elected and imploy'd to compass it or the love of the Son who for our welfare spared not his own blood Sinner approach the Throne of GOD with boldness He is no longer environed with flames and Lightning flashes He is full of grace and clemency Fear not His indignation or His severity Peace is made Your Rebellions are expiated your sins are purged GOD requires nothing of you but Faith and Repentance His Justice is contented and doubt not but the satisfaction it hath received is sufficient He that made it for you is the Well-beloved of the Father the Lord of glory in whom all fulness dwelleth You will find abundantly in Him all the good things that are necessary for your felicity the light of wisdom to dissipate your darkness and illuminate your understandings unto a perfect knowledge of Divine things a righteousness most compleat and of proof every way to justifie and exempt you from the Curse of the Law and to open the entrance of the Tribunal of GOD to you A most efficacious Sanctification to mortifie the lusts of your flesh and fill you with Charity Honesty and Purity And a most plentiful Redemption to deliver you from death and from all the evils that have connexion with it and put you in Eternal possession of Immortality Make your advantage of this Divine Well of Life Give no ear to them that call you any otherwhere You are happy enough if you possess the LORD JESUS He is the only Prince of Salvation the Way the Truth and the Life And as for Creatures whether Earthly or Heavenly fear them not If you are JESUS CHRIST's they shall do you no evil He hath reconcil'd them all to you He hath taken out of them all the will and all the power they had to hurt you They desire your good and secretly favour you owning you for their Friends and Allies Heaven looks down on you in peace and calleth you up into its holy place The Angels bless you and direct all your ways This Earth will hold you no longer than your common LORD shall judge expedient for His own glory and your salvation But if this general peace which you have now with GOD and the World do rejoyce you the means by which it was procured should no less ravish you even that blood of CHRIST shed out upon a Cross the grand Miracle of GOD the price of your Liberty the Salvation and the Glory of the Universe What and how ardent was that love which gave so rich and so admirable a Ransom for you What will He deny you who hath not kept back His own blood from you who to make you happy abhorred not a Cross the most infamous of all punishments who to raise you up to the most eminent Contentments underwent the extremest Dolours the lowest disgrace to bring you unto highest glory the Malidiction of GOD to communicate to you His Benediction O over-happy Christians if you could discern your blisses Where is the anguish of Spirit or the trouble of Conscience or the loss or the suffering or the reproach which the meditation of this love should not consolate Who shall condemn us since the Son of GOD dyed to merit our Absolution Who shall accuse us since His Blood and His Cross defend us Who shall take from us the Benevolence of the Father since He hath obtain'd it for us and conserves it towards us Who shall pluck out of our hands a life He hath given us a Salvation that He hath so dearly bought But dear Brethren these considerations which open to us so rich a Source of Consolation oblige us also to a singular Sanctification For how great will be the hardness of our hearts if these great evidences which GOD hath given us of His love do not affect us if they kindle not in us an ardent affection towards a GOD who hath so loved us a sacred and inviolable respect towards a Redeemer who hath done so much for us He hath reconciled and reunited all things in Him both Terrestrial and Celestial Let us live then henceforth in such sort as may answer this happy alliance Let us no more afflict heaven no more scandalize the earth by the impurity of our deportments Let us labour in conjunction with all the Creatures for the service and to glory of our common LORD Imitate we the purity the zeal and the obsequiousness of those Celestial Spirits into whose Society we are entred by the benefit of this Reconciliation Let us be cloathed as they are with a beautiful and pleasing light Our lot is to be one day like them in Immortality let us be so for the present in Sanctity Our peace is made with GOD. Let us not make war upon Him any more He hath pardoned us all the exorbitancies and rage of our Rebellion never turn we to any of them again He will be our good LORD and gracious Master Be we His faithful Subjects and obedient Servants Let the Blood of CHRIST wipe away both our guilt and our filth Fasten we our old man to His Cross Let the nails that there pierced His flesh pierce also the members of ours Let the Cross that made Him dye make to dye all our lusts and extinguish by little and little in us that earthly carnal and vicious life which we derive from the first Adam to regenerate and raise us up again with the second unto a new an holy and spiritual life worthy of that Blood by which he He hath purchas'd it for us and of that Spirit by whom He hath communicated the beginnings of it to us and of that Sanctuary of Immortality where He will fully finish it one day to His own glory and our eternal blessedness Amen THE XI SERMON COL I. Ver. XXI XXII Vers XXI And you who were somtime estranged from Him and who were His enemies in your understanding in wicked works XXII Yet now hath He reconciled in the body of His flesh by death to render you holy and without spot and unreprovable before Him DEar Brethren It was long since observed by Philosophers and we still find it by experience that general things do move the spirits of men very little The cause is that being naturally glewed up too close every one to his particular interests they mind only that which toucheth the same and are not sollicitous about a common concern till they are made some way smartly sensible that themselves have part in it The ministers of the Church therefore should not content themselves with proposing the maxims of heavenly doctrine in gross and in general only to the souls whose edification is committed to them that they may get hold of them and produce some good effect upon them they must apply to them in particular each of those Divine verities St. Paul whose example should serve for a rule to all the true servants of GOD takes this course in divers places of His Epistles and particularly in the Text we have now read you For
of their sex Moreover the interest of their Religion requires this performance at their hands though law and reason had not impos'd subjection on them to the end it might appear by their obedience that JESUS CHRIST doth not disturb the just order of humane societies but on the contrary form both men and women to all kind of righteousness and honesty much more exactly and effectually than other Religions do Lastly the Gospel of JESUS CHRIST having in divers places taken Marriage for a symbole of the union which is between Him and His Church he hath by that usage authorized and confirmed the duties of both the two Married parties and particularly the subjection of the wife since she is the image of the Church which ought to be subject unto CHRIST a matter which the Apostle hath elsewhere excellently made use of in this subject Eph. 5 23.24 The Husband saith he is the bead of the Wife even as CHRIST is the head of the Church Therefore as the Church is subject unto CHRIST so let wives be to their own husbands in all things Thus you see with how much truth and wisdom the Apostle here alledgeth unto Christian women that it is meet in the LORD that is in JESUS CHRIST they should be subject to their husbands it being clear by all we have been saying that all the considerations of the discipline of this same LORD and of the communion they have with Him do so strictly oblige them to this duty that if they fail of performance beside the fault and the disorder which they commit against the Law and institution of GOD and nature they also particularly offend the LORD JESUS and outrage the mysteries of His Gospel and scandalize His people But I have said that the Apostle does also by these words regulate and limit that subjection which the wife oweth her Husband For adding to the rest that in the LORD or according to the LORD he evidently sheweth that it reacheth no further than to such things as do not offend JESUS CHRIST She is subject to her husband I acknowledge but in things wherein she is not rebellious against GOD. She ought to please him but on condition she displease not their common LORD She owes him her obedience and her assistance and her service in adversity and in all the troubles of houshold affairs but not in sin The will of JESUS CHRIST is the true boundary of her subjection and complacency She ought to put on so far but further she may not pass without perrishing Whatever tye we have to any creature it still leaves the rights of GOD entire because our obligation unto Him is the first and most ancient the strictest and most necessary of all that we are under And if the Husband pretend to oblige his Wife or the Father his Child or the Prince his Subject unto any violation of the commands of GOD that is either to do what He forbids or not to do what He injoyns Acts 5.29 Luke 14.26 Matt. 10.37 in this case the faithful soul is to remember that we ought to obey GOD rather than men and that if we love father or mother husband or wife children or brethren or sisters or even our own lives more than CHRIST we are not worthy of Him nor can be His disciples But having thus heard the lesson which the Apostle gives the wife let us now hearken unto that he gives the husband Husbands saith he love your Wives and be not bitter against them He commands 'em to love them and forbids 'em to be bitter against them and in these few words compriseth all their duty This duty is no whit less just but indeed more sweet and pleasing than that which he prescribed the wives And observe I pray the Apostles prudence For when he had allotted the woman subjection for her share consequence seemed to require that he should give the man command and government for his But he doth it not He established the man's authority sufficiently by putting the woman in subjection to him and for the most part his strength and the other advantages of his sex do cause him to assume but too much Wherefore in stead of saying Husbands govern your wives or command them or of using some such word importing authority he saith unto them Love your wives to sweeten on one hand the subjection of the wife and to temper on the other hand the authority of the husband Wife let not your subjection fright you the Apostle subjects you not but to a person who loves you Husband let not your authority make you insolent If the Apostle subject your wife unto you it 's only to the end you love her Derive no vanity either the one or the other of you from the advantages he gives you If the love which the husband owes his wife make her haughty let her remember that withall she is subject unto him that loves her And if the authority which GOD giveth the husband flatter him let him not forget that the wife is not submitted to him but for the obliging him to love her the more Further this love which the Apostle would have husbands bear their wives is a sacred and sincere affection produced in their hearts not simply by that pleasing form and that grace and sweetness which naturally makes men love and seek unto this sex and which how perfect and charming soever it may be is at most but a flower of a very short and uncertain duration but principally by the will of GOD who hath joyned them with 'em who hath given them to them for companions in their good and bad fortunes for helps in all the parts of their life for a perpetuating of their name and lineage for the diminishing of their troubles and the augmenting of their joyes This perpetual and indivisible union which bindeth them together and which of two persons hath changed them into one flesh which hath mingled together all their interests and in their dear Children inseparably combined and confounded their blood and very nature all this I say must kindle in the foul of husbands a pure and an inviolable love unto their wives then again this love must flow forth from the heart into the external actions discovering and evidencing its self by such continual effects as may be truly worthy of it For love is not a dead picture nor a vain phantasie nor an idol without life and action It 's the liveliest and most active of all our sentiments It 's a will that affecteth and sets all the power one hath on work to procure some good to the person whom it loveth The first effect of this love is to be pleased in the presence of that which a man loves and not be able to suffer the absence of it long without disquiet The second to communicate to it all a man possesseth that is good and the third to guard and preserve it from all incommodity and molestation It 's thus the
here below do put off the habitudes of vices and put on those of Christian vertues by reason whereof they are justly called holy though through infirmity there slip from them somtimes some actions contrary thereto They are washed from those foule and ugly spots that yerwhile deformed their whole life and an adversary connot note or reprehend ought in their deportments that is contrary to the profession they make of the Covenant of grace As for what the Apostle addeth that they are such before GOD it is only to signifie that their piety is true and real not feigned nor dissembled that it is not a mask which cheateth the eyes of men but a disposition of heart which GOD discerns within them as men do behold the evidences of it without upon them in the same sense that St. Luke said of Zachary and Elizabeth that they were both righteous before GOD. Lo there Beloved Brethren what we had to say to you upon this Text. The rigour of the season obliging us to conclude this action I will only touch at in a word or two the uses we should deduce from it for our edification referring it to your diligence to dilate each of them and above all to reduce them carefully into practice Remember first the miserable estate wherein you were before GOD prevented you by His grace and think that it is to you also the Apostle saith ye were somtime estranged and enemies in your understandings in wicked works For our ancesters before the Sun of Righteousness shone on these countries were in such a condition as the Colossians or rather a worse Our Fathers were Hittites and our Mothers Amorites living in the darkness of Paganism serving an Hesus and a Belenus and a Tautates and I know not what other vanities sacrificing men to them and weltring in the filth of the most infamous vices Being by the great benignity of GOD drawn out of this gulf we were yet cast into another in which under other names we committed the like crimes adoring an insensible and inanimate thing and bending down our selves before wood and stone and dumb images and giving to a mortal man the glorious names which belong only to the Son of GOD being corrupted both in our thoughts and in our deeds These faults were so much worse than the former by how much less ignorant we were of our master's will than we had yerst been Admire next the goodness of GOD who seeing us in this abyss though our ingratitude and rebellion merited His heaviest avenges yet had pity on us and visiting us in His infinite mercies hath reconciled us by the body of the flesh of His Son through His death He hath sent to us Epaphras's as He did to the Colossians Ministers of His word who have made the voice of Paul and of the other Apostles to resound among us He hath purified us and washed all our filth in the blood of His CHRIST He hath bedewed our hearts therewith and abolished the enmity and extinguished the hatred and re-united us unto Himself communicating to us the Divine body of His Son nailed for us to the Cross the source of our salvation and the treasury of all the good things of Heaven His death hath been our life and His malediction our benediction Acknowledge we this great goodness of our GOD with a profound gratitude Give we Him the glory of all the good that may be in us If there be any light in our understandings any peace in our consciences any pureness in our affections any rectitude in our ways bless we the kindness of this Soveraign LORD who hath vouchsafed to illuminate us to reconcile us and to cleanse us Without this favourable beaming forth of His grace we should be yet strangers and enemies in the bondage and darkness of Aegypt or under the yoke and in the captivity of Chaldea Make we use now of the benefits He hath conferred on us Let us abide fastned to Him so as nothing may set us at distance from Him Love we Him fervently and serve Him diligently lest we become yet again His enemies Let those understandings which were somtime the heads of that wicked war we made against Him religiously maintain that holy and happy Peace which He hath vouchsafed to conclude with us Banish we thence all thoughts of rebellion Have we still before our eyes that sacred flesh which the King of glory was clothed with for us the blood wherewith He purchased our peace the death He underwent to bring us in again with GOD His Father Let us not prophane a blessing that cost Him so dear Imitate we also His goodness Treat we our neighbours as He treated us If they avoid us let us seek to them For we also were enemies to GOD and warred against Him when He called us to the communion of His grace Above all remember we that the end of all the miracles GOD hath done on our behalf is to make us holy without spot and unreprovable before Him Let not us betray so admirable and so reasonable a design Let us not frustrate so good and so merciful a LORD of His intentions Dear Brethren I might here make large complaint of the profaneness of some of the loosness of others and of the faltrings of us all who labour after nothing less than that high and accomplished sanctification to which GOD calleth us but I had much rather end with entreaties than with complaints and do conjure you in the Name of the LORD and by your own salvation that you would judge your selves and that renouncing all the faults of the time past all the impieties and lusts of this world ye would live henceforth soberly righteously and godly and keep your selves holy pure and unreprovable to the glory of GOD the edification of men and your own salvation Amen THE XII SERMON COL I. Ver. XXIII Vers XXIII If indeed ye continue in the faith founded and firm and be not moved away from the hope of the Gospel which ye have heard and which was preached to every creature which is under heaven whereof I Paul have been made a Minister OUr LORD JESUS CHRIST in the Gospel according to S. Matthew telleth us of two sorts of people which hear His Doctrine and frequent His School the one they that put His words in practise that is those who embracing the Gospel with a true and lively faith do render Him the obedience He demandeth of them the other they that hear but put not in practice what He saith unto them that is those who giving but little or no belief to His Divine truth take no care to perform what He commands but content themselves with a vain outside Profession and are not inwardly affected and changed as they ought to be He compares the former to a wise and prudent man that hath built his house upon a Rock and when the rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew and beat upon that house it fell not for
perpetual voice of the Church that though the faithful dye for their brethren Aug. 〈◊〉 tract in Joaâ— l. q. ad Bonif. de pecc mer. remiss yet Martyrs did not shed one drop of their blood for the remission of their sins And that none but CHRIST hath done this for us and that He herein gave us not what to immitate but what to thank Him for that He alone took on Him our punishment without our sin to the end that we by Him without merit might obtain the grace which is not due to us This foundation being overturned their pretended treasury and the dispensing of it which they forge doth fall to ground I confess the Church hath a treasure or rather a living spring of graces and of propitiation for its sins but it is full and whole in JESUS CHRIST her eternal High priest who was ordained of GOD from all time to be a propitiation through faith in His blood and to have possession of the same the sinner needeth but to present Him an heart full of faith and of repentance according to the direction of S. John 1 Joh. 1.9 If we confess our sins He is faithful and just to pardon them and to cleanse us from all iniquity As for the patience and the sufferings of Saints though they have not the vertue to satisfie for our sins yet notwithstanding they are not unprofitable to us Wherefore the LORD would have them put up and kept not in the pretended enchequer of the Pope but in the treasury of the Scriptures out of which every faithful person hath the liberty to fetch them at all times for his use to the edifying of his life and for the gathering from such fair examples that excellent fruit of piety which they do contain he admiring and imitating them the best he can This is that we ought to practise upon the sufferings of the Apostle in particular which are represented to us in this Text that we may in good earnest make our profit of them to the glory of GOD and our own edification Learn we from them first not to be ashamed of affliction for the Gospel S. Paul shews us that it is matter of joy Mat. 5.11 12. I rejoyce saith he in my sufferings and our LORD Himself commands us to have this sentiment of it Rejoyce saith He and be exceeding glad when men shall revile you and persâ—cute you for great is your reward in Heaven For so persecuted they the Prophets which were before you CHRIST was treated thus Himself and His Apostles went to heaven the same way Blush not at the bearing of their marks If they be ignominious before men they are glorious before GOD Fortify your selves in this resolution particularly ye to whom GOD hath committed the ministry of His word If the world do thwart your preaching if it threaten you if it come so far as to imprisonments and to banishing and further yet remember that S. Paul had no better usage and that it was out of a prison that he wrote this excellent Epistle As your cause is the same so let your courage be like his Conclude as he did that these bonds are an honour to you that these sufferings are the afflictions of CHRIT Let this sacred Name and the communion you have with Him sweeten all the bitterness of your troubles But Faithful Brethren think ye not to be exempted from these trials because you are not Ministers of the Gospel You also have part in them each one according to his calling and the measure of the grace of GOD. He hath no children whom he consecrateth not by afflictions But if you suffer with JESUS CHRIST you shall raign with Him If you have part now in his Cross you shall have so one day in His glory And to assure you of it He calleth your sufferings His afflictions He protesteth that you receive never a blow but He feeleth it Doubt not but he doth take great notice of the confflicts which He vouchsafes to call His. Think also upon what He hath sustained for you and you will confess it is reasonable that you should suffer something for His Glory who hath undergone so much for your salvatition He hath taken up for you the whole curse of GOD Will not you bear the reproaches and wrongs of men for Him He hath born and expiated the penalty of your sins on the cross Will you have horror at the remainder of His afflictions He hath accomplished what was most difficult that which none but He could discharge having drank for us the dreadful cup of GOD's indignation against our sins Accomplish ye stoutly the trials that remain for us It 's He Himself that dispenseth them to us It 's not either the phancy of men or the rage of Devils God hath cut out our task for us It 's from His hand we must receive all the afflictions we shall suffer But beside that we owe this respect and subjection to GOD let us learn of the Apostle that we owe such examples also to the Church It is not for JESUS CHRIST alone that we suffer It is for His body also As our afflictions advance the glory of the Master so do they serve likewise for the edification of the Family Judge ye thereby Faithful Brethren what our affection for the Church should be The consideration of it made up a good part of the Apostles joy He accounted himself happy that by his sufferings he could testify the love he bore to this sacred body of His Master He blessed his Chain how hard soever it was because it did the Church some service Dear Brethren let us imitate this divine charity Love we our LORD's Church above all things Let us make it the chief object of our delight Consecrate we to its edification all the actions and sufferings of our lives Embrace we all its members with brotherly kindness and take good heed we despise no man that hath the honour to be incorporate in so august and so divine a society The Apostles example sheweth us that we owe them even our blood and our life And we have heard him besides at another time Phil. 2.17 professing to the Philippians that if he might serve for an aspersion upon the sacrifice 1 Joh. 3.16 and service of their faith he should joy in it And S. John saith expresly that as CHRIST hath laid down His life for us so we ought to lay down our lives for our brethren If the LORD spare our infirmity and call us not to so high trials let us at least testifie our charity towards the Church by all the offices and services whereof our condition and the present occasion is capable We owe it our blood Let us give it at least our tears our almes our good examples You that have had the heart to plunge your selves in the vain pastimes of the world while the Church was in mourning that have laught and sported while she suffered and
