it is maintained by the terrour of Inquisitions and the pomp of a worldly power and the favour of the Great who find their own interests in it It is only the Gospel of the LORD that from its birth had the courage and the force to fly every way penetrating with incredible swiftness all the Regions of the habitable world in less than five and twenty years And let none alledge unto me here the Seduction of Mahomet which infected the East and the South and a part of the West it self in a very little time For there is nothing alike in the progress of the one and the other of these two doctrines I pass by other differences that may be observed I will only touch at one of the most essential namely that Mahomet and his Successours advanced not their impostures but by force of Arms and dint of Sword not Preaching and establishing their Doctrine save in the Countreys they conquer'd and among the Nations they brought under their Yoke To say true it was their Iron and not their Alcoran that ran through and spoiled the World What was strange or supernatural in their success That a Troop of Robbers whom their own need or others cowardice and confusion emboldened to enterprise could seize them of some Towns by fraud or force That puffed up with the good fortune of their first successes and by a multitude of people joyned with them they pushed further on and issuing out of their Arabia should attempt the outmost quarters of the Roman Empire very ill-garded at that time and in a manner exposed to pillage and that gaining ground by little and little they should fall on further and break in on one side and the other as the division and weakness of their enemies gave them opportunity so as in fine in the space of three or four score years they saw by these progresses the East and the South in their hands Sure there was nothing but humane in all this Alexander the Macedonian had yer-while done as much or more in less than fifteen years and Sesostris and divers others both before and after him It is then no Miracle that the Religion of the Saracens born if I may so say upon the wings of their victorious Ensignes saw much of the World by this means in fifty or sixty years If any marvel be it is that of their armes which did so great exploits in so small time and not that of their Alcoran which never entred but into places whose gates fire and sword opened for it But as to the Gospel of the LORD JESUS it is quite otherwise It had not to sustain it and advance it in the world either the aid of force or the favour of armes or the successes of Warr or the exploits of any Conquerour It had not in its service either the charms of Eloquence or the subtilities of Philosophy in one word it had no humane or terrene succour that you can possibly imagine Those that carryed it were twelve or thirteen Fishermen with a little number of others of the same Cloth without Credit without Armes without courage without Experience the off-scouring and sweepage of the world weakness and imbecillity it self who far from enterprising upon ought of other mens had renounced all that was their own who instead of smiting and slaying where whip'd and ston'd at every turn instead of attaquing did not so much as make resistance to them that ill handled them living in an extreme humility and innocence With this poor equipage the Gospel undertook the world and though it met every where with gates shut up and walls garrison'd with all that was terrible to force it back though the Jews persecuted it the gentiles derided it great and small had it in abomination Magistrates banish'd it and put it under the most cruel punishments though all did rend it with injuries and reproaches yet naked as it was it made it self room and in spight of so many dreadful impediments ran from East to West and from South to North and so constantly despised all earthly means as it reigned every where for sixcore years before it had one Magistrate or Captain on its side disarming and despoiling them when it received any so far was it from making advantage of their arms or authority We may affirm therefore that this progress of the Gospel is a thing altogether singular not at any time else seen or hapning in the world and with which neither Mahumetism nor any other Religion hath any community Consequently that this is a mark of the truth and divinity of this holy doctrine those that are humane neither having nor being able to have that admirable force and vertue which appeareth in it But this event proves the same thing yet again after another manner inasmuch as it was a manifest accomplishment of ancient Oracles yer-while given by the LORD to His former people and registred in His Scriptures which foretell in divers places that the Messiah should spread all abroad the knowledge of the true GOD which was before shut up within the strait limits of Judea Isa 60.3 9.1 that the Nations one day should walk in His light and that people sitting in darkness should see a great light which the LORD JESUS explaining in the dayes of His flesh had said upon it Mat. 24.14 that His Gospel should be Preached in all the world These predictions therefore appearing at that time so punctually and so admirably and in so short a space fulfilled who can doubt any more but that the LORD JESUS is the true CHRIST since never any but He revealed the GOD of Israel and His service to the World and that His Apostles were the servants of this same GOD who having foretold these things so many ages before so mightily executed them by their Ministry in the fulness of time But besides the confirmation of the Colossians faith in general I account that the Apostle would more-over by this Elogy he gives the Gospel to be come into all the world fortifie them in particular against the new doctrines which some seducers were sowing in their Church For since other Churches founded here and their in divers parts of the world had heard nothing of them it was a very evident argument that they were not any part of the Gospel that is of what the Apostles Preached Whence we may draw to give you this advice by the way an invincible proof both of the truth of the doctrine we believe and of the vanity of that which we contest about with our adversaries of Rome For as to that we hold it is evident the Apostles Preached it in all the world both by word of mouth and by writing there being none of the necessary positive and assirmative articles of our faith but doth appear in all the Monuments of Apostolique Preaching to wit both in the Books they wrote and in the Churches they sounded As for our adversaries it is no less evident they can
never shew that the Monarchy or infallibility of their Pope or the Adoration of their Host or the service of their Images or their invocation of Saints or Purgatory or the trafick of their Indulgencies or any other of the points which we debate with them was Preached in all the world at the time of the holy Apostle no track at all of them being found in any of the Books or Memorials that remain of that age or of a long time beyond it only a man may perceive them some ages after growing up one in one place and another in another at divers times and in different Climats an evident sign that they are not parts of the Gospel of JESUS CHRIST which was Preached entire in all the world in St. Pauls life time but inventions and traditions of men that came since After this suddain and admirable spreading of the Gospel the Apostle adds the efficacy it had in the places where it had been preached It is not only come into all the world saith he but which is more it bringeth forth fruit there as it doth also in you It bears the same fruits there which it hath produced among you You discern that these fruits of the Gospel signifie no other thing but that faith charity honesty modesty temperance and the other spiritual vertues which it produceth in the souls of those that hear it and receive it as they ought and in which the Sanctification of men doth consist It is this power and efficacy of the Gospel which the LORD would represent unto us in the Parable of the seed to which He compareth it Matt. 13. and which according to the divers disposition of the places where it fell brought forth more or less fruit in some an bundred fold in other fixty and elsewhere but thirty Never was seen a thing more marvellous The Gospel changed the whole earth in a few years It crowned plants with flowers and fruits that were barren and accursed It filled the desarts the plains and the most desolate heaths with exquisit and delicious trees That which the Laws of Nations that which the most excellent Philosophy had husbanded whole ages in vain no sooner felt the hand of these Evangelique Vine-dressers and labourers but suddainly losing the bitterness of its first juice was sweetned and became loaden with Celestial fruits There was piety sweetness and humanity seen to flourish where never had appeared ought but the horrour of Superstition of Atheism of cruelty and all other kind of Vices This is the change which the LORD had foretold in Isaiah Isa 41.19 in those Allegorical words I will make to grow in the Desart the Cedar the Pine tree the Myrtle and the Olive I will set in the Plains the Firre-tree the Elme and the Box together And elsewhere again comparing the Gospel to a rain that watereth the Earth and makes it bud and bring forth corn and bread So shall my word be saith He it shall not return to me without effect Isa 55.10 11. but it shall do all my pleasure and prosper to the things I shall send it for And this divine fruitfulness of the doctrine of the Gospel which miraculously changed the world is also a most evident argument of it's truth and of it's heavenly original there never having been Religion or Discipline on earth that had so lively and universal an efficacy But the Apostle particularly commendeth here the fruits it had brought forth among the Colossians It fructifieth in you saith he since the day that you heard and knew the grace of GOD in truth He praiseth both their teachableness in that this word had fructified in them from the first day they heard it and their constancy for that it continued still fructifying to that time The earth produceth not fruit as soon as it hath received the seed there must be time to mollifie the grain to make it thrust forth and sprout to raise it up and garnish it with fruits In this spiritual Husbandry it is not so The Gospel if rightly received into your heart will fructifie there from that very moment Receive it then faithful Brethren Defer not till the morrow This day that you hear the voice of the LORD harden not your hearts Psalm 95. It 's one of the most pernicious artifices of the enemy to suggest to men that they put off their conversion to the future Give me saith He this day and thou shalt give God the next Give me the present and Him the future to me the flower and vigour of thy life to Him the remains and thine old age So they find at last when all hath been given to Satan and the world nothing remains for them to give the LORD to whom they have left the future only that is what was not theirs disposing of the present which alone was in their power to the pleasure of their mortal enemy Christians take heed of his wiles and hasten ye out of his snares Imitate these faithful Colossians Receive the Word of GOD so deep into your hearts that it may fructifie there from this very day You cannot be the LORD' 's too soon Put not off the design of being happy to another time consider that time fleeth and life runs out and death comes while you deliberate But if we must begin betimes to bear fruit worthy of the Gospel it is not mean't that we may cease again soon after as forward Trees which make an end first as they did begin The plants of the LORD begin early but never cease to fructifie They bring forth fruit in their through-white old age and are even then in good liking and bide fresh as the Psalmist singeth Psal 92.15 If you have embraced the Gospel with ardour retain it with an invincible constancy For salvation is not prepared save for them that shall persevere that shall keep the verdure of the heavenly sap in them in spight of the scorching heats of Summer and the coolings of Winter so as no season how rude and contrary soever doth ever strip them of their mystical flowers and fruits As to what remains the Apostle calleth the faith of the Gospel The knowledge of the grace of GOD because it is not possible to relish this heavenly doctrine if a man have not received and experimented the mercy which it offereth us in JESUS CHRIST This grace is the heart and substance of the Gospel Whence appears that it is a corrupting it and a changing the nature of it to thrust into it the doctrine of the satisfactions and merits of men things either wholly incompatible with Grace or such as at least extreamly darken and enfeeble it When he faith that they heard and knew the Grace of GOD in truth he meaneth either that they received it truly in sincerity of heart without hypocrisie or that this Grace they knew was delivered them pure and sincere without any mixture either of Pharisaical Superstition or Philosophical Vanity or finally
Saints of GOD who do truly know His mysteries the revelation which is necessary for the knowing of them most assuredly purifying and sanctifying the heart of man But I perceive some difficulties arise here in your minds against this doctrine of the Apostle which must be resolved for your satisfaction before we pass further on First You may ask me in general how it is true that this mysterie was hid from the foregoing ages seeing the Gospel is eternal And then how this accordeth with so many Prophecies of the Old Testament in which it seems to be so clearly represented and moreover how with the LORD 's saying of Abraham that he saw His day and lastly with the Scriptures express informing us that the ancient believers were all saved by faith which seems to have no place without the knowledge of the Gospel To this I answer for the first article that it is true the Gospel was foretold and as the Apostle speaks elsewhere was promised and figured under the Old Testament but it was not manifested It was at that time in being but lay hid in the bosome of the Father and only wrap'd up in the Oracles by which He promised it and in the types by which He figured it so as it is nevertheless eternal forasmuch as in these latter times it was not made and created of nothing but only brought out of the obscurities and enveloppings which untill then it had remained covered with And as for the Prophecies it 's true they are clear since the Sun of righteousness arising in the horizon of the Church hath there shed abroad His light by the benefit thereof we easily read what the finger of GOD hath written in them But before this while the darkness of the night did cover all things it was impossible for the best sight to penetrate throughly the true meaning of them As when it is broad day we read distinctly and without difficulty the same writing wherein we see nothing but some strokes and a few letters confusedly during the dimness of the night Would you know what difference there is between these two seasons Turn to that Chapter of Isaiah Isa 53.7 in which we read He was led as a sheep to the slaughter and what follows There is not a child among us but presently understandeth it of CHRIST and His dying for us Act. 8.34 in a profound humbleness and charity Yet the Ethiopian who without doubt was very forward in the Schoole of the former people doth confess that he understandeth nothing of it and cannot tell whether the Prophet does say this of himself or of some other First the accomplishment of the things which is the commentary upon prophecies and the light of figures hath made the ancient oracles and types clear to us which by consequent remained obscure and inexplicable untill that event Secondly the Law did further augment this obscurity being then spread over these mysteries as a thick veil through which how sharp-sighted soever men were it was not possible for them to pierce Whereas now the righteousness of GOD having been revealed to us without the Law as the Apostle saith and this troublesome Veil having been rent and removed by JESUS CHRIST we clearly behold the light of Moses's face which indeed was of old but could not be seen as long as it abode covered with the Veil of the Law And as for Abraham he saw the day of the LORD and rejoyced in it that is to say he knew and believed that CHRIST should come and save the world and exalt the people of GOD unto a super-eminent glory which was sufficient for his joy but this implyeth not that he distinctly knew either what the person of CHRIST would be or in what manner He acquired salvation for us with all the circumstances of these things which neither any men or so much as Angels knew but by the manifestation of JESUS CHRIST in flesh Eph. 3.10 and by the consequents thereof the Apostle expresly testifying that it was then and not before that the manifold wisdom of GOD was made know to the Angels whom according to his ordinary stile he calleth principalities and powers The knowledge which the rest of the faithful had of CHRIST was like that which Abraham had They believed in sum His coming and their redemption and the restauration of all things by His means and they desired Him and waited affectionately for Him saluting His promises afar off But they did not distinctly comprehend the mysterie and in particular as we at this day do Yet this hindred not but that they were justified by the merit of His death and saved by His cross and fed with his Manna and made to drink of His source it being clear that there is no other salvation in the world but the same which He did procure nor do the divers degrees of faith by which the redeemed draw from His fulness vary ought at all in the essence and substance of His grace because GOD requireth no other faith of His people but such as is proportioned to the measure of the revelation He hath given them the same being more or less clear as the times were nearer to or further distant from the glorious light of His Son Thus the truth which the Apostle teacheth us here abideth firm and beyond all contradiction namely that the mysterie of GOD that is to say the Gospel was hid from ages and from all generations and was not manifested but now to the Saints of GOD. To whom saith he GOD would give to know what are the riches of the glory of this secret among the Gentiles which is CHRIST in you the hope of glory This is the third part of this Text and doth express the glory and the sum of this mysterie He sets the will of GOD at the entrance as a strong barr against our curiosity to stay it and restrain it from intruding into a search of the causes of this admirable dispensation of the mysterie of the Gospel It busieth its self principally about two points namely the time and the persons to whom this manifestation hath been made For as to the first it doth demand why GOD should suffer so many ages to flow forth and so many generations pass away without discovering the secret of the Gospel to them having reserved the revelation of it to these latter ages only Let us say with the Apostle that the truth is He would so do and be we contented with His will assuring our selves that it is just and reasonable though we know not the motives of it He hath reserved the seasons of things in His own dispose Besides at what time soever He had done it man would still have demanded why no sooner or no later Now he complains that GOD delayed so long If GOD had discovered His mysterie at the beginning he would complain of His having made so much haste He now objecteth the interest of the first ages that were deprived of
that is necessary for you Let your whole life be taken up in the continual handling of these Divine Jewels in admiring the beauty and using the brightness of them Let it be all the passion of your souls the matter of your joys and the consolation of your troubles If you have not those false good things which the world so much glorieth in remember that you have the treasures of Heaven the portion of Angels the wisdom and knowledg of happiness Take heed that none bereave you of so rich a possession Shut your ear against the prattle and plausible discoursings of Seducers Conserve this treasure couragiously against their attempts nor be content to have it only communicate it to your neighbours lay forth the wonders of it before their eyes adorning all the parts of your life with it Let the innocency and sanctity and sweetness and humility of the LORD JESUS shine out in it Let these be your Pearls and your Jewels and your Ornaments before men which may constrain them to acknowledg that JESUS CHRIST dwells in the midst of you and to say Of a truth this Nation is a wise and understanding people Above all instruct your Children in this knowledg Leave them this wisdom for an inheritance Such a portion is enough to make them happy whereas without this they cannot possibly be other than fools and wretches though you should leave them all the wealth of the East and West Finally since the Apostle assureth us that all the treasures of wisdom are in JESUS CHRIST let us content our selves with him alone and centemn the vanity of those who under any pretence whatsoever would make pass for wisdom doctrines that are forreign and without the sphere of CHRIST Let us not so much as give them the hearing It 's warrant enough for us to reject them that they make up no part of the treasure of JESUS CHRIST I stand not to enquire whether they be true or false helpful or hurtful It sufficeth me that whatever they be otherways they are not in CHRIST Nothing is to be received in Religion but what comes out of this treasury GOD who hath given it us in his abundant mercy and who calleth us to partake also of it the LORD's day next grant us to conserve it pure and entire to possess it with joy and respect in this world and reap the full fruit of it in that which is to come So be it THE EIGHTEENTH SERMON COL CHAP. II. VER IV V. Ver. IV. But this I say that none may deceive you by words of perswasion V. For though I am absent in body yet in spirit I am with you rejoycing and seeing your order and the firmness of your faith which you have in CHRIST AS men do not naturally love and desire but things which have an appearance of good so they believe none but those that have a semblance of truth and they lay down love of the one and belief of the others as soon as they certainly discover that the former are evil and the latter untrue Whence it comes that being prepossessed upon some general and confused knowledg with conceit that the enjoyment or belief of a thing would be profitable and advantageous to them they wish it prove good and true evidently presupposing that otherwise their very nature could not permit them to love it or believe it This is to be seen in children themselves who are the sincerest and most natural map of the motions of our nature For when their Nurses tell them any thing they ask if it be true and if the tale please them they are troubled when they perceive it is but a tale and would have it true that they might believe it So deeply imprinted in the mind of all reasonable Creatures is this sacred and inviolable principle of their nature that nothing is to be believed but what is true This advantage which truth naturally hath over falshood doth enforce its very enemies to counterfeit its mark and wear its livery they being sensible that their errors and falshoods can have no passage among men except they go under the appearance of some truth Even as Coiners that they may put off their Copper and Lead do give it the colour and resemblance of Gold and Silver and counterfeit the image and stamp of a lawful Prince or as they that would travel through an enemy's Countrey do privily accommodate themselves with the enemy's badges so Seducers well knowing that the understanding of man is the proper and lawful Kingdom of truth where nothing passes but under the avouching and marks of the same do fard and disguise the fictions which they would put off and give them as finely as they can the countenance and colour of truth that by the means of this false resemblance they may pass currant among men who would reject them immediately if they saw them in their own natural likeness There hath ever been a great number of these cheats in the world a multitude of persons being every where found who pricked forward by ambition or some other particular interest do strive to bring their fancies and dreams into reputation But as Christian Religion compriseth the best and most important Verities in the world so there never was any profession that Error and Imposture have more laboured to corrupt both by decrying some of its true doctrines on one hand and by intermingling of falshoods on the other And as all the artifice of such unhappy wits tendeth only to confound truth and lies so ought we to employ the utmost of our industry that we may effectually sever them and so discern them as we never take the one for the other This discerning dear Brethren is one of the most important duties of our life It is loss I confess to take Copper for Gold and bad money for good and it is moreover ignorance ever shameful sometimes not a little hurtful to receive an error for truth in Philosophy and in civil life But yet the loss and shame that accrues from all this kind of cheats reacheth no further than the present time whereas the consequents of those impostures which we suffer in Religion do extend even to eternity For this cause the holy Apostle often warneth the faithful Rom. 16.17 1 Thes 5.21 Eph. 4.14 Heb. 5.14 to whom he writeth to beware of them and to try all things with a great deal of care that they may not be inveigled by seducers nor take up their traditions for truths willing every sound and thorough Christian to have his senses exercised and habituated to discern between good and evil You may have observed in the Text we have read that this is the happiness which he wisheth and would procure to the Colossians keeping them from being drawn in by the fair speeches of those seducers that courted them He had afore represented to them at large the abundance and excellency of the benefits of their LORD and Saviour and he protested again in the
