5. 24. 1 Pet. 2. 11. What Satan backs and 〈◊〉 to gratify support and cherish in Saints are they constantly to fight against oppose cross impoverish and run down to death If they not only live but walk in Christ's Gospel Spirit wherein he will judg the World and they with him thus will they do They 'l judg the World within them their worldly natural Spirit now pass sentence of death upon it in harmony of their spiritual mind with Christ and as workers with him joyn in the speedy carrying on the 〈◊〉 of it lest Satan set or fix their heart in them to do evil Eccl. 8. 11. in unchangeable union with him All that by Christ's Spirit in them mortify the lusts and deeds of their body or natural state will live for ever with
the true Shepherd the said strange Woman fill's her mouth with the most inticing perswasive words of her serpentine wisdom to furnish them for the serving all her mischievous designs upon themselves and others The words of Man's and Satan's wisdom's joyntly hand forth another pretended Gospel in flat opposition to every word of Christ's clothing all their falshoods with the misapplied letter of his words of truth This Woman's words are smoother than Butter softer then Oil but are drawn Swords wounding Men to eternal death Psal. 55. 21. Many strong Men Wise Strong and honourable in Christ by first-Covenant attainments have bin So slain by her Prov. 7. 26. The palate and temper of humane Nature in general is what Ahab discover'd in hating the one true Prophet Micaiah that counsell'd him contrary to his own will for his good and rewarding the four hundred false ones that gratified his will to his own destruction 1 Kin. 22. The language or thought of all natural hearts God declar's to be this Prophesie not unto us right things speak unto us smooth things prophesie deceits Isa. 30. 10. and Satan finds false Prophets enow in a readiness to gratify them so as to keep true Seers out of all hearing or regard all whose words lie cross to the will palat and desire of humane nature corrupt or righteous in all mankind They preach the Cross and death to it in all as necessary to the Salvation of any This Satan represents as the greatest loss and prejudice imaginable to them indeed their utter ruine He advises them to hold fast their own decrying the pretended advantages of suffering and dying even a living and reigning with Christ as meer delusive fictions All men in their natural principles corrupt or righteous stand ready for receiving Satan's doctrin the doctrine of Devils pleasing to Nature in all variety of condition it can be found in No man in that worldly nature and spirit receives Christ's Gospel-Testimony Joh. 3. 22. 14. 17. This must needs make a vast difference between the numberless flockers after Satan's Gospel and the few or next to no listners after Christ's When Satan has lock'd up men in a double prison the will of their own fixed spirit of bondage and his will upon that in this firm union of these self-embondaging spirits and wills are they invincibly hardned against all the words of God's Wisdom And then the whole counsel of the Devil in his Mystery of Iniquity passes currant with them for the whole Counsel of God in his mystery of Godliness Solomon Paul and other awaken'd spiritual Saints can find out all these depths wiles devices snares and nets of this Woman that they see their fellow mortals even the professing party so generally involv'd entangled and caught in This Woman is more bitter than death her heart being full of snares and nets So subtilly contriv'd and methodiz'd as most certainly to catch all that refuse and so are destitute of the new-creation wisdom of God which alone can enable to number and find out the name and nature of this first-creation Beast Rev. 13. 18 with all her natural perfections disguis'd and gilded over by her whorish paint and transforming skil with counterfeit resemblances of spiritual in order to give the utmost shock of opposition to what is so For this end does she vent her Gospel-lies in hypocrisy or feigned resemblances of Christ's Gospel-Truths 1 Tim. 4. 1 2. Thus accoutred and furnish'd with gilded painted snares and nets from the date of her first sin and fall is she the Captain-General of all her hosts of evil Angels and Men fix'd with her in a spirit of unchangeable darkness and falshood against God and his new-creature-spirit of marvellous Light and infallible Truth Under her powerful witchcrafts and alluring charm's fell Man at best And what can he do that comes after the King Adam in the unstain'd purity of all natural perfections and excellencies of humane nature Remember this first battel in which all mankind with the first fell dead at the Serpent's feet dead in trespasses and sins and do so no more Job 41. 8. Never think of undertaking him with success in but the gradually restor'd Righteous Life Wisdom and Armour of Man In the most restor'd righteous natural Man is now found actual enmity to God but changeable pardonable curable by the cross not otherwise If Satan render this unchangeable and unpardonable his work is finish'd Christ comes with Fire and Sword speaks War and Death to Nature at best Satan with flattering kisses and pleasing Words Who is like to be best liked by Man The wounds of the true Friend and Saviour submitted to will be Salvation The kisses and smooth words of the enemy complied with Damnation Prov. 27. 6. Satan finds in man a natural inclination to resist the Cross as his enemy and he leaves no meanes unattempted conducible to the fixing him in such resistance Then is he his own true subject in his kingdom of darkness and God swears in wrath he shall never enter into his Kingdom of Light This Woman will not fail to lay her snares and nets before Saints every step they are making under the cross towards the Kingdom of God while any thing of his natural friend in them is yet about them He was at it with Christ himself again and again while he had any thing of our pure fleshly Nature and changeable life of the Law in him Mat. 4. 16. 22 23. Luk. 4. Man establish'd in his own Righteousness thinks all safe for Salvation when fast lodg'd in the very arms of this grand mystical Adulteress the Devil irrecoverably wrap'd and bound up in the bundle of death caught and held fast in her nets and snares while pleasing himself with hopeful thoughts that his soul is bound up in the bundle of life with the Lord as David's 1 Sam. 25. 29. The perswasive words of Man's and Satan's wisdom are exactly calculated to gratify the desires of humane Nature in order to fix men in enmity to the unpleasing doctrine of the cross upon it and so perfectly deafen them to the voice of the true Shepherd all the words of God's Wisdom in himself and Saints to all spiritual charmers charm they never so wisely Psal. 58. 4 5. Man by willingly giving himself up in obedience to and compliance with Satan's known lie against God's known truth Heb. 10. 26. is abhorred of the Lord and given up by him to such strong delusion as holds him fast in the snares of this bottomless pit the very spirit of the Devil that he be damn'd with him 2 Thes. 2. 10 -12. When men are thus caught in the Snares of this Woman her hands are as bands upon them powerful cords and chains they can never break or get loose from never get out of this deep Dungeon and bottomless pit into which they have plung'd themselves Who so pleaseth or is good before God shall escape her but the Sinner shall be taken
