design but this certainly and effectually does as being not only the Wisdom but Secondly The Power of God too the first Infallible the other Irresistible In a word the Wisdom here spoken of is a Messenger which always goes as far as sent an Instrument which never fails or lurches the Great Agent who imploys it either in Reaching the End He directs it to or in Finishing the Work He intends it for So that in short there could not be an higher and a nobler Elogy to express the Gospel by than by representing it to us as the Wisdom of God For as Wisdom in general is the Noblest and most Sublime Perfection of an Intellectual Nature and particularly in God Himself is the Leading Ruling Attribute prescribing to all the rest so a Commendation drawn from thence must needs be the most glorious that can possibly pass upon any Action or Design proceeding from such an One. And the Apostle seems here most peculiarly to have directed this Encomium of the Gopel as a Defiance to the Philosophers of his Time the Flustring Vain glorious Greeks who pretended so much to magnify and even Adore the Wisdom they professed and with great modesty no doubt confin'd wholly to themselves A Wisdom I think little to be envyed them being such as none who had it could be the better nor consequently the wiser for And thus much for the first Thing contained in the Words and proposed from them namely That the Gospel is the Wisdom of God I proceed now to the Second which we shall chiefly insist upon and that is concerning the Mysteriousness of it as That it is the Wisdom of God in a Mystery For the prosecution of which we shall enquire into and endeavour to give some Account of the Reasons so far as we may presume to judge of them why God should deliver to Mankind a Religion so full of Mysteries as the Christian Religion certainly is and was ever accounted to be Now the Reasons of this in general I conceive may be stated upon these two Grounds First The Nature and Quality of the Things treated of in the Christian Religion And Secondly The Ends to which all Religion both as to the General and Particular Nature of it is designed with relation to the Influence which it ought to have upon the minds of Men. And first of all For the Nature of the Things themselves which are the Subject matter of the Christian Religion there are in them these three Qualifications or Properties which do and must of Necessity render them Mysterious Obscure and of difficult Apprehension As First Their surpassing Greatness and Inequality to the mind of Man The Christian Religion as to a great part of it is but a kind of Comment upon the Divine Nature an Instrument to convey right Conceptions of God into the Soul of Man so far as it is capable of receiving them But now God we know is an Infinite Being without any Bounds or Limitations of His Essence Wonderful in His Actings Inconceivable in His Purposes and Inexpressible in His Attributes which yet as Great as they are if severally taken give us but an Incomplete Representation of Him He is another World in Himself too high for our Speculations and too great for our Descriptions For how can such Vast and Mighty things be crowded into a little finite Understanding Heaven I confess enters into us as we must into That by a very narrow Passage But how shall the King of Glory whom the Heavens themselves cannot contain enter in by these Doors by a Weak Imagination a slender Notion and a contracted Intellect How shall these poor short faculties measure the Lengths of His Eternity the Breadth and Expansions of His Immensity the Heights of His Prescience and the Depths of His Decrees and last of all that Unutterable Incomprehensible Mystery of Two Natures United into one Person and again of one and the same Nature diffused into a Triple Personality All which being some of the Prime Fundamental matters treated of in our Religion how can it be otherwise than a Systeme of Mysteries and a knot of dark inexplicable Propositions Since it exhibits to us such Things as the very Condition of our Nature renders us Uncapable of clearly understanding The Socinians indeed who would obtrude upon the World and of late more daringly than ever a New Christianity of their own Inventing will admit of nothing Mysterious in this Religion or such as the Natural Reason of Man cannot have a clear and Comprehensive perception of and this not only in defiance of the express Words of Scripture so frequently and fully affirming the contrary but also of the constant universal sense of all Antiquity Unanimously confessing an Incomprehensibility in many of the Articles of the Christian Faith So that these bold Persons stand alone by themselves upon a new bottom and an Upstart Principle not much above an Hundred years old spitting upon all Antiquity before them and as some have well observed of them who have wrote against them are the only Sect of Men in the World who ever pretended to set up or own a Religion without either a Mystery or a Sacrifice belonging to it For as we have shewn that they deny the first so they equally explode the latter by denying Christ to be properly a Priest or His Death to have been a Propitiatory Oblation for the Sins of the World And now are not these blessed New Lights think we fit to be encouraged courted and have Panegyricks made upon their Wonderful Abilities forsooth Whilst they on the other side are imploying the utmost of those abilities such as they are in Blaspheming our Saviour and Overturning our Religion But this is their hour and the Power of Darkness For it is a Truth too too manifest to be denied That there have been more Innovations upon and Blasphemies against the Chief Articles of our Faith published in this Kingdom and that after a more Audacious and Scandalous manner within these several years last past than have been known here for some Centuries of years before even those times of Confusion both in Church and State betwixt Forty One and Sixty not excepted And what this may produce and end in God only at present knows and I wish the whole Nation may not at length feel Secondly A second Qualification of the Chief Things treated of in our Religion and which must needs render them Mysterious is their Spirituality and Abstraction from all Sensible and Corporeal Matter Of which sort of Things it is impossible for the Understanding of Man to form to it self an exact Idea or Representation So that when we hear or read that God is a Spirit and that Angels and the Souls of Men are Spirits our Apprehensions are utterly at a loss how to frame any Notion or Resemblance of them but are put to float and wander in an endless Maze of Guesses and Conjectures and know not certainly what to fix upon For in this Case
even the Council of Nice have condemned this And all those Scriptures which make Christ either One with or equal to the Father clearly confute and overthrow so absurd as well as blasphemous an Assertion Let this therefore be fixed upon that Christ was the Root or Original of David as he was of all Mankind besides Namely in respect of His Divinity of that Infinite Eternal Power which displayed it self in the Works of the Creation For by him all things were made as the Evangelist tells us Iohn 1.3 But how ready natural Reason will be to rise up against this Assertion I am not Ignorant and how that Iesus of Nazareth a Man like our selves should be accounted by Nature God the Creator of the World Omniscient Omnipotent and Eternal is look'd upon by many as a Proposition not only false but foolish and fitter to be laugh'd than disputed out of the World this also is no surprize to us But then on the other side That this is a thing not to be founded upon or to take its rise from the bare discourses of Reason he must be very much a Stranger to Reason Himself who shall venture to deny for if it may be proved by Reason as I doubt not but it may that the Scripture is the Word of God addressed to Men and consequently ought to be understood and interpreted according to the familiar natural way of construction proper to humane Writings then I affirm that to deny Christ to be naturally God is irrational when His being so is so frequently asserted throughout the whole Scripture and that in as clear terms as it is possible for one Man to express his Mind by to another if it were his purpose to declare this very Thing to Him And therefore I have often wondred at the preposterous Tenets of Socinus and that not so much for his denying the natural Deity of our Saviour as that he should do it after he had wrote a Book for the Authority of the Scripture For upon the same reasons that He and his Sect deny the Deity of Christ I should rather deny the Scripture to be of Divine Authority They say for Christ to be God is a thing absurd and impossible from which I should argue that that Writing or Doctrine which affirms a thing absurd and impossible cannot be true and much less the Word of God And that the Gospel affirms so much of Christ we may appeal to the judgment of any impartial Heathen who understands the Language in which it is Written But he who first denies the Deity of Christ as absurd and impossible and thereupon rejects the Divine Authority of the Scripture for affirming it may be presumed upon the supposal of the former to do the latter very Rationally So that he who would take the most proper and direct way to Convince such an one of his Heresy if there be any convincing of one who first takes up his Opinion and then seeks for Reasons for it must not I conceive endeavour in the first place to Convince him out of Scripture That Iesus Christ is God but turn the whole force and stress of his Disputation to the proof of this That the Scripture is the Word of God to Mankind and upon that account ought to be interpreted as the Writings of Men use and ought to be and if so he who will make sense of them must grant the Divinity of Christ to be clearly asserted in them and irrefragably inferred from them In short if the Adversaries of Christ's Divinity can prove Christ not to be God they must by consequence prove that the Scriptures Naturally and Grammatically interpreted are not the Word of God But on the contrary the Church being assured that the Scriptures so interpreted are the Word of God is consequently assured also that Christ is and must be God Nevertheless if according to the unreasonable demands of the Men of this Sect this and all other Mysteries of our Religion should be put to answer for themselves at the Bar of Humane Reason I would fain know wherein consists the Paradox of asserting Christ to be God For no Man saies that his Humane Nature is his Divine or that he is God as he is Man But we assert that he who is God is also Man by having two Natures united into one and the same Subsistence And if the Soul which is an Immaterial Substance is united to the Body which is a Material though the case is not altogether the same yet it is so very near that we may well ask what Repugnancy there is but that the Divine Nature may as well be united to the Humane I believe if we reduce things to our way of Conception we shall find it altogether as hard to conceive the Conjunction of the two former as of the two latter and this notwithstanding that other Difference also of finite and infinite between them for why a finite and an Infinite Being may not be United to one Another by an Intimate and inseparable Relation and an Assumption of the finite into the Personal subsistence of the Infinite I believe it will be hard for any one to give a Solid and Demonstrative Reason For Scoffs and Railery the Usual Arguments brought against it I am sure are not so But I forget my self for the Persons here disputed against believe not the Soul to be either immaterial or naturally immortal but are much the same with the Sadduces and upon that account fitter to be crush'd by the civil Magistrate as destructive to Government and Society than to be confuted as meerly Hereticks in Religion I conclude therefore against the Scoffs of the Heathens the Disputations of the Jews the Impiety of Arius and the Bold Blasphemous Assertions of Socinus that the Man Christ Jesus Born at Bethlem of the Virgin Mary is God God by Nature the Maker of all Things the Fountain of Being the Ancient of Days the First and the Last of whose Being there was no Beginning and of whose Kingdom there shall be no end And in this one Proposition the very Life and Heart of Christianity does consist For as That there is a God is the grand Foundation of Religion in general So that Iesus Christ is God is the Foundation of the Christian Religion and I believe it will one day be found that he who will not acknowledge Christ for his Creator shall never have him for his Redeemer Having thus shewn how Christ was the Root and Original of David pass we now to the next thing proposed which is to shew Secondly That He was His Off-spring too and so having asserted his Divinity to clear also his Humanity That the Christian Religion be True is the Eternal Concernment of all those who believe it and look to be saved by it And that it be so depends upon Jesus Christ's being the true promised Messias the grand and chief thing asserted by him in his Gospel and lastly Christ's being the true Messias depends upon
