Christ Dying and Drawing Sinners to Himself
7. Yea, upon this reasonless and fleshly ground, if we may omit pray • ng, and so believing, loving, repenting, mortifying our lusts, when the Spirit stirs us not to these acts, and say, if God will suffer me to sin, let him see to it, then upon the same ground all the justified Saints (I should think them Devils, not Saints) might sin, mu • there, blaspheme, whore, oppress, commit Sodomy, Incest as Lot, deny J • sus Chr • st, as Peter did, and say as w • are not to pray, nor obliged to a constant course in prayer, when Christ draweth not, and when the Spirit moveth us not (as Antimonians say (with Mr Crisp and others) error, 49. pag. 9.10. Rise, Reign) so neither are we to abstain from murder, denying of Christ, blasphemy, Sodomy, when the spirit of Christ draweth us not, and moveth & stirreth not our soul to abstinency and a holy fear and circumspection that we commit not such abominations, and Peter might say, I am not obliged to a constant course of confessing Christ before men, unless the Spirit stir me thereunto, and David or any Saint might say, If the Lord will suffer me to murder the innocent, let him see to it ; for the Lord's drawing and the Spirits st ••• ing is as necessary in a holy eschewing of sins • f commission, as in sins of omission; and by as great, and an every way equal necessity, if the Lord withdraw himself and the Spirit stir not, we must f • ll • n such abominations, when tempted by Satan and the fl • sh, as in the sins of sinful omitting of praying, praising, believing, when the Spirit stirs us not thereunto; but the truth is, this necessity can neith • r lay the blame on the holy & spotless dispensation of God, nor free us from guiltiness, because between God's withdrawing influence, and the sin, there doth interveen an obliging Law that forbids sin, and our free-w • ll and reason acting the sin freely. But we are commanded, 2 Tim. 1.6. To stir up the grace of God in us, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 its on allusion to the Priests, who were to keep in the fire that came from heaven; grace is resembled to fire under ashes, which with blowing of bellows is made to revive and burn again; it is the Prophets complaint. Esa. 64. • . There is none that calleth upon thy name, or stirs up himself to lay hold on thee; the habit of grace may be warmed, • lown upon, and kindled, that as fire makes fire, so grace may put forth itself, in acts of grace; and the seed of God, in the Saints, 1 Joh. 2.9. may bring forth births like it self; motion here produceth heat.
Object. But the actual predetermination of grace is not in your hand; and without this, acts of praying and believing, are unpossible to me.
Answ. If this were a sufficient reason, then all works of nature, whatever the creature doth were unpossible; for the plow-man should not go to till, sow, and reap, because, without the blessing of the common and natural influence of the first cause he could do none of these things.
2. Because the Saints know not the counsel and mind of God in his decree of joining of his supernatural influence, or his suspending of the same, to this or this act of praying, believing, hoping, loving of Christ, &c. Therefore upon all occasions, the Saints, what ever be their present deadness and indisposition, are to pray, believe, and to stir up themselves to lay hold on God. 1. Because as in natural and moral actions, men are not to neglect plowing, earing, journeying, eating, drinking, sleeping, buying, and selling, upon this ground because they are ignorant, whether in the work, the Lord shall be pleased to join his influence, as the first cause without whom all inferior causes can do nothing: So are not the Saints to neglect to pray, because they are dead and indisposed, upon the ground of their doubting and not knowing whether the Lord of grace will be pleased to add his actual assistance of grace, to work in them to will, and to do; for the Lord may be pleased to add his supernatural influence in a moment, his wind bloweth when it listeth, his grace moveth swiftly, when, and where he pleaseth: our good disposition is neither rule, condition, work, nor hire to move him to work.
2. It is all one, as if we willfully neglected to pray, and resisted the predeterminating grace of God, when we know not whether the Lord shall deny his influence or no; Yet we disobey the Lord commanding and so obliging us to pray; for as if we had his influence at our elbow, attending us, so we are to pray, and set to work: yea, our voluntary refusing to pray, we only conjecturing evil of God, and of his free grace, without ground, must come from sinful wickedness, not from impotency and weakness; for who told you that Christ would be wanting in his influence? You knew it not from any word of God; and shall you fancy a jealousy against Christ's love, without any warrant? even as a servant commanded to lift a burden, upon a sluggishness should say, It came thither in a Cart and two horses when he would never move an arm to take a trial what he could do, though the burden were above his strength, when he will not do as much as he can, his disobedience is willful: Therefore we may say, if we speak of a voluntary, willful and groundless forsaking of God, in order of time, we first fors • ke God ere he desert us; but in order of nature, God first forsaketh us, that is, he withdraweth his heavenly influence from us, but so as before and after the act of withdrawing, we are willing that God should withdraw, and be gone; for we love in all the acts of sinning to hav • a world of our own.
3. We are to believe in the general, we being within the covenant, the Lord will keep his promise, Deut. • 0.6. And the Lord thy God will circumcise thine he • t and the heart of thy seed, to love the Lord thy God, with all thy heart, and with all thy soul that thou mayest live, Ezech. 11.19. And I will give them one heart, and I will put a new Spirit within you, — 20. that they may walk in my Statutes, Ezech. 36.27. then are we so to set to these duties of wa • king in the Lord's way, as we are to believe he will nor deny actual grace, necessary for our perseverance, because it is his express promise, Ier. 31.33.34.35.36. Ier. 32.39. • 0. Isaiah. 59.19 20 21. Isaiah. 54 10.11. Ezech. 36.26.27. 1 John, 2.1.2. Matth. 16.18. Luk. 2 • .3 • .32. though in acts not fundamental, and simply n • cessary for our being in the state of grace, the Lord hath reserved a latitude of independent Sov • raigntie to act the soul in these and these particular a • ts, as seemeth good to him, that every new breathing of the Spirit of • esus, may be a new debt, and obligation of free grace▪ to Christ.
We are absolutely to p • ay for the breathings of Christ's Spirit, to go a • ong wi • h us, in all the particular acts of a gracious and spiritual walking▪ but we know the Lord's absolute good pleasure is his rule he walks by: so here our desires may be absolute in seeking, where the Lord gives upon condition of • is own good will; nor are our desi • es in prayer to be conformable to God's decree, or free pleasure, but to his revealed will.
Grace is the culours of the inhabitants and citiz • ns of the house of the lower and higher rooms of the new Jerusalem ; all the way, and all the home the Sain • s walk in this white; Christ keeps not his Spouse in a close chamber, it is not one great act of free grace only, when all were in one day redeemed on the cross, but daily Christ weareth his Church as a bracelet 〈1 page duplicate〉 〈1 page duplicate〉 about his neck, as a seal on his heart, as his Royal diadem, and a crown of glory on his • ead, as his love-ring on his hand; this day grace, tomorrow new and fresh supply of grace: the next hour grace; he has strowed all the way to heaven with new grace▪ every day new wine, new Spikenard new pe • fume, new ointments.
When will Christ grow old, and gray-haired? Never: Will his heart ev • r grow cold of love? No: Will he tire of love? will he wear out of delight in the Spouse that lieth for eternity between his breasts? No, no: The love of • hrist is always green • , as young-like, as fair, and white today, as from eternity; this rose is not altered a whit. Who knows how grace and love in Christ's breast solaced themselves in these infinite revolutions of ages, before the creation: how Christ's heart was cheering it self, and rejoicing to have the first day of the creation dawning, that he might enjoy the love of the sons of men, not then created, Proverb. 8.3 • .31. as if grace and love had thought long to find a channel with wide banks to flow in; as if Christ having infinite love within him, in that long, long age (to borrow that expression) should say, when shall time begin? and sinful men and my mystical body, and desired spouse my Church, have being in the world, that I may out that gr • ce on her? I have love within me, and lying beside me; I rejoice to have a lover: as if grace in Chri • t, h • d been in too na • row banks, in the in •• nite acts of the infinite mind of God and the heart of Christ, and longed to have Men and Angels to give a vent to his love.
And that long avum, the ages that were before the world was, brought it green to us, that long, long endless and vast duration, when time shall be no more, cannot make Christ's love change the color, or grow less, or root one Saint out of his heart; When God leaveth off to be God, • r • ce will leave off to be Grace: Make Christ repent of Grace, if you can; as Christ has washen his Spouse, and in regard of the guilt of sin, has made her all fair and spotless; so doth he daily lick and purge, and cleanse her, in regard of the inherent b • ot, while she be fair as the Sun, and all a new heaven.
Asser. 7. In the third consideration, from this suspension of divine influence cometh our sin, as a necessary consequent and result; yet so as the Lord's suspension, and our transgression fall both in the bosom of divine providence: The Lord knoweth why be withdraweth his grace, that we m • ght know how weighty a thi • g gr • at heaven is laid upon our poor shoulders, and that we would make foul woe • k out of all we have received, and the flock the second Adam has given is, if we had not Christ to stir the ship, to lead the minors to heaven, to keep the inheritance to the little heirs of Christ, should evanish to nothing.
Po • tion 9. If we consider the Lord's denial of Christ, from wicked men; they c • nnot turn to God, but that impotency lay in the womb of will; it is not weakness only, but also willfulness, Matth. 23. verse 37. I would have gathered you, (saith Christ) ye would not, John. 5.6. Christ saith to the sick man, wilt thou be made whole? Then there was a stop in his will, as well as in his weakness, er. 44.16. As for the word that thou hast spoken to us, in the Name of the Lord, we will not he • ken to thee.
2. Love and delight to do ill, is from the strength and marrow of the will, not from weakness only; the servant that would not leave his master, because he loved him; is a slave forever, through love to slavery, rather then through impotency to be free? In those that d • light to do e • il, Will hath a strong influence in the evil they do: every sinner esteems his prison of hell, a heaven; hi • fetters of sin on his legs, as a gold chain about his neck.
3. It is a journey of a hundredth miles to Christ, it is unpossible to the natural man to compass it, yet he may walk two of these hundredth miles, though not as a part of the way; he will not so much as cast a sad look after Christ, the will not bestow one sigh after Christ, nor know his own weakness, nor d • spair of his own hability, nor lie at the water-side, and c • y, Lord Jesus come carry me over ; he positively hates Christ; were it possible that the unrenewed man had the two eyes of a renewed man, to see the beauty and high excellen • y of Jesus, though he had still his own lame legs, he would weep out his eyes for a Chariot to carry him to Christ, he would send sad love-challenges, after Christ; could these that' are scorched in hell-fire and hear the howling of their fellow prisoners, and see the ugly Devils, the bloody Scorpions with which Satan lasheth miserable souls, and the huge, deep, broad furnace of eternal vengeance, have but a window opened to see heaven, the • horn, the tree of life, the glory of the Troops clothed in white, and hear the music of these that praise him that sitteth on the the Throne, or say but one of the apples of the tree of life were sent down to Hell, and that the damned had senses to taste and smell a grain weight of the glory that is in it, what thoughts would they have of Christ and heaven? It is like they would hate themselves, and send up sad wishes at least, for the continuance of that sight. O could but natural men see Christ with his own light, it may be they would make out for him: but when all is said of this subject, the grace of God is a desirable thing, better have Chris • 's heart and love and soul toward you, then what else your thoughts could imagine above or below heaven.
If I be lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men to me.
Articl. 5. I come now to the fifth Article, the condition of Christ's drawing, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 ; If I be lifted up from the Earth ; this particle 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 ( if ) is not as in other places, a note of doubting or of a thing of a contingent and uncertain event; Yea, it signifieth here that Christ was not on any deliberation; Shall I die, or sh • ll I not die, for lost man? Christ is not wavering, dubious and uncertain in his love; love in Christ is more f • xed and resolved upon, then the Covenant of night and day, and the standing of mountains and hills, Ier. 31.35. Isaiah. 54.10. in other places of Scripture, it is not a matter of debate; as • oh. 14.3. If I go away 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 . Christ made no qu • stion whither he would go to his father, 1 John. 2. • . 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , if any man sin, we have an Advocate ; there is no doubt but the Saints sin, and if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us, 1 John. 1.8.
To be lifted up from the earth, is expounded to be crucified, v. 33. this is Christ's Metaphrase of the kind of death which he suffered.
Crucifying was a cursed shameful and base death, Deut. 21▪ 23. yet Christ exp • esseth it by a word of exaltation, Phil. 2.9. lifting up from the earth: Christ's death is life, his shame glory; there be pearls and sa • hirs of heaven in Christ's hell; and • hrist keepeth warm b • eath of life and hot blood in the cold grave; when he is in an agony, which materially was hell, a glorious Angel of Heaven is in that hell with him to comfo • t him; when h • i • born a poor man on earth, and lies in a horses manger, there • s a new bon fire in Heaven for joy that a great Prince is born, a new star appears; the weakness of Christ is stronger then men. The blackness of Christ's marred visage is fa • re; in Christ's poverty, when he has not to pay Tribute to the Emperor Caesar, the Sea pays Tribute to the King and Prince of Kings, Jesus; a 〈◊〉 yields him a piece of moeny; the lowest and basest rep • o • ches of Christ, his Cross and suffering • drops the honey▪ the sweet smell of heaven; Christ's thorn is a rose, his sadness joy; O what most immediate rays of glory that comes from his face be? the very second • able of Heaven must be exceeding fatness, the back pa • ts of the glorious King that sitteth on the Throne must be desirable; the fragments and the broken meat of the Lord's higher Table must be incompa • ably dainty: all the earth to these are husks; the reproaches of Christ must be not so sower as they are reported of. 2. He maketh it the cause of Christ's drawing all m • n to him. 1. The Holy Ghost will express the cursed and shameful death of Christ, by a word of glory to be lifted up.
1. The dying of Christ is a leaving of the earth.
2. It is a ma • ter of exaltation that Christ was thus abased; Of these two only in this place in the New Testament, and John. 3.15. is Christ's dying so expressed; It is considerable that in this manner of death, Christ will hold forth to us, that the dying of Christ i • in a specia • l manner a leaving of the earth; so Hezekiah, Es • i. 37.11. I shall behold man no more with the inhabitants of the world, that is, I must leave the earth, and see the Sun no more; and Christ, John. 13.1. Jesus knew that his hour was come, and that he should depart out of this world into the Father ; Hence his own word to the repenting • heife, Luk. 23.43. To day thou shalt be with me in Paradise, John. 8.21. I go my way, and ye shall seek me, and shall die in your •• nnes: whither I go ye cannot come.
Doct. Christ chose a kind of death which was a visible leaving of the earth, and a going to • even ere he came down again off the Cross; for that day his soul was in Paradise; as the Serpent was lifted up in the wilderness, John. 3.15. Christ's motion in death is from the earth; Christ was tired of the earth, and had his fill of it, he desired no more of it. It is not a place much to be loved by you, Saints for your dear Savior had but few and sad days on the earth, he was served as a stranger here, and has now left the earth, and gone to the Father; consider but a few reasons to move you to leave the earth: 1. The earth was Christ's prison, he could not escape out of it, till he paid his sweet life for it; only two that we read of, Enoch and Elias left the earth, and went to heaven and saw not death ; these that shall be changed and shall not die, at Christ's coming have this privilege; but otherwise all have a bruise in the heel, ere they go out of earth. 2. When Christ was on his journey, he was not so much in love with the earth, as to repent and turn back again; as Christ's head and face was toward heaven, so his heart and soul followed, he went from the Cross straight way to Paradise. 3. What doth Christ leave? the earth. It is thy fellow-creature of God.
But 1. the foot-stool for the soles of Christ's feet, Esa. 66.1. Math. 5.35.
2. A foot-stool of clay far from the the throne of glory, the office house of sin, Isaiah 24.5. The earth also is defiled under the Inhabitants thereof, chap. 26.21. For the Lord cometh out of his place, to punish the Inhabitants of the earth for their inity ; It is Satan's walk, Job 2.2. And the Lord said unto Satan from whence cometh thou? and Satan answered the Lord and said from going too and from the earth, and from walking up and down in it.
3. Its the poor heritage of the Sons of men, a clay patrimony, Psal. 115.16. The heav • n even the heavens are Lord's; but the earth hath he given to the children of men ; and oppressors are the Land-lords of it. Psal. 10. God ariseth to judge, ver. 18. that the man of the earth may no more oppress, Io • . 9.24. The earth is given to the hand of the wicked.
4. Yea, it is not only the slaughter-house and shamble • where Christ was slain, but all the Martyrs and witnesses of Jesus were butchered here; for its said of Babylon, Rev. 18.2 • . And in her was found the blood of Prophets and of the Saints, and of all that were slain on the earth ; then the earth is the scaffold of the Lambs of Christ where the • throats have been cut.
5. Its a common Inn where bed and board is free to men, Devils, Sons, Bastards, Elect and Reprobate; yea, to beasts called from their Country, Gen. 1.25. beasts of the earth; an earthly minded man, is a fellow-citizen with beasts; it is a home to all but the Saints, its their Pilgrim-Inns; it is a strange land and the house of their Pilgrimage; Psal. 119.19. I am a stranger in the earth ; so David ; so Abraham and his; though they had the heritage of a pleasant spot of the earth by prom • se, even the Land of Canaan ; yet they sojourned in it as a strange Country ; and Heb. 11.13. Confessed they were strangers and Pilgrimes on Earth, 2 Cor, 5.6. While we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord.
6. The first dooms-day fell upon the earth, for man's sin, Genes. 3.17. Cu • sed shall the earth be for thy sake, in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all thy days. Its a cursed table to man: And the other dooms-day is ripening for it, Revel. 14.15.16. Antichrists seat the Earth of the false Church, is a ripe harvest for the Lord's sickle of destruction. The last dooms-day is approaching when this clay-stage shall be removed, 2 Pet. 3.10. The earth and the works therein, the house and all the plenishing shall be burnt with fire : Its no long time that we are here, if we believe, Job chap. 7.1. Is there not an appointed time to man upon Earth? are not his days like the days of an hireling? Job 14.2. He cometh forth as a flower, and is cut down, he fleeth also as a shadow, and continue • th not. Many generations of hirelings have ended their days task, and have now their wages, many sh • ddowe • are gone down, many Acters have closed their gam • , as it may be, and some have fulfilled their course with joy, and are now within the curtine, since the creation.
