this Union betwixt Christ and his Church and the most general and comprehensive notion is that it is a Political not a natural Union the Union between Christ and his Church consists in their mutual Relations to each other now those Relations whereby the Scripture represents this Union signifie Power and Authority on Christs part and Inferiority and Subjection in the Church Christ is the Head and Husband which signifies Rule and Government and the Church is his Spouse and Body and therefore as the Wife is subject to the Husband and the Body to the Head so the Church must be subject to Christ and the like may be said of all those other Relations whereby this Union is described Only when I call it a Political Union you must not imagine that it is only such an external Relation as is between a Prince and his Subjects because Christ is a spiritual King and his Authority reaches to the Heart and Spirit which no Humane Power can no man is in a proper sence a Subject of Christs Kingdom but he who governs his Heart and Spirit as well as his external Actions by the Laws of the Gospel and though an external and visible profession of the Gospel entitles men to an external Communion with the Christian Church because the external Government of the Church is committed to men who cannot discern hearts and thoughts yet whoever does not heartily obey Christ is not really united to him for the subjection of the Mind and Spirit is the principal thing which denominates us the Subjects of a spiritual King and therefore this may be called a Spiritual-Political Union which principally respects the Subjection of our Minds and Spirits to Christ and does necessarily include a participation of the same nature with him and a mutual and reciprocal love It is a Political Union because it consists in the Authority and Govern ment of Christ as a Head and Husband and in the Subjection and Obedience of the Church as his Body and Spouse and it is Spiritual because the Authority of Christ does not only teach our outward Actions as the Government of Earthly Princes does but extends it self to our Minds and Spirits and if you will put it into other words our Union to Christ consists in a hearty belief of his Revelations in obedience to his Laws and subjection to his Authority this makes us the Church the Temple of God wherein he dwells as he formerly did in the Temple at Jerusalem this is that which the Scripture calls having Fellowship and Communion with God and Christ which signifies being of that Society which puts us into a peculiar relation to God that God is our Father and we his Children that Christ is our Head and Husband our Lord and Master we his Disciples and Followers his Spouse and his Body this entitles us to his Merits and Righteousness to his peculiar Care and Providence to the Influences of his Grace to the Power of his Intercession to all those blessings which he hath purchased for and promised to his Church Now besides that this Notion is plain and intelligible and very aptly agrees with all those Metaphors and Forms of Speech whereby the Scripture represents our Union to Christ there are these two great advantages we gain by it first that this is a plain demonstration of the evil and danger of Schism a sin which very few men have any sense of in these days for if our Union to Christ as our Head necessarily requires our Union to the Christian Church which is his Body then to divide from the Christian Church or any true and sound part of it does not only make a Rent in the Body of Christ which is a very great evil but divides us from Christ as a Member which is separated from the Body is separated from the Head too this makes the Sentence of Excommunication so dreadful because it cuts us off from the Body of Christ and this Sentence every Schismatick executes upon himself and that more infallibly too than Church-Governours can for they may be mistaken in the Justice of the Cause and may separate those from the external Communion of the Church who are spiritually united to Christ and then their Sentence is reverst by a superior Tribunal But whoever causlesly separates from the Christian Church or any part of it does infallibly divide himself from Christ unless it be through such invincible mistakes as may mitigate the crime and plead his excuse for Schism is a work of the flesh the effect of Pride and Passion or Interest or some other carnal Lust and it concerns those men who make so light of Schism to consider how they expect to be saved by Christ who is only the Saviour of the Body when they have divided themselves from his Body and are no longer any part or member of it A second advantage which we gain by this notion is this that it gives a plain account of the necessity of Holiness and Obedience to entitle us to the Merits of Christ and Justification by him and to all those Promises which Christ hath made to his Body and Members whoever is in Christ and united to him shall certainly be saved by him for he is the Saviour of the Body and our Justification is not owing to our own Merits and Deserts but to the Merits of Christ for whose sake alone God hath promised to justifie and reward those who are united to him but since our Union to Christ consists in the