for all this they will still make Christ a Deceiver they must introduce upon Mankind new Principles of Acting cancel and overturn the old acknowledged methods of Nature and in a word either affirm that Christ was not a Man or that he was influenced by Ends and Inclinations contrary to all the rest of Mankind one of which must unavoidably follow but neither of them ought to be admitted where Sense or Reason is so much as pretended to And thus I have at length finished what I first proposed to be discoursed of from these Words He came to His Own and His Own received Him not In which that Men may not run themselves into a dangerous mistake by thinking the Jews the only Persons concerned in these Words and consequently that the Guilt here charged upon them could affect None else we must know that although upon the score of the Natural Cognation between Christ and the Jews the Text calls them by that appropriating Character His Own and accordingly speaks of His coming to them as such yet that all the Nations of the World who have had the Gospel preached unto them are as really His Own as any of the Race of Abraham could be if those may be called His Own whom He had so dearly bought and consequently that we are as capable of having Christ come to us as the Jews themselves were And accordingly he actually has and every day does Come to us not in the same manner indeed but to the same Purpose Not in the form of a Servant but with the Majesty of a Saviour that is to say He comes to us in His Word in His Sacraments and in all the benefits of His Incarnation and those exhibited to us with as much reality and effect as if with our very Eyes we beheld the Person of our Benefactor And then on the other hand as we are altogether as capable of His Coming to us as his Kindred and Contemporaries the Jews themselves were so are we likewise as Capable of not Receiving Him as those Wretches were or could be And therefore let no Man flatter Himself with reference to Christ as the Jews in much the like case did with reference to the old Prophets boasting forsooth that had they lived in the days of their Fathers they would have had no hand in the bloud of those Holy Messengers of God Matth. 23.30 Let no vitious Person I say though never so noted and profest a Christian conclude from hence that had he lived when and where our Saviour did nothing could have induced him to use Him as those Miscreants had done For though I know that such Men as bad as they are do with great confidence averr all this and think themselves in very good earnest while they do so yet as in general he who thinks he cannot deceive himself does not sufficiently know himself So in this particular case every Hypocrite or wicked Liver professing Christianity while he thinks and speaks in this manner is really imposing upon himself by a false perswasion and would though he may not know so much have born the very same Malignity towards our Saviour which those Jews are recorded to have done and under the same Circumstances would have infallibly treated Him with the same Barbarity For why did the Jews themselves use Him so Why because the Doctrines He preached to them were directly contrary to their Lusts and corrupt Affections and defeated their expectations of a Wordly Messias Who should have answered their sensual desires with the Plenties and Glories of such an Earthly Kingdom as they had wholly set their gross Hearts and Souls upon Accordingly Let us now but shift the Scene and suppose Christ in Person preaching the same Doctrines amongst us and withall as much hated and runn'd down for an Impostor by the whole National power Civil and Ecclesiastical as it then fared with him amongst the Jews and then no doubt we should see all such Vitious Persons finding themselves prick'd and galled with his severe precepts quickly fall in with the stream of publick Vogue and Authority and as eagerly set for the taking away His life as against Reforming their own To which we may further Add this That our Saviour himself passes the very same Estimate upon every such wicked Professor of His Gospel which he then did upon the Jews themselves in that his irrefragable Expostulation with them Why call you Me Lord Lord and do not the things that I command you Luke 6.46 implying thereby That this was the greatest Hostility and Affront that Men could possibly pass upon him And no doubt but the Jews themselves who avowedly rejected Christ and his Doctrine out of an allmost invincible prejudice infused into them by their Teachers and Rulers concerning the utter inconsistency of both with the Mosaick Constitution were much more excusable before God than any Christians can be who acknowledging the Divine Authority both of his Person and his Gospel do yet reverse and contradict that in their Lives and Actions which they avow in their Creeds and solemn Declarations For he who prefers a base pleasure or profit before Christ spits in his Face as much as the Jews did And he who debauches his immortal Soul and prostitutes it to the vile and low services of Lust and Sensuality Crucifies His Saviour afresh and puts him to as open a shame as ever Pontius Pilate the High Priest or those mercenary Tools the very Souldiers themselves did They do not indeed pierce His Side but what is worse they strike a Dagger into his Heart And now if the passing of all these Indignities upon One who came into the World only to save it and to Redeem those very Persons who used him so is not able to work upon our Ingenuity should not the consequences of it at least work upon our Fears and make us consider whether as we affect to Sin like the Iews it may not be our Doom to suffer like the Iews too To which purpose let us but represent to our selves the woful estate of Ierusalem bleeding under the Rage and Rapine of the Roman Armies together with that Face of Horrour and Confusion which then sat upon that wretched People when the casting off their Messias had turned their Advocate into their Iudge their Saviour into their Enemy and by a long refusal of his mercy made them ripe for the utmost Executions of his Iustice. After which proceeding of the Divine Vengeance against such Sinners should it not one would think be both the Interest and Wisdom of the stoutest and most daring Sinners in the World forthwith to make Peace with their Redeemer upon his own terms And as hard a lesson as it seems to take his Yoak upon their Necks rather than with the Jews to draw His Bloud upon their Heads especially since one of the two must and will assuredly be their Case For the methods of Grace are fixed and the measures stated And as little allowance of Mercy will
suffering for Sin but his being punished for Sin And that I am sure is spoke so plain and loud by the Universal Voice of the whole Book of God that Scripture must be Crucified as well as Christ to give any other tolerable sence of it But since Heresy has made such bold invasions upon those Sacred Writings we will consider both those sences which these words are asserted to be capable of 1. First of all then some assert That to be stricken for Transgression imports not here a Punishment for Sins past but a Prevention or taking away of Sin for the future So that Christ is said to be stricken to suffer and to die for Sin because by all this He confirmed to us an Excellent and Holy Doctrine the belief of which has in it a natural Aptness to draw Men off from their Sins In a word because Christianity tends to make Men holy and cease from Sin and because Christ by His bloud sealed the Truth of Christianity therefore is He said to die for Sin A strange and remote deduction and such an one as the Common rules and use of speaking would never have suggested But then besides because it is easy to come upon the Authors of this perverse Interpretation by demanding of them what fitness there could be in Christ's death to confirm His Doctrine And what Reason the World could have to believe Christianity True because the Author of it a Pious Innocent Excellent Person was basely and cruelly put to Death Therefore they further say that this Effect of its confirmation is really and indeed to be ascribed to His subsequent Resurrection though only his Death be still mentioned that being the most difficult and Heroick passage of all that he either did or suffered for our sakes and consequently the greatest Instance of his Patience and perswasion of the Truth of that Doctrine for which he suffered But by their favour if Christ is said no otherwise to die for Sin than because he delivered a Doctrine the design of which was to draw Men off from Sin and which was confirm'd to be true only by his Resurrection How comes it to pass that this effect is still joyned with his Death but never with his Resurrection It being said over and over that He dyed for Sin suffered and bled for Sin but never that He rose again for Sin It is indeed said once that he rose again for our justification but in the very foregoing words it is said that he was delivered to death for our Offences Which shews that those words for our Offences and for our justification have there a very different sence and bear a different relation to the words with which they are joined in that as well as in the other Scriptures But this whole Invention is so forced and far fetched and so much out of the Road of Common reason that it is impossible it should gain but by the strengths and prepossessions of Prejudice and where prejudice stands for judgment for ought I see it is as vain to urge Arguments as to quote Scriptures 2. The other sence of these words and which alone the Catholick Church receives for true is That Christ's being stricken for Sin signifies his being punished for Sin The word For in this case denoting the Antecedent Meritorious cause of his suffering and not the Final as the School of Socinus does assert and consequently must directly relate to the removal of the guilt of