consequence of a great part at least of the ensuing discourse to commend to thee the great goodness of God as to those that walk with him in his ways to which he invites thee in calling thee to repentance so also to those that turn at his reproofs into his ways in his readiness to forgive sins past through his forbearance and to testifie his gladness for their escape from the dangers of destruction they were in while sinning in his giving them the comforts of his grace in Christ and taking them under his most safe and satisfying protection and blessing Surely as its better to be feasting and making merry at home with a rich liberal and loving Father than to be abroad among strangers nay enemies in a strange Country keeping swine in the cold fields and ready there to perish with hunger So and far more better is it to be in God's fear and in the faith of Jesus walking in the ways of righteousness and enjoying the comforts of the Holy Ghost in the assured perswasions of God's favour towards us and of eternal life and happiness than to be the drudges and sworn vassels of sin and Satan grapling with the stings of an accusing Conscience and fears of God's most dreadful and everlasting wrath and vengeance and hurried on in the ways of sin thereto by evil spirits who rejoyce so much in nothing as in bringing men unto everlasting destruction The assured hope of attaining which good things and escaping which evil things is in this Parable and discourse set clearly before thee as to the good ground thereof to be proved in an hearty turning to God in Christ by thee And verily the certainty of speeding well in any course is a marvailous great spur to the undertaking it hope of profit and pleasure upon uncertain grounds usually draw men to great adventures here much more do certain Behold here certain grounds of hoping for and expecting the greatest profits and pleasures that are possible proposed to thee to move thee to repentance Even a certainty grounded upon God's word who cannot lye and Christ's accustomed grace to repentant sinners who being the Son of God neither can nor will deceive us Oh then mind and be moved by them to serious and speedy repentance thy time is short thy life uncertain if thou dye in thy sins all hope of mercy is for ever gone lay hold therefore of the present opportunity while it is afforded thee lay hold on eternal life enter the strait gate set upon the holy race and so run therein as thou mayst obtain Men will divers together run in an earthly race for an earthly prize of any great value though they know before hand that but one of them shall obtain it but in this heavenly race is a heavenly prize exceeding all earthly values and all that run for it aright are sure to obtain it no ones getting it shall hinder another that runs with him Yea as in the Parable of the labourers in the Vineyard Matth. 20. they that set out a great deal later than others may yet be at the race end as soon and obtain it as fully and certainly as they that set out before them So that thou mayst run at a certainty and fight not as one that beats the Air but to good purpose if thou wilt but yet be perswaded to set upon this heavenly race and holy combate against sin and Sathan Let the greatness of the gain then proposed of the pleasures promised of the satisfaction assured and the greatness of the certainty of attaining them in a serious turning to God in Christ to seek after and endeavour for them draw thee into a stedfast resolution of quitting thy ways of sin and falshood and embracing and walking on the ways of righteousness and salvation And do it betimes and without delay least thou defer too long and the Devil and Sin draw thee on by little and little till they bring thee inevitably into Perdition But peradventure Satan will suggest unto thee to hinder thee of the good both of these my advices and of the whole following Treatise such thoughts as some men harbour in their hearts yea and some fear not to utter with their tongues reasoning to this purpose All men are under one or other of these two absolute Decrees either of Election unto life or of Reprobation to destruction and therefore I must needs be under one of them also If I be Elect as I hope I am then to what purpose is all your cost and labour for its impossible for me to miscarry what ever I do and however I live at present my sins cannot frustrate God's decree and purpose nor may you or any body else lay any sin to my charge For who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's Elect it is God that justifies and if he justifie me in my present state what need is there for me to repent that I may be justified or who shall condemn me seeing Christ's death is for me and shall secure me from all my sins past present and to come so as they cannot harm me and whereas no unclean thing may inherit God's kingdome that cannot hurt me for if I be elected I shall and must at one time or other be so effectually called as against all my resistances and notwithstanding all my present sinnings I shall obey and so be washed and sanctified and shall against all fallings