to think and medirate on Him and to receive from His hand the Divine fire of His Spirit that we may speak of His wonderful works Our feast of Tabernacles is to live as strangers in the world without cleaving to it still aspiring unto Jerusalem which is above the Mother and the City of the faithful Our new Moons are the praise we continually sound forth unto GOD not with Silver-trumpets but with heart and understanding In fine Our Sabbath is to do not our own will but the will of GOD repressing and restraining the motions and sentiments of our nature that place may be left for CHRIST to work in us so as it may not be we that live but CHRIST who liveth in us This is Christians that true body which was represented heretofore by the Jewish shadows These are your festivals your solemnities and your devotions Keep them holy and celebrate them religiously It is the great Prince of your salvation who hath instituted and consecrated them He recommends them to you every where in His Gospel and hath indissolvably obliged you to them by that death of His the remembrance of which we are to celebrate next LORD's day If you acquit your selves worthily herein be assured that after such stay for a time as you make here below He will raise you up to Heaven there to celebrate with Him and His Angels that last mystical feast of the great day which rising at the point of our Resurrection shall not go down for ever but shine eternally and render us happy in the fruition of that life and immortal glory which was prepared for us before the foundation of the world So be it THE XXVIII SERMON COL II. Ver. XVIII Vers XVIII Let no man master it over you at his pleasure by an humility of spirit and the service of Angels intruding into things which he hath not seen being rashly puffed up with the sence of his flesh DEar Brethren It 's a thing infinitely strange and which shews the extream corruption of our nature more sensibly than any other that men should have so vehement and invincible a passion for the serving of creatures GOD the Soveraign LORD both of them and of the Universe did manifest Himself clearly to them causing the illustrious and glorious marks of His goodness and wisdom and infinite power to shine forth every where above and beneath upon them and about them yea bringing the same home even to their hearts and giving them a feeling of Him by the innumerable benefits which He poureth out continually upon all the parts of their lives In short He shewed Himself and drew near and presented Himself in so lively a manner to their understandings Senses and perceptions that they could not if I may presume to say it be ignorant of Him though they would Besides all this He vouchsafed to reveal Himself to them at the beginning in a particular way speaking familiarly to Adam and Noah and others of the primitive Patriarchs who were the sources of the first and second world Nevertheless you know that notwithstanding all these lights the rage of that passion men had for Idolatry was so violent that it made them forget all these holy and admirable discoveries of the Deity and induced them instead of their great and abundantly good and omnipotent Creator blessed for â—ver to serve the creature and their phrensie rose to such an height that besides the Luminaries of Heaven and the invisible Powers that do govern them as also besides Kings and Sages and persons whom worth or authority had raised above others they were not ashamed to adore yet other things of the lowest in nature as Beasts and Plants and Elements and to compleat their extravagancy they added to all the rest Images and Figures things absolute insensible and unprofitable Changing as the Apostles does reproach them the glory of the uncorruptible GOD Rom. 1.22 into the resemblance of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed Beasts and creeping things This Bruitish error having overwhelmed all mankind the LORD was so gracious that He drew Abraham out of it as a brand out of an universal Conflagration and afterwards manifesting Himself more clearly unto his posterity by the ministry of Moses and giving them His Law He raised up amid this people a publick testimony of His truth against the general misdemeanour of the world fulminating a thousand and a thousand maledictions against all such as served Creatures But the love of Idolatry was so strong as it broke this barr of Heaven and violated this Divine declaration which prov'd to be so far from reducing the Nations to their duty as it could not keep the very Israelites in theirs but they as we learn by their History often gave up themselves to the serving of Creatures At last after so many significations of His mind GOD sent His only begotten the Sun of Righteousness and truth into the world who opened to us the manner and the reasons and causes of the worshipping of GOD and did fully discover that which both the Gentiles were ignorant of by reason of their stupidity and the Jews did but imperfectly know in their minority Now who would think that so shameful and gross an errour as the serving of creatures is should have the shamelesness to shew its self in so noble and so glorious a light Yet you know this wretched passion found the means to content its self bringing in under divers vain but plausible pretences the worshipping of Angels and men by little and little among Christians But however it is not so strange a thing that a corruption should get such ground in the latter ages when it was favoured by an universal ignorance and by a decay of truth and by the depravedness of men such a thing doth frequently come to pass in their disciplines and constitutions commonly as they go on they grow worse That which surpasseth all admiration is that in the time and under the eyes of the holy Apostles of our LORD and Saviour there should be men found of so impudent a spirit as to promote so vile an errour in the profession of Christianity We should scarce be able to believe it if S. Paul did not give us that testimony of it which we even now read to you And GOD permitted it as well to exercise and prove the Church which then was as to confirm ours this occasion having here drawn from the Apostle's pen a clear and magnifick condemnation of this abuse He hath rejected already in the precedent context those observances which the false Teachers he opposeth had taken from the Mosaical Law now he refuâ—es those which they had borrowed from the Philosophers of the World For as we shall shew anon that serving of Angels which these men would have introduced among Christians was a fruit and an invention of Heathen Philosophy S. Paul strikes down this vain impiety in few words Let no man saith he master it ever you at his
an example of it in the Text which you even now heard For having said afore that the Colossians had heard of the hope which is laid up for us in the Heavens by the word of truth to wit the Gospel from thence he takes occasion to interpose in this verse something to its commendation representing to us the extention and efficacy of this Divine word of life The Gospel saith he which is come unto you as also it is into all the world and bringeth forth fruit as it doth also in you since the day that you heard and knew the Grace of God in truth In the two verses that follow he praiseth Epaphras who had by his Ministry converted the Colossians to the knowledge of the LORD giving him an excellent testimony of fidelity and goodness and mingling therewith some praises of the Colossians themselves As also saith he you have heard of Epaphras our dear fellow servant who is a faithful Minister of CHRIST for you who also hath declared unto us your Charity which you have in the Spirit This shall be if it please the LORD the matter of this action And to proceed upon it in order we will consider one after the other the two particulars that present themselves as you see in the Text of St. Paul to wit the praise of the Gospel in the former verse and that of Epaphras in the two next touching at also upon each what the Apostle intermixeth to the commendation of the Colossians As to the Gospel he toucheth at two points First its admirable progress and its great and sudden spread It is saith he come unto you as also into all the world and secondly its divine effectualness to convert men and change their manners and life And it bringeth forth fruit saith he as also it doth in you since the day that you heard and knew the Grace of GOD in truth He saith therefore first That the Gospel was come to the Colossians secondly That it is also come unto all the World About the first there is no difficulty For since there was a Church in the City of Colosse it is evident that the Gospel by which Christian Churches are founded and builded had been Preached to them Only we should observe in this event the marvels of the goodness of GOD towards the Colossians For they were a barbarous and an Idolatrous people very far off from the Countrey and the Religion of Israel a portion of Phrygia a Province infamous for its abominations from whence had issued the mysteries and infernal devotions of Cibele called by the Gentiles the mother of the GODs the most detestable of all Pagan Idols and in whose service were committed the most unclean and shamefullest horrours The Colossians as other inhabitants of Phrygia were plunged in this gulf of vileness when the LORD vouchsafed to visit them and make the light of His Gospel to arise upon them Whence appears that the knowledge He gives us of His word is a present from His meer grace and not the pay of our pretended merits For what had the Colossians in the condition they then were that might invite Him to communicate this rich treasure to them what had they on the contrary but might have diverted Him from it seeing all among them was full of a profound and inveterate Idolatrousness You see also the Apostle saith not that they were come to the Gospel but that the Gospel was come to them to shew us that it is GOD that cometh to us who preventeth us by His grace according to the determinate purpose of His good pleasure The sick do go or send to the Physician and sollicite the succour of his art Here quite contrary the supream Physitian of souls seeketh to the sick He comes to them in His benignity He sendeth them His Ministers and presenteth to them His remedies when they dream of nothing less Luk. 19.10 than of their malady and the cure necessary for them The Son of man came to seek and save that which was lost He dispatcheth His servants to Colosse and elsewhere to bear thither His salvation to people that thought not save of destroying themselves He makes Himself be found of them that sought Him not Isa 65.11 and saith unto a Nation that was not called by His Name Behold me behold me Let a man search as much as he pleaseth He shall never be able to find any reasonable cause of this dispensation of GOD communicating His Gospel at certain times and to certain places but His sole good pleasure And that we might the better note this truth He often directeth the light of His word to those that governed themselves worst in the state of nature and hideth it from them that seemed less defiled than others He imparteth His Gospel to the Colossians to the Ephesians to the Corinthians and such like the most lost men that were in all kind of superstitions and Vices He saith nothing to the Gymnosophists or the Brachmans or to divers others as well Barbarians as Greeks which were esteemed at that time the most innocent of all mankind as in effect there appeareth much more of justice and honesty in what is reported to us of their manners than in those of any other people Wherefore hath GOD taken this course Because if He had done otherwise if He had called only those in whose policy and life was seen some outward goodness to shine forth passing by those whose manners had nothing which was not damnable we should have believed without all doubt what some cannot yet forbear to say that it is the works of men that oblige GOD to call them and to impart His Gospel to them and that if in rigour they be not worthy of this favour they merit it at least in a seemliness of equity and in congruity as they speak of it in the Schools of Rome Therefore the LORD useth very often a clean contrary procedure to make us understand that those whom He calleth do not more than those he leaveth merit ought at all as in effect it is most true that all men in the corruption wherein they are born do nothing that is of value the most splendid of their pretended vertues in this estate being but a plaister and a deceitful dawbing which under a fair appearance hideth only deformity and filth and that if He vouchsafe to illuminate any with the light of his Gospel it is of the sole good pleasure of His grace He doth it and not at all for merit of theirs It was therefore a miracle of the Divine goodness that this saving Doctrine came to the Colossians who by their nature were so far from it and the Apostle remindeth them of it to animate them more and more in sincere gratitude towards the author of so great a benefit But that which he addeth is much more strange and incredible that the Gospel was come into all the world He testifieth it too elsewhere as here a little after where
he saith that the Gospel is preached to every creature Col. 1.23 that is under Heaven and at the tenth of the Epistle to the Romans where applying to the Ministers of the LORD JESUS what the Psalmist had sung of the Heavens Rom. 10.18 Their sound saith he is gone forth through all the earth and their words unto the ends of the World And elsewhere speaking of himself he saith That from Jerusalem Rom. 15.19 and round about it even to Illyricum he had made the Gospel of JESUS CHRIST to abound and after the time he wrote those words He sowed it besides in the Isle of Malta and at Rome Now if the other twelve Apostles and the seventy Disciples and the Evangelists did labour each according to his measure in proportion with St. Paul as it is not to be doubted but they did no one will have cause to be astonished that all they together should have by that time carryed the Gospel through the whole world We read likewise in the writings of the first Christians Justin Clement Tertullian and others that in their time that is about 130 and 160 years only after the LORD's death all was full of Christian Churches and that there was no Nation either among the Greeks or the Barbarians nay the very Scythians or Tartarians wherein CHRIST JESUS had not servants And though these testimonies cannot be rejected without extream impudence there being no probability that either St. Paul or those other Writers would have spoken of the thing in such sort if it had not been true yet entirely to disarm incredulity I will add that the very same appears by the Books of Pagans of that time that are remaining For Tacitus a Roman Historian a passionate enemy of Christianity Amel. l. 15. though otherwise a grave man and of great esteem among his Countrymen hath left in Writing that in the eleventh year of Nero that is only eight years after the date of this Epistle of St. Paul to the Colossians a severe search having been made after it there was found a very great multitude of Christians at Rome This sufficeth to justifie what the Apostle says For since that Preaching was able to penetrate so far on this side athwart Provinces that made as it were the heart of the Roman Empire it might be much more easily spread towards the East in the Estates of the Parthians and in the Indies even whither St. Thomas went as appears by tracks of it that remain of it to this day in those Countries and towards the South in Egypt and Ethiopia where St. Matthew Preached as the ancients do report and towards the North whither passed some of the other Disciples This was well nigh the whole world then known of the Greeks and Romans and thus without doubt the Apostle understands it in this place For as to those great Countreys discovered in the West about one hundred and fifty years ago which they commonly call the West Indies or the New world it is evident the Ancients had no certain knowledge of them and it is very likely that they were not yet peopled in the Apostle's time the furtherst memory which the Nations there have preserved of things yerst done among them being but for four or five hundred years at most Be it concluded therefore that taking the World as is commonly understood for Countries inhabited and known at that time the Gospel was then already come into all the world The Apostle mentions it to the Colossians First to confirm them the more in the saith they had given to the Gospel I confess that its truth depends not upon the success of the Preaching it nor upon the multitude of them that believe it Though all the world should reject it though Heaven and Earth should persecute it the faith of a Christian ought to abide alwayes firm and unshaken being founded as it is upon the word of GOD and not upon the consent of men as on the contrary though the whole universe should maintain errour we should not be for this either obliged to follow errour or excusable for having followed it this order of GOD subsisting for ever that we must not follow a multitude to do evil But thoug it be thus yet it is a great consolation to a faithful soul to see the truth spread abroad And since the Divine Vertue of the LORD is so much the more powerfully declared by how much the more men it converteth unto his Christ it is evident that this extension of the Gospel helpeth and confirmeth our Faith in as much as it furnisheth us with an excellent testimony of the power of GOD and of the efficacy of His word But I add also that the success here touched by the Apostle contains a manifest argument of the Divinity of the Gospel and that in two respects For first if you consider the thing in its self it is so great and marvelous as that it sheweth sufficiently that this Doctrine is not only true but even Divine and Celestial When St. Paul wrote this Letter it was not full thirty years that JESUS CHRIST had suffered death in Judea and yet the Gospel as he saith was already come into all the world How could it have made so much way in so little time penetrated so many obstacles flown into so many places infinitely distant if it had not been both of a Celestial Original and carryed by a divine force Certainly as the extension of the light of the Sun who inlightens the whole Hemisphere in an instant and the rapidness of its motion who visits all the Climats of the universe in four and twenty hours doth evidently shew us that it is a work of GOD and of a nature altogether different from that of Earthly and Elementary things In like manner this so swift and suddain course of the Evangelique Doctrine that fill'd the world in so little time pierced through and dissipated the darkness and made it self be seen so quickly from one end of the Heavens to the other invincibly proves that it is a divine thing and no humane production Look on all the disciplines that ever had sway in the World You shall not find any of them that was establisht in this sort and made such a progress in so small a time The religions of the Pagans lived only in the Countries where they were born and if sometimes they stretched further it was rather the curiosity of strangers that brought them from the place of their birth than their own design or vigour all those so famous sects of the Philosophy of the Greeks did abide each of them in the soil that bare them And the Doctrine which the Popes of Rome have established in their Communion came not to the estate wherein we see it but by a long succession of time one age gaining one point and another adding a second till after many ages it took in fine the consistence and form it hath at this day and wherein