subjection of our Souls and Bodies to him Holiness and Obedience is as necessary a condition of our Justification by Christ as it is essential to our Union to him We cannot be justified by Christ till we are united to him and we are not united to him till we obey him this gives the glory of all to Christ because we are justified for his sake by vertue of our Union to him and yet vindicates the necessity of a holy Life because this is essential to our Union to Christ. And this is the sum of whatever I asserted concerning the necessity of Good Works to our Justification not that they can merit any thing of God but that they are the necessary conditions of the Covenant of Grace which was purchased and sealed by the blood of Christ or in other words that they are necessary to our Union with Christ and thereby to give us an interest in all those Promises of Pardon and Grace and Eternal Life which Christ hath made to his Church The Righteousness of Christ is our Righteousness when we speak of the Foundation of the Covenant by which we are accepted but if we speak of the terms of the Covenant then we must have a Righteousness of our own not to merit Justification or Eternal Life but to entitle us to the Grace and Mercy of the New Covenant or which is all one to unite us to Christ by whom and for whose sake we are justified to say that Obedience to the
Author should give himself the trouble to excuse his wit for he has as little reason for it as any man I know But I see the Devil is their very good Friend and must revenge their quarrel on me and play upon me because as our Author says I have plaid upon them well if it must be so I cannot help it only I would advise them not to look behind lest they should see the Devil laughing more heartily at them behind their backs And I perceive the Devil has very much be-fooled if he does not laugh at our Author that he should see no difference between representing a Minister of Christ Jesus disputing with the Devil and the Devil playing and drolling on him and making a little innocent mirth with some absurd and foolish propositions such a man is a very fit Tool for the Devils use who has lost all manner of sense of what is fit and comly And now the Author gives us leave to go into the house it self and though I perceive it is a haunted house yet I think there is no danger in it for it is such a silly Devil as will be easily conjured out AN ANSWER To a SCANDALOUS PAMPHLET ENTITULED A Friendly Debate between SATAN and SHERLOCK THe Question under debate is whether those Principles owned by me in A Discourse of the Knowledge of JESUS CHRIST afford the Devi the same grounds for his hope of Salvation that they do mankind Thus our Author tells us in his Title-Page which he says subverts the Gospel and transforms Christianity into Mahumetanism This Mahumetism is placed here only as an invidious term for that gives no more hope of Salvation to the Devil than T. Danson does unless he will say that an absolute Fate and irrespective Decrees which is the doctrin of Mahumetanism gives the Devil as much hope of Salvation as Mankind And if he did say so some think he would come much nearer the truth for if these absolute Decrees give no hope to the Devil no more do they to Mankind For he will not say that the Elect are all Mankind and it is plain that the Reprobate who are far the greatest part of Mankind can have no more reasonable hope of Salvation than the Devils have and the Elect themselves can have no hope of Salvation by virtue of these Principles but must either have a particular revelation for it or live in perpetual doubt or abuse themselves by a warm and Enthusiastic fansie And if there were any necessity of chusing one methinks every man out of love to himself and to human Nature should rather espouse those Principles which afford all mankind reasonable hopes of Salvation though the Devil himself should conceive some reason to hope well too than such Principles as will give no man not the Elect themselves any sure foundation for hope But let us consider what those Principles are which as our Author says give the Devil as great hope of Salvation as Mankind And the First is Gods love to all his Creatures as he cites my words The light of nature and works of Creation and Providence assure us that God is so good that he designs and desires the happiness of all his Creatures according to the capacity of their natures Knowledge of Christ p. 42. Ed. 1. and therefore either the Devil is none of Gods Creatures or his nature is uncapable of happiness or God designs and desires his happiness as well as of other of his Creatures I see our Author begins as he intends to hold on for it is his constant Practice to take part of a Sentence which he thinks will serve his turn and leave out what will not for my words are these The light of nature and the works of Creation and Providence and those manifold Revelations God hath made of himself to the world especially that last and most perfect Revelation by Jesus Christ our Lord assure us c. So that I joyn the Light of Nature with the Revelation of the Gospel which is the most certain discovery of the will of God and therefore can be understood of no other creatures than those to whom