both of the desire he had to see them persevere still in so good a course and of the advice he gave them not to suffer themselves to be beguiled by the perswasive words of seducers as likewise of the adding that preservative of meditating incessantly upon the treasures of wisdom which are in JESUS for the saving themselves from this mortal danger It 's now our concernment to make a good improvement of so excellent a lesson We are as much environ'd or more than the Colossians sometimes were with people that endeavour to deceive us with words of perswasion that daily make all kind of attempts upon our faith and do not forget the sophisms of subtilty or the charms of eloquence presenting error to us farded with divers specious colours For the securing of our minds from their illusions let us tell them as the Apostle teacheth us That all the Treasures of wisdom are hid in that JESUS CHRIST whom we have embraced that He sufficeth to make us wise to salvation and that we need to know none but Him to obtain happiness If with fair and artificial words they represent to us the necessity of an expiatory Sacrifice for the recommending that of their own Altars or the utility of Satisfactions to make us receive theirs or the horror of fin which hath no entrance into the Kingdom of GOD to perswade us upon their Purgatory or the need we have of an Intercessor to oblige us to have recourse to the mediation of Angels and of departed Saints or of an Head to set up their Pope Let us answer them That we have all this most fully in JESUS CHRIST that His Cross is our Sacrifice His Sufferings our Satisfactions His Blood our Purgation That while we possess Him we shall need neither an Intercessor to open the Throne of the Grace of GOD to us and render both our persons and our prayers acceptable to Him nor an Head to govern and conserve us Let us account all that would turn us aside from Him or place any part of its Treasure elsewhere than in Him to be a seduction and an illusion And as good Physicians do not only preserve from poysons but also draw profit from them by making them Remedies so let us not content our selves to keep the venom of Seducements from hurting us let us manage them in such sort as that they may serve us Let the ardency they have for Error enflame our zeal for the Truth Let their pains-taking and industry sharpen our diligence and care Let us employ that acuteness and eloquence to the defence of the Gospel which they prophane in the service of an Imposture Let us have no less affection for the Cause of GOD than they have for the matters of flesh and blood And instead of the extravagancy of some who love ignorance and rudeness because Error doth abuse Knowledg and Eloquence let us on the contrary thence take occasion to labour in adorning and embellishing of Truth that even in this respect Falshood may have no advantage above it But if the examples of enemies should be of use to us much more ought the examples of Brethren be so which wholly and solely tend to our edification Let us make our profit of that of the Colossians whose faith and order the Apostle praiseth that we might imitate it Let us put our Church into such an estate as may give joy to the LORD to His Angels and to His Ministers I may not deny but that your saith and order may be in some degree praised without flattery since by the Grace of CHRIST my Brethren you persevere in His fear and assiduously rank your selves under His Ensigns no tentation having been able hitherto to make you desert these holy Assemblies But you are not ignorant that together with this well-doing there are many miscarriages among us that there pass divers things in our Congregations smally comporting with the dignity of the House of GOD and that the hardness of some doth stiffen it self against Discipline the only Bond of Order and if our Faith be constant against Error it is too too yeilding unto Vice Dear Brethren I had rather leave the examination of it to your own Consciences than here publish our sin and shame and will content my self with telling you 1 Cor. 6.10 that the Apostle banisheth out of Heaven the vicious as well as the idolatrous GOD who hath granted us to persevere in the profession of His Truth be pleased powerfully to amend by the virtue of His Gospel the defects which His gentleness hath hitherto born with in us and sanctifie us so efficaciously that after we have glorified Him on Earth by the good order of our conversation and the fruirs of a firm and unmoved Faith we may one day receive in the Heavens from His merciful hand the Reward and Crown of blissful immortality in His Son JESUS CHRIST who in the Unity of the Father and of the Holy Ghost liveth and reigneth the only GOD blessed for ever Amen THE NINETEENTH SERMON COL CHAP. II. VER VI VII VI. Therefore as you have received the Lord JESVS CHRIST so walk in Him VII Being rooted and built up in Him and established in the Faith as you have been taught abounding therein with thanksgiving FOrasmuch as man naturally loveth novelty and variety it cometh to pass that he disgusteth the best and most wholsom things when he is held any long time to the usage of them What food was there ever in the world better more savoury more nourishing and more miraculous than that Manna wherewith GOD fed the Israelites in the Wilderness pouring it down daily from Heaven upon them by the Ministry of his Angels whence it is called the Bread of Heaven and the Bread of the Mighty that is of the Angels Nevertheless this wretched people were soon discontented at it disdaining that precious gift of GOD Numb 11.6 and sottishly regretting the fruits and fish of Egypt Our soul said they is dried up there 's nothing here our eyes see nought but Manna Dear Brethren this History is a fit emblem of what hath betided men in reference to JESUS CHRIST and His Gospel the true Bread of Heaven sent down from GOD into the Wilderness of this World for the eternal nutriment of Mankind of which that ancient Manna as you know was the figure according to what Himself teacheth us in the sixth of S. John For our nature is no less delicate nor hath an appetite less extravagant in respect of the Doctrines that are necessary to seed our Souls than it hath in respect of the Meat that is ordained for the refection of our Bodies The truth of the LORD JESUS is embraced at the first with hungring and heat every one admiring the wonderfulness of this heavenly food which wholly exceedeth the productions of the earth But because though it be throughout holy and salutiferous yet it is simple and uniform the vanity of man in desiring change and variety
corrupted by these shameless sayings of the world But why do we call our selves Christians if we preferr the sentiments of the world or of our own flesh before the judgements of GOD St. Paul beside what he saith of it here protests aloud else-where having spoken of adultery Gal. 5.21 fornication and uncleannesse that they that commit such things 1 Cor. 6.10 shall not inherit the kingdom of GOD And again more formally elsewhere Deceive not your selves saith he neither fornicators nor adulterers nor the effeminate shall inherit the kingdom of GOD. Renounce either St. Paul or this error of the world If you persist in it the Apostle cryeth to you that you deceive your selves that is to say instead of Heaven which you in vain hope for while you continue in this evil way you shall in the end have hell for your portion in the communion of devils whose uncleannesse you love more than the purity of JESUS CHRIST and of His Saints Neither may you plead to us the furiousness of this passion GOD hath provided for it giving you an honest and a lawful remedy of it namely Marriage Why do ye not use it But the love of libertinizing and the fear of an imaginary yoke and an ambitious humour with-hold most men from thinking on it who would willingly say what the Doctors of Rome have not been asham'd to write concerning their Priests even that marriage is a greater sin for them than fornication whereby they sufficiently declare what opinion they have of this filth since they preferr it before a thing which they rank among the Sacraments But the Epicurians among Pagans and Monks among Christians have cried down marriage as much as they could through a mervaillous artifice of the enemy of our salvation who rightly judged that by this pernicious doctrine he should involve a multitude of people in the vilinies of luxury and consequently in damnation But if this vice be pernicious the other which St. Paul condemneth here is no less so And his not being able to name it without giving it the title of idolatry doth evidently shew you what indeed it is Ye covetous let this thunderbolt break the charms of your illusion Judge what a vice yours is since the Apostle calleth it idolatry and thereupon conceiving a just horrour at it renounce it for ever and all those low thoughts in which it busieth you to become henceforth liberal charitable beneficent communicative rich in good works Instead of these perishing goods which are exposed to the hands of men and the injuries of nature labour to treasure up a foundation for the time to come and to get together on high in the Heavens those true and immortal riches which JESUS CHRIST the Father of Eternity doth there keep for us and will one day give us to enjoy the same for ever in supreme glory with Himself and all His Saints So be it THE THIRTY FIFTH SERMON ON COLOSSIANS CHAP. III. VER VI VII Verse VI. For which things the wrath of GOD cometh upon the children of rebellion VII In which you also walked other-while when ye lived in them DEAR Brethren If men had as great a measure of understanding and generosity as vertue hath of beauty and attractiveness there would need no more to induce them to love it and embrace it but a representing to them the image of it This admirable object would quickly ravish their hearts and in an instant kindle in them a sweet and an everlasting flame of love which would govern all the motions and sentiments of their lives and consuming in a short time the vices and the foolish or unjust passions of their nature fill their deportment with piety honesty and charity One of those ancient sages of the world whom they call Philosophers did rightly acknowledge this truth notwithstanding the darknesse of his Paganism and said that if we could see vertue naked that is as it is in its self it would inflame our souls with a marvellous love to it For indeed what is there fairer and more amiable than virtue the true and lively image of GOD the supreme beauty of all beauties the resemblance of Angels the fairest of all creatures the only jewel of reasonable nature the light of our souls the ornament of our bodies the advantage of our being above that of animals the end and utmost perfection of the world it's just and legitimate governesse this vast universe having not been made and formed but that she might happily possesse it governing and keeping it under her holy and divine laws She sets all our affections in their true position bowing them under the Creator and raising them above the creature She reduceth all the faculties of our nature to their just symmetrie subjecting our passions to the will and our will to reason Resting content with the love of GOD and the hope of His glory she coveteth no unjust thing and doth no person wrong no not in desire and thought but loveth and obligeth all men as much as she can and sheds abroad continually upon them the sweet and innocent rayes of her excellent light remaining alwaies holy and just and honest without alwaies calm and peaceable and happy within Who could look upon a thing so beautiful without loving it accordingly you may observe that where there does appear at any heigth for instance upon the throne of a nation some image of it though not fully to the lire nor compleat and every way entire but only grosly drawn and in many respects imperfect yet it fails not to attract the eyes and hearts of the world forthwith It proves the love and joy of the present generation and the admiration of all posterity Men bless it heaven and earth delight in it and the age that produced it is glorious by it one single example of this nature being sufficient to adorn a whole countrey and render the time wherein it flourished for ever illustrious What then would our ravishments be if we beheld the true and accomplished effigies of it in all its lively colours without defect and without imperfection It 's true GOD hath pourtray'd it indeed to the life in the tables of His Scriptures But the eyes of our souls are so bad that we never comprehend it but very weakly and again our fordidnesse and wretchlesnesse is so extreme that commonly we do not love things according to their inherent beauty and honesty but according to the profit they afford us and do likewise hate things not so much for their deformity and natural odiousnesse as for the hurt that they may do us This ignorance and this mercenary humour which is common to all men is a cause that our Saviour contemeth not Himself with proposing to us the beauty of holynesse and the deformity and disorder of sin which is the due manner of dealing with reasonable creatures but accommodating Himself to our infirmity he incessantly sets before our eyes the good and the evil that will redound unto
it Such as are not vertuous but after this manner are not so indeed They are subtil and dextrous but not good men And though the external lustre of these goodly works they do be apt to deceive men yet it will not be able to satisfie their own conscience if they have any and much less to content the eyes of GOD who judgeth of things by their in-side and their verity not by their apparence For that any act of beneficence of clemency of meeknesse and humanity may be holy and acceptable unto GOD 't is requisite it should proceed from a sincere love towards our neighbours If it come from any other principle it is of no value in reality how plausible and pompous soever it be in shew It 's a false and spurious production a fruit sair without but worm-eaten and corrupt within Beside that the thing speaks of its self St. Paul proclaims it in the thirteenth Chapter of the first to the Corinthians If I distribute all my goods saith he to feed the poor and have not charity it profits me nothing Therefore Brethren the same Apostle having here afore charged us to bear with one another to pardon one another and to perform all other acts of kindness mercy meeknesse and patience doth now add very pertinently for the purging of our hearts and works from all the venome of hypocrisie that together with these vertues which he hath exhorted us unto we have above all charity as that which is the soul of every true vertue and without which the fairest and most esteemed actions are but as an ancient Doctor said well glittering sins And beside all this saith the Apostle put on charity which is the bond of perfection And let the peace of GOD hold the chief place in your hearts unto which ye are called in one body and be ye thankful You plainly see that he recommends unto us three Christian vertues Charity the Peace of GOD and Thankfulness Now as for the last of these he only names it without saying ought else of it whereas in referrence to the other two he briefly sets before us some considerations that may oblige us to take up the studious pursuance of them For he saith of charity that it is the bond of Perfection and of the Peace of GOD that we are thereunto called in one body In compliance then with the order of our Text we will treat of three heads in this action if GOD please first of Charity secondly of the Peace of GOD and then for a conclusion in some brief touches of gratitude or thankfulness about which the Apostle speaks but a word and no more There is no person in the Church but knows that Charity is that pure and sincere and vertuous love which each of us doth owe to other men our neighbours upon the account of that communion of nature we have with them as also principally because of the image of GOD after which they all are created according to the expresse command that He hath given us to love them as our selves I grant it hath divers degrees and doth embrace men with some inequality these more strictly and those less according to the differences of their merit and worth as also of the union we have with them either in nature or in the state or in grace Nevertheless it extends its self unto all and doth not account any one a stranger but obligeth and serveth them freely as far as its ability permits and when occasion is offered For our LORD and Saviour teacheth us in the parable of that poor man whom the Samaritan assisted Luke 12.36 finding him in that pitiful estate the theeves had left him on the way from Jericho to Jerusalem that every man that needeth our help is our neighbour So that GOD and right reason obliging us to love whom ever that is our neighbour it 's out of all doubt that there is no man but we ought to love But as Charity hath a much greater extent than the friendship of the world so is its flame much more pure and holy For to say true men of the world love none but themselves it being evident that if they affect any it is not so much to do them good as to draw profit or pleasure from them But Charity doth sincerely affect its neighbour desiring to him and procuring him that good which is necessary to make him happy And the difference of these two affections comes from their causes For Charity issueth from the love of GOD whereas worldly friendship proceeds from that vicious and inordinate love which every one beareth to himself so as Charity loving our neighbour for GOD's sake seeks nothing but GOD's glory and the welfare of the person it loveth whereas a man of the world not loving but for his own sake does accordingly seek nothing but his own interests And though this doth plainly appear in the whole conduct of the one and the other of these loves yet it may be particularly observed in this one event namely that that affliction and misery which extinguisheth worldly amity doth make the affections of charity to flame more than ever an evident sign that the one is neither bred nor fed but by the fruit it gathers from the thing it loves whereas the other on the contrary being kindled by that ray of the Divine image which it sees ingraven on the nature of its neighbour is kept alwaies in and the more it sees him need its compassions and good offices the more it increaseth and redoubleth its endeavours It 's this holy and Christian Charity which the Apostle would have us put on And besides all this saith he put on Charity These words as they lye in the original may be taken two manner of waies both of them apt and good and such as have their authors Some interpret them and above or over all these things Others a little otherwise and for all these things Both the one and the others do accord that all those things which the Apostle intends are the same he had spoken of immediately before to wit those bowels of mercy that kindness that humility meekness and patience which in the precedent verses he commands us to put on Now then after the sense of the former of those interpreters he means that to this rich garment we should add charity putting it uppermost as a precious and an useful robe to cover and keep all the rest Not that we must put on charity last in regard of time after all those other vertues for on the contrary it ought to be first formed in us as the parent of whom the most part of the rest are to be brought forth But the Apostle makes use of this comparison upon the account of other resemblances that these things have with one another and the authors of this exposition do note three of that kind One that as the robe we put over our clothes is greater and larger than our other clothing so