good works so the exercise of good works cleanseth the eyes of our understandings and encreaseth true wisdom on the contrary the neglect of sanctification diminisheth this divine clearness in us and bringeth back by little and little the darkness of ignorance upon us For as the LORD giveth new graces to him that faithfully manageth His first presents so takes He away His Talent from Him that abuseth it Those that cast away a good conscience make shipwrack also of Faith and they that withhold the truth in unrighteousness are given up to a mind disfurnished of all judgement and GOD sendeth the efficacy of errour to those that receive not his Holy doctrine with love On the contrary He revealeth His secret and augmenteth His light to them that seek His commandments and are bent to do His will Let us hold fast therefore these two precious gifts of the LORD knowledge and good works Faith and Charity and studiously apply us to encrease the one by the other meditating and learning the mysteries of GOD that we may obey His will and obey His will that we may confirm our selves more and more in the knowledge of His mysteries Dear Brethren That which the Apostle hath desired for His Colossians is very much an accomplished knowledge of the Divine will a life worthy of the LORD a spiritual secondity fructifying in every good work and a continual advancement in heavenly wisdom Yet this is not all For how great and excellent soever these things be they suffice not without perseverance to conduct us to salvation and it 's impossible to persevere in them without a supernatural strength and firmness Therefore St. Paul wisheth again in the last place for these faithful people that they may be strengthened in all might according to the power of His glory in all suffering and patience of mind with joy This succour is necessary for us as well because of our own infirmities as for the multitude violence and obstinacy of our enemies For as to our selves though that celestial spirit wherewith GOD baptizeth us at the beginning of our vocation doth invest us with a new vigour yet so it is that there remaineth much weakness in us while we live on earth our inward man being yet but in its infancy a weak age and which easily lets it self sink if it be not sustained And as for our enemies we have a vast multitude of them that watch night and day to destroy us and ranged in diverse bands under the ensignes of the Devil the world and the flesh the principal heads of this black Army conjured to our ruine cease not to trouble us leaving nor wile nor forcible attempt nor malice nor violence nor threatning nor promise un-employed against us If we have repulsed one of them 〈◊〉 return again upon us diverse others which essay us on all sides espy where 〈…〉 weak and oftentimes turn our own weapons against us If we have overthrown avarice voluptuousness sets its self on foot If we defeat it also ambition enters in its place Hatred unites with it Desire of revenge pusheth us on Wrath provoketh us Envy seizeth us Persecution troubleth us Prosperity pusseth us up the success of our own combats tickleth us Oftentimes that which helps us on one hand hurts us on another as in a complicated disease in which the remedies cross one another or that which is good for the liver is dangerous for the Stomach Who seeth not that to preserve our selves in such a mingled Combate and against so many charges so confused and so obstinate for they last as long as our lives we have need of an extraordinary might we who of our selves have so little that we are insufficient even for one good thought But GOD armeth us with the power of His Spirit as with an impenetrable buckler under which we stand in covert amid that thick hail of blows that falls continually about us It 's this Divine power the Apostle wisheth here to the Colossians when he prayeth that they might be strengthened in all might that their souls might be confirmed their hearts hardned as a Diamond to resist all assaults their courages vested with an heroick ardour and firmness which all the rages of Hell or earth may never be able to overcome He prayeth they may be strengthened in all might because as we have to do with divers enemies and are sick of divers infirmities we have need to receive not one or two kinds of strength only but many different ones For even as in nature you see the strength of bodies is different one resisting one thing and yielding to another one having the vertue to repulse the force of one element but not to gard it self from another So in a manner is it in the souls of men Such a man will bravely free himself from the tentation of one Vice that will not be able to defend himself from another Such a man shall resist the violences of the world as will yield to the charms of its caresses Since that to lose a Victory it is enough to be overcome though by but one of their enemies 't is with great reason that the Apostle for preserving to these Colossians the honour of their Crown and Triumph wisheth them all strength that is a perfect strength which may be of proof against all the strokes of the enemy which may boldly undertake good and holy actions how high and difficult soever they be which may valiantly combate vices resolutely despise earthly things vigorously repell tentations and generously suffer afflictions He sheweth us also by the way the source of this heavenly might when after having wished that the Colossians might be strengthned in all might he addeth according to the power of the glory of GOD that is according to His glorious power by a manner of speaking ordinary in the style of the Hebrews Whence is it that these faithful people do receive this admirable strength necessary for their salvation From the glorious power of the LORD saith the Apostle that is from that immense and efficacious puissance of GOD which nothing can resist The Holy Spirit is so named in St. Luke Lâ—k 24.49 where the LORD commandeth His Apostles to tarry at Jerusalem untill they be indued with power from on high that is the Spirit he had promised them And St. Paul elsewhere making for the Ephesians a petition altogether like this which he here presents to GOD for the Colossians clearly termeth that the Spirit of GOD Ephes 3.16 which in this passage he calleth the Vertue or Power of His glory GOD grant you saith he that you may be powerfully strengthned by His Spirit in the inner man He calleth this Vertue of the Spirit of God glorious to express its admirable and unsurmountable force which triumpheth magnificently over all that opposeth its action which with the weakest means accomplisheth the greatest things which changeth when it will Shepheards into Law-givers and Kings Cow-heards into Prophets and Persecutors
and felicity whereof we shall be seized on high in the Heavens It is best in my opinion to joyn these two expositions together that we may so comprehend the entire state of the whole inheritance of Saints who after they are once united to JESUS CHRIST do alwayes live in light first in that of grace during their pilgrimage on earth afterwards in that of glory Rev. 21.23 when they shall be raised up to that blessed City which hath no need of the Sun nor of the Moon because the brightness of GOD hath illuminated it and the Lamb is the light thereof 1 Thes 5.5 Phil. 2.15 Mat. 5.14 For this cause all the divine denizons of this heavenly State are called Children of light and of the day which should shine as lights in the midst of a perverse generation and be the light of the world as persons born of the light of the Spirit and of the word of God who being led by the rayes of their Sun of Righteousness walk on straight towards the supream source of lights where arrived they shall eternally dwell in that shine which will transform them into the image of their LORD from glory to glory by the power of His Omnipotent Spirit But it is time to come to the other verse in which the Apostle addeth what the Father hath done to make us thus capable of partaking in the inheritance of Saints in light He hath delivered us saith he from the power of darkness and translated us into the Kingdom of His well-beloved Son By darkness the Scripture ordinarily understands ignorance and misery the two contraries of knowledge and joy which it signifies by light as we said even now For ignorance and error do hide the true and natural form of things from our understandings just as darkness doth wrap up visible objects from our bodily eyes And forasmuch as there is nothing more unpleasant to men nor more affrighting than the obscurity of darkness thence it comes that the term is also made use of to represent horrour trouble and misery So the power of darkness is nothing else but that tyranny which the Devil and sin do exercise over their slaves filling their spirits with deadly errours and brutish ignorances and their consciences either with affrightment or insensibility and training them on by little and little under this dismal yoke into the horrours of eternal death which our LORD often calleth outer-darkness where is weeping and gnashing of teeth For as knowledge and truth is a light necessary for the attainment of salvation so errour and ignorance infallibly lead to death Therefore the Devil the sworn enemy of our good blindeth men the most he possibly can spreading before them gross and thick mists which hide Heaven and its blessed brightness from them This is the summ of his craft and subtil operation The deep of his abyss doth ever vomit forth into our aire a black vapour for the rendring of our senses useless By this means he turned heretofore the Nations of the Earth from the service of their Creator obscuring and smothering by his illusions those sparkles of the knowledge of Him which they had and plunging them and holding them down in so deep ignorance that these miserable men were not ashamed Rom. 1.23 to adore the work of their own hands and change the glory of the incorruptible GOD into the resemblance and image of corruptible man and of birds and of four-footed beasts and creeping things As for justice and honesty of life this impostor had so extinguished the lights which Providence had kindled for them in their hearts and so disordered all their knowledge by his seductions that the vilest abominations passed among them for indifferent things Walking on in so thick darkness it is no wonder if they were in continual fear they knew not where they went nor whither they should come and fell at last after having pittifully stumbled and staggered into the precipice of eternal perdition And would to GOD the Prince of errour did not yet still abuse the world in the same manner Certainly the darkness of the old Paganism was not more gross nor shameful than that which covers the greater part of the earth at this very day But whereas that errour wherein the Devil keepeth men is called by the Apostle the power of darkness and not simply darkness this teacheth us that that accursed one worketh effectually in them doing with their hearts what seemeth Him good and planting all deceit and ignorance in them at his will so as these wretches cannot defend themselves therefrom This is one thing the Apostle teacheth us elsewhere as when he saith that this evil Spirit now worketh with efficacy Eph. 2.3 in the children of rebellion Not that he hath naturally any just Dominion over the souls of men but their sin brings them under His Sceptre and their hearts being of themselves full of unclean and unjust affections it comes to pass through the excess of their corruption that he never tempteth them in vain And all this imperial force he hath upon them is founded meerly on imposture on errour and ignorance so as it is with a deal of truth and elegancy that St. Paul calleth it here the power of darkness This is Faithful Brethren the sad and pittiful estate in which naturally men lye Let not the paint and lustre of their pretended wisdom and justice dazle your eyes In the sight of GOD it is but darkness whence it comes Eph. 5.8 that the Scripture calleth them darkness it self Ye were sometime darkness saith the Apostle to the Ephesians Judge hereby how horrible the errour of those is who dogmatize that liberty is so very natural to man as they cannot conceive that they can be men without it Let them Philosophise upon this subject as they please They shall never be able to shew that a man can be all at once both at liberty and under the power of darkness He that is under the power of another is not free It 's GOD alone that can enfranchise men and take them from this miserable servitude and bind that strong Tyrant who did hold them Captive It is to this Soveraign LORD that the Apostle here giveth the glory both of his own liberty and of the Colossians theirs 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He saith he hath delivered us from the power of darkness Yet the Greek word which he useth in the Original hath more Emphasis signifying that He delivered us by an exerting of power drawing us and if I may so speak plucking us out of the irons we were in whereby he representeth to us on the one hand how strong and strait the bonds of our slavery were and on the other hand how excellent and admirable the power is which GOD hath displayed to bring us out of this spiritual Egypt For we experiment it daily that though nothing be more sordid and shameful than the tyranny of error Yet we all naturally love it so
in like manner hath not only the shadow or the appearance of the authority and power of his Predecessor He hath the whole substance and reality of it Gen. 5.3 Thus it is that Moses saith Adam begat Seth his son in his own likeness and after his image He signifies thereby that Seth had a nature the same in all things with Adam's own Now the question is in which of these two senses must we take the word Image when the Apostle saith here and also elsewhere that JESVS CHRIST is the image of GOD. 2 Cor. 4.4 The very quality of the subject in question sheweth us so clearly that we must apprehend it after the second way and not the former as even those that quarrel it dare not say that JESUS CHRIST is an imperfect image of His Father For where is the Christian ear that could suffer a blasphemy so horrible and so contrary to all the Scripture Sure when the Apostle saith of our LORD that He is the image of GOD he thereby meaneth quite another thing then what he signifies elsewhere when he saith that man is the image of GOD. For intending here to exalt the LORD JESUS and to demonstrate that His dignity is so high as capacitateth Him to save us He would ill suite this design if he attributed nothing to Him but what agreeth to any man whoever he be And yet if you do not understand it that JESUS CHRIST is a perfect image of GOD the Apostle will affirm no other thing of Him here then he asserts elsewhere of man when he saith he is the image of GOD. Beside the Apostle's end the thing it self he speaks of doth evidently shew it us also For our LORD informeth us that He who hath seen Him hath seen the Father and that Joh. 14.9 12.45 who beholdeth Him beholdeth Him that sent him Where is the pourtrait of which it may be said that he who hath seen it hath seen the subject which it representeth It 's clear this is not found but in such an image as is most perfect and containeth fully in it all the being of its original Whence it appears that it is in this sense that JESVS CHRIST is the image of GOD. And to make us conceive it the better the Apostle hath a passage in the Epistle to the Hebrews the scope the terms and sense whereof have very much resemblance with this here there he saith Heb. 1.3 that JESVS CHRIST is the resplendency of the glory of His Father and the Character or engraven Stamp of His person Terms exceeding elegant and expressive and such as clearly decide this case that the LORD is the image of GOD in another manner than man and that the same glory which shineth in the Father is respendent also in the Son and that the same nature which is in the person of the one is likewise in the person of the other Say we therefore according to the Analogie of this Doctrine and the reason of the thing it self That JESUS CHRIST is the image of GOD His Father but a perfect one yea the most perfect that an image may be An image which exhibiteth unto us and representeth not the colour or the shadow but the truth and substance of the Deity The Scripture our only guide in these high mysteries teacheth it clearly And to aid you in the comprehending of it though the GOD-head be most simple in it self exempt from all mixture and composition yet speaking of it according to the weakness of our understanding to which GOD hath not disdained to accommodate Himself in His word we will consider three things of Him the nature the properties or qualities which Divines commonly call His Attributes and His works As for His Nature it is most perfectly represented in JESUS CHRIST forasmuch as He hath really and veritably the same being and same substance with GOD the Father As a child whom we call the image of His Father hath the same nature with Him being truly of mankind as He. The Scripture teacheth us this truth in very many places where it saith Joh. 1.5 Tit. 2.13 Rom. 9.5 1 Cor. 10.9 Joh. 12.41 that JESUS CHRIST is GOD that He is the true GOD. Our great GOD and Saviour GOD blessed above all Jehovah yerst tempted by the Israelites in the desart He whose glory Isaiah saw in the vision described at the sixth Chapter of His Prophecy It layeth down the same thing also as often as it represents Him to us a due object of our adoration saying that all ought to honour Him as they honour the Father Joh. 5.23 Heb. 1.6 and that the very Angels worship Him it being evident that according to Scripture there is nothing but a nature truly divine to whom adoration may be lawfully given But the LORD JESUS no less perfectly represents the Father in His Properties then in His Nature The Father is eternal so is the Son and Isaiah calleth Him upon this account The Father of eternity Before Abraham was He is Joh. 8.58 He was from the beginning with GOD and before the world was created even then He was in the bosome of the Father His love and His delight The Heavens shall perish but He is permanent The Heavens shall wax old as a garment and be folded up as a Vesture and be changed But JESUS is the same Heb 1.11 12. and His years shall not fail The Father is immutable without ever receiving any alteration or change Heb. 13.8 either in His being or in His will The Son is the same both yesterday and to day and for ever The Father is infinite filling Heaven and earth neither is there any thing within or without the world that boundeth the presence of His being Joh. 3.13 The Son is in like manner infinite He is in Heaven whiles He speaketh to Nicodemus on earth He is here below on earth in our hearts and in our assemblies the same instant that He is fitting at the right hand of the Father in the highest room of the Universe and though the Heavens contain that body and humane nature which He did assume yet they do not enclose His Majesty and all-present Divinity The Father hath a soveraign understanding knowing all things present past and to come The Son is Wisdom it self He knoweth all things and if He say somewhere that He knoweth not the day of Judgement this is not to be understood but in respect of His humane nature and not in respect of His divine intelligency Rev. 2.23 He soundeth the reins and knoweth the heart of man a quality which the Scripture noteth to us as the character and specifique mark of the knowledge of GOD asserting that there is none but He only who knoweth the hearts of men The Father knoweth Himself and no man or Angel to speak properly ever saw Him The Son so perfectly knoweth Him that He hath even declared and revealed Him unto men The Father is almighty and
Such was the sad and dismal estate of the world the end whereof could be nothing else but ruine and eternal perdition Therefore GOD to restore its primitive beauty yea to raise it to a perfection higher than that of its first original reconciled all things by His CHRIST both Terrestrial and Celestial He took away the wars the hatreds and the aversions that divided them and reduced them all into that union which they ought to have for His glory and their own good As to things on earth you know what was the enmity and the separatedness of the Jews and Gentiles whom the Law as a partition wall did bar off from the fellowship of the people of GOD. CHRIST laid this enterclose even with the ground and recalling the Gentiles associated and rea-allyed them with the Jews to make them thenceforth one only and the same people He did as much to the distinctions that separated the more Polite Nations from the Barbarous the Latines from the Greeks the East from the West the North from the South He removed all these marks and differences and united all Nations Sects and conditions into one only people into one only body namely His Church It 's thus that things on earth were reconciled As for things in heaven it was the good pleasure of the Father to reconcile them also by His Son For the Angels the true Citizens of heaven were our foes after sin whereas they are henceforth our Friends and our Allies united with us under JESUS CHRIST our common Head Aforetime they were armed against us with flaming sword now they fight for us and encamp about us They did drive us off from the entrance into Paradise Now themselves do bear our souls thither at their departure out of this life They take part in our interests they are sad at our disasters and rejoyce at our amendment And to testifie how delightful this Reconciliation is to them they saluted the birth of our Lord who came to make it with their songs and melodies For it they glorified GOD and blessed and congratulated men But as the mischief of our sin communicated it self to all the parts of the Universe even those that are without life putting them all in disorder and subjecting them unto vanity so I account that this blessed Reconciliation must be extended even to them also The will of GOD was to comprehend them also in it re-uniting the heavens with our earth and all the Elements with us For heaven which had nothing but Lightnings and Thunder for us and that would rather have been reduc'd to nothing than receive us into its courts is now liberal towards us of its comfortable light and openeth to us the most secret Sanctuaries of its glory Life is at accord with us Immortality is in good intelligence with our flesh the Grave is no longer our enemy the Elements shall be serviceable to our welfare they shall work no more against us And so you see how the will of GOD was to reconcile things on earth and things in heaven by His Son and reduce all the parts of the Universe unto good terms each with other This great work is begun the foundations of it are laid the pledges of it are given us But it will not be perfectly accomplished until the latter day when the world freed from the bondage under which it yet groaneth shall appear entirely changed its new heavens and its new earth and its new elements with the Angels and the Saints and all its other parts conspiring together in an eternal concord and an inviolable correspondence to the glory of their common Creator who shall then be all in all 1 Cor. â—â— as the Apostle elsewhere saith And it 's this in my opinion which he meaneth in this place when he saith That the Father would reconcile all things in Himself as the Original precisely runneth For these words signifie not the term but the end and event of this Reconciliation that is to say that it shall be made not with GOD as the greater part of Expositors have understood it but for the glory of GOD. For it is plain that heavenly things were not reconciled with GOD for they never were at odds with Him But it is no less evident that their Reconciliation with us in the sense we have explained it will redound to the glory of GOD when this whole Universe shall return entirely to its true and due union It 's this therefore the Apostle intendeth when he saith That it is the good pleasure of the Father to reconcile all things in Himself that is for Himself It remains now that we speak of the means which GOD made use of to bring this great work of the Reconciliation of the world to its end S. Paul shews it us when he addeth Having made peace by the blood of the cross of CHRIST The war that man had with GOD in consequence of his sin was as we said afore the true and only cause of the bad intelligence we were in with the Angels and the other parts of the World Whence it is clear that to make the latter cease there needed only an extinguishing of the former that is to reconcile us with the Creatures there needed only a recovering us to the favour of the Creator This is the means that the Father in His Soveraign Wisdom made use of And it 's this the Apostle meaneth when he saith That He made peace that is ours having pacified His own Justice and quenched all the burning of His wrath against us 'T is by the Sacrifice that JESUS CHRIST offer'd on His Cross that this miraculous change was wrought This precious blood contented the Justice of the Father and the odour of this Divine Burnt-offering sweetned His Spirit and of severe and inexorable as He was rendred Him propitious and favourable to us Instead of fulminating His avenges He tenders us the arms of His love and no man is so wretched but He is ready to receive him provided he accept the promise of His mercy with an humble faith It is not long since that upon one of the Texts foregoing we treated of the reality the worthiness and necessity of this Satisfaction by which the Lord JESUS made our peace with the Father through the shedding out of his blood on the Cross and the voluntary suffering there for us and in our room the curse which our sins deserved Therefore we will dispense with our selves for speaking more of it at this time and to conclude the Exercise will content our selves with the noting briefly upon each of the three Points explained the principal heads of Consolation and Edification which they contain And here dear Brethren which shall we most admire the goodness of the Father and the will He had to raise us up from our fall and to reconcile us with the whole Creation whose hatred and aversion we had incurred or His unspeakable wisdom in the ordering of this great work and in the means he