the Gospel gives hopes of Salvation But the force of his Argument consists in the word Creature but does not the Scripture use that word peculiarly for all mankind When our Saviour commands his Apostles to Preach the Gospel to every Creature Mark xvi 15. does that signifie that they must Preach the Gospel to Devils as well as Men When the Psalmist tells us that the Lord is good to all and his tender mercies are over all his works Psal. cxlv 9. which is as large an expression as all Creatures must the Devil who is one of Gods works be included or not if not then it seems God may be good all his works and all his Creatures according to the Scripture Phrase without being good to the Devil But why did not our Author from hence conclude the Salvation of Birds and Beasts and Fishes and in a Fanatic phrensie like another S. Francis and S. Antony go and Preach to Lambs and Sheep and Fish For they are Creatures too and if we will believe the experience of these Saints very capable of Devotion and indeed it would have been a much more innocent imploiment and more suited to his abilities than writing Dialogues for the Devil But let me seriously ask our Author whether God be good to all his Creatures or not If he be as I hope he will not dare to say otherwise whatever he thinks then according to his Principles the Devil has the same hope of Salvation that mankind has or if he have not then he must find out some way to reconcile Gods love to all his Creatures with the irrevocable Damnation of the Devil and that will serve my turn as well as his But to bring this to an issue I will only ask him one question more whether from Gods goodness to all his Creatures he thinks it may be proved that all men shall to all eternity be in the same capacity for Salvation that they are in while they live in this world If not then it seems God may be very good to all his Creatures and yet allot such a time for the exercise of his patience and long suffering beyond which the obstinate and incorrigible shall be utterly uncapable of Mercy and Salvation and this God expresly tells us that his Spirit shall not always strive with man Gen. vi 3. and our Saviour wept over Jerusalem because she had out-stood the day of Grace and Salvation Luke xix 41 42. And when he was come near he beheld the City and wept over it saying if thou hadst known even thou at least in this thy day the things which belong unto thy peace but now they are hid from thine eyes The like we may see in Matth. xxiii 37 38 39. And the Apostle to the Hebrews dissuades from the delays of their Repentance by the example of Gods
Devil believe all the Articles of Faith Does he belive that God will forgive his sins and bestow on him eternal Happiness Then he is a perfect Fanatic in his Faith for he believes without any Reason unless our Author can show that the Gospel promises of forgiveness of sin and eternal life which are two great Articles of our Faith do as much belong to the Devil as to men and I am sure without the belief these the belief of all the other Articles of our Creed can neither better his life nor administer any comfort to him XVIII The last ground of the Devils hope of Salvation is the nature of our Union to Christ by Faith which is not mystical that is analogical to a natural Union between Vine and Branches nor therefore are we passive in the reception of Grace to believe and live accordingly but a Mediator is only a Minister of Grace i. e. one who by powerful Motives persuades us to be gracious come by Grace as we can and so it is not impossible but I may get Grace though I be not United to Christ. Now if all this were true it is only a repetition of what was said in his Fourth ground of hope and there you may find the answer but he proceeds The Union made by Faith is Political consisting in a belief of Christs Revelations which I have already though you have now heard that he neither has nor can have that Faith and government of our actions which I am in hopes of in time for Christ is the Minister of this Grace by proposing powerful arguments to it this has been already answered and if he have no more to say for himself he is like to be a Devil still but we may observe how hard the Devil is put to it to make out his evidences sometimes he hopes he may be saved without being United to Christ and sometimes he begins to hope that he is United to Christ in part already and may be perfectly United to him hereafter Thus you see that though we liberally grant M. Danson whatever he asks and suffer him to represent my Principles just as he pleases which as he represents them are so unlike to mine that I should never have known them had he not said so yet no such thing can follow as he pretends that the Devil has the same grounds to hope for Salvation that Mankind has But indeed this is not M. Dansons talent to reason and argue and draw consequences he knows much better how to imitate the Devil than to defend him lies and slanders and misrepresentations are the best weapons he has and therefore having got rid of the Devil I shall now come to Danson and take him to task for that abuse and cheat he has put upon his credulous Readers and that great injury he has done to me in perverting my words and sense And to make this as short and useful as I can I shall reduce it to certain Heads which may offer some occasion for profitable discourse First then one great artifice of our Authors is to represent me as attributing that knowledg wholly to the Light of Nature and the works of Creation and Providence which I expresly ascribe to Revelation also as the most certain and infallible means of knowing the nature and will of God this we had one instance of in the very beginning concerning Gods goodness to all his Creatures which he often repeats without the least mention of Revelation Thus p. 29. The Light of Nature assures sinners that God is so good that he hath a natural love for all good men and will not fail to reward them though he never made them a promise Knowledg of Christ p. 42. 