he is no Worshipper of God but a Malicious Blasphemer of him he pretends to no manner of Worship he intends no such thing towards God though he promotes Idolatry in others yet does what in him lies to eclipse his Glory altogether and to set up himself for the God of this world The Devil would be a God to this end that Wickedness may be accounted Godliness receiving its denomination from Satan usurping the name and title of God But from such a God and such Godliness good Lord deliver us Therefore that we may have clear distinct apprehensions of the only True God let us keep the eye of our Faith fixed upon Christ in all the acts of Worship we perform unto God believing him and him only to be the True Living God who hath Manifested himself to us in the Flesh of Christ. CHAP. VI. To know this only True God to be OVR God 1. WHAT it is for God to be our God God as Creator and Sovereign Lord of Heaven and Earth might have dealt with his creature Man in a way of Absolute Prerogative commanding duty without promising any Reward being Debtor to none he might without shewing any cause why have given to or taken from man what he pleased all was his own whether he gave or took away he did with his own as he pleased Thus he might have disposed of Man from time to time according to the secret good pleasure of his Will not made known to us but by the unavoidable events of it upon us This had been a Government not so suitable to our rational Natures to which God was resolved to accommodate himself in all his dealings with us therefore having made Man a knowing Creature he reveals his Will to him tells him what he expects from him and binds himself by Covenant to continue man in Life as long as he continues in his Obedience which his perfect State inclined him to Thus God set Life and Death before him left him to his choice what he did he must do knowingly and willingly if he injure himself the whole blame must lye upon himself he could not rebel against God but he must rebel against his own Reason and wilfully act against his own Light I say wilfully For there was nothing in his perfect Nature that could incline him to the Sin he committed his will chose it without any direction from the understanding for it was absoltuely impossible that the perfect understanding of man in Innocency should be guilty of such a mistake and dictate such a wickedness no the Devil dictated it and the mutable will of man was deceived by the Tempter and fell under a Curse from that time forward the law could do nothing but Curse fallen man who had now lost his legal Interest in the Love and Favour of God There is nothing due to a Sinner by Law but Death the wages of sin is death by nature we are Children of wrath fallen under the heavy displeasure of God and must Perish Eternally unless some means be found out to reconcile us to God again some dayes-man to umpire the business between God and us and to take up the quarrel Christ undertook this to make our peace with God to bring us nigh by his blood shed for the remission of our sins that God being pacified towards us might become our God and loving Father ceasing from his anger receiving us into a state of Grace and Favour with himself God lost none of his Power over us when we fell 't is so far from that that we fell into the hands of the living God sin fitted us for destruction Rom. 9. 22. Laid our Necks as it were upon the block exposed us to the stroke of Divine Vengeance In respect of power God is God over all still but in respect of Grace he ceases to be God i. e. a gracious God to those who are shut out of his love having forfeited all their Interest in it When God comes to a sinner and says as to Abraham Gen. 17. 7. I am thy God 't is as much as if he should say what I am in my self I 'll be on thy behalf I 'll be all in all to thee I 'll confer all blessings temporal and spiritual upon thee I 'll communicate all good to thee Grace and Protection I ll be with thee whereever thou goest to bless thee Alas What if God be Almighty and Alsufficient in himself unless he will help me and do good to me what am I the better therefore says God whatever I am have or can do shall be for thy good my Power Wisdom Goodness Mercy shall be applied to thee and thine for Blessing and Salvation Psal. 144. 15. I will be thy God In words a short promise but in sense the most ample promise in the whole Bible God here is taken relatively as he stands related to his people and his people to him he is the God of such a people and they are the people of such a God Hos. 2. 23. God dwells among them Exod. 29. 45 46. As a God nigh at hand to help them ready upon all occasions to do them good he does not only dwell but walk among us he goes into every room of the House takes care of every thing keeps all in good order Levit. 