or possibility of falling persevere in grace to the injoyment of the inheritance And why then may I not take the pleasure of my sins while I may seeing they shall neither prejudice my conversion nor my salvation and if it be not so with me but I am a reprebate then I cannot be saved though I should endeavour to follow your advise and to repent For then Christ dyed not for me nor hath procured for me at least any effectual and saving grace some common gifts and graces indeed I may attain some illuminations good desires and half repentances which can never translate me from under this sad Decree but only will serve to aggravate my future wo while I shall sin against the greater light and knowledge And had I not better take my course then and continue as I am than put my self upon bootless labour to no purpose rising a little higher to fall the heavilier and sink the deeper into misery Needful it is to endeavour the removal of these reasonings out of thy mind which retained will render all good advise to thee wholly ineffectual and so Answ 1. Fabrit Lac. Com. ex oper Luth. clas 2. p 93 94. I might say with Luther Istae voces sunt sceleratae si praedestinatus sum sive bene sive malè egero salvabor c. those are wicked sayings If I be praedestinate live I how I will I shall be saved they tend to harden thy heart in thy sin while it is called to day whereas the Holy Ghost saith To day if ye will
in the dishes and upon the trenchers if they had any and in their hands and mouths as they eat it and could they have needed to have eaten of it till this day might have grown upon them yet such this fatted Calf in the spirit and mystery of it unless we take it for some particular visit refreshing and chearing of the repentant sinners heart like to a Posset or a Caudle made by a tender Mother for her almost drowned Childe when being pulled out of the Pit and brought home she puts it to bed and should the other Children that kept themselves in the house and safe from the pit murmur at such a thing as that when they may at all times sit at meat with their Father and eat of his meat yea and if they please take part of that Posset too made for that escaped Childe take it in either sense the murmuring was unreasonable as the acts of envy and discontent all be It was a good saying of an ancient Doctor Tolle invidiam quod meum est tuum est si ego tollo invidiam quod tuum est meum est Take away envy and frowardness and what 's mine is thine too and if I put away envy from me that that is thine is mine with thee This is on the contrary to envy the excellency of Divine Love and Grace it makes all common that may be so lawfully or with expediency and as God gives us an interest in all that he hath leads us to say to our brethren too all that we have is yours for your usefulness as the Saints in the Primitive Church that said nothing that they had was their own they were so free to communicateâ— it to all others also Had this Brother said to his younger Brother as the Father to him welcome home Brother let us live lovingly together and as my Father gives me interest in and the use of all he hath so I freely give thee leave to take part with me in all I have with him and by his gift It had been an entertainment of him worthy such a condition of a Son of such a Father and that that may be proposable to us for imitation 3. This also shews the goodness of living at home with God or walking with him dutifully in his wayes seeing he that is so infinitely full is so infinitely free too to them that love him and keep his Commandments not only a Sun and a Shield but also gives grace and glory and withholds no good thing from them that walk uprightly with him therefore O Lord God of Hosts blessed is the man that trusteth in thee and so abides in thy courts alwayes Psal 84 10 11 12. Whither can we go from God to better our selves as Peter said Whither shall we go thou hast the words of eternal life John 6.68 All is ours if we be with and keep to God and we cannot have more then all by going from God or sinning against God Nay that 's the way to go from all for all is in and with God and without him nothing but sin emptiness vanity and vexation of spirit 4. Therefore also it may provoke us not to leave him but to keep close to him as David or Asaph saith Ps 73.28 It is good for me to draw nigh to or as the vulgar reads it to hold me fast by God seeing then we have all whether would this Elder Son go or what would he do that he will not come to his Fathers house and so to his Father Brother the rest therein what will he exclude himself from his Fathers house and so deprive himself of all and because his Father receives him in will he that is so angry at his Brothers naughtiness out of anger throw himself into his Brothers condition and divest himself of all because his Brother is admitted to a share with him surely he took the course thereto by so doing or would he turn his Father and Brother out of doors or at least his Brother to make room for himself as if the house was too little to hold them both and a Kings Estate too little to maintain them both