a Name given him above every name either in this world or in the world to come according to that description we find of him Isaiah 4. 2. c. where Christ the BRANCH is held forth in both these capacities called also Zach. 4. the two olive trees or sons of oyl that stand by the Lord of the whole earth by means of the one emptying out the golden oyl of all natural perfection as he is the Son of man singly considered Christ according to the flesh Head and Root of the renewal of natural purity and perfection by vertue of his blood unto Adams fallen posterity and by means of the other emptying forth the oyl of Gods new Name and of all Spiritual perfection as he is the beginning and first born from the dead made Head to the Heavenly body the Church that general Assembly of the first-born whose names are written in Heaven In both these respects this BRANCH of the Lord is to be made beautifull and glorious so as the very fruit of the earth or the earthly Adam shall be excellent and comely for them that are escaped of Israel Isa 4. 2. For in them the very being of the first Adams perfection considered as built up again in fellowship and harmony with the second Adams perfection through the Resurrection of the dead is as the Ark of the Testament which is to be seen in this Temple whereby the Song of Moses shall be sung as perfectly as the Song of the Lamb as the musick and harmony requisite to be made by the inhabitants of the NEW JERUS ALEM those that are left in Zion and that remain in Jerusalem when God shall have cleansed them and purged them by the spirit of Judgement and burning by the baptism of the fire of the sacrifice of Christs death wherby they are written among the living in Jerusalem that is do become a Heavenly Tabernacle as built up into a life from the dead for a shadow in the day time from the heat and for a place of refuge and for a covert from storm and from rain in which dwelling places of Mount Zion and upon her Assemblies the Lord will create a cloud and a smoke by day and the shining of a flaming fire by night for upon all the glory shall be a defence ver 3 4 5 6. From this Scripture it appears that after men have had that work pass upon them which baptizeth them into one living Body with Christ making them living Members of his fleshly Manhood and enabling them to bring forth the excellent comely fruits of the renewed earthly Adam ver 2. unless they yet further abide the trial of fire which is to pass upon them by the Spirit of Judgement and burning of the day of Christs second appearance they will not continue long in ZION nor remain members of this earthly Jerusalem but will defile and pollute the Temple and Tabernacle of God set up in them in conformity to the flesh of Christ and so make themselves fit subjects for God to destroy and to swear in his wrath that even this Generation thus far advanced out of Egypt toward the Land of Promise shall never enter into his Rest as those that are but after such a manner Christs house as is intimated Heb. 3. 6. whose house are we if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoycing of the hope firm unto the end And as those Paul speaks of amongst the Corinthians that walked like men 1 Cor. 3. 3 17. If any man defile the Temple of God him shall God destroy for the Temple of God is holy which Temple ye are Those then are the Children of the first Covenant who are Christs seed and off-spring as he is the Head of the first Adams natural perfection and doth renew the Spirit and power of that perfection in the purity thereof as a seed in fallen man that shall grow up and prosper even into a Kingdom in the soul so as to be the prevailing principle there and carry the Rule and sway over the corrupt and prophane part causing men clean to escape the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of him after the flesh only and with this flesh as the true Manna and bread given them from heaven nourishing them up in the beauty and strength of his natural life The character of this sort of Christs children by the first covenant is lively set down by the Prophet Ezekiel instancing in the children of Israel whom God took by the hand and led out of Aegypt under the ministry of the first covenant wherein he was a husband unto them as appears Jer. 31 32. and had made them beautiful and of great renown in the sight of the Heathens round about them from whom they were separated as made perfect through his comliness which he had put upon them Ezek. 16. 13 14. which sort of Gods children Paul ranks those Galatians amongst that still desired to be under the Law in the time of the Gospel Gal. 4. calling them children of that covenant given from Sinai gendring to bondage or of the Ierusalem that now is to wit the earthly Jerusalem in distinction from the children of the other covenant or of the Jerusalem that is above viz. the heavenly For we must not think that this generation of men passeth away through the coming in of the Gospel but is rather much more improved and compleated forasmuch as by the means of Christ death the Holy commandment is now spoken by the Son himself delivered more immediately by the dawning of the light of Christs first appearance in the heart which was in the time of the ministry of the Law the word only spoken by Angels as committed unto them to mannage through whose ministry or disposition Acts 7. 53. the circumcised seed of Abraham Isaac and Jacob received it who were as figures of this circumcision to be made immediately by Christ himself among the Gentiles without hands by the pouring forth of his spirit upon all flesh and building them up with him into one living body as the true Israel of God after the flesh all which amounts but to the compleating of Christs living body through this first-covenant-first-covenant-work of his set up in the heart and conscience called in Scripture the FIRST FAITH which may be departed from and prove a faith that fails as being held upon wavering and uncertain principles until it be fixed by the baptism of fire and have that brought forth in fellowship with it which accompanies salvation to wit the incorruptible and immortal seed of the perfection of the second Adam causing them to dwell on high and placing them upon the munitions of Rocks where bread is given to them and waters that do not fail The Rule that is given unto this fleshly seed or children of the first covenant is the pattern of Christs natural life and perfection as he appeareth in the fashion of a man and form of a servant like unto us in all
abundantly confirm and make good the justification which is not of works but of grace according to Gods purpose The very nature and kinde of this faith may suffice to all unbyassed judgements to shew that those that are justified by it are not justified by works since in its principles and seed it is quite differing from that which is by the Law or born after the flesh which is of works so as the one is differenced from the other in the very kind of perfection and life both as to principles and works the seed and the fruit of each yea and this faith of the right kind considered as abiding in Christ not in us is that that properly justifies the believer For if it be by grace it is no more of works otherwise grace is no more grace But if it be of works then it is no more grace otherwise work is no more work And besides the Spiritual Seed are beloved as they are chosen in Christ before the world began and are distinguished as so accepted in him from the fleshly seed before they have done either good or evil This chusing in Christ is not the justification by faith inasmuch as that act of God never passes upon us till we be actually believers For though we have being in our head who is blessed and beloved before the world began Ephes 1. Yet we are not made to be in our own persons of that Spiritual Seed untill we have the righteousness of our head actually imputed to us and so are made to stand without guile or spot before the throne of God whilst as yet we are ungodly and bear about with us a body of sin and death unsubdued and unabolished which nevertheless in the end by faith is overcome and wholly done away The working power then which is put forth by faith in the heart and conscience of him that is the true Believer is to be distinguished from faith in the first act singly considered as the new birth and reception of Christ to inhabite and dwell there as the root and author of all spiritual life and perfection which indeed is rather itself the work or workmanship of Christ as the suitable reception that he makes for his indwelling presence in the heart then any effect of the power of faith working patience and experience there in pursuance of the end for which it is given which is to work the spirit of man either under the first or second dispensation to a compleat and full resignation of its understanding will and desire unto the teachings light and life of this faith evidencing him that is invisible and giving entrance into the glory that is within the veil shewing what is the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the Saints and what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward that believe Which glory is not seen all that while to the natural senses and discerning but the life and workings of faith wherein the spiritual part of the believer does exceedingly rejoyce the fleshly or natural man in the Saint unsubdued cannot bear but hath its reluctancy against lusting to envy ready to oppose resist and contradict the same to the utmost and is all the season of the trial of faith in great heaviness grief and despondency through manifold temptations whilst the believing part is exercising love on him whom the natural senses cannot reach nor come to the sight of In whom though now we see him not yet believing we rejoyce with joy unspeakable and glorious girding up the loyns of our minds in sobriety and hope For the power of faith is such in its operation that it overcomes the world and all the powers of flesh and blood in us at the best which serve but to be made conquest of and triumphed over by faith in order to be nailed to the cross of Christ for the slaying of the enmity which thereby would be springing up to the choaking of the spirtual seed the crucifying afresh the Son of God and trampling under foot the blood of the everlasting Covenant as an unholy thing This power of flesh and blood that ends and expires at last under the conquering and triumphing power of faith causes for a long time a sore and fiery trial in the soul through the sharp contest and dispute that arises between the heavenly powers and spiritual senses on the one hand and the fleshly and natural powers in the same Saint on the other by reason of which the soul is often inclining and falling back into the life of the flesh and workings of the natural will instead of being strengthned in the inward man and fixed there in love and true Rest against all contradicting whatsoever made by flesh and blood whether pure and holy flesh or sinful and corrupt So that oft the party which faith by its power makes for it self in the heart and conscience of the believer is deserted and in a manner given off through the prevalent reasonings and desires of flesh and blood which make resistance in this warfare to their last breath or activity that remains in them And first when faith cals the heart to leave its natural state its kindred and relations in the heathenish world the morality and civility whereof seems to have much to say for it self after the corrupt part in it is cast off the natural powers and faculties of the mind in that state rebel and resist a long season not knowing how to submit though upon hopes of a land of promise specially when they must not know or cannot be made acquainted whither the soul is going and are therefore constantly representing all discouragements imaginable to hinder its obedience to this call of faith till at last they be over-ruled and brought under But secondly when through faiths workings by the power of the Law or Ministry of Christs first appearance the soul is brought out of the corrupt degenerate state of nature hath turned its back upon the land of its nativity and is come to the earthly Canaan to the circumcision of the flesh not in the letter only but in the spirit for the righteousness of works by the first Covenant then hath faith another Call or second voice to the soul causing it to sojourn as a stranger even in the land of promise and to look upon this earthly Jerusalem as no abiding City but that out of which it must also pass into a heavenly Country the Jerusalem that is above forgetting the things that are behind or unto which it hath already attained and pressing forwards to the mark for the price of its high calling to be clothed upon as with its house from heaven Through the call of this last voice of faith all flesh and the glory thereof is blown upon and made as nothing Isa 40. 6. the voice said cry and he said what shall I cry All flesh is grass and the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field perishing and fading in a moment
a subordinate and subjected way to be inseparably harmonious co-workers with that second and better activity of faith which blessed association of these two in the last Adam is much better then the one that is single and alone in the first making up of twain that one new man and new name which is better then the name of sons and of daughters in the children of the first Covenant Hence it appears that Christ in his active obedience did not only conform to the Law as a legally righteous and holy man doing the work of a servant in the spirit and life of the Son fulfilling the righteousness of the Law by faith but that he did also perform the proper works required by the Law of the new-covenant consisting in the holy observation of the true Sabbath and bringing his fleshly principles into subjection unto and useful co-operativeness with his heavenly and spiritual in the exercise of faith And so Christs active obedience we see distinguisheth it self into the works required to be done by the first and second covenant This hath brought us to the second sort of Christs obedience which is called passive as consisting in that wherein he was a sufferer which also is capable of a twofold consideration First in respect of that which he suffered under the power and activity of faith carrying his natural judgement and will into a voluntary captivity to the teachings of the Father that trained him up to the doing of his Fathers will with the denyal or not doing of his own as properly his in the activity of his fleshly or legal principles or secondly as relating to that wherein he was made a curse for us appointed and delivered up by the Father though still with his own consent to bear the punishment due unto sinners and perform that in his own person wherewith Gods Justice might be satisfied and sin expiated as it is written by his stripes we are healed the just is punished and the unjust is set free Christ was in the first of these respects truly and properly a sufferer as he that submitted himself to be bereaved and deprived of the exercise of these principles in and upon the operation whereof in the judgement of the natural man as single depended the performance of the condition of the first Covenant wherein all mankind was concerned as it is written He that doth these things shall live in them So as the weakness and disability which he suffered to be brought upon himself in this his operation might seem to be the way to expose him to the curse and wrath of God threatned upon non-performance of the condition of the Law as it is written Cursed is every one that continues not in all things which are written in the Book of the Law to do them and therefore was hard even for Christs natural man to undergo costing him many a tear groan and cry before his natural judgement was fully silenced and made to yield to it as giving full credit to this report of faith calling for obedience hereunto as to the voice of God Isa 53. And as this seemed hard to Christs natural judgement so nothing was more bitter and cross to the inclinations and desires of his natural will then to have his natural spirit thus broken abased humbled and laid low in such a poor destitute and weak condition as to become a worm no man unable to make resistance or defence for himself by the exercise of that activity that was properly his own which is hereby taken out of his single dispose in order to be brought forth in newness of operation through the power and activity of faith or the seed and principles flowing forth from his second union wherein he and his Father are one and the life he lives and the will he does is not his own exercised single but in conjunction and association with that of the Father Howbeit in this we are not to understand the natural man of Christ as meerly passive or violently bereaved of the use and exercise of this his first operation and activity but are to consider him herein as convinced in judgement and gained in will to the forbearance thereof and cessation therefrom and so voluntarily submitting his own hands in this regard to be bound and his feet tyed upon undeniable reasons and clear demonstrations to the eye of his faith of a far greater good to be redounding to him by the same This Christ asserts Joh. 10. 17 18. Therefore doth my Father love me because I lay down my life that I might take it again no man taketh it from me but I lay it down of my self who might keep it and exercise it if I would for I have power or freedom to lay it down and also to take it up according to the commandment which I haveh rein received from the Father and because I do it in the way of choice and freely not by compulsion therefore it is my Father loves me Thus also Christ testifieth of himself Joh. 8. where he saith I am one that bear witness of my self or I have a principle in me that can declare it self in the proper life and operation of a natural righteous and holy man as one made under the Law and walking in all the ordinances and commandments of God therein blameless Yet saith he Joh. 5. 30 31. to come forth in the single exercise hereof is not my manner of acting for of my self I can do nothing or I am taught by my Father to do nothing but in association with him as I hear I Judge and I am thereby instructed not to do my own will or go forth in the single exercise of my first activity but to seek the will of the Father that sent me even to the offering up in sacrifice my own proper will and desire For if I should bear witness of my self my witness single were not true or authentique to make out truth according to your law which Ioh. 8. 16 17 18. requires two witnesses for the establishing of every truth therefore saith he there is another with me in association that never leaves me to my single actings and I know that the witness which he gives of me is true and that the testimony which I give flowing from that anointing is truth in the full and compleat evidence thereof That then which in this first sense Christs natural man was a sufferer in consisted in the weakness and disability which was brought upon the fleshly mind to resist the powerful workings of his faith or spiritual mind unto the obedience where of it is voluntarily made captive as the only way and means to be brought into the Rest and Cessation required by the Father in respect whereof it is that he saith he can do nothing of himself but what he sees the Father do for whatsoever things he doth these doth the Son likewise and so is no loser by this kind of weakness and inability but rather a rich
gainer experimentally finding that when thus he is weakest then he is strongest as brought into such a frame of spirit wherein he is disabled to do any thing against the truth and thereby qualified to do all things for the truth This profitable weakness and disability came not all at once upon Christs natural man but gradually growing up at last into the perfect Rest and Cessation from his own works wherein the true sabbathism consists and in which Christ sets forth himself a pattern for his Saints imitation Heb. 4. 10. This made him say Joh. 8. 28. when ye have lift up the son of man then ye shall know that I am he and that I do nothing of my self but as my Father hath taught me I speak these things and he that hath sent me is with me the Father hath not left me alone but is ever bringing the natural powers and senses of my mind into perfect subserviency and subjection to my spiritual which through faith are alwaies exercised in unity with my Fathers will so that I do alwaies those things that please him In this blessed association consists the life of the new creature when of twain there is made one new man by the blood of this sacrifice In this new frame of spirit and newness of life and operation Christ delights to be taken notice of Joh. 7. 28. where he saith ye both know me and whence I am I am not come of my self but he that sent me is true whom ye know not but I know him for I am from him and my doctrine is not mine but his that sent me under the power of whose teachings I am so absolutely and intirely brought that I do not so much as speak of my self much less think or act for he that speaks of himself seeks his own glory but he that seeks the glory of him that sent him the same is true and there is no unrighteousness in him And he it is Joh. 5. 20. whom the Father loves and sheweth all things that himself doth and who will shew him greater works then these that ye may marvel for as the Father raiseth up the dead and quickneth them by his immediate witness in the Son so the Son quickens whom he will even the whole spiritual seed by making them one with him as he and the Father are one Thus in this first part of Christs passive obedience he through the law becomes dead unto the law through the law of the spirit of life in the second Adam becomes dead unto the law and life of the first fulfilling the whole law of righteousness by being rendred utterly unable to perform one tittle of it in mans first activity and sufficiency or as left alone to the grace and strength received by the first-covenant principles Thus we have seen Christ not only as the Lamb prepared without spot and blemish in order to be offered up but as he became our passover actually sacrificed for us being in one person as well the priest as the sacrifice fulfilling the righteousness and conditions of both covenants in that newness of life and operation which sprang up in him through faith or the unity of operation he was begotten into with the Father Through this twofold obedience of Christ which in him strictly considered is but one as the obedience of one man or last Adam set up in ballance against the disobedience of the first he was that and did that in his own person wherein after a peculiar manner he is made of God wisdom righteousness sanctification and redemption unto the right heirs of salvation and is become the ransom and propitiation for all sinners not for those only who so believe as that they shall be eternally saved but for the whole world as upon the terms of the first covenant renewed in the blood of Christ they are reconciled unto God and admitted again into converse and fellowship with him that by doing the things therein required they may live and so be put upon a new proof and trial whether they will live unto themselves or unto Christ that died for them and rose again Righteousness is hereby capable to be derived yea is more or less derived upon all the seed as well those which are of the law as those which are of the faith of Abraham respectively who is the father of us all or the type and shadow of Christ as he is the common parent unto both by his incarnation through which he had a twofold union wrought out in him becomming therein the head and root unto both these seeds and so to all mankind whatsoever who in one of these two respects are all made alive again in the last Adam that died in the first and this by the law of the first-fruits and root unto which the Olive branches do respectively refer for so it is said Rom 11. 16. if the first fruits be holy so is the lump and if the root be holy so are the branches where the branches are described as of two sorts the one such as may be broken off after they are engraffed in as also John 15. 1. c. having their union by the first covenant only the other those that stand by faith never to be cut off as having their union by the second and new covenant Now the first sort of these branches in right of their union and relation unto their head Christs natural man or living body unbroken and uncrucified have one sort of benefit by Christs sacrifice which is conditional and may be lost The second sort in right of their union and relation to their head Christs crucified natural man or dead body have all that the other have and over and above an additional benefit by the same sacrifice of Christ which the others have not and so the full and whole benefit of his death and that absolutely and without conditions This benefit unto each of the seeds from Christ their head is twofold either such as by way of imputation is their justification or such as by way of inherency is their sanctification respectively there is derived to the one such a justification and sanctification as answers in kind to what is required by the first covenant from him who doth those things thereby to live in them to the other there doth flow such a justification and sanctification as answers exactly to the Law of faith or second covenant unto whom faith is imputed without the works of the Law singly considered and in whom faith is operative to the purifying of the conscience in conformity to the purity and poverty of spirit found in Christs crucified and broken natural man They only that are justified and sanctified in this latter sense shall eternally be saved it being out of the power either of life or death or Angels or principalities or powers or things present or things to come or height or depth or any other creature to be able to separate them from this love of God in Christ
that which Christ in no sort or sense was capable to undergo being every moment of his sufferings the most perfect object of Gods eternal love doing that all along which was most perfectly welpleasing and lovely to the Father even whilst his natural man was the object of his temporary wrath and displeasure But Gods wrath in the first sense hath for its object all sinners whatsoever they be whether elect or non-elect whether such as shall be finally saved or finally damned consisting in that discountenance and rebuke which God hath resolved to put upon sin wheresoever he finds it yea though in his own dear children which therefore is consistent with his peculiar love as himself saith speaking of the spiritual seed to whom the sure mercies belong and with whom his covenant stands fast for ever Psal 89. 30 31 32 33. If his children forsake my law and walk not in my judgements if they break my statutes and keep not my commandments then will I visit their transgression with the rod that is of this wrath and their iniquity with stripes Nevertheless my loving kindness will I not utterly take from him nor suffer my faithfulness to fail With this rod and with these stripes was Christ himself smitten and we healed Isa 53. to the marring of his visage more then any mans and his form more then the sons of men Chap. 52. 14. leaving in him no form or comeliness to the eye of the natural man who therefore when he thus seeth him saith there is no beauty that we should desire him Chap. 53. 2. c. looking on him as despised and rejected of men and therefore hiding the face from him as not valuing or esteeming him at all but judging him as one stricken smitten of God and afflicted or as as one whose name is blotted out of Gods book a phrase usual in scripture to describe those that are under this first dispensation of wrath as accursed and separated from God Rev. 3. to whom God doth in this temporary ministry of wrath attending the breach of the first covenant declare himself as an enemy Thus it was with Christ not only to the judgement and discerning of others whether of his own people the Jews or of the heathens but thus he stood represented to himself in his own natural judgement and sense as a meer man who lay really under this wrath of God as the object of it for the sins and on the behalf of all mankind which seems to be intimated by Moses when in the person of Christ he was mediating with God Exod 32. 32. in behalf of the transgressing children of the first covenant bringing this as his last argument Blot me saith he out of thy book if thou wilt not forgive them as if he should have said Am not I willing to be blotted out of thy book that thou mightest forgive them have not I thus been wounded for their transgressions that by my stripes they might be healed under this wrath or curse Paul also in imitation of Christs affection declares himself willing to fall if thereby he might benefit his brethren his kinsfolks according to the flesh This then is the only sense wherein Christ is capable of bearing Gods wrath and of being made a curse for us And now how innocent and spotless is this precious and most profitable doctrine of Christs sufferings or passive obedience as to the calumnies and unworthy reproaches of those who take upon them to brand it with Popery Socinianism and how unjustly doth this proceed out of their mouths who state the point of justification so as to make it little other or better then that of works or of the first covenant having the imputation of no higher an object then Christs active obedience or legal righteousness singly considered for the matter of it whereas by this doctrine of Christs death and passive obedience we see something farther required by the law of the new covenant over and above the former which as a higher and more acceptable object of imputative righteousness is given to the true and right heirs of salvation viz. that of Christs broken meek crucified spirit the true Isaac as offered up which is before God of great price In this everlasting righteousness all the spiritual seed obtain at once an absolute remission and freedom from sin standing before the throne of God without blame in their spiritual Head the spotless Lamb in whom is no guile to the obtaining an eternal redemption peculiar to themselves from amongst all others the sons of men And forasmuch as herein is asserted that the sinner is thus justified in the spirit and righteousness of his head imputed to him as soon as he is made actually a believer and of that one blessed seed it doth avowedly decry Socinianism which makes the personal obedience of the Saint in conformity only to the death of Christ as his pattern and this but litterally also understood to be that alone which is thesinners justification which withall excludes the secondbranch of Christs passive obedience here asserted as it is the satisfaction to Gods justice and the atonement for the appeasing of his wrath on the behalf of sinners And as thus the true believers have a higher and more excellent objective righteousness offered and imputed to them so have they also a more excellent and precious faith then the other to receive and apply it founded in the spirit of true son-ship and adoption as the spring of that newness of life and operation which the law of the new covenant requires This faith we say is saving and to be of it is inconsistent with our being of works singly considered so that to be and live by this grace is no more to be and live by works otherwise grace is no more grace and if it be of works then is it not of grace otherwise work is no more work Rom. 10. 6. which with what else hath been said on this subject of Christs obedience doth suffiicently bear witness against the Romish doctrine of works Thus we have treated of the obedience of Christ both active and passive through which he fulfilled all righteousness and underwent all things written of him needful to be by him performed and suffered for the compleating mans redemption and salvation without having inflicted upon him the pain of the damned or the wrath of God in that sense as some groundlesly and without warrant from Scripture do affirm And as thus we have seen Christ mystically as well as litterally laid in the grave and rendred obedient to the death of the Cross so in the third and last particular he remains to be considered as through the progress which the witness and teachings of the Father made in him he comes at length to be declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead the holy one which was so far from being left in the grave or suffered to see corruption that his crucified natural man or dead