7. It is a poor narrow • oom • ; Some, Isaiah. 5.8. make house to touch house, and lay field to field, till there be want of place, that they only may be placed alone on the earth: if they report right of the earth, who make it one and twenty thousand miles in circuit, if new found Lands add to this some poor • kers, and the Western Beast have much of this, Revel. 13.8. and the other Beast of the East, the Turk, the enemy of Jesus Christ, have eight thousand miles of the Land, and other eight thousand miles of Sea, making sixteen thousand miles of the two little Globes, (I leave others to examine their Geography) then it must be a base plea, and a poor lodging to contend for; it were a good use for us to argue, Was the earth my Savior's refuse, and his Inn, not his home, and if Christ left the earth long ago, and was tired of it, then let us (Heb. 13.13.) go forth therefore unto him, without the camp, bearing his reproach: for here have we no continuing city, but we seek one to come: We cannot lodge, far less can we dwell in a house that shall be burnt with fire; Nor is there room for us here; there is a more excellent country above, where men have no winter, no night, no sighing, no sickness, no death, but they live for evermore: we are thronged here for want of room, and its a narrow tent; O what a large land is that above, in which we shall not strive for Akers, Land, Kingdoms? In my Fathers house (saith Christ) there are 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 many dwelling places, houses, great and fair, and numerous; all these are holden forth to us; the earth is a creature near of kin and blood to the half of us, and our body. When a Son of Adam dieth, he returneth 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 to his own earth ; had he no free heritage on the world, though he were no landed man, yet when he goeth to his grave, he returneth to his own free heritage, to his own earth, 32. If I be lifted up from the earth. I will draw &c.
Here is a s • eciall condition of drawing sinners to Christ; the manner of Christ • death, his being lifted up from the earth, holdeth forth a drawing of sinners up after him from the earth to heaven; hence Christ's death is a special m • anes of heavenly-mindnesse and mortification. So 1 Pet. 2.24. Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness, Col. 3.2. Set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth. 3. For you are dead▪ and your life is hid with Christ in God, &c. 5. Mortify therefore your members, that are on earth, fornication, uncleanness, &c.
Beza, Piscator, and others think it probable that Christ uttered this prayer to his father, in the Syriac tongue, because the Evangelist useth th • word 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , to be lifted up from the earth, and the word 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 signifieth both to cut off, as 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 doth, as Daniel 8.11. by him the daily sacrifice 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 was taken away ; and to exalt and lift on high, 1 Sam. 2.1. my horn is exalted, Psal. 99.2. the Lord is high, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 above all the people, Psal. 18.47. Let the Lord be exalted Numb. 24.7. Psal. 46.11. Isaiah. 49.11. Gen. 14.22. so • e holdeth forth such an exalting of Christ, as is to cut off, and to slay; this doth come home to drawing of man from sin, and the earth, by that Spirit purchased to us by Christ's death: Now Christ's dying, thus being a taking of him away from the earth, and from sinners, and that in a shameful manner, he being lifted up on the cross, and he in this posture drawing us after him, its a clear working in us the death of sin, and our deadness to the pleasures and glory of the world. 1. Christ died pulling his brethren out of hell and sin, he died, and his Spouse in his arms; and this showeth how desirous Christ is to have an union with us; its a posture of love and grace, his head bowed down to kiss sinner▪ his arms stretched out to embrace them, his bosom open to receive them▪ his sides pierced that the doves may fly into the holes of the rock, and lodge there; Christ on the cross, broached and pierced, as a full vessel, out of whom issueth blood and water, justification and redemption from the guilt of sin, and sanctification, is a drawing lover. 2 Here is fullness of power, to reconcile to himself all things, whether they be things in heaven, or things on earth, by the blood of his cross ; here we are made Chrrsts friends, to do whatsoever he commands us, Col. 1.20 John. 15.15.
3. Nor is there a stronger band or cord to draw men from sin, then the faith of Christ's death, Gal. 2.20. I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liv • th in me, and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me, Gal. 6.14. But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified to me, and I unto the world ; here is reciprocation of death's: Paul is crucified to the world, as a dead man, not in the world, nor one of the worlds number▪ A mortified Saint drawn up to heaven from the earth, is an odd person, not under tale, he may be spared well enough; the world and the Town he lives in may be well without him; as Joseph was the odd ladde▪ separated foom his brethren, and David none of the seven, miscounted in the telling among the Ewes at the sheepfolds, and forgotten as a bastard, or as a dead man out of thought : And again the world is crucified to Paul, for it looks like a hanged man, it smells like a dead corps to a Saints senses. Now thus they have not eyes more affected with the world, nor ears more taken with their music, nor a heart more overcome with the lusts of the world, nor a dead man set to a rich table is affected with all the dainties there, or with the harping of the sweetest musician; the man has escaped the 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 the pollutions • f the woe • ld, to him the world has sooty fingers, and dirty and picky hands, it defiles washen souls but to the unmortified man the world smelleth like the garden of God : Lust casteth in, and well cometh to eye and heart and fancy, Granadoes and fire-bals of uncleanness; sinful pleasure has a rosie face, profit has golden fingers, Court and honor has a sweet breath, the world is not to him an ill smelled stinking corps, fit for nothing but for a hole under the earth; Nay but god-Mammon looks like heaven; the world a poor thing, yea the world of itself is but a bag of empty wind, a fancy: (1.) It has no weight, as touching the part of it we count most of, the earth, but so many pounds of clay, the dregs, the earthie bottom of the creation: (2.) the stage that pieces of brittle clay comes upon▪ and weeps, and laughs, and lives, speaks and dies: (3.) The flowers of it, that we are most in love withal, the lusts of the eye, the lust of the flesh, the pride of life, are not of God, 1 John. 3.16. (4) It is a house of glass, or of Ice that stands for the fourth part of the year, for winter, but is removed in the Spring, and is never to be seen again, for it passeth away like a figure written on the Sea-shore, when the sea floweth, 1 Cor. 7.31. (5.) the frenizes, or passements of it pleasure profit, honor, are all sick of vanity and change, to the Saints that are crucified, and buried with Christ, in whom lust is nailed to the cross of Christ, the world is a dead bag of despised dust, and though a toe or a finger of a crucified Saint will make a motion and a sti • re, and break a wedge of the Cross, because of the indwelling of a body of death, yet hear his arguing. O vain clay-god, dirty Earth, I ow thee no love, because my Lord was lifted up from the earth, and has drawn me after him. I care not for this bubble of a vain life, this transient shadow, seeing Christ could not brook it: What is the fancy of a plastered and fairded worldly glory to me, if Jesus his face was spitted on? what is this painted globe of an empty perishing, and death-condemned world to my happiness, seeing my Savior was a borrowed body, a stranger and slaughtered in the world, and had all against him, and always the wind on his face?
Now let us consider what Antinomians say of mortification; What is mortification (saith (a) Mr Den) but the apprehension of sin slain by the body of Christ? What is vivification but our new life? The just shall live by faith, I may know (saith the Antinomian ) I am Christ's, not because I do crucify the lu •• s of the flesh but because I do not crucify them, but believe in Christ that crucified my lusts for me : Much of this lawless and carnal mortification is to be found in Saltmarsh his inexperienced treatise of free Grace, in which he labors to make Protestant Divines Anti-Christian Legalists in the doctrine of mortification; for his way is that we are to believe our Repentance true in Christ, who hath repented for us; our mortifying sin true in him through whom we are more then conquerors; our new obedience true in him who hath obeyed the Law for us, and is the end of the Law to everyone that believeth, our change of the whole man is true in him, who is righteousness and true holiness; and thus without faith it is possible to please God, for there is (saith he) great deceitfulness in mortification of sin, as it is commonly taken, (he must point at Calvin, and other Protestant Divines, for as Papists and Arminians commonly speak and teach, we are justified by works of penance and mortification) for the not acting of sin, or conceivings of lust is not pure mortification; for then children, and civilly moral men were mortified persons, &c. It is not in the mere absence of the body of sin, for then dead or sick men were mortified persons.
Eatons Honey comb of justification, chap. 8. pag. 164.165. We mortify ourselves only declaratively, to the sight of men— whereby the holy Ghost seeth not us properly mortifying our sins out of the sight of God; for then he should see us robbing Christ of that glory which his blood hath freely done before we begin; nay but when the wedding garment hath freely curified us in the sight of God then the Spirit enters in us to dwell, which otherwise he would not do, and enableth us to walk holtly and righteously, to avoid and purify out of our own sight, sense, and feeling, and out of the sight of other men that sin which the wedding garment hath purified and abolished before out of the sight of God.
But this in name, and thing, is the doctrine of the old Libertines in Calvin's time, as • e may read, Calvin opuscul. instructio adversus Libertinos chap. 18. pag. 450.451. The Libertines (saith Calvin) seem to be of the same mind with us, and extol Mortification and Regeneration, and say we cannot be the sons of God, except we be borne again, and if we belong to God, the old man must in us be crucified, the old Adam must perish, and our flesh must be mortified ; but they destroy all holiness, and tansforme themselves into beasts, when they explain to us their regeneration and Mortification ; they say, regeneration is the restitution of man, to that innocence in the which Adam was created.
And they expound it thus; This state of innocence was to know nothing, neither good nor ill, black nor white, not to know or feel sin; because this was Adams sin to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil; so by the mind of Libertines, to crucify old Adam is no other thing then to discern nothing, not to feel sin in ourselves, as Mr Eaton saith, but all knowledge of sin being removed, it is, according to the custom of children, to follow sense and natural inclination; hence they drew into their mortification all the places of Scripture in which the simplicity of children is commended; Eaton just so, Honey-Comb, p. 165. unto natural reason (or sense) objecting, if we be perfectly holy in the sight of God, then we may live freely, as we list in sin; Paul Answers, Nay, that is unpossible; for (saith he) how can we that are dead unto sin live y • t therein? that is as if a man be by justification restored to the case of the first Adam or perfectly freed from all sin in the sight of God, as he is freed from the troffick and business of this life that is dead, which must needs be, if we be made perfectly holy in the sight of God from all spot of sin? Nay, he cannot choose but show and declare the same by holy and righteous living, to the sight of men, and mortify them to himself and to his own feeling and sense, as he is by justification dead to them in the sight of God. Consider if Antinomians and Libertines do not both join in this; that though sin in our conversation and before men, as to walk after our lusts, we being once justified, is truly contrary to the Law of God, yet to mortify sin to our sense is to attain to a sense and feeling that it is no sin to us and before men, as it is no sin in the sight of God, and in the Court of Justice, because its freely pardoned; this is the currant Doctrine of Antinomians.
Parallel. 2.
When Libertines saw any man troubled in conscience with sin, they said to him, O Adam, knowest thou somewhat yet? Is not the old man yet crucified in thee? If they saw any stricken with the fear of the judgment of God; hast thou yet (said they) a taste of the apple? beware that that morsel strangle thee not; sin yet reigns in thee. So Mr Town the Antinomian said, pag. 103. David confessed his sin, not according to the truth and confession of faith, but from want and weakness of faith and effectual apprehension of forgiveness, pag. 97. I can look on myself my actions, yea, into my conscience, and my sins remain (this is the sense of the old Adam, the unmortified flesh) but look into the records of Heaven, and God's justice, and since the bloodshed of Christ (why were no the fathers pardoned before Christ shed his blood?) I can find there nothing against me, but the band by my surety is satisfied▪ and cancelled, and even these present sins, which so fearfully stare in my face, are there bl • tted out, and become a nullity with the Lord ; I need not cite Mr Den, Eaton, Crisp, Saltmarsh ; for Town and all the Antinomian race teach that it is unbelief, a work of the flesh of the old Adam, and our weak sense, and want of mortification, that the justified person feels sin; sorroweth for sin, complains of the body of sin, as Paul doth, Rom. 7. For in that Chapter (saith Crisp ) he doth not act the person of a regenerate person, but of a scrupulous and doubting unbeliever: But for the justified person, its more then he ought to do, if he confess sin, crave pardon, mourn, fast, wall • in sack cloth, he has peace (saith Town, pag. 34) Security, consolation, joy, contentment and hap • inesse, except his flesh rob him of these: Its legal and bewrayeth the man to be under a Covenant of works, if upon the committing of Incest, or the greatest sins, he doubt whether God be his dear Father, Rise, • aign, error. 20. And after the revelation of the Spirit, neither the Devil nor sin can make the soul to doubt. Error 32.
Parallel. 3.
Libertines said, sin, the world, the flesh, the old man was nothing but an opinion or an imagination, and these were new creatures, that were free of that opinion that sin was anything, or such as believed sin to be nothing, and the benefit of Christ's death they place in taking away that opinion, by which the first sin of Adam entered into the world, and under this opinion they comprehended all scruple of conscience, sense of judgment or remorse or sorrow for sin; and when this opinion is taken away then there is no more sin, nor the world, nor the Devil, nor the flesh.
Antinomians come well-near fully up to Libertines in this, for in their writings they tell us, that what sins justified persons fall in, being once justified, are sins (saith H. Den) of our conversation, and before men, not sins in the conscience and in the Court of Divine justice, or as Eaton saith, Honey-Comb, pag. 165.166. Before God they are no sins, and in his sight they are perfectly abolished; yea, and become nullities, saith Mr Town Assert. of grace, pag. 97. But to our carnal sense and feeling saith Eaton, they are sins, till our sense be mortified, and when we look on ourselves, our own actions, yea on our own conscience. Now the adulteries, murders, denying of the Lord Jesus; that David and Peter and other Saints fall in after their justification, cannot be sins in themselves; but only in the opinion and sense and feeling of such as commit these sins, and in such a sense as is contrary to faith and the light of faith that believeth 〈◊〉 jus • ification in Christ's death, and must be abolished and removed by perfect mortification, then all the justified are to believe what • ver sins they commit in their conversation, and before men, are no sins in themselves, or the court of Divine Justice, or in relation to a Divine Law; but they are sins in their sense or er • oneous opinion. If Joseph be only dead in the opinion and in his Fathers mistaking judgment, then he is not really dead, but lives. 2. Under this head Libertines said mortification was not in abstaining from fleshly lusts that war against the soul ; but in removing the opinion and sense of apprehending sin to be sin; and so Saltmarsh forbiddeth: 1. Any man to doubt whither his faith be true faith or no, and it is true faith, and willeth all within the visible Church to believe God loved them with an everlasting love, and its true they are all chosen to salvation and that Christ died for all, and that opinion makes it true, that Christ died for them all, and they are all justified in Christ blood; there is here strong power in opinions. 3. Saltmarsh, Den, Town, s • y mortification is not in personal abstinence from worldly lusts, but in faith apprehending that Christ dying on the Cross satisfied for the body of sin; then if they abstain from adultery, murder, perj • ry, being once justified, its of mere courtesy, and of no obligation to either Law or Gospel command, and if they commit such fleshly sins, they are only sins to their weak flesh and opinion, not in themselves; and if they lay aside that opinion and carnal sense, by the which they believe these to be sins, and believe that Christ has abolished them, then these sins are no sins, but perfectly mortified and abolished; that I do them no wrong, I repeat Mr Eaton 's words; Honey-Comb, chap. 8. pag. 165. The Holy Ghost seeth us not properly mortifying, cleansing and purifying our sins out of the sight of God ourselves, for then he should see us robbing Christ of that glory which his blood hath freely done, before we begin; but when the wedding garment wrought by his blood, hath freely purified them out of God's sight, then the spirit (we being thus first clean in his sight) enters into us to dwell in us, which otherwise he would not do; but being entered and dwelling in us, he enableth us by walking holily and righteously to avoid and purify out of our own sight, and out of the sight of other men, that sin which the wedding garment hath purified and abolished before out of the sight of God and so we merely declare before the Spirit, that he himself and Christ's righteousness have originally and properly cleansed and purified away and utterly abolished them out of God's sight freely. But this holy walking, they talk of is not opposed to sinning or walking after the flesh, it is but a removing of the sinful sense and feeling or knowledge of unbelief, by which we apprehended sin pardoned to be sin, when it was no such thing; but our erroneous sense or opinion as the taste of the forbidden apple remaining, could not rightly judge of these sins, because our life of justification is hid with Christ in God, and we apprehended ourselves to be under a Law, and our lying, adulteries, swearing, &c. to be sins before God and contrary to his holy Law, when they were no such thing; for we being justified, are under no Law, and so as clean from sin as Christ himself, but our dreaming sense judged so, but erroneously and falsely; for abolished sins are no sins.
Parallel. 4.
Libertines taught that regeneration was a clean Angelicke state in which they were void of sin, and when they were rebuked for sin, they answered, non ego sum qui pecco, sed asinus meus, Its not I, but my asse or sin dwelling in me doth the sin; and they cited the same Text, that Antinomians do now, 1 John. 3. He that is borne of God, sinneth not. So Antinomians. Mr Eaton frequently, especially Honey Comb, chap. 6. ch • p. 7. saith, being justified we are made perfectly holy and righteous from all spot of sin in the sight ▪of God. Saltmarsh flowings, par. 2. chap. 29. pag. 140. The Spirit of Christ sets a believer as free from hell, the Law and bondage here on earth, as if he were in heaven, nor wants he anything to make him so, but to make him believe he is so; for Satan sinful flesh, and the Law are all so near, and about him in this life, that he cannot so walk by sight or in the clear apprehension of it, but the just do live by faith. So Sal. abets nothings of what Libertines say, he will not have sin dwelling in the Saints, but will have the justified as clean from sin, both the guilt and obligation to eternal wrath (which we yield) and from the bondage and in-dwelling of sin, of which Paul complaineth so sadly, Rom. 7. as the glorified in heaven. 2. If the • justified sin only, he doth not really sin, but only in the dreamings and lying imaginations of his sinful flesh; because, Sin, Satan and the Law, are near him; so that it is the Devil • and the living flesh, the asse; not Paul that makes him Rom. 7. complain he was sold und • r sin; Crisp saith, Paul lied when he saith so ; If Peter walk by faith, then Peter shall see his denial of Christ, and David his adultery and murder to be no sins, for they want nothing to make them as free from sin, death, as these that are now in heaven • , but believe it is so, believe adultery and murder in these justified persons to be no sin • , and they are no sinners; this looketh as l • ke the Devilish mortifi • tion of David Georgius, and Libertines, and the casting off of their sense of discerning good and ill, and the banishing common honesty, and the principels of a natural conscience, as milk is like milk. Yea, Mr Town contendeth for a complete perfection, not only of persons justified in Christ, but also of performances, so that (saith he • pag 73, I believe there is no sin▪ no male • ction, no death in the Church of God, for they that believe in Christ are no sinners ; and he will have a perfection not of parts, but also of degrees, pag. 77. This he p • oveth from Luther's words perverted.
Parall. 5.
Libertines, (saith Cal • ine • ) because the Scripture saith we are freed from the curse of the Law, and made free in Christ, without all distinction, will have the whole Law abolished, and that we are to have no regard of • he Law a • all.
Now I need not cite Mr Town and others Antinomians, who will have believers freed not only from the curse & rigor of the Law, but from the Law as a rule of righteousness, its obvious to all that read their writings. to which Calvin Answers well, There is not (saith he) any Epistle of Paul, in which he doth not send believers to the Law, as to a rule of holy living, to the which they all must co • form their life : Yet Antinomians are not ashamed to pretend Calvin's name and authority for their opini • n▪ w • en Calvin in a learned Treatis • refuting the Libertines of his time, doth clearly condemn the Antinomians of our time; and proveth from the necessity of sanctification, that we are not f • eed from the Law.