26. 12. 2 Cor. 6. 16. Zech. 2. 10 11 12. This dwelling denotes not only the general presence of his Power but the special presence of his Grace So he was with Joseph Gen. 39. 2. And when he withdraws his favour and assistance he is said not to be among us Numb 14. 42. Then they are smitten by their Enemies but when God appears then their Enemies fly before them Psal 79. 9 10. For God to be our God and our Father secures us to eternity whatever Chastisements we pass through all will issue well 2 Sam. 7. 14. 15. if God be our God and Father For God to be our God is equivalent to other expressions of Scripture of the like import viz. to be for us Rom. 8. 31. To be on our side Psal. 124. 1 2. To be round about us as the Mountains about Jerusalem Psal. 125. 2. To be with us in us always nigh at hand to help us God is ours when all that he hath is ours for our use and benefit 2. How comes God to be our God This comes originally from himself because he truly bestows himself upon us in the new Covenant by vertue of which he becomes ours and we become his Gen. 17. 7. God and the Saints have a propriety in each other Heb. 8. 10. I will be to them a God and they shall be to me a people God gives himself to us and then we resign up our selves to him Isa. 44. 5. We must prove God to be ours by some grant or deed of gift which God has made of himself to us in his word before we can lay claim to him As God became the God of Abraham by Covenant and
c. In the day thou eatest thou shalt die Nothing does establish this Law and give it its full course towards Believers but faith in Christ Jesus who was made a curse and died according to Law for our sins and being risen again he brings those whom he freed from the curse of the Law under the blessing of the Gospel giving eternal Life as a free-gift to all who thankfully receive it from his hand by faith owning him as the Author and Donor of it 3. The nature of the Offence as committed against an infinite God requires a price equivalent to it of infinite value none but God could satisfie God the wrath of God is asswaged by the blood of God and that he might bleed he became Man the Second Person of the Trinity as incarnate died for man tasted death for us in our nature which he still kept hypostatically untied to his own Divine Person for Christ by dying did not lay down humane Nature but humane Life only which he took up again and now lives for ever as a quickning Spirit communicating eternal Life to Believers through his humane nature now glorified in Heaven Therefore Christ is said to be our life Col. 3. 4. And this life is in his son 1 John 5.11 Hid with Christ in God Col. 3. 3. The life which we derive from mere humane nature will quickly fail but the life which we derive by faith form the Divine Person of the Son of God is everlasting John 3. 16. As the father hath life in himself so hath he given to the son to have life in himself John 5. 26. i. e. He is life essentially the essence of the Deity is communicated by the Father to Christ incarnate and so he becomes the Fountain of life to us therefore let all those who hope to inherit eternal life join themselves by faith to Christ the only Fountain of life How little of this hidden life does appear in the effects of it among Professors We live more by sense than faith very solicitous about natural life but how few do carry it as those who have eternal life abiding in them 1 John 3. 15. Living in the flesh by the faith of the Son of God Gal. 2. 20. Who fell a Sacrifice for our sins but rose again and now lives for ever And gives eternal life to as many as the father hath given him John 17. 2. He has undertaken to the Father to draw all the Elect into a participation of that eternal life which he as man possess now in Heaven and because he lives we shall live for ever in him The Second person in the Trinity died as a man in our human nature to satisfie the Law and to evidence the reality of his death he lay buried three days in the Grave he was alive as God when dead as Man what a profound Mystery is this that the Deity of Christ should suffer his human Body to fall under the power of death for three days this shews the strength of sin the strength of the law and the strength of the wrath of God that so great a man as Christ was could not stand under and live die he must by the sanction of the law being found in the likeness of sinful flesh Rom. 8. 