as this Gospel new-creature Spirit or Holy Ghost Act. 19. 2. Men clap all the titles of Christ's one thing on the back of their one thing that 's a spirit of darkness enmity and death Their but renewed spirit of Nature must needs amount to a state of Grace Regeneration New Creature Heir of the Kingdom of God What then must the very Christ the very Spirit of Grace and Truth be a Blasphemer a Devil Thus did the children of the Devil first-covenant Professors baptiz'd into his spirit of unchangeable enmity to God call the Holy Ghost or Gospel-spirit in Christ himself with all its Words Joh. 1. 11. 8. 44. 10. 20. and Mat. 12. 24 32. This subtil Serpentine trade won't do man's work when God is Judg himself Psal. 50. 6. He will call every thing by its right name Man's Wisdom in Divinity calls every thing by a wrong name all his natural God's spiritual things And what name title or character then God's things must have with him is easie to guess If natural Man or Angel will needs be as Gods in the proudly and presumptuously assum'd soveraignty and uncontroll'd exercise of their own Wills they 'l certainly judg and call the true Spiritual Man a Fool that quits all this as dung with Paul which they ruffle in Hos. 9. 7. 8. 1 Cor. 4. 10. No remedy for this in Man's day or Judgment In God's there will True Saints ought in Faith and Patience to possess their Souls quietly waiting for the decision of all Zion-controversies at Christ's second appearing to their Joy and to the Confusion of all their self-confident proud boasting enemies Isa. 66. 5. Your first-Covenant Brethren that hate you sit and speak against you Psal. 50. 20. Ezek. 33. 30. and cast you out excommunicate you as Blasphemers but I 'le appear says God to your Joy and then they shall be asham'd I 'le excommunicate them out of my Church and lay them under the Anathema Maranatha for ever under my everlasting Curse and Wrath. Let the naturalist then or first-Covenant Brother for a season wear the title of the second and allow him nothing but Blasphemer and Mad-man consider the great Lord and Master Did not he quietly endure the Contradictions and Reproaches of such Righteous first-Covenant Sinners against the second in his own day and turn on Earth among the only professing People in the World All will out at last after all scrambling confounded doings in this dark World and Kingdom of Satan All shame will be laid at the right door and God and his true Saints be glorified All in good time God's time is best Mean while the one uniform truth of God most harmoniously represented all along the Scriptures of Truth in great variety of Similitude Language and Type is in a manner universally rejected even by Professours and their one sandy-foundation'd thing by a lying Spirit of Divination set up in the room thereof which in the highest sence is the abomination that makes desolate Mat. 24. 15. and herein boast they themselves as to that great variety of the many Inventions they stand here charg'd with as their own self-destroying folly and madness The true spiritual Church own only one God and Father of all one Lord one Faith one fire-Baptism one Spiritual Circumcision setting fire upon and cutting off all fleshly life holy and profane in Pharisee and Publican The Church on the sand has many Gods many Lords of their Faith which are many Devils many Men in their differing and various teachings or doctrines all which in the same lying spirit of Divination do tend directly to the Destruction of themselves and hearers Such false Christs and Apostles evil Angels and Men will in these latter times more then ever pass unquestionably for the true as coming in the guise language dress and appearance thereof Has not the true Christ and his great Apostle foretold all this Mat. 24. 5. ver 23 25. 2 Cor. 11. 13 15. In such disguise they 'd deceive if possible the very Elect. The Worldly Church on the Sand boasts of such variety of Invention as amounts to but a glorying in their own shame Such poetical Creation-Preachers are always liars Tit. 1. 12. Under all pretence to Gospel are they the flattest enemies to it They come with methodiz'd discourse in the contrivances and Words of their own Wisdom Doctrine Reasons Uses Motives order'd and placed rank and file in Battel-array with the Armour of Man upon them to fight the Devils Battel against all Spiritual Saints and Gospel-Truths These are your Gospel-Merchants that corrupt or deal deceitfully with the word of God 2 Cor. 2. 17. destroying Souls for dishonest gain Ezek. 22. 27. They labour to make the truly Righteous sad by their reproachful censures and strengthen the wicked in their hidden mystical uncleanesses and abominable Idolatrys Ezek. 13. 22. They interpret Scripture into anti-Gospel-Doctrine and then invent reasons for it uses of it motives and arguments to follow and obey it all to encourage people in their Self-chosen way to the Chambers of death the congregation of the dead or assembly of Giants the Gigantick sighters against God Prov. 21. 16. Gen. 6. 4 5. All their Preaching Reasons and Uses as pretending to shew and lead men into the true Gospel-way of Salvation runs in a strein of direct enmity to all the spiritual reasonings and words of Christ's Gospel-spirit and so to the whole Counsel of God Paul declar'd Act. 20. 27. The right opening the Scriptur's is an opening the Kingdom of God This does the true publick one Gospel-spirit of Christ in himself and Saints The private natural womanish changeable spirit of man shuts out all spiritual Kingdom-Truths and in union with Satan open's his kingdom or bottomless pit of deceits and preaches up that first-creation state he has chosen as the only true Salvation When thus resolutely engag'd they disswade all people and frighten them what they can from touching or coming near such doctrin as indeed opens the Kingdom of Heaven as the arrantest Heresy and Blasphemy in the World This is the old Pharisaical trade of hypocritical Sinners in Zion Mat. 23. 13. But true interpretation of Scripture in that Spirit and Wisdom none are able to bear up against Act. 6. 10. will speak for it self in the hearts and consciences of the hearers and be a savour of life or death to the obedient receivers or wilful rejecters thereof The Cryptick Methods and Arts of man's mercenary wisdom are calculated to deceive All their Elocution Mymical gestures and affected tones look this way These humane Artifices are not to be used in uttering the words of God's Wisdom but cleer powerful spiritual demonstration 1 Cor. 2. 4. This was the way of Christ and his inspir'd Pen-Men or Teachers in the words of his Wisdom whether speaking to a multitude or only in answer to particular inquiries Convincing evidence and demonstration in the Wisdom and Power of the Holy 〈◊〉 were they