Some a little legally biassed (saith Saltmarsh ) are carried to mortify sin by vows, promises, shunning occasions, removing temptations, strictness and severity in duties ▪ (what aileth him at w • lking 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , strictly, Ephes. 5.15. Psal. 16.4. Iud· v. 23?) fear of hell and judgment, —watchfuln • sse, scarce rising so h • gh for their mortification as Christ — but pure, spiritual, mystical mortification is being planted together in Christ's death, in our union with Christ. So as a believer is to consider himself dead to sin only in the fellowship of Christ's death mystically, and to consider himself only dying to sin in his own nature spi • itually, so as in Christ he is only complete; and in himself imperfect at the best. I find (saith Saltmarsh ) no promise made against the never committing such a particular act or sin which a man lived in, in his unregenerated condition; there are differences made, but it puzzles both D • vines and the godliest to find a difference between sins committed before, and after regeneration; for take a man in the strength of natural or common light, l • ving under a powerful word or preacher, by which his candle is better lighted then it was, such a man shall sin against as seeming strong conviction, as the other, if not more ; This to me is that which the Libe • tines of New-England say, That there is no differencs between the graces of hypocrites and believers in their kind ; And now in the Covenant of works, a legalist may attain the same righteousness for truth which Adam had in innocence, before the fall ; And a living faith, that hath living fruits may grow from the living law. I see not but all these must follow, if a regenerate David ▪ or Peter may commit the same act of relapse and falling in the same sin of adultery and murder after conversion, which he committed before conversion: then he must commit the same sin with the like intension & hight of bensill of will after as before conversion, & he mu • t now after he is converted, fall again in the same act of murder, denial of Christ, being now converted, which he committed before conversion, that is as the unconverted man with the rankest and highest strength of lust, & unrenewed will in its fervor of strength and rebellion did murder & d • ny Christ, without any reluctancy and pr • testation on the contrary from the renewed will or the Spirit, he may, being converted, fall in the same sin; yea, with a higher hand, and without any reluctancy from the regenerate part; this to me must infer necessarily the Apostasy of the Saints, as that believers may fall again in these same sins with as high and up-lifted hand against God, with as strong, full and high bended acts of the will after, as b • fore conversion, so as the battle of the Spirit against the • lesh in this wicked relapse does utterly cease: for Perkins who denieth a man can fall in the same sin, of which he once sync • rly repented, and whom Saltmarsh judgeth a Legalist and Anti-Christian in this point, denieth that a Convert may fall in the same sin that he committed in his unregenerated state, or that a Convert can fall in the same sin, every way the same with the like strength of corruption that this Convert before acted in his unregenerated condition, yea, or regenerate, he having a further growth of habitual renovation in the second fall, and so a higher habitual reluctancy of the renewed part, then when he formerly fell in th • same sin, and so it cannot be the same sin but a lesser, otherwise he never sincerely repented of the former sin, if this be more grievous and committed with a higher hand: Now Saltmarsh his ground is different f • om all Pro • estant Divines, to wit, That the wound, pricking or sorrow for sin in an enlightened soul leaveth no such habitual impression of remorse as the man dare never adventure to commit the like again; for (saith he) th • gales and breathings of the Spirit of sorrow for sin are like the wind that makes a thing move or tremble while the power of the air is upon it, but as that slackens or breaths, so doth it.
But this is to say right down that the Spirit of Grace, that causeth sorrow according to God, and repentance which is never to be repented of, is but an evanishing and transient act like the blowing of the wind on a tree; the Scripture maketh the spirit that produceth mourning and remorse for sin, when the sinner sees him whom he has pierced, an habitual in-dwelling Spirit, and calls him, Zach. 12.10. The Spirit of grace and supplication ; if then the Spirit of Adoption be no transient, but an habitual and inbiding grace, as is evident, Rom. 8.23, 24, 25, 26. It is a received spirit, abiding in us helping our infirmities, teaching us what to pray; it is Esa. 44. • , 4, 5, 6. Water poured on the thirsty, making us confess and subscribe the Covenant, & if it be, as it is the New heart, Ezech. 36.26, 27. The Law in the inner parts, Ier. 31.33 the seed of God, 1 John. 3.9. the annointing abiding in us, 1 John. 3.27. A well of water of an everlasting spring within us, John. 4.14. I se • not how a Spirit groaning in us, when we pray, Rom. 8.26. sighing, sorrowing for the in-dwelling body of sin, Rom 7.14, 23, 27. can be but a passing away motion like a blast of air; but this is the mystery of Libertines that the • e is no inheren • grace in-biding in the Saints, no spring of sanctification; all grace is in Christ and his imputed righteousness, and so they destroy sanctification: 2. The aim of Sal. is here, that if we sorrow once, and scarce that, at the beginning of conversion, we are never more to confess or sorrow for sin, when that transient motion, like a fire-flaught in the air is gone. But for mortification against all contrary blasphemies we say.
Asser. 1. Mortification is not as Mr Den saith, An apprehension of sin sl • in by the body of Christ: 1. Because this apprehension is an act of faith, in the understanding faculty, believing that Christ has mortified sin for me, and so Mr Den saith, vivification is to live by faith, that is to believe that I am justified and have life and righteousness freely in Christ. Now mortification is not formally any such apprehension, it doth flow from faith as the effect from the cause; but mortification denominates the man mortified not in his apprehending and knowing that Christ wa • mortified and died for him; but in that he really himself is dead, when it is said, • ol. 3.3. for you are dead, Gal. 6.14. by Christ I am crucified to the world and the world crucified to me : by this fancy, the world and the sinful pleasures crucified must be the faith and apprehension that is in the fleshly pleasures and lawless-lusts by which these lusts apprehend and know that Christ died for them; for Paul saith, as well that the world is crucified to him, as he unto the world.
2. Mortification is a deadness in will and affections, and the abaiting, half death, the languor and dying of the power of our lusts to sin; as a believer is dead to vain-glory, when contentedly he can be despised, have his name trampled on, be called a Deceiver, a Samaritan, and when the Apostles went out from the Council Act. 5.41. Rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame ; and the Saints are pers • cuted, reviled, and men speak all manner of evil against them falsely, for the name of Christ, Matth. 5.11, 12. and yet are so far from the boiling and rising of sinful lusts in them▪ that as if choir lusts were dead, they rejoice under the hope of glory, then are they mortified to these lusts and the like, I say, of fleshly pleasures, of unlawful gain. 2. Mortification is when the heart runs not out wantonly and whoorishly upon the pleasures of the creature, we are too ready to take the creature in our bosom; but mortification is when the heart stands at a distance from creatures; as Job saith of himself, Chap. 31.24. If I have made gold my hope, or said to the fine gold, thou art my confidence, ver. 25. if I rejoiced because my wealth was great. 3. Its to be from under the power or bondage to the creature or the world, the believer is above the creature, and the world is under his feet as a drudge or servant; they have no Dominion over the heart; he has a wife as if he had no wife; the man buys and possesseth not; because when he has bought houses, gardens, lands, they are no more in the center & heart of his love, then if they were the houses & lands of another man; mortification is a Lord over the creature. But there is nothing more contrary to the Gospel and the grace of Christ, then that the Apostles rejoicing, when they we • e scourged & shamed for Christ, had nothing of realty of scourging of shame, nor of real joy & deadness to the world in their persons; only they believed and apprehended that Christ was scourged, shamed, crucified for their sins; this is but opinative, not real mortification; The Scripture knoweth nothing of imputed mortification, as contra-distinguished from real personal and inherent mortification.
3. When Paul saith, Col. 3.5. Mortify therefore your members▪ which are upon earth, fornication, uncleanness, inord • nate affection, evil concupiscence—for which things the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience ; h • s sense must be, believe and appreh • nd that fornication, uncleanness, are mortified to your hand, and that Christ has slain the body of sin on the cross, and the • e is an end; now this is to annihilate sanctification, and to make justification all; whereas justification, it alone is no justification being separated from sanctification, as Libertines do, and the Popish sanctification, or the moral acquiring of a new habit of holiness, and the infusion of supernatural habits is not justification at all, yea, nor true sanctification, for they separate it from the free imputation of Christ's righteousness, to a believing sinner: The Libertine takes away sanctification and makes justification all; the Papist takes away justification by faith and the free grace of God, and in the place thereof substitutes a supposed moral, or civil sanctification; which to him is all in all; further if this ( Mortify your members and the body of sin ) be nothing but believe that Christ has mortified the body of sin already, then as we are justified from eternity, as some Libertines say, or as all say, before we believe remission of sins in Christ's blood: so to be mortified to our lusts, must he to believe we are mortified to our lusts long before we believe. Paul thinks not so of the Colossians, set he saith, v. 7. chap. 3. In which also ye walked some time, when ye lived in them, v. 8. But now also put off all these, wrath, malice, &c. Then before they were converted, and did believe, they we • e not mortified nor freed from uncleanness, fornication, because then they walked in these; except Libertines say that they were mortified and did not walk in uncleanness, before they believed, but were delivered in themselves from walking in these lusts, only they were not in their own sense delivered, but in their own sense, though not really, they did walk in fornication and uncleanness; this is not sober divinity; for they say, before we believe we are justified, though not to, or in our own sense and feeling till we believe; and why are we not also sanctified and effectually called before we believe? for whom he called and predestinated, them also be justified, Rom. 8.3 • . And the Scripture never shows us of a man in time justified, before he be sanctified, and mortified in some measure.
4. When Paul saith Col. 2.6. As ye have therefore received Christ, so walk in him, he means so mortify your lusts; then he must intend this; walk in Christ, that is believe that Christ walked in Christ for you; and put on love and brotherly-kindness, and pray continually, in all things give thanks, abstain from worldly lusts, love one another, keep yourselves from Idols, seek the thinks that are above, &c. must have no other meaning but believe that Christ has put on love for you, that he abstains from fornication for you, gives thanks, abstains from worldly lusts for you, keeps himself from Idols, seeks the things that are above, mortifies his members that are on earth, fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, for you; all which are blasphemies; or they can have this sense at the best, love one another ; that is, believe that Christ hath satisfied for your hating one another, and then ye love one another; and keep yourselves from Idods, that is, apprehend and believe that Christ hath died for your Idolatry. Now this is a mocking of sanctification, not a commanding of it.
Then to do all these and abstain from fornication, must be commanded and forbidden in sou •• other Gospel, otherwise we perform will-worship, and will-obedience to God, without warrant of his word, and the grace of God in the Gospel doth not teach us to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts, in our own person, but only to believe that Jesus Christ has a • d doth deny • ngodlinesse and worldly lusts, and perform active and personal obedience for us, and to our hand; for Libertines cannot expound one Gospel charge one way, and another Gospel command another way, and that we are obliged to personal active obedience in one precept, and to imputed active or fidei jussory, or mediatory obedience in Christ, in another; yea when we are in the Gospel to believe with a promise of • ife and righteousness, and that damnation is threatened, if we believe not, so are we commanded to mortify our lusts, and seek the things that are above with promises, and forbidden to walk after our lusts, because for these things the wrath of God comes on the children of disobedience, then I may with equal strength of reason say that the sense of these passages, Believe in I • sus Christ who justifies the ungodly, and believe the immediate testimony of the holy Ghost witnessing to your hearts that ye are the sons of God, must be not to believe in your own persons, but believe that • esus Christ believeth for you, on Christ that justifieth sinners and believe that the Spirit • : witnesseth to Christ's Spirit, that ye are the sons of God: Now if the • ommands of the Gospel urge us not to personal obedience, but to believe that Christ (as S. saith) has obeyed for us, and that in the Gospel way, they cannot oblige us in a law-way, as they teach, so by law and Gospel we shall be freed from all personal obedience and morti •• cation, Saltmarsh and Libertines bid us be merry, and believe that Christ has done all these for us.
5. A flee •• lie presumer walking after his lusts may believe that Christ mortified sin for him, obeyed the Law, & repented for him: so if a hypocrite as an h • pocrite, a presumer vainly puffed up, void of all down-casting and conscience of sin, believe that Christ has repented and mortified sin, and believed for him, though he live as the devil believing and trembling, he is not to doubt his faith.
If they say, that men believing savingly and sincerely, cannot go on in a constant walking after their lusts, never humbled for sin, never despairing in themselves, never out of love constraining them to please God and strive to walk in Christ, as they have learned him ; for if they be such, their faith is but wild oats, and empty presumption: then they say, 1. Men know their faith to be found, by holy walking: 2. Men may call in question their faith, if their works b • lie their faith: 3. They deny that a fleshly man, as such, and never humbled, can believe, (this is our doctrine.)
Asser. 2 Never any of our Divines said that pure mortification is the not acting of sin, or the not conceiving of lusts ; nor that it is the mere absence of the body of sin; this is a foul slander; which if willful, Antinomians, though in their own eyes perfectly holy, in the sight of God must answer to God for: nor is that any argument of weight to prove that mortification is not the absence of the body of sin, because then (saith he) dead and sick men were mortified persons, except w • e admit such new vain divinity that a bodily ague or sickness does extirpate the body of sin out of the soul, which mad or frantic men would not say; and if it be truth that the body of sin dwelleth in us, in this life, this body of sin is either sin, or no sin; if it be no sin, l • t Libertines speak plain truth, we deceive ourselves, if we have no sin ; If it be sin; Then let Libertines resolve us, how Crisp and Eaton and Den say we are all as holy and clean from sin, being once justified, as our surety Christ is, and as spotless on earth as the Angels and glorified that are in heaven that stand before the throne; now certain, neither in Christ, nor in Angels, is there any spot of sin, or any indwelling body of lust: and Crisp gives this reason why sin dwelling in the Saints, is no sin; It cannot sink (saith he) into the head of any reasonable person, that sin should be taken away (by the Lamb of God, John. 1.29) and yet be left behind; it is • flat contradiction; if a man be to receive money at such a place, and he doth take this money away with him, is the money left in that place, when he hath taken it away? Mr • enne has a fine 〈◊〉 for this; he saith, there is sin in the conscience, and sin in the conversation: Christ hath taken away sin out of the conscience of his called people, 1 Pet. 3.21. Heb. 10.22. The whi • e raiment wherewith the Saints are clothed •• gnifieth not only cleanness before God, but also purity and cleanness of conscience confi • ing in the apprehension of that glorious estate and • ondition in Christ's death; so there is no sin at all in the Saints, 1 John. 1.8. and the blood of Jesus Christ shall purge you from all sin: in the conscience does joy and gladness dwell, and there is no more place for sorrow and sighing; and there is sin in the conversation or hands: now a man may be strict in conversation, and yet not pure and clean in Conscience: So its possible a man hath been an exceeding sinner, and yet is not wholly cleansed from all wickedness in conversation; if this seem a mystery to you that sin in the flesh (in the body, outward man or conversation) should stand wi • h purity of conscience take these reasons, if purity of conscience could not be found, but where there is purity in the flesh, a pure conscience could not at all be found on earth, for there is none that doth good, no not one, Rom. 3.12. (2.) Purity of conscience ariseth not from purity of conversation; but the original of purity of conversation is from the consciences apprehension that all our impurities and sins were laid on Christ; and in regard of sin in the conversation, if we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves, 1 John. 1. and 1 John. 3.9. He that is born of God doth not commit sin.
Answ. 1. Sin in the conversation, and outward man is essentially sin; to • ill my neighbor with my hands, to speak with an unbridled tongue, to the Apostle James, argueth a vain religion, and must be pardoned, else such sins condemn; for he that offends in one, is guilty of the breach of the whole law. Ergo, sin in the conversation must be sin in the conscience, and the distinction must be vain; for the one member is essentially affirmed of the other.
Now when John saith, if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves ; he must mean of sin in the conscience, and of sin before God, and not in the flesh and conversation only, because if sin in the conversation be no sin, then when we commit sin in the conversation, we fail against no Law of God, and do nothing that can bring us under eternal condemnation, and if in committing sin in the conversation, we do nothing contrary to God's Law, we may well say we sin not, and yet not lie in saying so.
2. John must understand sin in the conscience, and in the sight of God, when he saith, if we say we have no sin, we lie, because that of that same sin of conversation of which Mr. Den supposeth John to speak, he addeth in the next words, 1 John. 2.1. If we sin, we have an advocate ; but the sin which has need of an advocate, has need also of a pardon, and is a sin against the Law, and in the sight of God, and in the conscience.
3. By this we may be pardoned, pure in conscience, justified in Christ's blood ▪ and yet before men, in the flesh, outwa • d man, and conversation under sin, and yet not be guilty before God; so drunkenness, murder, Sodomy, incest, den • ing of the Lord Jesus Christ before men, shall be no sins before God; for that which is p • rdoned is no more sin then if it never had been committed, as Libertines say, and is no more sin then anything that ever our Savior Christ did, or the elect Angels; now the sins which they call sins of conversation, and the Apostle Peters denial of Ch • ist, and all the sins of the Just • fied Saints, their Murthers, Adulteries, Parricids, &c. are pardoned, before they have the being or ess • nce of sin, ere they be committed; ergo, when they are committed they are no mor • sins before God, and in the Court of Conscience, and no more capable of pardon, then they were before they had any being, and were not as yet committed at all: the murder that David is to commit some twenty years before ever he be King of Israel, and shall commit, it is no more his sin to be charged on him in the sight of God, then original sin can be charged on David before David or his father less be borne; what may be charged as a sin on David, in regard he is not yet borne, is no more his guiltiness, as yet▪ then the guiltiness of any other man: Now David's murthe • , Peters denial, they being justified from these sins, and pardoned ere the sins have any being in the world, cannot be sins at all, nor such as are charged on Mankind, Rom. 3. Psal. 14. There is none that doth good, no not one ; for this sin stops the mouth of all the world, makes them silent, guilty and under condemnation before God, v. 19.20. and how Mr, Den can cite this to prove that there be some sins of conversation distin • t from sins in the conscience, let the Reader judge; Yea, to my best understanding by these reasons while I be resolved, Otherwise Libertines must hold neither the elect before or after justification can sin any at all.