Sin and not the Power as is also affirmed by the same Persons Now that Christ's suffering and being stricken for Transgression imports that suffering to have been Penal and Expiatory as it might with the highest Evidence be demonstrated from several Scriptures so at this time I shall confine my self within the limits of the Chapter from whence I took my Text and here I shall found the proof of it upon these two expressions First That Christ is said to have born our Sins in the 12. v. Now to bear Sin is an Hebrew Phrase for that which in Latin is Luere peccatum and in English to be punished for Sin And if to bear another Man's Sin or iniquity by suffering does not imply the undergoing of the punishment due to that Man's Sin We must invent a new way of expounding Profane Writers as well as Sacred and of interpreting the common speeches of Men as well as the word of God Secondly The other Argument shall be taken from that Expression which declares Christ to have been made a Sacrifice or an Offering for Sin in the 10. v. When Thou shalt make His Soul an Offering for Sin The proof of what I here affirm is grounded upon the use and design of a Sacrifice as it has been used by all Nations in the World which was to appease the Deity by paying down a Life for Sin and that by the substitution of a Sacrifice whether of Man or Beast to die and pay down his Life instead of the Sinner For there was a tacit acknowledgment universally fixt in the Hearts of all Mankind that the Wages of Sin was Death and that without shedding of bloud there could be no Remission upon which was built the reason of all their Sacrifices and Victims So surely therefore as Christ was a Sacrifice and as the design of a Sacrifice is to pay down a Life for Sin and as to pay down a Life for Sin is to be Punished for Sin so sure it is that Christ's Death and Sufferings were Penal Now it being clear that the foundation of all Punishment is compensation or exchange that is to say something paid down to divine Justice for something done against it and since all compensation implies a Retribution equivalent to the Injury done therefore that Christ might be qualified to be a Sacrifice fit to undergo the full Punishment due for the Sins of Mankind two things were required 1. An infinite dignity in his Person for since the Evil and Demerit of Sin was Infinite and since Christ was so to suffer for it as not to remain under those sufferings for an Infinite duration that Infinity therefore was to be made up some other way which could not be but by the Infinite worth and Dignity of his Person grasping in all the Perfections and Glories of the Deity and by consequence deriving an Infinite Value to his Sufferings 2. The other Qualification required was a perfect Innocence in the Person to suffer for so much was specified by the Paschal Lamb of which we still read in Scripture That it was to be a Lamb without blemish And there is no doubt but had Christ had any Sin of his own to have satisfied for he had been very unable to satisfy for other Men's He who is going to Gaol for his own debts is very unfit to be a Security for anothers But now this perfect Innocence which I affirm necessary to render Christ a fit and proper Sacrifice is urged by our Adversaries to be the very Reason
fail of the Prize he runs for by mistaking the Way he should run in St. Paul as plainly as words can express a Thing tells us That Eternal Life is the Gift of God and Consequently to be expected by us only as such nay He asserts it to be a Gift in the very same verse in which He affirms Death to be as due to a Sinner as Wages are to a Worke man Romans 6.23 Than which Words nothing certainly can be more full and Conclusive That Salvation proceeds wholly upon Free-gift though Damnation upon strict Desert Nevertheless such is the Extreme folly or rather Sottishness of Manâ— Corrupt Nature That this does by 〈◊〉 means Satisfy Him For though indeed he would fain be Happy yet fain would He also Thank none for it but Himself And though He finds that not only His Duty but His Necessity brings him every day upon His knees to Almighty God for the very Bread he eats yet when he comes to deal with Him about Spirituals things of infinitely greater Value he appears and acts not as a Suppliant but as a Merchant not as One who comes to be Relieved but to Traffick For something he would receive of God and something he would Give Him and nothing will content this Insolent yet Impotent Creature unless he may seem to Buy the very Thing he Begs Such being the Pride and Baseness of some Spirits that where they Receive a Benefit too big for them to requite they will even Deny the Kindness and disown the Obligation Now this great self-delusion so prevalent upon most minds is the Thing here encountered in the Text. The words of which by an usual way of speech under an Interrogation couching a Positive Assertion are a Declaration of the Impossibility of man's being Profitable to God or which is all one of his meriting of God according to the true proper and strict sence of Merit Noâ— does this Interrogative way of Expression import only a bare Negation of the Thing as in it self Impossible but also a manifest Undeniable Evidence of the said Impossibility As if it had been said That nothing can be more plainly Impossible than for a man to be Profitable to God for God to receive any Advantage by man's Righteousness or to gain any Thing by his making his Ways perfect and Consequently That nothing can be more absurd and contrary to all Sense and Reason â—â—an for a man to entertain and cherish so irrational a Conceit or to affirm so gross a Paradox And that no other Thing is here meant by a man's being profitable to God but his meritiâ—â— of God will appear from a true State and Account of the Nature of Merit Which we may not improperly define A Right to receive some good upon the score of some good done together with an Equiâ—olence or Parity of Worth between the Good to be Received and the Good Done So that although according to the Common Divisâ—â—n of Iustice into Commutative and Distributive that which is called Commutative be imployed only about the strict Value of Things according to an Arithmetical Proportion as the Schools speak which admits of no Degrees and the other species of Iustice call'd Distributive as consisting in the Distribution of Rewards and Punishments admits of some Latitude and degrees in the Dispensation of it yet in Truth even this Distribution it self must so far follow the Rules of Commutation That the Good to be dispensed by way of Reward ought in Iustice to be Equivalent to the Work or Action which it is design'd as a Compensation of So as by no means to sink below it or fall short of the full Value of it From all which upon a just Estimate of the matter it follows That in true Philosophy Merit is nothing else but an Instance or Exemplification of that Noted saying or Maxim That one Benefaction or good Turn requires another and imports neither more nor less than a mans claim or Title to Receive as much Good from another as he had done for him Thus much therefore being premised as an Explication of the Drift or Design of the Words the Words themselves being too plain and Easy to need any further exposition we shall observe and draw from them these Four Particulars First Something supposed or implyed in them viz. That Men are naturally very Prone to entertain an Opinion or Perswasion That they are able to merit of God or be Profitable to Him Secondly Something expressed namely That such an Opinion or Perswasion is utterly false and absurd and that it iâ— impossible for man to merit of God or to be Profitable to Him Thirdly Something Inferred from both the former to wit That the forementioned Opinion or Perswasion is the very source or foundation of Two of the greatest Corruptions that have infested the Christian Church and Religion And Fourthly and Lastly Something objected against the Particulars discoursed of which I shall endeavour â—o answer and remove and so Conclude this Discourse Of Each of which in their order And First For the first of them The Thing supposed or Implyed in the Words namely That Men are naturally very Prone to entertain an Opinion or Perswasion That they are able to merit of God or be Profitable to Him The Truth of which will appear from these two Considerations First That it is Natural for them to place too High a Value both upon themselves and their own Performances And that this is so is evident from that Vniversal Experience which proves it no less Natural to them to bear a more than ordinary Love to themselves and all Love we know is founded in and results from a Proportionable Esteem of the Object Loved So that look in what Degree any Man loves himself in the same Degree it will follow that he must Esteem himself too Upon which account it is that every Man will be sure to set his own Price upon what he is and what he does whether the World will come up to it or no as it seldom does That speech of St. Peter to our Saviour is very remarkable in Mat. xix 27 Master says he we have forsook all and followed Thee what shall we have therefore In which words he seems to be upon Equal Terms with his Lord and to expect no more of him as he thought but strictly a Pennyworth for his Penny and all this from a Conceit that he had done an Aâ— so exceedingly Meritorious that it must even Non-plus his Master's Bouâ—â—y to quit scores with him by a just Requital Nay so far had the same proud Ferment got into the Minds of all the Disciples that neither could their own low condition nor the constant Sâ—rmons of that Great Example of Self-denial and Humility whom they daily conversed with nor lastly the Correctives of a Peculiar Grace totally clear and cure them of it And therefore no Wonder if a Principle so deeply rooted in Nature works with the whole Power of Nature and considering also â—he