alway's for An open 〈◊〉 to the 〈◊〉 voice and too general reception of the methodiz'd words of man's wisdom as orthodox-Gospel does wonderfully disframe Peoples minds and prejudice them as to a right listning to one right Gospel-word of God's If the true Gospel-Preacher gratisie not their prurient or itching ears their vain wanton understandings or fancies with the humane methods they have bin all along accustom'd to and habituated in from enmity to and dislike of the matter they 'l pretend that occasion to fly off from any farther hearing it The numberless things of the Gospel one thing 〈◊〉 the Pearl of great price the unspeakable gift the Thoughts Affections Words Works Births Fruits and products thereof will be sound to out-number as well as transcendently to exceed in dignity all man's first-creation no-things shadows things that are not Things 〈◊〉 have their numerous varieties as well as excellencies above all first-creation perishing vanities The New-creature Gospel-spirit brings with it into man the New-creature Life Wisdom and 〈◊〉 of God that is that creature-life that being in Christ personally united with the Divine and in Saints in unchangeable harmony with the Divine is call'd the Life of God and they that have it are said to be born of God and partake of the Divine Nature 2 Pet. 1. 4. All things are theirs and they are Christ's and Christ is God's 1 Cor. 3. 22 23. God or the infinite Divine Nature is their inheritance by way of object to their sight and enjoyment not an ingredient into their persons as in Christ's That 's his super-eminent Prerogative But Saints are Co-heirs with him of God Rom. 8. 17. as to the vision of and feeding on the Divine Glory to eternity The great design of the whole Scripture is to bring Men into the view love and enjoyment of things eternal 2 Cor. 4. 18. all which are comprehended in the explain'd one thing necessary The vast number of things eternal in the one eternal Creature-spirit of Christ Heb. 9. 14. are handed to us in great variety of Expression Types Figures Parables Similitudes with most significant Instructions about the one thing or spirit that comprehends them all as the natural spirit in Man and Angel comprehends all their natural things first-Creation Shadows perishing Vanities Those that come to any right frame of mind towards God's Gospel-things will quit and rid themselves of all those Prejudices and false Conceptions they have bin cramm'd with and built up in by worldly-Church-custom's and freely expose their darling nature to be touch'd and hit between the joynts of the Harness or Armour of Man by the sharp doctrine and discipline of the Gospel-sword and Cross of Christ. Man at best in his own Strength Wisdom and Armour stands ready to resist and fight against God not the Devil Whose side was Paul engag'd on when according to Law blamless Every right interpretation of Scripture will be at this work with us even the darting in mortifying Truths upon Nature's heart shooting in the sharp Arrows of the Lord into the hearts of the King's Enemies even in Saints the foes of their own house their own very Spirit and that at best with all the mystical Children Works Fruits or Products thereof as altogether Vanity and sinful All the desires thoughts and reasonings our own spirit the foe of our own house people's our Souls with against God and his only way of saving us are a numerous throng of Enemies Fighters and Warriers against God and the true interest or eternal concerns of our own Souls These are all struck at at every turn by every right Gospel-word or doctrine of the Cross. If we come with but itching Ears to gratify our curiosity by hearing a few Gospel-words of God's Wisdom as a novelty among the various Words or Doctrines of Mans for our understandings to trade in to furnish notional Discourse only and so to pride our selves in over-topping others understandings we shall find our selves sorely mistaken in the case Such a design may seem a-kin to Ptolomee's curiosity in procuring the Greek translation of the old Testament by 72 Jews 6 of each of the twelve Tribes call'd thence numero rotundo the Septuagint to furnish his new-erected Egyptian library amongst the learn'd writings of the wise Greeks and others from others parts God's Word is another-gets thing and has far other-gets matters to do with Men then to furnish a little overly Discourse Where rightly interpreted in the Words of his Wisdom or of that spirit which inspired the holy Pen-men thereof 't will be a Savour of Life or Death to the hearers 2 Cor. 2. 15 16. 'T is as a sire in and upon Men's spirits Luk. 24. 32. A hammer that breaks the Rock in pieces Jer 23. 29. 'T will prosper in the thing whereto he sends it accomplish that which he pleases Isa. 55. 11. Life or Death in and to the respective heedful or regardless hearers thereof 'T is dangerous dallying with such sharp two-edg'd tools Do we stand trifling and lie at catch with the Pharisees to see what Gospel-doctrine will be at Where it will pitch Alas alas Every Word of it rightly heard and consider'd makes a home-thrust at Nature's heart howe're it slips o're Men's inadvertent heads while they confusedly wait for they know not what hoping to hear some change of voice in favour to poor Nature's head and that the Righteous Life of the earthly Jerusalem State thereof need not be surrendred to the Gospel-sword and Cross. A like vain thought to that of King Zedekiah when he sent privately for Jeremy out of a Dungeon to speak with him Is there any Word from the Lord Says he to him There is says Jeremy and this is it Thou shall be deliver'd into the hand of the King of Babylon Jer. 37. 17. How Nebuchadnezzar handled him see Jer. 52. 8 11. The Word of God is a steddy constant Word not off and on no yea and nay with it all 's yea and amen 2 Cor. 1. 17 20. Or absolute infallible Truth The mercenary preachers of Satans accursed other Gospel in great variety of opinion and way flourish in worldly dignities and recompences for their pretended skil in spiritual affairs the whole world running after them 1 Joh. 4. 5. Rev. 13. 3. Amidst this self-exalted crew of mercenary Babylonians with their many inventions if the true spiritual Gospel-Declarer can but scape blows he will think himself tolerably treated He comes with a Doctrine that strikes at the very root and foundation of all their humane self-interests the very principle of all their Life Desire Thought and Action at best CHAP. VIII V. 1. Who is as the wise Man and who knoweth the interpretation of a thing Heb. word A man's wisdom maketh his face to shine and the boldness Heb. strength of his face shall be changed HEre are too questions the latter implying an answer to the former and then a declaration of the valuable priviledges of the truly wise man The
of life and operation in his whole person This when the Death of Nature and Life of Grace are compleated will be found the true Saints case How else should men out of polluted Nature come to be spotless before the Throne of God and chast Virgins to Christ The wise Man duly considering these things and discerning time and judgment rightly uses and obey's every of God's Gists and Dispensations to him in their orderly succession one after another first a restoring the changeable righteous Law-life of Nature and then calling it back again by a holy Death in exchange for a Gospel-life of everlasting Righteousness in his Spirit of Grace When this transcendently better life is convincingly shew'd and offer'd man's chusing his former in preference thereunto tho' good in its kind season and right use turns it into unchangeable evil and renders him guilty of unpardonable folly If Man wilfully sight against the known will of God in any of his Dispensations to him and finally persist therein his misery will be great upon him as Solomon further argues Vers. 6. Because to every purpose there is time and judgment therefore the misery of man is great upon him There 's an appointed time and judgment to all natural things which therefore are not to be rested in Enlightned Heathens and first-Covenant Jews or Christians reckon their various natural attainments an undoubted and impregnable security for their happiness that none can deprive them of But all visible and invisible outward or inward first-creation goodnesses or excellencies have that vanity writ out in the fading nature thereof which necessitat's their being brought to a period as is undeniably clear from the Scriptures of Truth All Man 's disquieting himself in heaping up riches literal or mystical there is but a 〈◊〉 in and pleasing himself with a vain shew Psal. 39. 