4. It is most false that a man strict and upright in conversation, can have a foul and polluted conscience, if you speak of true sincere strictness and u • rightness of conversation, as the scripture speaketh, Psal. 50.23. To him that ordereth his conversation aright, I will show the salvation of God, Psal. 37.14. The wicked draws his bow to slay such as be of upright conversation ; the principle of a soun • conversation is the grace of G • d, 2 Cor. 1.12. the sound conversation is heavenly mindedness, Phil. 3.20. and is in heaven, and must be, as becometh the Gospel of Christ, Phil. 1.27. a good conversation, I am. 3.13. we are to be holy in all manner of conversation, 1 Pet. 1.15. and so even before men; God beholds the sins that we do to men, no less then our secret sins we commit again • t God, and the scripture requires in our conversation that it be holy, 1 Pet. 1.15. honest, 1 Pet. 2.12. chas • e, 1 Pet. 3.2. without covetousness, Heb. 1 • .5. not vain, 1 Pet. 3.16. not as in times past in the lusts of the flesh Ephes. 2.3. But the putting off of the old man, Ephes. 4.22. In charity, in Spirit, in Faith, in purity, 1 Tim. 4.12. Now every conversation contrary to this, argueth an unjustified and unpardoned man▪, and must • e an unpardoned and sinful conversation, so as there is neither strictness nor uprightness, nor anything but sin and an unpardoned estate, where this conversation is not, what ever Antinomians say on the contrary, being in this, as in other points, declared enemies to the grace of sanctification. But if we speak of a strict and upright conversation, in an hypocritical outside, Its true, many are as Paul was, strict Pharisee • , precise Civilians, painted tombs without, but within full of rottenness and dead men's bon • s : But this way Satan only saith Job is a strict walker, and serveth God for hire, and the enemies of Christ join with Antinomians in this, to say, that the justified in Christ, have but sin in their conversation, but wide consciences, because they study strictness of walking with God; but purity of conversation, (as the places cited prove) must be inseparably conjoined with purity of conscience; separate them who will, Christ hath joined them.
Mr. Eaton and Mr. Town call the sins of justified persons sins according to their sense or the flesh, but in regard of faith they are clean of all sin, and without spot in the sight of God. So Eaton Honey comb, chap. 5. page 87. God freeth us not of sins to our sense and feeling, till death, for the exercise of our faith. yet in his own sight he hath perfectly healed us. chap. 5. pag. 95. So Saltmarsh Free grace, page 57. chap. 3. article 3. calls it the lust of sin, the just (saith he) shall live by faith, which is not a life of sense and sanctification merely, but by believing of life in another.
I should gladly know, if sin in the justified be sin really and indeed, or against any Law? I believe not. 1. Eaton saith, • in hath lost its being in the justified: Saltmarsh part. 2. chap. 32. If a believer live only by sense, reason, ex • erience of himself as he lives to men, he lives both under the power and fe • ling o • sin and the Law : Now he should not live so; this is the use of unbelief; ergo, He ought to believe that h • hath no sin; and so he hath no sin, nor doth he sin, only the blind flesh falsely thinketh that is sin which is no sin:
But faith is not to believe a lie; then a believer may say, he has no sin; John saith, that is a lie.
Assert. 3. Mortification essential is in abstaining from w • rldly lusts, and in remiss and slacked acts of sinning, and in begun walking with God, and acts of holy living, yet so as all these do flow from faith in Christ; another mystical or Gospel-mortification is unknown to the Gospel, Rom. 6. • . Therefore we are buried with him by Baptism unto death, that like as Christ was raised up from the dead, by the glory of the Father, so we also (consider the formal acts of mortification) should walk in newness of life, ver. 5. For if we have been planted together in the likness • of his death: we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection, ver. 6. • nowing this that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin ; Then as it is one thing to sin, and another thing to serve sin; so acts of mortification must be in abstaining from greedy sin, as hired servants make it their life and work to sin; and in remiss and weakened acts of sin, as a dying man's operation are less intended and hightned then of a strong man in vigor▪ and health; as for the plenary mortification, expiring, and death of the body of sin, we think i • cannot be, so long as we are in the body, Col. 3.3. Ye are dead, ver. 5. mortify therefore your members that are upon earth, fornication, uncleanness, &c. To mortify fornication, must be the none-acting of fo • n • cation: 1. Because it is an abominable sense to imagine that we mortify fornication, when we believe that Christ abstained from fornication for us▪ 2. On to believe that Christ died for our fornication and uncleanness; for both these may hold forth mortification of fornication and committing of fornication. 2. Because for not mortifying of fornication, the wrath of God comes on the children of disobedience, ver. 6 Now wrath come • s not on wicked men because they believe not that Christ abstained from fornication for them; many walk in uncleanness, covetousness, who are therefore under wrath, who are not obliged to believe that, because they never • eard the Gospel. 3. Such an abstinence from fornication is here commanded, as the Colossians and other Gentiles walked in, ver. 7. and which they had now put off with the old man, ver. 8. But the Colossians, while they were Gentiles, and heard not of the Gospel, did not walk in this as in a sin, that they believed not that Christ abstained from fornication for them and satisfied divine justice for their fornication; but their sin was, that in person, they committed these sins, 1 Pet. 2.11. Dearely beloved▪ I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fl • s • lie lusts that war against the soul, ver. 24. Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we being dead to sins should live to righteousness Rom. 8.11. And if the Spirit of him that raised Jesus from the dead, dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead, shall als • quicken your mortal bodies, ver. 12. Therefore brethren, we are debtors not to th • flesh, to live after the fl • sh, verse. 13. for if ye live after the fl • sh ye shall die: But if ye, through the Spirit, do mortify the deeds of the body ye shall live, ver. 10. If Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin, Gal. 5.24. They that are Christ's, have crucified the flesh, with the affections & lusts, Gal. 2.1 • . For I, through the Law, am d • ad to the Law, that I might live unto God ; all Gospel-commands to subdue the lusts of flesh, not to serve the flesh as debtors paying rent thereun • o: to mortify the deeds of the body, not to live to ourselves &c. were mere precepts for justification, not for sanctification and mortification of lusts, and should • urn the Saints into mere Solifidians, Gnostics, empty Professors and fruitless trees, if ou • mortification were not in the weakening of lusts, • bstinence from sin???service, and living to him who is our ransomner. There is nothing more false then that ever our Divines taught to mortify sins by vows, promises strictness and severity o • duties, watchfulness scarce rising so high for mortification as Christ : For its Christ and faith in his death that is the spring and fountain of mortification; yet is mortification formally in holy walking, and not formally in bel • eving, for then should we be justified by mortification, for sure we are justified by faith: 2. Faith is a duty of the first Table respecting God in Christ as its object: mortification to uncleanness, vain-glory or the like, is a duty of the second Table respecting men.
Asser. 4. The living of the just by faith, is as well the life of sanctification, as of justification; its true the life of justification is the cause, more complete and perfect, and the other the effect and imperfect; but our spiritual condition is not only in sanctification, but also in justification. And only enemies of free grace, separate the one from the other; and heighten the one to feed men on the East wind, and lessen the other, as if sanctification were an accident, and some indifferent Ceremony, that men walk after the fl • sh and believe, that Christ for them walked after the Spirit, and that is enough: nor do we teach men to weigh their state of Grace in the scales of mortification or simple not acting of sin, as mortification cometh from moral and natural principles, but as it floweth from faith apprehending Christ crucified, and from the Spirit of the Father and the Son drawing the sinner to Christ, and our blessedness is no less in that corruption is subdued, and the dominion removed, then in that the curse is taken away. Saltmarsh when he willeth the sinner as a sinner, a Parricide, a Man-slayer, a slave to his lusts, to be • ieve and apply Christ as his Redeemer without any sense of sin or humiliation at all, and then saith the man's blessedness is more to have the curse of sin, then the corruption of sin removed, clearly concludeth that a man that walks after his lusts in actual lusting against the Lord Jesus and the Gospel; proud, vain, self-righteous, is as such a man to believe, and so blessed and may promise to himself peace, though he walk after the imaginations of his own heart.
Nor is arguing against the temptation with spiritual reason fr • m the word as Joseph did Gen. 39.8.9. and Job ch. 2.9.10. and David, 2 Sam. 16.7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14. our own power or contrary to the fighting by the shield of faith, the Word of God; as Saltmarsh imagineth.
Assert. 5. It is to be reputed as a most blasphemous assertion, that we know we are Christ's, not because we crucify the lusts of the flesh, but because we do not c • ucifie them ; Pet 1. Crucifying of our lusts is a mark of our being in • hris • Gal. • .24 Rom. 8.13. This maketh walking af • er the Spirit, and a parting from iniquity and being pure in Spirit and dying to an 〈◊〉 of no interest in Christ, contrary to Rom. 8.1, 2. 2 Tim. 2.19. Math. 5.8. 1 Pet. 24. Gal. 1.4. 1 Pet. 1.18. and contrary to the whole Gospel: which was that blasphemy of David George who taught mortification was to act all uncleanness without shame or sense of sin; • nd the more men are v • yd of the common passion that follows sin, the more mortified and spiritual they are ; and this is very like •• e Libertines way, who teach That to take delight in the holy service of God is to go a whooring from God ; and that they are legally biassed, that would mortify the fl • sh by watchfulness and strictness of walking ; whereas to put our duties on the Throne with Christ, and to put Christ's crown on our mortification, as if we were thereby justified is the Idolatry; But the delighting in the Law of the Lord, and taking of the Lord's testimonines for our heritage, a serving the Lord with cheerfulness and fervor of Spirit, Psal. 1.2. Psal. 119.111.262. Isai. 58.13. Psal. 112.1. Rom. 7.22. Rom. 12.8. 2 Cor. 9.7. Phil. 4.4. Act. 20.24. Iaem. 1.2. are marks of a blessed condition. If any teach that we mortify the flesh by watchfulness and strictness of walking, as if these did merit mortification, we judge it cursed doctrine; but if Libertines deny, as they do, that acts of mortification do formally consist in watchful, strict and accurate walking with God, in being not taken, nor madly drunken with the lusts of sin, but dead to pleasures, as these acts flow from the Spirit of Christ, we curse their fleshly doctrine also.
Its no consequent to say, because Regeneration is not a work of nature, but of the Spirit of God, and the way of the Spirit is not so gross and carnal as the Divinity of former times, it being hard to trace and find the impressions of the Spirit, therefore we are not to take experience so low, and carnally, by the feelings of flesh and blood, and signs not infallible, as to write of Regeneration as Philosophers do of moral virtues.
Answ. 1. Regeneration is above nature every way, but in this its most suitable to nature. That as a man come to age doth not at all times, even when he is sick, in a swon, in a deep sleep know that he liveth; yet ordinarily life hath reflect acts on itself, so as a living man may know that he lives by many signs of life; so a regenerate man, except he be deserted may know that he lives the life of God.
2 If Antinomians find out new Divinity less cernall, more spiritual, then in former times, how is it that Christians are to live from under all rule of life? and not to pray, forgive us our sins, when they pray for daily bread? and that none justified are to confess their sins and to sorrow for them: that new obedience, mortification, repentance, is to believe that Christ has done these for us; that we are not to pray continually but only when the Spirit stirreth us? an hundredth of these false ways may be shown; is this more spiritual Divinity then in former ages? is it not the most carnal divinity that we read of? for when D. Taylor objecteth to Antinomians, as a limb of their fleshly divinity, No action of the Believer after justification is sin, Mr Town answereth nothing at all but of the way, no action is sin, the disorder and ataxie of the action is the sin. But D. Taylor meaned that there is no disorder in the actions of a justified man by their way; to this Mr Town replieth not one word, but saith unto faith there is no sin, because there is not one spot in a justified person ; and he citeth Rev. 1.5. Eph. 5.26. Cant. 4.7. and 6.9. 1 Cor. 6.11. because Christ hath washed Rev. 1.5. purged, Heb. 1.3. abolished, Heb. • .26. all our sins, and hath made us holy and unblamable and unrebukable in the sight of God ; we are like Christ void of sin ; which is not the removal of sin, but of the guilt, that is, of the obligation to eternal wrath and the curse of the Law; for if we say we (even though justified as John the Apostle was) have no sin, we are liars ; can this be any but a divinity of the flesh that Antinomians teach?
3. Sanctification is a far other thing then moral virtues: 1. A moralist that is • emperate, chaste, is never so over-clouded in his faith, as to doubt, whither he be a temperate man or not; a sanctified soul will often doubt if • e have any sanctification at all: 2. A sanctified man must •• ve the use of the light of the Spirit to know his • tare, and these things that are freely given him of God, 1 Cor. 2.12. A Mo •• li •• knoweth with the light of his own sparks, what he is; does Saltmarsh know of any desertions or overcloudings of the Spirit, in a moral Seneca, Aristides, Plato? 3. The Moralist dreams of justification by his virtues. 4 He needs only natural reason, not the breathings and stirring of the Spirit to act according to his moral habits. 5. Nor are his habits infused from heaven, but his own conquest. 6. Nor knows he an absence or a presence of the Spirit, all which are peculiar to sanctified and just • fied persons.
We are not completely (saith Saltmarsh) or perfectly mortified to sin, by our being planted into Christ, and the fellowship of his death.
Answ. But if mortification be the faith and apprehension that Christ mortified sin for us, then as we are perfectly justified, so are we perfectly mortified; now Antinomians teach the former.
Let not (saith he) mortification of sin in Christ, tempt any to a neglect of mortification of sin in the body, no more then the free grace of God in forgiveness of sin ought to tempt any to take liberty to sin.
Answ. 1. Surely as to add an thing to justification, so to advance in mortification must be as wicked and blasphemous, according to the way of Antinomians, for if mortification be the believing that Christ has slain the body of sin, as Mr Den saith (and Saltmarsh seconds him as a brother) • hen our neglecting of mortification is no sin, for we are to believe that Christ has removed all neglects of mortification, if mortification be faith and belief that Christ mortified sin for us.
2. I cannot neglect justification or apprehension that Christ mortified sin for me, any otherwise but by a remiss act of believing, or neglect of a higher measure, and a more intense and strong act of faith, and not by an abstinence from fleshly lusts; such an abstinence is no faith or apprehension that Christ has slain and mort • fied the body of sin for me; for non-sinning cannot formally be believing; that were non-sense.
3. If the meaning be that we are not to abstain from fleshly lusts▪ that is from sins that the flesh or the body of sin acteth in us, this is neither mortification nor any part thereof, to Antinomians. But I desi • e and provoke Antinomians to satisfy us in these; if Salmarsh one of their Patrons can.
1. Whither or no sins of the body, or in the body, as Saltmarsh calleth them here, or sins of conversation, as Mr Den saith, or sins, as Mr Town speaketh, arising out of these earthly members of our flesh, he sins agai • st the Law of God ; if so, they involve t • e justified under a curse, and so t • ey a • e sins formally, and the justified either cannot sin a • all, which I fear is the fleshly way of Libertines, a way that my soul abhor • , if I be not deceived, or then, the sins, the adultery o • a just • fied man, the m • rther, the denial of Christ in Peter, is no less a breach of the Law of God, then the denial of Christ in Judas (it may be the one with a greater bensill of will denies Christ, then the o • her; sed magis & minus non variant speciim ) and so the jus • ified do as truly and essentially sin against the Law, as the unregenerate doth; then they are not as clean from sin as Christ the surety is.
2. If murders, adulteries committed by the justified be sins of their flesh and body that is, such sins as they are not by any Prophet or Nathan to be rebuked for; because the Spirit that is not in their power, in his actions and motions did assist not them to abstain, and they are under no other Law, but the only irresistible action of the Spirit to hinder them physically in all sins, to abstain from any sin, this must be Antinomians spiritual divinity; to make no Rule no Law of ordering the life and conversation of an justified man; but only the motions of a Spirit separated from the world.
3. Whither or not when Paul said, Rom. 7.17. Now it is no more I (that sin) but sin that dwelleth in me, ver. 18. I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing, his meaning be according to the Antinomians divinity, that no regenerate man sinneth, but his flesh and sensitive part which is not capable of any Law, sinneth: but he who acteth the sin being above or from under Law, Rule, or direction, sinneth not against God, or any Law?
4. Whither or no the Enthysiasts Rule, which is the immediate and irresistible inspiration of a Spirit, which doth press a brother to kill a brother, and has done it, as Bullinger saith of the practice of divers Anabatists, and some of New England said, though they resisted the Christian Magis • rate, and fired the Churches of Christ there, yet they should be miraculously delivered from the Court, as Daniel was from the den of Lions ; whither or no this Rule of the Spirits immediate acting without Law and Gospel be the only Law and Rule that the justified are under and led by?
5. Whither from this spring does not flow the rejecting of all the Scriptures or written Law or Gospel, as if they were but a covenant of works, and the walking by the Spirit separated from the word, and the denying any marks as love to the brethren sincerity, keeping of the commandments of God recommended in the word, John. 14.15. 1 John. 2.3.4.5. 1 John 3.14? and if this be the spiritual divinity spoken of here?
6. Whither or no sins of the body and of the fl • sh or conversation (as Antinomians call them) be not sins against the Law of God, and make the justified truly guilty, if the Lord should enter in judgment with them, and though they that commit them be justified, and so absolved from obligation to eternal wrath, are not formally and inherently blotted, and sinful in those sinful acts?
7. If they are not to be sad for them as offensive to the authority of the Law-Giver, and the love of Christ, though they be not to fear the ete • nall punishment of them? for sorrow for sin, and fear for sin, are most different to us.
8. Whither the free-g • ace of God doth not tempt men to sin, most kindly and from the nature of free grace, according to the Antinomian way, if the free grace of justification do free the justified so from sinning; as their indulgence to the flesh and sinful pleasure, can be no sin in God's court, no more then there can be sin in Christ; and if they be as free, notwithstanding of all the sin they do, being once justified, as if they never had sinned, or as the sinless Angels; and if the essence of sin and all they do against the Law of God, be as clean removed as money taken away out of a place, which sure cannot be said without a contradiction, to remain in that place, as Dr Crisp speaketh, and that before the sin be committed? whither can a thing in its essence be wholly removed, as if it never had been, before it have any being at all; can a rose be said to be whithered and destroyed as if it had never been, before ever that same rose spring out of the earth? sure faith cannot fancy lies and contradictions.
How ever it be, Christ's death teacheth us mortification of our lusts, it is a mortified like death, for he dieth on a visible journey leaving the earth; his back was towards life, pleasure, profit, he is not dead to his lusts, whatever be his boasting who is not dead in, or with Christ to sin.
For 1. Christ's death and his contempt of the world teacheth that we should follow him. 1. He looked even straight before him, neither to the right, nor left hand, nor behind him; the meddows, buildings, fair flowers and roses in the way of this passenger, did never allure him to stay in the way and fall in love with anything on this side of heaven, Heb. 12.2. as our 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 the captain of our faith 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 for the joy that was set before him, he endured the cross ; his heart was so upon the crown, and that which was his garland, his conquered Spouse, that he did run his race with all his breath and wearied not; his heart was much upon the p • ize that he did run for.