of the Gospel and to give it to the Fopperies and Vanities which they preach S. Paul to put the Colossians out of all doubt and ambiguity indicateth expresly to them what this Gospel is of which he speaketh That saith he which you have heard namely of Epaphras who had preached it among them and to whom he gave before an excellent Testimonial for fidelity and sincerity I mean saith he the Gospel which you receiv'd at the beginning from the mouth of true Servants of GOD and not these vain and dangerous Doctrines which evil workers would make to pass with you for the Gospel of CHRIST though they be nothing less then so But to confirm them the more in the faith he sets before them in the second place an excellent encomium of the Gospel which containeth a clear proof of its truth saying That it is the Gospel which was preached to every creature under heaven It is not the Doctrine which these false Apostles sowed here and there in some out quarters whispering and privily advancing the same among light and unstable spirits It is the true Word of the Son of GOD which had been proclaimed through the whole Universe by His command and according to the Oracles of His ancient Prophets That Word which going forth from Jerusalem did spread its self every way in a very little time and being accompanied with the power of its Author made it self be heard and believed in all the Provinces of the habitable earth in spight of the contradictions of Hell and the world His assertion that the Gospel was preached to every creature which is under heaven may be expounded two manner of ways but both of them amounting to the same sense First by a Figure very common in Divine and Humane speech the word Creature may be taken for Man the noblest and most excellent of all the Creatures And the LORD had so used the word before in the same matter when He commanded His Apostles to do what S. Paul doth magnifie in this place Go ye forth said He to them into all the world and preach the Gospel unto every creature Where it is evident that by every creature He understandeth men who alone are capable of hearing and receiving what is preached In this sense when S. Paul saith that the Gospel was preached to every creature it is as much as if he had said to all mankind and among all sorts of men agreeably to what he saith here a little after speaking of himself that he admonisheth every man Col. 1.28 and teacheth every man in all wisdom Secondly these words To every creature may in my opinion be taken also as signifying in all the world and this the rather because it is literally in the Original in all the creature with the Article the and not simply to every creature Now that S. Paul sometimes useth this term the creature to signifie the world this great body and collection of all things which GOD hath created this is manifestly to be seen in the Epistle to the Romans where he saith Rom. 8.19 20 21. That the great and ardent desire of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the children of GOD and again That the creature was made subject to vanity and more a little after That all the creature groaneth and travelleth in pain together until now where it is clear and confessed by the greatest part of Interpreters that the creature signifies the world and our Bibles to make us understand it the better do change the singular number into the plural rendring it les creatures and toutes les creatures the creatures and all the creatures whereas the Original readeth simply the creature and all the creature Taking it thus therefore in this place when the Apostle saith the Gospel was preached in all the creature which is under heaven he meaneth in all the world wherein we dwell wherein GOD hath seated mankind beneath the heavens I will make no stay here now to shew you how it might be truly said in S. Pauls time that the Gospel of our LORD was then preached to all mankind or in all the habitable world or how this event is a clear and solid proof of its truth We have already heretofore handled both the one and the other of these two particulars in expounding if you remember the sixth Verse of this Chapter which affirmed that the Gospel was come unto all the world Upon that Text which signifies no other thing than what the Apostle saith here namely that the Gospel hath been preached in all the creature which is under heaven We shewed first by good and irrefragable testimonies of Ancient Writers both Christian and Pagan that the heavenly Word had been preached within the Apostles days in all Countreys then known either to Greeks or Romans and receiv'd for the most part with fruit so as taking the word World according to the stile of all Languages not simply and absolutely for all the parts of the Terrestrial Globe but only for those which at that time were known to men and which they understood to be inhabited it might be said with truth and without any over-reaching Hyperbole as S. Paul declareth here that the Gospel had been preached in all the creature which is under heaven that is in all the world And in the second place we proved both by the importance of the thing it self and by the respect it hath to the Oracles of the Old Testament which had predicted it many ages before its event that this so swift so sudden and so admirable running of the Gospel through all the world in so few years is a certain and infallible evidence of the verity and divinity of this holy Doctrine obliging consequently both the Colossians heretofore and us at present to hold fast and persevere in the faith which we have given to it without suffering our selves to be ever mov'd away from it either by the cheating arts of false Teachers and their crafty Seducements or by the Threatnings and Persecutions of the world These things having been heretofore largely deduced and opened to you lest the repition of them should be irksome I will pass to the third head of our Text wherein the Apostle sets before the Colossians another Character of true Christian Doctrine to wit that it is the Word the Ministery whereof was committed to him It is saith he the Gospel of which I Paul have been made a Minister He opposeth his heavenly call to the temerity of the false Teachers who ran without having been sent and preached not what Heaven commanded them but what earth inspir'd them with their impulsions and instructions being from flesh and blood and not from the LORD JESUS It was otherwise with Paul all the faithful knew him to have been called from heaven and suddenly changed by the efficacy of Divine power from a Wolf into a Pastor made an Herald and witness of the Gospel immediately by the LORD JESUS instructed in His
countrymen and also by the Gentiles He was beaten imprisoned scourged stoned He was in shipwracks on the Sea in dangers and deaths upon the Land He was brought to be at the mercy of robbers in desarts beset round in cities both with weapons of enemies and the ambushments of false friends He was reduced to nakedness to cold to hunger and thirst It 's this hard and terrible chain of labours and sufferings which he meaneth here when he saith Whereunto I also labour combating But Oh the deep humility of this holy Soul he immediately gives the glory of these merveilous exploits to the sole vertue and assistance of the LORD JESUS I labour and combat saith he according to His efficacy which worketh powerfully in me He exerciseth the like modesty elsewhere when having said that he had laboured abundantly more than they all he presently takes up himself and adds yet not I but the grace of GOD which is with me It is the invincible force of this grace of the LORD JESUS which he calleth here his efficacy and he saith it worketh powerfully in him or with power to signifie the admirable effects which it produced in him first in that it raised up in Him the light of knowledge the love of holiness charity towards the LORD's flock such prudence and wisdom as were necessary for the instruction and government of souls Secondly in that it endued him with a more than humane courage with an immoveable constancy and firmness both that he might not sink under the burden of such great and continual labour and that he might patiently and cheerfully bear the persecutions and tentations which were still let loose upon him the LORD making things tend to His glory and the advancement of his work which seemed so contrary thereto as He promised him elsewhere that His power should be made perfect in his infirmity Thirdly in accompanying the Apostles preaching with diverse miracles which ravished men and authorised his words Rom. 15.18 19 as he expresly testifies in another place I will not dare to speak of any of those things which CHRIST hath not wrought by me saith he to make the Gentiles obedient by word and work through mighty signs and wonders Lastly this Divine vertue of our Saviour did also magnificently appear in the success he gave to Pauls labour opening the hearts of those that heard him and causing his voice to enter into them notwithstanding all the impediments of nature with such a miraculous blessing that he made his Gospel to abound from Jerusalem and round about even to Illyricum subduing nations and converting them gloriously to the service of His Master It 's this that he represents here to the Colossians in these words even that he laboureth and combateth according to the efficacy of CHRIST which worketh powerfully in him And it excellently conduceth to his design which is to shew the truth of the Gospel he preached which shined forth clearly in those many miracles they being as seals by which the LORD confirmed it I confess now that this great example doth particularly reflect on such as GOD hath called to the sacred Ministry of His house and it sheweth them on one hand how painful their office is that it is a work as the Apostle faith otherwhere a work I say rather than a dignity 1 Tim. 3.1 2 Tim. 4.5 a labour and not a recreation For the discharging of it worthily they must toil and strive watch in all things endure afflictions and do the work of Evangelists And it teacheth them on the other hand that they must not recoil for those great difficulties but trust in the grace of CHRIST and expect from the sole efficaciousness of His assistance that light that strength that patience and constancy which is requisite for the finishing of so laborious a course since it is He alone who rendreth us meet for these things strengthning us in weakness comforting us in trouble encouraging us in difficulties susteining us under assaults and so conducting us that though we be nothing of our selves 2 Cor. 3.5 yet in Him we can do all things who maketh us able to be Ministers of the new Testament But though S. Pauls example do particularly respect Pastors yet it appertaineth also to all true Christians in general since there is no one of them but is also in some sort the LORD's servant hath of Him the managing of some of His Talents and is called to labour and combat Let us consider then all of us in common and joyntly make our improvement both of the preaching and of the labouring of this great Apostle He still at this day declares to us the same CHRIST whom he preached heretofore to all the nations of the world Though the Organs that sound it to you be incomparably weaker than his were yet it is his word that you hear the same word and the same CHRIST that yer-while converted the universe The same Paul whose voyce had then so much efficacy speaks yet to you daily He addresseth to you the same doctrine He sets before you the same wisdom He admonisheth and teacheth every man among you Do not abuse so great a blessing do not frustrate the labour of this holy man of it's true and just effect The end of His preaching is that you all may be perfect This is the mark to which he calls you all in common Say not to me that he speaks but to some only I admonish saith he and teach every man that I may render every man perfect in JESVS CHRIST Object not the employments which you have in the world nor the cares to which your family and your affairs do bind you up If they be incompatible with that perfection which the Apostle requires of you you must renounce them It 's an extreme folly to excuse ones self from being happy This ought to be the first and last of our cares and if we cannot attain it but by quitting of honours by losing of riches by retrenching our delights yea as the LORD saith by plucking out our own eyes and cutting off of our feet and our hands it is better to forego all this than keep it to be cast at our departure hence into the torment of eternal fire But these are vain and meer frivolous pretences to palliate our slackness If we have truly received JESUS CHRIST into our hearts neither a wife nor children nor a family nor an estate nor the honest and lawfull employments of the world will hinder you from being perfect The fear of GOD honest deportment plain-dealing and justice charity and beneficence and in a word the fanctity wherein our perfection consisteth is not incompatible with any of these things For I beseech you is it your business or your calling which obligeth you to offend GOD and injure men to pollute your body with the filth of infamous pleasures to defraud or to rob your neighbour to drown your whole life in luxury in debauches and in
verse immediately foregoing as you heard if you remember in our last Exercise upon this subject that in JESVS CHRIST are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledg Now he sheweth them the design upon which he so instantly repeateth what he seemed to have sufficiently treated of in the precedent Texts Now this I say saith he that none may deceive you with words of perswasion And to give evidence that he did not put himself to this trouble vainly or rashly he adds in the following verse the knowledg that he had of their estate it being as really before his eyes as if he were upon the place For saith he though I am absent in body yet in spirit I am with you rejoycing and seeing your order and the firmness of your faith which you have in CHRIST Thus we shall have two points to handle for the giving you a full and entire understanding of this Text. First The Apostle's care of these Christians that they might not be seduced And Secondly The cognizance he took of their present state though he was in body far distant from them We will consider them both if GOD permit as briefly as we can pointing at what we judg useful for your edification and consolation both in the one and the other The first of these two points the Apostle expresseth in these words But this I say that none may deceive you by words of perswasion Upon which words we shall have two things to examine The danger the Colossians were in and the usefulness of that which the Apostle says to preserve them from incurring it The danger was great and the evil which it threatned grievous and mortal even the being deceived and seduced by the perswasive words which false Teachers used in this wretched design There never was any servants of CHRIST but such a tentation did beset them Satan no sooner seeing the truth of the Gospel any where appear but he immediately raiseth up Impostors to corrupt it and turn away those that embrace it from the purity and simplicity thereof But especially at the beginning of Christianity when it was first preached and sounded by the holy Apostles then there arose a multitude of seducers who did their utmost to deprave and marr this divine seed of the salvation of men and the Devil made like attempts in our Fathers days when perceiving the Gospel to be revived that he might presently obstruct this holy work he speedily brought into the field a world of spirits some audacious and extravagant others subtil and selfish which endeavoured to scandalize or to seduce the simple those by the prodigies of their fond imaginations these by the plausible appearances of their false accommodations But they which troubled the Church in the Apostle's time did address themselves among others to the Colossians in particular as appears both by what he intimateth briefly here and more clearly yet by what he addeth in the series of this Chapter He doth not name them but his saying that none deceive you is a sufficient evidence that there were some crastsmen of this quality about them who took pains to ensnare them It is therefore thâ—â—â— same he aimeth at and against the force of their seducements doth he arm the Colossians He sheweth here both the end to which they tended even the deceiving of the faithful and the means they used about it namely words of perswasion The term he pitcheth upon to express the first of these doth not signifie simply to deceive but to deceive by false and captious ratiocination For these bad men knowing well that the spirits of men are not brought to embrace nor avoid any thing without some reason it being the natural order and disposition of all our actions and motions that the understanding do still precede the will they begin the effecting of our ruin there and to entangle our minds in their errors they propose us reasons false indeed but appearing otherwise such as have the colour and countenance but not the essential form and substance of a good and solid discourse This the word Paralogism here used by the Apostle doth properly signifie It 's a sophism a false and spurious arguing which by its vain appearance and fallacious blaze leadeth men into error as those fatuous fires which rising sometimes in the dark of night do trail those that follow them into precipices Satan the Father of all Sophisters took this course first having miserably seduced our first Parents by the illusion of a false discourse the vanity whereof experience clearly demonstrated for that he might corrupt their will he attaqued their understandings in the first place and beguiled them that he might destroy them perswading that the forbidden fruit would make them like GOD. Those whom he hath set on work since that time have all followed this method there having never risen Heretick either under the Old or the New Testament but hath painted over his impostures with some deceivable reasons Only this difference may be observ'd among such men that some do the thing maliciously and against their own conscience others through ignorance The former sort are true children of the Devil and the most execrable of all men as combating that truth which they are conscious of and defending error by reasons whose vanity they well understand neverthelss they forbear not to labour in this unhappy desing either for the acquiring of glory to themselves or for creating trouble to Teachers of truth whom they have conceiv'd an hatred of Those of the other sort who do it through ignorance have less guilt and wickedness I confess but are no less dangerous For believing in good earnest the errors which they do advance they strive to perswade others to them with so much the more passion and fervency as imagining that they serve them when they indeed destroy them and that they edifie when in truth they ruin them Rom. 10.2 Such were those Jews of whom S. Paul beareth witness that they had a zeal of God but without knowledg They believ'd themselves the error which they recommended and were in those snares wherewith they sought to entangle others And in this rank we must place the most of those of the Roman Communion who take so much pains to draw us into their mistakes not only those of the people but also many of their Monks and of their Doctors who labour to deceive others because they have been themselves deceiv'd having run into that erroneous perswasion into which they would induce us and confirmed themselves from time to time in it by those sophisms and false reasonings which they offer us and which they have either learnt of their instructors or invented of themselves We must equally take heed of both these sorts of workers For how different soever the motive of their acting be the effect of it is ever the same even seduction and perdition And as poyson forbears not to kill the man that takes it though it have been ignorantly given