6. This folly is reproved by Christ himself Mat. 6. 25 -32. and all Men counsell'd by him to seek the Kingdom of God and his 〈◊〉 in his Gospel-spirit of everlasting Righteousness and Truth If Man submit to God's Judgment of death on his natural state he enters into and is possess'd of the everlasting Righteousness of his Kingdom-spirit if not is he found in unchangeable enmity to God and then great will his misery be upon him When men by spiritual light shew'd and offer'd God's excellent heavenly things do turn from that light in hatred to those things and love to their own God harden's blind's and deafen's such self-hardning enemies and refusers of his gracious offers Isa. 6. 9 10. By such just judgment on them come they to have their hearts eyes and understandings perfectly closed up from any regard of God or his offer'd new-creation life and things for ever He sends them strong delusion that they should believe Satan's self-pleasing lie and so go headlong in a delusive satisfaction to the Chambers of Death God gives them their hearts desire as to the fatness riches and flourish of their own nature as the beginning of his unchangeable Dispensation of wrath upon them fitting them thereby for destruction And thenceforth are they under an impossibility of ever finding out God's time and Judgment in this thing or relating to that natural state of vanity they take up in for happiness Vers. 7. For he knoweth not that which shall be for who can tell him when or how it shall be This great misery comes upon Man on his wilful turning from God's declar'd way and means of doing him good God excludes him by oath from true Blessedness swears in his Wrath he shall never enter into his rest Heb. 3. 11. And then is he concluded under an unchangeable curse the grievous nature whereof can't be known till felt or experienc'd The terrible things in final Wrath provided by God for Enemies as well as the things in Love provided for Saints are such as Eye hath not seen Ear heard nor have entred into the Heart of Man 1 Cor. 2. 9. Christ's mystery of Godliness Satans mystery of Iniquity and the differing recompences of the Followers of Christ into the former or being willingly caught by Satan in the latter all these most concerning things to be diligently sought after or most heedfully avoided lie clear out of the reach of Man's Understanding or Wisdom And how then shall he know what Misery shall at last befal him or when how and by what Hand it shall be brought upon him Vers. 8. There is no Man hath Power over the Spirit to retain the Spirit neither hath he Power in the day of Death and there is no discharge in that War neither shall Wickedness deliver those that are given to it Here 's the reason of what is said in the former Verses the great Misery Man brings upon himself by not observing and submitting to Time and Judgment No Man hath Power over his Spirit to secure it from the Wrath and just Judgment of God He that made it challenges all obedience from it which disputed and not performed by Man renders God's Judgment of Wrath on him undeniably just and from this can no Man free himself For he can neither retain the fading Life and Goodness of his own Spirit nor reduce it to nothing nor render it an insensible something It will ever be kept up by its Creatour in an exquisite sensibleness of all evil and perfect deprivation of all the fading good it can ever remember the enjoyment of for the increase and aggravation of its Torment God has given it an immortality of being and 't is not able to bear up in its rebellion against him to secure it self from the Power of evil or that just Punishment he will bring upon it Man has no Power in the day of Death either of his Body or Spirit Neither of these lives that of his body or the fading first-covenant Righteous Life of his Spirit can he secure from Death when God's time is come for giving Judgment and pouring forth his Wrath upon him When God comes in hostility upon him as a provok'd Enemy there 's no discharge from either of these wars he cannot run away get out of the field and so scape the avenging Justice of God nor yet stand or bear up against it but must certainly fall and perish under it There 's an appointed time of Death and Judgment on all fading perishing mortal life of Man's body and spirit his whole natural being and person be he good or bad The good by an obedient surrender of all thereto in a dutiful compliance with the declar'd Methods of God's Wisdom for saving them are rais'd into and receive 〈◊〉 everlasting Gospel-life which is not diminish'd but marvelously enlarg'd and perfected at the death of the Body clear'd from all disturbances and interruptions by any Enemies without or within them as intirely at home with Lord when quite absent or deliver'd from the mortal Body and State They groan therefore after a full deliverance from their whole earthly Tabernacle and mortal Life
the natural earthy fleshly state of their whole person Body Soul and 〈◊〉 See all this 2 Cor. 5. 1 8. But quite contrary the wilfully disobedient to God's Time Way and Judgment of Death to their whole beings are under an absolute necessity of coming to the experience of the same twofold Death as to any natural life or goodness in Body or Spirit and they 'l receive in the room thereof the positive inflictions of Wrath upon their whole beings for ever in a resurrection of Damnation Joh. 5. 29. Dan. 12. 2. The immortality of their beings will hold them to 't in suffering under the Wrath to come that will never be gone or end No scaping the temporal death of their mortal Body or eternal death of their immortal Spirit and Body too as reduc'd by a resurrection into a fellowship with their Spirit in Torment for ever the Tophet prepar'd for them None of these Deaths has evil man the least Power to resist or avoid the temporal Death of his Body or Soul as to the mortal Life of both or the eternal Death and 〈◊〉 of both There 's no discharge from this twofold War of God upon him Fall he will most certainly in both For has he an Arm like God Job 40. 9. Think'st thou by thy wicked and rebellious contending with him to escape or find any thing short of thy eternal confusion t. Neither shall wickedness deliver those that are given to it Devils the supream rank of enemies rendred the highest spiritual wickednesses and rebels against God and his new-creation Spirit by fixing in their natural and first These grand patrons of wickedness and most gigantick fighters against God with their followers and subjects from amongst men will fall under the hand of the living God Heb. 10. 31. his irresistible Gospel-Sword Men-rebels with their proud evil-angelical helpers the mystical Rocks and Mountains or supream first-creation Principalities and Powers will all be inevitably forc'd to stoop and fall together under his all-conquering Sword and Power Job 9. 13. Rev. 6. 12 -17. No evil Angel or Man have power over their own spirit to preserve any life light or comfort therein against God's or his final Wrath to be executed thereby upon all and every one of them Nor can they by annihilation shuffle themselves out of the hands of God's avenging Justice No annihilation-Death will ever be found by them Rev. 9. 6. The misery therefore of them all will be as unavoidable as unexpressibly great upon them And 't will be undeniably evident they have all by their wilful obstinacy brought it upon their own guilty heads They have refus'd so great 〈◊〉 as was offer'd them in God's way and chosen so great misery in their own Prov. 8. 