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A67218
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The substance of several sermons, from John, ix. 39 Preach'd at the request of a friend, and now publish'd for the benefit of the publick. By Nathanael Wyles, an unworthy labourer in Christ's vineyard.
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Wyles, Nathaniel.
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1698
(1698)
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Wing W3770B; ESTC R222177
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55,039
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110
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down to the present Time in the midst of such a World of Men Ignorant of God Alienated from his Life without God in the World without Christ and Enemies in their Minds so much given up to the World and the Lusts of it as to be called The World and the Men of this World in a State of Enmity to God and his Kingdom the Seed of the Serpent the Dragon Haters of his Servants and on all opportunities Slaying them as Cain the Seed of the Wicked one Did Abel in the very Beginning That yet in the midst of all these there should be a Generation of Men and Women that should be in an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a course a Lincal succession of the Saints and Servants of God like the succession as in the House of Levi of the Preisthood and of the High Preisthood in the Family of Aaron the more Eminent and the less Eminent among the Servants of God but all a Royal Priesthood or like the Stars of the First Magnitâ—de in the Regions above and those they call the Sporades the Multitude of the lesser Stars Now the very Root and Foundation and Corner Stone of all this is That Grand Elect Servant of God in whom His Soul delighteth who in Raising up a Generation of the Servants of God dealeth with all mildness A Bruised Reed shall He not break nor smoking Flax shall He quench but shall send forth Judgment unto Truth of Victory Esa 42. 1. That Servant of the Lord with the Key of David on his shoulder and strengthn'd with the Girdle of Faithfulness and Righteousness The Nail sasten'd in a sure place Esa 22. 20 c. Upon whom is Hung all the Glory of his Fathers House the off-spring and the Issue All Vessels of Greater and smaller Quantity from the Vessels of Cups even to All the Vessels of Flagons Had not He been a Servant in the Foundation There had never been a Servant of God in the World It is He who hath Loved and washed in His Blood and constituted Kings and Preists unto God and His Father Rev. 1. 5. Now the Charter of His making Servants to God among the Children of Men was given to the Second Adam Immediately upon the Fall of the First Adam so quick and immediate as to surprize the Power of Sathan in the First Effort when God in a Judiciary process upon Sathan says to Him under the disguise of the Serpent I will put enmity between thy Seed and of the Woman and this Seed of the Woman the one Seed Christ shall break the Head of the Serpent Gen. 3. unto perfect Victory and Thou shall bruise His Heel of which is presently to be spoken There must be therefore a Seed of the Second Adam Servants of God in every Generation who shall Fight Finish their course Hold the Faith of the Seed of the Woman the Second Adam the Lord from Heaven the Quickning Spirit the Saviour to the uttermost who Lives for ever to make Intercession and so sustains all the Servants of God coming to God by Him He Bears them up in their State of Preisthood as the Preist for ever Constituted after the Power of an Endless Life consecrated by the word of the Oath for evermore the High Preist and Apostle of our Profession the Captain of our salvation This supports the whole State of the Servants of God in all the Service here recounted here by the Apostle Fighting Running Finishing their course in order to the Receiving the Crown And thus the Line of the succession of the Servants of God hath been continued from Adam through all Ages From Adam by the Patriarks to Moses Joshuah the Judges Kings Prophets Zerubbabel and Ezra so to the Great Lord appearing in his Temple Malach. 3. 1. Then the Apostles and successive Ministers of the Gospel and the Witnesses Revel 11. 