they may indeed beg an Alms but must not think to â—â—and upon their Teâ—ms But Secondly Not only the Law of Nature and the Reason of the Thing it self as we have sufficiently shewn Excludes a Man from all Plea of Merit but also that further Obligation lying upon him and all his services from the positive Law and Command of God equally cuts him off from the same The known Voice of that Law being Thou shalt Worship the Lord thy God and Him only shalt thou serve Matth. 4.10 And thâ—n for the measure and extent of that service It is to be with all the Heart and all the Strength and all the Soul Mark 12.30 Which one Comprehensive Injunction grasping in it all that humane nature is able to do and by Consequence bringing all that can be done by Man within the compass and Verge of Dutyâ— has left no Vacancy or Possibility for Merit to take place till it be proved That a Man may actually do more than with all his Heart and all his Strength and all his Soul he is able to do than which it is impossible even for Comâ—on sense to conceive any Thing more senseless and contradictious And so I proceed to the II. Condition required to render an Action meritorious and that is That it should really add to and better the State of the Person of whom it is to Merit The reason of which is because all merit as we have shewn before consists properly in a Right to receive some Benefit on the account of some Benefit first done The Natural order of Things requiring that where a Considerable Advantage has been received something of the like Nature should be returned For that otherwise if one Part of the World should be always upon the Receiving hand and never upon the Restoring that Part would be a kind of monstrous Dead Weight upon the other and all that was good and useful to Mankind would by an Enormous Disparity lean wholly on one side But to bring the foremenâ—ioned Condition of Merit home to our present Purpose and thereby to shew how far God is capable of Receiving from man aâ—â— man of giving to God it may not be amiss briefly to represent to our selves What God is and what man is and by Consequence how the Case of Giving and Receiving must stand on God's Part and how on Man's And here in the 1 st Place God offers Himself to our Consideration as a Being infinitely Perfect infinitely Happy and Self-sufficient depending upon no supply or Revenue from abroad but as I may so express it retreating wholly into Himself and there living for ever upon the Inexhaustible stock of His Own Essential fulness And as a Fountain owes not its Streams to any Poor Adventitious Infusions from without but to the Internal Unfailing Plenties of its own Springs So this Mighty All-comprehending Being which we call God needs no other Happiness but to Contemplate upon that which he actually is and ever was and shall be possessed of From all which it follows That the Divine Nature and Beatitude can no more admit of any Addition to it than we can add Degrees to Infinity new measures to Immensity and further Improvements to a Boundless Absolute Vnimproveable Perfection For such a Being is the Great God Who is one of the Parties whom we are now discoursing of Nevertheless to carry the Case a little further supposing for the Present That the Divine Nature and Felicity were capable of some further Addition and Encrease Let us in the 2. Place cast our Eye upon the other Party concern'd and consider whether Man be a Being fit and able to make this Addition Man I say that poor slight Inconsiderable Nothing or at best a Pitiful Something beholden to every one of the Elements as well as Compounded of them and living as an Eleemosinary upon a Perpetual contribution from all and every Part of the Creation This Creature clothing him another feeding him a third curing him when sick and a fourth comforting and Refreshing him when well In a word he subsists by the joint Alms of Heaven and Earth and stands at the Mercy of every Thing in Nature which is able either to help or hurt him And is this now the Person who is to oblige hiâ— Maker to indent and drive bargaâ—â—s with the Almighty Those I am sure who in their several Ages have been reputed most Eminent for their knowledge of God and of themselves too used to speak at much another Rate concerning Both. My Goodness says David extendeth not to Theeâ— Ps. 16.2 And again If Thou be righteouâ— says Elihu to Iob what givest thou Him or what does He receive at thy hands Job 35.7 So that St. Paul might well make that Challenge without expecting ever to see it answered in Rom. 11.35 Who hath first given to Him and it shall be recompenced to him again For let Man but first prove the Debt and the Almighty will be sure to pay it But most fully of all does our Saviour Himself determine this point in that Remarkable conclusion of the forecited Parable in Luk. 17.10 where He instructs His Disciples After they had done all that was Commanded them to acknowledge themselves Vnprofitable Servants That is to say such as God upon no account whatsoever was or could be at all the better for And a clearer Text certainly and more direct and home against all Pretence of Merit neither Law nor Gospel can afford Nevertheless it must be confessed That some have found out such an Exposition of it as if admitted renders it â—f no force at all against this Doctrine of Merit For first they absolutely Cashier and Literal Express sence of the Words and in the room of it Introduce a Figure called by the Greeks 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which to diminish or degrade a thing expresses it in Terms representing it much less than indeed it is as when we say a thing is smaller than an Atome less than Nothing and the like Such words are not to be understood Literally but import only that the thing spoken of is very Inconsiderable Accordingly when Christ bids His Disciples after their best and most exact Performances acknowledge themselves Vnprofitable Servants we are not say these Expositors to conclude from hence That really they were so but that Christ only read the◠〈◊〉 Lecture of Humility and Self-abasement towards God in speaking but meanly and lowly of their own Piety how differently soever it might deserâ—e to be Valued according to the strâ—â—â— Estimate of the Thing it self So that by all this it seems our Saviour was only teaching those about Him how to paâ—â— Complements upon Almighty God Their Professing of themselves Vnprofitable Servants amounting to no more than if they had told Him they were His Humble Servants The meaning of which words if they have any meaning at all the Fashionable Custom of Gentile Lying will much better account for than the Language of Scripture the word of Truth is
able to do But in the mean time what an insufferable perversion of the Written Word is it to affix such a sence to any Text of it as this forced Exposition here does which manifestly turns a most Devout Confession to Almighty God into a piece of Courtship a Principal Truth into a meer Trope or Figure and in a word one of the highest Duties of a Christian into a false fulsome and at best an Empty Expression And so I pass to the III. Condition required to render an Action meritorious and that is That there be an Equal Proportion of Value between the Action and the Reward This being evident from the foundation already laid by us to wit That the Nature of Merit consists properly in Exchange and that we know must proceed according to a Parity of Worth on both sides Commutation being most properly between things Equivalent But now the Prize we run for in all our Religious performances is no less a thing than Life Eternal and a Beatifick Enjoyment of God Himself for ever And can any Man not quite abandoned by his Reason imagine a few weak broken Actions a competent Price for Heaven and Immortality And fit to be laid in the balance with an Exceeding and Eternal Weight of Glory Is there any thing in Dust and Ashes that can deserve to dwell with God and to converse with Angels Oâ— can we who live by sense and act by sense do any thing worthy of those joy which not only exceed our senses but also transcend our Intellectuals Can wâ— do beyond what we can Think And Deserve beyond what we can do For let us rate our best and most Exact services according to the strict Rules of Morality and what Man is able to carry so steady an hand in any Religious performance as to observe all those Conditions that are absolutely necessary to answer the full Measures of the Law No this is such a pitch of Acting as the present strengths of Nature must not pretend to And if not how can an Action short of complete Morality set up for Meritorious The Papists we know in their disputes upon this subject distinguish of merit into that which is de Condigno which merits a Reward upon Terms of Iustice and by Reason of the inherent Worth and Value of the Work done and that on the other side to be de Congruo which though it cannot claim a Reward upon those Terms and and from the Precise Worth and Value of the Work it self yet is such that God would not act sutably and congruously to the Equity and Goodness of his Nature if He should not reward it These two sorts of Merit I say they hold but are not yet agreed which of the two they should state the Merit of their good works upon For some boldly assert that they merit the former way to wit by their own inherent worth and value And some that they merit only the latter way that is by being such as the Equity and Goodness of God cannot but Reward And lastly Others as particularly Bellarmine hold that they merit both ways to wit partly by Condignity and partly by Congruity In Answer to which without disputing any thing against their Merit of Condignity since it more than sufficiently confutes it self I utterly deny the whole foundation of their Merit de Congruo as to any Obligation on God's Part to reward our Religious Services upon the score of Equity since upon that account God can be under no Obligation to do any thing For as much as therâ— is no such thing as Equity in God distinct from his Iustice and Mercy and the Exercise of his mercy must on all hands needs be granted to be free how much soever that of his Iustice may by some be thought otherwise Amongst Men I confess there is such an Obligation as that of Equity and the reason is because Men stand obliged by a Superior Law to exercise mercy as well as Iustice which God does not and therefore though there may be such a thing as a Meritum de Congruo between man and man yet between God and man since God is under no Obligation to shew mercy where His own Word has not first obliged Him no such Merit can take place But besides This is not the point Whether or no it be Congruous to the Goodness of God for Him to reward such or such Actions For there may be many Thousands of Things and Actions very Congruous for God to do which yet by his Nature He is not obliged to do nor ever will do So â—hat the bare Congruity of any Thing or Action to the Divine Nature lays no obligation upon God to do it at all But the point lies here to wit whether it be so Congruous to God to reward the Obedience and good Actions of men that it is incongruous to his Nature not to do it and this I utterly deny For if it were Incongruous to his Nature not to reward them it would be necessary for him to reward them and then indeed Merit must upon Equal necessity take Place But if God be not bound to reward every Act which it may be suitable or Congruous for him to reward as we have shewn that he is not then Meritum de Congruo is but Merit equivocally so called and the forementioned Division of Merit is not a Division of a Genus into Two several Species but only a Distribution of an Equivocal Term into its several Significations and Consequently to give the Name of Merit with respect to God to that which is so only de Congruo is a meer Trifâ—ing about Words without any regard had to the sence of them Nor let any one here Object the frequent use of the Terms mereri and meâ—â—ritum by the Fathers and other Ancient Church-Writers for they use them not in a Sence importing Claim upon the score of strict Iustice but only as they signify the Actual obtainment of any thing from God upon the Stock of Free-Promise by Coming up to the Conditions of it which by no means reaches that sence of the word which we have been hitherto disputing against In short therefore the Question stands thus Does this Meritum do Congruo from the Nature of the Thing it self oblige God to reward it or does it not If it does then I am sure that Merit of Condignity does the same and can do no more and so the Distinction between them is but Verbal and superfluous But if on the other hand it does not oblige God then I affirm that it is not so much as Merit for where there is no Obligation on one side there can be no Merit on the other To which we may add this further consideration that the asserting of such a Merit of Congruity is altogether as Arrogant as to assert that of Condignity forasmuch as it equally binds God and brings him under as great a necessity of Rewarding as the other can and that not by Reason of
and much less His Conscience together For neither Grace nor Nature will have it so It is an utter Contradiction to the methods of Both. Who hath Woe Who hath Sorrow Who hath Contentions Who hath Babling Who hath wounds without Cause Who hath Redness of Eyes says Solomon Prov. 23.29 Which Question He Himself presently Answers in the next verse They who tarry long at the wine they who seek after mixt wine So say I who has a stupid Intellect a Broken memory and a blasted wit and which is worse than all a Blind and a Benighted Conscience but the Intemperate and Luxurious the Epicure and the Smell-feast So Impossible is it for a Man to turn Sott without making Himself a Blockhead too I know this is not always the present effect of these Courses but at long run it will Infallibly be so and Time and Luxury together will as certainly change the Inside as it does the outside of the Best heads whatsoever and much more of such Heads as are strong for nothing but to bear drink concerning which it ever was and is and will be a sure observation that such as are Ablest at the Barrel are generally Weakest at the Book And thus much for the first great Darkner of Man's mind sensuality and that in Both the Branches of it Lust and Intemperance Secondly Another Vitious affection which Clouds and Darkens the Conscience is Covetousness Concerning which it may truly be affirmed that of all the Vices incident to Humane Nature none so powerfully and peculiarly Carries the Soul downwards as Covetousness does It makes it all Earth and Dirt Burying that Noble Thing which can never Die. So that while the Body is above ground the Soul is under it and therefore must needs be in a state of Darkness while it Converses in the Regions of it How mightily this Vice Darkens and Debases the Mind Scripture-Instancer do abundantly shew When Moses would assign the proper Qualifications of a Judge which office certainly calls for the Quickest Apprehension and the solidest Judgment that the Mind of Man is well Capable of Deut. 16.19 Thou shalt not says He take a Gift But why He presently adds the Reason Because a Gift says He blinds the Eyes of the wise And no wonder for it perverts their will and then who so Blind as the Man who resolves not to see Gold it seems being but a very bad help and Cure of the Eyes in such Cases In like manner when Samuel would set the Credit of his Integrity clear above all the Aspersions of Envy and Calumny it self 1 Sam. 12.3 Of whose hands says He have I received a Bribe to blind my Eyes therewith Implying thereby that for a Man to be Gripe-handed and Clear-sighted too was Impossible And again Eccl. 7.7 A gift says the Wiseman destroyeth the Heart That is as we have shewn already the Iudging and Discerning Powers of the Soul By all which we see that in the Judgment of some of the wisest and greatest Men that ever lived such as Moses Samuel Solomon Himself Covetousness Baffles and Befools the mind Blinds and Confounds the Reasoning Faculty and that not only in ordinary Persons but even in the Ablest the Wisest and most sagacious And to give you one Proof above all of the peculiar blinding Power of this Vice there is not the most Covetous wretch Breathing who does so much as see or perceive that He is Covetous For the Truth is preach to the Conscience of a Covetous Person if he may be said to have any with the Tongue of Men and Angels and tell him of the Vanity of the World of Treasure in Heaven and of the Necessity of being Rich toward God and Liberal to his Poor Brother and 't is all but flat insipid and ridiculous stuff to Him who neither sees nor feels nor suffers any thing to pass into His Heart but through his Hands You must preach to such an One of Bargain and sale Profits and Perquisits Principal and Interest use upon use and if you can perswade Him that Godliness is gain in his own sense perhaps you may do something with Him otherwise though you edge every word you speak with Reason and Religion Evidence and Demonstration you shall never affect nor touch nor so much as reach his Conscience for it is kept sealed up in a bag under Lock and Key and you cannot come at it And thus much for the second base Affection that blinds the mind of Man which is Covetousness A thing directly Contrary to the very Spirit of Christianity which is a free a large and an open Spirit A Spirit open to God and Man and always carrying Charity in one hand and Generosity in the other Thirdly The third and last Vile affection which I shall mention as having the same Darkening effect upon the Mind or Conscience is Ambition For as Covetousness dulls the mind by pressing it down too much below it self so Ambition dazles it by lifting it up as much above it self But both of them are sure to darken the light of it For if you either look too intently down a deep Precipice upon a Thing at an extreme distance below you or with the same earnestness fix your Eye upon something at too great an Height above you in both cases you will find a Vertigo or Giddiness And where there is a Giddiness in the Head there will be always a mist before the Eyes And thus no doubt it was only an Ambitious aspiring after high Things which not long since caused such a Woful scandalous Giddiness in some Men's Consciences and made them turn Round and Round from this to That and from That to this till at length they knew not what Bottom to fix upon And this in my Opinion is a Case that admits of no Vindication Pride we know which is always Cousin-German to Ambition is Commonly reckoned the Fore-runner of a Fall It was the Devil's sin and the Devil's ruine and has been ever since the Devil 's strategem who like an Expert Wrestler usually gives a Man a Lift before he gives Him a Throw But how does he do this Why by first blinding Him with Ambition and when a Man either cannot or will not mind the Ground he stands upon as a Thing forsooth too much below Him he is then easily justled down and thrust headlong into the next ditch The Truth is in this case Men seem to ascend to an High station just as they use to leap down a very great steep in both Cases they shut their Eyes first for in both the danger is very dreadful and the way to venture upon it is not to see it Yea so fatally does this touring aspiring humour intoxicate and impose upon Mens minds that when the Devil stands Bobbing and Tantalizing their Gaping hopes with some Preferment in Church or State they shall do the Basest the Vilest and most Odious things Imaginable and that not only in defiance of Conscience but which is yet more
Prosopopoeia in the Person of the Scribes and Pharisees whose Custom it was to Preface and Authorize their Lectures and Glosses to the People with the Pompous Plea of Antiquity and Tradition As if Christ had bespoken them thus You have been accustomed indeed to hear the Scribes and Pharisees tell you that This and This was said by those of old Time but notwithstanding all these pretences I tell you that the Case is much otherwise and that the True Account and sence of the Law is Thus and Thus. This I say is the natural purport and meaning of our Saviour's words throughout this Chapter Thirdly That passage in the 43. v. of the same Ye have heard that it hath been said ye shall love your Neighbour and hate your Enemy is so far from being the words of the Mosaick Law that Moses Commands the clean Contrary to the latter Clause Exod. 23.4 If thou seest thine Enemies Ox going astray thou shalt surely bring it back to Him again and if thou see the Ass of him who hateth thee lying under His Burthen thou shalt surely help Him And if this was the Voice of the Law then can we Imagine that it would make it a Mans Duty to relieve his Enemies Oxe or his Ass and at the same time allow Him to hate or malign his Person This certainly is unaccountable and Incredible Fourthly If Christ opposed his Precepts to those of the Mosaick Law then God speaking by Christ must Contradict Himself as speaking by Moses For whatsoever Moses spoke He spoke as the Immediate Dictates of God from whom He received the Law But this is Absurd and by no means Consistent with the Divine Holiness and Veracity Fifthly and lastly Christ in all this discourse never calls any one of the Doctrines opposed by Him the Words of Moses or of the Law but only the Righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees which shews that they and they only were the Persons with whom He mannaged this whole Contest Let this therefore Rest with us as a firm Conclusion That Moses and Christ were at perfect Agreement whatever the Controversy was between Him and the Pharisees And so from the Scheme anâ— Context of the words I pass to the Duty enjoined 〈◊〉 them which is to Love our Enemies The discussion of which I shall cast under these three General Heads First I shall shew Negatively what is not that Love which we are here commanded to shew our Enemies Secondly I shall shew positively wherein it does Consist Thirdly I shall produce Arguments to enforce it And first for the First of these what is not that Love which we must shew our Enemies this we shall find to exclude several things which would fain wear this Name 1. As first to treat an Enemy with a fair deportment and amicable Language is not the Love here enjoined by Christ. Love is a thing that scorns to dwell any where but in the Heart The Tongue is a Thing made for words but what reality is there in a Voice what substance in a sound and words are no more The Kindness of the Heart never kills but that of the Tongue often does And in an ill sence of soft Answer may sometimes break the Bones He who speaks me well proves himself a Rhetorician or a Courtier but that is not to be a Friend Was ever the Hungry fed or the Naked Cloathed with good looks or fair Speechâ—â— these are but thin Garments to keep out the Cold and but a slender repast to conjure down the rage of a Craving Appetite My Enemy perhaps is ready to Starve or Perish through Poverty and I tell him I am heartily glad to see Him and should be very ready to serve him but still my Hand is Close and my Purse shut I neither bring him to my Table nor lodge him under my Roof He asks for Bread and I give him a Complement a thing indeed not so hard as a Stone but altogether as dry I treat him with Art and outside and lastly at parting with all the Ceremonies of dearnessâ— I shake him by the hand but put nothing into it In a word I play with his Distress and dally with that which I will not be dallied with Want and Misery and a Clamorous Necessity For will fair words and a Courtly behaviour pay Debts and discharge Scores if they could there is a sort of Men that would not be so much in debt as they are Can a Man look and speak himself out of his Creditors hands Surely then if my words cannot do this for my self neither can they do it for my Enemy And therefore this has nothing of the Love spoken of in the Text. It is but a Scene and a meer Mockery for the receiving that cannot make my Enemy at all the Richer the giving of which makes me not one Penny the Poorer It is indeed the fashion of the World thus to amuse Men with empty Caresses and to feast them with Words and Air Looks and Legs nay and it has this peculiar privilege above all other Fashions that it never alters but certainly no Man ever yet quenched his Thirst with looking upon a golden Cup nor made a Meal with the outside of a Lordly Dish But we are not to rest here fair Speeches and Looks are not only very Insignificant as to the real effects of Love but are for the most part the Instruments of hatred in the Execution of the greatest mischiefs Few Men are to be ruined till they are made Confident of the Contrary and this cannot be done by threats and roughness and owning the mischief that a Man designs but the Pit-fall must be covered to invite the Man to Venture over it all things must be sweetned with professions of Love Friendly Looks and Embraces For it is Oyl that whets the Razor and the smoothest Edge is still the sharpest they are the Complacencies of an Enemy that Kill the Closest Hugs that stifle and Love must be pretended before Malice can be effectually practised In a word he must get into his Heart with fair Speeches and Promises before he can come at it with his Dagger For surely no Man fishes with a bare hook or thinks that the Net it self can be any Enticement to the Bird. But now if these outward shows of fairness are short of the Love which we owe to our Enemies What can we say of those who have not arrived so far as these and yet pretend to be Friends disdain and distance sowre looks and sharp words are all the expressions of Friendship that some Natures can manifest I confess where real Kindnesses are done these circumstantial Garnitures of Love as I may so call them may be dispensed with and it is better to have a rough Friend than a fawning Enemy but those who neither do good Turns nor give good Looks nor speak good Words have a Love strangely subtil and metaphysical for other poor Mortals of an ordinary Capacity are forced to be ignorant of that
Nothing and that in the Business of Religion and the great concern of Souls all that is short of Obedience and a Good Life is Nothing but Trick and Evasion Froth and Folly and consequently that if they build upon such deceitful Grounds and with such slight materials they must and can expect no other than after all their cost and pains to have their House fall upon their Heads and so perish in the Ruin And with this Terrible Application in these two last Verses which I have pitched upon for my Text he concludes his Divine Sermon and Discourse from the Mount The words of the Text being too plain and easy to need any Nice or large Explication I shall manage the discussion of them in these four Particulars First In shewing the Reasons upon which I conclude Practice or Obedience in the great Business of a Man's Eternal Happiness to be the best and surest Foundation for him to build upon Secondly In shewing the False Foundations upon which many build and accordingly in Time of Tryal Miscarry Thirdly In shewing the Causes why such Miscarry and fall away in time of Tryal or Temptation Fourthly and Lastly In shewing wherein the Fatal greatness of their Fall consists And First for the first of These viz. to shew the Reasons why Practice or Obedience is the best and surest Foundation still supposing it bottomed upon the merits of Christ for a Man to build his designs for Heaven and the hopes of his Salvation upon I shall mention Three First Because according to the ordinary way and Oeconomy of God's working upon the Hearts of Men nothing but Practice can change our Corrupt Nature and Practice continued and persevered in by the Grace of God Will. We all acknowledge that is all who are not wise above the Articles of our Church that there is an Universal stain and depravation upon Mans Nature that does incapacitate him for the Fruition and Infinitely pure Converse of God The Removal of which cannot be effected but by introducing the contrary habit of Holiness which shall by degrees expell and purge out the other And the only way to produce an habit is by the frequent repetition of Congenial Actions Every Pious Action leaves a certain Tincture or disposition upon the Soul which being seconded by Actions of the same Nature whether by the superaddition of new Degrees or a more radicate fixation of the same grows at length into an Habit or Quality of the Force and Energy of a second Nature I confess the Habit of Holiness finding no Principles of Production in a Nature wholly corrupt must needs be produced by Supernatural Infusion and consequently proceed not from Acquisition but Gift It must be brought into the Soul it cannot grow or spring out of of it But then we must remember that most excellent and true Rule of the Schools that Habitus infusi obtinentur per modum acquisitorum It is indeed a supernatural effect but as I may so speak wrought in a Natural way The Spirit of God imitating the Course of Nature even then when it works something above it A person in the State of Nature or Unregeneracy cannot by the sole strength of his most improved Performances acquire an Habit of True Grace or Holiness But as in the Rain it is not the bare Water that fructifies but a secret Spirit or Nitre descending with it and joined to it that has this Vertue and produces this effect So in the Duties of a meer Natural Man there is sometimes an hidden Divine Influence that keeps pace with those Actions and together with each performance imprints a holy disposition upon the Soul which after a long Series of the like Actions influenced by the same Divine Principle comes at length to be of that force and firmness as to outgrow and work out the Contrary Qualities of inherent Corruption We have an illustration of this though not a Parallel Instance in Natural Actions which by frequency imprint an habit or permanent facility of Acting upon the Agent Godliness is in some sense an Art or Mystery and we all know that it is Practice chiefly that makes the Artist Secondly A second Reason for our Assertion is Because Action is the highest Perfection and Drawing forth of the utmost Power Vigor and Activity of Mans Nature God is pleased to Vouchsafe the best that He can give only to the Best that we can do And Action isâ— undoubtedly our best because the most Difficult for in such cases Worth and Difficulty are inseparable Companions The properest and most raised Conception that we have of God is that He is a Pure Act a Perpetual Incessant Motion And next to Him in the Rank of Beings are the Angels as approaching nearest to Him in this Perfection being all Flame â—nd Agility ministring Spirits always busy and upon the Wing for the Execution of His Great Commands about the Government of the World And indeed Doing is nothing else but the Noblest Improvement of Being It is not as some nice Speculators make it an airy diminutive entity or Accident distinct from the Substance of the Soul but to define it more sutably to it self and to the Soul too Action is properly the Soul in its best Posture Thirdly A Third Reason is because the main End Drift and Design of Religion is the Active part of it Profession is only the Badge of a Christian Belief the beginning but Practice is the Nature and Custom the Perfection For it is this which translates Christianity from a bare Notion into a Real Business from useless Speculations into Substantial Duties and from an Idea in the Brain into an Existence in the Life An Upright Conversation is the bringing of the General Theorems of Religion into the particular Instances of solid Experience and if it were not for this Religion would exist no where but in the Bible The Grand deciding Question at the last day will be not What have you said or What have you believed but What have you done more than others But that the very Life of Religion consists in Practice will appear yet further from those subordinate Ends to which it is designed in this World and which are as Realâ—y though not as Principally the purpose of it as the Utmost attainment of the Beatifick Vision and the very last Period of our Salvation And these are Two First The Honouring of God before the World God will not have His Worship like His Nature Invisible Next to Authority it self is the Pomp and Manifestation of it And to be acknowledged is something more than to be Obeyed For what is Sovereignty unknown or Majesty unobserved What Glory were it for the Sun to direct the Affairs if he did not also attract the Eyes of the World It is his open and Universal Light more than his Occult Influence that we love and admire him for Religion if confined to the Heart is not so much entertain'd as imprisoned That indeed is to be its Fountain
Enhance its Guilt As it would look like a very strange and odd Commendation of a Tree to Apologize for the Sourness of its Fruit by pleading that all its goodness lay in the Root But in the discourses of Reason such is the weakness and shortness of its Reach that it seldom suggests Arguments à Priore for any Thing but by a low and humble Gradation creeps from the Effects up to the Cause because these first strike and Alarm the Senses and therefore St. James speaks as good Philosophy as Divinity when He says Iam. 2.18 Shew me thy Faith by thy Works Every Action being the most lively Pourtraicture and impartial Expression of its Efficient Principle as the Complexion is the best Comment upon the Constitution For in natural Productions â—here is no Hypocrisy Only we must observe here that Good and Evil Actions bear a very different Relation to their Respective Principles As it is between Truth and Falshood in Argumentation So it is between Good and Evil in matters of Practice For though from an Artificial contrivance of false Principles or Premises may emerge a True Conclusion yet from True Premises cannot ensue a False So though an Evil Heart may frame it self to the doing of an Action in its kind or Nature Good yet a Renewed Sanctified Principle cannot of its self design Actions really Vitious The reason of which is Because the former in such a Case acts upon a Principle of Dissimulation and no Man by dissembling affects to appear worse than he is but better But all this while I speak not of a single Action but of a Conversation or Course of Acting For a Pious Man may do an Evil action upon Temptation or Surprize but not by the Tenour of his standing Principles and Resolutions But when a Mans Sin is his Business and the formed Purpose of his Life and his Piety shrinks only into Meaning and Intention When he tells me His heart is right with God while his hand is in my Pocket he upbraids my Reason and outfaces the Common Principle of natural discourse with an Impudence equal to the Absurdity This therefore I affirm That he who places his Christianity only in his Heart and his Religion in his Meaning has fairly secured himself against a discovery in case he should have none but yet for all that shall at the last find his Portion with those who indeed have none And the Truth is those who are thus intentionally Pious do in a very ill and untoward sence verify that Philosophical Maxim That what they so much pretend to be Chief and First in their Intention is always Last if at all in the Execution Thirdly The third and last false ground that I shall mention upon which some Men build to their Confusion is Party and Singularity If an implicite Faith be as some say the Property of a Roman Catholick then I am sure Popery may be found where the name of Papist is adhorred For what account can some give of their Religion or of that Assurance of their Salvation which they so much boast of but that they have wholly resigned themselves up to the Guidance and Dictates of those who have the Front and Boldness to usurp the Title of the Godly To be of such a Party of such a Name nay of such a sneaking look is to some the very Spirit and Characteristick mark of Christianity See what St. Paul himself built upon before His Conversion to Christ Acts 26.5 I was says He after the strictest Sect of our Religion a Pharisee So that it was the Reputation of the Sect upon which St. Paul then embarked His Salvation Now the Nature of this Fraternity or Sect we may Learn from the Origination of their Name Pharisee it being derived from Parasch separavit discrevit whence in Greek they were called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 separati So that the Words amount to this That St. Paul before He was a Christian was a Rigid Separatist But Singularity is not Sincerity tho' too often and mischievously mistaken for it And as an House built upon the Sand is likely to be ruined by Storms so an House built out of the Road is exposed to the Invasion of Robbers and wants both the Convenience and Assistance of Society Christ is not therefore called the Corner stone in the Spiritual building as if He intended that His Church should consist only of Corners or be driven into them There is a By-path as well as a Broad-way to Destruction And it both argues the Nature and portends the Doom of Chaff upon Agitation to separate and Divide from the Wheat But to such as Venture their Eternal Interest upon such a Bottom I shall only suggest these two Words First That admitting but not granting that the Party which they adhere to may be truly Pious yet the Piety of the Party cannot sanctify its Proselytes A Church may be properly called Holy when yet that Holiness does not diffuse it self to each particular Member the Reason of which is Because the whole may receive Denomination from a Quality inherent only in some of its Parts Company may occasion but it cannot transfuse Holyness No Mans Righteousness but Christs alone can be imputed to another To rate a Man by the Nature of his Companions is a Rule frequent indeed but not Infallible Iudas was as much a Wretch amongst the Apostles as amongst the Priests And therefore it is but a poor Argument for a Man to derive his Saintship from the Vertues of the Society he belongs to and to conclude himself no Weed only because he grows amongst the Corn. Secondly Such an adhesion to a Party carries in it a strong suspicion and Tang of the rankest of all ill Qualities Spiritual Pride There are Two Things natural almost to all Men. First A desire of Preheminence in any Perfection but especially Religious Secondly A Spirit of Opposition or Contradiction to such as are not of their own Mind or Way Now both these are eminently gratifyed by a Man's listing himself of a Party in Religion And I doubt not but some are more really proud of the affected sordidness of a pretended Mortification than others are of the greatest affluence and splendor of Life And that many who call the Execution of Law and Justice Persecution do yet suffer it with an Higher and more pleasing Relish of Pride than others can inflict it For it is not true Zeal rising from an Hearty concernment for Religion but an ill restless cross humour which is imped with Smart and quickned with Opposition The Godly Party is little better than a Contradiction in the Adjunct for he who is truly Godly is humble and peaceable and will neither make nor be of a Party according to the Common sence of that word Let such Pretenders therefore suspect the Sandiness and Hollowness of their Foundation and know that such Imitators of Corah Dathan and Abiram build upon the same Ground upon which they stood and into which
are told is who shall reckon his Years For he shall live to be very Aged Though yet we know no more of his Age but that he Prophesied about forty Years whereas some others have Prophesied much longer and particularly Hosea who Prophesied about fourscore As for the other Expression of his seeing his Seed and prolonging his Days that we are taught must signify that he should see many of his Converts in Egypt where he should live for a long time Though yet we read not of any one of those Converts nor of any such prolonging his Days there but that it is a constant Tradition of Antiquity that he died an untimely disastrous Death being knock'd on the Head in Egypt by his wicked Country-men with a Fuller's Club. And in the last place for his dividing the Spoil with the Mighty that we are informed was fullfilled in this That Nebuzaradan Captain of the Chaldean Host as we find it in Ieremy 40.5 gave him a Reward and some Victuals that is to say a small supply or modicum of Meat and Money for his present support and so sent him away A worthy glorious dividing of the Spoil indeed and much after the same rate that the Poor may be said to divide the Spoil when they take their shares of what is given them at Rich-men's Doors So then we have here an Interpretation but as for the sense of it that for ought I see must shift for it self But whether thus to drag and hale words both from Sence and Context and then to squeeze whatsoever meaning we please out of them be not as I may speak with some change of the Prophet's Phrase to draw lyes with cords of Blasphemy and Nonsence as it were with a Cart-rope let any sober and impartial Hearer or Reader be Judge For whatsoever titles the itch of Novelty and Socinianism has thought fit to Dignify such Immortal Incomparable Incomprehensible Interpreters with yet if these Interpretations ought to take place the said Prophecies which all before Grotius and the aforesaid Rabby Saadias Unanimously fixed in the first sense of them upon the sole Person of the Messiah might have been actually fullfilled and consequently the Veracity of God in the said Prophecies strictly accounted for though Iesus of Nazareth had never been Born Which being so would any one have thought that the Author of the Book de Veritate Religionis Christianae de satisfactione Christi could be also the Author of such Interpretations as these No Age certainly ever produced a mightier Man in all sorts of Learning than Grotius nor more happily furnished with all sorts of Arms both Offensive and Defensive for the Vindication of the Christian Faith had he not in his Annotations too frequently turned the Edge of them the wrong way Well therefore taking it for manifest and that upon all the grounds of Rational and unforced Interpretation that the Person here spoken of was the Messias and that this Messias could be no other than Iesus of Nazareth the Great Mediator of the second Covenant very God and very Man in whom every tittle of this Prophecy is most exactly verifyed and to whom it does most peculiarly and incommunicably agree We shall proceed now to take an account of the several parts of the Text in which we have these three things considerable First The suffering it self He was stricken Secondly The Nature of the suffering which was Penal and Expiatory He was stricken for Transgression And Thirdly The Ground and Cause of this suffering which was God's propriety in and relation to the Persons for whom Christ was stricken implyed in this word My People For the Transgression of My People was he stricken Of each of which in their order And First For the suffering it self He was stricken The very word imports violence and invasion from without It was not a suffering upon the stock of the meer internal weaknesses of Nature which carries the seeds and causes of its dissolution in its own bowels and so by degrees withers and decays and at length dies like a Lamp that for want of Oyl can burn no longer but like a Torch in its full flame beat and ruffled and at length blown out by the breath of a North-Wind So was Christ dealt with in the very prime and vigor of his Years being by main force torn and stricken out of the World Blows did the work of time and Stripes and Spears were instead of Age to put a period to his afflicted Life Now the Greatness of this Suffering will be made out to us upon these three accounts First Upon the Account of the Latitude and Extent of it Secondly Of the Intenseness and Sharpness of it And Thirdly Of the Person inflicting it First As for the Latitude or Extent of it The Blow reach'd every part of His humanity carrying the grief all over till by an Universal diffusion of it self it entred according to the Psalmists expression like water into His bowels or like Oyl into His bones It spread it self into every part of his Body as if it had been another Soul Nothing was free from suffering that could suffer Suffering seem'd to be his Portion his Inheritance nay his very Property Even the Religion that he came to propagate and establish was a suffering Religion and by the severest method of establishment he gave the First and the Greatest Instance of it in himself He who would recount every part of Christ that suffered must read a Lecture of Anatomy From the Crown of the Head to the Sole of the Foot there was nothing but the traces of pain and suffering they made long furrows upon His back says the Psalmist they did as it were tear and plow up his innocent Body In his Person we might have seen Grief in its height and supremacy Grief Triumphant Crown'd and arrayed in Purple Grief reigning and doing the utmost that it was able It is a Subject too well known and too frequently discoursed of to make descriptions of the Thorns the Spears and the Nails that acted their several parts in this Tragedy and that so that the very Narrative of our Saviour's Passion cannot but beget another in every pious hearer of it But when we have said the utmost of his Bodily sufferings we still know that Nature has provided a support able to mate and stand up against all these for the strength and firmness of a Resolved Mind will bear a Man above his Infirmity as the Breath bears up the Body from sinking But when the supporter it self fails when the Primum vivens and the Vltimum moriens has had a mortal blow and the Iron enters into the very Soul then baffled Nature must surrender and quit the Combat unless seconded and held up by something greater and mightier than it self And this was our Saviour's Condition There was a Sword which reach'd his very Spirit and pierced his Soul till it Bled through his Body for they were the Struggles and Agonies of the
was not enough to cover the cheat or to palliate the Illusion But I suppose no body will be very importunate for any further proof of this That if Christ was raised it must be God who raised him The Angel might indeed roll away the stone from the Sepulchre but not turn it into a Son of Abraham and a less Power than that which could do so could not effect the Resurrection 2. I come now to the second thing which is to shew the manner by which God wrought this Resurrection set forth in those Words having loosed the Pains of Death An expression not altogether so clear but that it may well require a further explication For it may be enquired with what propriety God could be said to loose the Pains of Death by Christs Resurrection when those Pains continued not till the Resurrection but determined and expired in the Death of his Body Upon which ground it is that some have affirmed That Christ descended into the place of the damned where during his Body's abode in the Grave they say that in his Soul he really suffered the pains of Hell and this not unsutably to some Ancient Copies which read it not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Pains of Death but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the pains of Hell and this also with much seeming consonance to that Article of the Creed in which Christ is said to have descended into hell But to this I answer That Christ suffered not any such pains in Hell as the forementioned opinion would pretend which we may demonstrate from this That if Christ suffered any of those pains during His abode in the Grave then it was either in his Divine Nature or in his Soul or in his Body But the Divine Nature could not suffer or be tormented as being wholly impassible Nor yet could he suffer in his Soul for as much as in the very same day of his Death that passed into Paradise which surely is no place of pain Nor