him when the LORD calleth us thereto It 's this way Christians that we shall get to that heavenly Kingdom in which St. Paul is lodg'd after his combats and there receive with him from the merciful hand of our Father the glorious crown of immortality which He on His great day will give to us and to all those that shall have lov'd the appearing of His Son unto Whom with Him and the Holy Spirit the only true GOD blessed for ever be honour praise and glory to ages of ages Amen THE FORTY NINTH SERMON ON COLOSSIANS CHAP. IV. VER XII XIII XIV XV XVI XVII XVIII Verse XII Epaphras who is one of you a servant of CHRIST saluteth you striving alwaies for you in prayer that ye might abide perfect and compleat in all the will of GOD. XIII For I bear him record that he hath a great zeal for you and for them who are of Laodicea and for them of Hierapolis XIV Luke the beloved Physician saluteth you and Demas also XV. Salute the brethren who are at Laodicea and Nymphas and the Church which is in his house XVI And when this Epistle hath been read among you cause that it be also read in the Church of the Laodiceans and that you read also the Epistle from Laodicea XVII And say to Archippus take heed to the ministry which thou hast received in the LORD that thou fulfill it XVIII The salutation by the own hand of me Paul Remember my bonds Grace be with you Amen DEAR Brethren The LORD JESUS being upon the point to quit the earth and making as it were a declaration of His last will chargeth His Disciples above all things to love one another with a sincere and ardent affection like that He bore us This mutual love He appoints to be the badge of our profession Joh. 13.35 By this saith he shall all men know that ye are my Disciples if ye love one another Accordingly you know that His Spirit failed not to imprint this Divine mark upon those first Christians whom He formed in the City of Jerusalem by the Apostles preaching Acts 4.32 animated with the vertue of His heavenly fire The whole multitude of them saith the holy story was of one heart and of one soul neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own but they had all things common This union and admirable correspondence continued a long time among the faithful and was observed by the Pagans with wonder witness he who about two hundred years after the birth of our LORD reproacheth Christians that they know one another by certain secret signs and love almost before they are acquainted and all of them call one another indifferently brethren and sisters Now as error and passion do abuse the best things this poor ignorant takes their holy and divine concord for some execrable conspiracy and referrs the mysterie of their amity unto infamous commerces whereas all their union grew from Heaven and was founded upon piety and breathed nothing but honesty and sanctity nor did tend but to the glory of GOD and the supreme happiness of men Beside the Apostles writings which expos'd in publick view did plainly discover to the unpassionate how pure and honest and holy the laws of their charity were the manners and the lives and actions of those primitive Christians did also evidently justifie the same There are left us GOD be thanked divers excellent informations in the books of the first antiquity by which the marvels of the charity and mutual love of those holy men do plainly appear And not to speak of others you have fair and illustrious marks of it in this conclusion of St. Paul's Epistle unto the Colossians who sheweth us that his prison neither hindred divers faithful men from joyning themselves unto him in this affliction nor him nor them again from minding absent Christians and charitably embracing the Churches of Colosse and Laodicea and Hierapolis You here see the love of Pastors to their flocks the dear affection of flocks to their Pastors and the divine communication of Churches one with another Psal 133.1 If therefore it be a goood and pleasant thing as the Psalmist singeth to see brethren maintaining a due entercourse with each other grudge not this hour My Beloved which we yet oblige you to spend in the consideration of this Text having not been able to finish it entirely in our last action Let this admirable amity of the first Christians rejoyce you and give you an ardent desire to imitate it Have ye for one another sentiments and movings of heart like to theirs You have already heard how St. Paul having advertised the faithful at Colosse that he sent Tychicus and Onesimus unto them to inform them of his estate doth give them the recommendations of Aristarchus and Mark and Jesus He now addeth those of Epaphras and Luke and Demas and then his own to the Church of Laodicea and to a faithful man named Nymphas with an order to impart this his Epistle to them and to advertise Archippus of his duty Whereupon he endeth with his ordinary salutation conjuring them to remember his bonds and recommending them to the grace of GOD. For the deducing of these four points by the assistance of GOD in the same order as they are couched in the Text we must first consider who these three persons were whose salutations the Apostle presents to the Colossians The first of the three is Epaphras of whom he spake afore in very honourable terms at the beginning of this Epistle where he stileth him Colos 1.7 8. his dear fellow servant and a faithful Minister of CHRIST and gives him the glory of having instructed the Colossians in the knowledge of the Gospel and of having taken the care to let him know the charity they had for him Here he qualifies him in like manner a fervant of CHRIST that is a Minister of his and an Officer of His house in the work of the Gospel Moreover he informs us that this holy man was a Colossian that is was born in their City or at least made his ordinary abode there Epaphras saith he who is one of you a servant of CHRIST saluteth you Some learned men * Grotius Phil. 2.28 are of opinion that it 's this same Pastor whom the Apostle calls Epaphroditus and of whom he says so much good in the Epistle to the Philippians But I do not see that this conjecture is either founded or followed by any of the ancients I confess that the name Epaphras is a contraction of Epaphroditus and such a diminution is ordinary in the Greek and in the Latin tongue in the proper names of men But if it were one and the same person there is no reason why the Apostle should name him diversly in these two Epistles in the one contractedly and with diminution in the other the name at length and entire Considering withal that no part of what is
case as none of Creatures do more need the offices of our Charity neither is there any object worthier of the affection and succour of a good and generous soul than innocence hated and oppressed unjustly therefore it is that the Apostle noteth here by name the Charity of the Colossians towards all the Saints He joyneth these two Vertues together Faith and Charity because in effect they are inseparable it being neither possible nor imaginable whatsoever error list to say of it that man should believe and truly embrace GOD as his Saviour in JESUS CHRIST without loving Him and His neighbours for His sake or that he should love Him sincerely without believing in Him He puts Faith before Charity not for that it is more excellent on the contrary he elsewhere openly giveth the advantage unto Charity but because it goes first in the order of things requisite to salvation It is the blessed root whence Charity springs forth 1 Cor. 13. and all other Christian Vertues It is the foundation of the spiritual building the Gate of the Kingdom of Heaven the first fruits of the workmanship of GOD and the beginning of the second Creation As in the old Creation Light was the first thing He created so in the new one Faith is the first thing He produceth which the Apostle divinely expresseth to us elsewhere 2 Cor. 4.6 GOD saith he who commanded the light to shine out of darkness hath shined in our hearts to give the illumination of the knowledge of the glory of GOD in the face of JESVS CHRIST After the Faith and Charity of the Colossians the Apostle adds in the third place the Happiness that was kept for them in the Heavens For the hope saith He which is reserved in Heaven for you Some knit these words with what he had now said of the Faith and Charity of the Colossians and understand that these faithful people laboured with alacrity in the exercise of these Vertues for the hope they had of the celestial Crown and reward according to what the Apostle saith elsewhere of Moses that He chose rather to be afflicted with the People of GOD Hebr. than to enjoy for a little time the delights of sin and esteemed the reproach of CHRIST greater riches than the treasures of Aegypt because saith he he had respect to the recompence And he teacheth us in general of all those that come to GOD that they must believe that GOD is and that He is a rewarder of them that seek him Ibid. v. 6. And from hence it followeth not at all either that our works do merit the glory of Heaven or that our affection is mercenary If we should not hope but for what we merit our hopes would be very miserable But knowing that GOD is faithful and constant we hope with assurance for the bliss which He of His meer grace promiseth us and the less we merit it the more love we conceive towards GOD who giveth it to us and the more acknowledgement and service ought we to render Him for the same And for this gratuitous salary which He promiseth us we look not on it as a prey after which we hunt and without which we would have no love for the LORD but as an excellent evidence of His infinite goodness as a testimony of His admirable liberality that love of GOD which shines forth in it is the thing pleaseth and ravisheth us most of all and which enflameth our faith our zeal and our affection to the service of so good and amiable a LORD though then we should bind what the Apostle saith of the Charity of the Colossians with the hope they had of the heavenly glory there would be nothing in this but what were conform to Evangelical Truth Yet it seems to me more simple and fluent to refer it to the third Verse where he saith that He giveth thanks to GOD for the Colossians having understood their faith and charity for the hope He addeth now which is reserved in Heaven for you For to consider the condition of these believers on the earth it seems there was no great cause to congratulate them for their faith and charity the afflictions which they drew on them rendring them in appearance the most miserable of men But though the flesh make this judgement of it the Spirit that seeth above visible things the Crown of glory prepared for the faith and charity of the faithful holdeth them for the happiest of all Creatures congratulates them and rendreth thanks to GOD for the inestimable treasure he hath communicated to them I know saith the Apostle that your piety hath it's tryals and exercises in this world But I forbear not to bless the LORD affectionately for that He hath given it to you I know the bliss that is prepared for you on high in the Sanctuary of GOD. He takes the word Hope here as often elsewhere for the thing we hope for to wit the blessed immortality and glory of the world to come I confess we possess it not yet for hope is the expectation of a good to come Rom. 8.23 That we are saved saith the Apostle is in hope but hope that a man seeth is not hope for what a man seeth why doth he yet hope for But this good though absent and to come is as assured to us as if we had it already in our hands The Apostle shews it when he addeth that this Hope is reserved in Heaven for you It is a treasure which GOD hath set apart having fully prepared it already keeping it faithfully for us in His own bosome Whence it is that we make an assured account thereof for He hath deposited it in the hands of JESUS CHRIST in whom is hid our life and immortality so as if we make an assured account of things which a man of probity and honour keepeth in trust for us how much more certain should we be of the life and glory to come seeing GOD hath put it for us in the keeping of so faithful and powerful a depositary The place where this rich treasure is kept deposited for us confirms yet more the hope and excellency of it to us for saith the Apostle it is reserved for us in the heavens Fear not ye Faithful Your bliss is not on earth where the Thief steals or infidelity and violence make spoil where time it self ruineth all things where Crowns the best establisht are subject to a thousand and a thousand accidents Yours is on high in the Heavens in the Sanctuary of eternity lifted up above all the odd variations and inconstancies of humane things where neither our changes nor the causes that produce them have any access But this same place sheweth you besides the excellency and perfection of the bliss you hope for inasmuch as all celestial things are great and magnificent Weakness poverty and imperfection lodge here below Heaven is the habitation of glory and felicity In fine the Apostle toucheth briefly in the
so as it is declared in the Gospel not in Error and in Fictions and Lies as in false Religions nor in shadow and in figure as in the Law of Moses but nakedly and simply as it is in it self Of these three Expositions all good and convenient the First is to the praise of the Colossians the Second to that of Epaphras their Pastor and the third to the praise of the Gospel it self But as to Epaphras he speaks of Him by name in the two last Verses of this Text which make the second part of it And to commend Him to the Colossians and win him their hearts and respect He gives an excellent testimony of his fidelity his candour and his goodness As also saith he you have learned of Epaphras our dear fellow-servant who is a faithful Minister of CHRIST for you who also hath declared unto us your charity which you have in the Spirit This holy Apostle knew how much it concerneth Churches for their edification to have a good opinion of their Pastors and with what artifices the enemy laboureth ordinarily to decry the faithful servants of GOD and ruine their reputation among their flocks therefore it is that he here exalteth Epaphras as his piety deserved and to take out of the Colossians all suspicion against the purity of his teachings advertiseth them expresly that the doctrine they had learned of him was in truth the same Gospel of which he had spoken And from this great care the Apostle hath of Epaphras's reputation the Ministers of the LORD should learn to set themselves the best they can in the Spirit of their people abstaining not from evil only but also from its appearances and whatsoever might make them to be suspected of it It is not enough to approve the goodness of our life to our own conscience We must also if it may be content the judgement of our neighbours Innocence is necessary for our selves and reputation for others And since it serves to edifie them we are evidently obliged to preserve not our own only but also the reputation of our fellow-brethren whom GOD hath setled in the same charge for if we bite and rend one another who sees not but the particular reproach of each one will be the common infamy and ruine of us all But since the reputation of Pastors is a publick good which tendeth to the edification of the whole Church you see again that each faithful person oweth it a particular respect and that the crime of those who violate it unjustly is a kind of Sacriledge It 's a robbing of the Church and stealing from it it 's edification to black by calumny and detractions the life and doctrine of them that serve it or to expose them to laughter and contempt by scoffings and revilings But to return to Epaphras the Apostle crowneth him with two or three excellent Elogies First He calleth him his dear fellow-servant Admire I beseech you the candour and the goodness the humility and the modesty of this holy man His candor for whereas ordinarily there 's jealousie between persons of the same faculty St. Paul contrarily acknowledgeth and exalteth the Gifts and Vertue of this servant of GOD. His goodness for He tenderly loves Him as every where else He plainly sheweth that of all men there were none he more affected than the faithful Ministers of the Gospel His humility lastly in that being raised on the Throne of the Apostolick dignity the highest in the Church he maketh Epaphras as one may say to sit there with Him owning Him for His fellow Next He termeth Him a Minister of CHRIST It was much to be fellow-servant with St. Paul but it is much more to be the Minister of CHRIST the LORD of glory the Head of the Church the Soveraign Monarch of Men and Angels Judge with what reason some of our adversaries mock at the title we assume qualifying our selves Ministers of CHRIST or of His Gospel since it is the word that the Apostle useth here expresly to signifie that holy charge which GOD hath called us unto But He doth not term Epaphras simply a Minister of CHRIST He saith moreover that He is a faithful Minister the quality of Minister was common to him with many others the praise of faithfulness with few 'T is all that the Apostle did require in a good Steward of the House of GOD. 1 Cor. 4.1 2. Let each one hold us saith he for Ministers of CHRIST and Stewards of the mysteries of GOD. Moreover it is required in Stewards that each one be found faithful To have the praise thereof the Minister of the LORD must First Seek the glory of his Master and not his own and Secondly Keep close to His Orders without hiding from or envying to His Sheep any of the things committed to him for their edification without setting before them ought of His own invention beyond or against the will of the chief Shepheard But though all these good qualities greatly recommended Epaphras to the Colossians He addeth yet another which no less than the rest obliged them tenderly to love and cherish him namely that He employed the Master's talents to their edification He is saith he a faithful Minister of CHRIST for you They ought therefore to love him both for the dignity of his Office and for the profit that came in to them thereby For though we be obliged to love and respect all the faithful servants of GOD in general yet there is no doubt but we owe a particular affection and reverence to those who peculiarly consecrate their Ministry to our edification In fine the Apostle tells them that this holy servant of GOD had advertised Him of the pure and spiritual love they bore Him He hath declared to us saith he that is both to Him and to Timothy your charity which you have in Spirit I count that by charity he meaneth here not in general the Christian Vertue which we ordinarily call by this name for of the Charity of the Colossians so understood he had already spoken in the fourth Verse but the affection these faithful people had for St. Paul And He calleth it a Charity or Love in Spirit that is spiritual because it was founded upon the Spirit and not upon the flesh upon the interests of Heaven and not of Earth And here consider I beseech you how dextrous and industrious Epaphras was to knit spiritual friendships The Colossians had never seen St. Paul 't is he without doubt that had recounted to them the excellent vertue and piety of this great man and by this means enkindled in their souls that holy and spiritual charity they had for Him And see again how by the relation he makes to the Apostle of the love these believers bore Him He possesseth His soul with a reciprocal affection towards them O holy and blessed tongue that sowest nothing in the hearts of the faithful but charity and love how far now-adayes from thy candour and sincere goodness
his Brethren presented him GOD be gracious unto thee my Son Gen. 43.29 From such sentiments do flow those benedictions which we are wont to pronounce upon persons that are imployed in things beneficial and useful whether natural or civil as to instance with the Psalmist when we see the busie Reapers of a fair Field in Harvest time and say The blessing of the LORD be upon you Psal 129.8 we bless you in the name of the LORD But if this kind of natural beauty and perfection doth engage our affections and good wishes to the subjects in which we perceive it the gifts of divine grace which are incomparably more excellent should much more lively touch us my Brethren and kindle in our hearts greater flames of love and of desire for those that possess them For as high as Heaven is above the Earth and as much as eternity is preferable to time so much advantage have the beauties and perfections of Grace above those of Nature If therefore we judge rightly of them and estimate them according to their worth it cannot be that we should see them shine out in any without running to them and fastning forthwith on them as holy and as happy persons An eminent example of this motion of Christian Charity we have in our Text for the Apostle St. Paul here sheweth us he no sooner understood by Epaphras's report the Colossians faith and love but his soul was presently seized with ardent love unto them and his absence hindring him from giving them other evidences of it he incessantly presented prayer and earnest suits to GOD for their persevering and perfiting in piety that is for the continuation and the perpetuity of their happiness The summ of his desires for them is contained in three Verses as they evidently relate to three sorts of benefits for he wisheth them first in the ninth Verse the benefits that respect perfect knowledge of the truth next in the tenth those that respect the exercise of sanctity and finally in the eleventh such as concern perseverance in faith and patience in afflictions For present we will meditate only on the first of these three Articles remitting the two next to another action And for this cause saith the Apostle we also since the day we heard it cease not to pray for you and to crave that ye might be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding For right understanding this Text we will consider in it three particulars by the help of the grace of GOD which we implore for this effect First The Motive of the Apostle's prayers Secondly Their form manner and quality and in fine which is principal and most important the subject of them that is what He requested of GOD in His prayers As for the Motive that induced the Apostle to pray for the Colossians He signifies it to us in these first words And for this cause since the day we heard it we cease not to pray for you For these words sending us back to the precedent Verses with which they have a tye do shew us that the knowledge which the Apostle had by Epaphras's relation of the faith of the Colossians towards JESUS CHRIST and of their charity towards the Saints of their heavenly hope and of their other spiritual graces whereof He spake afore that this knowledge I say having filled Him with love towards them made Him continually pour out His Vows and prayers before GOD for the compleating of their salvation I confess the affection they bore Him in particular and whereof He maketh mention in the Verse immediately preceding contributed something also to this care he had to pray for them But it 's principal cause was their piety and sanctification that they had the first fruits of the Spirit and the beginnings of the Kingdom of Heaven Seeing the foundations of the Gospel and of the building of GOD so happily laid and established among them He beseecheth the Supream Master and Architect of this spiritual work to finish it and powerfully set the last hand to it The same reason made Him in like manner present His prayers to GOD for the Ephesians as he testifies at the beginning of the Epistle Ephes 1.15 16 17. he wrote them using almost all the same words that serve Him here Having saith he to them heard of the faith you have in the LORD JESVS and the charity you have towards all the Saints I cease not to render thanks for you making mention of you in my prayers that the GOD of our LORD JESVS CHRIST the Father of glory would give you the Spirit of Wisdom and of Revelation Faithful Sirs learn by this example of the Apostle to pray the LORD principally 〈◊〉 those in whom you see the work of His Spirit appear Rejoyce ye for their faith and their zeal and love them for the honesty and purity of their life But remember that the first and principal office which your charity oweth them is the continual succour of your prayers Object not that they are too far advanced to need them During the course of this life the progress of a Christian is never so great but the prayers of his Brethren are necessary for him It 's then when he is most advanced that the enemy maketh most attempts and layeth most ambushments for him The nearer he is to the Crown the more need he hath of divine assistance As there is none in the lists whom we favour more with our wishes acclamations and applauses than those that come nearest to victory so in this carrier of the Gospel we should affectionate and accompany with our vows prayers and benedictions those most that run best and are nighest to the mark of the heavenly calling We never make more wishes for a Vessel than when after a long and dangerous voyage it comes upon our Coast or we see it ready to arrive in the Haven When the believer having escaped the shelves and tempests of the world steers the true course of Heaven and makes if we may so say with Oars and Sails to the Port of Salvation 't is then we should redouble our wishes and benedictions for his safety 't is then we should fear more than ever lest some mishap marr all his progress and bereave him of the reward of his pains But let us now consider the manner and the quality of the Apostle's prayers Since the day saith he that we heard these good news we cease not to pray GOD and to make request for you First He did not pray alone We cease not to pray saith he where you see he speaks of more praying with him comprising in this number Timothy whom he had expresly named already at the beginning of this Epistle and the other faithful that were at Rome with him Being put on by one and the same charity animated with one and the same desire they all lifted up their hearts and Votes to GOD together with the Apostle for the