large discussed and held forth 2 Cor. 5. as also Jer. 31. compared with Ezek. 18. where Christ challenges all souls to be his as having obtained the non-imputing of sins past unto them in order to put them upon a new trial of personal obedience unto him who is the Lord that bought them and hath renewed life in them that they should henceforth not live unto themselves but to him that died for them Yea this is so evident that the creature itself Rom. 8. 19 20. earnestly groans and labours expecting a restauration by this price of redemption paid by Christ from under the bondage of corruption so as to be brought into the glorious liberty of the sons of God In summ therefore there are these two great and general benefits flowing forth from Christs death upon all men The first is a common enlightning of spirit whereby there is set up in them in some degree more or less the candle of the Lord shewing the work of the law in their consciences to the accusing or excusing them in all they do and enabling them to such improvement thereof as to attain the answer of a good natural conscience unto the Rule set before them under the first administration of Christs kingdom The second is Gods not imputing to them sins past as also the often renewing of his pardon to them for sins present Psalm 78. 38. exercising therein his forbearance for the sake of his own justice as pacified and atoned by Christs sacrifice accompanied with protection and encouragement which thence also is afforded them by the hands of the good Angels as his ministers of justice unto all such as by approving themselves faithful in that little they have received are found in the number of wel-doers by which we see the extent of the vertue of Christs blood even to the ends of the earth wherein he hath prepared as large a remedy for the fallen seed of Adam as the dise ase required CHAP. XIV Shewing the continuance and progress of the war between the subjects of Christ and Anti-Christ and the terms and issues upon which they joyn THis war first discovered itself in the two brothers Cain and Abel where the devil comes off equal with Christ so as to gain and prevail with Cain as Christ chose and accepted Abel yea for success in the combate seems to have the better judging probably that in this murther of Abel the promised seed might have been wholly extinct and so have finally miscarried God therefore supplies Abels room with another son through whose line the PROMISED SEED might be yet figured out and carryed on as through Cains line the SEED OF THE SERPENT were shadowed forth and continued But the world coming to multiply and the generations of men to increase the subjects now of Christs three kingdomes distributed as before we have set down are upon the stage at once The first sort of men are those in a corrupt degenerated state whose daughters the SONS OF GOD went in unto Gen. 6. and so begat Giants or men of renown The second sort are typed out and comprehended in this race of GYANTS or men of fame and great repute having the name of sons and God for their Father but being weighed in the ballance of the sanctuary were found to be too light a fleshly seed only though such as therein did bear the first image of God yet who in process of time did so corrupt themselves that God refused to strive by his spirit any longer with them but gave them up to the destruction of the flood as those who became in the imaginations of their hearts alwaies evil before him and in the works they did perform The third sort were found in the family of Noah who was righteous in Gods account and typed out the true spiritual seed Thus we see the distribution of mankind before the flood but after the flood it became much more evident and apparent not only in the three sons of Noah that afterwards peopled again the whole earth but in the time of Abraham with whom God renewed both his covenants making him the Father of many nations or indeed of the two great nations one of the law the other of faith Ishmael born of Hagar the bond-woman figuring out the children of the first covenant that were born after the flesh and Isaac the son of the free woman who was by promise typing out the seed born after the spirit These two seeds were distinguished by their births and dispensations they were under from all the nations of the world besides who were in an open idolatrous heathenish state out of which Abraham was called into the land which God should shew him And in process of time when God made good the promises to Abrahams seed in giving them possession of the earthly Canaan he still continued this threefold distribution of mankind chusing the fleshly seed of Abraham from among all the Nations round about them and placing them in the midst of them and then by his Prophets and the true ministry of his Word subdividing again the spiritual seed from the carnal Into this threefold distribution God was pleased to sort and rank fallen mankind and so to continue them unto Christs second coming in order to accomplish and fulfil the whole counsel of his will upon them which he had fore-purposed and determined within himself and had chosen the Lord Jesus as a polished shaft in his hand to bring to pass accordingly by what he reveals of himself in the Gospel and word of TRUTH wherein first he is declared to the Captain and Author of salvation unto the whole spiritual seed the many sons that are given him by the Father to bring up to eternal glory in the same way he came to it himself who was made perfect through sufferings of whom he is not to lose one but to raise them up all at the last day into everlasting life Secondly he is declared the Redeemer and Ransomer so far of all mankind from under the power of sin and Satan as to disable them to keep off the good things contained in the promises of this life or of that which is to come from any that shall fulfill the condition of them or at least keep themselves as they may from such high provocations and wilful resistance for which God swears in his wrath they shall never enter into his REST. But when man finds such work before him as he cannot go through with by the strength of nature he will not resign up himself in such case though he see there is no other way that God may do it for him by bringing him to Christ that he may have life but sits down in a sullenness of spirit resisting the Holy Ghost and rejecting the counsel of God against his own soul In direct opposition to both these declared branches of Gods will in the Gospel the devil and his instruments set themselves First to attempt by all the power that is in
the natural will or judgement in all the power and light thereof at best whilst unregenerate have no skil in nor know how to set about but as fools and little châ—ldren men must be found at the feet of Christ that he may give them a new birth and so teach and enable them thereunto But now these that thus have a right litteral knowledge of the Gospel are necessitated as to the life and power of their inward principles to fall in with and agree upon the same natural righteousness holiness and perfection in kind with their opposers and make use of their weapons to fix the truth of their witness taken up by them from theletter of the Scripture in such expressions as belong to the new-covenant-life in the second Adam upon those principles of the first Adams purity and perfection or the life of the covenant of Works as restored in and by the blood of Christ which the Scripture never intends if rightly understood but indeed on this account doth undeniably cast the cause upon those that are for the common and general Redemption who are not to be blamed for what they assert as to the extent of the benefit of Christs death to all men but for denying the truth of that witness held forth by the other which ought to have its due place and to be owned by them as consistent with theirs if they understood it yea as that which alone can give perfection and stability thereunto which therefore if rightly stated and acknowledged by them would return shame sufficient upon their adversaries discovering them to be self-condemners as opposing that very thing in the spirit and truth of it the grace faith and principles of the second-covenant-life which they do so zealously contend for in the Letter as to the peculiarity and durableness of the benefit which the true Saint receives by the death of Christ and as agreeing with that in spirit and truth the single activity and life of first-covenant-principles which they implacably oppose in the letter These are the contradictions that with great confidence and censoriousness are maintained on both sides in this our age whilst truth it self suffers every way and is unacceptable to either none being more ready then these to lay Heresie Blasphemy and high Notions at the wrong door of others in hopes to make themselves appear the sound and good Physitians Thus we see under the shadow and letter of the covenant of Grace the truth and spirit of it opposed and kept out and those that do it miserably tearing out their own bowels and pleasing themselves with names for things Whence it is that none are more confident of their being within the covenant of Grace freed from any danger of the covenant of Works then this latter sort of men who do that honour and right to the covenant of Grace as to be for it in their mouths but remove their heart far from it and hug in their bosoms the principles and life of the covenant of Works as that which they will not part with by any means but in such case will rather as with weeping may be said of them become enemies to the Cross of Christ whose God is their belly whose glory is in their shame who mind earthly things Phil. 3. 19. And herein they are hardned also two waies First by considering those that are behind them who maintain the doctrine of works against the litteral witness which they give unto the covenant of grace whence they conclude themselves free from any danger of being comprehended under a covenant of works Secondly by the consideration of their witness that pretend to be above them and to hold forth a Kingdom that consists not in word only but in power who under pretence of spirit and power do either with those called Ranters set up the doctrine and inspiration of devils in opposition to the truth of their witness that is but in the letter introducing again the filthiness of the flesh whereby to destroy the righteousness and holiness of the natural man which is not done away as some falsly and scandalously affirm we say by conformity with Christ in his death but is thereby fulfilled for that garment is made yet more pure and white by the blood of the Lamb and is kept spotless by this means to the second appearance of Christ or else they do annihilate the creature-being and assert perfection to consist in a swallowing up thereof into the pure being of God even in that glory wherein he is in communicable and saith I am and there is none besides me as the Familist and such who gather up all at last into a state of eternal salvation or rather into no state of creature-being at all and so in effect making neither heaven nor hell The contrary unto both these opinions is freely and fully asserted in this treatise in the believers conformity to Christs death and resurrection a doctrine which nevertheless in the true and full extent of it is accounted very offensive and scandalous in these daies of ours even amongst those that are most zealous for it in the letter who possibly may oppose it ignorantly for a season but when it comes to wilful sinning in this case it carries its own fire about with it whereby to devour the adversaries This little excursion I judged not unuseful for the cleerer and fuller asserting of the doctrine of the cross and death of Christ as it operates upon and is mis-judged by those that are yet under the first covenant considered as dispensed by the Son himself in his first appearance wherein he is a minister of the circumcision in the truth of it the righteousness and holiness of his flesh or natural man being the law or covenant of works in its highest and most glorious administration In this respect Christ is said himself to be made under the Law who also doth effectually teach those that follow him in the power of his death and resurrection how the Law may be used lawfully and according to the true intent of the giving of it So that Christ by coming in the flesh and considered as giving himself singly in and by the means of his first appearance doth beget unto himself children of the law or first covenant whose knowledge of him is only after the flesh and who though they be taken by him in to his house and built up with him in his flesh as one Tabernacle and habitation unto God yet attain no higher thereby then to be in the holy place and to minister and serve before the Lord there in a state figured out by the charge of the Levites under the Law who notwithstanding their officiating and performing service unto God in the Temple are capable of being for ever excluded from coming into the holiest of all there to do the office of a Priest or to come neer to any of those holy things which are within the veil in the most holy place and to be made
reserved in heaven for them ready to be revealed in the last time They that are born of this seed are born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of Man but of God and through the power of faith and the abiding of this seed in them are kept unto salvation without any possibility of sinning unto death or any danger of final falling away having by vertue of their reception of this seed in the heart through the gift of God the nature of true believers communicated unto them even the unity of the faith and knowledge of the son of God which makes them members of the new Jerusalem children of the promise who are born after the spirit and have that anointing whereby they know all things immediately from the head and fountain itself and need not that any man should teach them but as the same anointing teacheth them of all things 1 Joh. 2. 20 27. which was given to their head the true Aaron without measure running down upon all those that dwell together with him in the unity of the faith of the son of God even to the skirts of his garments upon the lowest members of this NEW JERUSALEM consecrating them a ROYAL PRIESTHOOD with himself to offer up spiritual sacrifices unto God This new nature in the seed of it whilst it is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things unseen is called faith even the faith that justifies spreading over us the propitiatory covering of Christs spiritual headship and EVERLASTING RIGHTEOUSNESS in which we are made to stand for ever spotless and without guile before the Throne of God Those that are of this faith are blessed with faithful Abraham and are of that one seed that are heirs according to the promise The work of this faith and new birth when once wrought out by Christ in the heart and conscience is to breed patience and that patience experience and that experience hope even that hope which maketh not ashamed The patience which is wrought out in every regenerate one by this faith is called the obedience of faith that when it hath had its perfect work maketh us perfect so as to want nothing arming us with the same mind that was in Christ Jesus to suffer in the flesh in order to put an end to sin and to work off the soul from the will desire of the flesh into an absolute subjection and conformity to the heavenly will of Christ wherein he is one with the Father and so enabling us to keep the word of Christs patience which is indeed the Law and Rule under which the true believer is subjected until Christs second coming being to rest in the grave with Christ untill the remainder of his sufferings be fulfilled in his whole body the Church under the certainty and with the comfort of his promise that those that thus suffer with him shall also raign with him and those that thus die with him shall also live with him And that all true believers are thus observers of this Rule according to the patern left by Christ in his own sufferings purifying themselves as he is pure keeping the word of his patience and performing the obedience of faith which is required by the law of the new covenant we shall endeavour to make known as in the experience thereof and Testimony from the Scripture it is held forth For through the comprehending power of Christ as he is the head and root of this spiritual seed and precious faith which is obtained by Gods chosen ones they are separated from the very womb yea they have grace given unto them in Christ Iesus before the world began and are blessed with all spiritual blessings in the heavenly in him being accepted in the beloved In this respect Jacob was loved and Esau was hated or the one was accepted and the other was refused in their mothers wombe the children being not yet born neither of them having as yet done good or evil that the purpose of God according to election might stand not of works but of him that calleth Howbeit we are not in Scripture sense nor in truth as some unwarrantably affirm actual believers until by effectual calling we are made receivers of whole Christ in the seed as before described And therefore the Apostle Paul who is a remarkable example herein though he had received grace in Christ Iesus as in his head before the world began and as thus comprehended in his head was separated and distinguished from the womb in whom the purpose of God according to the election was to stand yet it pleased not God to call him and by revealing his son in him to make him actually a believer and new creature until he had spent many years even a great part of his life in a sowerness and rigidness of spirit under the dispensation of the Law flaming out at last into cruel and fierce persecution of the Church of God though in all still preserved by his head from wilfull enmity For saith he I did it ignorantly In like manner all the children given to Christ by the Father whereof he is to lose none are thus separated and distinguished from the rest of the world as the beloved seed according to Gods purpose from the womb and so according to Gods purpose are blessed with all spiritual blessings in Christ before the world began Yet until it pleaseth God by his grace to call them whether they be in the state of circumcision or uncircumcision they live and walk according to the principles and Rule of that dispensation they are under For so we see in the great instance of Abraham the father of the faithful as by Stephen he is described to us Acts 7. in the manner of the calling with which he was called and whereby he was made actually a Believer and a new creature which was by Gods appearing to him and by the power of his WORD working in him calling and bringing him out of his own Country the land of his Nativity and from his natural relations into the land which he should shew him causing him herein to resign up his natural judgement and will entirely to his disposal and through faith to obey for he went out not knowing whither he went which first remove of his was out of the state of degenerate nature and his heathenish life into the earthly land of Canaan as that was a type and figure of the heavenly and into circumcision or experience of that communion with God which is by the first Covenant whereby the filth of the flesh in his heathenish state was cut off and cleansed and he in minde as well as in body brought into the figurative land of promise even to a conformity in mind and spirit to the Law the perfection of Christs flesh or natural man In this promised land perceiving by faith that it was but the type and shadow of the good things themselves the heavenly Country which was
the grass withereth the flower fadeth away because the spirit of the Lord blows npon it surely the people is grass The grass withereth the flower fadeth but the WORD of our God shall stand for ever ver 7 8. So then at length the believing part in the Saint cometh to see and experiment the emptiness nothingness and fading of the best natural perfection and fleshly purity not only in legal worldly rudiments and principles but even in Evangelicals so far as they consist in the knowledge of Christ himself but according to the flesh Whereupon the believer becomes willing to be crucified to all confidence esteem or desire of Rest and abode in them seeing a patern left by Christ himself herein when he suffered in the flesh that we also might be armed with the same mind and by being crucified in the flesh may come at last to cease from sin attaining a perfect freedom there-from by the resurrection from the dead And now what high thoughts and proud imaginations do rise up in the heart fit to be brought down and subdued by the cross of Christ then which nothing is more grievous to the soul which loves this Absolon it s own uncrucified fleshly mind and the enlightned reasonings thereof in their very rebellion and endeavours to out it of the everlasting kingdom yea it struggles hard and wrestles vehemently to keep its Isaac from being offered up in sacrifice Oh! how with Zipporah doth the flesh cry out against faith as a bloody husband thus to require the full resignation of the judgement will and desire of the pure holy natural man as well as that of the corrupt All this it doth require and no less will serve its turn then the bringing of the exercise of these natnral senses as they are contesting with and resisting the workings of faith into perfect captivity to the obedience of faith and into perfect rest and silence in the grave of Christ where they are to be bound as in chains and fetters utterly disabled for ever acting more in any resisting or contradicting way unto the power and life of faith and so indeed are set free and have their truest liberty given to them to act more fully then ever in harmony with and subserviency unto the workings and life of faith Thus Rom 8. it is said If Christ be in you the body or flesh is dead because of sin but if the spirit of him that raised up Christ from the dead dwell in you he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies or crucified fleshly senses by his spirit that dwelleth in you to the bringing them forth in a better and more excellent way of operation then ever they had before For these fleshly senses as they are planted into the likeness of the death of Christ are made one dead body with him and so are shut up for ever in an everlasting impossibility to act against the truth but only for the truth to act in a way of resisting and contradicting the workings of faith but in subjection and subordination to â—â—em This is that we mean by the obedience of faith and keeping of the word of Christs patience which is required by the law of the new covenant the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus as it frees us from the law of sin and death which is so far from destroying the law that it fulfils it and so far from abolishing the good works required by the law that it disannuls only the unlawful use of them setting them up in their right and lawful exercise not single and alone without the faith that is saving or in resistance and contradiction to that faith nor so mixing them with a faith that fails whereby both faith and a good conscience may come to shipwrack but making them in such manner the fruit and children of the operation of the faith of Gods elect as that against such there is no law This is the gathering together into one dead body with Christ wherein all his elect must be found as fashioned into a similitude with him in his death and that for the filling up of the measure of his sufferings in the whole number of his beloved ones that so at last they may arise likewise with his dead body and be gathered together into one glorified body with him or into a similitude with him in the glory and power of his resurrection when they shall be like him and see him as he is when at this appearing of Christ who is their life they also shall appear with him in glory The hope and expectation hereof grounded upon the promises made to this purpose in Col 3. 4. 1 Joh. 3. 2. Phil. 3. 21. and many other places of Scripture is that that hath born up the spirits of his people and faithful ones in all ages that have been made willing to follow this Lamb whithersoever he goeth from desponding and sinking away under all those insolent affronts and contradictions they have met with in their several generations from their insulting unreasonable adversaries the inhabitants of the earth who flourish prosper in the world while they are chastened every morning disciplined under the cross of Christ miscarrying as to all that 's visible and overcome in those hot contests oppositions and assaults which the seed of the Serpent lusting to envy will not fail to exercise them with who indeed could have no power against them unless it were given them from above as Christ the head of this spiritual seed told Pilate in his own personal case Ioh. 19. 11. and as power was given from above against that great Master Lord so is it also given to them to make war with the Saints and to overcome them Rev. 13. 7. but though at present they be so overset by worldly powers that they cannot work any deliverance in the earth neither do the inhabitants of the world fall before them Isa 26. 18. yet at this second coming of Christ he will call up the dead bodies of these his crucified Saints and faithful witnesses not only into a state of security from the destroyer but into a singing and triumphing condition ver 19. Thy dead men shall live together with my dead body shall they arise awake and sing ye that dwell in dust Both these states of the true Saint are most lively described Isa 54. which we shall endeavour to give some short tasts of for our clearer enlightning in the present truth specially as to what concerns the former branch the Saints conformity with Christ in his death The other consisting in a conformity to him in his Resurrection-state we shall reserve for the latter end and conclusion of this discourse CHAP. XVIII Concerning the Saints conformity with Christ in his death particularly opened and cleared from those mistakes which the enemies to the Crosse of Christ are apt to brand it with BY conformity with Christ in his death which some have been
their own righteousnesse not submitting to the righteousnesse of God and so prove deceived and seduced through an unskilfulnesse of discerning in that which is good to the despising and refusal of that which is a more excellent and enduring substance for the fading glory of flesh and the morning dew of natural righteousnesse wanting that wisdome which teaches to distinguish betweene the lawful and unlawful use that is to be made of the Law and the eating and drinking of the body and blood of Christ worthily or unworthly Behold then the evil desire and lust that may and doth spring up in mans pure holy and righteous nature as by being under the dominion of the Law and living in subjection and conformity thereunto he is striving to separate them whom God has joyned together in Christs second appearance and to uphold competition and opposition betweene those that should dwell together as brethren in unity in the communion of the holy Ghost which counsel of God carries much contrariety in it to mans natural desire and lust which would faine get away with Gods first word the word of the beginning Heb. 6. 1. wherewith God at first visits man refusing to stay to the end and to hear and obey the second word which God is pleased to have with him whereby he finishes and compleats his first operations in him declaring to him his whole counsel whereunto the first dispensation is appointed only as a fore-runner and therefore must needs be short as to that which is the work of the second being no otherwise intended from the beginning but as a messenger or preparer of the way Hence we may see what it is Paul means Rom. 7. and ch 8. when he acknowledges that the Law through the weaknesse of the flesh though it have nothing in it which causes or is the author of sin yet it hath that in it which sinne takes occasion by to set up it self anew and blossome forth againe in mans nature when renewed and restored to a conformity with the Law which is spiritual holy righteous and good for lust is capable to conceive in Adams posterity thus renewed and set up afresh as well as it did in himself at first and lust when it hath thus conceived brings forth sinne or an envying and contesting against the glory of Christs second appearance which sin being perfected or come to its fixing of the mind in an unchangeable and implacable enmity thereunto brings forth death even that death which is spiritual and eternal so Rom. 8. such a carnal mind as this is called death as it stands in such an enmity to the spiritual mind that it is neither subject to that Law of God which is the Law of the Crosse and Spirit of life nor indeed can be Thus saith the Apostle by the coming of the Commandment sin revived and 1 died and what was ordeined for life I found unto me to be unto death sin getting into its vigour and strength thereby assuring the soul that it is here out of all danger being begotten againe into Gods own likenesse wherein man was at first created and having the visible characters thereof shining forth in it written not with inke and on tables of stone but with the Spirit of the living God and on the fleshly tables of the heart shewing it self a right change and a real heart-heart-work above and beyond all that is accounted civility and morality and above all notion and spirituality that is but head-work and fancy What is now to be done sayes the Tempter to this sort of men but to perswade them torest here and praise and blesse Gods Word that by this first visit and beginning hath made so beautiful glorious a change in their hearts nature as this is wherof the experiences are so lively and refreshing especially when reflection is made upon what they are changed from when brought to this and the way and means of attaining it which hath also the approbation and praise of visible Churches and Saints and of the best men so judged by mans day which makes them say Let us tabernacle here with Moses and Elias especially if we be upon the Mount and brought thither by Christ himself transfiguring himself there before us In this earthly building of the renewed natural man let us fix and resist all dawnings and approachings of any higher or better state Let this our Ishmael live was once the voice of Abraham himself that afterwards was perswaded to offer up his Isaac that was but according to the flesh If we be prevailed with to fix here and live after the flesh we shall die Rom. 8. 13. or enter and abide in those wayes of death which make us enemies to the Crosse of Christ and cause him in the end to swear we shall never enter into his Rest As man therefore in the purity and holinesse of his natural will may be using the Law of God lawfully as we have shewed so also he may exercise himself in his own holy and righteous operations of mind and nature in such manner as may be quite contrary to the mind of God and the true end of such conformity wrought in him unto the Law experiencing by this means the evil that is incident unto a pure and uncorrupt state of being and that lust that is to be known only by the coming of the Law Which evil desire or lust of man in this state is a covetousnesse which sets up idolatry in the highest streine endeavouring to oppose Christ in the Spirit by Christ in the flesh by exalting the glory of his first appearance above that of the second Sin in this sense hath for the Mother and Nurse of it mans natural righteousnesse wherein he is apt to glory and be puffed up without cause contrary to the true meaning of the Law which requires him indeed to cherish and maintaine the natural righteousnesse and holinesse therein and thereby ministred whether considered as it shines forth in the flesh of Christ or in their own hearts and consciences in opposition to that which is the filth of the flesh or to the resting in our own personal morality and vertue before the Law came to us but authorizes him not or warrants him to oppose herewith the Crosse of Christ and the excellency of the knowledge of him crucified or to resist upon pretence of keeping that up the coming in of the better and more excellent glory When once therefore such a frame of spirit as a root of gall and bitternesse is springing up in men and that wilfully against manifest conviction and long contestation and patience on Gods part to bring them to another mind at last they are brought by sad experience to find that in their flesh dwells no good thing but such as will be leaking out of this fleshly building of the first Adam at its best if rested in and subject to corrupt So that whilst with the mind they serve the Law of God with the flesh
