Selected quad for the lemma: world_n
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A67417
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Three sermons concerning the sacred Trinity by John Wallis.
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Wallis, John, 1616-1703.
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1691
(1691)
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Wing W611; ESTC R17917
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57,981
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110
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God they did not understand him to speak in such a sense as when themselves were commonly wont so to speak as Joh. 8.41 We are not born of fornication we have one Father even God but in such a sense as they judged Blasphemous and had been so indeed had it not been true who therefore sought the more to kill him Joh. 5.18 because he said That God was his Father making himself Equal with God And the High Priest Matth. 26.65 rent his Cloths saying He speaketh Blasphemy when our Saviour affirmed before him That he was the Christ the Son of God 'T was manifest therefore that he so spake and they so understood him of such a Son-ship as argued a Divinity a being equal with God 2. His Humanity or Incarnation is pointed at in these words whom thou hast sent For by the Fathers sending him or his coming into the World is clearly meant his being Incarnate or made Man As Gal. 4.4 God sent his Son made of a Woman And Joh. 1.14 The Word was made Flesh and dwelt amongst us 3. His Mediatory Office is implyed as well in the Title Christ added to his Name Jesus as in that of his being sent by God Jesus the Christ or Jesus the Messiah whom thou hast sent For as his Name Jesus doth design the Person so the Title Christ that is Messiah that in Greek answering to this in Hebrew and both signifying the Anointed doth import the Office to which he was designed and for which he was sent For God did not send him to no purpose but sent him for this end for this Work To be the Mediator between God and Man To reconcile us to the Father To make an Atonement or Propitiation for us To take away the sins of the World To obtain Eternal Redemption To procure an Everlasting Inheritance a purchased Possession To make Intercession for us To save to the uttermost those that come unto God by him Or as Joh. 3.16 17. where all the three Particulars are likewise intimated God therefore sent his onely begotten Son into the World that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have Everlasting Life And now having gone through the whole Text we might if time would suffer look back upon it to take a new Survey thereof and collect from thence some of those particular deductions which might concern our practice For certainly the Knowledge which Christ here declares necessary to Eternal Life and the means conducing thereunto is not a bare Notional knowledge or a pure speculative Belief such as the Devils may have as well as we but an operative Knowledge a practical Faith a Faith fruitful in good Works without which those speculative notions will never bring us to Heaven And therefore without ingaging in the nice Disputes of Justification by Faith alone or Works concurring thereunto this is on all hands agreed without dispute That Faith without good Works will never justify us Whatever their influence be in Justification their Presence at least is necessary Without Doing we cannot in God's account be reputed either to Believe or Know. Those that obey him not are reckoned in God's account amongst those that Know not God at least amongst those who profess they know God but do in their works deny him Who shall be so far by such a Knowledge from obtaining Eternal Life that Christ shall come in flaming fire to take vengeance on them and to punish them with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his Power In particular If we know God to be the onely True God Then must we Love him Fear him Worship him and Obey him Nor doth the knowledge of Christ as Mediator abate any thing of this Duty For though he came to take away the Curse of the Law by being made a Curse for us yet not our Obligation thereunto He came not to destroy the Law or make it less obligatory to duty but to fulfill it I may add That those who will not acknowledge themselves under the Obligation of it have reason to fear they be yet under the Curse of it Again If we know Christ whom he hath sent It will be our duty then to Believe in him For 't is to those onely that Christ doth give eternal life And so to Believe in him as to Obey him For to those who obey not the Gospel of his Son it is that Christ shall render vengeance in flaming fire Furthermore If in this Christ we hope to have Eternal Life how should this excite our Rejoicing and Thankfulness for so great Salvation Not by Rioting and Drunkenness by Revelling and Debauchery which is the Abuse not the Celebration of this Solemnity in memory of Christ's Incarnation But by a pious Remembrance and Commemoration of that Redemption obtained for us such as may be to the Honour not the Reproach of him that came to Redeem us from our vain Conversation That denying ungodliness and worldly lusts we should live Godly Righteously and Soberly in this present World Looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the Great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify unto himself a peculiar People zealous of good Works To whom with the Father and the Holy Ghost be Glory for evermore The End of the First Sermon A Second SERMON Concerning the TRINITY TO THE UNIVERSITY of Oxford April 26. 1691. JOH xvij 3. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And this is life eternal that they might know thee the onely true God and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent IT is now a great many years since in this Place if not to this Auditory I did discourse of these Words I shall repeat very little of that Discourse But think fit to add somewhat to what was then said Our Saviour in the three Chapters next foregoing the 14 th 15 th and 16 th Chapters of S. John's Gospel had made a large Discourse to his Disciples after his Institution of the Lord's Supper the night before he was to Die which in this 17 th Chapter he closeth with a Prayer to his Father in their behalf Wherein having made mention of Eternal Life ver 2. which he was to give to as many as the Father had given him that is to as many as should â—ffectually Believe in him he subjoins this Eâ—â—phonema And This is Life Eternal That they might know Thee the only True God and whom thou hast sent Jesus Christ. In which words we have Two things proposed to us The Christian's Happiness And The Mâ—ans wâ—ereby it is to be attained I. The Câ—ristian's Happiness is called Life as to its Excâ—â—â—ency and Eternal as to its Duration Wâ—ich is Begun here in the Kingdom of Graâ—â— and is to be Perfected and for ever Conâ—inued in that of Glory II. The Means to attain it is the Knowledge of God and