us This is the mysterie of the bread we there break and of the cup we there bless in remembrance and for the communicating of that sacred body which was broken for us and of that divine blood which was shed for the remission of our sins Let us carefully improve a doctrine so necessary and which is so diligently inculcated on us in the word and in the Sacraments of our LORD referring it to our edification and comfort Learn we from it first the horrour of sin a spot so black as could not be washed out but by the blood of JESUS CHRIST That remission of it might be given us it was necessary the Father should deliver up His dear Son to dye and the Son give His blood the preciousest jewel of the universe a thousand times more worth than heaven and earth and all the glory of them From this meditation conceive a just hatred against Sin since it is so abominable in the eyes of this Soveraign LORD on whose communion alone depends all your bliss shun it and pluck it out of your Consciences and your hearts As for sins already committed seek the remission of them in the blood of CHRIST Give your selves no rest till you have found it till you have obtained grace till it be exemplified in your souls by the hand and seal of the Holy Ghost Lay by the pretended satisfactions and merits of men Have no recourse but to the righteousness of JESUS CHRIST which alone is able to cover our shame and render us acceptable to GOD. But having once obtained pardon for the time passed return not into it for the future When sin shall present it self to you repell it couragiously opposing to all its temptations this holy and healthsome consideration It 's my Master 's the murtherer of the LORD of glory It 's the accursed Serpent that separated man from GOD that put enmity between Heaven and earth that sowed misery and death in the world and obliged the Father to deliver up His Son to the sufferings of the Cross GOD forbid I should take into my bosome so cruel so deadly an enemy But from this same source we may also draw unspeakable consolation against the gnawing guilt of sin and the troubles of Conscience For since it 's by the blood of the Son of GOD that we have been redeemed what cause is there to doubt but that our remission is assured The superstitious hath reason to be in continual affright since man in whom he puts his confidence is but vanity The propitiatory I present you Faithful soul is not the blood of a man or of an Angel creatures finite and incapable of sustaining the eternal burnings of the wrath of the Almighty It is the blood of GOD's own Son who also is Himself GOD blessed for ever It 's a blood of infinite value and truly capable of counter-poising and bearing down the infinite demerit of your crimes Come then sinner whoever you be Come with assurance How foul soever your transgessions be this blood will cleanse them away How ardent soever the displeasure of GOD against you be this blood will quench it Only bedew your soul with it Make an aspersion of it on your hearts with a lively faith and you shall no more need to fear the word of the executioner of the avenges of GOD. But Faithful Brethren having thus assured your Conscience by the meditation of this divine blood of our LORD admire ye also His infinite love which He so clearly sheweth us and confirmeth to us This King of Glory hath so loved you that when your sins could not be pardoned without the effusion of His blood He would dye upon a Cross rather than see you perish in Hell He poured out His blood to keep in yours and did undergo the curse of GOD that you might partake in His blessings O great and incomprehensible love the singular miracle of Heaven which ravishest men and Angels What should we fear henceforth since this great GOD hath so loved us Who shall condemn us since He is our surety Who shall accuse us since He is our Advocate He hath given us His own blood What can He any longer refuse to bestow on us He hath laid down His soul for us how much more will He grant us all other things that may be necessary for our salvation But as this thought doth comfort us so ought it to sanctifie us Of what Hells shall not we be worthy if we love not a LORD who hath so passionately loved us If we obey not His commandments who hath blotted out our sins If for this precious blood which He hath given us we do not render to Him ours and consecrate to His glory a life which He hath redeemed by the offering up of His own in sacrifice for our salvation And after an example of so ravishing goodness how can we be ill affected to any man Christians GOD hath forgiven you a thousand and a thousand most-enormous sins how have you the heart to deny your neighbour the pardon of one slight offence He hath given you His blood you that were His enemy How can you refuse a small almes to him that is your Brother and that upon the account both of nature and grace Let the goodness of the LORD JESUS mollifie the hardness of your heart let the vertue of His blood melt your bowels into sweetness into charity and into love both toward Him and towards His members Discharge you this very day at His table of all the bitter passions of your flesh Put off there pride hatred and envy and clothe you there with His humility and His gentleness Do him new homage and give Him oath to be never any others but His alone presenting your selves with deepest respect before this Throne of His grace Remember both at this time and ever after that blood by which He hath obtained Redemption for you that is the remission of your sins This blood is the peace of Heaven and of earth This blood hath brought us out of Hell and opened Paradise unto us It hath delivered us from death and given us life This blood hath blotted out the sentence of our curse that stood registred in the Law of GOD it hath stopped the mouth of our accusers and pacified our Judge This blood hath effected a renovation of the world It hath quickned the dead and animated the dust and changed our mortal flesh into a celestial and divine nature Dear Brethren GOD forbid we should tread under foot a thing so holy or account such precious blood profane or common Let us reverence it and receive it into our hearts with an ardent devotion And may it display its admirable efficacy in them causing the royal image of GOD even holiness and righteousness to flourish there to the glory of the LORD and our own consolation and salvation Amen THE VII SERMON COL I. Ver. XV. Vers XV. Who is the image of the invisible GOD the first-born of every
all the sentiments we have Let there appear nothing in our words in our affections or our works but what is His. But this lesson of the Apostles doth no less recommend to us charity towards our neighbour than submission towards JESUS CHRIST For since the Church is a body and even the body of CHRIST that is the fairest and most perfect body in the world judge ye what ought to be the union and the love of all the faithful that compose it Look upon the body of man from which this resemblance is taken how great is the zeal of all the parts for the conservation of the whole How do they love it and conspire for it's good how do they do and suffer all things and each in it's rank expose their life and being for it Such ye Faithful ought to be your affection for the Church this Divine body of the LORD whereof you are members It s peace its preservation and its glory should be the object of your highest and most urgent defires There is nothing that should not be cheerfully employed in so brave a design Wo to them that have no feeling of the wounds of this sacred body that are not affected with its bruises and look upon the breaches of it unmoved who are so far from groaning at them and endeavouring to repair them that themselves make more rending with extream impiety and inhumanity the most innocent body in the world and most beloved of GOD the body of His Son which He hath redeemed at the price of His own Blood But besides the affection we ought to have for the Church in general this similitude advertiseth us also to love ardently each of the faithful in particular St. Paul toucheth at and treateth of this advice expresly in another place There is no division in the body 1 Cor. 12.25 26. saith he the members have a mutual care one of another and if one of the members suffer any thing all the members suffer with it or if one of the members be honoured all the members rejoyce together in it Now ye are the body of CHRIST and His members each one on his part O GOD how great would be our happiness and our glory if the union and concord of our flock did answer this fair and rich picture if knit together by an holy and inviolable love and having but one heart and one soul as we have but one Head we did amiably converse together tenderly resenting the good and evil of each other and each of us putting forth his power to conserve and encrease the good of our brethren and to comfort and cure their evils But alas instead of this sweet and grateful spectacle which would ravish heaven and earth we behold nothing among us but quarrels and coldness and hatred and animofities The welfare of our brethren displeaseth us and their ill case toucheth us not at all The former raiseth our envy and the latter stirreth not our compassion Vanity and the love of our selves make us either disdain or hate all others There are no bonds which our fierceness doth not break it equally violates both those of nature and those of grace Is this that great name of the body of CHRIST which we glory to be called by CHRIST is nothing but sweetness and love He hath laid down His life for His enemies How are we His we that hate and persecute our brethren And how are we His body since we rend one another Were ever the members of the same body seen at war together the hand assaulting the foot and the teeth falling on the hand If any such thing appear is it not taken for the effect of an extream rage or for an horrible prodigy Oh! how ordinary is this rage and this prodigy among us who being members of the same body and which infinitely augmenteth our shame of the body of CHRIST the Saviour of the world have yet no horrour at the biting and consuming of one another as if we were an herd of Canibals and not the flock of the Lord JESUS I well know we do not want plausible reasons to palliate each of us our faults passion it self making us witty in the defence of this bad cause But let our own conscience be our judge let it remember it hath to do with JESUS CHRIST and not with men if it beguile us it cannot deceive GOD. Renounce we then unfeignedly all this kind of vices and cordially loving our Brethren succouring the afflicted assisting the poor comforting the sick and living in concord with all let us truly be as we say we are the body of our LORD JESUS CHRIST It 's this in particular that the bread and the wine of our LORD the sacred embleme of our mystical union do require of us they mind us that we are but one bread and one body as the Apostle represents it Chap. 10. in the first Epistle to the Corinthians Finally this doctrine further sheweth us with what purity and sanctity we ought to keep our own persons since all being the body of CHRIST we are each one members of Him Against every temptation that sin shall let fly at us let us take up this consideration for our succour say shall I take the members of CHRIST to make of them members of Satan Shall I defile that body in the ordure of incontinency or of drunkenness or any other debauches which the Son of GOD hath cleansed with His blood which He hath united and joyned to Himself and whereof He is become their Head Far be it from me to commit so vile a fact It 's thus My Brethren that we ought to regulate our whole life for the being truly the body of CHRIST And if we so be this Divine Head doubt it not will love us and tenderly preserve us For no one ever yet hated his own flesh He will feed us and set us at His own Table and give us the bread and wine of Heaven and after the combats and trials of this life will clothe us with His own glory and immortality as being the first-born from the dead To Him with the Father and the Holy Spirit the true GOD blessed for ever be honour and glory to ages of ages Amen THE X. SERMON COL I. Ver. XIX XX. Vers XIX For it was the good pleasure of the Father that in Him should all fulness dwell XX. And by Him to reconcile all things to Himself having made peace by the blood of His cross viz. as well the things that are in Earth as those that are in Heaven EVen as in the frame of Nature GOD hath set up one only principle of light namely the Sun and hath united in the body of this admirable luminary all the brightness that was spred through the universe that it might enlighten the Heavens and the earth and that from it as from a common source might stream forth into all things all the flame and warmth they do receive so likewise in the Kingdom of
crave that you may be filled with the knowledg of the Will of CHRIST in all wisdom and spiritual understanding To Prayer he added Action couragiously attacquing Error on all occasions refuting Seducers and discovering the vanity of their Doctrine and the malignity of their design not only by word of mouth but also by writing as we see by those divine Epistles of his which remain with us and in which the evidences of his great earnestness against these false Apostles do appear here and there in many places And as he laid on stoutly upon enemies so did he smartly take up the faithful reproving them admonishing and encouraging them to necessary firmness and constancy He marched with so high a generosity that he spared not S. Peter himself who having slipt through weakness and complacency into actions which seem'd to favour error Paul boldly undertakes him and sheweth him his fault with much liberty as himself gives us an account elsewhere In short Gal. 2. he omitted none of the duties of a valiant and vigilant Captain either against the foe or towards his friends and fellow-soldiers as is easie to be seen by his writings Yet his combat stay'd not here He often came to blows cheerfully suffering for this cause all the persecutions which the rage of the Jews and the malice of Seducers did contrive and form against him And to say the truth the very chain he was loaden with and the prison he was in when he wrote this Epistle did make up a part of this Combat of his it being clear by the History of the Acts that nothing had more inflamed the hatred of the Jews against him who cast him into this affliction than the zeal he shewed every where against the corruptions of such people as would retain the Ceremonies of the Jewish Law and hence it is that he told the Colossians afore Col. 1.24 he suffered for them because in effect and at the bottom it was for maintaining their liberty and the liberty of other Gentiles converted to the Gospel and for the keeping of their faith pure from all corruptive leaven that he fell into this tedious sufferance Such was Paul's combat for these faithful people Dear Brethren admire the zeal and the charity of this sanctified soul He was in the Prisons of Nero he stood as we may say upon the Scaffold and had his head on the block being indicted for a criminal matter which concerned his life And even in this estate his heart is in pain for the Churches of Colosse and Laodicea and for those beside that had never beheld him Their danger troubled him more than his own Neither prison nor death was able to extinguish or diminish his affection or to make him lay aside the least of his cares Having so great a Combat against his own person upon his hands he leaves it and on so pressing an occasion travelleth and combateth for others Certainly there cannot any thing be imagin'd more elevated or more ardent than this love We may truly affirm of it what is said in the Song of Solomon His love is strong as death and his jealousie is hard as the grave it's burnings are burnings of fire and a flame of GOD Many waters could not quench it nor could flouds drown it But observe again the prudence and apt procedure of this holy man in that he representeth these things to these faithful people for so good an end For being to entertain them with important matters and to decry errors which seduction did paint over with the deceitful colours of Philosophy and Eloquence that he might dispose their hearts to give him due audience and gain his remonstrances a necessary credit and authority he sets before them at the entrance the cares he had for their Salvation the combats he sustained for them and all the effects of that sacred amity he had towards them As a Captain who to keep firm his Soldiers in their duty represents to them his watchings and his pains-taking and his cares for their preservation and in sum all the marks of his affection to them or rather as a tender mother who to withdraw her dear children from giving ear to debauches sheweth them her fears her sollicitudes and her alarms the yearning of her bowels and all that she doth or suffereth for them Such is the Apostles holy artifice in the present business and it is grounded upon a maxime we all know namely that we much more believe those that love us and are affectionate for our welfare than those to whom we are indifferent He declareth to them his pains that they may take in good part his remonstrances and discovereth to them his passion that they may receive his counsels His aim is not to draw glory from it or to enhanse his esteem among them such a childish vanity had no place in the soul of this great man but indeed to render his instructions the more effectual to the Colossians thereby And the Combats which he for the same end tells them of should serve in like manner for examples unto us Let Ministers of the Gospel learn by them what love they owe their flocks what cares and combats their Office obligeth them to Let nothing in the world be dearer or more precious to them than the Salvation of the Souls committed to their charge let them take part in their joys and in their griefs let them feelingly resent their wounds apprehend their dangers labour incessantly for their edification To it let them consecrate the thoughts of their mind and the words of their mouth and the work of their pen and the actions of their life yea their blood and life it self if there be need saying with clear conscience as the Apostle in another place doth 2 Cor. 12.15 As for me I will willingly spend and be spent for your souls and be glad to serve for an aspersion upon the sacrifice and service of your faith Let this care and these thoughts fill their hearts day and night let them make account that there is neither affair nor occasion nor peril that dispenseth with them for the same no not death it self in the very gates whereof they ought to mind still their flock and combat for them by their prayers and their devout wishes Such is the faithful the love and the care we owe you We confess that without such watching and striving for your Salvation we cannot avoid the censure and chastisements of the supream Pastor Judg if it be not reasonable that you have affection and respect for those whom the love of your Salvation engageth to so many cares and labours and if it be not just that you receive their instructions with reverence and hearken to the product of their studies with attention that you comply with the zeal they have for your edification and attribute much to their counsels and suffer their liberty and impute to their affection the sharpness of their remonstrances when grief and fear draw