2. H • was nothing beholding to the world, he came to the house o • his friends, they refused him house room and lodgeing, John. 1.11. His own received him not, and therefore he was fame to lie with the birds of heaven, and the Foxes of the earth ; Christ was no landed man on earth, he had never a free house of his own above his head; he had a purse, but no fi • e rent, no income by year, Matth. 8.20. he had not whereon to buy a grave when he died, John. 19.41. The earth was his Fathers land; but he lodged in a borrowed grave; his coat was all his legacy, yet it could not buy a winding sheet to him; the soldiers thought it too little see for their pains in crucifying him, and it was not of much worth, when they put it to the hazard of lots, take it that wins it; his heart was never on the world, he refused a Kings Crown when it was offered to him without stroke of sword, John. 6.15. He had neither heart nor leisure to enjoy the world, John. 4. when he wanted his dinner, he begged a drink of water from a stranger, and was wea • y with walking on foot, yet he was the one great Bishop, the head of the body of the Church, and had neither ho • se nor coach, and he could have made the clouds his chariot; he became poor that we might be made rich. Was sweet Jesus thy Savior a poor man in the world? learn to be a stranger and to want, and to be content to borrow, and to lie in the fields, and to have a dead heart to the world: 1. O glory worldly', O all crowns, and gold, and stately Palaces, blush, be ashamed, take not such a wide lodging in the hearts of Saints, go not with so broad and fair Peacock-wings, ye are too big in men's eyes, Christ our dear Savior refused you: 2. Rich Saints, drink at leisure, use the world at t • e by, as if you used it not. Look with half an eye, the least half of your desire upon this borrowed shadow: Let not thy heart water, nor itch after white and yellow clay: 3. Gold, thou art not God, Saints look over crowns and court; see, see what a Kingdom is above your hand; Pilgrims, drink, but la • not down your burden and your staff: let it be a standing drink, and be gone; 4. Ye are longed for in heaven, 5. Your King lodged with poverty and abasement, and shame; love the lodging the better that he was there before you. Christ's love is languishing to have you soon cut of this passing • ransi • ory world and to be at your best home.
3. Christ did never laugh on earth that we read of, but he wept; O what a sad world! Psal. 69.11. I made sackcloth my garment ; O precious Redeemer, cloth of gold is too con • fe fo • thee, v. 20. Reproach hath broken my heart, I am full of heaviness ; he was a man made of sorrow, Esa. 53.3. and had experience and familiar acquaintance with grief; there be a multitude that goes laughing, harping, piping and danceing to heaven as whole and unbroken-hearted Christians mystical mortification (say they) is only faith, and joy; we have nothing to do with weeping, co • fessing, sorrow for sin, that is a dish of the Law Vinegar and Gall, it belongs not to us; we are not under the Law, but under grace; that sour sauce is the due of carnal men under the bond • ge of the Law ; but will Christ wipe away tears from the eyes of laughing men, wh • n they come to heaven? believe 〈◊〉 , there goes no unbroken and whole professors to heaven; that is far from mortification; heaven will not lodge whole souls, with their Iron sinnew in the neck never cracked by the death of Christ.
Object. But godliness is not melancholy, but joy of the holy Ghost.
Answ. 1. True; but whom does Christ, with the bowels and hand of a Savior bind up, but the broken-hearted mourners in Zion, and such as lie in ashes? Esa. 61.1.2.3. sorrow and joy may lodge in one soul.
2. Christ feasts some in the way to heaven, and dyets them daintily; some feed ordinarily on the fat and marrow of the Lord's house, Psal. 63.5. And there is a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of ma • row, of wines on the lees-well refined Isaiah. 25.6. and has not the King a banqueting house, a wine-cellar (Cant. 2.4.) for some? and do they not feed upon the honey-comb, and the wine, the spiced wine and the milk? Cant. 5.1. Cant. 8.2. But these that drink wine at some time, must at another time be glad of a drink of water.
2. And if there be varieties of temperature of Saints, some rough and stiff, some mild, some old men, and some babes, 1 John. 2.13. and as there be some Lambs, some fainting weak and swooning tender things that Christ feeds like Kings son • , with wine of heaven: so there be others that are under the care of the steward Christ, who are heifers and young bullocks, like Ephraim not well broken yet. Ierem. 31.18.19. and there be hoping and waiting Saints, that must bear the yoke in their youth, Lament. 3.26.27. and sundry kinds and sizes of children; everyone must have their own portion and diet, 2 Tim. 2.15. Matth. 24.45. One man's meat is another's poison, and yet they are both the sons of one Father.
3 Can every head that shall wear a crown in heaven, bear this wine, on the earth, being clothed with such a nature? and must everyone be taken into the Kings house of wine, and sit between the Fathers knees, at the high table, and eat marrow, and drink spiced wine? are there not some set at the by-board, that must be content with brown-bread and small drink or water?
4. Though the word should be silent, it is easy to prove that Saints have not the like fare of Christ's dainties at all times; for the Church, Cant. 2.4. is taken into the banqueting house, and feasts on fatness of free love; and yet again, Cant. 3. cries hunger, and seeks and finds not; and Cant. 5.1. feasts with Christ on wine and honey and milk; but verse. 5.6. there is a dinner of gall, hunger, and swooning, my soul (saith the Spouse) went out of me.
5. How many Saints go to heaven, and you never heard another word from them but complaints, want of access, straitening of Spirit, deadness, absence, withdrawings of the beloved, at every slip, scourged, chastised every morning? their complainings cannot be praised; yea till they land, they are ever sea-sick, till they be at shore, never see a fa • re day, nor one joyful hour, • sal. 88.15. I am afflicted and ready to die 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 from my youth I suffer thy terrors, and am distracted sore, for the Lord's dispensation, we m • y • ay, who hath been upon his counsels and who hath instructed him? Antinomians allow daily feasts and the strongest of the Gospel wine for daily food to all that are sinners; this we • dare not do; but as we judge it a sin to stand a • o • fe from free grace, because we have no mon • y nor hire : so to fill out the wine of t • e the Gospel more largely and p • ofusely then the King of the feast allows, even to sinners as sinners, and all unhumbled and high minded Pharisees, is to be stewards to men's lusts, and to turn the Gospel in to the doctrine of license to the flesh, and not to extol Free grace.
4. Chri • t in his way had no reason to glory in friends, 1. How was he despised of them? Isaiah. 53.3. We did hide our faces from him ; all his friends thought shame of him, a • d fled the way for him, they refuse to give him one look of their eye, 2. Psal. 31.11. I was a reproach amongst all mine enemies, but especially among my neighbors, and a fear to mine acquaintance, they that see me without, fled from me ; this is more to be a • pproach and a fear to neighbor and friend. 3. Nature and blood went against itself, Psal. 69.8. I am become a stranger to my brethren, and an alien to my mothers children.
All the Saints Idols are broken, to the end God may be one for all; this is a good ground of mortification; men shall be cruel brethren, and redeemed ones shall have the iron bowels of an Ostrich, a Lion to kill you and to consent to make war against you, that Christ's meekness may appear; friends must be sour, that Christ may be sweet; and you may be deadened in love to brethren and friends, yea to a forsaking father and mother, Psal. 27.10.5. No lust had any life or stirring in Christ, this cannot be in us; the old man that has lived five thousand years and above, is not so gray haired as to die, in any Saint while he dy, his deceiveable lusts at best come to a staff and trembling, and gray hairs in the holiest and most mortified, but expire not till dust return to dust.
If I be lifted up, I will draw, When Christ is weakest and bleeding to death on the cross, he is strongest, Col. 2.15. he triumphed over principalities and powers ; there is more of strength and omnipotency in Christ's weakness, then in all the power and might of Men and Angels; the weakness of God is stronger then men, 1 Cor. 1.25. there is more of life in Christ's death, then in all the world; he was a grain of wheat cast in the earth, and sown in the grave, and there sprung out of dead Christ a numerous offspring of children, a • l the redee • ed ones grew out of the womb of his grave, his Catholic Church was formed out of the side of the second Adam, when he was fast asleep on the cross.
2. This makes the way of redemption so much the more admirable, that out of a way of weakness, of death and shame, the Lord should out-work sin and the Devil, and rear up to himself out of dust and hell and death, glory heaven and eternal life: Infinite glory made a chariot of shame, and from it highly honored Christ: Omnipotency did ride upon death, and triumph over hell and devi • s, 1 Cor. 1.27. God hath chosen the weak things of the world, to confound things that are mighty, 28. and 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 the base, the kinlesse things that are of no noble blood, and 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , things that are despised, the nothings of the world he hath chosen, and things that are not, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 that he may make idle and fruitless, or bring to nothing, things that are.
Use If the Lord Jesus at the lowest and weakest, his dying and shamed condition be so strong as to pull his bride from under the water, and out of the bottom of hell, up to heaven, what power has he now, when he is exalted at th • right hand of the Majesty of God, and has obtained a name above all names, and is crowned King in Zion? It is better to be weak, and sick, and weep and sigh with Christ then to be strong, and live, dance, sing, laugh, and ride upon the skies with men in the world; sure his enemies will be now less then bread to him, and shall be his footstool.
2. Christ had cause to mind himself, and forget us, being now lifted up to the cross under extreme pain and shame; but love has a sharp memory, even in death.
Two things help our memory, and they were both in Christ: 1. Extreame love; the mothers memory cannot fail in minding her child, because the child is in her heart, and deep in h • r love: the wretch cannot forget his treasure, his gold is in his heart; Christ loved his Church, both by will, and nature, and cannot forget her, she is Christ's gold, and his treasure, Isaiah. 49.14, 15. Christ could not cast off nature, the husband cannot forget the wife of his youth; and the deeper love is rooted, the memory of the thing loved is the stronger. O but it is many years since Christ loved his redeemed ones: 2. Sense helpeth memory; a man cannot go abroad in cold weather and forget to put on his clothes; sense will teach him to do that; a paining boil will keep a man in mind of pain; the Church is a fragment and a piece of mystical Christ; he cannot forget his own body; the Church is bone of his bone; the head forgets not a wound in the hand. Love did sweat up an high and mighty mountain with thousands on his back: 1. O what sweating for us even in death, and sweating of blood: 2. O what praying, and praying more earnestly; Lord help me up the mountain with this burden ; and all this time, he is drawing and carrying on his shoulders hell up to heaven. 3. What a sight was it to behold Christ dying, bleeding, pained, shamed, tormented in soul, wrestling in an agony with divine justice and wrath, receiving strokes and lashes from an angry God, and yet he kept fast in his bosom his redeemed ones, and said, death and hell, pain and wrath shall not part us. It pleased the Lord to bruise him, to afflict his soul, not to spare him, to smite the shepherd, but it pleased him in that condition out of deep love to draw his redeemed ones from the earth up after him to heaven. Christ was a good servant, he always minded his work, even to his dying day.
Use. If he in his weakest condition draw all men.
1. How easily can he with one look, blast the beauty and strength of his enemies being a God of such majesty and glory? how weak is hell and all the Iron gates of it? when Christ at the weakest, plucks his Church out of the jaws of death ; and triumphs over death and hell.
2. It shall be nothing to him with a pull of his finger, when he appears the second time in power and great glory, to break the pillars that bear up heaven and earth, and to dissolve with the heat and sparkles of fire that comes from his angry face, the great Globe of the whole world, as a hot hand can melt a little snow-ball of some few ounces weight, and to loose with one shake of his arm all the Stars in heaven, especially since the world is now but an old thread-bare-worn case, and the best jewel in the case is man, who is old and failed, and passeth away like a figure; and it shall be but a case of dead bones, and of old broken earthen shards at Christ's coming, and Christ with no labor or pain, can crush down the Potters house, mar all the clay-vessels, and burn with fire all the work of the house, the Houses, Castles, Towe • s, Cities, A • kers, Lands, Woods, Gold, Silver, Silks, and whatever is in it; glory not in the creatures, but glo • y in Christ.
3. Death and the cross are the weakest things in the world, but being on Christ's back they are the strongest things in the world, 2 Cor. 13.4. Though he was crucified through weakness, yet he liveth by the power of God : 1. The cross was Christ's triumphing Chariot; there is power and strength in Christ's tears, in his sighs, in the holes that the thorns made in his head, in the stone laid above him, when he is buried: 2. His shame, death, and burial, made the greatest turning of wheels in the earth and heaven that ever the ears of man heard; the more providence does concern God, his highness, his glory, the more special it is and accurate, not that infinite wisdom is not infinite in the care over a worm, as over an Angel; but because there is more art of seen and external visible providence in whole Kingdoms, in Kings, in the Church, then toward one man or one Saint; so providence must have more of the art, wisdom, special care of God toward his Catholic Church, and his own only begotten Son in redeeming the whole Catholic Church, then in caring for the Lilies of the field, and the worms of the earth, or someone particular Saint: What wonder then there be an eminent providence observed in the disposing of Christ's coat when he died, & in the borrowing of an Ass for him to ride on, and in casting a garment on the Ass for a Saddle, or a foot-mantell when he rode into Jerusalem? so in Christ's suffering there is much of God; there was a more noble work in his dying on the cross, then the creating of the world; and there were four things of the greatest baseness imaginable upon Christ, in this providence; for there were upon Christ. 1. The weakness of death. 2. Extreame pain. 3. The openest shame, Christ dying poor, despised, forsaken of all friend and unfriend. 4. The curse of the Law in the manner of his death; yet in all these he acted the part of a triumphing redeemer, Col. 1.19. For it pleased the Father that in him all fullness should dwell, ver. 20. and (having made peace through the blood of his cross) by him, to reconcile all things to himself, whither they be things in earth, or things in heaven.
Use. Yea, we see Christ has never loosed anything by the cross, but has gained much, Rom. 8.37. in all these we are more then conquerors, in death we die not, a dead man is more then a conqueror, and if he should not live and triumph, he could not be capable of conquering, far less could he be more then a Conqueror, Revel. 12.11. The Saints overcome, but its a bloody victory; They overcame by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their Testimony ; Then if the word be an overcoming and prevailing thing, the cause overcame; but what if the persons be killed, then they are overcome? No; for the victory is personal, the followers of the Lamb, overcame by dying, because they loved not their lives unto death ▪ Triumphing in the grave is admirable. Things work in a threefold consideration: 1. According to excellency of their being, modus operandi sequitur modum essendi, men's operations flowing from reason are more excellent then actions of beasts. And Angels excel men in their actions. Its a noble and excellent being that is in Christ, being the only begotten Son of God; what excellency of working is this, that not only the dead, but death should live? and shame should shine in glory? the dumb may speak, and the deaf hear; but that dumbness should speak, and deafness hear, is more then a miracle; here Christ causeth death, shame, cursing be immediate organs and instruments of life, glory, immortality and honor. 2. Christ was never weaker and lower then now, and never more glo • ious in his working, Isaiah. 63.2. Wherefore are thou red in thy apparel, and thy garments like one that treadeth in the wine fat? R • v. 19.15. he himself was trodden on in the wine-press, and fierceness, and wrath of Almighty God? but Esa. 63.1. he is glorious in his apparel and travelleth in the greatness of his strength ; so in his lowest condition, when he is shamed, he is glorious; when he is weak and lying on his back, he walketh and walketh in the greatness of his strength ; from the baseness of the instruments, in excellent works, we collect that there must be a high, noble and excellent cause, who acteth on these instruments: 3. Agents work according to the distance they are to that they woe • k upon; a shot afar off is weaker. Now on the cross, 1. Christ is nearer to us, and so getteth a heartier lift of us; death and blood are near of kindred to us; 2. Christ coming so near death, hath a fairer shot and visie of death, and the grave, and Hell, and all our enemies, Heb 2.14, 15. He died that by death he might destroy him that had the power of death.
1. Drawing when he is on the Cross, doth most extol Christ's love: death parteth company amongst men, and often parteth loves; but Christ dying draweth his Church into his bosom and heart, as not willing that the grave should part them and him John. 14.1. Christ having loved his own, that were in the world, to the end he loved them: Christ died loving, and died drawing.
2. The cords of love with which he draweth sinners, were woven and spun, in all their threads and twistings, out of the bowels and heart of Christ, out of his blood, death, and pain; though it be sweet to Christ to draw, yet its laborious and and painful to Christ. It cost Chr • st a pained back, and holed sides, and pierced hands and feet, an head harrowed with thorns and a bleeding body, and a bruis • d soul to draw sinners; he drew while he did bleed again, he died under the work.
3. All the bones of all mankind that have been, are, or shall be, all the strength of Angels in one arm could not have drawn one sinner out of Hell. But O the strength of the merits of his lifting upon the Cross • ! one sinner is as heavy as hell, as a mountain of Iron; what burden must it be to Christ to have millions of souls and all their sins hanging on him? He carried on his body on the tree, so many millions of sinners, and drew up after him so many thousand redeemed ones, as would have made the world to crack, the whole earth to groan and cry for pain like a sick woman in child-birth pain.
4. The white and red in a flower or rose contempered together, make up a beautiful color and pleasant to the eye; 1. Love in Christ; 2. Lowlinesse; 3. And singular care to save, made up a sweet mixture • n Jesus that flower of Jesse, to draw strongly sinners to him. See a Father carrying seven or eight children on his back; through a deep river, he binds them all in his garment that none of them fall in the water, he leans on his staff; how doth he with advised choice and ele •• ion order every step, that he s • eme not to them to slip or fall? and he cries comfort over his shoulder to them, Fear not, be not dismayed, I will present you safe on dry land: so Christ with all his children, great • esus Christ had his offspring laped up in his merits, and did wade through the floods of death and hell and the curse of the Law with redeemed ones in his arms crying, Fear not worm Jacob, be not dismayd: I will help thee, the fl • nds shall not drown thee ; and for his own condition, his faith was that he should safely swim through the Sea, and the mighty waters of all his deepest sufferings, and that he and his mystical body (for Christ was a public surety, not one private man in this case) should shore on the land of praise • , and this is above all doubting, when he saith, Isaiah. 50.7. For the Lord God will help me, therefore shall I not be confounded: therefore have I set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed ; and then Christ had a most watchful and prudent care, Esa. 52. that not one pin, not one wheel in the work of our salvation should miscarry, but all should go right, nothing neglected, in doing, comforting, preaching, praying, suffering, sweating, weeping, believing, hoping in patience, in being shamed, spitted on, scourg • d, accused, railed on, traduced, condemned, belied, pained, crucified between two Thieves, buried in a sinners grave; there was not one hole, one want, one stumble, one slip in all or anything, but the work was whole entire and perfectly finished to God's satisfaction, Esa. 53.11. Luk. 22.37. John. 19.30.
5. That drawing of sinners to Christ was his last work in his death-bed and departure out of this life, crieth • hat he was desirous to lie in one grave with his Spouse the Lambs wife, and died enclosed in an union with Saints; it saith also, O how admirable was his love! and that love was Christ's last work in this life, he died of no other sickness but love, love, love was Christ's death-work, Christ's Testament, Christ's winding sheet, Christ's grave, he took his Bride lapped in his love and heart to Paradise with him, his last breath was love. The myrrh, when it is withered has the same smell (and a sweeter) that it had while it was g • een. Christ that bundle of myrrh that lieth all the night between the Churches breasts, when withered and dead, smelled of love, for he opened the graves and raised the dead, and took a repenting sinner to Paradise with him, which are acts of great love; its considerable that he is at one time a dying, a drawing and a loving Saviou • ; and ask what was Christ's last act on earth, its answered, he died in the very act of loving, and drawing sinners to his heart.