the importance of this duty Beware saith he lest any man make prey of you He could not more to the life or with greater elegancy express the danger of such as stand not on their guard than by this word which signifies properly to carry away the booty that a man hath taken It is not without cause saith he that I give you order to use all your abilities and to defend your selves against Error with utmost vigilancy For no small matter depends upon it It is as much as your souls your selves and the noblest part of your beeing your understandings your affections your heart comes to The Wolves and the Thieves against whom men watch with so much care do aim only at their Sheep or their Purse Those against whom I animate you aim at your Persons An Enemy against whom Cities and States do set guards doth threaten only their Goods or their Lives at most He against whom I require your watching seeketh your souls and the share they have in eternity You are the Workmanship and the Jewel of the LORD of Glory You will be a prey to Satan and his Ministers if you fall into their snares They will not be content with having taken you they will bring you into bondage and the redeemed of JESUS CHRIST whose liberty he hath bought at the price of his Divine Blood will become slaves of men and which is worse of Devils Good GOD how piercing was the eye of that Heavenly Spirit which guided the Pen of this Apostle How clearly did it see the nature and the qualities of all the things whereof he speaketh Observe how Error â—iumpheth over those whom it infecteth See the Trophies it sets up of their spoils the Fâ—tters wherewith it loadeth those whom it seduceth the yoke which it puts upon their neeks and the captivity into which it brings them and you with confess that the eâ—lects of its false and damnable conquests could not pâ—ssibly be more truly and more naturally represented to us than by saying as S. Paul doth here that it makes a prey of Christians or carries them away as booty For Error is ever insolent and whereas Preachers of the Truth do serve those whom they teach and stile themselves their Ministers as this Apostle heretofore did the Teachers of Falshood usurp dominion over those whom they have corrupted and vaunt that they are their Judges their Masters and their Lords S Paul noted it long since of the seducers of the Corinthians who as he saith 2 Cor. 11.20 enslaved them devoured them and exalted themselves over them and smote them on the face that is did put all kind of indignities upon them And the false Teachers among the Galatians Gal. 6.13 he saith did glory in the flesh of their miserable discriples They are blind that do not at this day observe the self-same thing in the carriage of those men that reign over all the multitude whom they have deceived and rear up lofty Trophies of every poor soul that they have made prey of Dear Brethren if you love the liberty which the LORD JESUS hath purchased for you if you abhor the servitude of men if you desire the fruit of the one which is immortality and detest perdition the inevitable sequel of the other in the name of GOD take heed that no man make prey of you The Doctrine of truth is enclosed within the LORD's sheepfold Abide there if you would be in safety Stray you thence but ever so little and you will fall into the hands of Wolves and Robbers Hearken not unto their babble Be not taken with their countenance Let any thing among them that may promise fair be suspected of you since their seeking only is to withdraw you from the simplicity of the Gospel Now the Apostle points at three things here which he adviseth us to take heed of in particular namely The vain deceit of Philosophy The traditions of men and The rudiments of the world Because these were the three sources from which those false Apostles that then attempted the Colossians drew all the heads of their Doctrine and the means which they used to colour it and give it that vain lustre which was needful for the beguiling of the simple and unlearned For Col. 2.23 as we shall see more particularly in the sequel of this Chapter they enjoined the worshipping of Angels a matter they had taken in all likelihood out of the Sinks of the Platonick Philosophers who storied divers things of these higher spirits and of their interposition and mediation between GOD and us for the purifying of us and the rendring us capable of supream happiness as we see even at this day in those remains which we have of their Writings Again Col. 2.23 they introduced divers voluntary devotions which did not spare the flesh and seem'd full of humility but were indeed only traditions of men without any foundation in the word of GOD. Finally it is also evident that they pressed the observation of days and the distinction of meats according to the ordinances of the Mosaical Law which are likewise stiled Elements of the World Now though these three points do particularly respect the false Teachers at Coloss yet they are common well-nigh to all such as ever set themselves to alter and sophisticate the Gospel the most part of their impostures having issued from one of these three springs We will consider them therefore briefly and distinctly by the will of God and after them the character or mark which S. Paul giveth them to wit that these things are not after CHRIST Among these things of which we are to beware he gives the first place to Philosophy It 's name is very honourable Philosophy if you weigh the word signifying the love and pursuit of wisdom But the corruptness of those men that gave their Profession this name among the Grecians did disgrace so worthy a term and made it to be the name of a Tool of Error and Imposture rather than of an Instrument of Science and Truth For the common sort of those that stiled themselves Philosophers amused themselves altogether in vain Speculations in a trade of subtilty and syllogizing and in endless disputes that yeelded men no true profit They thought they had attained the End of their profession when they had got a faculty to speak of all matters with some colour and probability so as to dazle the eyes of the ignorant and win the admiration of the half-witted This vanity rendred them odious first among the Pagans themselves where they went among the people for extravagant persons and were in little better esteem among the greater part of the better sort And for as much as of all Professions scarce any did more fiercely oppose the Gospel of our Saviour thence it came to pass that the first Christians also conceiv'd a very ill opinion of them which encreas'd when it did appear that Hereticks did ordinanarily fetch from these mens Forges the Arms
which I delivered unto you that is taught It therefore calls those Doctrines Traditions of men which have men only for their authors which come from men and not from GOD. I confess that errors derived from that Philosophy whereof he spake even now may also bear the same name since they slowed from the spirit of man and had no other source than his imagination yet the Apostle distinguisheth the one from the others for two reasons as I conceive First Forasmuch as these had some colour of abstruse wisdom being sprung from speculations in shew sublime and excellent though in reality vain and frivolous whereas the Doctrines which he here calleth Traditions had no foundation at all but the authority of those that set them up and the usage of those that practis'd them they being otherways far from all Philosophical reasons not only true and solid but also probable Secondly Because they had had some successive continuance among the people of GOD having been deliver'd by the Pharisees and other Zealots of Judaism from father to son in a series of no small length whereas that which he calls the deceit of Philosophy was not deliver'd in that manner but lately invented by these new Teachers and taken from the dreams of some Philosophers Whence it doth appear that no productions or institutions of an human spirit are receivable in Evangelical Religion neither those that are supported by some pretended reasons nor those that are founded upon use and antiquity They are all of them nothing but folly and vanity in the sight of GOD with what colour soever they be painted over And though men boast of their utility they are extreamly hurtful as pestring Consciences and busying them about things which GOD hath not ordained and turning them aside from his pure service to matters of nought Accordingly you see that our LORD JESUS CHRIST rejects and roughly thrusts away all the traditions of the Pharisees how much esteem'd soever they were for their antiquity and pretended use reproaching them that by holding fast those Traditions of men they did let loose the Commandments of GOD and applying to them those words of the LORD in Isaiah Mark 7.8 Isa 29.13 In vain do they honour me teaching Doctrines which are the commandments of men As indeed it s an unsufferable presumption that man should attempt to prescribe the form of GOD's service especially after the declaration which himself hath vouchsafed to make of his holy will nor is there one among men that would endure his servant should treat him in that manner and instead of obeying his Orders and causing others to dispatch them fall a Philosophising in his house and giving his Family a new rule to observe as if he were wiser than his Master I know well the authors of these Traditions and those that follow them are not without fine reasons to palliate their temerity But it is evident that they do the very same for substance neither is it to be doubted but a servant that should be culpable of such a vanity would alledg likewise his motive and designs to any that would give him audience But common sense dictateth to the meanest capacities that such undertaking-spirits merit not so much as to be heard especially where GOD is concern'd in comparison of whom they with all their sufficiency are but poor worms of the earth Hold we firm therefore this foundation of the Apostle That the Traditions of men ought to have no place in Religion It concerns me not to inform my self of their age whether they be the traditions of men ancient or modern It sufficeth that I know they are Traditions of men Having the Apostle's advertisement we should not be moved with any reason or splendor or antiquity they may come clothed with If you would have me receive them shew me that they are Prescriptions of GOD Institutions of his CHRIST Doctrines of his Scriptures Without this how specious soever you make them appear to me I shall ever believe it is but to make prey of me and your diligence shall have no effect but the making me suspect them so much the more In fine the Apostle addeth a third Source whence the Seducers drew both their Doctrine and the means to colour it namely that which he calls the Elements of the world I pass by the opinion of those who refer these words to the Elements of Nature Water Air Earth and Fire as if the Apostle here did tax these false Teachers of reducing the service of them which was then in full vogue among the Heathen these wretched Idolaters having yerst deified all the parts of the Universe There is not a word in S. Paul's Writings either here or elsewhere that leadeth us to such a conceit and it is not very likely that the persons he here aims at should authorize so brutal a kind of Idolatry persons who covered themselves with the Name of JESUS CHRIST and made profession at least in shew of retaining his Gospel It is clear that the Apostle in other places doth mean by the Elements of the world not these primigenial and more simple substances out of which all natural generations are framed but the ceremonies and carnal services of the Mosaick Law under which the ancient people lived until the revelation of the Messiah When we were children saith he Gal. 4.3 9. and you know he calleth all that time the Childhood of the Church wherein it was under the Pedagogie of Moses we were in bondage under the elements of the world and a little after in contempt he stileth them poor and weak elements whereto the Galatians would embondage themselves Now it is evident the error of the Galatians was that they would still be subject to the Ceremonial Law Here beneath the Text he useth the same word in the same sense If you be dead with CHRIST saith he unto the elements of the world why are you burden'd with Ordinances There is then no doubt but that in this place he doth in like manner signifie still the same thing by these words that is to say the observations and devotions of the Ceremonial Law And in effect we shall see hereafter that these seducers whom he combateth in this Chapter would hold fast that Law either in whole or in part subjecting the faithful to circumcision and divers regulations about meats and days S. Paul calleth them Elements or as our Bibles have rendred it in some places the rudiments of the world because they were the first and the lowest lessons the Church had during the time of its Childhood they were as its Alphabet For the word Elements is often so taken namely for the first lessons wherein they are taught to know their Letters which are also call'd Elements because in speech words are made up of them even as natural bodies are formed of those first and more simple substances which we properly call Elements And he calls the Jewish Church the World because its estate and its
worship was gross and terrene and in some sort worldly in comparison of that of the new Isreal whom the LORD formed to worship GOD in spirit and in truth Whence it comes that he calls all the knowledg of the Jewish Rabbies 1 Cor. 2.6 8. the wisdom of this generation and those Rabbies themselves the Princes of this generation that is of this world Thus how hoary-headed and venerable soever the age of these rudiments of the world was the Apostle would not that the faithful should susser themselves to be taken under that pretence by those seducers that advanced the observation of them Behold what were those three colours wherewith these men be-painted their Doctrine The vain speculations of Philosophy The antiquity of Tradition and The authority of the Mosaical Ceremonies To which the Apostle adds and not after CHRIST By these very few words as with one blow he beateth down all the speciousness of these strange Doctrines Let men trick them up saith he as much as they will let them colour them with the subtilities of Philosophy let the practise of them be authorized by Tradition let them be recommended under the name of Moses and by the respect we owe to the rudiments of the former world all this hinders not but that we ought to despise them not only as unprofitable but even as dangerous since they are not after CHRIST He saith they are not after CHRIST First Because the LORD JESUS hath told us nothing of them in his Gospel whence it appears that we have good ground to reject from our belief all that is not found in the Scriptures of the New-Testament Secondly Because the Doctrine of JESUS CHRIST is wholly spiritual and celestial whereas those traditions and legal observations were gross and carnal And lastly Because besides their having no correspondency with the nature of the Gospel they do turn men aside from the LORD JESUS causing them to seek some part of their salvation otherwhere than in Him in whom it is so entirely seated as not the least drop of it is to be had in any other And what shew soever such as follow these Traditions do make of being resolv'd to retain JESUS CHRIST experience lets us see that they do but very slightly stick to him busying themselves wholly in the performance of their own devotions and placing the greatest part of their confidence in the same which comes from hence even that these are more grateful to them both for their novelty and for their being voluntary and indeed of less difficulty it being much easier to the flesh to acquit it self of some external and corporeal observances than to embrace JESUS CHRIST with a lively faith dying to the world and living unto him alone Thus you see what we had to say to you upon this advertisement of the Apostle's It is addressed to you also dear Brethren since you have adversaries who sollicite your belief in the same manner as those men did at first combat the faith of the Colossians They propose unto you the same errors and paint and gild them over after the same method with the vain colours of Philosophy with the plausible name of Tradition with the authority of Moses They are either Doctrines drawn forth from the speculations of Philosophers as the invocation of Angels and of Saints departed the veneration of Images the estate of souls in Purgatory and such like or humane Traditions as prayer for the dead Quadragesimal observances the Hierarchy the Primacy of the Bishop of Rome Monkery Single-life and others all crected by men without any foundation in the word of GOD. Or lastly they are Elements of the world ceremonial observances sometime instituted by Moses but abolished by JESUS CHRIST as the distinction of Meats Festivals Unctions Consecrations Sacrifice Fixation unto certain places and of all that we reject in our Doctrine there is not a particular but referrs to one of these three heads Remember therefore when they set upon you that the Apostle still to this day calls aloud from Heaven to you Take heed that none do make booty of you by Philosophy and vain deception after the tradition of men after the rudiments of the world and not after CHRIST Under these fair appearances there is hidden a pernicious design Men would take you away from JESUS CHRIST and make you a prey to and the Vassals of men Oppose to all their Artifices this one saying of the Apostle's That whatever the things which are enjoined you may be they are not after CHRIST they are not found in that Testament wherein he hath declar'd his whole will they have no conformity with the nature of his Gospel and do turn away the minds of men from that Soveraign LORD in whom alone is our wisdom and our righteousness our sanctification and redemption But Faithful Brethren as the Apostle's lesson should defend you from error so should it preserve you from vice Let that JESUS whom he so assiduously preacheth to you sill up your manners as well as your faith Love none but him as you believe in none but him Renounce the customs and vices of the world as well as its Religion Let the leaven of Philosophy have no more place in your actions than in your belief Receive the manners of men into your communion no more than the traditions of men If you be above the rudiments of the world be also above its infancy and its low and childish passions and affections they were sometimes pardonable in that childhood but are inexcusable in persons whom JESUS CHRIST hath advanced unto perfect men and such as by his illumination he hath brought unâ—â—fulness and maturity of age Let your souls henceforth have thoughts and aâ—â—ctions noble and heavenly and worthy of those high instructions which JESUS CHRIST hath given you Let your whole life be referr'd to him passing by the world and its elements this present generation and its lusts and idols with which the LORD JESUS doth not participate in any thing He hath crucified all those things for us and displayed before our eyes a new world brought forth out of the bosome of Eternity a world incorruptible and radiant with such glory as can neither be sullied or made to fade 'T is hither Faithful Brethren that you should elevate your desires This same is true Christian Discipline to dye with JESUS to this old world having no more sentiment or passion for its perishing-benefits and to live again with the same JESUS in that new world whereinto he is entred for us to breathe after nothing but its glory to think of nothing but its purity to rejoyce in nothing but in its peace and in the hope of its eternal pleasures To forgo for ever that which is passed and to tend with all our might towards the mark and price of our supernal calling justifying the verity of our Religion by the sanctity of our conversation so as there appear no more among us either ambition or hatred