I am with you rejoycing and seeing your order and the firmness of your faith which you have in CHRIST This is the reason why he advertiseth them to take heed of the wiles of seducers and why he so carefully puts into their hands the means to preserve themselves For some might have thought it strange that being so far from them and in all likelihood ignorant of the state wherein they were he should yet give them such an advertisement He preventeth this surmise and answers that though at Rome he were nevertheless he minded what was a doing at Coloss the affection which he borâ— them obliging him to interess himself in all their concernments Wonder not saith he that I bespeak you in this manner and send you from so far off preservatives against seduction For though so many Seas and Hills do sever my body from you yet my spirit is with you taking part in all that doth betide you rejoycing in the prosperous estate of your piety but likewise fearing the attempts of those enemies which I see round about you ready to sow the tares of Schism and Error upon any the least overture they find for it Some referr his saying that he wasi n spirit with the Colossians to an extraordinary and miraculous operation of the Holy Ghost who replenishing his soul with light made him thereby see things that passed at the greatest distance as clearly as if he had been present after the same manner that GOD had afore-time shewed Elisha what his servant Gehazi did with Naaman a passage which accordingly the Prophet expresseth almost in the same manner 2 Kings 5.26 Went not my heart with thee saith he to Gehazi when the man turned again from his Chariot to meet thee I confess surely that GOD could easily have made known to Paul at Rome in the Prisons of Nero where he was all that pass'd in the Church of Coloss with as much yea more clearness than if he had been present there and have revealed also to him the whole state of other Churches further distant from Italy as he made Ezekiel while living in captivity at Babylon to see the most secret actions of the Jews in the City and the Temple of Jerusalem But because it is dangerous to argue from what GOD can do to what he doth and under colour of some sleight probabilities to resolve upon things which his word doth not at all affirm Moreover since we must not multiply Miracles without necessity I account it best and safest without having receourse to this extraordinary kind of presence to interpret these words of the Apostle simply as others do of a presence in respect of care and affection For nothing is more common in all Languages than to say that our mind is in such places and with such persons as we think upon and have affection to Whence comes the vulgar saying that the soul is where it loves because there it ordinarily keeps its desires its love and its cogitations And it is thus also that we must take what the Apostle saith to the Corinthians 1 Cor. 5. â— that though absent in body he was present with them in spirit He means simply that his bonds did not detain his spirit or shut it up in the Prisons of Rome nor hinder him from minding them every hour and having his affections and thoughts continually among them figuring to himself the estate which they were in in as lively a manner as if he had had them before his bodily eyes and drawing from this lively conception the same movings of joy contentment and fear as the sight of them would have wrought within him So as there need be no wonder if having them so deeply engraven on his heart and still present to the eyes of his mind he become pained for them and at such distance prescribe them necessary precautions and preservatives against the pleasant but pernicious poysons of error And observe I beseech you this holy man's prudent and apt procedure For to justifie that care which he took of them he doth not urge the danger they were in their weakness or the bad inclinations which some of them had This discourse would have been offensive as shewing a distrust of their piety but on the contrary he here tells them of the prosperity of their spiritual estate the beauty of their order and the constancy of their faith Rejoycing saith he and seeing your order and the firmness of your faith Do not imagine saith he that I have an ill opinion of your piety because I do so earnestly advise you to stand fast I am very well satisfied concerning it and do find you in so good a posture that I have much consolation at it this matter being so pleasing to me that it fills my heart with joy notwithstanding the sad estate that I am in But from the same root whence springs my joy my ardent desire to see you go on from good to better doth also arise and with it the sollicitude and care I take to exhort it because it would be an extream regret and displeasure to see Error waste or wound so fair and flourishing a Church ever so little See how by praising them he doth oblige them to regard his advertisements and by the very consideration of their having so well begun doth more and more engage them to holy persevering to the end Thus he also treated the Philippians My beloved brethren said he to them and much desired Phil. 4.1 my joy and my crown so stand fast in the LORD my dearly beloved You perceive of your selves without my indication that when he says rejoycing and seeing your order the meaning is rejoycing to see or for that I see your order For in Scripture-language and even in our vulgar speech the particle and is often used in this sense and signifies because that or forasmuch as He praiseth and extolleth two things in these faithful persons wherein the happiness and the perfection of a Church doth consist to wit Order and a firm and constant Faith By the order of these Colossians he meaneth the good disposition of all the parts of their Church the vigilancy of the Pastors the submission and obedience of the Flock their joint-regard of Discipline each keeping themselves within the bounds of their vocation and both together living in concord and good intelligence honestly and without scandal For that order comprehendeth also purity and sanctity of behaviour the Apostle evidently sheweth in another place where 2 Thess 3.6 to signifie those that lead a scandalous life he saith that they walk disorderly He praiseth also the firmness of their faith in JESUS CHRIST signifying thereby both that full perswasion they had of the truth and divinity of his Gospel and their constancy to hold it fast notwithstanding the assaults and tentations of the Enemy It 's this Faith dear Brethren and this Order of the Colossians that was the matter of the Apostle's joy and the occasion
of the same and giving of thanks He expresseth the first two ways First in metaphorical terms being rooted and built up in JESVS CHRIST And next properly and without figure being established or confirmed in faith For this confirmation in faith is no other thing than the self-same that he intendeth by the words rooted and built up in JESVS CHRIST The first of these two Metaphors is taken from Trees which stand firm and easily resist the violence of winds when they have put forth good and deep roots into the earth which serve them for so many stays and bands to hold them fast whereas the Plants which have but little or no root are easily pluckt up the least gust yea the hand of a Child is enough to overthrow them The faithful are often in Scripture compared unto trees You all know the Parable of the Fig-tree in the Gospel Psa 92.13 14 and that of the Palm-tree in the Psalms The just shall flourish as the Palm-tree and grow as the Cedar in Lebanon And there 's no one in the Church but is acquainted with that dainty Tree planted by the rivers of waters which bringeth its fruit in its season and the leaves whereof doth not wither Psal 1.3 which the Psalmist gives us a picture of at the beginning of his Book for an image of a true believer Whence it comes that the Ministers who labour in the culture of these Mystical Plants are likened to Gardeners and Vine-dressers and Husbandmen such an one was he in that Evangelical Parable Luke 13.8 who prayed the Owner to supersede the sentence pronounced upon one of his fig-trees And S. Paul also expresseth his own and Apollos his labouring for the edification of the faithful in terms taken from the same subject saying that he planted and Apollos watered 1 Cor. 3.6 â— In consequence of these figurative expressions which are familiar in Scripture you see that it is with much gracefulness and a great deal of reason that the Apostle here to recommend firmness of faith in JESUS CHRIST doth say they should be rooted in Him He saith the same again elsewhere when he prayeth GOD to strengthen the Ephesians by his spirit Eph. 3.18 that saith he being rooted and founded in love they might be able to comprehend with all Saints what is the breadth and length the heighth and depth and to know the love of Christ For since the faithful man is compared to a tree it is congruous to attribute to him both the production that is fruits and the parts of a tree whereof the principal is the root We say then that a tree is well rooted when its root is spread abroad and thrust far into the ground where it is planted and fastned to it so many ways that it stands upright and firm nor can be plucked up without extream difficulty Who then is the believer rooted in CHRIST Even the man whose whose soul embraceth the LORD JESUS all whose thoughts and affections are stretch'd forth and fastned to this Divine crucified Saviour who hath neither love nor desire nor affiance but for Him It is he who having rightly understood the excellency and the fulness of this rich Subject seeks all his felicity in it and withdrawing the desires the cares and affections of his heart from earth which are as it were the strings and roots of our nature by which it is fastned to its objects doth thrust them forth towards JESUS CHRIST doth unite with and bind them about Him and resteth on him alone and draweth the nutriment of his life from none other â—s you know trees by their root do receive all that juice which makes them â—â—ve shoot forth and fructifie Not to alledg any other example such a one was our Paul so fastned was he unto and so incorporated with his LORD that he liv'd in Him alone this divine ground wherein he was planted affording him all the joy all the contentment and all the life he had There is no need to fear that those who adhere to JESUS CHRIST in such a manner who are so really and deeply rooted in Him can ever be pluck'd up by any effort how violent soever it be The winds do in vain shake them tempests do beat upon them to no purpose persecutions will not be able to make them bend nor fraud nor eloquence nor the subtilty of Sophisters remove them Novelties and Curiosities do not tempt them because that sweet sap which they continually draw from their CHRIST as from a rich soil doth content them and purgeth them of that foolish and childish itching humour which openeth the ears of the weak and unstable to such things But if you be not thus rooted in CHRIST it will be no great difficulty to pluck you from the station you are in If it be not this heavenly efficacy of our LORD but either birth or breeding or the discourse or authority of men or the name of liberty or any other such like cause which keeps you in the profession of Christianity I am much afraid you will not long abide in it If your heart be in the world if it still spread its affections as its roots into perishing things if it still admire the pleasures of the flesh and the fumes of ambition and the vanity of riches your perseverance is in truth very dubious The tree that hath no root hath no hold The first gust that falls upon it bears it down And would to God experience had less justified this truth in our eyes But this is the very cause of all their change who have deserted us If you examine their lives you will find they were not well rooted in CHRIST JESUS Wonder not that they were overthrown But let us make our profit of their unhappiness obeying the Apostle And that we may abide firm for ever in the communion of this Divine LORD of ours out of which there is nothing but misery and perdition let us be rooted in him with a lively and profound faith and love Let us love and relish him only and inseparably fasten all the powers of our souls to him alone as dead and risen again for us drawing all our righteousness from his Cross and all our hope and our glory from his Heavenly state and his immortality I come to the other Metaphor here used by the Apostle to set forth the confirming of our faith in JESUS CHRIST being rooted saith he and built up in JESVS CHRIST The former was taken from Trees and this now is drawn from Buildings It is no less famous in Scripture than the other for the faithful are there oftentimes compared to Houses and particularly to Temples and the Church that is the Society consisting of them collectively is represented to us under the same image Whence it comes that the labours of the Servants of the Lord for this end are also called edifyings a word so common in this sense that there is no need we should stay to explain
me with I know not who they were or to say better I know well that they were men subject to failing so as neither you nor I can have any firm and certain assurance that their assertions are true But for this JESUS with whose Gospel I content me we all know that he was the Son of GOD in whom wisdom and truth do dwell bodily with all the fulness of the Deity Moses himself must be silent when the LORD JESUS doth appear as the Starrs do withdraw their light when the Sun shews abroad his The one's Law is no longer considerable when the other's Gospel is risen In fine this sentence of the Apostle's doth suffice to overturn not only all the traditions of men in gross and in general but even each of them singly and in particular For example we are press'd to serve and invocate Angels and Saints departed I will not for the present alledg that GOD whose voice is the rule of my Faith hath given no command about it I will not say that Religious worship doth not belong to any Creature I will not enquire whether Saints do heaâ— from Heaven where they are the prayers that are directed to them on the earthâ— nor whether being finite and created as they are they do behold the motions of our hearts I will only demand of our Adversaries Why they would have us serve and invocate Saints To the end say they that we may gain their favour and their intercession with the Father But poor men have we not in JESUS CHRIST all the grace and favour that we need And though there were nothing else in the matter would it not be great imprudence for us to have recourse to others since we have him near us in whom dwelleth all the fulness of the Deity They extol unto us their merits and their satisfactions and the indulgences of their Popes I enter not upon a strict examination of these things nor do I make enquiry for the present whether they be merits and satisfactions and indulgences in reality or no. Though they were what those men pretend they be yet it is clear that they are useless to us since we find in this JESUS CHRIST who sufficeth us all the fulness of the Godhead dwelling in him even bodily If you have need of mercy of grace of consolation of righteousness of merit of assistance of life none of these good things are wanting in him in whom dwelleth all the fulness of the Deity And I am well assured you shall find no degree of them any other where either in Heaven or Earth But though some drop of them might be elsewhere met with yet it is certain and your selves will not deny it that they are not to be had either in Saints or in Angels either so undoubtedly or so abundantly as in JESUS CHRIST Why then while I have so rich a treasure in my hands would you have me go a begging other-where It is sufficient for me to be saved Since the fulness of things necessary for my salvation dwelleth in JESUS CHRIST I will content my self with having recourse to him alone with sixing my trust and my love on him and with addressing my services and supplications unto him nor will I be so unadvis'd as to lose or at least hazzard my time and my devotions in directing them to others which I am sure I may successfully apply unto him Dear Brethren Let us hold to this LORD alone Let us not divide our piety between him and any other Let him alone have our whole hearts and all our desires since he alone hath all that fulness which is necessary to make us happy He is the true Fountain of living water let us not draw any other where We have no need of Cisterns This Divine Rock that followeth the Camp of his own Israel hath wherewithal to satisfie all his people plentifully He wanteth nothing who hath fulness Only let us bring him souls hungring after his benefits and thirsting for his righteousness hearts panting after the pleasures of his Sanctuary and braying after him as the Hart after the brooks of water Let us serve him constantly and keep faithfully the holy discipline he hath given us in a continual exercise of piety and charity This is all that he demands of us for the love he hath born us for the favours he hath done us and for the glory which he promiseth us Let us not deny him I beseech you so just a thing Let us do what he requireth us and he will liberally give what we ask of him He will through his great goodness communicate this Divine fulness to us which dwells in himself that being justified by his merit cleared by his light upheld by his power enriched by his treasures quickned by his spirit and fed with his abundance we may one day have part in his Crowns and in his Glory after the petty conflicts and slight trials of this life to be made eternally happy in him Amen The Twenty-second SERMON COL CHAP. II. VER X XI Ver. X. And ye are made compleat in Him who is the head of all principality and power XI In whom also you are circumcised with a circumcision made without hand by the putting off of the body of the sins of the flesh to wit by the circumcision of CHRIST DEar Brethren With excellent reason said our LORD and Saviour when he would magnifie the love of GOD towards Mankind that he so loved the world as he gave his only Son John 3.16 that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have eternal life For this donation of his CHRIST which he hath made us is without contradiction the greatest and most admirable evidence of his love that he could give us I confess that this great Frame which he freely bestowed on us at the first Creation this World roof'd with those stately Heavens that environ us enlightned by those brave Luminaries that roll about incessantly over us and filled with an infinite variety of good things was a choice sign of a wonderful bounty and love and that the Psalmist had reason to cry out as ravish'd with the consideration of it What is mortal man Psal 8.5 6 7. that thou hast remembrance of him and the son of man that thou visitest him For thou hast made him little less than the Angels and hast crowned him with glory and honour Thou hast made him ruler over the works of thy hands Thou hast set all things under his feet Yet it must be acknowledged that all this liberality of GOD's to us-ward which consider'd in its self is so great and so ravishing is a small matter in comparison of the ineffable and incomprehensible love which he hath shewed in giving us his CHRIST whether you compare the gifts themselves one with the other or do consider the fruit which they both yeeld For the first Whereas the World is a kind of Magazine of the riches of Nature JESUS CHRIST is the Treasury of
mystically and not literally for the internal corruption of our nature and as he express'd it afore for the body of the sins of the flesh not simply for the external condition and mark of Paganism Ye were dead in the uncircumcision of your flesh that is in the corruption of your flesh precisely in the same sense that Moses meant when he commanded the Israelites to circumcise the foreskin of their heart that is to cut off the vices and corruption of their hearts This mystical uncircumcision of the flesh is nothing else but the depravedness of our nature the vices and perverse habitudes and qualities which have seiz'd on all its faculties the blindness error and folly of the understanding the disorder of the will and its adherence unto vanity and false good things the rebelliousness of the appetites and lusts 〈◊〉 â—â—inted with gall and bitterest poyson This is properly the princip 〈…〉 wherewith we all were struck before the vocation of GOD. This is the cursed 〈◊〉 from which it springs up in us In the stirrings and motions of this hateful source which boils incessantly in us and casts up filth continually doth this spiritual death consist And I confess in this respect there is a difference between the condition of the dead commonly so called and the condition of these spiritually dead whom the Apostle speaks of For the former as they do no good so neither do they any evil Their faculties are equally disabled to the one and the other Whereas these spiritually dead men have lost sense and motion only in reference to that which is good They have both quick enough but it is only in reference to evil They understand they love they desire but altogether oppositely to good their thoughts and affections being full of error extravagancy and malignity As for true good they neither comprehend it nor discern it nor love it any more than 〈◊〉 they had neither understanding nor will at all Whence it follows that whereas the deadness the insensibility and unmovableness of other dead is an innocent misery deserving our pity and not our hate these mens on the contrary is an evil infinitely culpable and doth merit not compassion but abhorrence and execration from every reasonable creature For that they neither do nor can love GOD doth not proceed from their being destitute of natural faculties of understanding and loving but from a strong and obstinate rebelliousness of those faculties and from that invincible passion which carrieth them to evil John 5.44 as our Saviour shews us when he saith unto the Jews How can you believe seeing that you seek honour one of another and seek not the honour which comes of GOD alone An evident sign that these wretched people's impotency to believe did come from nothing but their impiety their stiff and inflexible aversion from the glory of GOD and that ardent and invincible affection they had for vanity and their own glory See then beloved Brethren what the condition of all men is before the LORD doth effectually call them unto the grace of his Son Where now are they that pretend they have the power of a free determination and a will equally capable of good and evil that do hereupon contest they can either convert them themselves unto GOD as said the Pelagians of old or at least prepare themselves for conversion and dispose themselves for grace as the greater part of the Doctors of Rome and with them some others also do maintain at this day The Apostle blasteth all this pride in one word when he saith that we were dead in our sins and in the uncircumcision of our flesh If a dead man be able to make himself alive or to prepare himself for the reception of life by any actions that come from him I will yeeld that the error of these men is not incompatible with the Doctrine of S. Paul But since common sense assureth us that the dead are depriv'd not of the actions alone but also of the power of life and that there is nothing but a supernatural action of GOD that is able to restore them to the society of the living so as they can contribute nothing thereto themselves we must needs either charge a falshâ—od upon the Apostle who saith that before Grace we are dead in our sins or confess in consequence of his Doctrine that men neither have nor can have of themselves any action or disposition unto spiritual life and that the power of the hand of GOD working supernaturally in them by his grace is the only strength that raiseth them up out of this miserable state If their will be free it is free to evil only which it embraceth and followeth most freely I confess that is most voluntarily and without any constraint taking all its delight therein If their understanding do act it is for error which it doth conceive and most obstinately embrace But as for the life of GOD they have not liberty or light for it any more John 6.44 and 8.36 than if they had neither will nor understanding at all according to that which our Saviour hath taught us saying No man can come to me except the Father who hath sent me draw him and again If the Son make you free you shall be free indeed Without this a man can have neither life nor liberty The Apostle clearly sheweth it when having represented the death wherein we were he adds in the second part of our Text that God hath quickned us together with CHRIST having freely pardoned us all our offences For there is no doubt but we must refer this action unto GOD of whom he just before was saying that He raised JESVS CHRIST from the dead It is therefore the same GOD who raised up the chief Shepherd from the dead that doth also make alive his faithful flock bringing them our of that spiritual and eternal death into which we are naturally sunk and putting them into a celestial and immortal life As there is none but He that could inspire and quicken that dust of which He formed us at first so there is again none but He that can expel out of our flesh that death which hath seized on it and restore that life which sin hath extinguish'd in us Both the one and the other vivification is the work of His hand alone Yet to say as truth is it is needful for Him to put forth more might in the second of them than He did in the first For if that handful of earth of which He created Adam had no disposition at all to that form and life which He put in it yet at least it had no repugnancy thereto whereas besides that He now findeth in us no disposition to an heavenly life He meets with over and above resistance and contrariety a spirit of rebellion aâ—â—mating the whole mass of our flesh which He must necessarily cast out that celestial life may be infused Now as that Death in which we lay doth comprehend