43. as he cites the place though whoever looks there shall find no such thing that last Clause though he never made them a promise being his own addition though Printed in a different Character as my words Thus p. 10. The Light of Nature and the works of Creation and Providence assure us that God is so Holy that he hath a natural love for good men and will not fail to reward them and had Christ never appeared in the world yet we had reason to believe that God is thus good and holy and merciful The Appearance of Christ did not first discover the Nature of GOD to us but confirms us in the belief of what we had learn'd before from Nature pag. 42 43. GOD is as ready to pardon the worst of Men and why not the worst of Angels when they return to their Duty as a kind Father is to receive an humble and penitent Prodigal pag. 43. Now any one who reads this might conclude that I very much slight the Revelations of the Gospel and resolve all our Faith into the Light of Nature and therefore to discover the gross Knavery of this for I know not what gentler term to give it I shall transcribe that whole Paragraph which runs thus The Light of Nature and the Works of Creation and Providence and those manifold Revelations GOD hath made of himself to the world especially that last and most perfect Revelation by JESUS CHRIST our Lord assure us that God is infinite in all Perfections that he is so powerful that he can do whatever he pleases so wise that he knows how to order every thing for the best so good that he desires and designs the happiness of all his Creatures according to the capacity of their natures so holy that he hath a natural Love for all good men and will not fail to reward them but hates all sin and wickedness and will as certainly punish all obstinate and incorrigible Sinners but yet that he is very patient and long-suffering towards the worst of men and useth various methods of Kindness and Severity to reclaim them and is as ready to pardon them when they return to their Duty as a kind Father is to receive an humble and penitent Prodigal These Properties of GOD are plainly revealed in the Scripture without any further Acquaintance with the Person of Christ that is without reasoning from a pretended Acquaintance with the Person of Christ which is Dr. Owen's way of discovering those Gospel-Mysteries which cannot be learn'd from Revelation only against which this whole Discourse was levelled and which you may see fully stated and explained in pag. 38. of my Defence but to proceed and had Christ never appeared in the world yet we had reason to believe that GOD is thus wise and good and holy and merciful because not only the works of Creation and Providence but the Word of GOD assures us that he is so The appearance of Christ did not first discover the nature of GOD to us but only gave us a greater Expression of Gods Goodness than ever we had before confirms us in the belief of what we had learn'd before from Nature and Revelation just as his Resurrection which is an ocular demonstration of another Life confirms us in
Ages was more or less obscure according to the different Revelations which God made to the World as it must necessarily be It was but little that Adam understood from that promise The seed of the woman shall break the Serpents head nor could that promise made to Abraham In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed instruct him who this seed was or what he should do or by what means he should bless the world as I shewed particularly in my first Discourse to which I shall refer my Reader The promise made to David of a great Prince that should come of his Race and sit upon his Throne and those other magnificent descriptions of the Kingdom of the Messias by the Prophets betrayed the Jews into an expectation of a temporal Prince which was the reason why they rejected Christ when he came And though the Prophesies of Isaiah and Daniel concerning the Sufferings of the Messiah seem very plain to us now the event has expounded them yet it is as evident that the Jews did not understand them and must we be forced now to please Mr. Danson to say that Adam and Enoch and Abraham and the whole Jewish Nation did understand that their promised Messiah was to be no less Person than a God incarnate that he was to live in a mean condition to preach the Gospel to suffer Death upon the Cross to rise again from the dead and ascend up into Heaven there to intercede for us and