heretofore took the care to make those draughts is Author of the verities they represented and that the body doth descend from the same Heaven that at first did make the shadows of it to be seen I pass by for this time the Lamb and the Sacrifices and the aspersions and expiations and all the Levitical Priesthood a true delineation of our grand Victime offer'd for the salvation of the world and of that eternal righteousness which His bloud hath procured for us and other like things which cannot but with extreme difficulty be mainteined nor accorded with the ways of the ordinary wisdom of GOD save by acknowledging and receiving as veritable what the Apostle doth here teach us and is evident enough of it self namely that all this was heretofore ordained for the prefiguring of CHRIST I will only speak a few words of the distinction of meats and dayes The Apostle opens the mystery of it elsewhere For as to observance of meats giving us order in the Epistle to the Corinthians 1 Cor. 5.8 to keep the feast of our Passoever not with the old leaven of naughtines and wickedness but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth doth he not clearly shew us that abstinence from leavened bread observ'd by the first people was a Picture of the Innocence and sanctity of the second and that by consequence it 's to the same we must referr the distinction of other legal meats the beasts which were forbidden them representing by the characters of their natural qualities those moral imperfections that is those vices and corrupt affections from which our lives ought to be exempted As for example abstinence from Swines flesh which was an abomination to them did signifie that the people of the Messiah should have no commerce with those uncleannesses and ordures of deportment wherein men of the world notably represented by the genius of this animal do wallow And when the same Apostle telleth us that we should keep our feast in truth and sincerity and in another place Hebr. 4 9. that there remaineth unto us a Sabbath or a rest doth he not shew us again that the old feasts of Israel were shadows of ours even of that feast which the Messiah hath procured and appointed for the faithful and which doth consist in two things the one that they do absteine from the works of sin and of the flesh the common works of men and the other that they do celebrate a rest in GOD with eternal joy Now that the body of these shadows is in JESUS CHRIST is evident For innocency sanctity abstinence from sin joy and immortality do well in Him fully There it is and no other where that the truth the example and pattern the doctrine and all the cause of them are to be found together with an almighty Spirit of light which alone is capable of producing these divine things in every one of us Whereby you see it is so far from being consequent upon these distinctions having been heretofore ordeined of GOD that we ought now to observe them still that on the contrary it is to be concluded we may insist no longer on them For since they were appointed in the quality of shadows until CHRIST should be revealed who sees not but that now when CHRIST hath been fully manifested it would be meer folly in us to adhere unto them still even as if seeing and having in hand the very body of a thing we should busy our selves in following after and embracing the shadow of it Precisely such was the extravagancy of these false Teachers who are here noted by S. Saul and such also is the errour of all those who upon the like pretences intermedle with the imposing of laws upon Christians concerning usage of or abstinence from such things as are in their nature indifferent And it is in this matter for one that our adversaries of Rome are infinitly to blame who notwithstanding the reason of the things themselves and the so clear doctrine of this great Apostle both in this place and in many other have made and constituted a no less number of laws about the distinction of dayes and meats then were among the Jews themselves They have marked more then half of the dayes of the year some with black and others with white I call marked with black those which they have devoted to the sadness of fasts and abstinences as all the Fridayes and Saturdayes of the year the Ember weeks the Rogation-dayes the Advent the Eves and Lent I mean by marked with white those which they consecrate to joy as that great throng of Holy-dayes which they disperse through all the fower seasons JESUS CHRIST the Father of eternity hath made His Disciples free from the laws of time raising them up above the Heavens which do make and measure it But these men put them in subjection to dayes and months and reduce them under the yoke of the Jews and make their piety depend upon the Almanack If they do not exactly observe all the dayes of the year if they fast not one day if they eat not on another if on one they don't do penance if they make not mirth on another though upon the former they should have cause to rejoyce in GOD and upon the latter to afflict themselves for their sins or their sufferings they commit a mortal sin though they did it without contempt or scandal Was there ever a discipline less reasonable or more contrary to the doctrine of S. Paul who would not have Christians condemned for the distinction of a Festival-day of a new Moon or of the Sabbaths who reprehends the Galatians for their observing-dayes and months and times and years Gal. 4.11 Rom. 14 6. and counts it for a weakness in faith to esteem one day above another Neither may it be replyed here that we also do discriminate Sundayes and Easter and Christmas and Pentecoste We observe them for orders sake not for Religion for the Polity of the Church and not upon scruples of devotion For what a confusion would there be if we had no dayes appointed for the assembling of the faithful It 's for our mutual edification and not for the worth and value of the dayes themselves that we observe them and as an Ancient said not that the day on which we do assemble is more holy or more glorious S. Hieâ—ome l. 2. Comment in Ep. ad Gal. To. 9. p 314. then another but because what day soever we assemble it 's a consolation to us to behold our selves all jointly employed in holy exercises For the main to us all dayes are equal as uniform parts of the same time which flow on by the order of one and the same LORD all of them and are all employable to His glory but the necessity and infirmity of this poor life doth constrain us of force to divide and part them out for divers uses If it be thus O adversaries that you discriminate-dayes I shall
confess I have done wrong to accuse you of crossing the doctrine of S. Paul But who knows not that it is a devotion for dayes and not the profit of men that makes you observe them You believe you do GOD service in this very thing that you feast one day and fast another You give it to the dignity of the day and not to the necessity of order or to your edification neither do you esteem dayes alike Those which you observe you set up very high above others not only by reason of the Church's command but because they have the honour to represent and signify some mysterious thing Accordingly you hold that besides the use which Festivals may be of for your instruction and your having time for works of piety your very solemnizing of them is a Religious act such as makes up a part of Divine service and is as you say meritorious in the sight of GOD which is exactly the opinion and the practice of those whom the Apostle in this place doth oppose For they condemned Christians not for absence from the assembly of the Church on the day appointed for it or for having profaned such howers in the world as were destin'd unto the service of GOD or for having scandaliz'd their neighbour by this kind of fault but only and precisely as you do for not having celebrated a Festival-day What shall I say of the other point to wit the use of and abstinence from meats The Apostle saith Let no man judge you in eating In conscience dare you affirm that you judge none of the faithful in this behalf What mean then those so rigorous laws of yours against them that eat any flesh those laws of yours that deprive Christians of this liberty for more then one third of the year and condemn that man who during all this time shall tast one bit of Bief or Mutton to as heavy penalties as if he had committed a deadly sin You are come so far as you look not upon those who violate these fine laws as sinners You abhorr them as proâ—ne persons and Atheists and count them not for Christians Is not this a grave and holy discipline and well worthy of S. Paul and JESUS CHRIST to make the service of GOD consist in meat whereof neither abstinence Matth. 15. 1 Cor 8 8. Rom. 14.17 nor use as reason sheweth every one and as our Saviour and His Apostle do teach doth pollute or sanctify doth bring loss or gain it being a thing purely indifferent in it's self good or evil only as it hurts or helps the interests of temperance and charity But we shall have shortly a fitter occasion to speak unto you of this subject more at large For the present Beloved Brethren make your profit I beseech you of S. Pauls instruction Use the liberty which the LORD JESUS hath obtained for you as His Apostle doth declare It is not reasonable that men should take from you what GOD hath given you and bought with the precious bloud of His Son Only see Gal. 5.13 that you take not this liberty for an occasion to live after the flesh Lay by shadows since you are no longer children But embrace the body which is in JESUS CHRIST His Kingdom is neither meat nor drink and no one will He condemn for having eaten any of the things which he hath created for the faithful to use with thanksgiving If He otherwhile prohibited some of them it was to deliâ—â—ate and figure out by this fleshly abstinence that which is mystical and spiritual whereunto He hath shaped you by His cross Your abstinence Christian is to renounce the meat that perisheth to loath the passions and productions of vice whereon the world doth feed It nourisheth it's self with the works of sin Avarice and ambitions and injustice and luxury and the ordures of wantoness and the infamous sweets of revenge are the aliments it runs after and cannot live without This is O ye faithful that flesh the usage whereof is forbidden you This is the Lent which JESUS CHRIST and His Apostles have in truth enjoyned a Lent to be observed not fourty dayes only but all the year long even that we abhorr what is evil that we eschew vice as poison that our lives be pure and innocent and clean from all the filthines of the flesh This is in truth that abstinence that makes a Christian and without which no man can have place among the members of CHRIST Gal. 5.24 6.14 For they that are His have crucify'd the flesh with the affections and lusts therefore The world is crucify'd to them It 's provisions it's pleasures it's allurements are had in execration of them Whoever he be that fasteth this Lent exactly he shall have part in the resurrection of CHRIST JESUS Not a man shall attain thereto otherwayes Prosecute it in good earnest Christian Souls and powerfully mortify in your selves all the lusts of this accursed flesh which perisheth it's self and will make all those perish too that desire it's delights and cannot wean themselves from it's deadly dainties See what JESUS CHRIST hath done and suffer'd for the destroying of it See the excellency of that other divine food on which He would have you live Your true food is to fulfil the will of His Father This is the food of the Prince of glory and of all His Angels food that is holy and immortal which will leave in your Souls a divine relish and contentment much better then all the feasts on earth and after the consolations wherewith it will solidly strengthen your consciences in this life eternally repast you in the Heavens with the delights of blissful immortality Brethren this is the body whereof the abstinence of the Jews was the shadow and delineation only As for their festivals they were also figures verily not of those in Rome which to say true are meer shadows and weak repesentations themselves no less then these of the Jews only they are instituted by men whereas the Jewish were ordeined of GOD they were I say figures of the resting and spiritual contentment of the faithful Origen against Cels s. l. 8. p. 404. Our festival as one of the ancients heretofore answered a Pagan that reproached Christians for their having none our festival is to do our duty to worship GOD and offer Him the unbloudy sacrifices of our holy supplications to rest from our own works and entirely sequester our selves to the work of GOD to exterminate from among us that really servile and mechanick labour of vitious actions and spend our lives in the truly noble and divine exercise of Sanctification Our Passeover is to eat the flesh of the Lambe to make use of His bloud to pass out of Egypt unto Canaan out of the world unto GOD and from Earth to Heaven leaving the things that are behind and advancing daily towards the mark and prize of our calling Our Pentecost is to converse with CHRIST in heavenly places
follow it Amen The End of the Second Part. SERMONS OF M R. JOHN DAILLE ON THE EPISTLE OF THE Apostle S T. Paul TO THE COLOSSIANS THE THIRD PART CONTAINING An Exposition of the two last Chapters in Eighteen SERMONS LONDON Printed for Tho. Parkhurst 1671. The Author's Epistle Dedicatory TO MONSIEUR Monsieur de Rambovillet LORD OF LANCEY and of PLESSIS-FRANC SIR THese Sermons will not be new to You there having past so little time since you heard them at Charenton no doubt but you will know them at first sight The support they then found in our holy Assembly emboldens them now to present themselves in publick Perhaps it had been better to rest contented with that favour which our people shew'd them and not publish them once more in this other form For beside that the eye is much more delicate than the ear and the defects of a discourse are far more easily observ'd on paper where they abide than in the air where they do but pass there is further a great difference between an Auditor whom devotion doth oblige to hear you and a Reader who does owe you nothing The one would think he should sin against Piety if he deny'd you his attention The other doth you a favour in heeding you and may examine you without a crime The one's judgment is half made for you whereas the other's is at its full liberty These reasons would have with-held me from hazarding the edition of these small Books if the matter had wholly depended upon my opinion But the desires of my friends and the intreaties of the Book-seller interposing in it their violence hath forc'd my modesty Yet I should have had vigour and firmness enough to defend my self against it if the question had been simply of my self and my reputation For the present age being so polite and so illuminated as the most eloquent tongues and the best fashioned penns can hardly content it I well know that to please it there is need of graces and perfections which I do not possess But neither is that the thing I seek since of my weakness and the Calling wherewith GOD hath honoured me having competently secured me from such a passion That which made me yield to the too favourable will of my Friends is the interest of Christian souls which they laid before me and the service they believ'd this Book might do them The success will inform us whether they had reason to promise themselves so much from it For my part the thing being as yet uncertain I held my self obliged to give place unto their judgment and to prefer the profit which they imagine the faithful may receive from my poor labours before any other consideration And if it be temerity to hope the same at least it is not a crime but a laudable affection to desire it Of one thing Sir I am well-nigh assured that you will not dislike the gift I make you of this third and last part of my work For to say nothing of that sweetness of spirit and that obliging nature which every one observes in you and not to consider divers testimonies which I have received of your good will towards me in particular I am confirm'd in this opinion by your piety well known in our Church both by the excellent fruits of your charity in the ordinary course of your life and by the services you have sometime done our whole flock in the Office of an Elder while you executed it among us with much edification and praise Perswading my self therefore Sir may it please you that you will receive this small present with your usual goodness and facility there remains not else but that I pray GOD to conserve you with your worthy and well-born Family in health and prosperity daily augmenting on you His most precious blessings both spiritual and temporal I beseech you to continue me the honour of your good graces and to do me the favour to believe that I passionately am SIR Your most Humble and most obedient Servitour DAILLE From Paris Apr. the 1. 1648. SERMONS ON THE THIRD AND FOURTH CHAPTERS OF THE Epistle of the Apostle St. Paul TO THE COLOSSIANS SERMON XXXII CHAP. III. Verses I. II. Verse I. If then ye be risen again with CHRIST seek the things which are above where CHRIST sitteth at the right hand of GOD. II. Mind the things which are above not those which are on the earth DEar Brethren If the study and practise of true holiness which consists in the love of God and our Neighbour had filled as it ought the hearts and lives of Christians they would never have amus'd themselves in those minute devotions and carnal ceremonies wherewith superstition hath alwaies fed and doth still to this day feed the World This second sort of services was not invented and introduced in Religion but to be a supply in defect of the other For man well knowing that the Majesty and Beneficence of GOD obligeth us to serve Him and the charms and tentations of the earth turning away his heart from the legitimate service we owe Him which is that of a true and real sanctity that he may not appear empty in the presence of this soveraign Deity he presents it instead of that which it requireth of us with certain corporeal childish and spurious devotions which for that they are of our own invention are naturally pleasing to us Accordingly they are commonly called satisfactions because they are performed to content GOD and pay Him for the omission of what was due to Him An evident sign that if men had fulfill'd their duty there would have been no need of their busying themselves in these other exercises Hence there proceeded at the beginning those abstinences from certain meats and those distinctions of daies and that worshipping of Angels which some seducers would have set up among Christians in the very daies of the Apostles From the same source also issued afterward the stations the xerofagies and other disciplines of the Montanists and of divers hereticks that sometime disturbed the ancient Church In fine from this very original have sprung the observances and voluntary services of Rome those Orders and Rules of so many Monks as do now a-daies fill the World quadragesimal rites fasts and vigils auricular confession pilgrimages whippings feastivals jubilees chappelets and fraternities with a multitude of such other devotions which have overwhelmed Christian Religion We may confidently say there would never have been recourse to such things if mortification of the old man if true piety towards GOD and true charity towards their neighbour had exercised and continually taken up the affections and whole life of Christians So likewise you see their greatest Zealots confess that their rules and disciplines have no place in Heaven where holiness is perfected and never had less on earth than among Christians of the first age that is the best and most holy all these humane devotions being evidently sprung from a relaxing of the piety
with so rich a portion not envy any of the creatures the perfections and happiness they have Our whole life would be a perpetual feastival whereon free from the travail and turmoil of worldlings contemplating in spirit the glory of the Palace of our LORD meditating His promises breathing after His benefits and enjoying them for the present by faith and Hope we should in repose wait for the blessed day of our glorious triumph But alas how far are we from such a felicity This wretched and perishing earth is the sole object of our minds Our souls are no less fastned to it than our bodies It swalloweth up all our thoughts it possesseth our affections it takes up our cares and our labours and hath the use of all our time We have no desires and love but for the false goods which it sheweth us nor fear and horrour but for the evils wherewith it threatneth us As for Heaven and the things it comprehendeth we are so far from seeking them that we not so much as think of them except it be dreamingly or in manner of a divertisement when we are told of them in this place looking on the stately representations which JESUS CHRIST hath drawn us of them as an empty picture fair indeed and pleasing but good for nought saving to feed our eyes with a short and bootless pleasure not attracting nor engaging our desires This is the cause why our whole life is miserable full of griefs and fears of weaknesses of regrets and infelicities The least strokes overturn us the least losses and slightest afflictions bear us down because not being fastned to Heaven the only firm and sure place of the World we fluctuate exposed to the mercy of all that comes against us And as children cannot be appeased when their puppets are taken from them because they have set all their affection on them so are we seized and do take on when we come to lose some of these toyes of the earth There is no way to comfort us because we have fastned our hearts to them And to say truth our condition is worse than other mens they at least are subject but to the evils that either the infirmity of nature or as they call it the inconstancy of fortune do bring with them whereas besides these the bad Christian who is not a Christian but in name is moreover exposed to the persecution of the World so as to say plainly there is nothing more foolish nor more wretched than he who hath part in the temporal sufferings and hardships of true beleevers and none at all in their consolation or blessedness inasmuch as his profession exposes Him to the hatred of the World and his vice excludes him from the Kingdom of GOD. Awake then ye that are worldly and come once out of so dangerous an errour Let not the trumpet of Heaven the voice of our great Apostle have founded now in your ears in vain Do not add this contempt to your other crimes He hath advertised you of your duty He hath declared the reasons that oblige you to it Take heed lest if you shut your ears against JESUS CHRIST who speaks by His mouth you perish in the end with this earth and the things you seek on it How do you not perceive that you shall never find there the happiness you seek Why hath not the experience of so many millions of persons who daily spend themselves in this vain labour taught you that the things of the earth are all of them but vanities and illusions transient figures which promise pleasure honour and contentment but afford none which do not cure the maladies of the body nor of the soul which infinitely toil out those that seek them and never fill the hearts of those that possess them multiplying their desires and their fears inflaming and envenoming their passions instead of extinguishing them which are subject to infinite mutations which men and elements may bereave you of every moment and which considering the short and uncertain duration of the life we lead here below you can enjoy but a very little time supposing that nothing does deprive you of them before death At that time Matt. 16.26 What will it profit a man to have gained the whole world and lose his own soul It is sure a blindness incredible to one that saw it not I do not say that a Christian who hath hopes of the world to come but that even any reasonable man should adhere with so ardent and obstinate a passion unto such wretched and fruitless things We perceive it and confess it and make the bravest discourses in the World upon it and after all that false lustre which we behold in these things hath such a faculty to bewitch our senses that not a person but lets himself be caught thereby But the worst is that besides errour and vanity there 's in it a tendency to eternal damnation For men may not slatter themselves None can serve two Masters nor look on Heaven and earth both together He that seeks the one must of necessity renounce the other it being no more possible to seek than it 's to find at once the things beneath and those which are above Faithful Brethren choose you and take the better part and leaving worldly men to labour in vain after the things of the earth and to seek in it what they shall never find turn you your hearts and eyes towards Heaven as the Apostle calleth you to do There Christian is the felicity you desire There dwelleth rest and joy and immortality and the perfection of both soul and body These are the only things that are truly worthy of your prayers and your pains Seek them and mind them night and day Give your selves no rest till you have found them and do feel the first-fruits and beginnings of them in your hearts Let these thoughts sweeten your sufferings and consolate your losses T is in vain that you threaten me ye people of the World You cannot deprive me of what I possess nor hinder me from finding what I seek since upon the things of Heaven you have no power Whatever you bereave me of the best part of my treasure and the only part that deserves that appellation will still remain entire to me Let the same thought arm us against all tentations Thou Tempter promisest me the things of the earth but I seek those of Heaven which thou canst not dispose of Though I should lose all I have here below even to this flesh its self yet shall I find it again with a thousand-fold increase in Heaven Let this thought again keep us continually busied in the good and worthy actions of piety charity and honesty Let our manners resemble those of the inhabitants of that divine City which wee seek Let the light of their knowledge the ardency of their love the purity of their affections shine forth now betimes in our lives 'T is that to which that new nature JESUS