threatnest us How hast thou the insolency to accuse those whom GOD justifies and to condemn those for whom the Son of GOD dyed and rose again 'T is thus Dear Brethren that we must repel the tentations of the enemy and maugre his assaults possess in peace the loving-kindness of GOD adoring his bounty and ardently employing our selves to his glory For this is the scope and the end of his grace He hath acquitted us of all our debts and made void the obligation which was upon them that we being ravish'd with a Goodness so divine might love him with all our strength and all our soul according to that veritable Maxime acknowledged by Simon in the Gospel He to whom much is forgiven Luk. 7.43 Luk. 1. 74 75 ougth to love much He hath delivered us by his Son out of the hand of our enemies that we might serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness before him all the days of our life And indeed how can we have the heart either not to love at all or to love but coldly a GOD who is so good to us who seeing us overwhelm'd in debt hath freely forgiven us all hath made void the obligation and for the razing out and making void the same spent the blood of his only begotten Son and for the rending it in pieces suffered his Divine Body to be all rent with strokes After a goodness so ravishing must not that man be worse than a Devil who loves not this Father who hath given us his Son and this Son who hath by his death obtained our salvation Oh how much reason had the Apostle to count him execrable who loves not this great Saviour 1 Cor. 16.22 If any man saith he love not the LORD JESVS CHRIST let him be anathema maranatha GOD forbid there should be any so wretched and odious a person in the midst of us Yet if any be sure he believes not of our Saviour what he makes profession to believe For it is not possible to believe him without loving him Let us love him then and faithfully serve him setting his Name and Honour above all the Interests of the World and our Flesh Let us obey his holy Discipline and conform all that life unto his will which we hold not but by his grace Let us imitate that Divine Pattern he hath left us diligently walking in humility and patience and charity whereof he hath given us so great and so admirable examples Let us have compassions and tendernesses for our Brethren that may resemble those which he hath had for us He hath pardoned us all our sins and quitted to us all our debts He hath shed his blood to blot out the obligation that was against us He dyed on a Cross that he might thereunto nail up and for ever abolish all the instruments of our condemnation Having experienced so great a goodness towards our selves how can we dare to have so little towards others to be obdurate to them and implacable when they have offended us cruel and inexorable when they owe us any thing He hath forgiven us Talents and we exact of them even Farthings He hath pardoned us a thousand and a thousand crimes We retain against them the slightest offences What shall we answer when he one day shall say to us Behold I have forgiven thee all this great debt at thy request shouldst not thou also have had pity on thy fellow-servant as I had pity on thee Without doubt my Brethren we should It is a duty too just and too reasonable for us to fail in If yet our flesh oppose let us pray the LORD to subdue it to his will by the power of his Spirit granting us to do what he commands that after we have had part here below in his Grace and in his Sanctification we may one day participate on high of his Eternal Glory So be it The Twenty-sixth SERMON COL CHAP. II. VER XV. Ver. xv Having spoiled principalities and powers which he publickly made a shew of triumphing over them on that Cross DEar Brethren The Cross of our LORD CHRIST which at the first preaching of the Gospel was a scandal to the Jews and the scorn of Gentiles is in truth the greatest mystery of the Wisdom of GOD and matter of highest admiration to Angels and men In it the Supream Majesty hath mixed together with incomprehensible art and reconcil'd most contrary and most incompatible things death and life ignominy and glory condemnation and absolution defeat and victory The Devil having put it in the heart of Judas to betray JESUS and push'd on the Princes of the Jews to take him and deliver him to Pilate who condemn'd him and caused him to dye a cruel death upon a Cross this mortal Enemy of our salvation seemed to have got the day inasmuch as by his artifices he had brought the Prince of Life to so shameful an execution But it succeeded quite otherwise The blow he gave our LORD struck himself and our Saviour by suffering of death overthrew for ever all the power of the Devil as Sampson the Heroe of Israel who when he dyed pulled down and involved in the same ruins some thousands of his enemies This Cross on which JESUS hung was to say truth the instrument of his glory rather than of his ignominy and the trophee of his victory rather than the gibbet of his execution He suffer'd death on it I grant but a death that lasted no longer than three days and got him immortality whereas he there defeated and ruin'd the Devil and all our Enemies without recovery It 's this the Apostle represents to us in the Text where in connexion with that he had said before namely that the LORD effaced the obligation which is contrary to us and abolish'd it and fastned it to the cross he now adds Having spoiled principalities and powers which he publickly made a shew of triumphing over them on the cross Good GOD what a change is this He tells us of the death of CHRIST the most painful the most shameful and most execrable punishment in the world as of a triumph and doth not stick to compare that fatal Tree whereon he suffer'd it to a triumphal Chariot He puts in chains those that put him to death and causeth them to go not for authors or spectators of his sufferings but for part of the pomp of his victory This is the sight my Brethren to which the Apostle inviteth us the triumph not of a Caesar or some other of the World 's great Captains but of the Son of GOD the Father of Eternity In it you shall see this King of Glory riding in a Chariot bath'd all over with his divine victorious blood Isa 63.1.3 and as the Prophet Isaiah yer-while represented him with Princes and people under foot and he marching over them with his garments died red In it you shall see not Soldiers and Commanders in chains but Daemons the Princes of this world bound and
Philosophers defined good by this its refâ—â—â— to our affections and by the vertue it hath to move and attract our desires 〈◊〉 Good is that which all desire And hence it comes that Impostors who 〈◊〉 trade of seducing men have alwaies taken a great deal of care to give their 〈◊〉 vain institutions some shew of goodness being not ignorant that witho◠〈◊〉 they should not be able to gain any mans affections and much less to have any train of followers in the world This is to be seen particularly in religion into wâ—â—â—n never was heresie nor superstition introduced but under the favour of this in posture though spirits of different capacities having medled in the matter there haâ—â— been accordingly a great difference between their cosenages For as those that would make a false stone pass for a Diamond or an Emerald or a Ruby do endeavour as farr as cunning is able to counterfeit the truth to give it the colour the shape the lustre the sparkling and other qualities thereof that by such a feigned resemblance they may deceive simple and unexperienced persons So they that have set themselves upon the corrupting of Religion to the end they might make the opinions and services they promoted be received for sound doctrines and disciplines have above all things taken a great deal of pains to guild over their merchandize and to colour it with some fair and specious pretexts fit to dazle the eyes of men and hide the defects of their doctrine and give it the shew of what in substance it is not It is this that the Apostle S. Paul doth observe here in the documents and commandments of those Seducers whom he undertook in this Chapter For having solidly and admirably refuted that superstitious discipline which they had set a foot and which consisted in a religious worshipping of Angels and in a scrupulous abstinence from certain meats and in the observation of certain festival days for a conclusion he discovers in this last verse the false colours wherewith they did in vain dawb it over He acknowledgeth that it had its true some shew of wisdom but denies that this was sufficient to cover its defects or to oblige the faithful to receive it Their Ordinances said he afore are commandments and doctrines of men Which yet he now adds have some shew of wisdom in voluntary devotion and humility of spirit and in that they do not at all spare the body and have no regard to the satisfying of the flesh It is evident that he speaks of those humane doctrines which he had been mentioning in the verse immediately foregoing and he says first that they have a shew of wisdom Next he represents particularly three things which give them this false shew voluntary service humility of spirit and rough treatment of the body which they did not at all spare These are as it were the three colours which being mingled together by the artifice of the Seducers composed that paint which rendred their doctrine plausible and gave it this false shew of wisdom that beguiled the eyes of the simple In compliance with this distinction we shall treat of three points in this action voluntary service humility of spirit and little care for the body and then consider how error and superstition have always made and still to this day make use of them to glose their inventions GOD grant us to beware duly of them and please for this end so to guide and assist us by His Spirit in discoursing of them as we may all bear away some Edification and Consolation The name of wisdom is great and honourable in the opinion of all people in the world For whereas other Sciences have respect but to natural or humane the relation of wisdom is to Divine things And whereas other knowledges are for the most part unprofitable to him who possesseth them that of wisdom is salutiferous it signifying the skill of conducting ones way aright for the attainment of happiness by the light of some choice and excellent verities Whence it follows that this title of wisdom doth not properly belong but to the knowledge of GOD which He hath given us by His Son in the Gospel the only light that is capable of conducting us to supreme felicity Accordingly you know it is the name that S. Paul does ordinarily give it as when he willeth that the word of GOD dwell richly in us in all wisdom and when he saith elsewhere that he speaks wisdom among them that are perfect calling the same a little after the wisdom of GOD in a mysterie the hidden wisdom and so often elsewhere Now though the doctrine of those who corrupt the Gospel as these Seducers did who S. Paul opposeth in this Chapter be nothing less in reality than wisdom yet so it is that its authors gave it the name and would have it pass in the belief of men for a rare and a beneficial knowledge more worthy of heaven than earth and capable in fine of rendring those that follow it perfect and happy The Apostle acknowledgeth that the doctrine of the Seducers of his time had this shew of wisdom but by his very granting them the shew hâ— denies them the truth of it and his meaning is that that doctrine of theirs had nothing but a false and a deceitful colour of wisdom not the substance and reality of the thing Voluntary service is the first particular that gave these doctrines of the Seducers such a shew They have saith the Apostle some shew of wisdom in voluntary service that is by reason or because of the voluntary service they taught and set a foot the observances and institutions which these men enjoyed as abstinence from certain meats the worshipping of Angels and the like being nothing else but voluntary services A service may be called voluntary two manner of waies First when he that performs it unto GOD doth it with affection and a good will without torment and constraint The love he bears this great and soveraign LORD sweetly bringing his soul under His yoke and disposing him to account whatsoever He hath commanded to be good and delectable In this sense that free and sincere obedience which true believers render unto GOD according to the Gospel may be stiled voluntary because it proceeds not from a spirit of bondage as theirs doth who do serve only because they are afraid but from a spirit of Love and of Adoption crying in their hearts Abba Father Wherefore the Prophet termeth the new people who render this frank and filial service unto GOD Psal 110.3 under the Gospel of the Messiah a voluntary or willing people Thy people saith he speaking to Him shall be a voluntary people or a people of frank willingness in the day that thou shalt assemble thine army in holy pomp It is not in this sense that the Apostle understands the voluntary service he speaks of in this place For first though the terms voluntary service which are taken up
in the French to express what S. Paul hath set down may be so understood yet true it is the Greek word he used in the Original text is never so taken as the intelligent do know Again this kind of Voluntary service doth consist in things which GOD hath expresly commanded but the Service here meant by the Apostle not so We are to know then that the Voluntary service he speaks of is worship which GOD did not by His word oblige men unto nor ever commanded them but they present it Him meerly of their own will subjecting themselves and others to it because it so pleases them without any necessity imposed on GOD'S part who demanded no such thing of them It is Voluntary not in regard of the manner after which it is performed for in this sense as we have said the Service of true Children of GOD may be also termed Voluntary but in regard of it's institution the principle that sets it up and presseth the performance of it being not the Law or the authority of GOD but singly the will of men who of their forwardness undertake to do things to the honour of GOD and for His Service which He for His part never gave order for Whence it comes that the word is in the language of the Greeks ordinarily taken in an ill sense as importing Superstition because it is the property of this vice to invent divers Services of it's self and pretend to pay off the Deity with them But the Apostle pointing here at the thing that gave the Seducers doctrine the shew and lustre which it had it cannot be doubted but he means their Service its being Voluntary and not its being superstitious though indeed it were so too For Superstition being generally decried and known to be a vice 't is clear that in that quality it is not a thing capable of recommending any ones doctrine nor were there ever found Seducers so gross as to profess that their worship was superstitions much less to vant of it and pretend to render it recommendable thereby But Voluntary service doth charm men and please their carnal sense And false Teachers for the most part do not forbear to glory in it and alledge it for a mark of the sublime wisdome of their doctrine There are of it two sorts the one gross and shameless to the highest degree which would make that pass for Service of GOD which He not only hath not commanded but even expresly prohibited as when the Idolaters in the wilderness counted the festival they kept before their Golden Calf and the honours they gave it things which GOD had expresly interdicted for worship performed to the LORD their GOD. Such also in effect was that Religious Serving of Angels which the Apostle taxed afore though it may not be doubted but the Seducers who introduced it did endeavour by divers subtilities to elude those passages of Scripture in which we are forbidden to do Religious Service unto any creature whatsoever The other sort of Voluntary service hath a little more shamefac'dness and modestie then the former when a man ordeineth and if we may so say erecteth into the title of a Divine service the observing of certain things which verily GOD hath not commanded but which neither hath He forbidden as abstinence from certain meats and the observation of certain dayes things which it seems GOD hath neither commanded nor forbidden It is properly to this rank we must assign that Voluntary service which the Apostle intendeth in the Text. For even they who institute such Services of the first sort do not yet own them to be so but pretended that GOD hath not forbidden what they command glossing those passages in which He forbids it and so artificially changing the true and genuine sense of them as they make it believ'd that the objects of their Service are not comprehended in it Now that this gives their Inventions a shew of wisdome as the Apostle here sayes and a lustre fair and plausible in the eyes of carnal men is very clear For first it seems magnifique and Heroical to be uncontented with what GOD hath commanded us for His Service and to have the resolution to exceed it That which He hath commanded being evidently due and of indubitable equity it seems a small mater to do but this because it is simply nothing else then the discharging of what a man ows which does seem to be a vertue not so exceedingly recommendable For whoever heard Panegyriques made in ones praise because he duly payd his debts Accordingly you see that presumptuous young man who is mention'd in the Gospel made no great account of all this For when our Saviour told him simply what GOD commands us in His Law he answers disdainfully Matt. 19.20 that he had kept all those things from his youth as if he had said that was his ordinary his daily practice and that he expected a quite other thing from so great a Teacher But when a man doth what he is not bound to do he is admired as we much more esteem him who gives what he doth not owe then him who simply makes puctual payment of what he doth owe. Besides it seems an act of a great and extraordinary love to GOD to subject that very thing to Him which He hath left free to us The fear of the Cudgel of times makes a Slave do all that his Master hath commanded him but it seems that nothing but love can oblige him to do more Again this very hardiness of daring to set up some certain sort of actions in the Service of GOD hath a kind of I know not what grandeur in it because common sense dictating to us that to ordein Service for Him is properly the act of a Divine authority we presently take them for Divine men who enterprise such a thing It may also be then that character of an humane Spirit which appears in these Voluntary services makes them to be the more esteemed by men every one naturally loving his own productions and favouring his own works Be it for these reasons or for others once certain it is that Voluntary services are ordinarily esteemed and admired by men And you see it clearly by experience of what is done in the communion of Rome For though considering things throughly no man can doubt but Innocence Charity and Justice are much more excellent then those Voluntary observances which are practised among them yet it is evident that much more account is made of these then of the others For the one they call simply good works But the others exceed it They are works of supererogation There was need to forge this new word our common languages having none losty enough to express the extraordinary altitude of their merit Hence it comes that Monks if you believe them are Angels and Demi-gods They are look'd upon as so many Heavenly Jewels so many Starrs and Luminaries as the only Ornaments of the Earth and of their Church
with so rich a portion not envy any of the creatures the perfections and happiness they have Our whole life would be a perpetual feastival whereon free from the travail and turmoil of worldlings contemplating in spirit the glory of the Palace of our LORD meditating His promises breathing after His benefits and enjoying them for the present by faith and Hope we should in repose wait for the blessed day of our glorious triumph But alas how far are we from such a felicity This wretched and perishing earth is the sole object of our minds Our souls are no less fastned to it than our bodies It swalloweth up all our thoughts it possesseth our affections it takes up our cares and our labours and hath the use of all our time We have no desires and love but for the false goods which it sheweth us nor fear and horrour but for the evils wherewith it threatneth us As for Heaven and the things it comprehendeth we are so far from seeking them that we not so much as think of them except it be dreamingly or in manner of a divertisement when we are told of them in this place looking on the stately representations which JESUS CHRIST hath drawn us of them as an empty picture fair indeed and pleasing but good for nought saving to feed our eyes with a short and bootless pleasure not attracting nor engaging our desires This is the cause why our whole life is miserable full of griefs and fears of weaknesses of regrets and infelicities The least strokes overturn us the least losses and slightest afflictions bear us down because not being fastned to Heaven the only firm and sure place of the World we fluctuate exposed to the mercy of all that comes against us And as children cannot be appeased when their puppets are taken from them because they have set all their affection on them so are we seized and do take on when we come to lose some of these toyes of the earth There is no way to comfort us because we have fastned our hearts to them And to say truth our condition is worse than other mens they at least are subject but to the evils that either the infirmity of nature or as they call it the inconstancy of fortune do bring with them whereas besides these the bad Christian who is not a Christian but in name is moreover exposed to the persecution of the World so as to say plainly there is nothing more foolish nor more wretched than he who hath part in the temporal sufferings and hardships of true beleevers and none at all in their consolation or blessedness inasmuch as his profession exposes Him to the hatred of the World and his vice excludes him from the Kingdom of GOD. Awake then ye that are worldly and come once out of so dangerous an errour Let not the trumpet of Heaven the voice of our great Apostle have founded now in your ears in vain Do not add this contempt to your other crimes He hath advertised you of your duty He hath declared the reasons that oblige you to it Take heed lest if you shut your ears against JESUS CHRIST who speaks by His mouth you perish in the end with this earth and the things you seek on it How do you not perceive that you shall never find there the happiness you seek Why hath not the experience of so many millions of persons who daily spend themselves in this vain labour taught you that the things of the earth are all of them but vanities and illusions transient figures which promise pleasure honour and contentment but afford none which do not cure the maladies of the body nor of the soul which infinitely toil out those that seek them and never fill the hearts of those that possess them multiplying their desires and their fears inflaming and envenoming their passions instead of extinguishing them which are subject to infinite mutations which men and elements may bereave you of every moment and which considering the short and uncertain duration of the life we lead here below you can enjoy but a very little time supposing that nothing does deprive you of them before death At that time Matt. 16.26 What will it profit a man to have gained the whole world and lose his own soul It is sure a blindness incredible to one that saw it not I do not say that a Christian who hath hopes of the world to come but that even any reasonable man should adhere with so ardent and obstinate a passion unto such wretched and fruitless things We perceive it and confess it and make the bravest discourses in the World upon it and after all that false lustre which we behold in these things hath such a faculty to bewitch our senses that not a person but lets himself be caught thereby But the worst is that besides errour and vanity there 's in it a tendency to eternal damnation For men may not slatter themselves None can serve two Masters nor look on Heaven and earth both together He that seeks the one must of necessity renounce the other it being no more possible to seek than it 's to find at once the things beneath and those which are above Faithful Brethren choose you and take the better part and leaving worldly men to labour in vain after the things of the earth and to seek in it what they shall never find turn you your hearts and eyes towards Heaven as the Apostle calleth you to do There Christian is the felicity you desire There dwelleth rest and joy and immortality and the perfection of both soul and body These are the only things that are truly worthy of your prayers and your pains Seek them and mind them night and day Give your selves no rest till you have found them and do feel the first-fruits and beginnings of them in your hearts Let these thoughts sweeten your sufferings and consolate your losses T is in vain that you threaten me ye people of the World You cannot deprive me of what I possess nor hinder me from finding what I seek since upon the things of Heaven you have no power Whatever you bereave me of the best part of my treasure and the only part that deserves that appellation will still remain entire to me Let the same thought arm us against all tentations Thou Tempter promisest me the things of the earth but I seek those of Heaven which thou canst not dispose of Though I should lose all I have here below even to this flesh its self yet shall I find it again with a thousand-fold increase in Heaven Let this thought again keep us continually busied in the good and worthy actions of piety charity and honesty Let our manners resemble those of the inhabitants of that divine City which wee seek Let the light of their knowledge the ardency of their love the purity of their affections shine forth now betimes in our lives 'T is that to which that new nature JESUS