several as they may without the seed of saving faith accompanying them how high and heavenly soever they may seeme to be they are but common grace and may be fallen from and so those may perish that have them But where such gifts are followed with that farther work in the soul which is the proper fruit and effect of the third Ministery containing in it things that accompany salvation then those very gifts hereby washed in the blood of the Lamb do change their fading and failing property and become saving and everlasting In the righteousnesse then of Faith both the former righteousnesses are fulfilled and established upon better principles and Promises then those of the first Covenant to the making the possessors thereof heirs of God co-heirs with Christ and so partakers of the Divine nature entering them into the glory that is within the veile and setting them downe with Christ on his Throne as he is set downe with the Father on his Throne in the fulnesse and perfection of both Creations having all power in Heaven and in Earth put into his hand This is the Mortification and Vivification the dying to sin and living to righteousness witnessed unto by the Scriptures and shining forth in the face of Christ as the Truth that is in Jesus unto which we are made conformable by being planted together with him in the likenesse of his death and resurrection comprehending in it all that righteousnesse and holinesse which is but in part and is upon right grounds pleaded for either by the Natural or Legal Conscience and holding forth over and above that which is higher and of a better and more durable kinde then theirs But however it be that the defect and miscarriage we are speaking to that is incident to Natural or Legal righteousnesse lie not in this that it is counterfeit or hypocritical but that it is that which is but in part and which therefore does unwarrantably exalt it self into a competition with or opposition to the whole as it comes to passe in those who make such ill use of Christs first appearance as thereby to resist and keep out his second yet we are neverthelesse to acknowledge that there is much counterfeit work to be found in the world as daily experience sheweth both as to light practice principles and converse amongst those that pretend fair to be great proficients in that righteousnesse and holinesse that makes up the answer of the Natural or Legal good conscience who do not truly live in the principles of either of these states but make a flourish with meere notion head-work and light without heat together with some overly performances as desirous of a share in the praise of men with those who truly live in such principles by a meere outward plausiblenesse in converse whilst their inward part is full of ravening and wickednesse Others also that are unsincere and faulty in their very principles we are to discover and lay open for the preventing of the deceit with which under these the Devil lies in wait to insnare and turne men aside from the TRVTH This sort of men in whom are found these corrupt principles whereby they become men of corrupt minds reprobate concerning the Faith speaking lies in hypocrisie the Scripture expressely takes notice and warnes us of above all the rest as the great engines the Devil makes use of for the instillation of his Doctrine by faire speeches to the deceiving of the hearts of the simple Since therefore there is such deceivable work kept on foot in men by that grand Impostor Satan and that under pretence of their dying to sin and living to righteousnesse in many feigned shews of mortification forbidding of marriage and commanding to abstain from meats which may be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth which things have indeed a shew of wisdome in will-worship and humility and neglecting of the body not in any honour to the satisfying of the flesh all which is so far from being comprehended in the righteousnesse revealed by the Gospel as any part of it that under a counterfeit shadow and similitude thereof it stands in direct opposition thereunto begetting in the conscience such a dying unto Christ or the Spirit of TRUTH as imports and plainly speaks forth a living unto Antichrist or the spirit of lies and fashood prophesied of as that which with great confidence will be obtruded by the witnesse and practice of divers in the last times 1 Tim. 4. 1 2 3. and elsewhere since I say these things are so I have held it my duty in very faithfulnesse unto the TRUTH not to passe by the same in silence without giving my Testimony against all such deceitful workings in those who having departed from the faith give heed unto seducing spirits speaking lies in hypocrisie or in feigned resemblances unto TRUTH Of such the Apostle speaks 2 Cor. 11. for whose sake he was exceeding jealous lest the Corinthians through their influence and subtilty should be corrupted from the simplicity and chastity of mind which they ought to bear as chast Spouses unto Christ their one Husband v. 2 3. Such saith Paul are false Apostles Prophets and professors of Christ transforming themselves into the appearance of Christs true witnesses and followers and no marvel For Satan himselfe is transformed into an Angel of light Therefore it is no great thing if his Ministers be transformed as the Ministers of righteousnesse taking upon them to personate true mortification or dying to sinne and true vivification or living to righteousnesse whose end shall be according to their Works ver 13 14 15. This sort of men as appeares in the examples of Hymeneus and Alexander have been once enlightned and through the receivings of grace and attainments under the first Covenant have had that which the Scripture calls Faith and a good conscience 1 Tim. 1. 19 20. who notwithstanding do put away their good conscience and concerning faith make shipwrack being the adversaries on the one hand which Paul exhorts Timothy to maintaine a good warfare against as well as against the Teachers of the Law on the other hand who being ignorant whilest they are under the Law how to pursue the true end of it run out into unprofitable heady disputes and endlesse questions having once turned aside unto vaine jangling understanding neither what they say nor wherefore they affirme v. 4 5 6 7. But stumbling at that stumbling stone in Sion and rock of offence to enemies Rom. 9. 33. but of defence and salvation to his chosen beloved ones Psal 95. 1. the same Christ becoming to these a sanctuary or place of refuge to them a stone of stumbling even to both the houses of Israel a gin and a snare to the inhabitants of the earthly Jerusalem Isa 8. 14 who going about to establish their own righteousnesse do not submit unto and so fall short of the righteousnesse of God Rom. 10. 3. Both these sorts of men on
between two either to render our selvs guilty of the blood of men in the Age wherein we live by holding our peace or else to endanger the making our selves a prey by speaking so as to become hatred in the house of our God Hos 9. 8. and be accounted fools and madmen yea spectacles and wonders even in Israel But the precious faith here witnessed unto teaches us to glory in tribulation to endure great hardship as good souldiers of Iesus Christ and a great fight of afflictions till men become weary of reproaching and wondering as those to whom it is given not only to believe but to suffer for Christs name sake Hereby the true Believer prevails over his greatest oppositions and is born up when he fights with beasts at Ephesus or with absurd and unreasonable men who not having faith are in their encounters with that which they know not compared to bruit beasts with whom to maintain a right combate the true witnesses of Jesus Christ take not upon them to dispute out their faith into unprofitable janglings from the nicety of words and the wilfull mistake of sincere intentions but do content themselves to be for the use to which Christ designs them as GOLDEN CANDLESTICKS to hold forth and bear that light which will by its own evidence and demonstration clear up it self in its proper time and in the mean season shelter and defend those that own it standing in very little need of the wit eloquence and abilities of men to back and sustain it over all which the power of the cross is by Paul brought in triumphing when he says Where is the wise where is the Scribe where is the disputer and great reasoner of this world hath not God made foolish the very wisdom of this world 1 Cor. 1. 20. And indeed experience in these days of ours as well as what former times have afforded hath set before our eyes in very legible broad Characters this generation of unreasonable men 2 Thes 3. 2. so long ago complained of by the Apostle who not having faith are led by degrees through the frowardness of their legal spirits to oppose it till they come in the way of Gods just Judgement to lose the right use of their very natural powers of mind as to sober and ingenious reasonings and become absurd like those teachers of the Law 1 Tim. 1. 7. who were famous for strife and jangling but neither understood what they said nor whereof they affirmed These the same Apostle Phil. 3. 2. stiles Dogs evil workers and the CONCISION that are very keen and sharp in barking biting and devouring wherein if they find they cannot do hurt enough themselves they will be calling out to others for assistance but know not how to carry themselves like men or reasonable creatures towards those who are the true circumcision and worship God in the Spirit rejoycing in Christ Iesus and having no confidence in the flesh ver 3. Of these the Scripture bids us beware more to signisie to the Faithful witnesses of Christ before hand what they are to expect then in the least to weaken them in the discharge of their duty even to the offering up of themselves if need be in the service of the faith which they profess For truth hath least cause of anything to be discouraged by opposition since it is able to cloath the lovers thereof with the whole armour of light by way of defence even against the gates of hell it self And since the days are hastning fast wherein there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed neither hid that shall not be made known so as that which hath been spoken in the Closets and in darkness shall be heard in the light and proclaimed on the house tops Luke 12. 2 3. why should the true Believer and righteous man be afraid to present the most inward thoughts of his heart in characters to be read and seen of all in assured expectation that the Lord will come to execute judgement and convince the ungodly of all their ungodly deeds and hard speeches against him Surely such a fear as this belongs more properly to the hypocrite who looks fair to the eyes of men but God knoweth his heart and seeth it full of blackness and corruption who therefore by his own immediate stroke will in his due time lay such open also to the sight of others Iob 34. 26. To conclude then Thou art desired who ever thou art that shalt think fit to peruse this Treatise not to be prejudiced at the first view or by taking things in parcels without a full and serious weighing of the whole but by a diligent search and perusal of the Scriptures whereon the things here witnessed unto are grounded to examine whether they are so or no. And if then thou shalt finde a harmony and consistency resulting springing up to thee as well from the inward as outward Word this leisurely Survey unto which thou art invited will be found to have been of no small advantage to thee in thy making a right judgement hereof And if some of the Chapters that are more Theoretical in the begining of this Treatise as well through sublimity of the subject-matter therein handled as the narrowness and insufficiency of expression be thought knotty and abstruse the other which are more practical and speak directly to the works of God in the consciences of men as the several draughts and copies of what was first requisite to be represented to thy view and contemplation in Himself the original patern Head and root of all will I perswade my-self be found very easie and familiar specially to those that are experimental who as they travel farther into this discourse will come out of the deep waters of the manifestation of Divine glory in God himself into such shallows as are more suited to humane capacity where not only the true Saint but even the natural man and that under different dispensations one coming over the head of the other as superior and more excellent and in the several measures and degrees of proficiency and growth under each may not only finde his legs and feel the ground under him but see his face as in a glass finding himself represented to himself as to his present state and appearance or as to the proper principles in the prevailing power and activity whereof he lives And if it be objected that it were more suitable to the Laws of method first to have propounded what is more obvious in way of condescension to the lowest capacities and so to have handed the Reader along into greater deeps The Answer is plain to any intelligent Reader which is that the matter requires and enforces this Method I have used which therefore I conceive to be more genuine and natural besides that no true and right prospect can be given or taken of the Copy till the original hath been first in our eye as the top-stone whence only we may be enabled
as their living Oracles that proceed out of the mouth of Christ the Mediator is also called the WORD according to Scripturesense and acceptation which yet will be more fully evident by considering the Word of God in a third sense to wit as the holy Scriptures coming not by the will of man but by inspiration from God in men moved by the Holy Ghost are also called the Word and Oracles of God containing in them the same Declaration and Testimony of the mind and will of God as is to be found in the inward WORD but dispensing it in an outward form of wholsome words taught and inspired by the Holy Ghost himself Unto these words of the Holy Scriptures given by divine inspiration no man may adde Rev. 22. 18. or take there from v. 19. Wherefore it is that they are not of any private interpretation but require the inspiration of the living WORD to open and declare the true and full meaning of them which is near unto every true believer being the WORD which dwels in the heart by faith the key of David and that holy anointing 1 Joh. 2. 27. that is truth and no lye which abideth in the Saints in such manner that they need not that any man teach them but as the same anointing teacheth them of all things taking of the things of Christ and shewing them unto them according to his promise John 16. 14 15. whos 's teachings nevertheless are also derived and communicated from one Saint unto another by the Ministry of outward words and Exposition of the Scriptures as by being taught of God they are fitted and prepared thereunto and made able Ministers of the new Testament who handle not the Word of God deceitfully through any private interpretations of their own but by manifestation of the Truth in its own self-evidence do commend themselves to every mans conscience in the sight of God not preaching themselves but Christ Jesus the Lord and themselves servants for Jesus sake 2 Cor. 4 5. And Christ hath promised to send forth such a spirit of the Ministry as this in all Ages even to the end of the world Mat. 28. 20. for the perfecting of the Saints and edifying of the Body the Church till we all come in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God unto a perfect man unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ Ephes 4. 13. That then which doth enable to the work of the Ministry thus considered is the shining forth of the Truth in the face of Jesus Christ by his indwelling presence in the heart comparing it self in the mind and understanding of the Saint with the testimony which is given of it self in the Outward Word And by discerning the perfect Analogie and Harmony that springs up between both answering one another as face answers face the believer receives such certainty and satisfaction in the mind of God made known as warrants him in the delivery and declaration thereof unto others This as the safest and best rule in judging and declaring truth from the Scriptures hath been owned in a constant harmony of witness by Saints in all Ages against all the enemies under one form or other that have sprung up either against the holy Scriptures themselves or the Spirit and inward WORD that lives and breathes forth in them and by them Thus through the faith that is in Christ Jesus the Holy Scriptures are able to make us wise unto salvation and to make the man of God perfect throughly furnished unto every good work being in this harmony and consent with the inward WORD of the same Authority with it and of the same divine and spiritual nature property and use able to save the soul and prosper to the end for which they are sent as a servant in the hand of the living WORD to fulfil all his pleasure and become either a savour of life unto life as ministred in harmony with and subserviency unto the living WORD or a savour of death unto death 2 Cor. 2. 16. as ministred singly in opposition thereunto The Scriptures then are not properly the inward and living WORD but have a testimony and expression peculiarly their own John 5. 39. search the scriptures they are they which testifie of me saith Christ in which Testimony of theirs they are either as a servant and preparer of the way unto the living WORD as those that literally testifie of it pointing at Christ the life and spirit of them or else they are to be considered as one and the same with the living WORD in perfect analogie and harmony both consorting and dwelling together in an inseparable band of union unveiling rather the naked beauty of the inward WORD then bearing any different sense from it professing themselves to be but as a dead letter or sealed book Isa 29. 11. any farther then the living unwritten WORD of God as breathing into them becomes their life and is made use of as the key to open them so that both together make up one and the same divine oracle whereas if consideration be had of the Scriptures in the letter only they are then capable of having a meer private interpretation and humane sense put upon them and so to nourish up a way of prophecying that hath its rise out of the divination of mans own heart or the single ability of the natural mind exercised in them which is so far from being the true ministry that it is but the vision of God that proceeds from man as he follows his own spirit and not Gods Ezek. 13. 2. 3. c. Now if the body of the Scriptures deserve the name as they do of the word of God their spirit and Original deserves it much more and is much more eminently of authority and use for the effecting of all that is or can be done by them even the WORD that is nigh thee that is in thy heart and in thy mouth the WORD of faith Rom. 10. 8. the unseen and unwritten WORD which evidences itself to faith which is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things unseen Heb 11. 1. This WORD is described Heb. 4. 12. where it is said the WORD of God is quick and powerful sharper then any two-edged sword piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit and of the joynts and marrow and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight but all things are naked and open unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do By being here described as a person the Holy Ghost signifies to us in what sense we are to understand the WORD of God in this place even for Jesus Christ the Mediator not simply considered as the second in the Trinity any more then for the outward body of the Scriptures which person of Christ is spoken of under the same name and description Rev. 19.
head of the woman is the man the head of every man is Christ and the head of Christ is God testifying hereby to faith which hath Christ for its object in all it receives the method wherein God proceeds as he creates all things by Jesus Christ for saith he God is the head of Christ or the Trinity by their immediate operation do first comprehend the person of the Mediator in God himself and then do send him forth as the true Messiah making him the Minister of Gods first and second appearance to the creature in the capacity of head and root to both creations Thus Secondly Christ is the head unto every man comprehending all mankind whatsoever as well they that are of the earth earthy as those that are of the Lord from heaven in himself who is the root to both creations and from thence causes them to flow forth and exist as his off-spring in their particular nature and proper persons in their several generations from the beginning to the end of the world Lastly Man is the head unto the woman in his creation so made by God unto Eve that therein he might as a shadow and figure illustrate not only the truth and reality of being which Eve had in her head but withall the true end of her being so comprehended that she might not abide single and alone cut off from dependance on and duty to her head but be brought into compleatness of being through her return into the neerness and intimacy of marriage-union with him yet without losing the property of being which she is made to have as the woman in distinction from the man This is the figure and resemblance of Gods method and proceeding in creating all things by Jesus Christ which haply the wisdom of man will carp at thinking to find absurdities in it through the deceits of Philosophy and worldly rudiments that are not after Christ but faith sees through all these Clouds and if need be interprets the riddle shewing that the truth which is spoken in Gods word hath also its testimony from humane principles so far as they have any rectitude in them It is plain That the worlds were made by the word of God that is God from eternity gives being unto the WORD as image of the Trinity and the WORD through the excellency of power and glory which he hath in and with God was able out of nothing to create both worlds giving them their beginning and foundation in himself as he became the first-born of every creature and first-begotten from the dead In which state he that thus was the first and was also the last did with his call cause all things in both to stand up together as by name in his sight and presence when he took notice of them recorded them in his books whilst as yet they were not fashioned and did behold them in the particular forms wherein afterwards they were to be Thus in the beginning was the WORD the WORD was with God and the WORD was God in this WORD was life even the life of both creations and therefore also of the man Christ Jesus that was fore-appointed the head and original pattern unto which as well the natural as spiritual man were to be conformed who did as the truth and substance it self at last appear and minister the true sanctuary which God pitched and not man accomplishing all that was written in the Volume of Gods book for him to perform for the abolishing of sin and death and the bringing forth of life and immortality to light In this his Angelical and spiritual state wherein the man Christ Jesus stood comprehended in the root of David before the world began he was figured out unto the children of Israel by the two Cherubims of glory covering or shadowing the Mercy-seat Heb. 9. 5. and by the two Olive-trees or the two anointed ones standing by the Lord of the whole earth Zech. 4. 14. which compared with 1 Kings 6. 23. will make it appear that Solomon was not ignorant of this great mysterie in that he made the two Cherubims when he was to build the Temple and set them up therein of Olive trees or trees of oyl to signifie the mediation of Christ in spirit in his head as these two Olive-trees were the two golden pipes that emptied out the golden oyl Zech. 4. 12. of all Gods communications unto the works of his hands in both worlds This is that Jesus who whilst comprehended in his head and for a long time shadowed and typed out as the promised seed that was to come in the flesh had notwithstanding all the actions of his head and root attributed to him as much as when in the very image it self he was made manifest and therefore is said to be that Jesus by whom all things are and were created and are of him and to him and for him in subordination to the Word Thus is Christ the son of man in heaven before he descended and was made flesh and in this heavenly state of his man-hood doth not actually exercise his humane life but his life is the same with the life of the Word all whose actions are imputed unto him as Abrahams were unto Levi who is said to have paid Tythes to Melchisedec in his fathers loyns so Jesus Christ may be said to comprehend in him and the actings of his mind the particular forms and life of all in both worlds to be manifested and brought forth in their proper seasons into their visible appearances in the worlds by him and at his pleasure for whom they are and were created And when we say that the particular life and form of every creature is thus comprehended in the heavenly manhood of Christ the meaning is either immediately or mediately For he that is thus before all things is not created alone but in and with this head they all consist or stand up together as in their head capable to exist in themselves in their heavenly invisible part at the pleasure of their head before they be brought forth into their mortal and visible frame and fashion in this world In which sense all of them are Christs off-spring and seed known to him by name whether such of them as are given to him by the Father to be trained and brought up by him as children of the second new and everlasting covenant or those of the first whether they be inhabitants of Mount Sion or Mount Sinai of the heavenly City that is above or of the earthly and fleshly Jerusalem whether they be men or Angels they are all his off-spring in one of these two respects and are to receive their natural or spiritual perfection from him as he is the Minister of Gods name in his first or second appearance unto them whence it is that Christ saith to his Father Heb. 2. 13. Behold me and the children which thou hast given me in distinction from the rest of the world the former of these
are hearers and receivers of this voice of Gods WORD in the best and highest capacity of any particular natural beings whatsoever And as their natural capacities are high and vast in their receivings from Christ so their readiness and exactness in conforming themselves to the will of Christ is unimaginable and their power to execute is most strong and mighty nothing under Christ being able to resist them or stand out against them in their ministry that is according to the will of Christ And as thus considered they are those that in the hand of Christ are made use of to bear the light or image of Gods first appearance unto all the inhabitants of the first creation so as not only man himself is made lower then they but with the whole world is put into subjection to them and their ministry as we have before expressed Thus in the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth he first set up the heavenly fabrick of the angelical nature and in that as in a subordinate head under Christ comprehended the whole earth and visible world as a mass without form and void through the darkness which was as yet upon the face of this great deep as it stood in the waters untill by the brooding of the spirit of life in the Word upon them making his Angels chariots and flying upon those wings of the wind he caused the earth to stand out of the waters and become a glorious visible fabrick adorned and beautified by the remaning works and products of the six daies as is at large described in the first of Genesis CHAP. V. Concerning the Creation of Man on the sixth Day WEE have already treated of the excellency and raisedness of being given unto Angels who in their invisibility shadow forth the glory of the Father And we have considered them as represented under the light of the first day as it stood divided from the darkness like a glorious heaven which light God called day in comparison of that darkness which he called night This darkness or night seems by the coherence of the verses fitly to represent the Earth considered as that Chaos or confused lump without form and void from whence God produced the bodily and visible frame of the first world with all the hoasts and generations thereof precedent unto and ushering in the creation of man after he had set up the Angels in a separatedness of being from it which visible frame of things so produced was to serve as an outward book of the creatures to make intelligible unto man the invisible things of God even his eternal power and Godhead through such earthly characters as so many kinds of voices in the world none of which wanted their signification or proper use for the service of man in his dutiful serving of God shadowing out the witness of the second in the Trinity which is the image of God in a visible administration to the sense and discerning of the natural being of the creature Forasmuch then as by the progress made by God as yet in the creation whilst the intellectual life of Angels and sensual life of other parts of the creation were brought forth and continued in so vast a distance and separation as heaven and earth so that the harmony and consistency of both seemed yet to be wanting God in his infinite wisdom to shadow and type out the finishing and compleating work which the operation of the Holy Ghost gives to the witness of the Father and of the Son was pleased on the sixth day to create man and in his constitution and building to provide a joynt consistency of both these excellencies and perfections together for man in his rational soul was made an associate to Angels and in his bodily or animal life equal to beasts that perish and in the joynt harmonious exercise of both these in one was that in a total sum which the other two were in a separate and divided condition Hence it is that man by his creation is so made in the image of God as to answer and represent the operations of the Trinity who put forth as it were a holy and divine combination in their workmanship to draw the earthly shadow of their perfections upon man in his creation who is made by them to consist of spirit soul and body 1 Thess 5. 25. But man considered as thus bearing the image of God is made simply to be receiving those properties and operations that are essential to him as a man and therefore is in another sense created in Gods image when he is made naturally righteous and holy in all the operations of this his being This we are taught by the Scripture Gen. 1. 26. 27. compared with Gen. 2. 7. if carefully minded by us where we may find man created in Gods image in a twofold respect First in the essential properties and operations that are incident and appertaining to him as he is a man consisting in the life of spirit soul and body wherein he is made to bear the similitude and resemblance of God in the divine essential properties and operations so as in a creature-being to be the earthly figure and similitude of the Trinity who therefore said Let us make man in our image and let him have dominion and soveraignty over the creatures bearing our likeness in his very make and constitution retaining this shadow of us as that which he can never quite lose without ceasing to be a man And for this reason it is that God saies Gen. 9. 5. 6. he will require the blood of mans life at the hands of every beast and at the hand of every mans brother for in the image of God made he man which if it should only refer to that image of God which man bears as he continues holy and righteous it would expose men in their corrupt state to the same fear which Cain that whosoever found them might kill them and be unaccountable Secondly man by the same act of Gods workman-ship is the image of God as he bears the similitude of Gods righteousness and holiness shining forth in Christs first appearance rendering him meet for communion with God in which consisted the puritie and perfection of the first Adam who was the figure and type of Christ himself according to the flesh the promised seed that was to come and to be made like unto us in all things sin only excepted and as such he was the shadowy Temple and first Sanctuary wherein divine worship and service was to be performed according to the tenor of the first covenant This was effected when God breathed into him the breath of life and made him to become a living soul as appears Gen. 2. 7. compared with 1 Cor. 15. 45 48 49. The image of God in this latter sense set up in man may as experience shews suffer change in a twofold respect either as that which as it ought will wax old vanish away prove as the morning dew