to extinguish and abolish in all the members of His Son that first life which they inherited from old Adam Secondly because the execution of this decree of GOD is begun and advanced in them for the present The mortal blow thereof the flesh receives in this life from the hand of JESUS CHRIST and cannot possibly recover it again Then in the third place because this execution already begun in them will not be long a finishing natural death which considering the few daies we spend here below is not far from either of them devesting first their souls of all terrene and carnal reliques and then the resurrection being finally to refine their bodies also at the last day when earthly life shall be entirely and quite and clean dissolved and destroyed It 's for these three reasons that the Apostle saith here and else-where that the faithful are dead in regard of the life of sin and of the flesh not that they have not in them yet some remainders of them but for that this death is ordained by the decree of GOD and already begun in them and will soon be infallibly finished Even as we reckon among the dead a malefactor whom a supream Court and a sick person whom a prudent and able Physitian have condemn'd to dye neither do we stick to say that he is gone he is dead because his death is inevitable and all the life that remains for him is no longâ—r any thing So when a man hath been mortally wounded we immediately rank him with the dead because his vitals are struck and all the movings and perceivings he yet hath are but his last gaspings and the last combat his life makes before it doth end It 's in the same manner with true believers The flesh in them is wounded to death and if it does yet stir if it struggle if it give them any blow this at most is a small matter in comparison of that life it other-while exercised in them At that time it reigned in them Now if it do fight yet it rules no longer It finds a spirit in them which resists it which makes head against it and in this unto-it-fatal conflict it loseth by little and little all the blood and life it hath yet left it Wherefore the LORD JESUS whose death as we have said is both the cause and the pattern of ours did not dye in an instant but a lingring death having continued five or six hours in an agony before He gave up the ghost It is thus that the old man dyeth in the faithful He is already pierced with the nails of our Saviour and fastned to His cross and in a dying estate and without hope of recovery Nevertheless he strugleth still and will be a-while in this estate losing blood and strength and motion and life not all at once but by little and little This same is the condition of true believers Whence appears the pernicious error of those men who having the old man not bound not pierced not wounded to death in them but living and reigning at full liberty and with his whole vigour do yet imagine that they pertain to JESUS CHRIST and are of the number of His true members It 's a mortal mistake JESUS owneth none for His but such as are dead with Him whose flesh is either already laid down and destroyed in the grave as theirs who live in Heaven or at least nailed to His cross as theirs who yet combat on earth I confess the presumption of those who vaunt they sin no more and feel no longer in themselves any motion or contradiction of the flesh is extremely vain But your errour worldling is no whit less who having sin reigning and the flesh living in you do not forbear to perswade your self that you are a true Christian If the flesh doth still breath in a true Christian if it hath still some motion and some feeling in him yet it hath dominion in him no longer It lives in him no longer it languisheth in him and is so weak as it plainly appears to be at the pangs of death Put it into this estate if you will be truly Christian Fasten it to the cross of JESUS Pierce it through with His nails and with His thorns Make it drink of His vinegar Take from it its pleasures draw out its blood and strength Again since this is our condition since we by the beneficence of our Saviour are dead in such sort as we even now explained you clearly see Christian that what the Apostle concludes upon it doth evidently and necessarily follow from it to wit that we should not seek any more the things which are on earth For since we have in JESUS CHRIST put off that carnal and vitious life for the maintaining and welfare whereof earthly things are subordinate who is there but comprehends that it would be an insufferable extravagancy for us to amuse our selves still about them It would be an errour as ridiculous as if one went an hunting after game or a buying precious stones and stuffs for a person either already dead or at least in the agony of death Such a person hath no more need of those things they being good only to feed or fashion that liâ—e which he no longer hath It 's just so that you Christian do who labour so ardently in the seeking after and acquiring of riches honours and other goods of the present World All this is the equipage of a life that you no longer have The flesh for whose delight and adornment those goods do serve is dead or at least death-struck in you It is crucified with the LORD and a crucified one hath nothing to do with meat nor jewels nor other things of the earth Luke 12.20 Thou fool said our Saviour to the rich worldling in the Gospel-parable this very night shall thy soul be required of thee and then whose shall those things be which thou hast laid up As if he had said that being once dead he could no more enjoy them Christian how is it you do not consider not only your dying e're long but that you are to say truth dead already that there is no carnal life for you any longer so as to conclude thereupon that you have therefore no need of all this earthly pelf which with such a deal of pain you scrape together I confess that while we are on earth we cannot altogether be without it But neither can you deny that for a living Christianly here we need but a little of it and for a little time because we have little left us of that life for which it is necessary Let us proportionably have little affection and adherence to it Let us use it but for necessity and not for delight Let us look upon the world with the eyes of pilgrims taking but so much of it as is requisite for our passing on Set we before us the example of the life of our LORD led on earth during the daies of His
flesh for indeed it is the pattern of that life we live here below after our regeneration He sought not either the glory or the pleasures or the riches of the World He adhered not to any one of those things but used what was necessary for His food and raiment with great sobriety and frugality not tasting the fruition of it and so little fearing to be deprived of the fame that instead of the glory of the world He voluntarily suffered extreme ignominy poverty and nakedness instead of riches torments and the cross instead of pleasure And so you see my Brethren how the consideration of our being dead in CHRIST JESUS should turn us aside from the affecting and the seeking of earthly things But the life we also have in Him should no less set us at distance from the same and this is that the Apostle sets before us in the second place You are dead and your life saith he is hid with JESVS CHRIST in GOD. When CHRIST who is your life shall appear then shall you also appear with Him in glory It seems that the first words do tend to prevent an objection which might be made to the Apostle upon his saying that we are dead For how doth this consist with that which he asserted afore namely that we are risen again with CHRIST If we be risen we live and if we live it is not true that we are dead But this difficulty is easily resolv'd For first the life unto which we are dead is the life of sin and of the flesh as we have explicated it whereas the life unto which we be risen in JESUS CHRIST is the life of CHRIST and of His Spirit The one is the life of the old Adam and the other of the new Now it is not incompatible that one and the same person be deprived of the former and possessed of the latter Nay on the contrary it is not possible that such as live in the former manner should also live in the latter and as in nature the generation of one thing doth naturally presuppose the corruption of another so likewise in grace the life of the second Adam doth of necessity inferr the death of the first so that from our being risen again with CHRIST it is so far from following we are not dead to the flesh that quite on the contrary it thence necessarily follows we are dead to the flesh it not being possible to affirm the former without supposing the latter nor to place the life of CHRIST in us otherwise than by the death of Adam in us An inevitable necessity requires the one do dye that the other may live in us As for that life which we acquire by our resurrection with JESUS CHRIST the Apostle grants that it pertaineth to us and that in this behalf it may be said of us that we live as he doth say frequently both of other beleevers in general and of himself in particular Yet notwithstanding he shews us again that this life of CHRIST is not manifested and compleated in us that it is yet for the present hidden in GOD with JESUS CHRIST so as in this respect it might be said of us while we are on the earth that we live not and that we have not yet the life unto which CHRIST hath raised us after the same manner Rom. 8.22 23. as he spares not to say else-where that our being saved is in hope and we yet wait for the adoption as if we had not hitherto receiv'd the salvation and adoption of GOD. For the right understanding of this mysterie we must consider briefly what the Apostle here saith of it and first what that life is which he calleth ours Secondly how it is hid in GOD with JESUS CHRIST and then lastly what shall be that manifestation of this life which he promiseth us at the appearing of CHRIST The life of the faithful is that same which JESUS CHRIST doth give them instead of the life He taketh from them when He receiveth them into His communion This which he takes away was impure and vicious the other was pure and holy This was natural and earthly the other is spiritual and heavenly The principle of the former was a carnal mind and an irregular concupiscence the principle of the latter is a divine saith and a just and reasonable love The one consisted in a vicious fruition of the flesh and of the earth the other is a sweet and a legitimate possessing of the Spirit and of Heaven And as the former was mortal and perishing no less than the flesh and the earth from which it drew its nutriment so the other is incorruptible and eternal according to the nature of the Spirit that quickens it and of Heaven that maintains it The fruits of the former were sin and shame and damnation The fruits of the latter are righteousness honour joy and immortality That first life therefore to say true was a death rather than a life being such as after a short and feaverish agitation could not terminate but in eternal sufferings And this other on the contrary is alone truly worthy of the name of life which name also the Scripture does oft-times purely and absolutely give it â— Joh. 5. as when it saith that He that hath the Son hath life and He that hath not the Son hath not life and that He that believeth in the Son is passed from death to life But then you will say since we do believe how is it that the Apostle says our life is hid with CHRIST in GOD as if it were not in our selves Dear Brethren I answer it is very certain that the LORD JESUS doth even at present give all His true members the seminals and principles of this blessed life the which He casteth into their hearts by His Gospel and that He preserveth augmenteth and fortifyeth them there gradually by the vertue of His Spirit and by the usage of His Word His Sacraments and his Disciplines unto the making them bring forth the excellent fruits of charity and sanctity By reason of these beginnings and of the sure title they bring them to the plenitude and perfection of that life they are said in Scripture to live and to have eternal life at present even as we attribute to a plant the name and life of the kind which it is of when it hath once taken root and thrust forth some bud and verdure though it hath not yet its whole extent and perfection Yet it must be acknowledged too that the compleat form of this life which consists in perfect sanctity rob'd with glorious immortality resembling that which JESUS CHRIST our elder brother brought up out of His sâ—pulchre at His rising again and carried into Heaven with Him forty daies after will not be communicated to us but in the world to come For here below as you know both our knowledge is imperfect and our sanctity infirm as the Apostle saith else-where declaring that now we see but in
old man are left sound and whole to stretch out the one upon the ground and lye in ashes while the others are in pleasure It is not by an hair-cloth nor a whip that vices are subdued These things incommodate the body but do not sure amend the soul They humble the out-side they hurt not within But leave the old man there at full liberty with his thoughts and lusts And it is not without reason the Apostle advertiseth us else-where that bodily exercise profits little 1 Tim. 4.8 Experience hath justified his words the lives of those that addict themselves to such exercises being no better yea sometimes worse than the lives of others And it is not long ago The Jesuit Tetavius l. 5 c. 3. de la penit publique since Truth drew this confession from the penn of one of our greatest adversaries that such exercises do many times much hurt even mens spiritual advancement because of a secret opinionativeness and pride which they beget and feed in some spirits who become arrogant and haughty upon them and take occasion from them to contemn those that lead a more moderated life The Apostle therefore would have us instead of these childish and poorly profitable exercises to lay our our labour upon the mortifying of the members of the old man that is our 〈◊〉 And it is to the same intention of his that I referr what he addeth namely that these members are upon the heart which is a thing excellently noted what way soever you consider it For first these vices are all upon the earth if you respect either their rise or their business or lastly their end and desires It 's clear they all spring up out of the earth from admiration and coveting of earthly things they all creep on the earth in its excrements or in its fruits and rise no higher than its fumes and vapours wretchedly cleaveing to these sordid vanities which they feel to fleet away and perish between their hands while they gripe them and are enjoying them Where is covetousness Where is luxury Where is gluttony and ambition What seek they for What desire they For what do they toil themselves Sure you plainly see that the earth is their only element that the metal which the one desires and the flesh which the other longeth for and the messes that the third breaths after and the vanities that are the passion of the latter I say you plainly see that all this is but earth or fruits and productions of the earth They are then to say true these members of the old man that fasten us to the earth and not the members of this body it is sin and not simply this flesh For as to our body it needs but a little for its conversation during that little time we pass here below whereas the desires of vice are infinite Whence it follows according to the Apostle's conception that it is vice we are to mortifie and not the body the members of the old man and not those of the body Then again if you consider the place destinated to be the abode of the one and the other nature you will further see that the members of the old man that is vices are not but upon the earth It 's there they make their spoyl and exercise all their tyranny there they live there they dye there they rot unprofitably consuming themselves in their own wretched filthinesse They have no place in Heaven where enters nothing but what is pure where perfect sanctity liveth and reigneth eternally crowned with immortal glory But the members of our bodies which superstition fastens ou◠and ridiculously afflicts though they also be for present on the earth and have need of its elements yet they shall not remain there alwaies They shall be one day lifted up into the Heavens and enter into the Sanctuary of GOD and live on His manna and partake of the fruits of the coelestial tree of life Knowing now the meaning of this exhortation of the Apostle's you may easily of your selves without my saying any thing of it comprehend the connexion it hath with the precedent words which imported that we are dead and that our life is hid with CHRIST in GOD and that we shall one day appear with Him in glory For since we be dead to the world and called to the hope and the fruition of an heavenly life which is hidden on high in JESUS CHRIST and shall be one day manifested and given to each one of us who sees not that all this doth most strictly oblige us to draw off all our affections from the earth and to cut all the ties that fasten us unto it that is to mortifie our members which are on the earth all the vices that engage us and ensnare us in the things of the earth It remaineth that we consider the vices or members of the old man which the Apostle does particularly name and expresly injoyn us to mortifie He nameth five in all fornication uncleanness inordinate appetite evil concupiscence and covetousness I conceive that the four first are related to one and the same head and be but divers branches of one and the same stock to wit luxury or sensuality Fornication is the principal species of them the disorders whereof are so evident and so well known that no one can be ignorant of the nature of it Uncleannesse comprehendeth all the other ordures and pollutions that are contrary to the chastity and honesty of our bodies as incests violations and those other abominable furies of carnal passions which transgress even the laws of nature as corrupt as it is The word which we have translated inordinate appetite doth signifie literally perturbation or passion in the original tongue But it is frequently used to express the passion of lubrieity and the filthy disposition of a voluptuous and esseminate heart that easily receives the impression of all lascivious objects and abandons its self to these kind of pleasures and runs out and pours forth its self in a sort entirely to them Evil concupiscence which the Apostle addeth in the fourth place is the source or the root of all the vices of this sort For though concupiscence be often taken in general for all irregular appetites and desires whatever the objects are to which they are unduly carried yet it sometimes signifies those in particular which respect the pleasures of the flesh and we often use the word concupiscence in this sense in our vulgar language Nevertheless I grant that in this place it may be taken in a larger extent as importing inordinate coveting either of pleasures or of profits and riches because the Apostle speaks here of covetousness also and not of sensuality alone He calls this concupiscence evil to distinguish it from that which keeping within its just bounds desireth things lawful in a due manner and measure The last of the vices here touched by the Apostle is Covetousnesse a vice no less known than the fore-going Only
avaricious by name for that among all vices these do particularly provoke the vengeance of GOD by reason of their vileness and enormity and also by reason of the disturbance they occasion in humane society the interest and conservation whereof doth often force the LORD to speed the execution of His judgements upon these kind of sinners and punish them exemplarily in this world that so by this severity of His He may cool the furiousnesse of those who giving up themselves to the passions of these two accursed pests would overthrow all order among mankind if their rage were not repressed by some notable chastisement As for the truth of this sentence that the wrath of GOD cometh for these sins upon the children of rebellion since it is the Apostle that is the mouth of Heaven the oracle of JESUS CHRIST that pronounceth it no Christian may doubt of it First though they should go on altogether unpunished in this world yet sure it is that in the next this burning wrath of the Almighty which shall there manifest its self once for all at the great and terrible day of the LORD shall separate them for ever from the society of the blessed and strike them down to Hell there to suffer eternally with devils the just punishments of their rebellion For besides this Text which is clear 1 Cor. 6.10 Eph. 5.5 Gal. 5.21 Heb. 13.4 1 Cor. 3.17 the Apostle doth in three other passages expresly enroll idolaters fornicators and adulterers among those that shall have no part in the Kingdom of Heaven And else-where he saith particularly of whoremongers and adulterers that GOD will judge them and else-where again that GOD will destroy those who shall have by such pollutions destroyed or violated His Temple that is their bodies In like manner St. John assigneth them their part in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone Rev. 21.8 1 Cor. 6.9 1 Tim. 6.9 which is the second death And as for the covetous it 's of them in particular St. Paul saies that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of GOD and elsewhere that covetous desires do drown men in perdition But besides this great and dreadful punishment which these vices will infallibly draw down at the last day upon the children of rebellion they involve them for the present in so many divers evils that if the worlds stupidity and passion did not blind it it might easily perceive the truth of what the Apostle doth affirm For first is not that bruitishnesse and that horrible eclipsing of good sense and right reason and that bestial abandonednesse to the vilest passions and actions into which almost all the slaves of these vices are seen to fall is not this I say an eminent and plain mark of the wrath of GOD upon them The debauched for their part the life they lead is nought else but a continual wandring out of the way Consider me Soloniâ—â—â— the sagest Prince that ever was in whom shone so glorious and so splendid a light of knowledge and of wisdom that he ravished his whole age and attracted a great Queen from the ends of the earth to come behold his glory After he yielded up himself to this infamous passion he so lost all that force of spirit and judgement that he became extravagant to such a degree as to give up himself to idolatry the utmost of all bruitalities in complacency to his Mistresses And the Heathen Poets themselves to represent what the ordinary sequel of this vice is do make one of their Heroes assume in their fables the habit and equipage of a woman after he had once fallen into the snares of this wretched passion It 's an image of what doth still betide those that let themselves be taken in the same putting off by little and little all vertue and shame they become effeminate and so utterly lose their senses that at length there is nothing so disgraceful nothing so contrary to order honour and decency but they readily do and suffer The same is signified again by another fable of the same Author's concerning some whom the potion of a sorceresse transformed into swine and other beasts The fable is pregnant of truth and under feigned names and persons containeth the history of the most part of those miserable men whom fornication and adultery hath bewitched They lose heart and judgement and humane sense and commit so many follies and extravagancies as it is very easie to perceive that it 's no longer the foul of a man but of a meer animal that guides them Whence then comes so strange a Metamorphosis even in a Solomon and in persons that otherwise seemed so advis'd and prudent Dear Brethren doubt not but that it comes from a secret judgement of GOD who deprives them of that spirit and judgement which they made such ill use of and who so to say degrading them of the quality of men whereof this vice hath rendred them unworthy Rom. 1.20 drives them out among animals delivering them up unto a mind disfurnished of judgement as the Apostle doth else-where describe this dreadful vengeance of GOD. But besides mind and reason who sees not that it also usually takes away their strength their beauty their vigour and health of body bringing on them diseases which gnaw their very bones diseases which rot them and incurvate them before the time and which creating sharpest pains in all the parts of their miserable flesh do make it pay dear for the dishonest pleasures they have given it Loss of goods is also one of the punishments which GOD commonly inflicteth for this sin permitting its very self to consume by the irregularity of its foolish expences the means that are necessary for the support of the life of man and reduce those that serve it to an incommodious and shameful poverty Whereto may be yet added infinite examples which the lives of men are full of of tragical miseries wherewith GOD doth visibly strike sins of this sort It was for them that He sent the first deluge of water on the earth and afterwards again a second of fire and brimstone upon the coasts of Sodom and Gomorrah The debauches of Israel with Moah were the cause of the death of four and twenty thousand men whom GOD consumed in His fury And the tribe of Benjamin so great and flourishing as it had been was reduced to six hundred men for the uncleanness of one of their Cities Who knows not that sometimes one man's adultery hath caused long wars and ruined great Estates And among the instances of it particularly lamentable is that of the Gothes Empire which having flourished in Spain a long time was destroyed and utterly overthrown for a fault of this kind committed by one of their Kings This occasion brought in the Saracens upon their hands who besides liberty and goods took Christian religion away too from the most part of those people introducing and maintaining Mahometism in those Countreys during many ages It is