sure it s better to submit to God and to resist the Devil from whom proceeds such a temptation and by living at home to keep possession of all rather then by standing out or departing to divest our selves of all But if we would keep at home with God we must take these helps and directions against discontent 1. Minde the goodness of God to us in Christ rather then our goodness or good doings for or towards him that was slipt out of this Sons eye when he stands thus at a distance and comes not in the minding his Fathers goodness would have given him such satisfaction as to have contented him in all his service with his Fathers dealings with him and made him thought himself happy that he might so live with and serve him still The application of the medicine informs us of the disease the Fathers minding him what he afforded him and what priviledges he enjoyed with him shews us that the Son had forgot them when he fell into this froward discontented passion 2. Consider the abundant fulness in God the abundant sufficiency in him together with his freeness to satisfie and content us and all others There is room enough saith Abraham to Lot in the land for us both therefore let us not fall out between our selves being brethren Gen. 13.8 9. Had this Brother minded how large his Fathers house was and how large his estate and how free he to communicate it it might have kept him from this murmuring 3. Be not hasty in our spirits but wait for Gods counsels inquire at his mouth and be swift to hear what he hath to say to us and slow to speak slow to wrath James 1.19 This Son was too hasty he should first have heard what his Father could say for his doings before he had given way to his anger 4. When the right eye offends pluck it out and cast it from thee and so when the right hand and foot offends cut them off and cast them from us Cast away the weight that presseth down and the sin that easily besets Keeping our eye single to what is set before us in the testimony of God It was this Brothers looking with an evil eye at his Fathers kindeness to his Brother made him sullen and the minding what his hand and foot had done for his Father how he had wrought and walked for him that puft him up with pride and caused him to think his Brother got too much love that had done worse and less then he Good and needful it is to cast away such considerations as draw to discontent and with draw us from him As it was also the Prodigals eying an excellency in his conceit in having a portion in his own hands and a sufficiency in himself to manage it distinct and apart from his Father that led him
into that separation and with-drawing from his Father which brought upon him all this misery that befel him which now after so large a view taken of the elder Brothers state comes in the next place as the second Branch of this Text to be considered by us viz. CHAP. VIII The second state of wanderers from God in two Branches opened and applyed THE misery of departing and wandring from God implyed in these words This thy Brother was dead was lost a two-fold metaphorical expression to represent it by Let us briefly and but briefly consider them Branch 1. Was dead A sinner by leaving God and running after sin and Satan brings death upon himself becomes as a dead man So Solomon tells us too Prov. 21.16 He that wandereth out of the way of understanding shall abide in the congregation of the dead For as the Apostle saith also to the Believers Rom. 8.13 If ye walk after the flesh ye shall dye and it must needs be so for 1. With God is the fountain of life Psal 36.9 In his favour is liâ—e Psalm 30.5 and his eternal Word or Son is that eternal life that was with the Father in the beginning in whom was life and that was manifested in these last dayes more fully to us 1 John 1.2 with John 1 4. The Spirit of God is life and the spirit of life Rom 8.2.10 by whom God through Christ breaths in life and so this God this one Father Son and Spirit having life in himself gives life also to others as he pleases and hath given to all life and breath and all things and so in the beginning when he made man made him of the dust of the earth and breathed in him the breath of life and man became a living soul Gen. 2.7 both as his body and person was made alive in the world indued with breath sense motion and understanding and also as his soul or inward man being upright and having its dependance on God being in subjection to his Word and Spirit in his image and likeness and so in his favour while upright he was owned of him and in union with him and had peace and joy and spiritual life in himself as so deriving it from him but in departing from him his word and command which is life and tends to life also is death and man so doing he dyed Spiritually First as to the loss of the favour of God in which was his life and of his subjection to God and fellowship with his Word and Spirit the fountain and conveyor of life and he fell under his displeasure in and from which is death even the death of the spirit of man inasmuch as the favour and fellowship of God his Word and Spirit being withdrawn