yea have no glory at all in comparison of that which excels and is to follow 2 Cor. 3. 10. or else as that which will be swallowed up of corruption and changed into a body of sin and death is the wages of mans disobedience and fruit of Gods displeasure for the same In this sense we are to understand man to be made in a mutable and corruptible state as having that set up in him and given to him through the well or evil ordering whereof he may either lose and justly be deprived of it in a way of Gods displeasure or exchange it for a second and more excellent appearance of God the glory that is to follow wherein this also is comprehended and made perfect and durable And that we may the better understand the nature of this changeable state wherein man is found under the first Covenant and see the weakness and faultiness thereof comparatively with that which is designed by God unto man wherein to fix and rest it will be needful for us to be more particular in describing first what man is in his essential properties and operations in that make and constitution communicated to him by the Trinity in his creation and then to shew what was the nature of the communion and converse with God which he was thereby fitted and qualified unto in order to grow up to be perfected in by the means for that end given him by God if the fault were not his own as it is written Thy destruction O man is of thy self Man then as he bears the image of the Trinity is constituted of spirit soul and body as his essential parts which whatever suspension of exercise or temporary alteration any of them may have do never suffer annihilation but make up the proper discriminating form of man by which he stands distinguished from all other the works of Gods hands in both worlds And thus first man is created spirit and made to subsist in his head Christ Jesus before the foundation of the world as we have already shewed where he stands comprehended in the life of Christs natural perfection as he is the Father of spirits in like manner by way of comparison as in reference to his fleshly seed all the posterity of Adam stood in the loyns of their common parent from the time of his creation Yet this is not the state of mans spirit made perfect but is only a first degree of his being which is the foundation laid by God to mans exercise of a bodily and spiritual life and operation incident and essential to him as a man whether he become a vessel of honour or dishonour So that in this state of a created spirit man had a being in his head before he was brought forth in the exercise either of his sensual or rational life and is rather comprehended in his head then actually and perfectly apprehending or enjoying in respect of which first state and invisibility of being he is a dark shadow of the witness of the Father Secondly man is to be considered in his bodily frame as he is made of the dust of the ground and had the breath of life breathed into him by God through which he became a living soul This breathing of the breath of life by God into mans nostrils doth declare first Gods bringing the soul of man into the actual being and exercise of its sensual life which till then lay hid in mans spirit by the means whereof he is furnished with a capacity of receiving and taking in by the organs of sense the knowledge of things proper to him as a man which though it be his weaker and inferiour part yet is first in motion in order to yield its service and subjection to the rational and superiour part This life which the soul leads and manages by actuating and informing the senses serving herself of them is that whereby the report of things from without is let in upon mans reason which is for the most part so prevalent as if the soul were absolutely and intirely dependent upon and necessitated unto the use of the senses in respect whereof some have thought very groundlesly that it hath either slept or ceased to be upon the laying down of the body By this first exercise of a living soul in man is figured out the witness of the Son Thirdly the spirit of man is the foundation and spring unto a rational spiritual or intellectual exercise of life wherein he is capable of associating with Angels and becoming their equal even in his natural capacity of a man which also was actually set up in Adam by that act of Gods breathing into him the breath of life and was as the superiour ruling part in man obtaining the place of Lord Ruler and Husband unto his first inferiour and sensual part which in its actings was to be dependent upon and subservient unto this in all usefulness and harmony Thus in a mystical sense man was made Male and Female in the same person through the setting up this two-fold exercise of life and operation of soul in him sensual and rational This second sort of operation is mans higher and nobler part and shews most the man in it the other distinguishes the man very little from the beast but that the countenance of man looks upward and the face of the beast downward The exercise of life in this higher and more raised part of man Adam obtained at first in perfection and had it in its compleat stature so far as it was capable during its association with its mortal body and while it was on this side the state of being made perfect in spirit and equal to Angels Luke 20. 36. by laying down the body in the grave either to good Angels when they become the spirits of just men made perfect or to evil Angels when they are the spirits of wicked men grown up to the height of their natural stature in spirit and by vertue of that perfect exercise of the rational and intellectual part which Adam had in the body he had a capacity to take in the knowledge and discerning of things immediatly from the inward vision represented to him by the ministry of Angels he had also an intuitive prospect into the nature of all visible and bodily things in their causes without being beholding to the report given by his senses and as a fruit hereof we do find Gen. 2. 19 20. That Adam gave names to every living creature according to their nature by vertue of this his intuitive knowledge which he exercised in a way independent upon his sensual part the property of this his spiritual and rational part being to act as in the body or as out of the body that is to say to serve it self of the use of its bodily senses or not according as they conduce to the furthering and bettering him in his true and right discerning of things man then hath a perfect compleat intellectual and rational life springing up
in him which is so far from being lessened or interrupted by death and the laying down of the use of his bodily life for a time that it never comes to its full and mature perfection until then and as a consequence hereof the body be re-assumed incorruptible In this property and operation of humane life man bears the figure and image of the witness of the Holy Ghost Thus we have described what man is in his essential parts and operations in order to fit him for that communion and converse with God designed unto him by the two Covenants unto the first of which he was actually and perfectly qualified as he became a living soul and did bear the image of God in and upon his natural man as the first Adam being of the earth earthy But unto the other man by his creation was no otherwise qualified and prepared then as he was set up in such a being as was capable by a farther workmanship of God to arrive unto and attain the glory and everlasting perfection of the new and second covenant without which all that was done unto him yet by what he had received from God in his creation if left to his own freewill would but redound to his greater misery and more righteous condemnation before the judgement seat of Christ through his own default This finishing and compleating work of God upon man was reserved to be Ministred to him on the seventh day whereby a far higher and more exalted capacity of mind and operation was to be added to him for the enabling him unto an everlasting happy and compleat communion with God This is that which in his first state was wanting and could not be obtained by him but as the free gift of God then propounded to him in the tree of life This second and last state of perfection held forth unto man from the beginning in the tree of life in the midst of the Paradise of God is described by the Apostle Paul 1 Cor. 15. 44 45 46 47 48 49. where he sets it up in contra-distinction to the first and earthly make of man by his creation shewing it to be that life and immortality which is brought to light in Christ as the last Adam the Lord from heaven and quickning spirit calling it the spiritual body as that in which the power of this endless life was comprehended comparatively with the natural body wherein the perfection of Adams mutable and corruptible life consisted saying plainly that there is this spiritual body and heavenly image in the last Adam as well as that natural body and earthly image in the first howbeit that is not first which is spiritual but that which is natural and afterwards that which is spiritual the first being the life of perfection that was found in the earthly Adam the other being that which was brought to light in the heavenly by his resurrection from the dead and therefore as is the earthly such are they that are earthly and as is the heavenly such are they also that are heavenly And in reference unto such as are the right heirs of salvation it is said as they have born the image of the earthly so shall they also bear the image of the heavenly and have their natural or vile bodies changed and fashioned like unto his glorious body by him who through his mighty power is able to subdue all things uno himself And if we desire to be satisfied how this change and translation out of the one perfection and image into the other is to be effected he positively asserts that it is brought upon man as the fruit of Christs resurrection or Ministry of Gods second appearance by and in him which rends the first veil and brings down the first Tabernacle of the natural body into the grave with Christ whence it springs up clothed upon with this house from heaven its spiritual body by means whereof this corruptible puts on incorruption and this mortal puts on immortality and death and the grave are swallowed up in victory This change and translation was as we have said propounded unto Adam as the end of his creation and was figured out to him in the tree of life and by the twofold exercise of life and ability of mind set up in their perfection in in him by creation he was indued with a power improveable in the use of the means God afforded him to be at least in a tendency unto so glorious an end and disposed in such a posture and frame of spirit as God required in him by the first covenant in order to this farther work which on the seventh day God would make known and impart to him What God herein required from man was signified unto him by the tree of knowledge of good and evil and the prohibition accompanying the same which was not to eat of the fruit of that tree In this tree of knowledge of good and evil man had the sight of himself in the exercise of his natural life and operations appertaining unto him as he became a living soul in the well or evi use whereof he might arrive unto the experience of the supream good held forth to him as the end of his creation the endless life that was to follow or else he might come by the forfeiture of the present good he enjoyed to know the evil of a much worse condition then at first he had for the avoiding of which and to continue in a posture meet to receive the other God required him in the state of innocency to abide in a waiting frame of spirit as a sojourner and stranger in the midst of his present enjoyments in the earthly Paradise that so through his patient forbearance from taking up his Rest or terminating his delight in seen things he might preserve in himself an unengaged unprejudiced spirit to what was yet behind of the counsel of God to be communicated to him as to a more excellent attainment and inheritance to be exhibited to him in the light of the approaching day of the Lord the beamings forth whereof as considered in type were already present CHAP. VI. Concerning the fall of man the steps and degrees to it with the bitter fruits and consequents thereof BY what hath been said of mans Creation it is undeniable that God made him perfect though the perfection of his estate was mutable or subject to change and therefore not the Rest from all eternity designed him by God so that man in this first perfect state had that still wanting which was the finishing and compleating work to what he at present enjoyed howbeit that which was wanting unto man did no way cause or necessitate his fall but that as we shall shew proceeded from the suggestion of Sathan and enticing of his own lust which lust when it had conceived brought forth sin and sin when it was perfected brought forth death although man in this estate was well and sufficiently armed and provided against it if he
same Covenant as it is the Law or first Testament though in effect it requires the same thing of man yet it is in reference to the sacrifice of the Redeemer by the vertue of whose blood the Covenant is not only renewed but kept from being broken until through wilful provocation there remain to man no more benefit by that sacrifice for sin Heb. 10. 26. That then which was possible for Adam to have done in the state of innocency was so to have made use of the power given unto him by his free will as to have walked faithfully with God according to the light he had received and therein to have abode in the earthly Paradise of his sinless nature as Christ commanded his Disciples to do in the earthly Jerusalem until the further effusion of the Spirit or pouring out of the Holy-Ghost upon them which further ministry was figured out unto Adam in the tree of life and the true Rest reserved by God yet to be more fully revealed unto him on the seventh day when the marriage union between Christ and him upon the terms of the new and everlasting Covenant was to have been contracted and celebrated whereof the institution of Marriage in the beginning was also unto him an earthly figure So that this we say as the result of all That by the power of pure and incorrupt nature in the first Adam he could never have wrought himself into the state of salvation nor have entred into the true Rest or procured an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled this being reserved to the work and power of faith that was yet to be revealed to him as the means to translate him out of his holy corruptible and mutable state of the first Covenant into the most holy incorruptible and immutable state of the second and everlasting Covenant and this without sin or forfeiture of the good he had in present possession to the advantage of himself and all his posterity But if it be here objected That if the power of nature could not do this it could do nothing and was of little avail to Adam the Answer is It was of great profit and avail to Adam if he had made the right use thereof For first he might by the power thereof have kept out the entrance of sin for the present until by being armed with a higher greater power he might have for ever shut the door upon it and excluded it Secondly he might have preserved in himself an unengaged and unprejudiced spirit against the approaching dawnings and breakings forth of further and higher light and in that ready silent waiting posture have diligently attended upon the means that were to be exhibited to him on the seventh day to lead him into rest which was the further preaching and holding forth of the Word of life by the voice and ministry of Gods second appearance which did bring its own saving power along with it to have begotten that precious faith in Adam that should have interested him in those precious promises whereby he might have been made partaker of the divine nature and have had the power given him to have become the Son of God in the new Covenant through believing and so heir of that salvation which by nature could not be obtained But Adam neglecting the opportunity by God put into his hands and hearkning to the voice of his wife and seducement of the Devil did justly fall under Gods displeasure and was made a sad spectacle thereof in himself and in his posterity who are now by nature children of wrath and disobedience a habitation of Devils a hold of every unclean spirit and Cage of every unclean and hateful bird yet not left in such a desperate state but that by the blood of Christ there is remission of sin to be obtained and a restauration capable to be wrought out CHAP. VII Shewing that God on the seventh day ended the works which he had made and produced the Rest and fixed estate appointed to the first creation which Christ the Mediator as he is the Minister of Gods second appearance is the Author and Accomplisher of THis Sabbathism or Rest of God was a state of glory and exaltation which was remaining unto the first works whereof the principal are men and Angels to be made partakers of and into which they were capable to be led and taken or from which to be denyed and excluded as in righteousness they should be judged by God to have rendred themselves worthy or unworthy by the deeds done by them in the natural body or state of life The extent and latitude whereof as to men is declared by the Apostle Paul 1 Cor. 15. where he comprehends under that term the whole life and operation of the natural man as he is a living soul in comparison with the whole life and operation of the spiritual man or heavenly Adam as he is made a quickning spirit and contains in him this glorious change under the term and expression of the spiritual body or heavenly image to be wrought out in man through the resurrection from the dead in conformity to the perfection or glory of this last Adam This change as well in reference to Angels and men as the rest of the creation which are also to be brought from under the bondage of corruption by the means hereof into the glorious liberty of the sons of God is the effect of the ministry of Christs second appearance which hath been in operation from the beginning dispelling the night which did precede it which is now far spent so as this day of the Lord is at hand ready to be revealed in the compleat victory and conquest it hath obtaind over all the opposition and resistance with which Angels and men have gone forth against it from the time of their first defection from God unto this day That which in this place is proper for us to treat of in reference hereunto is only to shew what change might would have been wrought upon the righteous and holy beings of angels and men by the influence and power of this second appearance of God in the face of the Mediator actually shining forth on the seventh day if the fault had not been in themselves by reason whereof instead of this glorious and blessed change they brought upon themselves a state of sin and death wherein by the power of this all-searching light and presence of Christs second appearance they were detected convinced judged and condemned The effect which is produced by the power of Christs second appearance upon the natural body or first constitution of being in Angels and men is called in Scripture a new creation and doth indeed require the putting forth of an exceeding mighty power Eph. 1. 19. for the effecting thereof even beyond if it were possible that that was declared and exercised in the first creation or the making of all things out of nothing which consists in a change and translation that is given unto
and the works of his hands judging and condemning the wicked Angels for their disobedience reserving them in chains of darkness unto the judgement of the great day and taking the holy and obedient Angels into participation and fellowship with himself in the life from the dead by him obtained and possessed as the Lord to whom God spake to sit down at his right hand from the beginning until he made his foes his foot stool through whom as through a Propitiatory covering he did look down upon all the works of his hands and was at rest and well pleased with them as wrought in the Mediator notwithstanding all that had been done by sin or Satan to effect a breach and alineate his mind from them Hence Job 38. 6 7. it is said that God fastned the foundation of the first world and laid the corner-stone thereof viz. in the person of the Mediator by way of provision and preparation against all the power of sin and Satan in their attempts upon it At this the good Angels those morning stars and sons of God rejoyced prying into this mysterie which made them sing and shout for joy as on the same occasion it is said Psal 118. 22 23 24. This is the day which the Lord hath made we will rejoyce and be glad in it to see thereby the Devil and his Angels disappointed in their wicked designs who by the bringing in of sin were in hopes to have hindred the growing up of Jesus the BRANCH that was to spring out of this ROOT But Davids ROOT sitting as Lord at Gods right hand had before obtained that power which was to subdue all enemies and lay them flat at his foot-stool Davids OFF-SPRING therefore was in no danger of having his course stopped or race hindred wherein as a mighty Saviour and Redeemer he was to go forth and rescue the whole spiritual seed out of the hands of sin and Satan to bring them unto the true REST and obtain a gracious reprieve and forbearance for the most obstinate and rebellious also And as this was the end of Christs coming in the flesh he is accordingly fitted and qualified thereunto enabled in every particular to fulfil and accomplish the same But that we may the more clearly and distinctly understand and come to see wherein Jesus Christ as man is made this mighty Saviour and Redeemer unto men we shall consider this in three chief particulars all which were the product and consequents of the Word 's being made flesh As first the seeds and principles of a two-fold holiness and righteousness formed and set up in the mind of Christ as he is a man answerable to both Covenants For by the Word 's being made flesh the man Christ Jesus was taken into a twofold union and communion with God through the overshadowing of the Holy-Ghost in the womb of the Virgin becoming thereby in his own person the substance of both Covenants Isa 42. 6. and ch 49. 8. The true Abraham or Father to both seeds as well that of the Law as that of Faith In both which considerations of his man-hood he was substantially or personally united with God or with the WORD he and the WORD making but one Person and one Mediator which no man whatever besides himself is or can be and by vertue hereof he is qualified both as Priest and Sacrifice to pay that ransom and make that atonement for sin which God required The first of these unions he had as made under the Law or first-covenant which produced in him suitable righteous and holy principles unto the rule and tenor thereof enabling him to fulfill all that kind and sort of righteousness therein and thereby required and commanded In respect of which union and the image of God thence springing up in him and adorning of him he was truly and properly made a living soul and in this fashion and habit of a man was to taste death for every man as being in a state subjected thereunto called the natural body in distinction from the spiritual body For 1 Cor. 15. 44 45. there is a natural body and there is a spiritual body as it is written the first man Adam was made a living soul and the last Adam was made a quickning spirit Through this first union Christ had an exercise of life as meer man and in common with all men sin only excepted by reason whereof the workings and operations of his mind though they were in their kind most perfect yet were but those of the first Adams righteousness in the highest purity and perfection thereof The second union and communion then which is contracted between the WORD and Jesus the Son of Mary made him a quickning Spirit and brought him under the Law of the Spirit or of the second and everlasting Covenant as it is written Isa 59. 21. Thus saith the Lord my Spirit that is upon thee and my words which I have put in thy mouth shall not depart out of thy mouth nor out of the mouth of thy seed nor out of the mouth of thy seeds seed from henceforth and for ever Through which union Christ as man had the Spirit poured out upon him without measure and above the measure according unto which he was the receiver of it as he was under the Law singly considered as him whom God the Father seals and on whom he confers his new name or second image feeding him with hidden Manna and admitting him into the glory within the veil setting up in him the exercise of spiritual senses suited and prepared to converse with the very substantial brightness and similitude of God face to face even apparently in which Moses was the figure of him Numb 12. 8. In this exercise of life Christ as man is made higher then the heavens exalted to a name above every name far above all principalities and powers having herein obtained a more excellent name and inheritance then the Angels unto whom nevertheless as he was made under the law he was made inferiour for the tasting of death In respect of this his exalted state of humane nature he is called Gods first begotten Heb. 1. 6. by reason of whose hypostatical or substantial union with the WORD the Angels of God are appointed to worship him and to acknowledge him in this glory one and equal with the Father alwaies doing that which is pleasing unto him The seed of this union and communion was sown in the humane nature of Christ in the very womb the former and this both together making up that holy thing born of the Virgin that child Jesus who is said to grow in grace and in favour with God and with man like the vine whose fruit was refreshing to the heart of God and of man having the principles and exercise of life springing up in him that were most suitable agreeable to the heart of both being a man of God after Gods own heart as well as a righteous and holy man according to the Law
nor qualified him with the power of sacrificer whereby the spotless Lamb was to be slain become a pass over meat and a supper to feed on in order to nourish the trubelievers unto everlasting life and to have the blood thereof shed poured forth and sprinkled upon the houses or hearts of his chosen ones for God to see as a token whereupon he promiseth to pass over them and that the plague of his eternal wrath shall not be upon them to destroy them Exod. 12. 13. Through the sprinkling of the blood of this passover it is then that they shall be secured from that destroying vengeance which overtakes and slaies the first-born the very chiefest dignity of the fleshly and natural seed that it touch not them or come neer their dwelling Heb. 11. 28. Hence then we say that Christ was active in the working out another sort of obedience then that wherein a meer conformity to the law of the first covenant consists which stood in his obtaining a perfect victory over the principles of his first activity answering to the voice of the Law which saith he that doth these things shall live in them so as by bringing these his fleshly principles into the cessation and rest required by the law of the new covenant he attains the end for which they were at first given him arriving at that most neer and intimate union with the Father which only by faith or the exercise of a newness of life and operation can be attained in which union God finds his Rest as well as the creature his and which is entred into or fallen short of by believing or not believing Heb. 4. 1 3. These second sort of works are called James 2. the works of faith as the obedience of the second covenant and in the case of Abraham are there said to consist in the offering up his Isaac upon the Altar by which act was declared the power of his faith as it wrought with his works and as by works it was made perfect prevailing with him to present the life of his fleshly seed or first activity in sacrifice upon the Altar as discovering that so to cease from his fleshly works or activity in the exercise of that newness of operation wherein as by a resurrection from the dead his first works though laid as it were to rest were to be fulfilled and established Thus we see how the activity and workings of Abrahams faith mastered and overcame the workings and activity of his fleshly seed and principles in the sacrificing whereof God declares himself so well pleased Gen. 22. 16. that he saith By my self have I sworn because thou hast done this thing and hast not withheld thy Son thine only Son that in blessing I will bless thee and in multiplying I will multiply thee and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies and in thy seed shall all the Nations of the earth be blessed because thou hast obeyed my voice Abraham then in obeying this voice of God and not fparing the life of his fleshly seed and principles had the blessings of the new-Covenant established upon him evidenced and confirmed to him upon this act of his faith all which we are to understand not as principally relating to the person of Abraham but Christ the true Father of the faithful whereof Abraham in this was but the type or figure who by performing this condition in himself did it on the behalf of the whole seed as surety unto them of the better Testament established upon better promises then the first Heb. 7. and in this act of his obedience to them imputed presents them righteous and without blame before the throne of God and makes them capable of the blessings belonging to this new and everlasting Covenant Thus was faith imputed to Abraham for righteousness that is to say the righteousness of faith wrought out by Christ himself in his own person as performing the condition of the new and everlasting Covenant and so becoming the Father root or common parent to all true Believers is imputed unto Abraham in stead of his own personal righteousness whether that of the Law or that of his own believing and exhibited to the eye of his faith as the matter of his Justification and the sole and only obedience wherein he stands accepted whereof he hath to glory before God Rom. 4. as found spotless and without blame in his sight This was conveyed to the faith of Abraham as in a lively figure and type thereof in his act of offering up his Son upon the Altar Unto which type or figure the antitype or truth doth most exactly answer and agree in Christs own sacrifice when he offered up himself through the eternal spirit without spot unto God actually sacrificed the true Isaac crucifying in himself the life of his fleshly seed and legal principles voluntarily laying aside the use and ceasing from the exercise thereof as single and alone that in the room thereof he might not only bring into exercise and use the newness of life and operation set up in him by faith but compleat these crucified fleshly principles as single and alone in their operations by bringing them forth again through the regeneration with greater vigour beauty and perfection then ever in subjection to and harmonious co-operation with the life of faith to the fulfilling thereby all righteousness as well relating to the first as second Covenant This second sort of activity in Christ flowing forth in newness of life and operation and becoming perfect through the ceasing of his first is the exercise of that faith by which he and the whole spiritual seed enter into Rest fighting through all opposition to the removing of every thing that lets and lies in the way thereof and therefore is in Christ the true Abraham or Father of the faithful offering up the true Isaac or the fleshly seed in Christ in the principles and activity thereof In which also he is the true Joshuah leading the natural man into the true Land of Canaan or heavenly Country into which the principles of Moses or of the Law could not bring him In this as in the performance of the true duty of the Sabbath Jesus our God and Saviour went before us as our example in thus ceasing from his works Heb. 4. that we also might not think it much in imitation of him to be ceasing after the same manner from ours since we stand obliged to the same Sabbath-observation as we desire to enter into Gods rest Through this working power of faith in Christ he was taught this new obedience suffering himself to be taken off his first activity or works with so advantageous a change as to have a higher and a better spring of operation set up in the room thereof through the Fathers witness and teaching wherein the disability or weakness that is brought upon the first principles and their activity as to their single exercise is abundantly recompensed with admission of them in