friends doth offend us And though we have more need than any of the equity and indulgence of others yet we can bear nothing from them but imitating in this part of our lives the furious and extravagant rigours of Rome in her Councils do excommunicate and anathematize indifferently all that crosseth us And as for the offences that are done us we make them so hainous that if we were believ'd they would all be taken for treasons which cannot be pardon'd without injustice and notable prejudice to all humane society Hence come those hatreds and quarrels wherewith all is full among us and which are kept on foot and perpetuated to the reproach of the Gospel and scandal of the world between great and small yea the more the sorrow between neighbours and nearest alliances not so much as Brethren and Sisters exempted neither the communion of grace nor of nature being sufficient to reduce our refractory and untrâ—ctable stoutness to reason Now though this be horrible yet need it not be wondred at For the cause of it is very evident even pride which hath taken up the place of that humility which the Apostle commandeth us 'T is this arrogancy and that haughty opinion which every one hath of himself that renders us so cruel and unnatural insensible of the miseries of the afflicted and implacable towards those that have offended us This is the poyson that kills all sweetness and gentleness all tenderness and humanity in us and draws out of our bowels all the sentiments of the charity of JESUS CHRIST Restore humility and you will soon recover all those divine Vertues But dear Brethren enough of complaints especially on so good a day in which we have communicatted at the LORD 's own Table I would now much rather praise your vertues and graces than reprehend your faults and vices I shall therefore leave the charge of examining them to each one of your selves to be performed by you apart under the eyes of GOD and in the secret of your own consciences and will for a conclusion content my self with exhorting and conjuring you to obey henceforth this command of the Apostle and to put on as he enjoyns bowels of mercy kindness humility gentleness and patience bearing with one another and pardoning one another if one hath a quarrel against the other as CHRIST hath pardoned you This is required of you by that sacred Bread and Wine which you all have taken together this Morning at the Table of JESUS CHRIST and are the symbol of your union and the badge of your concord Hath not that mystical Cup indeed sweetned your hearts Hath it not mitigated your gall and bitterness and mollified your stoutness and expel'd out of your minds all thoughts contrary to charity This again that holy and glorious LORD calls for of you who hath to day been communicated to you Christian saith he I have shewed thee mercy that thou might'st so do to others I have had pity upon thee that thou might'st have compassion upon them I have given thee my flesh and blood that thou might'st impart of thy good things to my poor members who need them I have dy'd for thee that thou might'st live for them and have satisfied thee with the bread of Heaven that thou might'st distribute unto them that of the earth I have pardoned thee thy crimes and drowned them all in my blood that thou might'st chearfully forgive them the offences they have done thee Thus it is my Brethren that the LORD bespeaks us The name of Christians which we bear and the quality of elect of GOD Saints and Beloved which is inseparably annext thereto doth also oblige us to the same devoirs For with what face can we say that we are elected of GOD if we still abide in the commerce of the World and its vices Or his Saints if we have no mark of his sanctity Or his Beloved if we despise his commandments In fine the interest of our own welfare and salvation demandeth too the same thing of us For what is there more miserable than cruel haughty hard-hearted and implacable souls whom their own vices do torment night and day for the present and the fire of Hell will torment eternally in the world to come And on the contrary what is more graceful or more happy than a Church in which do reign pity and benignity humility meekness and patience And these holy vertues bind all the faithful together It 's there that the LORD hath commanded life and the blessing for ever Psal 133.3 as the Psalmist sings It 's there he pours forth the graces and consolations of his Spirit during this world and will in the next distribute the crowns of his Glory and of his Immortality Amen THE FORTIETH SERMON ON COLOSSIANS CHAP. III. VER XIV XV. Verse XIV And besides all this put on Charity which is the bond of persection XV. And let the peace of GOD hold the chief place in your hearts unto which ye are called in one body and be ye thankful DEAR Brethren Hypocrisie that piece of wickedness which GOD most abhorreth hath a great extent in humane life It not only counterfeiteth piety doing external actions of religion and hiding a protane and impious heart under this handsome veil but also frequently puts on a false thew of justness and goodness towards men that by this out-side it may deceive them and through their credulity accomplish its unhonest and vicious designs Hereby first it commits an iniquity of blackest note it being as a wise Heathen sometime said one of the unjustest things in the world to make a wicked wretch pass for an honest man And secondly it does unworthily profane the acts of vertue as holy and sacred a thing as any is making them serve the passions and interests of vice than which a more unclean and baser object cannot be imagined For an Hypocrite does good not out of any affection he hath unto vertue but to get reputation or win peoples hearts or advance his own affairs Ambition or avarice or pleasure is the idol to which he sacrificeth the noblest and most splendid actions For instance when he gives alms unto the poor 't is not for that he careth for them as the Scripture speaks of Judas but he doth it only to win credit He gives properly to his own vanity and not to the necessitousness of men Again when he acts the part of a merciful man and forgives those that have cross'd him the offences they have done him it is not any sentiment of goodness but meerly the interest of his glory that sways him so to do There are a multitude of people that do thus abuse beneficence and gentleness As the more expert sort of Tyrants they make 'em instruments of their lust and when they perform any actions of 'em it is not at the command of those vertues themselves but in subserviency to their own vices retaining a disposition to be cruel and inhumane if their interest requireth
amongst us not the ordures of luxury nor the vilinies of avarice which are the infamy of His people the reproach of our profession the scandal of such as are without the shame of those that are within the ruine and eternal misery of those that obstinately continue in these vices Rather let honesty chastity purity of body and spirit charity and liberality and all other Christian vertues be seen to flourish and fructifie in the midst of us to the glory of GOD the edification of all within and without and our own salvation Amen THE THIRTY SIXTH SERMON ON COLOSSIANS CHAP. III. VER VIII Verse VIII But now ye also put off all these things wrath anger maliciousness detraction dishonest speech out of your mouth DEAR Brethren The Philosophers have well observed and with consonancy to truth as each of us may perceive in himself by our own experience that besides understanding and will there are in the souls of men two other inferior powers one of which desires those pleasing things that sense presents it and the other fleeth from and avoideth those that look troublesome In the barbarous language of the schools the former is called the concupiscible and the latter the irascible They both were given us by the Creator for the benefit of our nature to serve us as two goads which might prick and move us the one to seek and acquire what is profitable for it the other to repell what is contrary to it And in the primitive and legitimate constitution of our being each of these two powers exactly obeying reason they had nothing in their motions but what was good and just Afterwards sin supervening by our fall did put them into an huge disorder reason which had lost its dominion leaving them both without conduct and most commonly favouring their errors instead of correcting them For now desire embraceth any gustful thing that is presented and anger is stirred up against any thing that seems displeasing indifferently without heeding or following the judgement of right reason whence do proceed the greatest part of the sins and miseries of the life of man Accordingly you see that the principal task of those that would reform our manners is to labour above all things in the rectifying of these two powers of our souls and for the reducing of them sweetly under the yoke of reason that neither of them may ever move its self but as it commandeth or permitteth Our Apostle therefore having undertaken here to give the Colossians and all other believers which shall read this Epistle the form of that sanctity to which the discipline of our LORD JESUS CHRIST doth oblige us took care at the entrance to correct the actions and motions of the one and the other of these two powers He began with concupiscence enjoyning us to mortifie all that 's vitious in it and religiously abstain from its principal excesses which are the ordures of carnal pleasures and of avarice To this end he hath minded us of those inevitatable punishments which this kind of disorders doth ever draw down from Heaven upon the children of rebellion that if the justness of the thing it self cannot perswade us at least the fear of punishment may retain us in our duty Having thus purged our concupiscence he cometh next unto wrath and in the verse that we have read does faithfully advise us to mortifie likewise the passions thereof and all the evils they produce that our lives may be not only pure and honest but also innocent calm and peaceful and truly worthy of that JESUS CHRIST of whom we make profession the supreme pattern of sweetness and benignity But now saith he ye also put off all these things wrath anger maliciousness detraction and dishonest speech out of your mouth You plainly see that these things which he commandeth us to put off are five in all Wrath anger maliciousness detraction and dishonest speech The four first are either kinds or effects of one and the same passion even that which we call wrath The last referrs to somewhat else nevertheless he ranks it here with the other for a reason you shall hear anon This is the subject we will treat of in this action by the will of GOD. Only before our coming to it considering that there is nothing superfluous or useless in this holy Apostle's language we must discover in short the meaning and reason of those words with which he begins his exhortation But now ye also put off all these things They depend upon the precedent verse to which they most evidently referr St. Paul did there put the Colossians in mind of their ancient estate under the darknesse of Paganism before the Gospel had shone on them At that time said he to them you wallowed in the ordures of avarice and luxury as well as other children of the generation Ye walked and lived in these things When therefore he comes to add here But now put ye off all these things it is clear that he opposeth to the time of their fore-past ignorance the time of their present knowledge their faith to their error their Christianity to their Paganism the day to the night and the light to darkness and by this means he represents to them one reason to induce them to their duty drawn from their present estate For every thing as the Wise man sheweth hath its time and every season its business The actions of the day are of one sort and those of the night another and a thing that becomes childhood is not sufferable in riper years While you were in the darkness of Paganism that gross ignorance you lived in rendred your vices less strange and more excusable saith the Apostle Now that you live in the light of JESUS CHRIST with what excuse can you cover your faults any longer The laws and customs of this Divine Kingdom into which He hath called you are quite different from those of Paganism which you have renounced Be content to have escaped out of them and let it suffice you to have wretchedly lost so many years in the vices of ignorance and to have so long fulfilled the will of the Gentiles Now that GOD hath graciously brought you to quit their errors quit also their vices and henceforth regulate your manners by the light which shines about you Have no more commerce with their works since JESUS CHRIST hath brought you out of their darkness The Apostle in another place explains this reason more at length which he doth here but touch in a word The night is pass'd Rom. 13.12 1 Thes 5.6 2 Cor. 5.17 saith he and the day is come on Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness and put on the armour that is the garments of light You are all children of light and of the day We are not of the night nor of darkness Old things are passed away behold all things are become new Beloved Brethren Would to GOD we had this consideration alwaies before our eyes It would
be sufficient to divert us from the vices of the world unto which we suffer our selves to be so easily carried For if they rendred us guilty of death when we practised them in the darkness of ignorance of what hells and maledictions shall we not be worthy if we commit them now Now that we live in the light of the Gospel in the communion of Saints and Angels Who sees not that if we live ill all these great advantages will turn to our misery and that the glory we have to know GOD and His CHRIST will serve to no end but the aggravating the guilt and augmenting the punishment of our sins Let us then Christians beware of abusing the gifts of GOD. Let us lead a life worthy of the condition to which He hath called us and of the age to which He hath advanced us and following the counsel of His Apostle now that we are under grace in the kingdom of holynesse let us put off all these base lusts which belong only to that estate of errour and ignorance which we are come out of The word which we have translated put off signifyeth simply lay by or cast behind you as when a man throws down a fardle he was loaden with and so our Bibles have rendred it in the thirteenth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans Rom. 13.16 where the Apostle hath us'd it Let us cast off the works of darkness And it seems it would not have been amiss to take it so in the place before us because it immediately follows and dishonest speech out of your mouth in regard whereof the word put off is harsh as you may well perceive But this concerns the words only The sense remains the same still even that we rid our selves of all the passions of vice and cleanse our souls our senses and our mouths of them and as the Apostle speaks else-where using again the same word cast off all this heavy and killing load of the sins of the world We may not forget the word also ye also put off all these things Some referr it to other believers who endeavour after true sanctification as if the Apostle's meaning were that the Colossians should do the like But nothing appearing in the Text on which such a conceit may be founded I account it better to referr it either to the present state of the Colossians which required that as they had otherwhiles walked in vice so they should now renounce it or which seems to me more fluent to the passions whereof he had spoken Besides fornication and covetousnesse put off also all these things saith he to wit wrath and detraction of which he comes to speak For indeed friend if you would be truly a Christian it is not enough that you rid your self of one vice You must also break with all the rest as for restoring you to health it 's not sufficient to cure you of one maladie you must be heal'd of all it being clear that while any one remains upon you you may 't is true be less sick than you were when you had many others with it but for all that you will not be in health Accordingly for the being a true Christian a disciple of the Spirit and one of GOD's houshold there 's need of being delivered from all vices and not from some only If you had mortified in you the passions of luxury and avarice I acknowledge it is much But yet it is not all Qâ—it also those of wrath and detraction since they alone are sufficient to destroy you though you have none other This is the instruction the Apostle doth here give us where having ordered us to mortifie the former of those vices he addeth Cast off also all these things wrath anger malice detruction dishonest speech out of your mouth The two first of these five words referr to one and the same passion which we do but too well know and indifferently call in our tongue either wrath or anger But in the language the Apostle useth there is this difference that the first of these words which we have rendred wrath doth properly import a firm and fixed desire of revenge The other which we have translated anger or indignation is the first trouble which ariseth in us when we enter into choler that fire which on a sudden kindleth in our spirits and heating and agitating our blood makes it boil about our hearts One is the beginning and the other the form and consistency of the passion One is the first gust of the storm the other the continuation of it The one enkindles the other burns our hearts The one puts fire to them the other keeps it in I confess this first boyling up of indignation is a less evil than formed wrath but notwithstanding it 's an evil Wherefore the Apostle would have us clear our selves of them both That malice which he adds in the third place is also in my opinion a certain kind of anger I know well the word is of a great extent and signifies in general that venome and evil of sin which is diffused through any one of our passions which soever it be But here as frequently else-where I suppose it 's taken for the malignity of anger when a mischievous and vindicative stomach broods on its passion inwardly and feeds its fire under the ashes hatching some ill turn for the person it aims at and waiting for opportunity to break out Such a man works under ground as miners do and appears not till the ruine he prepareth for his enemy be fully ready His passion is like a stinted fire that doth not burn up untill its season Of all kinds of anger there is none more black and malignant in its self nor more noxious or pernicious in its effects Wherefore the Apostle calls it malice naughtinesse or malignity particularly and it seems to be the same thing he else-where calls bitternesse when treating of the same subject he saith Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamour and evil-speaking Ephes 4.3 be put away from among you with all malice But the Apostle's indication of our duty is not obscure and it would be loss of time to spend any more about explanation of it The summ of all is that we practise it and labour in the thing each of us in good earnest For the evil that this holy man would take away from among us is so common with us as scarce a person is to be found exempted from it I confess it 's a great and almost incredible calamity that man who was created for humanity and whom nature seems not to have form'd but for sweetnesse and courtesie and gentleness should be so corrupted as that there is no animal in the world more fierce more furious and more malignant the poison of serpents the paws of lions and the tusks of wild boars being not more to be feared than most mens choler I confess also it is yet a much greater shame that Christians