36. And who Devil or Man can imagin or take the right measure of God's final punishment upon them both till they feel and are irrecoverably under it The great sweeping temporal judgments the 〈◊〉 the storm of Fire and Brimstone on Sodom c. are but figures and shadows of the Vengeance of eternal Fire Jude 7. The deluge of sinal Wrath will drown all incorrigibly wicked Men and Angels in everlasting destruction and perdition for gratifying and drowning themselves in their own foolish and 〈◊〉 lusts 1 Tim. 6. 9. And as an aggravation of man's misery in this World he know's not when or how all this shall be brought upon him Evil shall come upon him he shall not know whence it rises 〈◊〉 shall fall upon him he shall not be able to put off and desolation shall come upon him suddenly which he shall not know Isa. 47. 11. 〈◊〉 knows not his time but as fishes or birds shall be taken in an evil net or snare falling suddenly upon him Eccl. 9. 12. Man knows not the time of his bodily death to which subject every moment of his life And if 〈◊〉 in enmity he soon sinds himself on such death under unchangeable wrath All his days upon Earth he fought under Satan's Banner against God his Saints and Truths So was he not only an Acceslory but principal Actor in bringing all his great eternal misery upon his own guilty head in a state of everlasting bondage and death Ver. 9. All this have I seen and applied my heart unto every work that is done under the Sun there is a time wherein one man ruleth over another to his own hurt This observation Solomon gain'd by the sad experience of the vanity of all things under the first-creation Sun literal or mystical Here 's 〈◊〉 a literal Truth when the Power of the Ruler is us'd to encourage wickedness in the ruled Such a one most certainly rules to his own 〈◊〉 For he is accountable for it And the mystical or principal sence is yet more true So the Ruler here is the Devil the permitted Ruler over the whole first-creation World from the beginning to the ending thereof This though he be gratified and pleas'd with will turn to his great damage when the Vials of Wrath come to be pour'd forth upon him as the meet recompence of all the wickedness he has bin instrumental to the practising of by Men in his rule over them The more universally he is obey'd and follow'd the more has he 〈◊〉 and the more will he be tormented for ever Both ruling evil-Angels and ruled evil-Men will 〈◊〉 unspeakable hurt in conclusion from all the wicked rule of the one and wicked obedience of the other Both will be cover'd with everlasting darkness and death Concerning such rule and obedience to it Solomon declares his farther observations as follows Vers. 10. And so I saw the wicked buried who had come and gone from the place of the holy and they were forgotten in the City where they had so done this is also Vanity Here 's the sad account of the faulty ruled from their willing obedience to the said wicked Ruler in the whole Progress of their lives as will be undeniably evident in the end Not Man in the dark corrupt but enlightned righteous nature that holy place or state is here meant This holy state being changeable will certainly be gone again as is plain Ezek. 18. 24 -26. God has provided a means to bring the whole Posterity of Adam into the first-covenant holy place or state but shews their liableness to apostatize or fall away from it again for ever and abundantly warn's them against it and of the most dangerous consequence thereof For then the guilt of the first sin and all the evil done in their own Persons will be justly charg'd upon them If the Righteous turn from his Righteousness and commit Iniquity he shall die He that has come to the first-covenant State or Place of the Holy as brought by the Redeemer thither out of his corrupt or unholy natural Place or State and is gone or departed thence back again into his unholy place comes to a final state of Death in which buried for ever in a grave from which there 's
no Redemption Psal. 49. 8. The first-covenant holy Place wilfully kept up against the second and most holy turns it into a most unholy Place a state of unchangeable enmity to God and death to Man 2 Pet. 2. 20 22. Heb. 10. 26 27. On this complicated twofold wilful sin against God and the distinct lights of his twofold Covenant as an enemy of all Righteousness does God bury and cover him with a spirit of unchangeable darkness So comes he to 〈◊〉 wholly forgotten in the City place or state where he hath so done The very name and memory of the whole earthly 〈◊〉 City or party of Men fix'd in the first-covenant holiness as turn'd into unchangeable enmity to God and the second will 〈◊〉 for ever They 'l be blotted out of all favourable regard or remembrance with God for ever The very state by them rebelliously chosen will 〈◊〉 made 〈◊〉 final prison and burying-place in which to 〈◊〉 for ever This get they by trusting in lying vanities Ver. 11. Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil Here 's a sad Account of the 〈◊〉 of all hearts as ready to abuse all the goodness and patience of God in deferring the execution of his sentence against their evil works God is of purer eyes than to behold with approbation any iniquity One time and way or other all sinners must be punish'd for all sorts of sins pardonable or unpardonable God punishes every evil work in Saints and puts the evil-worker in them their natural spirit to death at long-run under the fatherly chastisements of his Cross as we find it in Solomon's own case and all the posterity of our spiritual Lord David Psal. 89. 26 -36. Then he quickens and sets up the life of his Spirit of Grace in them that never can sin 1 Joh. 3. 9. In this can they fully please God and overcome the Devil This get they by the Gospel exchange-traffick God's infallible Gospel-Spirit and Wisdom for their fallible Law-spirit All that fix in their Law-spirit become unchangeable enemies of God and his Gospel And all God's patience towards them herein do they abuse to a farther hardning and waxing confident in their folly setting their hearts to do evil because his declar'd Sentence against them is not speedily executed upon them v. 11. and Rom. 2. 4 5. God 〈◊〉 them line and opportunities of manifesting the utmost of their wicked thoughts and intents against him and so do they ripen themselves for the Sicle of his just Vengeance Rev. 14. 19 20. God will be abundantly clear'd and justified in all his ways and dealings towards them his long patience with them and then final severity upon them after all No Men without the Law or in the Law no Heathens in the rational light of Nature no Jews or Christians in the first-Covenant life of the Law will be found destitute of such conviction of the insufficiency of their natural state for Salvation as will expose them to judgment for their secret enmity to God in staying there by his infallible Gospel-Spirit Rom. 2. 12 -16. 'T will then be undeniably evident that neither from the fashion of being or changeable life given them by a first-creation nor from want of sutable helps for directing them towards eternal blessedness in the second the miscarriage of any to their eternal ruin has bin necessitated Their evil mind growing worse and worse under all a Sentence of unchangeable Death comes at length to be most justly executed upon them Under all the favour of a first-Covenant life a-fresh restor'd in them and the life of the second in its own light shew'd and offer'd them in such a Land or State of Uprightness do they deal wickedly in enmity to God and the second Isa. 26. 10. Pharaoh under all the wonders in Egypt hardned himself more and more against the messages of God presumptuously calling them vain or lying Words Exod. 5. 