sanctification 1 Cor. 1. 30. consisting in a real and actual change of the heart which lieth in our conformity to Christs legal righteousness and is communicable unto men by this covenant in degree and measure so as through this knowledge of Jesus Christ men come to escape the pollutions of the world and to live in a conformity of mind to the holy commandment delivered and exhibited to them in the glory and perfection of Christs flesh or natural man unto which righteous and holy operations man is called by the law and rule of the first covenant wherein when Christ was set up as he was made under the law he was like unto us in all things sin only excepted This sort of holy and righteous operations in men and of holy and righteous principles according to this covenant is at large described Ezek. 18. wherewithal Christ declares that in the day they turn from this their righteousness and commit iniquity they shall die and their righteousness be no more remembred These may be heightned to such measures and degrees of life and light in this first covenant as to know all mysteryes to have faith so as to remove mountaines and to speak with the tongue of men and Angels taste of the heavenly gift and powers of the world to come and yet be as sounding brass and a tinckling Cymbal yea may become the more deeply fixed thereby in irrecoverable enmity against Christ and God which comes to pass by their having received Christ thus in part only and looking no farther then to the perfection through him attainable on this side his grave and resurrection whereas the true spiritual seed and chosen ones of God receive Christ not in part only whereby they have in common with the other all the forementioned benefits but in whole whereby they have over and above that which excels possessing and enjoying the riches of both covenants and all this not conditionally and upon the slippery tenure of the first covenant but absolutely and unchangeably in the second Isa 59. 21. As for me this is my covenant with them saith the Lord My spirit that is upon thee and my words which I have put in thy mouth shall not depart out of thy mouth nor out of the mouth of thy seed nor out of the mouth of thy seeds seed saith the Lord from henceforthand for ever In this new and everlasting covenant Christ is given and received in whole answerable to what himself received from the overshadowing of the Holy Ghost in the womb from whose fulness they receive grace for grace in both those sorts of principles and operations which we have already described in the foregoing chapter according to one of which he is alwaies one with the Father acting in unity of mind with him throughout and according to the other of which he is a righteous man in all his operations after the tenor of the law This then is that which we mean where whole Christ is given to any soul both these sorts of principles and operations through his indwelling spirit and presence are communicated unto it which two perfections are far better then that one that is given single and alone by the first covenant for here when one is ready to fall the other is neer to help him up but woe be to him that is alone Eccles 4. 9. 10. Now Christ by this entire gift of himself begets in and together with that which he communicates single by the first covenant a further capacity in the mind of man to be of one heart and one way with him throughout built up in this unity of the faith of the Son of God so as to make the Saint alwaies do that in a way of true Evangelical obedience which is pleasing unto him as he was alwaies in the daies of his flesh when he was offering up himself in the eternal spirit doing that which was pleasing to the Father When Christ thus bestows himself upon any forming his own reception in them they do obtain thereby the power and dignity to become the sons of God as those that are not born only of blood and of the will of the flesh and of the will of man but of God through which seed of God abiding in them they are made uncapable of sinning wilfully or of so provoking God as that he should swear in his wrath they shall never enter into his Rest being once taken thus into Gods everlasting covenant and made Gods first-born from the dead and co-heirs with Christ higher then the Kings of the earth A seed with whom his covenant shall stand fast and for whom he keeps his mercy for evermore who shall endure for ever and their throne as the daies of heaven who yet if they walk not in Gods law but for sake his judgements if they break his statutes and keep not his commandments as they may do then saith God I will visit their transgressions with the rod and their iniquity with stripes nevertheless my loving kindness will I not utterly take from them nor suffer my faithfullness to fail but will keep them from the great transgression that presumtuous sins get not dominion over them These are described Rev. 14. 3 4 5. as those that were enabled to sing a new song before the Throne which none could learn but those that were thus redeemed from the earth who are not defiled with women but in this unity and simplicity wherein they are espoused to Christ are kept as chaste Virgins to that their one husband and are followers of the Lamb whithersoever he goes as those that are redeemed from among men and made the first fruits unto God and unto the Lamb In whose mouth is found no guile as they are found in this unity with Christ and considered as that one seed Gal. 3. 16. that are without fault before the Throne of God From the consideration of which Scriptures the further benefits that do inseparably accompany Christ as entirely and absolutely given by the new and everlasting convenant are likewise plainly to be taken notice of as the peculiar priviledges of these besides those that they have in common with the others as First that calling which those few chosen ones are called with that shall be saved consisting in this spirit of adoption and son-ship which makes them one spiritual seed with Christ as brought forth into the same unity with him which he is in with his Father whereby they become heirs and are Lords of all perfectly distinguished from the servant or children born after the flesh under the first covenant And that we may the better understand what is meant by this unity of the faith of the Son of God into which all the spiritual seed are begotten we are to take notice of three spiritual unions witnessed unto by the Scriptures First between God and Christ in the WORD that was in the BEGINNING and was with God and was God in which union Christ the Mediator is God Secondly there is
cross and life from the dead These are the hundred fourty and four thousand spoken of Rev. 14. 1. which were redeemed from the earth ver 3. or out of all that was earthy and had learned to sing a new song before the throne and before the four beasts and the four and twenty elders which no man could learn but themselves ver 3. These are they which were not defiled with women but are virgins induced from the simplicity that is in Christ to follow the Lamb whereever he goeth who were redeemed from amongst men being the first fruits unto God and to the Lamb v. 4 In whose mouth was found no guile for they are without fault before the throne of God able to sing the sing of Moses and of the Lamb. These are the Jacob that are Gods portion Deut. 32. 9. or his peculiar people and treasure the lot of his inheritance reserved for the immediate shining forth of light from the face of the Son himself whether in his first or second appearance These are they of whom the Israelites after the flesh that were not of the faith of Abraham nor born after the spirit but children only of Mount Sinai and of the bondwoman were only the types and figures and as such were cast off when the true seed came and appeared calling the Gentiles home unto himself even as the worldly Church and fleshly seed of Professors among the Christian Gentiles shall be dealt with when the Jews are grafted in again upon a Spiritual account and shall be made known to be the fulness of the Gentiles Thus in brief we have made way unto the stating first the subjects of that threefold kingdom of Christ which we propounded to treat of secondly the rule set up over each of them appointed by Christ to govern judge and condemn those of them that walk not in conformity thereunto in these several distinguished conditions of men Thirdly the distinct nature and kind of these several administrations of Christs Kingdom and Government kept on foot and upheld by him in the world Which three particulars we shall first give you the view of in a clear witness from the Scriptures and then apply our selves to a distinct treating of the things and persons relating to each of these three Dominions or Kingdoms of Christ or rather distinct administrations of the one Government of Christ which he is heir and possessor of over men and Angels First then we are to consider the subjects that are bred up under the three administrations of Christs Government and Rule over men in their proper distinguishing characters names and descriptions wherein the Scripture presents them to our view But that we may be the better understood what we mean when we speak of these subjects it will be needfull for us to premise that there are two sorts of subjects under each administration either first such as are willingly subject for conscience sake whom Christ rules by the power of his light by them received owned and walked in Or secondly such as he rules over by force and with a rod of iron as his enemies breaking those that will not bend when they fall by their miscarriage and demerit under the power of his revenging Justice in any of these branches of his Government First then these two sorts of subjects under Christs first administration of Rule we shall find comprehended in those general Scripture expressions which distinguish all the Nations of the earth in their Gentilism and uncircumcised state from the Jews that are a higher enlightened sort of the sons of Adam in a separate and divided state as planted wholly a right seed Jer. 2. 21. a noble vine whereas the other are said to be alienated from the life of God delivered up to vile affections having their understandings darkned and walking in the vanity of their minds who as compared with the Jews are those that live without Law are sinners without law and perish without Law Rom. 2. 12. who are also said in this sense to be without God and without Christ in the world Such as have little or nothing of the first Image left in them but are carried away unto dumb idols as they are led This is the state wherein we are all by nature dead in trespasses and sins walking according to the course of this world according to the Prince of the power of the air the Ruler of the darkness of this world working in the children of disobedience having our conversation in the lusts of the flesh fulfilling the desires thereof and of the mind as children of wrath Eph. 2. 1 2 3. working all uncleanness with greediness These are further described by the uncircumcision in the flesh the corrupt natural man or the heathen in Scripture phrase that is to say the nations kindreds and people of the world that through the fall are turned into a degenerate plant a wild Olive tree having their place and habitation in the WICKED ONE who Rules acts and influences them at his pleasure In this sad helpless forlorn and wretched state Christ the Mediator finds all mankind by the fall and is pleased not here to leave them but through the ransom by him paid for all to bestow freely upon them the benefit of this first light and Rule under which he places them by the means of the ministry of Angels with which he enlightens every one that comes into the world begetting in them a capacity to seâ—k the Lord and to feel or grope after him in the midst of their darkness and setting up a work in their conscience to do and perform the things contained in the law if they wilfully desâ—ise not and neglect the means of light provided for them in this state which some of them do make a right and good use of and so are led forward by further enlightnings and quicknings to the saving of their souls whilst such as refuse or despise this are hardned and seared in their rebellion and reservea with the wicked Angels in chains of darkness to the judgement of the great day These willing captives of Sathan were typed out by those servants under the law who refusing their liberty offered in the years of Jubilee and seasons for their redemption were boared in the ears in token of the just and perpetual servitude that belonged to such as so little valued their liberty when freely offered to them and when the having or not having thereof depended meerly upon their own acceptance or refusal Secondly The two sorts of Subjects under Christs second administration consist of those sons of Adam that are purified quickned and enlightned whose bodies are washed with pure water cleansed from the filthiness of their natural man by having that done to them which was done to the Jewish nation or seed of Israel when called by God into a distinguished state from among the Gentiles Ezek. 16. ver 5. to the 15. when she was as a cast-out among the Gentiles to the loathing
of her person in the day of her nativity then God passed by her looked upon her and made it the time of his love saying unto her when she lay in her blood Live and causing her to multiply as the bud of the field till she encreased and waxed great and came to excellent ornaments to have her brests fashioned and her hair grown who was naked and bare for God had spread his skirt over her covered her nakedness and entred into covenant with her so that she became the Lords And he cleansed her with water washing away her blood from her anointed her with oil decked her with ornaments and jewels and caused her to eat fine flower and hony and oil and she was exceeding beautiful and did prosper into a kingdome in which glory of hers she was visible to others so as her renown went forth among the heathen for her beauty which was perfect through the comeliness which God had put upon her This is farther enlarged Deut. 32 4. c. where this work of God upon these Israelites is also called perfect flowing from their rock or from Christ that had been a Father to them and had bought them and made and established them and had thus divided and distinguished them from the rest of the sons of Adam Yet there were amongst these an unwise generation in and under all this those that had no faith and who considered not their latter end but corrupted themselves and had a latter end worse then their beginning so as their grape was the grape of Sodom and their vine was the vine of Gomorah and their spot shewed itself not to be the spot of Gods children declaring them to be a very crooked and perverse generation The first of the same principles with these was Cain whom Eve received as a man from the Lord then those sons of God in the old world who corrupted themselves and left a rebellious race of Giants or men of renown for enmity against God with which fleshly seed the Lord would not suffer his spirit any longer to strive in the daies of Noah Gen. 6. 1 2 3 4. Then Ishmael the son of Hagar the bond-woman figured out this generation under the first covenant after him Esan then the whole nation of the Israelites brought out of Aegypt who were all of them baptized unto Moses in the red sea and did eat the same spiritual meat and drink the same spiritual drink yet with many of them was not God well-pleased And so Israel after the flesh all along from them downward as they are described in all the Prophets to be righteous men and a holy seed yet such as Ezek. 18. 24. turned from their righteousness and committed iniquity stumbling at the stumbling stone being leavened with the leaven of the Pharisees and in whom sprang up a root of bitterness to their defilement so as after all their enlightnings and enlivenings from God they miscaried being such as Elias interceded against saying Lord they have killed thy Prophets and digged down thine Altars and I am left alone and they seek my life Rom. 11. 2 3. and concerning whom Esay is very beld saying All the day long I have stretched forth mine hands to a disobedient and gainsaying people Rom. 10. 20 21. who also saith of them Rom. 9. 29. except the Lord of Sabboth had left us a seed we had been as Sodom and had been made like unto Gomorah which frame of spirit they fully discovered at last when they crucified the Lord of glory and were the Jerusalem in whom was found the blood of all the Prophets Nor are we to think that this generation of men passed away with the Jews since Christ himself in the very Gospel may be known after the flesh and doth beget an Israel after the flesh in and under Gospel-ordinances and ministrations who by the knowledge of Jesus Christ and the holy commandment delivered unto them in his fleshly manifestation for their Rule may clean escape the pollutions of the world through lust and yet return with the dog to the vomit and with the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire 2 Pet. 2. 20. c. yea who may by the word of the beginning Heb. 6. 1. or first appearance of Christ pass through the great enlightnings and quicknings from Christ there spoken of to the tasting of the heavenly gift and partaking of the Holy Ghost to the relishing of the good Word of God and powers of the world to come and yet fall away and draw back unto predition being void of that faith that failes not wherewith we are to believe to the saving of the soul This sort of men the Apostle Paul in all his Epistles takes notice of and distinguishes the true believer from having had his warrant for it from Christ himself who said Many are called but few are chosen and again of the labourers in the vineyard he saith there are first that shall be last in Gods acceptance and last that shall be first and that these children of the kingdom shall see many come from the four parts of the world to sit down with Abraham I saac and Jacob in the kingdome of heaven and they themselves be thrust out with those that say Mat. 7. 22 23. Lord Lord have not we prophecyed in thy name and in thy name cast outdevils and done many wonderful works unto whom Christ will answer Depart from me ye workers of in iquity I know you not These are they Rom. 4. that find whereof to glory in the flesh of Christ or in their own holy flesh as the seed of Abraham that are by the law or first covenant who are righteous workers according to the law in the most Gospel-like administration of it but at the bottom are still upon the tenure and account of debt for so is their reward accounted to them by God as looking upon them still under the first covenant till they be brought to be of the faith with blessed Abraham These in 1 Cor. the 12. and 13. Chapters are intimated under the title of spiritual men in distinction from the heathen as having the manifestation of the spirit given them to profit with by means whereof they may come to great attainments in spiritual gifts and excellent operations of mind so as to speak with the tongues of men and Angels know all mysteries have all faith so as to remove mountains give all they have to the poor and their bodies to be burned and all this but upon the first root and single seed of natural righteousness remaining yet unexperienced of the more excellent way of enjoying and doing all this in union and harmony with a higher and better principle of life by participation of the divine nature which the true heirs do obtain and which is there called by the name of love Again 2 Cor. 10. 11. These are described under the names of those of which number Paul said he was not who measuring themselves
by themselves and comparing themselves amongst themselves were not wise but justly comprehended under the rank of foolish virgins over whom the Apostle was jealous with a godly jealousie hoping to have presented them as a chaste virgin to Christ but now fearing lest they should be beguiled and sin after the similitude of Adams transgression through the subtilty of the devil transforming himself into an Angel of light These among the Galatians were they that Paul stood in doubt of as discerning in them principles that would carry them no higher then the first Covenant before whom therefore he laid the distinction of the two Covenants and the two seeds even under the Gospel those that might be born after the spirit and those that might be born but of the flesh only one of the free woman the other of the bond And among the Philippians this sort of Professors were so prevalent that the Apostle was very sharp ch 3. v. 2. v 18 19. calling them those of the concision dogs and enemies to the cross of Christ whose God was their belly and whose glory was in their shame minding earthly things walking in a quite different strain from them who forgetting what is behinde press forward to the mark ver 14. of perfection brought to light by the death and resurrection of Christ worshipping God in the spirit rejoycing in Christ Jesus and having no confidence in the flesh It would be endless to rehearse the several passages in the remaining Epistles of Paul and the other Apostles deciphering this generation of Professors in the times they lived Teachers of the Law that knew not what they said nor whereof they affirmed as to the lawfull use of the very Law it self who by not holding faith and a good conscience which is interpreted Heb. 10. 23. a not holding them fast but in such wavering uncertain principles as the first Covenant ministers concerning faith made shipwrack and so lost their good conscience too at last drawing back into perdition Like the Jerusalem complained of Ezek. 5. 5. c. where they were so far from walking up to the light of the Covenant with God which they were under that in their walkings they fell beneath the very light and principles of heathens not doing according to the judgements of the nations round about them but becoming adulterers and adulteresses such as defile the Temple of God and therefore such whom God would destroy Lastly as once for all we may see this generation of men in their holy profession and visibility of Saintship incorporated together with the true spiritual seed in every one of the seven Churches mentioned Rev. 2. and 3. chapters which are usually accounted to be typical inreference to the state of the Church under the Gospel from the Primitive times to Christs second coming In every of these churches Christ makes the distinction between the Spiritual Seed that had the spiritual ear and the carnal Seed that had it not but who in and under those very Church-forms were the Nurseries of all hypocrisie apostasie and other Spiritual uncleannesses and defilements there and were not of the faith nor in the faith of those that overcome but were such as from whom the Candlestick and light they had from Christ might be removed verifying therein that saying of his speaking of this generation as they should continue under Gospel Ordinances when he was foretelling the end of the world under the type and figure of the destruction of the material Temple in Jerusalem Verily verily saith he This generation shall not pass away till all these things be fulfilled his mystical meaning herein being that this crooked and perverse generation mentioned Deut. 32. 5. who were always resisting the Holy Ghost Act. 7. 51. and were to succeed in that enmity which they bear unto the true Spiritual Seed to the very end of the world according unto what God declared from the beginning when he said I will put enmity between the Seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent should continue till the serpents head be wholly broken and he trampled under foot and the Saints heel wholly bruised or the measure of Christs sufferings remaining to be wrought out in his whole body the Church fulfilled These are they which call themselves Jews but are not in spirit and truth though they pass currant in the judgement of mans day for the only visible Church of God excluding the heathens on the one hand as Sathan appearing in his own likeness and the true spiritual believers on the other hand as the same evil spirit transformed into an Angel of light The third sort of subjects belonging to the last administration of Christs kingdom are they who in faith and patience do possess their souls following the Lamb whither soever he goes not loving their lives unto death but through the blood of the Lamb being received into the unity of the faith of the Son of God have the use of spiritual senses set up in them enabling them to hear and obey what the spirit saith unto the Churches and so are worshippers of God in spirit rejoycing in Christ Jesus having no confidence in the flesh enjoying within themselves the witness of a better and more enduring substance then what is experienced under the first-covenant-ministry through this law of the spirit of life which the spiritual sied are made under have that overcoming power of Christ ever present with them in the actings of true and saving faith which overcomes the world and gives them the victory over all opposition not but that they also in walking as men have the same common weaknesses as other men are liable to many failings and miscariages but as they are born of God and walk and live in that spirit sin hath no more dominion over them to make them fulfil the lusts thereof Gal. 5. 16 18. These therefore are distinguished from all the earth-born sons or children of the first covenant by their higher and more divine birth as born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man but of God Joh. 1. 13. not but that they are born also of all the other principles as well as othermen possess them in common with others something of the corrupt nature with the heathen and something of the renewed nature with the Jew or worldly Christian but they have over and besides a birth of God which none of the other two have living thereby in that light and life which no man hath seen or can see wherein they are a sort of heavenly seers and men of God that enter with Christ within the veyl and are admitted into the sight and enjoyment of God in the very brightness of his glory and express character of his person shining forth in the face of Christs second appearance and herein are heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ partaking after this manner of the divine nature it self wherein they see God face to
threefold nature and spirit proper to each of them In one of which all the nations of the world live and walk as they are distinguished from the earthly Jerusalem the children of Mount Sinai or the first convenant In the second the fleshly seed of Israel or the worldly Church lives and walks distinguished both from the nations of the world and from the heavenly Jerusalem or the true Mount-Sion And in the third the spiritual seed or children of the Jerusalem that is above do live and walk distinguished from both the former each of them therefore are placed by God under a several Rule and law according to which their lives and actions are to be fashioned and conformed and by which they are to be tried and judged at the last day when the secrets of men of all sorts shall be judged by Christ Jesus according to the Gospel which is of that large comprehension as to take in all the three dispensations First for the nations of the world they have judgements given them by God Ezek. 5. 6 7. with which Israel is reproched as having walked short of them so that the uncircumcision did out-doe the circumcision in the righteousness the effect whereof was contained in the law as in a much superiour and more excellent administration These the Apostle cals Rom. 2. 12. such as sin without law and perish without law but yet are acknowledged as such that though they have not the law as it was given to the Jews yet have a law given them from God the work and effect of which sheweth it self in their consciences accusing or excusing them as they walk up to it or short of it even the law of nature in which they are a law unto themselves having that within them that shall witness for them or against them before the Throne and judgement seat of Christ that is to say the law of natural right and just exhibited to them through the ministry of Angels that are invisible Thrones Dominions Principalities and powers set up by God for this very end as his ministers for terrour unto evil works and as encouragers and Protectors of them that do well as will presently more fully be evinced The second Rule or law containing the judgements and ordinances of God given unto the fleshly seed or children of the first covenant is the WORD of God coming forth in his first appearance or the law proceeding from Mount Sinai witnessed unto by the Scriptures of truth and Oracles of God that were committed to the Jews first and afterwards to the Gentiles which in all the degrees and steps of its administration answers the true measure and proportion of Christs natural righteousness and perfection as he is and so hath been here described the head and root thereof to Angels and men being that holy commandment that either may be turned aside from leaving them that have been under it to a far worse state then it found them in and rendring their latter end worse then their beginning as 2 Pet. 2. 20. c. or else be kept without spot and blameless through the power of faith by the true Saint or spiritual seed The third law and Rule is the law of the spirit of life in Christ Iesus the WORD of God in his second appearance which comes forth from Mount Sion the heavenly Jerusalem consisting not in meats and drinks and worldly rudiments but in the power of an endless life and an everlasting righteousness written out in fair characters in the death and resurrection of Christ when he ceased from his own works and became the beginning and author of life from the dead as the first-born among the many brethren whose names are written in heaven and upon whom God hath written his new name and the name of the new Ierusalem The perfection and righteousness of which second appearance is brought to light fully by the brightness of Christs comming the second time the first-fruits whereof are already given and set up in the hearts and spirits of the children of promise and of the free-woman being the hidden Manna which they feed on the new name which they can read and the holy anointing whereby they judge all things whilst themselves are judged of no man CHAP. XII Shewing wherein the three Rules and forms of administration in Christs mediatorial Kingdom do differ one from another and maintain an entire jurisdiction within themselves but in due subordination and subserviency still of the lower to the higher over the respective subjects that live under them THE first of these is the law and Rule which is given by God to all nations even to the whole world in their corrupt degenerate and fallen state occasioned by the entrance which sin made by Adam overrunning his whole posterity like a spreading leprosie whereby man that by his creation was made a temple of God became a habitation for Dragons a court for owls or birds of the night a hold for every foul spirit and a cage for every unclean and hateful bird so that although there was a natural being life and motion left unto man it was in the next degree to no being at all if not in some respects far worse Yet how great soever this desolation was and how thick soever the darkness be in this howling and barren wilderness-condition of mankind the blood of Christ is of vertue to make the heart of man again rejoyce and blessom as the Rose and the voice of the Mediator can make it self to be heard in the remotest and darkest corners of the world to the opening of the eyes of the blind and unstopping the ears of the deaf to the making the lame to leap and the dumb to sing to the causing the waters of his manifestation to break forth and stream in this desert in one word to the letting in the sound of the Gospel it-self in the shadowy dark appearances thereof upon the very ends of the world in pursuance of the extent of the reconciliation made through the blood of his Cross by whom all things are reconciled unto God whether they be things in earth or things in heaven so as the very creation it self is made capable to serve unto the ministry of the Gospel the heavens to declare the glory of God the firmament to shew his handy work day unto day to utter speech and night unto night to shew knowledge by means whereof there is no speech nor language where Christs voice is not heard their sound going into all the earth and their words unto the end of the world as Psal 19. 1 2 3 4. compared with Rom. 10. 18. doth evidence Thus the invisible things of God even his eternal power and Godhead shining forth in the face of the Mediator may be seen by the things that are made Rom. 1. and that either inwardly by the influence and operations of the holy Angels maintaining and keeping up the witness of Christ in the manifestation of natural justice