his life was withdrawn with them and inasmuch as it lay open to his anger to inflict misery upon it and so the inward state of the soul and spirit became unquiet dead without sense of the life of God the favour spirit and operations of his grace in it and was filled with fear shame guilt as the effects of the life withdrawn and misery deserved and exposed to and then bodily death as to its principles entred and so the sentence for dying at Gods pleasure bodily and for ever had not mercy looked upon man and prevented followed also Gen. 2.17 and 3.18 19 Rom. 5.12.18 2. But God rich in mercy looking back upon his prodigal Son man here devised his recovery and to that end sent his Son or Word that eternal life that was with him and made him flesh and in that flesh mortal and under the sentence of death that was upon man and accordingly delivered him up to death for our Sins who by his death destroyed him that had the power of death that is the Devil and swallowed up death from off the nature of man as it is in him and filled it with immortallity and eternal life so as he having dyed dyeth no more death hath no more dominion over him but the fulness of the God-head dwells in him bodily and all the fulness of his favour grace and blessing in which is life yea and the Spirit of Life is in and upon him so as he also in dying and by his death inasmuch as it was sustained by him for us even for all men hath obtained a release of all men from under that first Death and Judgement in which all universally and alike were condemned to dye as it did and must have stood upon us without his interposing and hath the ordering of Death and Grave and Hell in his hand and dispose with power and authority to bring us thereout and enliven and quicken soul and body yea and invest them with immortality and eternal life as pleases him he being in himself and for mankinde the resurrection and the life the deliverer and the raiser and the only ground or foundation cause and effector of the Resurrection in others either as to soul or body and the life quickning them and in which they being quickned live John 11.25 Yea in him is and God hath given to us even to the same us whom he commands to believe which is all men or men indefinitely eternal life so as that in partaking of him we partake of the Resurrection and are raised up in and by him in our spirits and partake of life spiritual life and so whosoever believeth in him though dead in himself is enlivened by him and shall live and being made alive in believing and going on yet to believe shall not dye shall not lose this life that he hath in and by him for ever but is alwayes in the raised state as to his state spiritually and shall be so at the last day bodily too and so alwayes in the favour of God in which is life in a justified state from sin and wrath curse and death and in a state of acceptation with God and heir-ship to the life promised further of God in and by him and hath his interest in and fellowship with God the fountain of life and the Spirit of God and its influences who is the Spirit of life and gives and upholds life as it is said He that hath the Son hath life and he that hath not the Son hath not life and so as all mankinde are in a released state from the destructiveness of the first death as in and of it self and in a possibility of life because in the hand of Christ where is life even spiritual and eternal life yea both for soul and body as in a root and fountain for them and communicable to them so all such of men as in hearing and receiving the Word and Doctrine of Christ which is called the word of life and life Acts 5.20 John 6.63 Prov. 4.13 because Christ objectively is in it as the matter of it set forth in and by it and his Spirit which is life and the Spirit of Life accompanies it and breaths in it are therein by the
departing and wandring from God in the wayes of sin and that is impliedly contained in the latter expressions of the latter part of his reply viz. in these words Thy Brother was dead was lost 3. The comfortable estate of such wanderers returned to God by repentance and that is signified in the whole latter part of the said reply verse 32. It was meet that we should make merry and be glad for this thy Brother was dead and is alive again he was lost and is found Of these in order The first state And first for the good estate of the obeyers and walkers with God it is signified in a three-fold expression viz. 1. In the compellation Son They are the Sons of God 2. In the first Branch of the assertion to him Thou art ever with me They are ever with God And 3. In the latter Branch of it and all that I have is thine They have interest in all that is Gods A happy portion and such as one would think if minded might content any one and preserve them from envying at either the portion of the world or the portion of or Gods dealing with any of their Brethren View we it in each of these Branches in order 1 Branch First They that abide with God and depart not from him but walk righteously before him they are the Sons of God 1. Men might be called the Sons of God by