3. bearing our sins in his own Body on the Tree but the dignity of his person was such and the extremity of his sufferings so great that his three days death was equivalent to eternal death he did that in three days which a damned sinner in Hell cannot effect to eternity for that which is doing to eternity can never be actually done and compleated i. e. Christ gave full satisfaction to the Law in three days and therefore could not longer be detained in the Grave there was no Law nor Reason for it having paid the utmost farthing of our whole Debt the Prison-doors were opened and Christ let out That which keeps the Damned in Hell for ever is because they can never fully satisfie the law of God by all their sufferings therefore they must suffer on still to eternity but Christ by one offering hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified Heb. 10. 14. Christ could have chose whether he would have died or no but for this end he came into the World and did voluntarily yield up himself to the Death of the Cross but rising the Third Day he lives for ever and has brought eternal life into human Nature to be communicated to all his Members who cannot forfeit that life which they derive from the second Adam as we all did that which we derived from the first Adam In Adam all die and in Christ all are made alive 1 Cor. 15. 22. CHAP. II. To whom was this PRICE paid FIfthly To whom was this Price paid viz. Into the hands of God the Father to appease his wrath under which we were Joh. 3. 36. God's justice requires this 't is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the judgment of God that sinners are worthy of death Rom. 1. 32. To this end Christ is our propitiation Rom. 3. 25. Reconciling God to us that we may be received into his favour again hence God declares in the new Covenant I will be merciful to their unrighteousness and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more Heb. 8. 12. Sing O ye heavens c. Isa. 44. 23. vide That satisfaction that Christ gave to the Justice of God lay in his bearing the Punishment of our sins which is the wrath of God in all the dreadful effects of it 2 Cor. 5. 21. 1 Pet. 2. 24. He was made a curse for us Gal. 3. 13. Died for us Mat. 20. 28. Isa. 53. 5. Was cut off for our sins Dan. 9. 26. Death was required to make satisfaction for sin In the day thou eatest c. The Wages of sin is death Rom. 6. 23. There is no escaping this death for us but by dealing with the Justice of God in some way that may satisfie Justice and save the sinner this Christ undertook and by his own Death effected for us He gave himself for our sins Gal. 1. 4. His Blood was the Price of our Redemption Price here is not taken as vulgarly for Money but whatever may satisfie him in whose hands the captive is that is the Price of Redemption God does not seek to make a gain of us that which he stand upon is the vindication of the honour of his Law and Justice the maintaining his Truth and Faithfulness To declare his righteousness that he might be just and the justifier of him which believeth ion Jesus Rom. 3. 26. Christ did not pay the Price of our Redemption to the Devil but to God the Father who had power to condemn us and as a Judge to detain us in prison till his Justice was satisfied therefore Christ deals with the Law-giver takes the penalty upon himself Whilst the condemning power of the Law is in force against us the Devil has a right in
witness whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son and with a pure conscience 2 Tim. 1. 3. void of offence towards God Acts 24. 16. In simplicity and godly sincerity 2 Cor. 1. 12. When with our minds we serve the law of God Rom. 7. 25. God is a Spirit and will be Worshipped in spirit and truth You have reason to enure your selves to this Spiritual worship because ere long you will be all Spirit when you have laid down these earthly tabernacles I mean it is the will of God that the Souls of men should after death live a while out of the body in a separate state till the Resurrection conversing with an innumerable company of Angels and Spirits of just men made perfect Though Believers now are Spiritually joined to the general Assembly of the First-born and in the apprehensions of their Faith do rejoyce in that relation they stand in to the Church-triumphant yet after death they will have actual communion with those blessed Spirits above though we cannot so clearly apprehend what this happy Paradisical state is after death yet those who are spiritually minded conceive so much of it by Faith as makes them long to be dissolved and to be with Christ they grow weary of all earthly converses waiting till their change comes that they may enter into rest from all their Labours and from that hard travel of Soul which they cannot be freed from till their warfare be fully accomplish'd then they put off their Armour as more than Conquerors and sit down in an everlasting Peace with palms in their hands and crowns upon their heads triumphing in the Grace of Christ to all Eternity Could we look through the dark Entry of the Grace into Eternity lifting up our heads within the Vail we should see a Glorious Light that would dazzle our eyes we should have a stronger taste of the powers of the world to come The wiser sort of Heathens were not without some thoughts of a future happy estate they did praesentire in posterum They had some bodings in their minds of some great good or evil that should befal them after death What a shame is it for Christians to be so little affected with the future eternal state of their Immortal Souls Believers while they are in this world are joyned to the Lord in one Spirit i. e. in one spiritual body or in the same spiritual nature with Christ Heb. 2. 