3. in the Time of the Apostacy who being the Last course of the Servants of God There is an express mention of that First Representation of things the Serpent early appearing as a Dragon in the Slaying Abel and the Seed of the Woman He endeavoured to devour by making War with them by the Beast Who kills them and they Lye Dead in the street of the Great City Till the Spirit of Life from God enter into them And then the course of things goes on to the Binding the Dragon Sathan the Old Serpent Chaining and Sealing up in the Abyss in his own Hell and Chains of Darkness and then after a short Loosing to shew his ever remaining Diabolick Spirit we have with all his Dead His Final Casting into the Lake which is the Second Death And thus we have the First Point cleared How comes there to be such a Line and Succession of the Priests or Servants of the Most High God in so Degenerate a Humane Nature And how Long Even till they come into the Glorious State of being Preists of God and Christ and Reigning with Him a Thousand Years seeing His Face as His Servants serving Him with His Name on their Foreheads and at Last deliver'd up with the Kingdom to God All in All which is the State of pure and perfect Eternity Eternal Life in its Highest Orb. Point 2. I come therefore now to the second Point How comes it to pass there is such a strict Limitation of the Servants of God First under such an Honourable Limitation as Fighting the Good Fight even unto Victory their Finishing their course even unto obtaining the Prize and their Keeping the Faith without betraying Basely surrendring or having made Shipwrack of it and so presenting it before the Righteous Judge and receiving the Crown at that Day All these are Honourable and yet Limitations Their Fight Course Keeping the Faith are not Lengthen'd out to that very Day Now of this there are very Great Reasons 1. The Great Lord of Time hath drawn the whole time with such exactness of Wisdom and Holiness That every thing is in its own Place Season and Time and as it fills that up and nothing is wanting so it cannot exceed nor reach beyond it And thus Every thing is Beautiful in its season Thus from the very Beginning Abel the First Martyr Finished his Course though short Enoch Noah Abraham Isaac and Jacob theirs In the midst of whom appeared Melchisedec made like to the Son of God without Beginning of Days or End of Life Abridgeth a Preist continually He was not a Type of the Son of God in some particular excellency but He was made like to the Son of God throughout And thus is the Line of every Saints service drawn out nothing can crowd into it and this Line can by no Violence be cut shorter nor can any Zeal for Service draw it out longer The only Elect Servant is He whose Service hath no Limitation but as was said The Son Consecrated by the Word of the Oath for evermore and constituted after the Power of an Endless Life Melchisedec therefore who was
Israel over Jordan but to come up to Mount Nebo and to Dye Deut. 33. God plainly sent to Hezekiah to set His House in Order and to Dye against which Prohibition that it might be under as it were an Arrest of Judgment He so earnestly Prayed It is therefore to be duly considered That for the Display of the Judgment and Indignation of God against sin and because of the present State of the Saints under a Remaining Body of Sin and so of Death and in the present State of this World full of Sin and Evil and of so many of the Children of Adam Children of Death even of the Second Death In the Wisdom and Holiness of God It was by the Counsel of the Father and the Son that Death should continue and have the Face of a Judgment and of a Legal Prohibition to continue in the Service of God any longer on Earth Till the Kingdom of Christ the Kingdom of Redemption should bring in a State of the Living Saints then Remaining being chang'd and not to Dye 2. Jesus Christ our Lord Because the Children were Partakers of Flesh and Blood He took part of the same that through Death He might subdue Him that had the Power of Death that is the Devil and Deliver them who all their Life were subject to Bondage by reason of the Fear of Death and now therefore Death came upon Him with the Violence and Terror of a Judgment from which He was taken and from Prison Esa 53. 8. By the Mighty Power of his Resurrection It becomes all His to submit then to the Face of a Judgment in Dying that they may be conform'd to their Captain and from the First Born Heb. 2. 