notable is the elogium he gives it in saying Covetousness which is idolatry For this title surpriseth us every one well knowing that idolatry and covetousness are to speak properly two different sins the first directly respecting religion and the service of the Deity when men adore a thing which is not the true GOD and render it those religious honours which belong to none but GOD whereas covetousness is a moral sin that consists in an excessive and immoderate adhesion to the goods of this world makes men get them and possess them amiss and contrary to the laws of justice and reason These two things therefore being so different why saith St. Paul that covetousness is idolatry Dear Brethren I answer that he was in no wise ignorant of this nor did he intend in this place to confound these two sins which in divers other places he does most expresly discriminate and distinguish as particularly there where making a list of the principal sinners that shall not inherit the kingdom of GOD he sets down the idolater and the covetous severally and each of them in his rank But aiming here in passing to brand and blast this vice for the giving of us a just horror at it that we might not account it as the greater part of men do a light matter and a lowness and weakness of spirit rather than a crime he qualifies it with the elogium of idolatry improperly I grant and figuratively but very fitly for the discovering of its venoum to us And it is not here alone that he hath done it He brands this vice after the same manner again in the Epistle to the Ephesians where speaking of the covetous he adds the very same thing and says who is an idolater You know saith he that no fornicator nor unclean person nor covetous who is an idolater hath any inheritance in the kingdom of CHRIST and of GOD. Now this proposition that covetousnesse is idolatry may be pertinently resolved two manner of waies First by taking it as signifying simply that it is an abominable thing For inasmuch as there was nothing in all the horrors of Paganism that was more severely prohibited of GOD nor more hated or abhorred among the Jews than idolatry thence it comes that they gave this name to every thing which they would detest and I perceive that even to this day this form of expression is common among them and when they would signifie that a thing is abominable they frequently say It 's an idol or it is idolatry so that we need not wonder if St. Paul who followeth all the idioms and terms of the Jews language hath said here in a like sense that covetousnesse is idolatry to signifie that it 's an horrible and detestable vice We meet with a like expression or rather indeed the same in Samuel when the Prophet to shew Saul how great the horror was of the fault he had committed in not executing punctually the thing GOD had commanded him tells him 1 Sam. 15.23 that to resist an order of the LORD's is a sin of divination that is of witchcraft or magick and not to acquiesce in what He hath commanded is a sin of idols or images that is idolatry There you see by the names of the most abominable sins witchcraft and idolatry he signifies the horridnesse of disobeying the voice of GOD altogether as the Apostle in our Text expresseth the horridnesse of avarice I add in the second place that though covetousnesse be not properly and formally Idolatry yet it hath so much resemblance with it that there is scarce any other sin to which this name doth better agree The idolater looks on his idols with profound veneration so doth the covetous on his goods and coin The one shuts up his idols so the other doth his The one serves an image and the other gold and silver and when the idol is of either of these two metals as they not seldome are they both serve the self-same thing with this difference only that the idolater serves it under one form and one way figured the covetous under another The one offers incense and sacrifices to his idol the other immolates his heart and affections to his Add hereto that the covetous bears more love to the objects of his passion and renders them more service than he doth to GOD He puts his hope in gold and saith to fine gold Thou art my considence And if you thoroughly examine his life you will find that he serves none but Mammon Mammon is then his GOD after the same manner as the Apostle saith else-where that the holly is the GOD of voluptuous men whence follows that it cannot be denied but that he also is an idolater In fine there are two things here to be yet heeded The first is that under the names of these five vices fornication uncleannesse inordinate appetite evil concupiscence and covetousnesse the Apostle signifies not meerly the acts of these sins which are also commonly called by the same names but properly and precisely the internal habits of them as seated in the soul For it 's they properly that are the members of the old man the acts are but his effects and operations His meaning therefore is that we cut them up to the very root that we not only abstain from those vile actions unto which they sway such as they possesse but that we mortifie and extinguish them themselves to the end that these accursed sources or evil being once dried up our life may remain 〈◊〉 and clean from all the ordures and filth of them The other thing is that we must not fancy the Apostle meant to make here an exact enumeration of all the vices of the old man He gives us but a small scantling of them intending we should likewise mortifie all the rest as gluttony drunkennesse and the like For it would be no benefit to us to have cut off one of his members if we let him live in respect of others His life is our death and while he conserves it whole in any of his parts we cannot be in safety Let us labour therefore to extinguish it all Eradicate all its lusts represse all its stirrings and smother all its sentiments Let us make a mortal and irreconcilable war upon this whole brood of monsters Spare we not any one of them Let us exterminate them all as an Anathema Treating them as the ancient Israelites sometime did the accursed nations of Canaan and as the Psalmist would have the little children of Babilon treated Psal 137.9 desiring they might be dash'd against the stones It 's in this case only that cruelty is laudable and that a man may lay aside pity without blame He that hath pity on the members of his old man is cruel to himself to spare them is to destroy ones self and to conserve them is to betray our own salvation This then My Brethren is the mortification which the Apostle requireth of us Neither he nor
utmost and highest point of its perfection in the Heavens when there shall be seen a compleat and Angelical sanctity to shine forth in it with glory and blessed immortality In fine the Apostle doth also briefly touch at both the manner after which and the pattern by which this renovation is wrought in us For the manner of it he saith That this new man is renewed in knowledge thereby shewing that JESUS CHRIST for the communicating of this new Nature which is in Him as in its source unto us doth give us and day by day augment the knowledge of his truth in us for as ignorance and error is the first and principal deformity of the old Man and the cause of all the rest so on the contrary Wisdom and Knowledge is the first and principal lineament of the new Man whereby are formed in us all the other vertues in which it doth consist as Love of GOD and Charity towards men and all the other holy habitudes which depend upon them it being manifest that we love none but the things we know and proportionably to the knowledge we have of them Wherefore the LORD begins the admirable work of his grace hereat And we have an excellent image of this method of his in the first Creation of the World where Moses expresly observes that the first thing GOD created by his Word was Light which is the symbol of Knowledge as darkness is of Ignorance This the Apostle plainly pointeth at elsewhere GOD saith he who commanded the light to shine out of darkness 2 Cor. 4 6. hath shined into our hearts This light of Knowledge once lighted up in our souls by the Spirit of the LORD doth presently expel Vices out of them and shewing us the holy and glorious face of GOD in JESUS CHRIST transforms us into his likeness as saith the same Apostle 1 Cor. 3.18 We all beholding as in a glass the glory of the LORD with open face are transformed into the same image from glory to glory as by the Spirit of the LORD It 's this he meaneth in the Text when he saith of the new Man that it is renewed after the image of him who created it that is of JESUS CHRIST our LORD For he properly is the Pattern by which that new Nature we are made partakers of is formed He is both the Author and Exemplar of it and 't is for this that it is called by his Name to wit the new Man Therefore the Apostle elsewhere to express the end and effect of his Ministry toward the Galatians Gal. 4.19 saith That he travelleth in birth until CHRIST be formed in them He had no other design but to revest them with the new Man Certainly then the new Man is nothing else but JESUS CHRIST formed in us that is nothing else but the form of this holy and blessed LORD engraven and imprinted on us by the seal of his Word and Spirit which is precisely the thing he here calls his Image If you know JESUS CHRIST you cannot be ignorant what this his form and image is JESUS CHRIST is the Saint of Saints a man full of all purity righteousness charity patience constancy and truth and in sum of all the lights of holiness Sure then his form and image can be no other than a genuine representation of these Divine qualities a soul in which appears a goodness an humility an honesty I say not equal for it is not possible to arrive unto so high a perfection but at least semblable and proportionate to his And this is that which S. Paul elsewhere compriseth expresly in two words saying That the new man is created after GOD in righteousness and true holiness Thus you see Brethren what that Old and what this new Man is which the Apostle speaks of in this place The one is the image of the first Adam and the other of the second He commandeth us to put off the old Man with his Deeds and to put on the New a manner of speaking no less elegant than familiar in Scripture which is wont to say of all the things that are found in this or that subject that it is clothed with them As when the Prophets say that GOD is clothed with strength with Glory and with Magnificence that he is cloathed with Justice that he will cloath his Priests with salvation and their enemies with shame that he will cloath the Heavens with darkness and so in a multitude of other places where it is evident that the term Cloathing is taken figuratively to express simply the putting of any thing in such or such a Subject whether it be internally or externally Whence it follows that to put off on the contrary is simply to quit a thing which one had and rid himself of it Thus to put off the old Man is nothing else but to rid our selves of his Vices and of his corruptness to pluck up for instance out of our hearts his covetousness and his ambition and the habitudes of his other sins But the Apostle expresly addeth that we put him off with his deeds that is to say that we not only pluck up out of our hearts the habits of Vices which are as it were the roots and stocks of it but that also we cut off from our lives all the actions whether interior as desires and lustings or exterior as other sins which proceed from the same and are as so many fruits of this accursed plant For to speak properly the old man is one thing and the act of sin that issues from it another The one is the corruptness it self of our nature the other is the effect it produceth The one is as the Plant and the other as its Fruit. For example cruelty or covetousness is one of the very members of the old Man murder or stealing ing are acts of it The Apostle would have us put off the one and the other that neither Vice nor its acts might have any place in us In like manner to put on the new Man is on the other hand to deck and adorn our understanding our will our affections and all the parts of our life with those excellent vertues in which the new man consisteth as we have said afore to endeavour it studiously and take no rest till we have them formed in us and our whole nature be covered and enriched with them But though these two words to put off and to put on be in this passage figuratively taken yet do they shew us notwithstanding against the gross and sensless error of some that as well the old Man as the New do both of them signifie the form and disposition not the substance and very essence of our nature For when a thing is utterly destroyed we do not say it puts off what it had but that it is perisheth And when the substance of a thing is produced altogether of new we say not that it 's cloathed but created so as the Apostle here commanding us to
the honour to be elected of GOD our selves This as doth not compare us with others but with our selves and impoâ—ts as much as if S. Paul had said seeing that or since that you be elected of GOD containing in it this reasoning Such as have the honour to be elected of GOD his Saints and his Beloved ought to be cloathed with humility benignity and meekness Since then you have in JESUS CHRIST the honour to be the Elect the Saints and the Beloved of GOD judge if you 〈◊〉 not obliged to put on all these Vertues We use the word as to the same sense often in our common speech As for example when we say of a good man that he liv'd and dy'd religiously as a Christian that is so as was meet for that quality of Christian which he had and when we advise a young man of good rank to be â—onest in all his conversation as born of a good house and issu'd from a noble and a vertuous Father Of these three qualities which the Apostle here gives the faithful the first is that they are elected of GOD. The election of God is the choice He makes according to his good pleasure of certain persons to call them unto the knowledge of himself and unto the glory of his salvation And this term Election signifies sometimes the resolution he hath taken in his eternal counsel to choose and call them which the Scripture elsewhere calls Eph. 1.11 The determinate purpose of GOD sometimes the execution of this eternal determination when GOD doth in time touch the men of his good pleasure by the efficacy of his Word and Spirit converting them to the faith of his Gospel and separating them by this means from the rest of men who continue in the miserable estate of their nature through their impenitence and unbelief The Apostle in my opinion does comprehend both the one and the other of these two senses when he saith here That we are elected of GOD that is such as he hath chosen and effectively separated from the world according to his determinate purpose calling us unto himself to serve him according to the discipline of his Gospel Now that this quality doth oblige us to put on all the vertues which he recommends unto us in the words following is evident For this very thing is the aim and end of his Election as the Apostle elsewhere informs us when he saith That GOD hath elected us in CHRIST Eph. 1.4 that we might be holy and blameless before him in love And it 's that that Moses yerwhile represented to ancient Israel the type of the new Deut. 26.18 The Lord saith he hath set thee on high this day that is hath raised thee above other Nations by his election that thou might'st be to him a peculiar people and keep his commandments Whence appears how false their calumny is who accuse the doctrine of Election of favouring vice and impenitency If it were so what could have less of reason in it than the Apostles discourse who alledgeth our election to incite us unto the studious pursuance of holiness But it is quite otherwise than these men pretend As GOD's election is the source of sanctification and good works so the asserting and teaching of it is an establishing and a founding of them And they that make their boast of their being elected of GOD but mean time lead a licentious and profane life do mock GOD and men and shall infallibly perish in this false and vain error if they amend not For since GOD's election is never executed without converting a man and sanctifying him and it is not possible on the other hand that any one should know himself elected otherwise than by feeling the real execution of his election it is evidently rashness and a palpable error to imagine that one is elected except he be truly converted unto GOD and indu'd with piety and charity Another quality which the Apostle here gives us is that we are Saints For he is not of the opinion of Rome who calls none Saints but those whom she hath canonized Saint Paul acknowledgeth none for believers who are not Saints Accordingly you know that in the Creed the Church which is the body of all true Christians and not of the canonized only is called holy and the communion of Saints Indeed since there is not a Christian but hath been baptized into JESUS CHRIST and receiv'd the holy Ghost according to the Apostles saying elsewhere Rom. 8. That if any man have not the Spirit of CHRIST he is none of his How can he be a Christian who is not a Saint Seeing both Baptism and the Spirit of CHRIST do sanctifie all those to whom they are truly communicated Now that this quality of Saints or holy Ones doth also oblige us to all the vertues that the Apostle gives us in charge in the following Verses is as clear as the Sun at noon-day For what else is sanctity it self but a piety and an exquisite charity compleat in all its parts and adorned with every vertue Besides by sanctification we are dedicated and consecrated unto GOD so as henceforth we ought not to dispose of our selves but for his service and according to his will which is no other but that we live in all purity honesty and vertue And this is that the LORD signifieth when he so often chargeth his people to be holy You shall he holy unto me saith he for I am holy Lev. 11.44 20.26 and have separated you from other people to be mine The third quality the Apostle gives us here is That we are the Beloved of GOD that is to say those of all men whom he most loveth and dearly respecteth in his Son JESUS CHRIST Since then the love wherewith God honoureth us does oblige us to love him and that we cannot fail of this reciprocal love without herrible ingratitude it is evident that our being the beloved of GOD doth necessarily require of us that we put on all these vertues which the Apostle is about to give us in charge First because it is a necessary and infallible effect of the love we bear to GOD to do what he commands us and he commands us nothing else Joh. 14.15 but the exercising of every vertue If you love me saith he keep my commandments Secondly because true love transformeth him that loveth into the image of the thing loved so as GOD being charity justice and holiness it self it is not possible if we love him truly but that we put on all these divine Vertues Thus you see Believers that the honour we have to be elected of GOD Saints and Beloved doth most strictly oblige us to do what the Apostle commands us that is to embrace all the vertues he is about to represent unto us which he expresseth in one word bidding us put them on that is that we seat them in our hearts and shew them in our lives that we deck our souls with