11. We live the life of Christ the Head and the Members being acted by the same Spirit Christians have not every one a diverse spirit as every man hath a divers Soul numerically distinct from the Soul of another man but as all Members of the Body have the same Soul though each of them divers operations Rom. 12. 4. so we have all of us one and the same Spirit though the operations of it be divers 1 Cor. 12. 4 13. Therefore if there be any fellowship of the Spirit let us glorifie God in our bodies and in our spirits which are God's CHRIST The ONLY MEDIATOR OF THE NEW COVENANT HEB. XII 24. And to Jesus the Mediator of the New Covenant BEfore I speak to the Words of the Text I shall premise Two Things 1. Compare the Covenant of Grace with the Covenant of Works shewing in what they agree and in what they differ 2. Compare the New Covenant with the Mount Sinai-Covenant CHAP. I. Christ the ONLY Mediator c. FIRST I shall Compare the Covenant of Works with the Covenant of Grace in sundry particulars 1. The Covenant of Grace frees a Sinner from two things which by the Covenant of Works are in force against him 1. From the Curse 2. From perfect Obedience as a Condition of life to be performed by man himself My meaning is That the Covenant of Grace does not take away the Condition of perfect obedience but only the Performance of it by us It is enough that Christ hath performed it for us by whose Obedience we are made Righteous 2. The Covenant of Grace is so far a friend to the Covenant of Works or rather to the Good Works commanded by that Covenant that it takes in all the moral Duties of that Covenant they are as much our Duty now under the Gospel as they were under the Law and our coming short in any of them is as much our sin now as then we ought as much to strive against it nay which is more than could be expected under the Law we are called to repent of it The Law neither gave Grace to repent neither did it admit of any Repentance You see how little countenance the Covenant of Grace rightly understood gives to Licentiousness how much it promotes Holiness even the perfection of Holiness For when all the Grace of that Covenant is given forth it will issue in Perfection then the Saints will be perfect The reason why under the Gospel imperfect Obedience is accepted is not because the Imperfections of it are approved but because they are pardoned and covered 3. The Covenant of Works shews what man must do to be justified The Covenant of Grace what a justified man ought to do how he should carry himself ever after towards God Holiness of life by the Covenant of Works went before Justification as the procuring meritorious cause of it but according to the Covenant of Grace it is the consequent or effect of Justification 4. The Covenant of Grace in the application of it to us begins in the pardon of sin No Grace reaches us till pardoning Grace begins with us we are under a curse till then concluded or shut up under wrath but pardoning Mercy opens the door for all manner of Mercies to enter in turns the whole stream and course of God's Grace towards us Blessed is the man whose transgression is forgiven c. Psalm 32. 1. This leads the way to all other blessings 5. In the Covenant of Grace God declares what he will be to us and do for us and also what he will enable us to be to him and to do for his Glory his free Grace undertakes both Parts of the Covenant 6. The Covenant of Grace presupposes full satisfaction made by Christ for all our sins against the Covenant of Works else God would not be just in justifying a Believer Rom. 3. 25 26. 7. The Covenant of Grace finds nothing in man to commed him to God but what it brings along with it To suppose any preparatory qualifications conditions causes or motives to make way for us into the favour of God does quite overthrow the nature of free Grace and take off greatly from the glory of it 1. None can have an interest in the Covenant of Grace or be said in a Gospel sence to be in Covenant in whom the essential parts of the Covenant are not already in some measure fulfilled viz. To have the Law written in their heart to have a right Spirit put into us to own God for our God to delight in