Use, We are engaged to love him, and if so, to keep his commandments, and to draw him after us; his own image, ho • inesse in the Saint • takes Christ, and causes him fall in love with us, Cant. 4.9. Thou hast ravished my heart, my sister, my Spouse, thou hast ravished my heart, with one of thine eyes, with a chain of thy neck ; Its much love that ravishes Christ; y • a it so overcomes him, that he professes its above him, he must desire his Spouse to look away, Cant. 6.5. Turn away thine eyes from me, for they have overcome me, Cant. 7.5. The king is held in his galleries ; holiness make • our king, the Lord Jesus a captive, for eternity he will delight to see the Lambs wife his bride, when she shall be decked up with endless glory; Be holy, and the king shall desire your beauty ; engage Christ more to love you, deck yourselves with chains, with bracelets, be attired in raiment of needle work, the braver in this apparel you are, ye are the lovelier to Christ, the wedding garment makes you fair to the king; put on the crown of grace on your head, and be highly beloved of this Prince.
Ver. 33. Now this he spoke signifying what death he should die.
The last article in Christ's draw • ng of sinners, is the exposition of the Evangelist John, who openeth to us the sense of Christ's words, to wit, what was meant by Christ's lifting up from the earth ; for it is not an ordinary phrase to express dying on the cross; therefore saith John he meaned by his lifting up from the earth, the kind and manner of his death, to wit, that he should be crucified, and die the shameful and ignominious death of the cross; it would seem that the exposition of John may be referred to the whole verse, 32. What is the sense of this? If Christ be lifted up he will draw all men up to him, that is, if he be crucified, by that shameful and painful death and the merito thereof he will draw all men to him, and translate them from the kingdom of darkness to the state of saving grace, which is true in itself, but seemeth not to be the sense of the words.
1. Because the Evangelists use to expound what may appear ambiguous to the hearers, as John. 7.8.39. But this he spoke of the Spirit, • oh. 20.23. Then went this saying abroad among the Brethren, that that disciple (John) should not die: yet Jesus • aid not to him, he sh • ll not die : So Matth. 2.16.17, 18. But that Christ draweth sinners by his death, was not so much controverted; for to come to Christ, to believe in Christ, to be drawn to Christ, were Phrases obvious enough, and known to all.
2. It is most pertinent to the text, that lifting up from the earth, which is ambiguous, and may seem to allude to Elias his being carried up to heaven, should be expounded by Chri •• s manner of death, to wi • , by crucifying.
3. Because the holy Ghost expoundeth not the connection of the conditional proposition, If I be lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men after me, which he must do, if the sense go thus; but only speaketh of the kind and nature of Christ's death, which was known to the • ewes to be both shameful and cursed; but in his exposition he speaks nothing of the fruit of Christ's death, but of the kind and manner of death.
Now that the Evangelist expoundeth the sense of Christ's words, what he meaned, by being lift up from the earth, it holdeth forth to us a necessity that the Lord speak plain language to us in scripture, and that one scripture expound another.
In finding the meaning of scripture, these considerations may give light.
1. The Scripture in the plainest expressions is dark, that is, high and deep in regard of the matter which is deep; high, above the reach of reason, and yet the language plain, obvious easy, that a virgin shall be a mother, the ancient of days a young sucking infant; that through one man, death digged a hole in the world, and sin passed on all; through a second Man life and heaven entered again; are high and deep mysteries, yet is not the Gospel obscure, as Papists say.
2. In mere historical narrations and prophecies foretelling the wars of the Lamb, the Dragon and the Beast, the Antichrist, their pursuing the woman in traveling in birth, to bring forth a man child, the matter subject is not profound, nor deep, yet the expressions are dark and covered, while the works of the Lord be a key to open his word; Here's the wisdom of God, that in deep and high mysteries necessary for salvation, the Lord is plain, and lower and easier stories are foretold more darkly; articles of faith are not set down in dark and enigmaticall prophesies, but plainly, whereas histories of things to come are more mysteriously proposed.
3. The Scripture in no place is in the popish sense dark, that is, that we are not to take any sense for the word of life, and the object of our faith, but that which the Church giveth as the sense, in regard the Scripture is a nose of wax, with equal propension to contradictory senses, except the mistress of our faith, the witch of Babel expound it, and then it is for such formally the word of God, as she expoundeth it.
4. The holy Ghost the Author of Scripture has concreated with the words, the true native sense, which all the powers on earth cannot alter.
Then when we swear a covenant with the Lord in plain easy country language, not devised of purpose to be ambiguous or to hold forth that all sects, Antinomians, Socinians, Arminians, Prelati • all halters, Anabaptists, Seekers, &c. may salve everyone his own way, and his 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , what he thinks good; to obtrude any authoritative interpretation on this covenant, which it holds not forth in its own simple words, to the reader, is the greatest tyranny and equivocating juggling in the world, and we may easily distinguish and dispute ourselves out of a good conscience, or rather confess we had never any intent to keep it, or acknowledge it was our sin we did swear it, and because unlawful, it obliges us not.
When we accuse the scripture of darkness, we would but snuf the Sun, and blow at it with a pair of bellows, to cause it shine more brightly. But the mischief is, that we either charge our souls beyond their stint, thinking to compass that world of the de • pe wisdom of God with our shor • fingers, or we stumble at the wisdom of the Scripture, because it is eccentrick to, and compl • es not with our lusts; and here's a deep not seen; God intends to carry Pharaoh and blinded reprobates to hell, through the wood of his mysterious works and word, they being blinded and hardened and they intend the same, but in another notion; God aims at the same end materially with them, but God levels at the glory of his own unviolable justice; they level at the word, the works of God to flatter their lusts, and take up a plea with both from the womb.
What death he should die.
Two things offer themselves to our consideration.
- 1. Christ's dying,
- 2. The kind of his death, What death he should die.
Christ came into the world with as strong intention to die as to live, and to be a pained, an afflicted man, as to be a man. In Christ's dying these considerations have place.
1. The love of man can go no farther then death, greater love then this hath no man, that a man should give his life for his friends, John. 15.13. For this Love can go no farther then the living Lover; now he cannot go one • eppe beyond death; Chri • t went on to the first and second death, so far as to satisfy justice: love is like lawful necessity, neither of them can live, when God is dishonored. Christ's love burnt and consumed him, till he died; love followed and pursued his lost Spouse through the land of death, through Hell, the grave, the c •• ses of an angry God, though Christ's love was both ancienter then his man-hood, and survived his death; love was of longer life in Christ, then his life as man, this Sun of love bu • nes hard down from heaven to this day.
2. It was a hard law that Christ subjected himself unto; that die he must; Heaven, Angels, the World could not save his life; This fa • re • ose had life and greenesse in abundance, and yet it must wither; this fountain of heaven had Sea's of waters, yet dried up it must be; this beauty of highest glory was full and vigorous, yet it must fade; the Lily of the excellentest Paradise that cast Rayes of glory and Majesty over the four corners of the Heaven of Heavens, and out-shadowed Angels, Men, and the large circuit of the whole Creation, must find its death-month, and must cast its fair and timely bloome: The love of loves must become pale and droup, that fire of love, that warms Angels and men, must become cold; and there was strong and invincible necessity; thus it must be 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , Matth. 26.54. Christ must die, Mar. 8.31. the Son of man must suffer many things, Luk. 22.27. For I say unto you (saith Christ) that that which is written must have an end in me. John. 3.14. The Son of man must be lifted upon the Cross. Christ could not pass to heaven another way; death was that one inevitable pass that he behooved to go through; there was no passable foord in the river but one; there was but one strait pass and fort between Christ and his Father, his glory and a saved Church, and justice kept this pass. Christ must lay out himself, his life, blood, estate and glory for his Church to gain this fort, and save his people from their sins. The Law laid it on him; 2. Love laid it on him: 3. Our necessities and everlasting perishing burdened him.
3. Might not the dead all wonder? there was never before nor after, nor never shall be such a Christ amongst the dead as the Lord of life ; all these in the dust could say, O life, what dost thou here among the dead! the worms and clay might say, O Creator canst thou lie near to us! Would not the fountains be offended, that they could not have leave to furnish a draught of cold water to their Creator, who made the the Seas and the Rivers, and divided Jordan with his Word? would not life it self grieve at such a dispensation, that it could stay and lodge no longer in the body of the Lord of life, but behooved to be gone and leave the Prince of life, to fall, that he could not stand on his own feet? was not bodily strength discontented, that sweet Jesus complained, Psal. 22.15. My strength is dried up like a Pot-shard, ver. 17. I may tell all my bones. Would not joy and beauty take it ill that sweet Jesus was a sad Savior, and his face foul with weeping, and his fair countenance that was like Lebanon, all marred, and our lovely Redeemer was put to his knees to pray with strong cries and tears? Isaiah. 52.14. Heb. 7.5. If there had been sense and reason, in all the Purples, Silks, Fleeces, wool, fine linnins that ever the earth had, they would think themselves unhappy, that they could not cover the holy body of the Redeemer of men and their Creator, when he complained, Psal. 22.18. They part my garments among them, and cast lo • s on my Vesture.
4. It was to much in regard of our deservings, that the Lord of life should descend to a natural life, to be under the • owly condition of base clay; but that this tent of clay, that the Lord was to dwell in, should be of the finest and most precious earth that can be, would seem reason; it might be said, it were fitting for the glory of the God-head united in a personal union with the Man Christ, that the body of the Son of God should be above pain, weakness or the Law of death, that it should be more glorious then all the pearelesse and precious stones of the earth; yea, then the Sun in the Firmament ; yea, but Isaiah. 53.2. he hath no form, nor comliness, and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. But this was incomparable condiscension of love that the Lord would take his own death upon him, and assume the manhood of sick, weak, pained, sad, sighing and dying clay, Isaiah. 53.4. Surely he hath born our sicknesses, and carried our sorrows.
5. If there be any that ever tasted the sweet of life, it being the most noble and desirable of created beings, if it were from a glorious Angel to a poor gnat or a base worm, they keep possession of life with all their desire; they will part with all things, men even with teeth and skin, ere they quit their life, Job 2.4. The more excellent life is, they struggle the more to keep it; a young man will do more then an old man for it; and the old man who ha • but a chip of life, the dregs of it, or the hundredth part of an hand-breath, the twentieth part of an inch, yet holds it so long as there is so much as the fourth part of a dram of natural vigorin him; Now Christ had cause to love his life, as any man else. It was about the flower of his age, the thirty three year of this life; and it must be a noble life, that dwelt personally with the God-head; yet when he was called to a treaty for rendering his life, he gave it not up, but upon princely and honorable quarters, even that he should see his seed, have a noble prize, and a ransomed spouse, a fair crown, a rich Kingdom to mystical Christ, but he parted with his noble and glorious life deliberately, intentionally, most willingly, John. 10.18. there was more will, more love in Christ dying, then in the dying of all men from the creation to the last judgment; O how he thirsted and longed to pay that Ransom, he had it by him, to give it out on demand; he did not first die, and bow his head, but he first bowed his head, and beckoned with his hand, and called upon death, and then rendered his Spirit.
6. O what a wonder, this rose of life on the Cross withereth in his full beauty, the Sun of life would shine no more on it. The prime delight of the Sons of men, the second Adam from Heaven fades, and life can breath no more, and beauty shine no more, and green • sse blossom no more; and when most lowly and low, clothed with a curse, most lovely, most Lordly and Princely, because in the act of Redeeming.
7. Christ's death must come under a three-fold notion: 1. At a torment inflicted by God's enemies: 2. As a punishment inflicted of God or sin, as a Ransom pa •• to justice: 3. As the crown and • nd of Christ's journey.
In the first notion, Christ's death as coming from wicked men, wanted three ingredients, that all the wicked world and Hell could not give it: 1. All the world cannot add a curse to the death of any man, God only is the Master and Lord of cursing and blessing: God cast this in from heaven of his own, for 2 Cor. 5.21. God made him sin, Isaiah. 53.6. Jehovah, the Lord laid on him the iniquities of us all. Who said that, Cursed be everyone that abideth not in all that is written in the Law to do it, Gal. 3.10.13. Deut. 21.23. Deut. 27.26? the only Law-giver who can dispense curses, he made Christ's death a curse: One death has not a curse more then another, and Christ's death of the cross had not a Ceremonial curse only in it, for that was common to the deaths of all that hangeth on a tree, Deut. 21.23. But the curse of the Moral Law which is upon the sinner, Deut. 27.26. Gal. 3.10▪ 13. was laid upon Christ; and this is heavier then ten millions of deaths of the cross: O how many thousands and what millions of talents weight of gall, & vengeance did the Lord from heaven add to the cup of Christ? 2. Because Christ was made sin, he behooved to be made the sinner, and from Christ's person his death had the sweet perfume of infinite merit & a sweet smell of a savor of rest to God, above all sacrifices and offerings that ever were offered to God, infiniteness of merit, this Christ gave to his own death. 3. The Lord gave it a third ingredient, that it had acceptation even in point of Law and Justice, which no man could give; to feel a smell of everlasting love, peace, reconciliation in blood, is the sure mercies of David ; O but it was white blood to God, crying blood, or rather singing blood that sings the sweet Gospel-song. Abel's blood cried a song of vengeance; ye are come to the blood of sprinkling 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , that sounds better things then the blood of Abel, Heb. 12.24.
In the second notion that Christ came under the Law of dying ( for it is appointed for all men to die ) speaks much love▪ To come to sleep which is deaths brother, to come under pain, weakness, bleeding, that are the near blood-friends of death, is great love expression. But to die, the lowest, and the saddest and sourest of bodily infirmities, and then for other men's faults, it sets out the love of God.
In this respect Christ dying was a Ransom for justice; there be four of the saddest things in a ransom that are here.
1. To give person for person is the hardest bargain; by the Law of Nations they are meeker wars where moneys and gold may buy a captive. God in this bargain could send captives away for neither silver, nor gold, nor any corruptible thing, 1 Pet. 1.18. A gift a reward will not bow justice; Rubies, Sapphires, let ten earths be turned into gold of Ophir, they cannot buy the offended Law of God; therefore it must be man for man, person for person or nothing, a man is more precious then gold.
2. If you must have man for man, then let proportion of common justice be kept; a soldier for a soldier, a servant for a servant, a free-man for a free-man, a master for a master; ye cannot demand a King to ransom a servant: Yea, (saith justice) but I will ; they are but men and slaves, and servants of sin; their Father Adam was indeed a King, but by Law, he is fallen from the crown and all his children are traitors and born servants; therefore justice would have no less ransom then one of the Kings line, one of the blood royal; and more, the only heir of the crown of heaven and earth, the King of Kings and the Lord of Lord's ; he is more then an over-ransom and over-sum; this is hard; but infinite wisdom cannot be against justice, but it was the strictest justice that ever was, the Kings Son for the Traitors son, the Prince for the Slave, the Lord of Lord's for the poor c • ay-subject.
3. But the ransom King must have honorable conditions, like himself; if he must be a captive, let him have some freedom befitting his birth and condition; now because this bargain was to be stretched out to the utmost line and border of strict justice (as also it wanted not deepest mercy shining in glorious rays through justice) therefore the King standing a ransom was as far below his place as a servant is below a King, Phil. 2.6, 7. You have the lowest and the highest steps, who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant : a King and God made a servant, Matth. 20.28. for even the Son of man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many: See here the Son of God a ransom in his own person, and the lowest of ransomes, a servant, far below a King.
4. It is not universal in these persons that are given to ransom others, but poor souls, if they be turned in servants, their life should be spared; but Christ was such a ransom as must lay down his life for the captives, Matth. 20.28. No ransom can come lower then a man, and an innocent man's death: If the captive be wounded and sickly, the man that goes a ramsome for him, by no Law, should be sickly and wounded also: 1. It is not ordinary that he that stands as a ransom for captives, should take their natural infirmities, their body, sighs, sadness, sorrow, wants, and be like them in all things, but Christ was like us in all things except sin: 2. And what greater hardship can you put on a ransom captive then death? all these Christ did • ndergoe for us.
The third and last consideration of Christ's death, is as it was the end of Christ's journey, and all his labors in the flesh, and this I desire to be considered in these repects.
- 1. As death is Christ's last enemy.
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2.
In the concomitants of it.
- 1. As in his triumph of victory.
- 2. His welcome to his Father.
1. As death was Christ's last enemy, dying was to him as to man the last day and moment of his week, when he entered into his Sabbath and rest, and died never to die again ; the world, and devils chased him into the grave, and when he was there, he was in his own land, in Paradise, in a Kingdom: Death was the wearied way-faring-man's home, the end of his race, and at this place was the fore-runners gold, his garland, and prize, even the glory set before him, for the which he endured the Cross and despised shame, he then sat down; it was Christ's landing port after his stormy sailing. 2. He had no more to do: in the merit of redemption, in the way of satisfying justice; for Christ's burial or lying in the grave was but his mora, his lodging all night with death or a continuation of his death; when he died, all was finished, the Law of God for satisfaction could crave no more: as the last enemy of the body is death, 1 Cor. 15.26. so it was the head Christ's lasts enemy on earth: 3. Heaven was Christ's place of refuge, his sanctuary and his asylum ; when Christ was in the other side of death and of time, he was in his castle, in his strong Fort; enemies can neither besiege him nor take him, he cares not now for the worlds feud, or for death or the grave, Revel. 1.18. There was no more law against Christ after his soul was in Paradise; the believer has a perfect acquittance of all crosses, when he is once in the land of glory.