and righteousness by way of counter-ballance to the works of the devil and his kingdom of darkness in the world or outwardly by the books of the creature and daily discoveries of Gods providences that are teaching and instructing to the lowest and meanest natural discernings of men And to enable them to the receiving hereof they have a further taste of the bounty of Christ the Redeemer who doth freely renew and continue their life breath and all things unto them upon a new tenure even by the ransom procured for them in his blood by vertue of which none of them do fail of partaking in a common enlightning from him when they receive their beings in this world and have the lamp or caâ—â—le of the Lord set up in them to be as a witness for or against every man according to his works being a light which searcheth the inward parts of the belly Prov. 20. 27. Over the nations then and people of the world thus considered we say Christ doth dispense his Rule and government and gives unto them judgements and ordinances according to which they are to walk Ezek. 5. and in the doing or not doing of them their consciences are accusing or excusing of them and Christ in this his government shews himself by his ministers to whom he hath committed the mannaging thereof either in wrath and terrour against all evil works or an Encourager and Protectour of all them that do well The prime Minister of God on this behalf is Christ The hands in which this government is betrusted by Christ are the invisible Thrones Dominions Principalities and powers of the holy Angels as we have already declared and shall yet further enlarge made by Christ and for Christ the chief Lords and Rulers of the first world and all the inhabitants thereof Regard seems to be had to this administration of government Iob 2. 1 2. where the sons of God or these holy Angels in their administration of this kind of government presented themselves before this Lord Christ and Sathan came also among them having been his circuits walking to and fro in the earth and up and down in it unto whom the Lord propounds the case of Iob as of a perfect and upright man so as there was none like him in all the earth and who accordingly had found Christ owning encouraging and protecting of him as the devil himself alledged Chap. 1. at the same kind of meeting between God and the Angels then held also for saith Sathan to God hast thou not made a hedge about him and about his house and about all that he hath on every side thou hast blessed the works of his hands and his substance is encreased in the land intimating hereby the reward that is administred as to the kind of it by the holy Angels under Christ to the very heathens themselves and the punishment of wrath to consist in the contrary dispensations of God hereunto when he declares himself outwardly a terrour to wicked works and puts forth his hand therein for which purpose these excellent spirits are invested with power might and dominion over all the works of Gods hands in the first world to execute Christs commands as the Hosts and Ministers that do his pleasure in all places of his dominion and are alwaies attending and hearkning unto the voice of this WORD speaking to them as he is the root and head of all natural good and perfection Under these invisible Thrones and higher powers there are visible ones also set up and are Christs ordinance and institution in an inferiour and subordinate ministration of this government of Christ over men which are called the higher powers of the world whether contracted in one universal Monarch as in the time of Nebuchadnezar Dan. 2. or dispersed into many several and distinct forms of Magistracy in the world according as the most high is pleased to set them up pull them down or change them in reference to the present work which he hath to do in the world and to the state and condition of his own people in it either for their bringing into bondage and captivity under the worldly powers or for the leading them out of the same into the glorious liberty by him designed unto them in the last of daies whereof Nebuchadnezars image was a notification once for all and was so interpreted by Daniel himself when he said to Nebuchadnezar the God of heaven hath given thee a kingdom power and strength and glory and wheresoever the children of men dwell the beasts of the field and fowls of the heaven he hath given it into thy hand and made thee ruler over them who therefore art this head of Gold Which government in the succession of it shall be dispersed decline and corrupt until it quite break asunder and split in pieces before the everlasting kingdom which is intended by God to be set up in the room thereof Which compared with Cap. 4. 17. makes it yet more evident that this visible government in the hands of the higher powers of the world is superintended over-ruled and influenced throughout by the decree of the watchers and the demand by the word of the holy ones or Angels to the intent that the living may know that the most High ruleth in the kingdom of men and giveth it to whomsoever he will and setteth up over it the basest of men evidently declaring that promotion cometh not from the East or West or South but Christ who bears up the pillars of the earth when else through sin and the fall the earth and the inhabitants thereof had been dissolved he is the judge he puts down one and sets up another Pal. 75. 6 7. And if then in the inferiour visible administration of this government over men in the hands of men the Rule is given and declared whereunto the governed are to be subject not only for wrath but conscience sake Rom. 13. how much straightlier is every soul obliged to the same Rule as it is administred in the hands of the invisible Thrones at the judgement seat of Angels who next under Christ the supream Minister of God are exercising their Ministry in a way of wrath and terrour against all evil workers and in a way of encouragement and protection unto all those that do well and walk uprightly in the earth Thus according to the orders and decrees of these watchers and holy ones whether declared by their inward ministry in the spirits and consciences of the men of the world or outwardly by the wholsome laws and ordinances of man as the product and fruit of the light by them dispensed or by the visible providences of God is the first administration of Christs kingdom managed and upheld throughout the whole earth and over all the world even the nations that are yet aliens from the Commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise And because it is very cleer from Scripture that the holy ones or Elect Angels are intrusted
to the flesh through which they clean escape the pollutions of the world and then turn aside from the holy commandment delivered unto them in the ministry of this first covenant These are they that are under the dominion of the law or of Christ as he is the Minister of circumcision of Gods first appearance exhibiting himself to the eyes of their mind in the righteousness of his natural man as he is God manifested in flesh and so witnessed unto by the Scriptures as a holy commandment unto which he begets and requires conformity in them Here he is to be seen and conversed with as on Mount Sinai in the holy place or worldly Sanctuary where his Angels are his chariots even thousand thousands of Angels to administer the glory of this kingdom under him and as his forerunners to prepare the way whither he himself intends to come and vouchsafe his own perpetual presence and abode So then until Christs coming in the flesh into the true Tabernacle which God pitched and not man the Word Law or Rule of this kingdom also was spoken given and administred by Angels called the law and Ministry of circumcision or of Moses contained in the two tables together with the Judicial laws and fleshly rites and ordinances of divine service those relating to the second table these to the first and to the material temple-worship which were to contiune till the time of reformation at the comming of the true Temple it self when the WORD was made flesh But Christ being come and having in the body prepared for him fulfilled the will of the Father in offering up himself in the flesh without spot unto God through the eternal spirit and with his own blood entred into the holiest of all he thought fit no longer to dwell in Temples made with hands Acts 7. 48. but abolishing all the former fleshly rites and worldly ordinances belonging unto the Temple-worship that was then he did build up out of the ruines thereof a spiritual Temple 1 Cor. 3. 16 17. which Temple saith the Apostle Paul unto the Corinthians are yee which yet is but such a kind of building for permanency and abiding as the former For whosoever of you saith Paul shall defile this Temple him shall God destroy whoever you be that after your being enlightned and having received the knowledge of the truth shall not hold fast your confidence unto the end but become such servants as are to be cast out of the house making shipwrack of faith and a good conscience Thus there is an Israel after the flesh kept up and continued under the Gospel as well as under the law who are now under Christs immediate government by his spirit in the ministry of his first appearance and according to the tenor of the first covenant as they then were under the law and had the word spoke unto them by Angels in the Mosaical ministration both being but one and the same earthly Ierusalem that now is and is in bondage with her children in which it is most true still that they are not all Israel that are of Israel neither because they are the seed of Abraham the Father of the faithful so pretending to be believers are they all children but in Isaac crucified offered up Isaac shall thy seed be called that is to say they that are the children of the flesh and of the living and natural body only are not the children of God but the children of the promise are counted for the seed that were raised out of a womb as good as dead and sprang up to Abraham after that he had received the promises as they respected his fleshly seed by Isaacs restauration as from the dead the figure of Christs death and resurrection This earthly Jerusalem is the worldly Church under the Gospel the incorporated body of visible Saints called out and separated from the world who for their Law and Rule own and profess the written word and the spirit of Christ received and held forth in no higher a ministry then that of Christ as he is the head and root of all natural purity and perfection singly considered declaring themselves herein a holy or a separated people by a manifest self-distinguishing profession according to the measure of their receiving from Christ and growth up unto him from all heathenish worship yea and corrupt Christian professions or practises walking in all the ordinances and judgements of Christ held forth to them from the Scriptures in the various forms thereof which their light leads them to receive This visible temple or worldly sanctuary of God is a true Church as they walk in the light and according to the truth of this Law under which they are and as shall be shewed the nursery or womb of all the true spiritual seed Rev. 12. 1. c. Where it is described by the woman cloathed with the Sun the day of Christs first appearance and having the Moon or heathenish Gentile state under her feet being exalted into a glory far above them and made use of by God to bring forth the manchild or heavenly seed that are to rule the Nations with a rod of iron which in their divine birth are caught up to God and to his Throne and so much farther exalted above the earthly Jerusalem then she is above the rest of the Nations This earthly Jerusalem in the times of the Law had judicial Laws for the heightning of a civil Magistracy into a sutableness unto the divine service of this worldly sanctuary But since Christs ascension and the spirituality of this very temple to be continued under the Gospel till the fulness of the Gentiles come in and the mysterie of God in Christs fleshly dispensations shall be finished although many attempts have been made and endeavours used to revive a like Magistracy again in conformity to the judicials of Moses in the very letter of them there hath seldom been found any considerable progress or success herein forasmuch as Christ is rather pleased to detain his people in subjection and captivity under the powers of the world and the Magistracy kept up by him over men as men during the season of sufferings allotted to them in which as souls under the Altar of persecution they cry out How long Lord holy and true dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwel on the earth and are enabled by faith to see through and above the visible powers and thrones of this world into the ministry of Christ by his Angels who are all the while Magistrates and Rulers in a higher sphere and capacity then the others and who as the times of Christ draw near who is the only Potentate and KING OF KINGS shall shew themselves to be his servants taking vengeance in flames of fire upon all ungodly men that are his and his peoples implacable enemies By what then hath been said we may see how consistent this second branch of Christs Rule over men is with
applied unto Christ himself to signifie that they are planted with him into the same likeness in Gods twofold name figured out thereby and so have that twofold name and witness wrought out in them which distinguishes them as well from the children of the first Covenant who bear conformity but with one of the Olive branches as singly communicable without the other as also from all that are called Gentiles whose very light is but as darkness to the shining forth of the single witness only in the children of the first Covenant Thus we are to understand by the two OLIVE TREES and the two CANDLESTICKS mentioned Rev. 11. 14. the whole Spiritual Seed considered in their exact conformity to their Head as well in his second as in his first appearance who are the two witnesses that from the very beginning of the world successively in their several generations have been the slain ones of the Lord the slaughtered sheep of Christ for the word of God and testimony of Jesus Yet we are not to rest and content our selves only with this general sense of the place which is true and doth give the proper character of the true Saint possessing and inheriting whole Christ and bearing upon him his whole name or his new name wherein of twain they are made one inseparably communicated as the twofold witness wherein the true heirs of salvation must be found to the glory of God the Father But we may farther take notice of a more restrained and particular consideration of these two witnesses which will be but a small digression from the matter in hand as they are spoken of in that place Rev. 11. where they are also to be looked upon as a particular number of the true Seed living and standing up in the world in that age and season foretold by John and qualified with an extraordinary Spirit of prophesie in reference to the justifying before the eyes of the world the truth of this twofold witness being clothed with power suitable in a way of working wonderful things during the time of such their prophesie whereof Elijah was the type in his days who by praying to God shut up the heavens for three years and an half that it did not rain the like is prophesied to be done by these witnesses ver 6. and brought down fire from heaven to prove that he was a MAN OF GOD and that his God was the true God yet after all this was forced to flie for his life to get from under the cruelty and oppression of his enemies and was at last taken up visibly into heaven in a chariot of fire Elisha beholding and looking upon him In which Spirit of Elijah some of the true Spiritual Seed are reserved by God to be brought forth in the last days and to give a most spiritual and remarkable witness unto the truth of Christs first and second appearance in his Saints before the great and terrible day of the Lord come In which dispensation they shall serve as the immediate forerunners to the brightness of Christs second appearance for the restoring of all things preparatively by this their Ministry of fire as John Baptist served unto the coming of Christ in the flesh by his Ministry of water and in that sense was owned by Christ to be as Elijah already come to wit in the shadow or figure of this Elijah that is to precede his second coming By what then hath been said we may perceive who are meant by the Spiritual Seed and how they are described in the Scripture as the two witnesses of God first in a more general acceptation as in all Ages they are to have their heel bruised and to be slain for the word of God and then in a more particular and restrained sense as some of them are to come forth in the latter days in the Spirit and power of Elijah to prepare for Christs second coming and then to have their dead bodies for three days and an half remain unburied in the great City spiritually called Sodom and Egypt which city as the mother of Harlots hath been extant in its spirit and principles from the beginning as well as the prophane heathenish world with the powers thereof embodied together upon differing grounds and interests by the Spirit of the old Dragon and influenced by him as suitable instruments of War and Engines of battery for the bruising of the heel of the true Spiritual Seed and keeping them under in all generations as spectacles to men and angels who are weak despised thirst hunger are naked and buffeted have no certain dwelling place but labour working with their hands who being reviled bless and being persecuted suffer and being defamed entreat are made as the filth of the world and off-scouring of all things to this very day To this War between the Seed of the woman and the seed of the Serpent all things tended and wrought from the very moment that Christ did accomplish and finish the seventh days work discovering thereby Gods true REST as it was set up in his own Person as the Mediator and Lamb slain from the foundation of the world when he offered up that in sacrifice according to the will of the Father wherein he rejected and cast under his feet the purest choicest excellency and perfection of all natural beings as they stood single in themselves unperfected by the union and subjection they were to be taken into by his second appearance necessarily conducing to the breaking of the serpents head and top glory in his Angelical nature and to the trampling it under the feeet of the Saints In like manner the Devil that old Dragon perceiving that to be done in Christ the Mediator which he could by no means rellish or bear that which was totally cross and destructive to him as fixed in that selfish spirit or single state of natural perfection wherein he lusted to Rule and Reign as god in the world and propounding the greatness of a Kingdom and glory to himself in which to enjoy his own will think his own thoughts do his own works and speak his own words which were not lawfull for him in the Sabbath of the true Rest to the Lord he wilfully and maliciously quitted his head Christ left his own habitation choosing rather to become the Father of lyes then to remain the son and servant of truth and so finished and compleated that root of enmity against Christ and the Spiritual Seed in himself whose off-spring they are that have this root of gall and bitterness springing up in them notwithstanding the life and perfection of their natural beings wherein either they were at first created or unto which in the principles thereof they are again renewed in the blood of Christ by which they strike in with the devils interest in downright opposition to Christ taking part with that King Apollyon Rev. 9. 11. to destroy him what in them lies as himself plainly tels this sort of men Joh. 8. 37. acknowledging
the gates of hell to prevail against the very elect themselves that are built on the Rock and are out of his reach to annoy in reference to the certainty of their salvation finding therefore little hopes or likelihood to frustrate them in that he makes it his business to render them of all men most miserable as to any hopes or enjoyments in this life wherein he finds latitude given him in the power allowed to him to bruise their heel Secondly he useth all the means-that lie in his power by subtilty or force so far as Gods permission gives way to him to assault the will and judgement of man how highly enlightned and how far quickned soever upon his single natural root in order to entice and draw him away from his subjection unto God in the natural service and worship that is due from him never leaving till he hath prevailed with and over him to provoke God so highly notwithstanding all his goodness patience and long-suffering to him extended through the blood of Christ as thereby to render himself unworthy of any further love or favour and to move God to swear in his wrath that he shall never enter into his REST. Under these two general heads we shall find as in a constant track throughout the whole Scripture the workings and counter-workings that are kept on foot and maintained between the MAN CHRIST JESUS who would have all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth and the MAN OF SIN and grand deceiver Satan who would have no man to be saved but all to be made children unto him who is the father of lyes The means used by Christ to produce renew and maintain the workings and operations of light and life from him in the hearts and consciences of fallen mankind is by setting on foot as hath been already shewed the threefold law and government given and erected by him at the beginning over all the sons of Adam upon the fall through the power and exercise whereof First he doth that to and in the hearts and consciences of the very heathen which fits and qualifies them to live answerable if the fault be not in themselves to the law and government they are under according to the measures of attainment which the meer natural man may have The like he doth unto the children of the first Covenant unto whom he is much more bountiful sutably to the state he farther leads them into And thirdly he exceeds what he doth to both these in the communications of himself unto the spiritual seed whom he suffers not to destroy themselves but takes a course to cross their own wils and desires when they are hearkning to the temptation of their own lust or Satan to draw them away This threefold conscience and spirit of man in the proper principles and operations of each of them whether they are to be found single or all of them together as in sweet harmony thus set up in the spiritual seed our purpose is to treat of and that as particularly and distinctly as we can to fall in with the experiences of all that may be therein concerned looking upon this as the best method we can take for the clear opening and stating the several dispensations of Christs three-fold government and Kingdom already entred upon And therefore we shall consider the principles and operations of each of these consciences either First as they are Christs own workmanship in and upon the heart and spirit of man as the beginning and foundation of those holy and righteous actings by him required under the dispensation whereinto each of them is brought by God or Secondly as they are the lawfull and righteous workings of the spirit of man enabled hereunto by free gift from Christ and in dependance upon him yet as the fruit and travel of his own proper judgement and will rectified in the use of those means prepared and laid before him by Christ to bring him to the right end of all motion which is the true REST whilst as yet he is under works and not under grace or Thirdly as they are the unlawfull and forbidden fruit of mans spirit qualified and enabled from Christ as before expressed when through his own lust he is enticed and through the subtilty of Satan he is ensnared so as lust when it hath thus conceived is the root of all evil operation bringing forth fruit unto death even death eternal in the end if the Lord upon the grounds of his new and everlasting Covenant do not pluck such souls out of this danger and lead them to such a state as contains in it a perfect security and freedom from the re-entry of sin with its prevailing power over them Through the right and distinct consideration of these principles and operations of conscience in the sons and daughters of men we may come to find our selves where we are and whose subjects whether Christs or the Devils and to what Kingdom or dispensation we belong in reference to the one or the other to the Kingdom of Christs marvellous light or to the power of Satans accursed darkness and upon what terms we stand in the one or the other whether in a wavering state consisting in a capacity and possibility of removal out of the one into the other or in a fixed determined state upon which it is impossible for any change to be brought either in a good sense or in a bad in which men are reserved and kept fast either in the bonds of perfect love light and freedom that casteth out fear as the elect or in chains of darkness and captivity unto the judgement of the great day as the non-elect who will be destroyed by the brightness of Christs coming when he shall appear the second time without sin to the salvation of his People And this we shall do if God permit as a service to these present times wherein like little children most are tossed to and fro with every wind of doctrine by the slight of men and cunning craftiness whereby men and devils lie in wait to deceive and lead on the ignorant to the Chambers of death CHAP. XV. Shewing more particularly the bounds of that Rule and Government which is set up by Christ in the natural conscience together with the answer of a good conscience thereunto in those that are under this first dispensation IT is most evident by the Scriptures that amongst the nations who are said to be without law as distinguished from the Jews that were under the law there were found doers of the law by nature who shewed the work of the law written in their hearts their consciences bearing them witness and their thoughts mean while accusing or excusing one another Rom. 2. 14 15. Of such Peter speaketh Acts 10. 34 35. where he saith Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons but in every nation he that feareth him and worketh righteousness is accepted with him according as David
also expresseth Psalm 34. 12 14 15 16. What man is he that desireth life and loveth many daies that he may see Good let him depart from evil and do good for the eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous and his ears are open unto their cry But the face of the Lord is against them that do evil to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth and this without respect of persons for as many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law and as many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law Rom. 2. 12. And on the contrary as many as have approved themselves faithful unto God without law in a dutiful and chaste observance of the judgements which by him are given to all nations Ezek. 5. 6 7. are alike accepted Acts 10. 35. as those that under the law have approved themselves righteous in walking in all those commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless Luke 1. 6. and are equally rewarded by God according to their answerableness to the light they live in who will punctually perform what lies on his part in giving to the righteous man the righteous mans reward according to the tenor of the promises covenant and light they live under For the Lord is a God of Gods and Lord of Lords a great God a mighty and a terrible one which regardeth not persons nor taketh reward but judgeth righteously the whole world and all the nations in it Deut. 10. 17. though he was pleased to delight so far in the fathers of the Jewish seed as to chuse their seed after them above all people of the world besides to take them neerer to him and make them a habitation more immediate for himself Yet as to the main which is the grace of being made new creatures the Scripture saith expresly neither circumcision nor uncircumcision availeth any-thing or hinders at all either of them from being taken into the RIGHTEOUSNES OF FAITH and life of the new and everlasting covenant The nations then of the world considered as those that are without law comparatively with the Jews are not left by Christ without a witness of God kept up amongst them nor without Judgements Ordinances and Laws proper to them in that state ordained by God to bring them unto life and to the knowledge of the truth accompanied also with suitable and sufficient means to lead to that end And therefore immediately after the flood God declares himself as making a kind of stipulation and covenant with all nations in the person of Noah and his family giving them statutes and ordinances upon the observance whereof he promiseth his reward and blessing referring the sum of all to this that in the image of God did he make man which perfection he requires and expects still that man should be aiming at and endeavouring the attainment of in all his operations as intimating thereby the obligation under which all men are by nature especially considering the extent of Christs death to yield obedience to that law which was written out in mans nature at first the seeds and principles whereof are renewed freely by gift from Christ in that enlightning wherewith he enlightens every man that comes into the world making the spirit of man in a lesser or higher degree and measure the candle and lamp of the Lord that is fed with oil out of the holy candlestick from Christ through a work in their natural conscience by the ministry of Angels enabling them to a discerning of good and evil according to the light and principles of that natural righteousness wherein they were at first created and requiring them to exercise and improve this talent and ability of mind freely given unto them promising to have his eye for good upon them in their being faithful according to that little they have received and to accept them according to what they have and not according to what they have not and to keep his ears open unto their cry if they want wisdom or strength to go forward and improve what they have received causing them also to meet with protection and encouragement under the ministry of the good Angels in counter-ballance to the discouraging assaults of the wicked ones to the end that by being thus assisted and strengthned in willing and resolving on a holy and righteous course of life and operation and putting the same in practice they may the better bear up against the degenerated part of nature in them and all the power and influence of Satan joyning therewith until the fault manifestly appear to be in their own free-will and determination by rebelling against the Rule and government which Christ hath given them to walk by and detaining the manifestation of the truth communicated to them in unrighteousness And besides this inward strengthning and encouragement afforded by God unto them there is also a visible and outward Testimony of his acceptance accompanying them as in the case of Job where the devil takes notice that as a reward unto Iob in his faithful and upright walking with God in fearing God and eschewing evil God made a hedge about him and about his and about all that he had and blessed the works of his hands giving herein his Angels charge over him being as yet but under this first dispensation though withall he had a seed of immortal life underneath The sum then of what God requires by the Rule and judgements he gives unto all nations is that they depart from evil and do good in the exercise of the natural abilities of their mind rectified and enlightned through the benefit of Christs blood and so made improveable by the use of the means which he affords them in present and is yet further willing to reveal to them in future in order to their growing out of all natural filth and pollution of flesh in conformity to that primitive purity wherein man was at first created and to their being delivered out of the kingdom of Sathan and power of darkness in which the design of the devil is to fix and detain them for ever Now the good answer of this natural conscience unto this Rule and these judgements and ordinances of Christ consists first in the fear and aw of God which such have in them that keeps them from sinning against him or thwarting the dictates of their own enlightned judgement shewing itself in accusing them for evil doings and excusing them in good especially when strengthned herein by inward good motions and impressions that are the effects of the ministry of the good Angels to perswade and encourage hereunto Secondly in a vigilant care and industry to walk up faithfully to this light not slighting or neglecting any proper and suitable means conducing thereunto Thirdly in an experimental sense of the emptiness and insufficiency of the good works by them done to justifie and present them faultless before God before whom the Angels themselves are ashamed and hide their faces which made