14. Obj. It may be Objected against this necessity of Dying How were those two Enoch and Elias exempted from that sentence of the Righteous and Holy Law that is stretched out so upon all seeing sin had extended it self on them as well as on others Answ The Death of Jesus Christ stood as a Full Ransom and Price of Redemption from the very first promise so that it is not indeed a Point of Justice or of the Truth of God That Believers in Jesus Christ are served as I may so speak with a Prohibition by Death but a Wise and Holy Dispensation of Government with Relation to the Servants of God in the present World where therefore in that wise Government God thinks fit there might be such an exemption from the General Statute of Dying or Prohibition by Death as of Enoch and Elijah and many more Examples of such Exemptions there might have been if He had seen Good having received such full satisfaction to his Law and to his Justice and He hath it in reserve an Universal Exemption at the Kingdom of Christ the Kingdom of Redemption when the Apostle says We shall not all dye but we shall all be changed and he prefaces before it Behold I shew you a mystery And I am much perswaded and even assured These two were Types of the Living Remaining caught up to meet the Lord in the Air 1 Cor. 15. He delivers up the Kingdom to God even the Father and hath put down all Rule Authority and the last Enemy and cast it into the Lake Rev. 20. ult When the Gentle Hand of Power shall Transpose the Saints as the Great Prophet Enoch of the Lord coming with Ten Thousand of his Saints and the Living Remaining changed and the Flames of Fire upon All Enemies shall convey them as in Elijahs Chariot to Heaven 3. The Judiciary part of Death is absolutely removed For the Sting of Death is Sin and the strength of Sin is the Law but thanks be to God who hath given us the Victory through Jesus Christ 1 Cor. 15. 12. So that Death is to Saints a sleeping in Jesus a Resting from Labours an entring into Rest a becoming present with the Lord A being with Christ a being in Paradise a being clothed upon with our House from Heaven And to shew It was not a Deadly stroke Before the Pronunciation of that Universal Prohibition of continuing here Dust thou Art and to Dust thou shalt Return Death was more gently express'd and with assurance of Victory The Womans Seed shall break the Serpents Head but the Serpent shall only Bruise the Heel of the Womans Seed Applic. I will now by way of Applicatory Review close the whole How fit this Context of the Apostle is to a Discourse with Relation to the Death of one or more of the Servants of God appears by the Apostles Preface to it I am even now as it were already as in Conformity to my Great Lord Offered and Sacrificed as a Martyr and the Time of my Dissolution is at Hand and so He goes on I have Fought c. As if He Preached his own Funeral Sermon while Living and a Great one it is but it hath its Principal sense in Christ and in God as appears in the following Part of the Chapter v. 17. wherein we have this Great acknowledgment that in his Fighting the Good Fight and Finishing his Course the Lord stood with Him strengthened Him that by Him the Preaching might be Fully known and the Gentiles hear and the Lord Delivered Him out of the Mouth of the Lyon the Lord would deliver Him from every Evil Work and preserve Him unto His Heavenly Kingdom and to Him he ascribes the Glory of All for Ever And He Includes all Saints Even all who Love the appearing of Jesus Christ this High Elogium or Speech of Praise else I must acknowledge I have no Opinion of the Large Encomiums or Praisings used in Funeral Sermons observing the Grand Exemplar of them Gods Gracious Remembrance of Moses John 1. Moses my Servant is Dead and no more and yet that Fixed so Dashing a Character of Honour upon Him that He is remembred by it to the Last Rev. 15. They Sang the Song of Moses the Servant of God and of the Lamb But this of the Apostle Joyned with that of Heb. 7. 23. Gives me such a History of the Life and Death of Saints That I cannot but Recommend it to all the Servants of Christ as the most excellent Rule of Life and as the Ground of the most Consolatory Hope in Death and that the very Discourse of it may be upon the Deceased Christian Friend a Memorial of Honour And so I most Humbly Recommend it to the Relations of all the Friends of the so many lately Removed Servants of God and of this Particular one the occasion of whose Death it is Published through Him who though the Eternal Liver as the Son of God without Beginning or End of Days yet in our Nature Became Dead for our sakes but behold He is Alive for Evermore Even so have all his Servants Reason to say Even so Amen And He hath the. Keys of Hell and Death Let Him Lay His Hand on his Servants of God in this Discourse and Bless it to Them and to his Servants of all States and Conditions saying unto them Fear not And to Him be Glory for Ever FINIS