that we are to be saved by a fiducial relyance and recumbency on the Merits and Righteousness of his Life and Death truly I would do something to gain his favour but I cannot renounce my senses and assert that to be which is so plain never was I believe that the true Light of the Gospel never shone upon the World till the day-spring from on high visited us but this is no hindrance to Gods accepting and rewarding good men for the sake of Christ for why may not God accept us for reasons which at present he thinks sit to conceal from us The vertue of Christs death to procure our pardon and reward does not depend upon our knowing but Gods accepting it and why may not God if he pleases accept it unknown to us Thirdly the terms and conditions of Salvation were always the same viz. such a sincere and hearty Faith as governs our lives and actions The objects of this Faith alter according to the different degrees of revelation The belief of the being and providence of God was all that could be required of those who had no more revealed to them but every new revelation God made enlarged the objects of their Faith till it grew up to the perfection of the Gospel Revelation and now our Faith in Christ whereby we are justified is of the same kind with the Faith of Abel and Enoch and Abraham but enlarged and perfected by a more perfect revelation as those good men believed whatever discoveries God made to them and governed their lives accordingly so must we believe all the Revelations Christ hath made to us of the Will of God and the way to Salvation and govern our lives by them and this is the righteousness of Faith as I have at large proved in the Knowledge of Christ pag. 252. c. Were the only condition of our justification a fiducial reliance and recumbency on Christ a rowling and resting our Souls on him and a fancyful application of his Merits and Righteousness to our selves these good men could never have been saved by Christ because this requires a particular knowledge of what Christ was to do and suffer which they had not but such a Faith in God as teaches us to love and serve him is of the same kind with the Christian Faith whereby we are now justified such a Faith in Christ as makes us obedient to the Gospel This our Adversaries are very sensible of and therefore nothing will serve them but to assert that Abraham and other good men before Christ had an explicite knowledge of Christ and were saved by resting on Christ for Salvation as they hope to be but it is evident that this is false and therefore it is as evident that their notion of Justification is false or else they must say that these good men were not saved by Christ. Fourthly the evidence these good men had of their acceptance with God did vary also according to the different Dispensations they were under that natural knowledge we have of God from the natural impreffions on our minds or from the works of Creation and Providence give us some assurance of Gods love to good men and of his readiness to pardon and reward those who are sincere Worshippers of him but this knowledge is not certain as that which is founded upon an express promise confirmed by our Saviour Christ himself the arguments from Nature without the help of Revelation are sufficient to incline honest minds though they are not without all possibility of a mistake as it was in the belief of a future state we see Mankind did generally agree in it though the evidence was not so great but that it needed a farther confirmation and therefore notwithstanding that evidence the World had of it yet Christ is said to have brought life and immortality to light by the Gospel because he has given us such assurance of it as the World never had in former Ages And therefore till the appearance of Christ in the World God gave them some additional confirmation of his acceptance of good men above what the light of Nature afforded as the frequent apparitions of Angels who possibly might make some greater discoveries to them than are recorded and the peculiar expressions of his goodness to Abraham Isaac and Jacob and to all their Posterity for their sakes all the promises of the Law of Moses which though according to the letter were but temporal yet were designed to typifie and represent spiritual and future blessings and were understood so by good men And since God for wise reasons reserved to himself was pleased to make but an imperfect Revelation to these good men he accepted also of a more imperfect obedience than the Gospel of our Saviour requires of us according to our Saviours known Rule To whom much is given of them shall be much required And since God was pleased to accept of good men for the sake of a Saviour whom they did not know with a distinct and explicite knowledge and to accept of meaner attainments when they wanted those powerful motives and assistances which were necessary to raise them to the Evangelical Heights of Goodness it brings it to such an equal balance that we cannot say that God was wanting to these good men But yet fifthly it was necessary that Christ should actually come into the World and suffer and dye because these good men were accepted upon account of that atonement which Christ was to make in the fulness of