9. The Priests Scribes Pharisees and professing Jews in the view of all Christ's Miracles grew more wilfully hard'ned against his Gospel-doctrin and murther'd his Person Thus did they in a Land of Uprightness the holy Place or first-covenant State of their enlightned righteous natural Spirit Man's just demeaning himself therein is an obedient submitting to God's doing Judgment on it out of love to his mercy or unspeakable Gospel gift of eternal Life Mic. 6. 8. By humbling himself with Christ Phil. 2. 8. to the Death of the former comes Man to walk for ever with God as Enoch Gen. 5. 24. in the latter A surrender of all our own in the first-creation for God's own in the second is a doing righteously in and with our Land or State of Uprightness This answers the very end for which God restores unto Man or brings him again into his first-creation 〈◊〉 or Land of Uprightness If Man will not then honour God with his substance Prov. 3. 9. by giving it all up in sacrifice to his Will but rebelliously keep it up in a known enmity to him his destruction is undeniably of himself as fully setting his heart to do evil Ver. 12. Tho' a sinner do evil an hundred times and his days be prolonged yet surely I know that it shall be well with them thatf ear God which fear before him In this and the next 〈◊〉 Solomon positively asserts a twofold truth concerning the obedient Saint and the incorrigible Sinner The Saint who alone truly sears God it shall be well with And as certain is it it shall not be well with the wicked because he does not fear before 〈◊〉 This fear of God that carries such great and certain good in it to the Saint and the want whereof causes great unchangeable misery to the incorrigible Sinner can import no less than an universal obedience to God and compliance with every of his 〈◊〉 Such obedience is seen by God in the incorruptible Seed of spiritual life and true Holmess before quickned into life or motion in the Saint This holy Seed secretly disposes men to obey the Lord according to their various degrees of natural and legal light as honest moral Heathens or first-covenant Believers Cornelius an Heathen Captain was own'd as such a fearer of God with all his Family under his conduct and example Act. 10. 2 22. and as so accepted with him v. 35. This Fear consisted in a faithfulness to his present light against the workings of corrupt nature and a readiness to receive and obey a greater light when offer'd as by Peter's Ministry So 〈◊〉 before his Gospel-conversion was faithful to his Law-light under that higher dispensation of God then Cornelius was before his Gospel conversion and forthwith obedient to Christ's Gospel-light as soon as shining upon him and made God's new dispensation to him Gal. 1. 16. Act. 9. 6. 26. 19. Both Cornelius and Paul walk'd according to their light yet not so resolutely confident or
he saith to every one that he is a fool Man 's own Wisdom is Folly not able to direct his steps in or so much as into the way everlasting Jer. 10. 23. Trusting therein and to renders him an enemy to true spiritual Wisdom that can do all And this manifests him to every one to be fool God will set up that Light in all that they and all others shall see them Fools as having wilfully chosen that Life and Wisdom they knew would fail them and consequently excluded themselves for ever from that which would have done their Work Thus become they everlasting monuments of their own madness and folly in eternal darkness and death under Wrath. Vers. 4 If the spirit of the Ruler rise up against thee leave not thy place for yielding pacifieth great offences The acknowledg'd literal gives aim at the mystical sence In letter Man ought not to leave his place of subjection to worldly Rulers but acknowledg the ruling Power by God's Providence permitted any to exercise over him however ill us'd This may and ought to be without any sinful compliance with such abused Power Even Saints must suffer as a passive owning that power so ill manag'd they can't actively obey All ought to keep their place of subjection to it so as not to rise up against dispute or deny the Rulers place and office however abus'd Such demeanour is the only safe way to pacify the Ruler's unjust wrath against them t. For yielding pacifieth great offences Yea Devils are not to be denied their invisible evil Angelical Principality and Power permissively given them in and over this World Luk. 4. 5 6. The Devil 's evil place of Rule and Power is not to be denied Even Michael the Arch-Angel Christ himself contending or disputing with the Devil about the body of Moses durst not bring against him a railing Accusation but said the Lord rebuke thee Jud. 9. So Zec. 3. 2. About Joshua another Type of himself The Devil contends or disputes by himself and Apostles for the body of Moses or life of the Law as eternal Life and Salvation according to his first short comprehensive lying Sermon to Eve ye shall not die This is eternal Life ye are already possess'd of by the first Creation A due demeanour towards the very evil Angels is an owning our place of inferiority to them in the life of but humane nature or our natural state at best 'T is acknowledg'd so in Christ himself Heb. 2. 7. The leaving our place of Subjection or Inferiority to evil visible or invisible Powers of this World is a leaving our place of right subjection and obedience to God and a giving advantage to the Devil to make us pay it him And so come we to the mystery here Christ of right is always the chief Magistrate and Supream Ruler over all in his very passive season and Satan's active Reign If his Spirit rise up against the guilty natural spirit of Man if he come with his spiritual Sword and Gospel-fire to slay and sacrifice it to God Obedience ought to be given to him herein by yielding subjection to this Supream Ruler over all as our true interest and safety This is the way to pacify God's provoked Wrath against us even the delivering up that spirit to death that 's found guilty of all sorts of offences against him and this undeniably evidenc'd by the all-discovering light of the two-edged flaming Sword that slays us Heb. 4. 12 13. No absolute reconciliation but by the death of the guilty Sinner in us the foe of our own house We ought to agree with this true Ruler in the way of his Cross the only way to Salvation when his Spirit rises against and he comes in the posture of an Adversary upon his and our enemy in us Mat. 5. 25. Such yielding up the perpetual Offender to death in order to be brought to live under the peaceable Rule of that Spirit of Life and Love that slays our spirit of Enmity and Death pacifies the Wrath of our most righteous Judg and brings this wonder to pass that we who in our own spirits have bin guilty of innumerable and unutterably aggravated follies and madnesses shall have no Iniquity found in us by Friends or Foes The guilty Sinner our natural spirit that always rebell'd in its life has obediently suffer'd death and there 's an end of all Iniquity By this means come we to be fill'd with a spirit of Life that 's in eternal union of mind will desire thought love and hatred with the infinite divine spirit Then let enemies that love nothing but such Iniquities they would charge us with search and accuse us while they will yea and let God that infinitely hates all Iniquity search us to the bottom by the joynt beamings forth of his infinite divine and all-searching infallible new-Creation Sun-lights still still no Iniquity will be found in us when fill'd with his own Spirit of everlasting Righteousness and Truth Vers. 5. There is an evil which I have seen under the Sun as an errour which proceedeth from the ruler Vers. 6. Folly is set in great dignity and the rich sit in low place Here 's just matter of complaint relating to the invisible or visible Magistrates of this World evil Angels or Men. Nothing more familiar to observation in the visible then their encouraging and advancing folly it self or grossly wicked and unworthy persons and thrusting down the rich in true wisdom the truly worthy into low place or no place out of all place yea and out of the World as not fit or worthy to live by reason of his unalterably contrary principle temper and spirit to such wicked Gamsters as resolve to make a prey of the People All discouragements injuries and oppressions imaginable are on this ground exercis'd on the most worthy Patriots whose Consciences permit them not to gratify and serve their corrupt wills interests and unruly lusts These are the things practis'd by wicked visible Rulers in a flat contrariety to their duty Rom. 13. 