is said of Christ Joh. 10.30 I and the Father are One is said of all Three by the same St. John â— Joh. 5.7 The Father the Word and the Holy Ghost thâ—se Three are One. Objection III. It is Objected that these words last cited are said to have been wanting in some Translations or some ancient Copies Answ. Be it so And so are some whole Epistles wanting in some Translations And considerable parts of some other Chapters But we are not therefore to cast them away as not Genuine The II d. and III d. Epistles of St. John and that of Jude are said to have been wanting in the Syriack and Arabick Translations And the Story of the Woman taken in Adultery Joh. 8. wanting in the Gothick Gospels And part of the last Chapter of St. Mark 's Gospel is said to be wanting in some Books And the Doxology in the close of the Lord's Prayer And the like in divers others But we must not thence conclude them not to be Genuine and put them out of our Bibles because they have chanced to be omitted in some Books And it is so far from being strange that such Omissions should sometimes happen that it is very strange if there were not a great Providence of God to preserve the Scriptures pure and entire that there should be no more such mistakes than what are found For before the convenience of Printing was found out when Copies were to be singly transcribed one from another and even those but in a few hands 'T was very possible and hardly avoidable even for a diligent Transcriber sometime to skip a line Especially which is the case here when some of the same words do again recur after a line or two Men are very subject both in Writing and Printing as those well know who are versed in either to leap from one word to the same recurring soon after Nor is such Omission when it happens readily discerned if as here the sense be not manifestly disturbed by it Now when such variety of Copies happens that words be found in some which are wanting in others this must either happen by a Casual mis-take without any design of Fraud or by a willful Falsification as to serve a particular turn which I take to be the case of the Papists Indices Expurgatorii And as to the words in question If the difference of Copies happened at first by a Casual mistake as I am apt to think 't is very easy for a Transcriber unawares to leave out a Line which was in his Copy especially where such omission doth not manifestly disturb the sense but not to put in a line which was not there And in such case the Fuller Copy is likelyest to be True and the Omission to be a Fault Which happening as it seems it did some hundreds of years ago in some one Copy it might easily pass unobserved into many others transcribed thence and so to others derived from those Transcripts But an Insertion of what was not in their Copy must needs be willful and not casual On the other side If this variety of Copies were at first from a willful Falsification It is much more likely to be a willful Omission of the Arians in some of their Copies which might be done silently and unobserved than by a willful Insertion of the Orthodox For the Insertion of such a clause if wholly New and which had never before been Heard of would have been presently detected by the Arians as soon as ever it should be urged against them Nor was any advantage to be made of it by the Orthodox since the Divinity of Christ which was the Point then in question might be as strongly urged from that in St. John's Gospel I and the Father are One as from this in his Epistle These Three are One. And therefore it is not likely that the Orthodox should willfully make any such Falsification from whence they could promise themselves no advantage Nor do I find it was ever charged upon them by the ancient Arians in those days though Athanasius and others urged it against them And in very ancient Copies in which it had been left out it is found supplied in the Margin as having been faultily omitted And it is the more likely to be Genuine because in this clause The Father the Word and the Holy-Ghost the second Person is called sunpliciter 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Word which is St. John's Language both here and in his Gospel Joh. 1. And is I think peculiar to him and not so used by any other of the Holy Writers of the New Testament I do not deny but that this second Person may be called the Word of God in Heb. 11.3 By Faith we understand that the Worlds were framed by the Word of God And 2 Pet. 3.5 7. By the Word of God were the Heavens of old and the Earth c. and by the same Word they are kept in store As he is by the same St. John Rev. 19.13 His name is called the Word of God But to call him the Word absolutely without other addition I think is peculiar to St. John And therefore much more likely in this place to have proceeded from the same Pen and not to have been inserted by an Interpolater some hundreds of years after And that clause These Three are One in the Epistle agreeing so well with I and the Father are one in the Gospel is a further confirmation of their being both from the same Pen. Add to this That the Antithesis which we find in the 7 th and 8 th Verses is so very Natural that it is a great Presumption to be Genuine There are Three that bear record in Heaven The Father the Word and the Holy-Ghost and these Three are One And there are Three that bear witness in Earth The Spirit and the Water and the Blood and these Three agree in One. Which as it stands is very Natural but the latter clause would seem lame without the former and the words in Earth wholly redundant in the latter if not by Antithesis to answer to the words in Heaven in the former Verse And that it was anciently so read appears from St. Cyprian by whom it is twice cited in his Book De Unitate Ecclesiae and in his Epistle ad Jubaianum before the Arian Controversy was on foot In the former place arguing for the Church's Unity not to be broken by Schisms he speaks thus Dicit Dominus Ego Pater unum sumus Et iterum de Patre Filio Spiritu Sancto scriptum est Et hi tres unum sunt Et quisquam credit hanc Unitatem de divina firmitate venientem sacramentis coelestibus cohaerentem scindi in Ecclesia posse That is Our Lord saith I and the Father are One And again of the Father Son and Holy Ghost It is Written These Three are One. And who can believe that this Unity of the Church proceeding from this Firm Union in God