Lastly in his Body for that being Dead and Consequently for the time bereaved of all Sense could not be capable of any Torment And then for answer to what was alledged from the Antient Copies it is to be observed that the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which some render Hell indifferently signifies also the Grave and a state of Death And Lastly for that Article of the Creed in which there is mention made of Christ's descent into Hell there are various expositions of it but the most rational and agreeable is that it means His abode in the grave and under the State of Death three Days and three nights or rather three 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 viz. part of the First and Third so called by a Synechdoche of the part for the whole and the Second entirely Whereby as his Burial signified his entrance into the grave So his descending into Hell signified his continuance there and subjection to that Estate And thus the three parts of his humiliation in the last and grand Scene of it do most appositely answer to the three parts of his exaltation For First His Death answers to his Rising again Secondly His Burial answers to his ascending into Heaven And Thirdly His Descending into Hell answers to his sitting at the Right hand of God in a State of never dying Glory Honour and Immortality But however that his descending into Hell mentioned in the Creed cannot signify his Local descent into the place of the Damned the former Argument disproving his suffering the Pains of Hell will by an easy Change of the Terms sufficiently evince this also For First Christ could not descend according to His Divine Nature since that which is Infinite and fills all places could not acquire any new place And as for his Soul that was in Paradise and his body was laid in the Grave and being so what part of Chirst could descend into Hell the whole Christ being thus disposed of needs a more than Ordinary apprehension to conceive We are therefore in the next place to see how we can make out the Reason of this Expression upon some other and better ground In order to which it is very observable that the same word which in the Greek Text is rendred by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and in the English by Pains in the Hebrew signifies not only pain but also a cord or band according to which it is very easy and proper to conceive that the Resurrection discharged Christ from the bands of Death besides that this rendition of the Word seems also most naturally to agree with the genuine meaning of some other words in the same verse as of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 having loosed which is properly applicable to bands and not to pains as also of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifies properly to be bound with some cord or band So that undoubtedly this exposition would give the whole verse a much more natural and apposite Construction and withal remove the diffiulty But Secondly Because the Evangelist St. Luke follows the Translation of the Septuagint who little minding the Hebrew pointings rendred the Word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Cords or Bands but by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Pains we are therefore not to baulk so great an Authority but to see how the Scheme of the Text may be made clear and agreeable even to this Exposition To this therefore I answer First That the Words contain in them an Hebraism viz. the pains of death for a painful death as it is said Matth. 24.15 The abomination of desolation for an abominable desolation and so the Resurrection loosed Christ from a painful Death not indeed painful in sensu Composito as if it were so at the time of his release from it but in a divided sence as the Logicians speak it loosed him from a Continuance under that Death which relating to the Time of his suffering it was so painful 2. But Secondly I answer further That though the pains of Death ceased long before the Resurrection so that this could not in strictness of sence be said to remove them yet taking in a Metonymy of the Cause for the Effect the Pains of Death might be properly said to have been loosed in the Resurrection because that Estate of Death into which Christ was brought by those foregoing pains was then conquered and completely Triumph'd over Captivity under Death and the Grave was the Effect and Consequent of those Pains and therefore the same Deliverance which discharged Christ from the one might not improperly be said to loose Him from the other And thus Christ was no sooner bound but within a little time he was loosed again He was not so much buryed as for a while deposited in the Grave for a small inconsiderable space So that even in this respect he may not inelegantly be said to have tasted of Death for a taste is transient short and quickly past God rescued him from that Estate as a
Prey from the Mighty and a Captive from the strong and though he was in the very Iaws of Death yet he was not devoured Corruption the common Lot of Mortality seized not on him Worms and Putrefaction durst not approach him His Body was Sacred and inviolable as sweet under ground as above it and in Death it self retaining One of the highest Privileges of the Living 3. Come we now to the Last and principal thing proposed namely The Ground of Christ's Resurrection which was its absolute Necessity expressed in these Words Because it was not possible that He should be holden of it and that according to the strictest and most received sence of the word Possible For it was not only Par aequum that Christ should not always be detained under Death because of his Innocence as Grotius precariously and to serve an Hypothesis would have the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 here signify but it was absolutely necessary that he should not and impossible that he should continue under the Bands of Death from the Peculiar Condition of his Person as well as upon several other Accounts And accordingly this Impossibility was founded upon these Five Things 1. The Union of Christ's Humane Nature to the Divine 2. God's Immutability 3. His Justice 4. The Necessity of Christ's being believed upon 5. And Lastly the Nature of his Priesthood First of all then The Hypostatical Vnion of Christ's Humane Nature to His Divine rendred a perpetual Duration under Death absolutely impossible For how could that which was united to the Great Source and Principle of Life be finally prevailed over by Death and pass into an Estate of perpetual darkness and oblivion Even while Christ's body was divided from his Soul yet it ceased not to maintain an intimate indissolvable Relation to his Divinity It was assumed into the same Person for according to the Creed of Athanasius As the Soul and Body make one Man so the Divine Nature and the Humane make One Christ. And if so is it imaginable that the Son of God could have one of his Natures rent wholly from his Person His Divinity as it were buoyed up his sinking Humanity and preserved it from a total Dissolution for as while the Soul continues joyned to the Body still speaking in sensu composito Death cannot pass upon it for as much as that is the proper Effect of their Separation So while Christ's Manhood was retained in a Personal conjunction with His Godhead the bands of death were but feeble and insignificant like the Wit hs and Cords upon Sampson while he was inspired with the mighty Presence and Assistance of God's Spirit It was possible indeed that the Divine Nature might for a while suspend its supporting influence and so deliver over the Humane Nature to pain and death but it was impossible for it to let go the relation it bore to it A Man may suffer his Child to fall to the ground and yet not wholly quit his hold of him but still Keep it in his power to recover and lift him up at his pleasure Thus the Divine Nature of Christ did for a while hide it self from his Humanity but not desert it put it into the Chambers of death but not lock the Everlasting Doors upon it The Sun may be clouded and yet not Eclipsed and Eclips'd but not stop'd in his Course and much less forced out of his Orb. It is a Mystery to be admired that any thing belonging to the Person of Christ should suffer but it is a Paradox to be exploded that it should perish For surely that Nature which diffusing it self throughout the Universe communicates an enlivening Influence to every part of it and quickens the least spire of grass according to the measure of its Nature and the proportion of its capacity would not wholly leave a Nature assumed into its Bosom and what is more into the very Unity of the Divine Person breathless and inanimate and dismantled of its Prime and Noblest Perfection For Life is so high a Perfection of Being that in this respect the least Fly or Mite is a more noble Being than a Star And God has expresly declared himself not the God of the Dead but of the Living and this in respect of the very Persons of Men but how much more with reference to what belongs to the Person of his Son For when Natures come to Unite so near as mutually to interchange Names and Attributes and to verify the Appellation by which God is said to be Man and Man to be God surely Man so privileg'd and advanced cannot for ever lie under Death without an insufferable invasion upon the entireness of that Glorious Person whose Perfection is as inviolable as it is incomprehensible 2. The Second Ground of the Impossibility of Christ's continuance under Death was that Great and Glorious Attribute of God His Immutability Christ's Resurrection was founded upon the same bottom with the consolation and Salvation of Believers expressed in that full declaration made by God of Himself Mala. 3.6 I the Lord change not therefore ye Sons of Jacob are not consumed Now the Immutability of God as it had an influence upon Christ's Resurrection was Two-fold First In respect of his Decree or Purpose Secondly In respect of his Word or Promise And First for his Decree God had from all Eternity designed this and sealed it by an irreversible Purpose For can we imagine that Christ's Resurrection was not decreed as well as his Death and sufferings and these in the 23. v. of this Chapter are expresly said to have been determined by God It is a known rule in Divinity that whatsoever God does in Time that He purposed to do from Eternity for there can be no new Purposes in God since he who takes up a new purpose does so because he sees some ground to induce him to such a purpose which he did not see before but this can have no place in an Infinite knowledge which by one Comprehensive Intuition sees all things as Present before ever they come to pass So that there can be no new Emergency that can alter the Divine Resolutions And therefore it having been Absolutely purposed to raise Christ from the Dead his Resurrection was as fixed and Necessary as the Purpose of God was Irrevocable A Purpose which Commenced from Eternity and was declared in the very Beginnings of Time a Purpose not to be Changed nor so much as bent and much less broke by all the Created Powers in Heaven and Earth and in Hell besides For though indeed Death is a great Conqueror and his Bands much too strong for Nature and Mortality Yet when over-matched by a Decree This Conqueror as old as he has grown in Conquest must surrender back his spoils unbind his Captives and in a word even Death it self must receive its Doom From all which it is manifest That where there is a Divine Decree there is always an Omnipotence to second it and Consequently That by