therefore not to infer from what hath been said as some ignorantly or maliciously do that in asserting those under the two former dispensations to be capable of miscarrying as not therein arrived at that which is their true safety and blessedness we destroy the faith of many dear Saints and professors of Christ who have dyed or yet may die without ever acknowledging or experiencing a higher or other state of acceptation with God For upon this ground Christ should never have come in the flesh or have promised to come the second time without sin unto salvation because many a true Saint may have died and never seen nor acknowledged him in either of these his comings But indeed this assertion is so far from straitning or lessening the number of those that are the true heirs of salvation that it rather discovers how they may lie hid as they did in Elijahs time out of the observation of visible professors amongst those that they exclude as heathens and may be comprehended by Christ their spiritual head when as yet they may not have their spiritual senses brought forth into exercise so as to apprehend him but may be babes in Christ walking as men 1 Cor. 3. 1 3. undistinguished from the rest of the world And although they may in that respect seem to be men in the flesh yet they may live according to God in the spirit and find acceptance in the beloved one whilst they themselves may either be without law exercising a chaste natural conscience or may be under the law believers so Zealous of the law as to flie in the face of Paul himself for witnessing a higher light then they have yet experience of or can bear Which being premised we shall now proceed to shew what is the third and last sort of Rule and operation of Christ that is set up in the hearts and consciences of men by vertue of the new creation and everlasting covenant described Ephes 2. 10. to be that workmanship whereby we are created in Christ Jesus unto good works which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them distinguished as well from the good works of the law as the good works of nature before spoken to consisting in the operation and exercise of that faith through which we are preserved from falling away taken off from those operations wherein self is kept alive and weighs down the ballance and carried on to the saving of the soul For the nature of this faith is to give subsistence and reception in the heart unto Christ in his second appearance considered as in the seed thereof springing up more and more unto a perfect day which consisting in the very image it self and substantial brightness of Gods glory as it subjects and subdues the first earthly and shadowy image wherein man was created unto a perfect subserviency to and harmony with it self makes of twain one new man or Temple of God in heaven where also is seen the Ark of his Test ament and forms the heart into a subjection unto Christ not only as he is the KING OF RIGHTEOUSNES but as he is KING OF PEACE also qualifying the soul not only to minister in the charge of the Levits in the holy place but to draw neer unto God and enter with the high Priest into the holiest of all as having the exercise of all the natural powers and faculties of the mind in their own proper righteousness and holiness but retained in a broken bruised crucified state perfectly subjected to the spiritual sences and operations brought into exercise through faith to the perfecting and fulfilling of the other and so making the same Saint capable to sing the song of Moses and of the Lamb too Thus by living the life of faith the true Saint comes to have the evidence of things unseen and to hope above hope whilst the first Tabernacle is taking down to be laid in the grave and Christ is bringing a perfect weakness and insufficiency upon him to speak think will or do from any other spring or fountain of action and motion then from himself who is risen from the dead or from his exalted heavenly manhood who by degrees as their house from heaven cloaths them upon and keeps them from being found naked though despoyled of their first self-sufficiency ability as it stood single alone This is the faith whereby power is given to us to be the sons of God in a birth and participation of the divine nature wherein God communicates himself in his first and second appearance as knit together and made up of twain into one new name in Christ which none know but they that have it forming up the answer of a good conscience through the resurrection from the dead 1 Pet. 3. 19. to the receiving of whole Christ as he is the finisher as well as the beginner of our faith as he is the High Priest as well as the sacrifice in our nature or as through the unity of Spirit wherein he lives with his Father he does offer up and crucify the will of his flesh bringing it into perfect subjection to his Fathers will This is the patern of being and obedience according to which we are formed when we are made NEW CREATURES being that image of the Son unto which all the adopted children of the new Covenant given by the father to Christ are predestinated to be conformed in copartnership with Christ as he is the first born among many brethren for which he prayed as the peculiar mercy reserved for them in distinction from all the world beside whom therefore in this sense he did not pray for when he desired of his father that they all might be one as he and the father are one Joh. 17. 9 11. And says he the glory which thou gavest me I have given them that they may be one even as we are one I in them and thou in me that they may be made perfect in one and be with me where I am that they may behold the glory that thou hast given me in the love which thou shewedst me and wherewith thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world that so also the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them and I in them ver 22. 23 24 26. The effect of which prayer is accomplished in the heart and conscience of every true believer that is made a NEW CREATURE and is that which constitutes and sets up the new man in his right and perfect distinction from the first Adams highest purity and utmost perfection consisting in that building of God made without hands mans house from heaven with which he is gradually clothed upon as he is gradually unclothed of the first building and so formed up in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God unto that perfection of manhood which is attainable even unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ unto which we shall arrive when
so ignorant of and such enemies to as most prophanely to call it a fiction and make little lesse of it then blasphemy We say that the flesh or natural man in the Saint whether considered in the workings of his morall nature or of his renewed enlightned nature under the first Covenant is crucified and rendred a copartner with Christ in his dead body whereby the powers and faculties of the mind in the natural man are neither annihilated nor deprived of their lawful use as lawful refers to the obedience of faith and the rule of the Gospel but only have death passe upon them or a disability and privation as to all unlawful use of them or possibility of acting in rebellion resistance or contradiction to the Law of the heavenly nature and mind set up by faith In this crucified posture of the flesh and broken-spiritednesse into which the powers and faculties of the natural mind are brought by faith the Prophet Isa 54. 1. calleth out to the Saint to sing as intimating that though the natural man be hereby disenabled to bear or bring forth fruit to its first husband Christ himself as made under the Law and head of natural perfection single yet it ought neverthelesse to break forth into singing in regard that by her being become dead to the Law she is married to another even to him that is raised from the dead to bring forth fruit in newnesse of spirit and life and that this its barrennesse is no just cause of reproach to it seeing it came to be lawfully disengaged from all obligation to its first Husband by the dead body of Christ through which her first Husband is become dead unto her so that she is no adulteresse though she be married to another man Rom. 7. 3 4. And therefore Cry aloud for joy saith the Prophet for more are the children of the desolate then of the married wife or she that keeps to her first Husband under the Law Fear not for thou shalt not be ashamed neither be thou confounded for thou shalt not be put to shame for thou shalt forget the shame of thy youth and shalt not remember the reproach of thy Widowheod any more for thy Maker is thy Husband the Lord of Hosts is his Name and thy Redeemer the holy one of Israel the God of the whole earth shall he be called In these two particulars therefore conformity to the death of Christ is made to consist by the Prophet Isaiah in this Chapter First in Christs own refusal to be any longer a Husband unto the natural man in the Saint through his own voluntary departure and withdrawing of himself out of his own fleshly life to go to his Father and be and remaine for ever in the glory of the Father in order to returne againe to the Saint as he that is risen from the dead to marry and espouse the soul that he hath thus grieved by his withdrawing For saith he The Lord hath called thee as a woman forsaken and grieved in spirit and a wife of youth when thou wast refused by thy God for a small moment have I forsaken thee but with everlasting mercies will I gather thee Secondly the Saints conformity unto the death of Christ consists in the desolate forsaken barren state wherein the flesh and natural man is left by Christ as in a dry and barren wildernesse exposed to all temptations and trials from God Angels and Men within and without ready to sink and faile in spirit every moment partly under the appearance of Gods displeasure whose withdrawing and forsaking the soul understands not any more then Job did who was privy and conscious to the faithfulnesse and integrity of his heart to his first Husband whilest he abode with him and partly from the cold dead disconsolate frame of spirit wherein it now finds it self as it measures it self by the life of sense and not by the life of faith under both which pressures the Word of Christs patience is set before the soul by faith to be kept and observed Who for the joy that was set before him endured the Crosse and despised the shame patiently suffering the bruising of his heele according as he had received commandment from the Father In this posture as a Widow indeed the poor broken-spirited Saint remains mourning and weeping left for a season as an Orphan by Christ brought into that condition which Christ foretold unto his Disciples whom at the present he acknowledged children of the Bridechamber whilest they had no higher knowledge of him then in his fleshly glory and perfection Of whom therefore he said As long as the Bridegroome was with them they could not fast but the dayes would come when the bridegroome should be taken away from them then they should fast intimating thereby the dayes of fasting and mourning and being clad in sackcloth which the true Saints witnesses of Christ were to be exercised with during the time of the trial of their faith upon the Bridegroomes being taken from them and changing that living fruitful frame of spirit which they were fed and nourished up in by him as they were his married wife under the Law into a fasting broken mournful desolate state of Widowhood which they are brought into as they are made one with Christ in his dead crucified body and are planted with him into the similitude of his death Christ then after he hath become a Bridegroome and married Husband unto true beleevers in and by his first appearance shining forth upon them in the life and glory of his natural and fleshly perfection wherein he hath nourished them up and made them fruitful children of that his Bride-chamber is pleased and hath power to take himself away from them and continue no longer with them as a Bridegroome under the first Covenant or in the ministery of his first appearance but wholly dissolve that marriage-band betweene them as refusing any longer to come forth in the exercise of life toward them upon the single root of his natural perfection in order upon the trial of their faith and their dutiful keeping the word of his patience during the time of this his separation from them to return again after a little moment and with everlasting mercies to embrace them and be married unto them in the light and life of his second appearance not only supplying to them again that wherein he was withdrawn from them but adding over and above a fuller and more abundant communication of life and glory which untill this death or withdrawing of his be perfected in them they are not capable subjects perfectly to receive and inherit but according to the steps and degrees of this death doth the approa hand increase of this higher life let it self in upon them and fill them This separation and withdrawing of Christ as a Bridegroome is the more bitter and grievous because this his absence carrieth in it the appearance of his wrath and sore displeasure to the eye of flesh
come to passe that when it is come to passe ye might beleeve And further I command ye that ye love one another when I am gone If the world hate you you know it hated me first before it hated you if ye were of the world the world would love his owne but because ye are not of the world but I have chosen you out of the world therefore the world hates you and if they have persecuted me they will also persecute you for the servant is not greater then his Lord These things they will do to you because they have not known the Father nor me But these things I have told you that when the time comes you may remember that I told you of them Which things I have beene telling you from the beginning ever since I was with you but now I must put my sayings in execution for I am going my way to him that sent me and none of you are sensible of it or so much as enquiring into that state to which now I am going but because I have said these things unto you sorrow hath filled your hearts Neverthelesse I tell you the truth it is expedient for you that I go away for if I go not away the Comforter will not come unto you but when I depart I will send him to you Yet upon my departure the change will be so great which you will experience through my withdrawing of my self as a Bridegroome from you that you shall weep and lament but the world shall rejoyce ye shall be sorrowfull but your mourning shall be turned into joy As a woman which whilest she is in travel hath sorrow because her hour is come so shall you be in the pangs of this new birth when faith begins to be brought forth into exercise and operation by way of encountring these sharp trialls But as soone as the woman is delivered of the child she remembreth no more the anguish for joy that a man-child is borne into the world Thus also shall it be with you when the birth of the Soone of God as the man-child that is to rule the Nations with a rod of iron shall be brought to light in you through believing and the growing evidence of things unseene Ye now therefore have sorrow for a little moment but I will see you againe and your hearts shall rejoyce and your joy no man taketh from you Such preparative teachings and instructions as these Christ is continually giving forth during his tabernacling with believers in his first appearance that he may make them as little children weaned from the milk and from the breasts in order to traine them up to the use of stronger meat prepared for them in his dead body and crucified flesh which is given to them by him to feed upon till he come and take them into conformity with him in his glorified body which he promises them to do through his intercession with his Father for to make them one with him as he and the Father are one willing that where he is they also may be Through these glances of spiritual light whilest the Bridegroome is yet with the soul in his fleshly presence the Saints do with the Disciples sometimes think and say Lord now speakest thou plainly and not in parables by this we beleeve that thou camest forth from God and art againe leaving the world and going to the Father and yet when the hour of his departure comes indeed then every one scatters and leaves him alone as unwilling to accompany him in his sufferings but are rather drawing back and desirous to stay where they are in the fleshly life and perfection which they have experienced to the making a faire shew of God in the flesh and gaining the visibility of Saint-ship amongst men then to suffer with Christ without the gate leave the Holy City the earthly Jerusalem to go along with Christ to Golgotha the place of skuls bearing his reproach Before the very beleevers themselves will be brought to this what strugling and wrastling is there within themselves to detaine the Bridegroome or first Husband who with the Angel that wrestled with Jacob saith to them Let me go for the day breaks or the day-dawn of my heavenly appearance is overtaking me and calling me away to rest in silence and in the grave as to my appearing to you singly in my fleshly state any more but as I shall come in company and association with a better consort and so compleat the marriage betweene us in the glory wherein I am risen from the dead that you may bring forth fruit in newnesse of spirit and of life This is the weaned unsetled condition of soul which beleevers whilest under the first Covenant and being in nothing differenced from servants as to what is yet appearing in them and to them in the work of the conscience are led into by this preparative administration of Christ who is in them as in seed even in their new-creature-being and life but as a seed under ground very weakly undiscernably working as yet save only in loosening the soul from resting in its present attainments and keeping it in expectation of some better thing wherein to be made perfect In which state probably most of the dear Saints of God were detained under the Law before Christs coming in the flesh and most of them may still be under the same legal perfection heightned and improved by Christs coming in the flesh or by the effusion of his Spirit upon all flesh in and by the same Ministery of his first appearance and in this first step and degree of the new birth are in as safe a state as to Gods love to them here and heaven hereafter as others that have larger fuller and greater attainments and experiences And as the knowledge of this truth ought not to satisfie any to stay here but should still put them on to be pressing forward whereby to come neerer to the mark of the price of their high calling as the more comfortable strong and prosperous state so also should it satisfie the groundlesse objection of those who stick not to brand this witnesse of the beleevers conformity to the death of Christ with the reproach of rendering the faith of all those Saints and precious ones that have died without the experience or acknowledgement thereof to be of none effect as a most pitiful weak affrightment to deteine some tender-hearted well-meaning persons from receiving and owning the excellency of the knowledge of Christs death which to set evidently before our eyes that is to say Christ crucified within us in making us partakers with himself in his sufferings brings to the second thing the consideration of what Christ does when he actually withdraws and takes himself away from the soul as the Bridegroom that hath cohabited with it for a season in the light and glory of his fleshly perfection or first appearance when he refuses the wife of his youth and leaves her comfortlesse
desolate and a widow for a little moment This act of his in a word is called the hiding of his face from the heart that he had been espoused and married unto by the first Covenant and so hiding as never to be seene or known more after the flesh or in the single light and life of this his first Ministery which is caused two wayes First by the dawning and near approach of the glory of his second appearance which by coming in place turns the Sun and Moon of the first natural glory into darknesse and blood before this great and notable day of the Lord which Christ is willing to suffer and to own it to the soul as that which deserves not the name of glory in comparison of that which doth excel and therefore judges it meet for him in his first perfection and light to decrease as the other increases upon the soul whereby doing this by degrees the soul is not found naked but still becomes cloathed upon with a greater as it is uncloathed of a lesser perfection and between both sin and all evil conscience consisting in the filthinesse of flesh and spirit is kept out more firmly then ever so that as the Mannah of Christs flesh failes and the nourishment thereby decayes the hidden Mannah comes in the roome as bread that is given upon the munition of rocks and waters that will not faile but become a Well springing up to eternall life and a seed of life and light increasing to a perfect day Thus the Sonne resignes up the Kingdome to the Father in the beleeving heart giving way to the Fathers ruling over the heart in his roome that God may be all in all and that by the Sonnes decreasing till he voluntarily abase himself as low as Gods footstoole in obedience unto the Will of his Father he may bring down all enemies with him into the same abasement and subjection whether they will or no to the putting down all rule all authority and power that would under pretence of friendship to his first appearance be enthroning themselves there which thus are triumphed over in this grave to the leading captivity captive And therefore Christ as the Sonne singly considered in his first appearance doth absolutely refuse any longer to continue a Husband and to command in that capacity but gives up his rule into the Fathers hand and comes again along with him in that new glory as second in the Throne and abides ruler over the soul for ever Thus the Bridegoome takes himself away and discontinues his rule in the heart as he is married and entertaines converse with the soul in and by the first Covenant wherein he is known according to the flesh and by this his separation from the soul doth bring the natural man of the Saint into a most perfect wildernesse-condition for barrennesse disconsolatenesse and untrodden paths to sense and reason together with exposednesse to all manner of trials and temptations from within and from without and into this forsaken Widowhood doth Christ purposely lead the beleever for the trial of his faith and to work that work of repentance and change in his mind which is never to be repeuted of even to arme him with the same mind that was in Christ Jesus when he suffered in the flesh to the ceasing or causing of sinne for ever to cease and be abolished And therefore makes it his own work which he fixedly carries on in the soul against all its reluctancies wrastlings and strivings to the contrary as the great discriminating work of his love to his chosen generation the chastenings wherby he reaches the true sons and heirs of salvation the obedience of faith and which he prevailes with them patiently to endure that thereby they may be brought into subjection to the Father of spirits and live This is the discipline wherwith Christ exercises the many sons that he is bringing up unto glory being but the same he exercised in and upon himself Heb. 2. 10. and ch 12. 6 7. not thinking fit to deale thus with bastards v. 8. but leaving them to their liberty content to be out-wrestled and over-mastered by them to their crucifying in themselves the Sonne of God afresh and putting him to open shame in a counter-endeavour to his voluntary resignation of power and enmity to his Crosse setting up the Sonnes Kingdome in their hearts in competition with and opposition to the Fathers which the Sonne himself disclaims hiding his face as one ashamed thereof Thus Christ the Bridegroome takes himself away and becomes dead to the soul that was as his married wife calling to the Saint to follow him into the grave where he shall find that out of the devourer comes meat and out of the strong Lion of the tribe of Judah slaine and crucified doth proceed sweetnesse And as Christ in this manner thinks fit to hide his face and leave the soul in this state of weaknesse and disconsolation in reference to his first presence and communion with the fruits thereof so Satan the great Tempter finding it as it were dark night with the Saint when no man can work nor see his way he then as a wild beast comes out of his den judging it his time to stir and move all his engines of battery on all hands to adde affliction to the afflicted and to bear down to the very pit the broken sinking-spirited Saint in this night of his sorrowes and sufferings and is encouraged hereunto from the general rule of permission given unto him by God as the fruit of that enmity which God said he would put between the seed of the Woman and the seed of the Serpent to the bruising of the Devils head and the Saints heele when therefore the Devill sees he cannor prevaile by all his temptations and deceits against the preparation-work that is used by Christ to fit this Saint for sufferings as the oile or ointment poured out upon his head disposing him to conformity with himself in his death but is rejected and cast off by the Saint as he was by Christ the Head when he was led by the Spirit into the wildernesse to be tempted and when by Peter he was moved to spare himself in confidence that such things should not befall him then this great destroyer comes as a down-right enemy to assault the suffering Saint from all corners as he did Job in his sufferings set before us by the Apostle James as meet for our consideration and as the forerunning type of the end of the Lord in his death upon the Crosse In which remarkable exercise of patience we may behold the enraged malice of this restlesse spirit the Devil at such a time as this For First he endeavours to set God against Job upon pretence that Jobs godlinesse was all for the gaine he had from it and by it and not out of any true love to God or godlinesse for its own sake and as a means to discover the faithfulnesse and to trie the
be reigning as Kings in a fleshly visibility and worldly glory without the true crucified Saint that in the meane time is made a spectacle to men and Angels and judged as the filth of the world and as the off-scouring of all things unto whom neverthelesse Christ speaks after this manner Esay 26. 19. Thy dead men shall live with my dead body shall they arise awake and sing ye that dwell in dust This is the last particular of our conformity to Christs death And now by what hath beene said in these four particulars as the result rising out of them all our eye may receive enlightning if God please in this great and glorious mystery of Christs death and the effect it hath upon us when it conformes us unto its own likenesse and similitude For we see it doth not annihilate the first Adam or natural man in us but it spoils and disrobes him of the power in effect to sin against God which he upon specious pretences would faine keep for sacrifice in bodily exercise though of little value a power to do his own will and to be at his owne disposal in the strength of grace received bearing oile in his Lamp but not in his vessel In the exercise of which power man is perfectly weakened and disabled by the Crosse First through Christs withdrawing the food and nourishment of it in him Secondly through Satans bruising and breaking down his stout-heartednesse as an executioner of Gods wrath upon him in bereaving him of worldly comforts which God sanctifies to a laying low of mans spirit under this rod of God though applied by Satan and his instruments Thirdly through the victory and conquest of faith which never leaves till it captivate all the powers and faculties of the natural man and bring them into obedience and subjection unto Christ to live unto him that is risen from the dead and so to bring forth fruit unto God in newnesse of spirit and of life made at last to take faith in the principles and operations of it for its Lord and best friend and therein to observe the Law of God given on that behalf that the elder should serve the younger that the first Adam should serve the last Adam Esau should serve Jacob or the naturall powers and faculties of the Saints mind should serve the heavenly birth and spiritual senses thereof that the righteousnesse of the Law may be performed in the Spirit of faith by being made one spirit with Christ in the glory of his resurrection from the dead the life whereof doth not yet fully appear but shall do when he shall be seene in that admirable glory and bring his Saints with him in the same likenesse that they may see him as he is as his associates and coheirs of the same incorruptible inheritance having hereby the use of heavenly faculties and powers given unto them whereby Christ will be admired in all those that do beleeve and they are admitted to enter within the veile and are made capable to converse with God in his own similitude apparently face to face as friend converses with friend which no man as a natural man in his best capacity did ever see nor can see and so the true Saints are made such excellent seers and contemplators of God thus influenced and over-ruled in all the powers and faculties of their subdued natural man as fashions them to do the will of God in earth or their earthly natural man thus taught obedience as they see it done and as they are the doers of it in heaven or in their spiritual and heavenly part and have oile in their vessels as well as in their lamps In which heavenly frame of spirit they are beheld by the Prophet Isaiah in the 54 chapter before mentioned when he saith All thy children shall be taught of the Lord and great shall their peace be In righteousnesse shalt thou be established thou shalt be farre from oppression for thou shalt not fear and from terrour it shall not come near thee when thou art made thus to dwell on high and art seated upon this munition of rocks behold they that shall gather together against thee shall not do it by me but whoever shall gather together against thee shall fall for thy sake no weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper and every tongue that shall rise in judgement against thee thou shalt condemne this is the heritage of the servants of the Lord and their righteousnesse is of me saith the Lord. And let me say thus much upon this occasion in one word to the youthful visible and flourishing Saints of these our dayes who with great earnestnesse and zeale are trimming their Lamps with oile to go out to meet the Bridegroome in expectation of the fleshly glory of Christs Kingdome to the keeping up of Absalon against the true David in Spirit of my Lord Esau against the true Jacob or of Isaac in the flesh against Isaac crucified and offered up in sacrifice to God to be received againe in spirit in the life from the dead They are not yet under those promises before mentioned by reason whereof those that gather together against them may prevaile over them and the weapons formed against them may prosper till the power of the holy people be scattered and none shut up or left Whereas if the Lord take down and bruise the youthful spirit that is in them and cause them with David when they have tried the armour of man to put it off againe to go forth in this armour of God which makes the Saint strongest when he is weakest our Goliah shall be slaine that defies the Hosts of the living God and great salvation shall be wrought for Gods people when they shall be little more then standers by the Lord of the whole earth and lookers on By this time we come to see wherein our conformity to Christ in his death consists the place whereof is found under the third administration of the Kingdome of Christ which in the three branches thereof we have endeavoured to describe in the preceding chapters The first of which may be compared to the Moone that rules the night as the weaker and fainter light of Christs first appearance the representation whereof is given by the single Ministery of Angels as the supreme Lords and Rulers under Christ of the natural and first world by the first Covenant considered meerly as the Law of nature receiving its renewal in the blood of Christ The second is likened by the Scripture unto the Sunne which shadowes forth the vigorous light and glory of Christs first appearance as it is ministred singly in and by the first Covenant considered as the Law and perfection of his flesh in the principles and life whereof the sonnes and servants are not differenced one from another but both walk to the house of God as friends the sonnes of God as well as the sonnes of perdition those that are borne after the flesh as well
the one hand and the other upon distinct accounts are to be reputed enemies to the TRUTH in the Spirit and Power thereof as is at large set forth 1 Tim. 1. the first of which are also meant and described 1 Tim. 4. 1. where they are said to be those that are departed from the Faith through giving heed unto seducing spirits and to inspirations of devils in those transformed Ministers of Satan 2 Cor. 11. 15. who labour to vent the doctrines of devils such as devils either are authors or objects of through whose Ministery they come to have itching ears formed in them 2 Tim. 4. 3. ready to hearken to all that the Serpent transformed into an Angel of light presents to them by way of instruction and under colour of divine inspiration as taking upon him the Prophetical office of Christ and thereby undertaking to carry them forward to what is more spiritual and to heighten them in their experiences of what SPIRIT and POWER is In this very way he offered to impose upon and deceive if it had been possible Christ himself when perceiving that all the literal Religion and legal worship of the Jewes would not hold him but lay short of his light he shewed him all the Kingdomes of the world and the glory of them the utmost creaturely perfection or natural glory which he was able to give the prospect and representation of in his own Angelical nature being of that highest rank of creatures in the whole first Creation and that in a moment or the twinkling of an eye saying All these will I give thee or make thee to live in if thou wilt fall down and worship me This temptation then which Christ resisted these seduced ones fall under and are snared and taken with to the making of them love and believe a lie and to yield up themselves in a fixednesse of service duty and love unto this false spirit as unto Christ the true Prophet And the better to induce them hereunto and strengthen them in the beliefe of a lie Satan in this his coming as an Angel of light is accompanied with power with signes and lying wonders acting the part of a great friend and favourer of all that is spiritual heavenly and high not opposing at all their having the understanding of all mysteries and all knowledge yea or their having of all faith to the working of miracles or removing of mountaines their speaking with the tongues of men and Angels but unto all these attainments he is conducing as much as in him lies in all deceivablenesse of unrighteousnesse to serve his designes by gaining the greater credit and authority hereby in their hearts and affections and so the more unperceivably beguiling and winding them over into the belief of a lie and that in a point of highest concernment unto them prevailing with them to receive him in their love and affection even that adulterous spirit and deceiver of the Nations in this his Angelical brightnesse instead of Christ himselfe THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH and SON OF THE LIVING GOD and that considered as shining forth in the glory of his SECOND COMING In consequence hereof he makes them to resigne up all the powers and operations of their minde absolutely into his hands in obedience to his dictates and inspirations upon which they hold themselves obliged to be alwayes waiting in the posture of passive silence in a Counterfeit imitation of the true conformity unto Christ in his death and resurrection So then by this meanes the Devill is found sitting in the Temple of God as God to the apprehension of those who thus possesse him or if you will whom he thus possesses as also to the imagination of others their deluded proselytes where he is opposing and Exalting himselfe above all that is called God And as in former times by JANNES and JAMBRES he withstood Moses through a lively and skilful imitation of his works and miracles so in the latter dayes by such instruments of his as these he shall resist the TRUTH to the causing of many to stumble and be offended thereat for the resemblance sake which this false spirit is able to forme of it Which false and counterfeit appearance of his as we have said the Scripture sets forth and describes under these two heads MORTIFICATION and VIVIFICATION with a Character of Condemnation upon them in the very description made of them Such mortification is spoken of 2 Tim 2. 17. in the case of HYMENEUS and PHILETUS whose word is there said to eate like a canker Intimating what kinde of mortification the word by them ministered did produce even such a one as is caused in the body by cancerous humors carrying certaine mortality in it if not timely prevented not being a mortification in order to health and life but unto unsoundnesse and death These teachers with their followers are men of corrupt and unchast mindes towards the true Lord and husband under all their abstinence and seeming mortification Againe 1 Tim. 4. 2. this mortification is called the searing of the conscience with a hot iron importing the dead and insensible frame which thereby is brought upon the minde to any other delight love or desire save only towards this false spirit with whom it is as it were bewitched to the contracting a spiritual benummednesse and coldnesse to all other lovers whatsoever to the world and all seen things or bodily objects answering unto the lust of the flesh the lust of the eye and the pride of sensual life yea and also to Christ himself the true and living God so as to become past feeling in the case of any checks accusations or reproofs from the SPIRIT OF TRUTH in order to a totall and full resignation of themselves up to the dictates inspirations and commands of this false and seducing spirit In this sense and on this account we may finde men giving their bodies to be burned 1 Cor 13. 3. yielding up themselves to be deprived of all their natural or sensual comforts yea many times the most lawful of them thereby offering themselves up as in sacrifice unto these satanical flames wherein they are in danger to be everlastingly burning as in a fire that can never be quenched For this searing of their conscience as with a hot yron is but the first fruits in these SONS OF PERDITION of that resurrection into everlasting contempt designed unto such VESSELS OF DISHONOUR as on the other hand the true mortification and resigning up of the natural will and desire to Christ is the first fruits in the true SONS OF GOD of their resurrection into everlasting life This sinne of their under the Gospel as it is more spiritual seems to be pointed out to us by that sinne under the Law committed by those that offered up their children to Molech causing their sons and their daughters to passe through that material fire and to yield up their very bodies in the most literal outward sense and acceptation to be burned in
formes through counterfeit resemblances unto TRUTH to beguile and mislead unstable souls and is daily detected and discovered under all professions or visible formes of Saintship whether more or lesse refined whether earthly and sensual or heavenly and Angelical Hereof there are in these dayes of ours but too many living instances who as Lots wife are turned into Monuments of Gods righteous judgment declared upon them for the admonition of others And that we may not leave this subject without endeavouring to contribute some assistance towards the resolving of that great Question how the true Spirit may with certainty and infallibility be known and distinguished from the false I shall briefly recommend to consideration as conducible to the discovery hereof these following particulars The Spirit of TRUTH is evidently and infallibly distinguished from the spirit of lies and falshood three several wayes by which we may make a trial and judgement of the spirits whether they be of God or no. First by the evidence and witnesse which is given of it by the three that bear witnesse in heaven where the Spirit of TRUTH shines forth in its supreme original light and self-evidence as we have at large shewed in the first and second Chapters Secondly by the Record and witnesse that the Sonne or Christ the true Spirit gives of himself in his flesh or humane nature causing the truth to shine forth in the face of Jesus opening what he is and what he did by coming in the flesh suffering and rising againe according to the Scriptures which 1 John 5. 6. is rendred thus This is he that came by water and blood even Jesus Christ not by water only but by water and blood and it is the Spirit that heareth witnesse because the Spirit is truth even the witnesse shining forth in his Spirit and person who whether considered as being and subsisting in the WORD OF LIFE before his being made flesh or considered as after his coming in the flesh living dying and rising againe hath a witnesse born of him in heaven by the FATHER WORD and SPIRIT which Three are one and also in earth by the SPIRIT WATER BLOOD declaring themselves in and upon him as he was found in the fashion and habit of a man which agree in one Thus in the same person we have the greater witnesse which is the witnesse of God or of Christ as he is God and the lesser witnesse which is the witnesse of man or of Christ as he is the Son of man and in both these considered also as testified unto by the Scriptures we have the compleat witnesse which God hath testified of his Son By reason hereof 't is said 1 Joh. 2. 12. Who is a liar but he that denies Jesus is the Christ He is Antichrist that denieth the Father and the Son Whosoever denies the Son the same hath not the Father Whosoever sees not nor acknowledges the TRUTH as witnessed and shining forth in the face of Jesus the Son of man with those that are rightly admitted to serve in the first Sanctuary among the many that are called can much lesse behold it as witnessed and held forth in the brightnesse of Gods face or of the blessed Trinity with those who are culled out of the former and rightly admitted into the holiest of all among the few that are chosen By both these witnesses and records in harmony with the outward Word we do come to know him that is true as the right and whole object whereon through faith we are to fix our eye in the proper forme character and distinction which he gives of himself from all idols or counterfeit appearances of him whatsoever The third or last witnesse which is given us of the true Spirit is that which immediately and necessarily flows from his indwelling presence in our hearts growing up there more and more unto a perfect day by working out in the conscience and spirit of the beleever a confōrmity unto Christ in his death and resurrection causing a dying to sinne and a living unto righteousnesse in the full extent of both as we have opened For if any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of his and if Christ be in you the body is dead because of sinne but the Spirit is life because of righteousnesse Examine therefore your selves whether ye be in the Faith know ye not your owne selves how that Jesus Christ is in you except ye be Reprobate And If the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead awell in you he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortall bodies by his Spirit that dwellesh in you and so the Spirit it-selfe comes evidently and infallibly to witnesse with our spirits that we are the children of God as having this Spirit of Adoption poured into our hearts for if we be adopted children then we know we are heires heires of God and joynt heires with Christ if so be we suffer with him that we may also be glorified with him And though we are now Sonnes so as it doth not yet appeare what we shall be when we come to the stature of perfect men in Christ Jesus at the full manifestation of the sonnes of God yet now we know that we shall then be like him and that we shall then see him as he is yea by faith we now see him who is invisible Heb. 11. 27. and by this knowledge we have of him in the mean time we come to see and experience him that is true and that we are in him that is true even the true God and eternal life having the witnesse in our selves through that holy anointing which is TRUTH and no lie teaching us of all things and abiding in us as a seed to preserve us from the evil and snare of all false and seducing spirits Abide therefore in him that when he shall appear we may have confidence and not be ashamed before him at his coming These things I have written unto you concerning them that seduce you CHAP. XXI Shewing particularly the evil seed that is sowen in the natural conscience by Satan through which he works men off from their subjection to Christ in his first dispensation and fixes them in rebellion against him HAving already in general laid open the methods of Satan the weapons of his warfare together with the diligent and skilful prosecution of his designes upon mankind to seduce them work them off and forever deteine them from their duty and faithfulnesse unto Christ their true Husband and Lord we shall come now in a more particular manner to shew how closse an attendant he is upon the foregoing works of Christ in the hearts and consciences of men considered under the former dispensations walking about like a roaring Lion seeking whom he may devoure watching what he can find in such hearts that in the BEGINNING are Gods and Christs owne workmanship as hath beene shewed and trying whom he may corrupt from their first
same heightning and purity which other parts of the Creation shall arrive unto through the general restitution of all things Magistracie it self as ranked among the rest is proportionably to receive For brasse sayes he I will bring gold and for yron I will bring silver and for wood brasse and for stones yron I will also make thy officers peace and thine exactors righteousnesse Violence shall be heard no more in thy land wasting nor destruction within thy borders but thou shalt call thy walls salvation and thy gates praise This restauration seemes to hold proportion with the degenerating of Magistracie figured out in Nebuchadnezzars Image Dan. 2. 32 33. Whose head was of fine gold his armes and breast of silver his belly and thighs of brasse his legges of yron his feet part of yron and part of clay which when it shall be sunk downe into this its lowest and most corrupted state is to receive a change wherein it shall be raised up to its primitive height and glory We are then from hence to be assured that Magistracie had a primitive patterne and Rule unto which Isa 1. 26. referres which though as to the practice of it it will hardly be found yet hereof the judicials of Moses were a shadow and type as through which did shine forth a Magistracie yet in promise in the man Christ Jesus which Moses beheld as the true Original in the Mount when he received the command to see that he made all things according to the patterne shewed him in the Mount and who saith of Christ Deut. 18. 15 18. A Prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren like unto me him shall you hear which compared with Isa 32. 12. shewes that this Prophet is also a King in the sense now spoken of where 't is said Behold a King shall reigne in righteousness and Princes shall Rule in judgement and a man shall be as an hiding-place from the wind and a covert from the tempest as rivers of water in a dry place and the shadow of a rock in a weary land So then faith sees or may see an image and Rule in Christ by whom Kings Rule and Princes decree justice unto which Magistracie it-self in its Primitive institution and right exercise is or ought to be conformed the knowledge of which truth was powerfully set upon Davids spirit enabling him Prophetically to describe it 2 Sam. 23. 3 4 5 6 7. saying He that rules ever men must be just ruling in the feare of God and he shall be as the light of the morning when the Sunne riseth even a morning without clouds as the tender grasse springing out of theearth by cleare shining after raine Which though David did not fully experience in his personal administration of this rule which was in him as in the type nor yet could find it like to be in his house as to the fleshly seed yet he foresaw it and accordingly prophesied of it as a thing to come by the exercise and administration thereof in the hand of Christ and his people in the latter dayes and so first describes wherein Magistracie consists as considered in the purity of its institution and the right exercise thereof when he saith He that rules over men must be JVST ruling in the fear of God and secondly when he shewes also the use which Christ will make of it when it shall by him be brought into practice according to its first patterne even for the thrusting away of all the sonnes of Belial as so many thornes that have laine goading in the sides of Gods suffering Saints for a long time which cannot be taken with hands but the man invested with this Magistracie and power shall be able to touch and subdue them as fenced with this rod of iron and staffe of a speare and they shall be burnt also with fire in the same place The fire that comes forth out of the mouth of Gods witnesses shall also slay them as concurring with this sword to the utter destruction of all Gods enemies As a true result then arising out of this Scripture it doth appear First that there is a rule over men which is Gods Ordinance capable to be brought into its exercise and practice amongst them according to the purity of its institution which being called a Rule over men and not in them signifies that the exercise thereof refers to the outward man or outward concernes of men in their bodily converse in this world Secondly that he that is to be in this power as qualified to exercise this Rule is man first Christ himself as he is the Son of man and then the Saints as gathered into one glorified body with him But this will be only at the time of Christs second coming Neverthelesse man in his earthly state as the figure and type of this is and hath beene qualified for the exercise of Magistracy from the beginning to the end of the world which seemes to be as one of the pillars whereby Christ bears up the World through the vertue of his blood when otherwise by the fall the earth and all the inhabitants thereof had beene dissolved and run into confusion Psal 75. 3. keeping this promotion at his owne disposal so as ver 6 7. It cometh neither from the East nor from the West nor from the South but God is the Judge he putteth downe one and setteth up another in the variety of formes and administrations wherein it is and hath beene exercised in all ages throughout the whole world And as the meanes of qualifying men hereunto Christ hath beene keeping up his witnesse even the fear of the Lord in the consciences of men under the threefold Government and Rule which he sets up in them which he preserves as a distinct jurisdiction from the outward exercise of Rule by man but as conducing to the better managing and carrying on of that outward Government in the hands of men For when the Scripture saith that the Rule of Magistracy is over men we are to understand by this terme the proper sphere bounds and limits of that office which is not to intrude it self into the office and proper concernes of Christs inward Government and rule in the conscience at large before discoursed by us but is to content it self with the outward man and to intermeddle with the concernes thereof in reference to the converse which man ought to have with man upon the grounds of natural just and right in things appertaining to this life wherein the Magistrate or higher power is not only the proper Judge but hath the right of coercion thereunto if not obeyed And the more illuminated the Magistrates conscience and judgement is as to natural justice and right by the knowledge of God and communications of light from Christ under any of the three dispensations before mentioned the better qualified is he to execute his office and the more accountable he is to God and man in default thereof So in
in a superiority in all things unto the Church or true spiritual seed which is his body the fulnesse of him that filleth all in all built up into a Heavenly conformity in all things as a Wife and Spouse unto this her Head and Husband This excellency of Christs exalted manhood was surely intimated unto Iaceb by that ladder Gen. 28. 12 which in his dream he beheld set upon the earth the top whereof reached to Heaven as also the Angels of God ascending and descending upon it For thus we find it interpreted by himself Iohn 1. 50 51. as that greater sight of his humane perfection then what could be seene in the dayes of his flesh Verily verily sayes he I say unto you hereafter you shall see Heaven open and the Angels of God ascending and descending upon the Sonne of man as if he should have said You shall see the Heavenly Temple of God opened Rev. 11. 19. that is to be found in the WORD OF LIFE and the heavenly discoveries flowing thence or sent forth from the same in their ascents and descents in and upon the manhood of Christ as the means chosen for the making manifest the riches of his glory to men and Angels in their particular beings and persons In these three respects shall the true SONNES AND HEIRS OF SALVATION fitted and adorned as a Bride and Heavenly body to this Husband and Head appeare bearing on them the image of the last Adam made like unto him to the seeing of him as he is and shining forth in this likenesse they will have accomplished upon them that manifestation of the sonnes of God which shall vastly difference them from the naturall or fleshly seed considered in their highest mutable perfection or in the incorruptible forme wherein they shall be raised up to everlasting contempt By vertue then of this conformity in image which the Saints shall be brought into with Christs heavenly manhood they shall come forth in the exercise of this threefold life in kind wherein the manhood of Christ hath beene conversant ever since the laying down of his earthly and natural body First of that life which all the true sonnes and heirs of salvation that have died in the faith have beene exercising ever since their change or falling asleep in the Lord that is to say the life of the spirits of just men made perfect a life like that of the Angels or perfect spirits that can live and act without dependance upon bodily life and motion described by Christ himself where he sayes that they who shall be accounted worthy to obteine that world and the resurrection from the dead as were Abraham Isaac and Jacob who then were and yet are in the possession of it neither marry nor are given in marriage for they are equal unto the Angels and are children of God and of the resurrection Luke 20. 35 36 that is to say are the children of God in their spirits made perfect and thereby are become equals and fit associates for the holy Angels themselves as the souls of wicked men departed this life become equals and fit associates for the evil Angels concerning which state also in the best sense Christ spake unto the thief upon the Crosse when he said This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise The second exercise of life which the Saints as gathered unto Christ their Head at his second coming shall be brought forth in is that of a glorified incorruptible body in fashion made like unto his glorious body Phil. 3. Into the exercise of which life they are not yet entered but reserved for it by the MAN CHRIST IESUS the FIRST-FRUITS who will have the souls of those slaine under the Altar to rest yet for a little season in the single exercise of their Angelical life as spirits of just men made perfect untill the gathering of the GENERAL ASSEMBLY of the first-borne together and setting them who have beene the slaine Witnesses of Christ upon their feet in the exercise of this immortal incorruptible bodily life here in this world wherein they are to continue and abide for a THOUSAND YEARS keeping the true Sabbath of Rest unto the Lord in that seventh part of the time of the worlds duration All worldly strength wisdome and power shall then as the walls of Iericho fall flat before Iesus the true Ioshua and these true Israelites as having beene by them compassed about six dayes and now on the seventh a thousand years being with the Lord as one day 2 Pet. 3. 8. making way for the end mentioned 1 Cor. 15. 24. to come and shew it self at which time the fleshly Rule and Kingdome of Christ in his first appearance till then kept up in the world as the first general Dominion is delivered up unto the Father the Sonnewillingly becoming subject herein with reference to the bringing himself forth in his second appearance to rule and reign in the place of the first that God may be all in all and that all other rule authority and power may hereby be put downe yea death it self as the last enemy may be destroyed and made unable to deteine any under its power that the quickning vertue shining forth in this presence and appearance of Christ shall call forth and give freedome unto The Saints in the exercise of this life with Christ upon earth during this THOUSAND YEARS shall be those in whom Christ will be admired and the Father glorified This state of theirs is the reward spoken of in Scripture where it is said The meek shall inherit the earth and Godlinesse hath not only the promise of the life to come but of this also 1 Tim. 4. 8. So Rom. 4. 13. The Promise to Abraham that he should be heir of the world is declared not to be by the Law or to have its accomplishment under the first Covenant-dispensation but through the righteousnesse of faith that it might be by grace to the end the Promise might be sure to all the seed not to that only which is of the Law but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham who with other beleevers died and received not the making good thereof It therefore remains to be performed in its due time at this manifestation of the Sonnes of God which faith sees and acknowledges Heb. 11. 39. These all having obtained a good report through faith received not the promise to wit this promise of being heirs of the world and of all Nations being blessed in and by the meanes of the spiritual seed which will certainly be fulfilled to them in the times of the NEW HEAVENS AND NEW EARTH Isa 65. 17. c. God having foreseene and reserved some better thing for us saith the Author to the Hebrews that they without us should not be made perfect but that all of us may enjoy that better thing together at once in the keeping of a holy Sabbath unto the Lord at the coming of this day of God in which the Heavens that
conformity with Christ in his death to the glory of the resurrection from the dead as the mark of the price of his high calling wherein true perfection and lasting blessednesse consists Where the Image of God in this third and last sense stands but in the least relative kind of union with any heart there the foundation is laid which is mentioned 2 Tim. 2. 19. where it is said The Lord knoweth them that are his bearing with and passing by all their evil carriages towards him in the times of their ignorance and unregenerate state not suffering the Destroyer to enter and utterly to make an end but because of this New Wine that is found in the Cluster God saith Destroy it not for a blessing is in it And though this hidden Being which everlasting righteousnesse hath in the soul to the separating of it unto God from the womb be not that which does actually invest such persons so much as with the Priviledges and Blessings of the first Covenant or give them a personal right to them all which depends upon the marriage-union actually to be contracted betweene Christ and them when they are so joyned as to be made one flesh yet the sanctification that passes upon the soul or separation that is made of it hereby from the womb keeps it from wilful sinning against the grace of the New Covenant and righteousnesse of Faith as appears in Solomon who in the midst of his greatest declinings and falls had this wisdome lying at bottome and keeping him from final Apostasie as the Book of Ecclesiastes at large declares So also in Paul this was evident who confesses in this respect that God shewed mercy to him who was the worst and greatest of sinners because that in all that contradiction and opposition to the light of Faith and of the New Covenant wherein he became a persecutor and a blasphemer he was ignorant and unaware I did it ignorantly sayes he 1 Tim. 1. 13. and elsewhere when called before the Magistrate Acts 26. 9. I verily thought with my self sayes he that I ought to do many things contrary to the Name of Iesus of Nazareth By this seed then of saving Faith whereby he was separated from the womb he was preserved from the great transgression or sinne that is unto death And in this sense we may safely understand that Scripture Luke 10. 5 6. Into what house soever ye enter first say Peace be to this house And if the SONNE OF PEACE be there your Peace shall rest upon it if not it shall turn to you againe So that no Peace or durable Blessednesse hath commission from God to rest upon any heart but where this seed is through which the Saints are separated unto God from the womb The Witnesse then which results and presents it self to our thoughts from this view of things is this that dying to sinne and living to righteousnesse considered only as the effect and birth of common grace or life from Christ under the first and second Ministery singly and apart from the effect and operation of saving Faith which is proper to the third Ministery alone does amount to no higher a work in the conscience then what may and will fail And yet this Mortification and Vivification thus produced in the heart is not only real but all such attainments and receivings as these from Christ with all the benefits inseperably accompanying his indwelling presence in the soul by his first appearance are as they are called Ezek. 16. 14 15. his owne comelinesse which he thinks fit to put upon these children of the first Covenant which they notwithstanding unwarrantably trusting unto and resting in do thereby commit iniquity and that such iniquity as that thereupon all their righteousnesse which they have had and done shall be no more remembered but for the iniquity which they thus commit they must die Ezek. 33. 13. as found opposers and fighters against the brightnesse of Christs second coming under pretence of upholding and adhering unto the life and glory of his first The defect therefore of these mens saintship or sanctification lies not in this that it is false counterfeit hypocritical or head-work only and unanswerable to the Rule or holy commandment given unto them For in all these respects it may be and is oftentimes free and faultlesse in the experience of those that have it who in great sincerity and zeale are servants unto righteousnesse and enemies unto sin in the two first Ministeries and upon the termes Christ therein exhibits himself unto them who yet for all this stumble at the stumbling stone and fall at last irrecoverably by setting up the work of God wrought in their hearts either under the first or second dispensation where it only obtaines the place of a Part or Branch in reference to the whole in a direct opposition to the coming on of the whole in the third and last dispensation as well knowing that when that which is perfect does once come and take place then that which is but in part and in that sense imperfect must be done away which such minds so principled as they are can by no means bear being fixedly and utterly unwilling where saving Faith is not at the bottome to part with and forgo these small Pearls whereby to make purchase of the great Pearle which comprehends all the parts in it self and that after a more excellent manner causing them to be enjoyed in a more excellent way they before and in more abundance So that the very Holinesse in kind is not lost but is perfected and fulfilled as we have at large shewed And therefore the Apostle Paul 1 Cor. 12. treating of Grace and the gifts of the Spirit under both these considerations first as the manifestation thereof is given in common to every man to profit withall dividing unto every man severally as he will or secondly as there is a giving forth of this Spirit in a more excellent way of life and grace then what the best gifts given several and apart do amount unto exhorts unto the acknowledging and retaining of both these in a consistency and loving harmony together as making but one body or compleat fulnesse in Christ which he calls Love Chap. 13. expressely asserting that all gifts of the Spirit how good and reall soever they be yet considered as they are several and in part only will leave the possessors of them little better then sounding brasse or tinkling Cymbals for they will not last or endure to the end The Apostle hereby intimates unto us the evil use that may be made of good and spiritual gifts when either the parts agree not amongst themselves but the eye sayes to the hand I have no need of thee or the head to the feet I have no need of you or when the parts considered as several conspire together against the whole as the Body against the Soul the Forme against the Power of Godlinesse When therfore the gifts of the Spirit are given