virtue of their Creation in which they received their being of and from God much more then a childe his being from his Parents and so as we noted before it s said The Son of Adam which was the Son of God Luke 3.38 and by the Poet recited and approved by the Apostle Paul Acts 17.28 29. For we are also his off-spring from which the Apostle infers forasmuch then as we are the off-spring of God we ought not to think that the God-head is like to Gold c. For indeed God made man in his own Image and Likeness and therefore also man resembling God in some respects as the Son the Father might there-from be called and accounted his Son But that image and likeness especially as to any holiness purity innocency right knowledge yea or any right of dominion over the creatures liberty of will or the like was wholly lost in our departing from him and sinning against him we being there-through filled with the poison of sin the spawn and likeness of the Devil the old Serpent and inslaved by and to him children of wrath and heirs of destruction though the relation of creatures abode still yet the likeness of children was wholly lost But 2. God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten Son thereinto to be the Saviour of the world and to that purpose made him of a woman and under the Law that he might bear our sins in his own body on the Tree and by giving himself a ransome and sacrifice to Justice for all men as the Lamb of God take away the sin of the world by bearing and satisfying for it in himself and destroying by his death him that had the power over death even the Devil and his works Heb. 2.14 1 John 3.8 might free us or buy us from under his acquired jurisdiction and tyranny over us and from the wrath and destruction due to us into his own Dispose Lordship and Jurisdiction to be ruled over and disposed of by him John â— 16 17. 1 John 4.14 Gal. 4.4 5. 1 Pet. 2.24 1 Tim. 2.6 John 1.29 Rom. 14.9 For to this end he both died rose and revived that he might be Lord of both quick and dead Now in this that he became man he took the man-hood into unity of person with himself so as in him Man is become the Son of God the only begotten Son of God even the man Christ Jesus as he was also mightily declared to be by the Spirit of Holiness in the Resurrection of the dead as it is said Thou art my Son this day have I begotten thee Rom. 1.3 4. Acts 13.33 and in that he in that nature hath suffered for us the just for the unjust and is become the propitiation for our sins even for the sins of the whole world and hath received into himself the immeasurable fulness of the Holy Spirit so as he may communicate to us thereof and Baptize us therewith he hath opened a way for us lost men to recover our nighness and likeness to God again that we receiving remission of sins through his Blood might be also adopted and taken into the account of his Sons being begotten by him through the revelation of his Son to us and of the grace in and by him to believe on his Son and approach to hope in and worship him in and by his Son Yea and 3. Because that man-hood which he purposed to cloath his Son with that body he prepared for him he chose and took it of the seed of Abraham Isaack and Jacob therefore to their seed also he of his Grace and Favour gave the adoption of Sons as it is said of the Jews They are Israelites to whom pertaineth the adoption the glory c. Rom. 9.4 when he is speaking of Israel after the flesh and such as for whom he could have wished himself accursed and had great heaviness and continual sorrow in his heart through the consideration of that state of unbelief they then lay in wherefore also of Israel it is said Israel is my Son my first-born and I say unto thee let my Son my first-born go Exod. 4.22 His Son both because Christ his Son in respect of the flesh he was to take was in them or some of them and in respect of the knowledge of Christ they the rest also were called to or also the Covenant the substance of which was Christ as it is said I have given him for a Covenant of the people Isa 42.6 and 49.6 and 55.3 I will make an everlasting Covenant with you the sure mercies of David Which the Apostle interprets to be Christ risen again Acts. 13.34 into which after a sort they were initiated and grafted by Circumcision a seal of the righteousness of the faith that Abraham had being yet uncircumcised as the Apostle saith Rom. 4.11 even the righteousness by the faith of Christ through whom and with respect to whom they were taken into Gods house and accounted and called his Sons and Children yea and there abiding in subjection to his instructions they continued so but many of them not understanding and walking in the Faith of Abraham of the righteousness whereof Circumcision was the Seal but resting short or wandring out of it yea and opposing of it they became so far from being the Sons of God that they were by our Saviour and John the Baptist John 8.44 rightly stiled Serpents a generation of Vipers yea the seed or children of the Devil Mat. 3.8 and 23.33 4. Yea whereas God gave to that people a holy and righteous Law to convince