faithful it mingleth and consociates them changeth them into one body and one spirit gives them the same will and the same affections Now surther it is to form and conserve this holy union among us that the Apostle does recommend to us the peace of GOD in the second part of this Text. Let the peace of GOD saith he hold the first place in your hearts to the which you are called in one body For this peace of GOD is not that which we have with GOD by faith in JESUS CHRIST His Son when as being appeased by the satisfaction of His Crosse He looks upon us in Him with a propitions and favourable eye as a Father and not as a Judge not imputing our sins to us which may be termed Peace of conscience But it is the peace we ought to have with one another all of us living amiably together as children of one and the same Father and heirs of one and the same grace and glory It 's the daughter of Charity and a fruit of that holy and Christian love which binds us perfectly together The Apostle calls it the peace of GOD first because He loves it above all things and upon this account is often stil'd in the Scriptures the GOD of peace hating nothing in the world more than trouble and discord and contentions and wars Secondly because He commands it us every where in His word And lastly because He is the Author of it who gives it and inspires it by His Spirit into all those that are truly His children And the Apostle hath expresly given it this title in this place for the more effectual recommending of it to us and that He might induce us to receive it with the greater respect as a thing of GOD's holy sacred and divine which we cannot violate without offending grievously that Soveraign Majesty to whom it doth belong 〈◊〉 many waies He willeth that this Peace of GOD do hold the chief place in our hearts The term he makes use of in the original is admirably expressive and elegant for it properly signifies to have the super-intendance of a thing to be the judge and arbiter of it to govern and regulate it and give it law That is the Apostle means that this Divine peace be the Queen of our hearts the mistresse and governesse of all your motions that that keeps them in due respect and with-holds them from ever attempting ought that tendeth to violate or disturb it And if the resenting of an offence for instance or an opinion of our own worth or any other such consideration do begin to kindle wrath or hatred or animosity against our brethren or excite some other passion of like nature in our hearts that this Peace do forthwith advance and stay the commotion and agitation of our minds calming the storm and speedily repelling all these sentiments of the flesh as so many incendiaries or evil spirits without giving them entrance or audience That it do enjoyn us and inspire into us humility and patience when we have been offended regret and the making of satisfaction when we have offended any other and cause us to seek carefully after all that it shall judge necessary to maintain amity and good intelligence among us as kind words and obliging deeds banishing both from our mouths and from our manners all that 's apt to cause or keep up our dividing from our neighbours The advertising of us that this is the peace of GOD were enough to perswade us to give it such place in our hearts But that the Apostle might overcome all possible obstinacy he here further represents unto us two considerations besides which oblige us to give it this super-intendency over our souls The one is that we are thereunto called and the other that we are one body For the first you know that our LORD and Master JESUS CHRIST doth every where call us to this Peace of GOD and that He hath given us precepts for it in His Gospel and examples of it in His life For what was there ever in the world more meek and peaceable than this Divine Lamb He contended not Mat. 12.19 nor cryed and His voice was not heard in the streets as the Prophets fore-told of Him He was gentle and lowly in heart He never repulsed any and received sinners with open arms how bad and abominable soever they had been He invited His greatest enemies unto His salvation and offered His grace to the most obstinate and bore their contradictions without answering again and their reproaches with silence and their rage without exasperation and did weep bitterly for that Jerusalem that rebellious City would not know the things of her peace Such is the pattern He gave us commanding us likewise expresly to be sweet Mark 9.50 and simple as doves without gall and without bitternesse and to be in peace among our selves And His Apostles repeat this lesson to us in divers places Rom. 12.8 as St. Paul here and other-where again If it be possible as much as in you lyeth have peace with all men And it 's for this that JESVS CHRIST came into the world even to pacifie Heaven and Earth Jews and Gentiles Isa 2.4 11.6 7 8. to extinguish enmities and wars and change swords into plow-shares and spears into pruning-books to take away the poison of asps and the cruelty of wolves and the fierceness of lions and transform bears and the savagest beasts into lambs Isa 66.12 and make them all live and dwell peaceably and amicably together finally to make peace overflow as a river as the ancient oracles had magnifically foretold Isa 9.5 by reason whereof He is also expresly stiled the Prince of Peace And you know it was the legacy He bequeathed us when He was preparing to dye for us Joh. 14.2 Peace I leave with you said He my peace I give unto you not to speak of the blessing and the dignity He promiseth those that shall love the same Blessed saith He are the Peace-makers Matt. 5.9 for they shall be called children of GOD. After all this who can doubt but He calleth all His unto peace as the Apostle here affirms Since He forms them to it by His voice by His lise by His promises and by the whole design of His Mediatorial Office But besides the command and order He hath given the very estate and condition He hath by His vocation put us in doth manifestly oblige us thereunto and this the Apostle represents unto us in the second place when having told us that we are called unto peace he adds in one body or to express the full and whole force of the Greek words in one only body It 's a doctrine universally received and most expresly asserted in divers places of Scripture that the whole Church doth make up but one only mystical body of which JESUS CHRIST is the head and the faithful are the members being animated under Him with one and the same
he never setting about them but when he may do them in the name of CHRIST For though the nature of them be indifferent the usage of them is not so but must be governed by the good and the evil that may thence redound either to or against the glory of GOD and the edification of men as the Apostle sayes elsewhere All things are lawful for me but all things are not expedient All things are lawful for me but all things edifie not Whence you see 1 Cor. â—0 2â— how vain the pretext of those is who excuse the excess of their habits of their tables and of their houses by the liberty which they pretend the LORD hath left them to clothe and feed and lodge themselves as they think good alledging that He hath not forbidden them Velvet or Silks or Gold or Silver or precious Stones or Tapistry or any sort of Furniture nor excluded from their Tables any kind of Meats or Services they being taken with thanksgiving I grant the use of these things to speak in general is free they all being created of GOD for man Yet this hinders not but each of you ought to observe certain rules about them and this one in particular namely that ye consider whether the thing be such as ye may do it in the name of JESUS CHRIST whether the money you waste in it might not be better employed in the service of His poor or of His Sanctuary whether your making men believe that you are vain glorious or intemperate or voluptuous by clothing or lodging or treating your selves more richly and more magnificently than beseems your condition whether this opinion I say which you give your Neighbours of you does not scandalize them and be not prejudicial unto the name and interests of our Saviour Hence again appears how inexcusable they are that marry with persons of a contrary Religion I confess that Marriage is honourable and that it is not prohibited to any But this action as well as all a Christians others must be done in the name of the LORD JESVS 1 Cor. 7.9 and so much the rather for that it is more important and continues as long as our lives Wherefore the Apostle doth expresly modifie the liberty he gives the believing widow by this exception She is at liberty saith he to marry again only so as it be in the LORD Now judge if it be a marrying in the LORD when you make alliance with a person allienate from your communion who will be a snare to pervert you from it will pluck the name of CHRIST out of your house and consecrate your blood to error and be so far from helping you in the exercises of your piety that the person will disturb them In fine this saying of the Apostle's shews us also what we are to think of Dances and Balls and such other vain pomps of the world If you can truly say that it is in the name of CHRIST you Masque and Dance I will accord that you fail not of your duty in it But if it be clear and manifestly known as it is that the LORD JESUS hath no part in these follies that in them His name is blasphem'd rather than glorified that His Spirit breaths not in them but indeed the Spirit of Satan and the world that scandal is given in them but no edification received confess it a thing contrary to your duty Add not impudence to guilt acknowledge if you be a Christian that it 's a violation of the Apostle's order to participate in such things which neither are nor can be done in the name of our LORD JESUS CHRIST I advertise you particularly of it because we are entring on the season in which the world is won't to give it self the greatest licence for such debauches Dear Brethren let not it's ill examples seduce you Let not the custome of the age nor the pleasing of men induce you to forget the respect you owe to the Apostles voice and the Churches consolation Seek your joys in the service of your LORD and Saviour and in the meditation and expressing of His life and having always before your eyes the love He beareth you the death He suffered for you and the Heaven to which He calleth you love Him with all your heart and whatever you do whether in word or work do it all in the name of this sweet and merciful Saviour rendring thanks by Him to our GOD and Father unto His glory and the edification of your Neighbours and your own Salvation Amen THE FORTY THIRD SERMON ON COLOSSIANS CHAP. III. VER XVIII XIX Verse XVIII VVives be subject unto your own Husbands as is meet in the LORD XIX Husbands love your VVives and be not bitter against them DEAR Brethren As man is subject to a twofold consideration first in regard of his nature simply as he is a reasonable creature secondly in reference to his condition or the rank he holds in humane society that is as either a Master or a Servant a Magistrate or a Subject or the like so he is obliged according to these two different respects to two divers sorts of duties those of the first sort are general and common universally to all men the others of the second do relate but to some certain order of persons only I place in the first rank piety towards GOD honesty temperance justice and charity and such other vertues for which neither sex nor age nor condition doth dispense with any because every man whatever he is otherwayes being a reasonable creature is bound upon that account to practice all those vertues as a perfection and ornament meet for such a nature I reckon among the duties of the second sort the service that bondmen owe their masters the obedience of children to their fathers the dependance of wives in relation to their husbands and the like which pertain as you see only to persons in such conditions and not to all men generally This difference hath produc'd in the Schools of Heathen Sages the distinguishing of active Philosophy into divers parts the first whereof which they call Moral Philosophy or the Ethiques do's explain that first sort of common and general duties the others do treat of the second to wit the Economicks which regulate and form the several different conditions that constitute a family namely husband and wife parents and children master and servants and the Politicks whose task is to expound the devoirs of all the divers orders that compose an Estate as the Prince and the Subject the Magistrate and the Citizen men of the long Robe and of the Sword and the like The Apostles of our LORD in those writings which they have left us where they have unfolded to us the Divine Philosophy of their Master have also followed the same order though their difference otherwayes be very great For they set before us in like manner some general duties which oblige all Christians of what quality soever and in whatever
the complacency she ought to have for her husband fashioning her self to his mind and devesting her own disposition of all she sees offensive to him to put on his affections and manners in every thing as far as piety and honesty will permit bending and accommodating her inclinations and humours in such manner unto her husbands that she may be as a faithful mirrour to him wherein he may see his own image This you will say is difficult Sure it is so But to such as bear their husbands little respect and love and yet more difficult to those that love them not at all She that loves her husband ardently that looks upon him as the head which GOD hath given her as her weal and her honour and her glory will easily discharge this duty yea take pleasure in it it being the nature of true love to transform sweetly and without constraint the person loving into the beloved In fine this subjection comprehends in sequel the cares a wife ought to have of her husband's person and family all which the Scripture compriseth in two words when it termeth her an help which GOD hath given him like unto him that is another himself That she love him constantly be a consolation to him in adversity and an augmentation of joy in prosperity and as the Wise man hath it Pro. 31.12 do him good all the daies of her life That she breed his children the sweet pledges of their amity and union in all probity and form them betimes to the giving him contentment That she keep his house as S. Paul expresly orders govern his family Tit. 2.4 and hold all in it in good order and in the end make account that this is the business to which GOD calleth her even to employ all her cares all her labour and vigilance to the contentment to the welfare and honour of her husband and that it is in this her own glory and felicity doth consist Such is that conjugal subjection which the wife oweth to her husband But the Apostle for the founding and the regulating of it after his giving it in charge to Christian women addeth as is meet in the LORD I say in these words he first foundeth that duty of subjection which the wife oweth to her husband For saying that this is meet in the LORD he sheweth us that the will of GOD is this be performed and that it is His order and institution that the wife be subject to her husband This receiveth evidence first from that particular which we learn from Moses even the LORD's saying expresly to Eve and in her to all women Thy desires shall refer unto thy husband and he shall have dominion over thee Gen. 3.16 The order also which he followed in the creation manifestly proveth that this was His intention For He created Adam first and then afterwards Eve an evident sign that Eve was made for Adam and not he for her And it is for the same end too that he formed Eve of one of the ribs of Adam to shew namely that the woman belongeth to the man that she is his own as being made and form'd of matter that was his and that he hath title to her and a right over her S. Paul hath prudently noted it Adam saith he was first formed and then Eve And elsewhere 1 Tim. 2. â—4 1 Cor. 11.8 9. The man saith he is not of the woman but the woman of the man For neither was the man created for the woman but the woman for the man The nature of both sexes doth teach us the same truth as well as the order and manner of their creation For though both the one and the other be for substance the same being alike rational and capable of immortality yet it is evident that the constitution of woman is more weak and less active nor so proper for government It 's this S. Peter means when he termeth her a weak or fragil vessel And hereto refers 1 Pet. 3.7 Aristot in his Polit. l. 1. c. 8. what the Master of Heathen Philosophers hath left written that the woman reasoneth and conâ—ulteth and deliberateth but more feebly and less resolutely than the man Whence he concludes that her vertue or perfection is to serve and not to rule that is to follow rather than to guide and to obey rather than to command Which is to be understood yet of the generality and the ordinary the natural and legitimate constitution of the one and the other sex it being otherwise very maniâ—est that some women are found not only as much but a great deal more reasonable more vivid and active than some men Upon these reasons all Nations have rightly judged as the Scripture expresly teacheth us that in Marriage the woman ought to be subject no one of those that have receiv'd the institution of Marriage â—â—ing sound but that hath so regulated it S. Paul adds yet another reason drawn from the fault which the woman committed in lending ear to the Serpent and upon it inducing her husband unto disobedience 1 Tim. 2.14 It was not Adam saith he that was seduced but the woman having been seduced was in the transgression For since they both sped so ill upon the husband's obeying of the wife it is very reasonable that the wife resume the first order and without putting of the yoke any more as she did then obey and be subject unto him whom she did so unhappily undertake to govern to the extreme misery of the one and other of them But though all this be true and evident yet I think the Apostle intends here somewhat more For when he ordereth wives to be subject to their husbands as is meet in the LORD by the term LORD he understands according to the ordinary stile of the New Testament not GOD simply but JESUS CHRIST and represents unto them the honour they have of being in the communion of this Soveraign LORD to put them on unto a faithful discharge of this duty For though it be a thing of a bad grace and contrary to the Laws of GOD that the wife should either assume superiority over her husband or however that be refuse him this just subjection yet there is no State nor Religion in which it is more unseemly and less permitted than in the discipline of CHRIST first because He hath discovered and established the dignity and sanctity and indissoluble union of the married state which this subjection appertains unto much more clearly and excellently than ever did any Lawgiver not Moses himself excepted Secondly for as much as He hath far better and much more perfectly formed than any other all His disciples in general unto peace and meekness and humility and women in particular unto that decency and modesty and reservedness which is proper for their sex it is evident that Christian wives are much more obliged to the subjection we speak of which is a thing depending on those vertues than any other persons
at which you shall be examined will have no more complacency for you then for them That LORD whom you see over you is their Creatour and Redeemer as well as yours He hath put them under you but to govern them not to tyrannize over them to have care of them as his creatures and children not to tread them under foot as worms Remember He will treat you as ye shall have treated them You are his servants as they are yours or to say better they are your brethren and ye are not worthy to be so much as His Vassals You and they are one and the same flesh that came out of the earth and unto earth shall return but neither they nor you have any thing in common with GOD. He is in the Heavens and you crawl in the dirt He is the King of Glory and ye are but dust and ashes Yet such is His goodness that notwithstanding this infinite inequality He hath not disdained your nothingness He hath pardoned you your sins He hath washed you in the bloud of his Son He hath forgiven you all your debts He hath communicated to you His divine nature Respect His graces and have no less gentleness and goodness for your own flesh and bloud then this Soveraign LORD hath had for you who were His enemies With what face will you beg mercy of Him if ye be inexorable to your people How can you hope for the grace of your Master if you have none for your Servants I beseech you both have these holy thoughts night and day fore your eyes to the end you may faithfully discharge those mutual duties which the Apostle enjoyns you the one subjection and obedience the others justice and equity both of you living in such an holy correspondence as that the loyalty the respect the humility the submission and the diligence of servants may go in conjunction with the gentleness the gravity the liberality and benevolence of Masters If ye so do you will be happy the families where you live together in this manner will become the wonder of the earth and the honour of the Church The blessing of Heaven will fall continually on them and besides the contentment and repose which this kind of life will give you abundantly for the present it will also bring you hereafter into the possession of the heavenly inheritance But Dear Brethren it is not enough that those Masters and Servants to whom St. Paul particularly speaks do make their profit of his instructions We all have in them what to learn of whatever quality and condition we be For since he would have servants render so exact and so frank an obedience to their Masters according to the flesh judge ye what kind of obedience we owe to that Highest LORD whom we all have in Heaven The Master according to the flesh gave not his servant the being he hath and if he redeemed him he redeemed but his flesh and that at the price of a sum of money only Ours did make us and it 's by His liberality alone that we hold all the being life and motion that we have Nor hath He only created us He hath also redeemed the whole of us our soul and body flesh and spirit not with silver and gold which are corruptible things but with His own precious bloud having voluntarily sacrific'd His life to preserve us from death and give us an happy immortality Never Master had so much right to command His servants as He hath in reference to us Let us obey Him then in all things without reservation and consecrate this whole life of ours to His service the whole whereof we have once and again received from His grace Neither is it with this LORD as with Masters according to the flesh These oftentimes command things unjust or unhonest things contrary to our salvation which we cannot do without destroying our selves He commands us nothing but what is just what is honest and reasonable what is worthy both of Himself and of us Wherefore the most abject bond-servant owes his Master but a limited obedience whereas we owe ours such as is absolute and infinite His yoke is easie and His burthen light He demands no other thing of us but that we love Him and our brethren for His sake that we live honestly and holily that is be happy O ingrateful and execrable creatures that we are if we deny a Master to whom we owe so much so just and so reasonable so beneficial and so blessed an obedience Again judge ye Faithful if the bond-servant ought to obey his Master in singleness of heart with courage and affection as the Apostle says with what ardour promtitude and devotion should we serve ours who is not only allmighty and all-wise but also goodness love clemency and beneficence it self Then as for the bond-man though he ought to serve his Master at all times and in every place yet his Master sees him not always whereas we are ever under the eye of ours He hath a full view of us sees us within and without nor can we hide our selves in any place where He is not present We cannot speak a word nor form the least thought in the secret of our hearts but He 's a witness of it knows the whole assoon as our selves Now sure there is no slave so sottish and shameless but the Master's eye will keep in order and compel unto obedience It such a one be idle or exorbitant he is not so but in the other's absence Since then we have ours alway present what remaineth but that we be never idle that we employ all our time in His service bearing respect to His Divine eye that looketh on us and is over us both day and night Again even when the serving of a man is in question the Apostle would have the slave not serve to please the man meerly so great an integrity and probity doth he require in all our performances Judge then how much more holy and how much more pure from all interest that obedience should be which we render to the LORD JESUS GOD blessed for ever Undoubtedly they that serve Him to please men to gain their esteem and acquire a reputation for sanctity among them or to draw thence any other profit they I say beside their being ridiculous and vain do commit also an huge and an inexcusable sacriledge profaning the Name of GOD and the sacred acts of religion Matt. 6.2 and most unrighteously abusing them for worldly ends Such are those hypocrites that fast and pray and hear the word of GOD and celebrate His Sacraments and give alms to be seen and had in honour that in short serve not GOD but to please men They saith CHRIST have their wages They are paid they have nothing more to look for at GOD's hands For such vain and deceitful service they shall have no other reward but that vain and deceitful breath which they have coveted and sottishly preferred to the glory of