2. There be two considerable concomitants in Christ's death: 1. His victory : 2. His welcome : His victory was in his very act of dying, that death and the justice of a divine law had their will of Christ, and could demand no more of him for all engagements, and to answer the bill, but death and such a death it was a sort of over-plus and abundance of ransom to God, that death was put to the worse, and could in justice never arrest any believer or Saint after Christ. O dea • h, what wouldst thou have more! Or, what canst thou demand in law? 2. Christ and all his, l • gally were crucified, and died, and Christ and all his were not destroyed under death, but Christ lived and all his with him, John. 14.19. when two strong enemies do conflict, and put out their strength one against another to the full, and the one lives in his full strength, the other must be foiled. Christ after death lived and can die no more, and is strong and omnipotent; now death did all it could against Christ in that he died; then he must be the Victor, and death the vanquished party; death was Christ's Land-port, his shore after sad Sea-sailing, his last stage in which he posted to glory; and he came into Paradise and his Fathers Kingdom, in a sweat of blood (and the Cross accompanied him in over the threshold of the gates of heaven) so he was welcommed, he, and all his feed (who then were legally in him) as one who had acquitted himself bravely and honourably in the business that most highly concerned the Lord, and the glory of all his blessed attributes, mercy, justice, grace, wisdom, power, sovereignty, &c. There was a most joyful acclamation in heaven, a welcome and embracing, and a hand-shaking (as we say:) 1. Between the Father and the Son, and this is a sweet medi • ation, Dan. 7.13. I saw in the night visions, and behold one like the Son of man, came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they brought him near before him, ver. 14. And there was given him dominion and glory, and a Kingdom, that all People and Nations and Languages should serve him : Now who be these that brought Christ to the Father when he ascended? who but th • holy Angels his ministering Spirits or servants; they attend his ascension to heaven, as the Estates of a King wait on, and convey the Prince and Heir of a Crown, in his Coronation day, Heb. 1.6, 14. the Disciples, Act. 1.10. See two men in white apparel, at his ascension; go up to heaven; sure there must have been a host of them, as there were at his birth, and shall be at his second coming, and its little enough that the Peers of Heaven, such a glorious Parliament of the High House, bear the tail of his Robe Royal and attend to welcome to heaven their Lord Creator, and their head Christ by whom they stand in Court, they are the servants of the Bridgroome; it was much joy to them, when Christ returned a triumphing Lord to heaven, having done all gloriously and completely. The Father after his death made him a great Prince, and gave him a name above all names, and set him at the right hand of the Majesty of God: 2. And if the Lord shall say to sinful men, Well done, good servant, enter into the joy of thy Lord ; Far more, being infinitely satisfied with the travels and service of his Son, he must say, Well done, well suffered, O Son of my love, enter into the joy of thy Fathers soul: For the Fathers soul ever delighted in him, Esa. 42.1. 3. And to see the Father embrace his Son in his arms after the battles, and put the Crown on his Head, and set him down at his right hand and exalt him as an eternal Prince for evermore, and accept all his labors, and his faithful and most successful acquitting of himself, in all his offices, as Redeemer, King, Priest, and Prophet, must be a joyful sight.
Use 1. No Believer take it ill to die; death sips at every blood, noble or low, and would but drink the blood of this celebrious and eminent Prince of the Kings of the earth: 1. For besides, that God has stinted our months, and the ship cannot pass farther then the length of the cable; here is the matter, Christ for imputed sin, behooved to bleed to death: 2. Only Enoch and Elias were reprieved, by the prerogative of free grace; we are by birth and sin, but some ounces or pieces and fragments of death and its appointed for all men to die; there is more reason we should die then the Lord of life ; for life was essential to the Prince of life, but life is a stranger to us; man is but man, but a handful of hot dust, a clay-vessel tunned up with the breathing of warm wind that smokes in and out at his nostrils, for a inch of flietting away time. And sin adds wings to the wheels of his life, and lays a Law of death on man, and if Christ had not come into this clay▪ city, he had been under no law of death; he dies for us; then we should • arre rather have died, p • opter quod unumquod{que} tale, &c. Now because your Redeemer laid his skin to death, and was willing to kiss death, believers are to esteem of death as the cross that Christ went through, love the winding sheet and the coffin the better, that they were the sleep-bed and night-clothes that your Savior sleeped in. 3. And Christ had the more cause to be willing to die, that he was little beholden to this life; it looked ever with a frowning face on Christ: 1. The first morning salutation of this life when Christ was new born, it boasted and threatened Christ with the cutting of his throat in the cradle, and banishment out of his own land to Egypt : 2. He had good hap all his life to sufferings, he had ever the wind on his fair face, and the smoke blowing on his eyes, as if his whole day had been a feast of tears and sorrow; yea, life and the sad and glowing cross parted both together with Christ, as if the world had sworn never to lend the Son of God one smile, or one glimpse of a glad hour. 3. Christ thought himself well away and out of the gate (as he fore-telleth, when the people mourned for his death, Luk. 23. ver. 28, 29, 30, 31.) before the destruction that came on the City of Jerusalem, that killed many of the Lord of the wine-yards servants, and at last killed the righteous heir. 4. You may remember Christ message that he sent to Herod, Luk. 13.32. I do • uers today and tomorrow, and the third day 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , I shall be perfected, Heb. 2.12. It became him from whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the captain of their salv • tion perfect through sufferings, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 : Death made Christ perfect for the Lo • d put the fair crown of Redemption on Christ's head with a very black hand; it was a black boat-man that carried our Prince Jesus over the water to Paradise, but sweet Jesus would have it his perfection, his crown, his glory to be swallowed up in deaths womb for us. Its considerable that death perfecteth the head: 1. As a Priest; he had been an imperfect sacrifice, if he had not died; and being offered dead to God, Christ's dead corps had an infinitely sweet smell in the nostrils of a just God; never sacrifice, never burnt offering like this which perfected all: 2. He had not been a perfect King and Conqueror, had he not pursued the enemy to his own land, and made the enemies land the seat of war, and triumphed dead upon the cross. 3. He had not been a perfect Redeemer, had he not died, and paid life for life: no satisfaction without death, no remission of sins without blood, Heb. 10. but it was the heart-blood, and blood with the life that was shed to God. Now these same befall the dying Saints: 1. While the Saints are here they are from home, and not at their Fathers fire-side, and this world their Step-Mother looks ever asquint on them, John. 16.33. And the cross gets a charge from God concerning a Saint, w • it on him, as his keeper while he die, leave him not; the cross follows the house of Christ and all the children of the house, its kindly to all the second Adams seed, it is an in-come by year that follows the stock: every child may in his suffering say my father the Prince of ages even the head of the house, my brother Jesus, and all our kine were sufferers: the sad cross runs in a blood to us, Psal. 34.19. Matth. 19.24. This is not our home, I would I were ashoare, and at home, in my Fathers house.
2. The Lord takes the righteous away from the ill to come, Isaiah. 57. When Christ was taken away, vengeance came to the full on the Jews, when he was in heaven. Christ's followers, that die, out-run many Crosses, as we see a man upon his life chased by his enemies, gets into a strong house and with speed of foot wins his life; sad days persue the Saints and they escape to their Castle, before the affliction can reach or overtake; there be some cruces posthume late-borne crosses, calamities and ill days that come on the posterity of the godly, the Lord closeth their eyes that they never see them. The grave is a house the Devil and the World and aff • ictions cannot besiege; sure when a Saint is in heaven, he is beyond Doomesday, death, and tears, he defies the malignants of this world then, and the wars and blood that his own brethren can raise against him.
3. What shall we say, that as Christ thought himself maimed, and he wanted a piece, or an arm or leg of a Savior and a perfect Redeemer till he died, and then when he died he was perfected; indeed our redemption had been lame and imperfect, had not Christ died; and his escape through death and the land of darkness the grave to his Fathers old crown that he had with him before the world was, was a perfecting of Christ: 1. So dying to a Saint is the Sun rising, the morning birth-day of eternity, the opening of the prisoners door, the Coronation-day, the marriage-night: 2. He is ever a lame man, he wants incomparably his best half, so long as he wants Christ in a fruition of glory; all the travelling and way-fairing men in their journey toward heaven are but sick men, for sickness is but a lameness of life, a want of so many degrees as make up a perf • ct life (because good health is but the flower and perfection of life) and the only perfect life Col. 3. ver. 3.4. is the life of glory; then all the Saints yet wanting the life of heaven, must be crazy, weak, groaning men, not healthy in a spiritual consideration, while they be in heaven: 3. When a Saint dies, he but takes an essay of the garment and robe of glory (though death make it seem strait and pinching) and enters in the joy of his Lord, Rev. 14.13. There is both Word and Writ, and from a land where there can be no lies, from heaven, blessed are the dead that die in the Lord, that they may rest from their labors, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 that the travellers may over-rest, or exceedingly breath, and refresh or comfort themselves after much toil and sweating in the way; therefore is death, 2 Tim. 4.6. 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 an unfolding of the net, or of the tent, that the man may go out, or a taking up the burden and laying it down in another Inn, or a loosing the cabels of ships to sails, or an untying of cords of a tabernacle to go to a choycer place.
Use 2. From Christ's dying we learn to die to sin, and live to him that died for us, 1 Pet. 2.24. Rom. 6.2, 6. 2 Cor. 5.15. Mortification to this goodly and God-like Idol the World, is a special lesson of the death of Christ, Gal. 6.14. It is a great distance and many miles about and off the road-way to heaven to go through such a thorny, thick, and bushy-wood of honors, riches, pleasures worldly, its a shorter and easier way to stand at a distance from the silken and golden creature, and despise the fairest created excellencies that fill both sides of the Sun. Antinomians would have us rest satisfied with a moral mortification, in the brim of the imagination, to believe that Christ dying mortified sin and the body thereof on the Cross, and there is an end, and that we are obliged by no command, no precept, no law to a personal mortifying of our lusts, to walk in new obedience, and that all that we do is arbitrary and free to us, coming on us by the immediate Spirits impulsion ; for Christ works in the Regenerate as in these that are dead, not as in these that are alive, and that after conversion we are altogether dead to spiritual acts, say they; contrary to 1 Cor. 15.10. Phil. 2.13. Rom. 6.11. Gal. 2.20. 1 Pet. 2.5.24. And that it is the efficacy of Christ's death to kill all activity in his members, that he might act all in all ; Yea, and that there is not any command in the Gospel, all is but promises, Christ is obliged to do all in us, and if he suffer us to sin, let him see to his own honor ; Yea to act by virtue of, or in obedience to a command, is a Law-way, and we have nothing to do with the Law : But the Gospel teacheth us a real and personal mortification, and that we are to be holy as he is holy, perfect as he is perfect ; that is, a new-covenant command, Gen. 17.1. That we should walk before him and be perfect, that we should walk after the Lord, Deut. 13.4. walk in all his ways, Deut. 5.33 take diligent heed to walk in his way, Josh. 22.5. Psal. 119.93. Prov. 2.7.20. Isa. 2.3. walk in the steps of that faith of our Father Abraham, Rom. 4.12. according to this rule of the Gospel Gal. 6.16. and worthy of the vocation, Eph. 4.1. worthy of the Lord, Col. 1.10. in light, 1 • oh. 1.7. even as he walked, 1 John. 2.6. after his commandments, 2 John. 6. honestly, as in the day, Rom. 13.13. in love. Ephes. 5.2. as children of the light, v. 8. as we have received Christ, Col. 2.6. in wisdom, ver. 4.5. as wise men, Ephes. 5.15. And the Gospel forbids and condemns walking as the Gentiles do in the vanity of the mind, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God ; but observe by Antinomians fleshly doctrine, no Gospel command under pain of eternal death, be it a command of believing in him, that justifieth the sinner, or of holy walking as a fruit and witness of our faith and justification obligeth these that are in Christ, as if, in regard of any Scriptural command of law or Gospel, we might live as we list, and follow the inspiration and leading of a lawless spirit separated from all word either Law or Gospel, either commanding or conditionally promising or threatening. We are not so to live after flesh in lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, revellings, banquetings and abominable Idolatries, 1 Pet. 4.3. not after the flesh, 2 Pet. 2.10. Rom. 8.13. If ye live after ths flesh, ye shall di • : There is a Gospel threatening as a promise of life; yea, the arms, colors, the badge of Gospel grace is to deny ungodliness, Tit. 2.11. Not to walk in darkness, nor hate our brother, 1 John. 2.8.9. for this is the new commandment ; and that the Gospel has commandments is clear, Math. 15.3. John. 15.12. Rom. 16.6. Eph. 6.2. 1 Tim. 1.1. The holy commandment, 2 Pet. 2.21. 1 • oh. 3.23. Rev. 22.14. Prov. 2.1. John. 14.21. 1 Thes. 4.2. 1 John. 2.4, 3, 2 • . And he that keepeth his Commaadements, dwells in him, and he in him, John. 14.15. If ye love me, keep my Commandments, Math. 5.3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.20, 21, 22▪ 24. Math. 7.1.2, 3, &c.
Use 3. We have rich consolation, from the Article of Christ's dying; the sinners debts are paid, his band and the hand-writing of blood, and eternal vengeance is cancelled, and taken out of the way; the gates of the p • ison broken, and the prisoners brought out, by the blood of the everlasting Covenant, 1 Pet. 2.24. with his stripes we are healed, Isaiah. 53.5. The chastisement of our peaces, or treaties of peace, as the word bears were upon him, and with his stripes we are healed ; Th • word of stripe in either languages, is a mark of a wound where blood and humors are neighboured together, it leads us to this that the only medicine of sick and dead sinners, was that which is sickness, pain, swellings from nails in hands and feet to Jesus Christ. Christ the Physicians pain was our case, his wounds the healing and cover • ng of our wounds with his skin, and his death the life of sinners; to visit the sick and help him at his bed side with consell and art is favor, but its physic of grace, not of nature, that the Physician should be the sick man, the pained, the groaning and dying Patient • , and lie down in his bed, and make his life and blood, and medicine to cure our diseases and wounds; In a Law-challenge the believer is so freed from eternal wrath, that if Satan and conscience say, Thou art a sinner and under the curse of the Law, he can say, its true, I am a sinner, but I was hanged on a tree and died, and was made a curse in my head and Law-surety Christ, and his payment and suffering is my payment and suffering.
Use 4. Sin is a sad debt, the Law is a severe crave • : 1. Its pastime to a fool to sin: it is no pastime nor sport to Christ to satisfy for sin. 2. There is as much justice and vengeance in the Gospel, as in the Law; the Gospel-suffering for our sin was as salt and sour to Christ as the Law vengeance would have been to us. The Lord never minded that any should bear sin, either by acting or suffering gratis, and at an easy rate. 3. Will ye not read bloody justice pursuing sin on the blew stripes and scarlet wounds, on innocent Jesus back and sides, his head and hands and fe • t? will ye young men, Eccles. 11.9. laugh and sin, and must Christ weep and shout and cry for pain, when he suffers for sin? Sinners ye have merry days in your lusts, O but it was a doleful and a wearisome time to Christ to pay for sin. The drunkard sings and drinks, when Christ answers his bill he sighs. Solomon, Eccles. 2. in the days of his vanity sought to give himself to wine, ver. 3. to lay hold on folly; and ver. 10. and what ever his eyes desired he withheld not from them, he kept no joy from his heart. But Christ had a sad night in the garden, O but he had a heavy soul, when with tears and strong cries, he prayed, when justice squeazeth a sweat of blood out of Christ's body, and he looks like sorrow and sadness it self dying, and b • eeding, and crying My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me: never mothers son after this, make a sport of sin, or sin with good will and delight.
What death, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , what quality or kind of death, he was to die.
The quality and kind of Christ's death is most remarkable; for three characters were printed and engraven on the death of the Cross which Christ died.
1. Paine. 2. Reproach and shame. 3. The Curse of God and man▪
The pain in Christ's death comes under a twofold consideration: 1. Naturally : 2. Legally ; the nature of the death was painful, for death of itself is painful; no man pays that debt with ease and nature smiling and sporting: die who will, it will cost you of your flesh; when Asa dies, he cries, ah my feet; when David dies, he complains, O my cold body; the Shunamites child, ah my pained head; Uzzah, Oh my lep • ous skin; do not pamper nor idolize your body; if wicked men have not one band or cord in their death▪ but steal down to the grave in a moment beside deaths knowledge, yet they pay dear for it, Job 24.20. The worms shall feed sweetly on them ; life is a great pearl▪ But there be three things besides, that made the death of Christ painful.
- 1. Violence.
- 2. Slownesse of dying.
- 3. Many degrees of life taken from him.
Violence, it is to die of any disease or of pain: 1. But when five or six deaths do all start equally at one land-port, and at one race, and strive which of them shall dispatch the poor man soonest, the pain is the more; ye know the complaint of our blessed Savior, Psal. 22.16. They pierced my hands and my feet, and John. 19.34. one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water: here by Scripture, be five deaths, that invade a living man, death on every hand, and death on every leg, and death on his side; though this last came a little too late; the Soldiers had no law to pierce his side, but to make sure work he should be dead, by a sort of chance to men, which yet sweetly was subservient to the decree of God and the Prophecies; Christ was thus served. 2. Now a violent death it must be when strong and great nails did pierce the most nervous parts of his body, his hands and his feet; one Iron wedge thrust in at his left pape, to pierce his heart, or to pierce through the temples of the head would quickly have dispatched him. 2. As for the slowness of his death, four leisurely and slow violent deaths to cause him to bleed to death were hard: the word saith the blood is the life of the living creature; then look how long his blood was coming out, his life was dropping out as long. They say, the death of the Cross will keep a man aliv with his life in on the Cross, above three or four hourese the man dying and yet cannot die; these languishing deaths procuring a cruel favor such as is deaths slow pace, and yet quick torment, are images of hell, where men seek death, but cannot find it, because death sleeth from them.
2. The lentnesse of death is much when death is divided into four quarters; death at every hand, and at every foot makes the pain greater; when the weight and trunck of Christ's living body lifted up from the earth, hangeth upon four paining and tormenting pillars, the Lord's pierced hands and feet; as if death had delighted to hold Christ long at Sea, and denied him the last sad service. 3. And Christ had been before dying a terrible death in the garden, when he had been see • hed and boiled in a blood of sweat, and two circumstances evidence that the two Thieves death was nothing in slowness of torment comparable to Christ's death: 1. The sad and direful Prefaces and preparatories to Christ's death, as he was in the night before in a soul death in the garden and in a sweat of blood there trickled out of his body down upon the ground 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 as it were drops great hail-stones of blood frozen or h • ardened together as Stephanu • thinks, through extreme terror; he was scourged against all Law and crowned with thorns: 2. And so was he weakened in body as he was not able to bear his own cross; it was his own complaint, Psal. 22.17. I may tell all my bones, what ever the story of passion say, how Christ could have been so lean in twen • y and four hours, its evident he complains his •• rength was dried up like a pot-sheard, and that death was more painful to Christ then to these tha • died the same death; yea, Christ began to die the night before; he was then under violent death of soul and body above▪ the hours that he was on the Cross, when others are long tormented with pain, that pain is rather the fore-runner of death, then death; for death stays but a moment in doing that sad service in bringing the soul out, but death all this time twenty four hours was acting upon Christ, both the second death, the Lord's anger and curse being on him, and then bodily pain with the curse of the law all this time wrought upon him. Some say gall and vinegar were given to men to be crucified to make them less sensible of that extreme pain. And consider his death legally, may we not say, as Christ in bearing the pains of the second death did suffer that which all the Elect should have sustained in their souls forever so Christ did bear many millions of bodily deaths? it may be a question, if Christ's suffering for Peter be Christ's suffering for David ; for sure Peters sins and David's sins together, are more then David's sins alone, and if on Christ the Lord laid the iniquity of us all, • sai 53.6. it must be a greater punishment, then if the Lord had laid the iniquity o • some few, one or two upon Christ; say that the Elect were three millions of rede • med ones, as we cannot de • erm • ne the number, sure thi • must be a sadder death, then if Christ had died but for ten men; it is true, it was an infinite pain in regard of the one infinite person that did bear our iniquiti • s, yea, and so subjective it was an infinite love with which in election and free redemption Christ followed all the Elect of God withal, but terminative as his love is bounded on sundry persons, Paul speaks of it as if there had been not one man loved but himself, Gal. 3.20. Christ loved me, and gave himself for me. Though the Lord Jesus passed in one bill, the election and redemption of all the family of the first born, yet every soul has a white stone, and a new name, that no other elect man knows, but he himself ; as every flower, every rose, every meadow and several garden has its several rays, beams, and comfort, and vigor of hear from the Sun, yet all these rays and beams are but one in the Suns body; so though Christ died but on death for all the Elect, yet in the hight of pain it was many de • ths to him.