3 4. The invisible Rulers of this World evil Angels prefer the rich wise-fools in a first-Covenant righteous life as their choicest and most useful subjects before above and against the mystical poor or impoverish'd there in order to become wise rich strong and honourable in God or in a spiritual new-Covenant life hid with Christ in God Christ pronounceth Wo to the former and says Blessed are the latter Luke 6. 20 24. That that 's highly esteemed of Men in the first Covenant is abominable to God Luk. 16. 15. as set up in a fixed enmity to him and the second And the broken contrite impoverish'd natural Spirit of the Saint as to all others trust and glory in seems abominable and contemptible to them the fat full rich wise strong and honourable in the first 1 Cor. 4. 8 10. The rich in the first-Covenant are sigur'd by the Man with a gold Ring and goodly apparel whereas the poor and
vanities saith the Preacher all is vanity All in the first-creation worldly state of Angel and Man is vanity no life beauty 〈◊〉 glory wisdom 〈◊〉 thoughts belly or meats desires or desirables words works c. but what are perishing vanities Man and Angel too in the highest honour and attainments of their natural make and state are altogether vanity Psal. 39. 5 6. 'T is then inexcusable madness and folly in both to pitch by their final choice for true happiness short of the convincingly shew'd and graciously offer'd new-covenant life of Christ and God Doting on their own glory will render them vessels of dishonour and 〈◊〉 contempt Vers. 9. And moreover because the Preacher was wise he still taught the people Knowledg yea he gave good heed and sought out and set in order many Proverbs 1 King 4. 32. Solomon in the infallible Spirit of Truth declar'd the deep hidden things and Spiritual Truths 〈◊〉 God All Divine and Spiritual things are Mysteries Parables and dark-sayings to the highest natural capacity of Angel or Man 'T is only in the infallible light or spiritual wisdom and understanding of Christ communicated to and set up in Man or Angel by his new-creating-workmanship upon them such Kingdom-things or mysteries can ever be discern'd or judg'd 1 Cor. 2. 10 14 15. To spiritual Saints only is it given to know such things Mat. 13. 11. To them any Men in their own understanding it is not given In the 〈◊〉 creature-spirit of Christ men come to see the fellowship of the 〈◊〉 Ephes. 3. 9. or the mysterious fellowship of Divine and 〈◊〉 nature in Christ's wonderful Person Hereby the most dark 〈◊〉 of God's infinite Divinity becomes known and seen to Saints Christ himself is the supream Preacher Discoverer and Declarer of all And by a portion of his infallible creature-spirit are Saints qualified to receive such visions or sights of God as he exhibits to them and to declare them to others Vers. 10. The Preacher sought to find out acceptable words and that which was written was upright even words of Truth Here 's a farther account of 〈◊〉 same thing by Solomon as a type of Christ the supream Apostle 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 and High-Priest of God the highest and chief 〈◊〉 of the divine mind to Angels and Men. He finds out and 〈◊〉 his true spiritual Disciples and followers with meet 〈◊〉 words ways and means for revealing or opening the mysteries of infinite Divinity which remain seal'd up from all first-creation 〈◊〉 The whole Counsel and all mysteries of the infinite divine Spirit are 〈◊〉 in the Tables of Christ's twofold creature nature root and branch in the heavenly and glorified earthly life thereof so as to be seen and read or understood by all spiritual Angels and Men. All the words of this living creature-word spirit or Book of God are acceptable to God and to obedient Angels and Men. This Book in personal union with the Divinity whose Book it is was shew'd John open'd by the Lamb slain as to changeable first-creation life and rais'd into the second On the opening thereof blessed Angels and Saints fall down and worship the Lamb for opening this Book of acceptable words to God and right words of comfort and Salvation to them Rev. 5. 5 14. By a right reading or understanding of these words of the reveal'd or open'd Book are other Saints with Solomon qualified to preach them This Paul experienc'd by Christ's powerful touching and raising him into a right spiritual understanding of such words in a newness of life and strength with Daniel Act. 9. 6. Dan. 10. 18 19. on which he became a Preacher of his unsearchable Divine and Creature-riches Ephes. 3. 8. in right words acceptable to God and Men as shewing the true way of Sulvation in which only men can be acceptable to God and truly blessed Such words as the new-Wine of the spiritual Vine-tree are 〈◊〉 to God and Man Judges 9. 13. Vers. 11. The words of the Wise are as Goads and as Nails fastned by the Masters of Assemblies which are given from one Shepherd Here are summ'd up the Truths spoken in reference to Christ and Saints as Christ is the great Master of such Assemblies and great Shepherd of his sheep setting up and using others under him in this high service Christ and his wise-hearted right-spirited Ministers under him are the only 〈◊〉 of such Words as will make wise unto 〈◊〉 Such words as goads and nails are fastned by such Masters of Assemblies in the hearts of obedient Hearers that have an incorruptible Seed of the same Wisdom in them The words of Man's or Devil's wisdom Princes of this World that come to nought 1 Cor. 2. 6. signify worse then nothing even that that natural State they have set up in unchangeable enmity to God is eternal Life But the words of God's Wisdom are not yea and nay but only yea and amen 2 Cor. 1. 17 20. Words of infallible Truth and everlasting Life fastned by Christ himself immediately and mediately by other Masters of Assemblies under him Vers. 12. And further by these my Son be admonished of making many Books there is no end and much study is a weariness of the Flesh. What are these many Books without end or to no end and much study or reading that 's weariness to the flesh Both signify the unprofitable labour in Man's Wisdom that can never attain the right knowledg of spiritual Mysteries the glorious Truths or things of the Kingdom of God Yea that Wisdom is the very vail on Man's heart that hinders his sight as to any such things In that wisdom can Man never see beyond no nor to the end of what 's to be abolish'd So sets up in the fading 〈◊〉 Goodness or Glory of that first-Covenant State that 's to be done away and utterly abolish'd out of all Angels and Men 2 Cor. 3. 13. Christ when he had taken this fleshly Vail rent it in himself Heb. 10. 20. By the death of our natural spirit at best can it be so rent in us as to make way for our spiritual sight of 〈◊〉 eternal things things of God Where-ever Moses or the Law yea and whole Scripture is read by such as have this Vail on their Hearts a single uncrucified natural first-Covenant 〈◊〉 they see nothing but letter old Testament or first-Covenant sense of all Scripture nothing of the Spirit new Testament or second Covenant and spiritual meaning in all 2 Cor. 3. 13 15. The enlighten'd fleshly first-Covenant Jews or Lawyers saw nothing of Gospel-mysteries couch'd under Moses's typical Law-writings by which even he they trusted in condemned them as Rejecters of all spiritual Truths or Mysteries by him therein declar'd 〈◊〉 5. 45 47. They saw the literal but did not believe the spiritual sense of and things in Moses's Writings the proper objects of spiritual Faith discerning or understanding They refus'd the way of having such an understanding brought a-float in them the death and loss of
witnes against them as fixed dwellers on the said mystical Earth or their earthly life when offered Heaven or God's spiritual heavenly life by a new-creation Christ sends his spiritual convictions into them as faithful spies that give a good report of his true land of promise or state of life These sinned against and not hearkned to vex and torment them taking from them such full undisturbed delights and uninterrupted pleasure as they desire to find in their earthly life will and way Gods spiritual conviction-light given in mercy finally rebelled against is in wrath kept up in their consciences as a never dying Worm that will torment them to all eternity witnessing against themselves as unpardonably guilty and for God as most just in his unquenchable wrath upon them Mar. 9. 44. Now this gnawing Worm that will be this sinner's everlasting tormentor in the world to come is a sore allay to his false joy in this Spiritual conviction is as a particular day of Gods Judgment in and upon man before the general comes The accusing voice thereof in him holds him to 't and forces him to see that all the treasure he 's heaping up for the last day's Jam. 5. 3. is indeed no other nor better then a treasuring up wrath for himself against the day of wrath Ro. 2. 5. This is a sowring ingredient in the midst of all the sweet and contentment this unpardonably guilty sinner desires to find in his own selfe-chosen way and self-chusing will He may know and conclude nothing remaines to him of benefit from Christ's sacrifice and intercession and so nothing at all from God but fiery indignation Heb. 10. 26 27. So of the first part of his punishment even at present in this world The second we shall find in considering the third particular To the 3d then By Gods over-ruling hand he shall be made to give all his heaped up treasures to him that is good before God whom he unchangably hates And this will be a tormenting consideration and sore vexation of his spirit his heaped up vanities wil prove unto him which is the concluding word of this Chapter All the sinner in the latter part of this verse labours for and gathers he must give or shal be given whether he will or no to the good man or spiritual saint in the former part In the parable of the talents Mat. 25. 14-30 we find that the evil servant who kept his own single earthly talent or earthly first-covenant life refusing to exchange it for Christ's heavenly is called Wicked and Slothful Servant and his Talent taken from him and given to him that had ten as having made the required Exchang by death to his advantage and great gain All the 〈◊〉 goodness and Comforts in the first Creation-Life and State kept up and held fast by Evil Angels and Men in Rebellion against God shall be finally taken from them and given to or Possessed by Spiritual Saints and Angels as Comprehended in and unspeakably out-done by the New-Creation Life and State where they receive their own and all others own again with Usury ver 27. Thus Christ Interprets his own Parable From him that hath not the durable Riches in New-creation Life shall be 〈◊〉 away all his Fading in the First and given to him that hath true Riches in the second with abundant Increase for ever ver 29. This is of like Significancy with that other faithfull saying and sure word of Prophecy whoever will spare or save his natural earthly Life from the death-work of the Cross shall lose it under the same Cross in final wrath and whosoever will hate and lose his natural and earthly for the sake of and love to Christs spiritual and heavenly the only right use of his single first-creation Life and Talent shall find it with Usury in Christ's heavenly Mat. 16. 25. Never was any thing in the former could make up any degree of true hapines to Man or Angel God convincingly shews and graciously offer 's his life to men waits with much patience and long-suffering for their accepting it on his termes the death of their own nature at best or in what ever variety of condition in Publican and Harlot or Scribe and Pharisee He knocks at the Dore of their hearts warn's counsells instructs reproves them invites entreats beseeches them by his Ambassadours of grace He calls out to them to hear his voice and not harden their hearts against him while the day of his gracious call and offers to them last's At length on their willful Provoking him beyond pardon the great Master of the New-Creation House or Building shuts the door and is gone Luk. 13. 25. Swearing in his Wrath they shall never enter into his Rest Heb. 3. 13. Then they may seek and knock while they will they 'l never find him Prov. 1. 28 nor any place for Repentance or change of their Rebellious Mind and desperate condition for ever Heb. 6. 4-6 Esau's Case Heb. 12. 17. An obedient Exchange by Death of Fading First-Creation Life for the Everlasting Second is unspeakable gain to Man The Rebellious keeping it up in Enmity to the Cross and Second or to the Spirit of God and its Crucifying Death-work upon it in order to set up its own Life in the Room is unspeakable loss to all that so do This Paul told the Self-Confident Professours at Philippi of in the fruitful Flourish of a First-Covenant Righteous Life even weeping Phil. 3. 18. and reproov'd the Corinthians for in like case 1 Cor. 4. 8. 10. as Christ himself when Ascended and Glorified the Laodiceans Rev. 3. 17 18. By the very same hand Cross or Gospel-Spirit of Christ will that Perishing Law-Life with all the Fruitfulness heap'd up Riches and meats thereof be taken from them in Final Wrath whether they will or no. CHAP. III. Vers. I. To every thing there is a Season and a time to every Purpose under the Heaven NExt to no difference from our Translation of this and the Seven following Verses in the Original Hebrew three Eastern Versions Chaldee Syriac and Arabick or the Septuagints Greek Translation In this Scripture to Verse 8th Inclusive have we the Character of Man in his whole Personal Constitution and Make by the First Creation or in whatever Flourish of the restor'd Wisdom and Exercise of a First-Covenant Righteous Life therein In Body Soul and Spirit no Life but Mortal by Creation And the same kind of Life restored in him since is much short of the perfection it was in at First Something of Filth of Flesh hangs about it still and Filth of Spirit that 's worse is inseperable from it since the fall Life and all therefore must go by a Holy Obedient death in Sacrifice to God If 〈◊〉 spared and Rebelliously kept it will be an Unholy life in unchangeable Enmity to God doing despite to his Divine and also to his New-Creature Gospel-Spirit of Grace and Truth In the Various Litteral Expressions here Relating to the