3. Again, consider how much of life Christ had, the removing of it by violence must be so much the more painful; life natural had in Christ a sweet and peaceable dwelling, the possession of life was with excellent deligh • s, like a tree growing on the bank of a sweet river of oil, wine and honey; it was planted beside the glorious Godhead pers • nally, and had sweet company, and that made it pleasant; the more beautiful, pleasant, and green the flower of less was, the more violence and pain it was to hew down this delitious tree of life, and to cut him out of the land of the living ; it had not been so much to cut down a thistle or a thorn tree, or to take away the life of a common man, whose life is not privileged with grace and the grace of a personal union with God; yea, the destroying of the life of an Angel, could never have been such violence. And then its considerable that Christ was not suffered to go to the grave without blood, and that his skine, his winding sheet, were bespotted with blood. Christ paid not this sum quickly, as many die; its true, there was more will and love infinitely in his blood, then violence and pain, every stream of blood flowing in a channel of love; and its also sure the soul and the Godhead were not separated, but the precious life of Christ was expelled, and that by a bloody death, out of a sweet Paradise, and death was a rough, sad and thorny journey to Christ; weapons of Iron on hands and feet came against the Lord to fetch the soul out of the body.
2. Shame.
The second character engraven on Christ's death was shame and reproach, in which consider
- 1. How shame could be on Christ dying.
- 2. What sh • me was on him.
- 3. How it stood with his honor as King.
1. Shame, is taken either fundamentally in the cause, or formally ; sin and sin acted by men against the Law of God is the only foundation of shame, when the people fell in idolatry, Exod. 32.25. Aaron made the people naked to their shame ; so when Tamar disswads her brother from incest, 2 Sam. 13.13. she saith, and I, whether shall I cause my shame to go? and as for th • e, thou shall be as one of the fools of Israel. Shame and sin are of one blood; for sinning is a shameful reproaching of the crea • ure; and thus, Christ was no more capable of shame, nor of sin; for he had done no violence, neither was there any guile in his mouth. Christ-man came out of the womb clothed with a precious white Robe of innocence and abundance of grace, he never contracted one black spot on that fair Robe of the highest image of God, from the womb to the grave; and so there was no shame, but fundamentally glory in Christ all his life; but there is shame formally in sin; and that: 1. Which we call thinking of shame or being ashamed actively: 2. In bearing of shame passively. In the former consideration; because sin is a shameful thing in self, Ier. 11.13. Ye set up Altars to that shameful thing, even Altars to burn incense to Baal; there is an internal blushing and shame rising from sin, when the sinner, if the conscience through a habit of sin be not turned brazen and hard, thinks ill of sin and esteems it s • lf base in doing ill; Rom. 6.21. What fruit had ye then of these things whereof ye are now ashamed? Adam and Eve were not ashamed before they sinned: now Christ man had this ingenuity which Heathens called half a virtue; shamefastness or a power to think ill of sin. Christ of himself (though he could not sin, as Adam had a power, before the fall to pity and commiserate the sick and miserable, though there was no formal object for that power afore men sinned) could think it of sin. Christ (I say) thought ill of sin, and esteemed the creature base in sinning; Heathens said virtue was of a red blushing color ; and the Scripture condems the shamelesnesse of sinners that are not abased themselves, for sin and cannot be ashamed; so the Lord burdens his people with this Ier. 3.3. And thou hadst a whores forehead, thou refusedst to ashamed, Heb. to blush, Isaiah. 3.9. The show of their countenance (that cannot blush at sin) doth witness against them, and they declare their sin as Sodom, they hid it not. Zeph. 3.5. But the unjust knoweth no shame. In this, Christ our Lord, (to come to the second point) being our surety though he could not be ashamed of any sin he did himself, for that he never sinned, yet being made sin for us, he did did bear the shame of our sin. And so Christ was not free of shame passively, as it is a punishment of sin; for it is penal evil of the creature, Dan. 12.2. Many that sleep in the dust shall awake some to shame and everlasting contempt. Ezech. 32.24. Elam and all her multitude are slain—they have born their shame, with them that go down to the pit. That which is penal in shame, the Lord Jesus did bear; he saith of himself, Isaiah. 50.6. I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair, I hid not my face from shame and spiting, Heb. 12.2. He endured the cross, despising the shame ; in these respects he did bear our shame; 1. That he being the Lord of glory, and thought it no robbery to be equal with the father, he abased himself to come so low as to be a man, and the lowest of men, a servant, Phil. 2.6, 7, 8. Matth. 20.28. & Isaiah. 49.7. Thus saith the Lord, the Redeemer of Israel, and his holy One to him whom man despiseth, Hebr. to one despised in soul, a contemned soul abhorred by the nation, to a servant of Lord's : 2. All the tokens of reproach and shame was on his suffering: As 1. In gestures, the puting a crown of thorns on his head, and a Reed for a Scepter in his hand, to scorn his Kingly power, saluting him with mocking and bowing the knee to him: 2. In words, saying, Hail King of the Jews ; a scorning his Prophetical dignity, in blind-folding him and covering his face and saying, Prophecy who is he that smote thee? and to deride his Prie •• hood, they put a Roab on him, and when he is on the Cross and offering himself as our Priest, in a sacrifice to God, all that passed by wagged their head, and shot out the lip, saying he trusted in God, let God save him : then the spitting on his face, in the Law was great shame, Deut. 25.9. the wife of the brother that would not build his brothers house, did spit on his face ; so Job complains, chap. 30.10. that the children of fools and base men abhorred him, and spared not to spit on his face. O but there is now much glory and beauty of glory on that face, its more glorious then the Sun. 3. His death had a special note of shame, the death of a robber and an ill doer; so it is called Christ's reproach, Heb. 13.13. Let us go forth therefore unto him, without the Camp, bearing his reproach, or bearing his cross, which was a reproachful thing; for it is a clear allusion to the manner of Christ's going out of the City of Jerusalem to Mount Calvary bearing his own Cross; it was a reproachful thing to see the Lord of glory bear shame on his back, and to behold Jesus going through the City, out at the Ports of Jerusalem with a shameful Cross between his shoulders, and all the children and boys and base ones of the City wondering at him, and crying hue after him; O woe to Jerusalem when they shut Christ out at their Po • ts, and will lodge him no longer, and woe to them that put that shame on him, as to lay the reproachful and cursed Cross on his back, and no man would bear it for him: And the suffering of Christ, Heb. 11.26. is called the reproach and the shame of Christ, Psal. 22.7. But I am a worm 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 no man of note, the reproach, the manifest or published shame or reproach of Adam, of frail men, the contempt of the people, the public disgrace or neglect of the people. Now the third particular is how could it consist with the glory of Christ as King to be shamed. It is, I must confess, a strange expression, the Son of God shamed, yet its Scripture expression, Heb. 12.2. Isaiah. 50.7. But such a shame as they could put on Christ, may well stand with the personal union.
For 1. Shame as arising from the ill conscience o • sin, they could not put on Christ, Ier. 2.26. As the Thief is ashamed, when he is found, so is the house of Israel ashamed, They could not catch Christ in any sin and so though they shamed him, he was not shamed, nor could he hide his face for confusion.
2. Shame is a breaking of the hope and confidence of these who look for great things, as 2 Chron. 32.21. The Lord sent an Angel which cut off all the mighty men of valor and the Leaders and Captains in the Camp of the King of Assyria: So he returned, with shame of face, to his own land ; and Esa. 30. Ye trust (saith the Lord) in the shadow of Egypt, ver. 3. Therefore shall the strength of Pharaoh be your shame, ver. 5. They are all ashamed of a people that could not profit t • em, nor be a help nor profit, but a shame and also a reproach : now thus the confidence that Christ had in God could not be broken. God could not fail Christ; his hope was ever green before the Sun: he said it, and it was true Esa. 50.7. (Christ's faith and boldness in his father was as hard as flint) for the Lord God will help me, therefore shall I not be confounded, there • fore have I set my face as flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed.
3. But it is clear, in pulling off his garments and scourging him, so they shamed him, as Ier. 13.26. Therefore will I discover thy skirts on thy face, that thy shame may appear: they brought Jesus bound, as if he had been a common Thief, to Pilate, Matth. 26.2. And in regard of this, Isaiah prophesied 53.3. He was despised and rejected of men (the text will bear) Christ was nobody— and we hid as it were our faces from him ; they put so much disgrace and shame on blessed Jesus, he was so basely • andled, that we blushed and were ashamed to look upon him, all his friends thought shame of him. 1. But this was but the lying estimation of unbelieving men, who could not see his glory; but the repenting Thief, when they render him most shameful and abased by faith, saw him a King who had the keys of Paradise at his girdle, when he prayed, Lord remember me when thou comest to thy Kingdom ; and he was most un-King-like at that time; and he had as much shame on him, as he was able to bear; he was branded as the greatest Thief of the three, dying a Thiefes death, going out at the ports of life, bleeding, pained, cursed, shamed, forsaken, despised, mocked; all his glory was now under the ashes, and covered with shame; the Sun seemed to be ashamed to see the Creator of the Sun in so painful and so shameful a condition, and therefore the Sun runs away and hides it self, and is not able to behold the Lord of glory hanged on a tree; the Rocks and Mountains, the stones and fair Temple, as if they would burst for sorrow, cannot endure so base a condition as the Creator was in now. And as if death and the graves were grieved and male content to serve the justice of God, for the sin of man, they will lodge their prisoners the dead no longer; but the graves are opened: 2. Shame is but an opinion, and men can bestow their opinion amiss, and so did the world on Christ; there was glory and fullness, yea, infinite glory in Christ, but they saw it not; few see the worth, fewer can weigh the weight of Christ's excellency; Men's glory is but 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , a mere opinion, and often but a lie; and it took nothing of real glory from Christ, whatever they esteemed him; say that the sense of a man would judge the Sun no better then a two penny candle, this takes nothing from the excellency of the Sun. 3. The Sun is the Sun when it hides its beams and rays of light and heat; Christ was the Lord of glory, when he drew in all his majesty and caused the Rayes of glory and honor retire and hid themselves under all the shame, baseness and disgrace that men could lay on him; a voluntary condiscension of Christ was all here.
3. A Curse.
The third Character engraven on Christ's death, is the curse of God, in which consider
- 1. What a curse was on Christ dying.
- 2. How he was a curse, and the causes of it.
To curse in both languages, is to pray evil, to devote to destruction either in word or deed; now the curse that Christ was made: 1. Was the Lord's pronouncing him a curse: 2. The setting of him a part, as appointed for wrath and judgment. 3. The dishonor done to him, the nothinging or despising of Christ, was a part of his curse; now in the first of these three, we know, Deut. 21.23. The Lord pronounceth him accursed that hangeth on a tree. Paul in Gal. 3.10.13. applies it to Christ; it was a Ceremonial curse, I grant, Deut. 21. but had a special relation to Christ, who was under a real and moral cu • se, for such a curse is upon the sinner for Idolatry, and the highest breaches of the moral Law, Deut. 27. as to s • t light by Father and Mother, to remove the neighbors land-mark, and by fraud or rapine, to take his Lands from him; such a curse was laid on Christ; an higher curse then to be hanged on a tree; to be hanged was a note of a temporal curse, but except the man died in sin, no mark of the eternal displeasure of God, but as typical and relative to Christ, for whose sake only this cu • se was put on the death of the Cross, it was in equivalency an eternal vengeance, and that wrath which all the Elect were forever to suffer in hell; the Apostle saith, Gal. 3.10, 11, 12, 13. Such a curse as is due to these that abide not in all that is written in the Law of God to do it, was upon Christ; now this was a real and moral curse; because first, due to the Gentiles who were not obliged to the Law of Ceremonies; and was, secondly, due to thousands that died not on the tree.
2. Christ was devoted and set apart, in the eternal counsel of God for suffering the punishment of sin; when God first purposed (if there be order of first and second in the eternal decrees of God) the Lord devoted and set apart this Lamb, before the foundation of the world was laid, to be a bloody sacrifice for sin; He was separated from the flock to be killed, and for our sakes he devoted vowed and sanctified himself for that work; Christ was of all mankind separated to be an atonement and an expiation for sin; he was dieted for the race to run, through death and hell, he was fitted; to suffer, no man so furnished to undergo the wrath of God, as he.
3. As to be accursed comes under the third notion, to wit, to be dishonou • ed, so was Christ under a curse, Psal. 22.7. no man, Esa. 53.3. the last of men ; the contempt and the refuse of men, Act. 4.11. the stone rejected by you builders (saith Peter ) 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 that Nothinged stone, not so much esteemed as an errand murderer Barabbas ; and this death of the Cross, now especially in the Christian world, is become most base; as the burial of an Ass, Ier. 22. was a sign of God's displeasure, so is hanging, N • tions having not without God's providence, casten their consent together, that it should be the death of the poor and basest of men; so Peter, as if it had been only of men's choosing, Act. 5.30. The God of our Fathers raised up Jesus whom ye slew, and hanged on a tree ; And Act. 2.23. whom by wicked hands ye have crucified and slain ; hanging on a •• ee is more then slaying; to kill a man is all ye can do, but to put him to a base death▪ that is cursed both of God and man, is far worse, its more then the woe • st; and that a King lineally descended of Kings and of the blood Royal, the Kingly Tribe of Judah, the man on earth that only by birth, and law, had Title to the Crown of Judea, should be put to so base a death, is the worst that wicked men and devils could do.
I may add yet a fourth consideration, Gen. 3.17. Al • the creatu • es are put under the curse of man's sins: Christ died such a death as took the creatures off the cu • se, and Col. 1.20. Christ having made peace through the blood of his cross reconciled all things to himself, whither they be things in earth, or things in heaven. 2. Now how Christ could be a curse is harder; there is a thing intrinsically and fundamentally cursed; and there is a thing extrinsically and effectively cursed; none, but he that sinneth, is intrinsically and fundamentally cursed; for in this regard its a personal ev • ll. Christ was not intrinsically abhominable, hateful and an execrable thing to God.
Obj • ct. But if Christ suffered all that we was to suffer for our sins, then as God must in • ustice abhor and hate with a hatred of abomination the sinner, and the sinner is such an one as God must let out his displeasure against him, so must God hate and abhor his person, therefore God's displeasure not only pursued Christ by way of punishment, that extrinsically he was cursed, but also the Lord in justice behooved to hate and abho • re the person of the Son of God with the hatred of abomination, that he intrinsically should be a curse, as well as the sinner, in whose person he stands.
Ans. Christ the surety behooved to suffer all and every punishment due to the Elect, either in the same kind and coin, as death, or in the equivalency and in as good; for there were some punishments that may be well changed the one in the other: as death natural, or by violence was changed in the death of the cross; we have no ground to think, if Christ had never come to die for us, that the death of all mankind must have been the death of the cross; so God's hating and abominating the sinner must be and was changed in God's forsaking of Christ, when he complained, My God, my God, &c. in regard this was all as penal and sad to Christ, as the other, to wit, to be abominated and hated in our persons as cursed of God,, not to say that it was not congruous to the condition of him who is the Son of the eternal God by nature, and by an unspeakable generation, to be in his person abominated and abhorred of God, as a man intrinsically cursed, as the sinner who sinneth in person is, and not to add also (which may be said▪ the kind of punishment; this, not this is arbitrary to the Law-giver, now the Apostle saith not Christ was cursed, but Gal. 3.10. 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , he was made a curse for us, extrinsically a curse, as 2 Cor. 5.21. God made him sin for us, that is, what was penal in the curse and sin, and whatever was congruous and suitable to his holy person, that the Lord Jesus came under; sure as Christ took on him our nature, so he changed persons and names with us legally; he was made the sinner, and the sinner made the Son; there was reciprocation of imputation here. Christ was you legally and by law, and ye are Sons in him. The Law was a bloody bond and our names and souls were inked with the blood of the eternal curse; but blot out (saith Christ) my brethren's names out of the bloody bond, and writ in my name, for blood and the curse of God, and there was a white Gospel-bond drawn up and the Elects names therein. Then the two writs run this in the new Covenant; Christ was made a curse and liable to pay all our debts and law-penalties to the blood and death, and the poor sinner eternally blessed in Jesus Christ even to perfect imputed righteousness and everlasting life. Christ changed your bleeding even to the second death, and made it blessings for evermore to new and everlasting life.
Use 1. If Christ died such a violent and painful death; then death violent or natural is not much up or down.
(1) Sweet Jesus had it to his choice, he would choose the sowerest of deaths, to go to the grave in blood; Christ's winding-sheet was blooded; a good prince, a reformer of the house of God Josiah died in blood: Many of the worthiest that died in faith, died not in their beds, were (Heb. 11.35.36.37.) tortured, had trial of bonds and imprisonment, they were stoned, they were sawne asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword. The first witness in the Christian Church after the Lord's ascension, Steven a man full of the holy Ghost and of faith, was stoned to death: Psal. 79.2 The bodies of thy servants have they given to be meat to the fowls of the heaven, the flesh of thy Saints to the beasts of the earth: Many thousand Martyrs have been burnt quick, extremely tormented with new devised most exquisite torments, as to be roasted on a brander, to be devoured with Lions and wild beasts.
2. Violence more or less is an accident of death, as it is the same hand folded in, or the fingers stretched out; violent death is but death on horse-back, and with wings, or a stroke with the fist, as the other death is a blow with the palms of the hand; Natural death is death going on foot, and creeping with a slower pace; violent death unites all its forces at once, and takes the Citty by storm, and comes with sowrer and blacker visage; Death natural divides it self in many several bits of deaths; old age being a long spun out death, and nature seems to render the Citty more willingly, and death comes with a whiter and a milder visage; the one has a salter bite, and teeth of steel and iron; the other has softer fingers, and takes asunder the boards of the clay-tabernacle more leisurely, softly, tenderly and with less din, as not willing that death should appear death, but a sleep; the violent death is as when apples green and raw are plucked off the tree, or when flowers in the bud, and young, are plucked up by the roots; the other way of dying is, as when apples are ripened and are filled with well boyld summer-sap, and fall off the tree of their own accord in the eaters mouth: or when flowers wither on the stalk: