But for this cause came I to this hour.
Now, for rules of submission to providence in order to the text, let these be considered;
Rule 1. Christ's patience, and so our submission must be bottomed on a looking above-hand to the will of God; every wheel in a great work, moves according to the motion of the highest and first wheel that moves all the rest. Every inferior court acts as ordered by the highest and supreme senate, the greatest in the kingdom. Every inferior orb in the heaven is moved in subordination to the Primum mobile, the highest that moveth all the rest; the motion of rivers regulate the flowings of lesser brooks. And things that move on earth, as the heavens move, so are they carried: the principle of motions and ways in all mortals, beginneth at the highest mover, the just and wife will of God; all are to say, Not my will, but thy will be done.
Rule 2. There is no ground of submission in a cross providence, but to look to the end that Christ looked to, the Lord's wise and holy will: he curseth, because the Lord biddeth him, faith David of Shimei; and there he fixeth his stake. The Lord hath taken away, faith Job; and upon the Lord's taking away, he faith, Blessed be the name of the Lord: any man can say, Blessed be the name of the Lord, who giveth; the greatest part of men break their teeth, in biting at the nearest link of the chain of second causes, but they arise never up to God, the first mover.
Rule 3. Christ not only submitteth to God's will, but he approveth that it may be done. So Hezekiah, Isa. 39:8. He said, moreover, good is the word of the Lord; the thing was heard, that all in his house should be carried away to Babylon, and his sons should be captives. Yet the will of the Lord was good and just, when the thing willed and decreed of God was evil to him.
Rule 4. Christ will not hinder God to do what he thinks good; Thy will be done. Murmuring is a stone in God's way; murmuring is an anti-providence, a little god, setting itself against the true God, that steers all in wisdom; and the murmurer doth what he can to stop up God's way. Old Eli, when he heard sad news, says, 1 Sam. 3:18. It is the Lord, [Vagnase] Let him, I hinder him not to do, what is good in his eyes. David faith, 2 Sam. 15:26. If the Lord say, I have no delight in thee, behold, here am I, let him do to me what seems good in his eyes. Here am I, is as much as, I will not flee him, nor hinder him; I lay myself under him, to receive his strokes. So Christ, Heb. 10:5; Psal. 40. Thou hast prepared my ears, or my body, here am I; v. 7. Here am I, to do thy will.
Rule 5. Christ gave not away his natural will; but in the act of willing, he submitted it; it was a broken will that Christ reserved to himself, or a submitted will, hic & nunc. Christ seeketh not the resigning of natural faculties in hard providences, but that we quit contest with God; and that our will be not abolished, but broken; especially, that we do not quarrel with justice. Lament. 3:28. He sitteth alone, and keepeth silence, because he hath born it upon him. v. 29. He putteth his mouth in the dust, if so be there may he hope. v. 30. He giveth his checks to him that smiteth them; he is filled with reproach. There be here many sweet signs of a broken will. 1. Solitary sadness. 2. Silence, the soul not daring to quarrel with God. 3. The stooping to the dust, and putting clay in the mouth, for fear that it speak against God's dispensation, as Job 40:4, 5:4. A willing accepting of buffets on the cheeks, and reproaches: so, Mic. 7:9. I will bear the indignation of the Lord, because I have sinned. When the soul is made like a broken and daunted heifer, or a silly heartless dove, so as the man, like a well-nurtured child, kisseth the rod of God. He is a bad soldier, who followeth his captain sighing and weeping; faith sings at tears, and rejoiceth under hope in the ill day.
Rule 6. It is the child's happiness, that the wise father's will be his rule, not his own; and for the orphan the tutor's wit is better than his own will. Our own will is our hell, Ezek. 18:31. Why will ye die, O house of Israel? Christ's will is heaven. Christ thinks it is his best, that his Father's will stand, and his human will be repealed, Rom. 15:3. For even Christ pleased not himself; to have no will of your own, is the pearl in the ring, a jewel in submission. (2.) That the Lord's end is good, he minds to have me home to heaven; then, as in his six days work of creation, he made nothing ill, so he hath been working these five thousand years, and all his works of providence are as good as his works of creation; he cannot chuse an ill mean for a good end: if God draw my way to heaven through fire, tortures, blood, poverty, though he should trail me through hell, he cannot err in leading, I may err in following.
Object. But there is a better way beside, and he leads others through a rosy and green valley, and my way within few inches to it, is a wilderness of thorns.
Answ. Gold absolutely is better than a draught of water: but comparatively, water is better to Samson, dying for thirst, than all the gold in the earth: so, cutting a vein, is in itself ill; but comparatively, letting blood through a cut vein, is good for a man in danger of an extreme fever; there is no better way out of heaven for thee, than the very way that the Lord leads thee. God not only chuses persons, but also things; and every cross that befals thee, is a chosen and selected cross, and it was shapen in length, and breadth, and measure, and weight, up before the throne, by God's own wise hand: heaven is the work-house of all befals thee, every evil is the birth that lay in the womb of an infinitely wise decree; so God is said to frame evil, as a potter doth an earthen vessel, (so [Ratzai;] Jatsar) signifieth, Jer. 18:11. To frame a vessel of clay, is a work of art and wisdom; so it is a work of deliberation and choice: God is said to devise judgment against Babylon, Jer. 51:12. And the Lord hath done to his people the things which he devised. [Zamam] is to think, meditate, study, devise, Deut. 19:18 and Isa. 45:7. He creates darkness and evil: it is such a work of omnipotency and wisdom, as the making of a world of nothing. Then, if God follow infinite art in shaping vengeance against Babylon, far more must he wisely study to mould and shape afflictions for his own; for no afflictions befal the saints, but they be well framed, chosen, wisely studied, forged, and created crosses. A potter cannot frame by deeper art and judgment, a water-pot for such an end and use; a fashioner cannot frame clothes in proportion for a man's body, so fitly, as the wise Lord, in judgment and cunning, shapes and frames this affliction as a measure for thy foot only; poverty for this man, and it is shapen to his measure; wicked children and the sword on David's house, fitted for him; such a lothsome disease for this saint; want of friends and banishment for such a man; another more and heavier should be shapen too wide for thy soul, and another lighter should have been too strait, short, and narrow for thee. It is comfortable, when I believe the draught, portraiture, and lineaments of my affliction, were framed and carved in all the limbs, bones, parts, qualities of it, in the wise decree, and in the heart and breast of Christ. It were not good to bear a cross of the devil's shaping: were there as much wormwood and gall in the saint's cup, as the devil would have in it, then hell should be in every cup; and how many hells should I drink? and how often should the church drink death? It is good I know Christ brewed the cup, then it will work the end; for, be it never so contrary and four to my taste, and so unsavory, Christ will not cast poison in it; he hath purposed I should sail with no other wind to heaven, and I know it is better than any wind to me, for that port.
Rule 7. Christ prescribes no way to his Father, but in the general, The Lord's will be done on me, (saith he) be what it will; let hell, and death, and devils' malice and heaven's indignation, and enmity, and war, ill-will, and perfection from earth, hard measure from friends and lovers, if the will of my Father so be, welcome with my soul; welcome black cross, welcome pale death, welcome curses, and all the curses of God, that the just law could lay on all my children, (and they are a fair number) welcome wrath of God, welcome shame, and the cold grave. The submission of faith subscribeth a blank paper, let the Lord write in what he pleaseth; patience dares not contest and stand upon pennies or pounds, on hundreds or thousands with God: Moses and Paul dare refer their heaven, and their share in Christ, and the book of life, to Christ, so the Lord may be glorified: submissive faith putteth much upon Christ, Let him stay me, yet will I trust in him, said Job. 13:15. Heman alledgeth, it was not one single cross, Psal. 88:7. Thou hast afflicted me with all thy waves. And David, Psal. 42:7. All thy waves and all thy billows are gone over me. One of God's waves could have drowned David; afflictions coming in armies, and in a battle-array, say, that one single soldier cannot subdue us. Lawful war is the most violent, and the last remedy against a state, and it argueth a great necessity of the sword. Job had an army sent against him, and from heaven too, chap. 6:4. The terrors of God do set themselves in array against me. See what a catalogue of sufferings, Paul did refer to God, 2 Cor. 11:23, 24, 25, &c. One good violent death would have made away a stronger man than Paul, yet he was willing for Christ to be in deaths often, ἐν θανάτοις πολλακις, many deaths, many stripes, many prisons, five times mine and thirty stripes; this was near two hundred stripes, every one of them was a little death: thrice beaten with rods, once stoned, thrice in shipwreck, night and day sailing in the deep, in journeying of ten, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils of his own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren, in weariness, and painfulness, in watching often, in hunger, in thirst, in fasting often, in cold, in nakedness, &c. Many of us would either have a cross of our own carving; as we love will-worship, and will-duties, so we love will-suffering, and desire nothing more, than if that we must suffer, Christ with his tongue would lick all the gall off our cross, and leave nothing but honey, and a cross of sugar and milk; we love to suffer with a reserve, and to die upon a condition. An indefinite and catholic resignation of ourselves without exception to Christ, and to undergo many furnaces, many hells, many deaths, as Christ will, is a rare grace of God, and not of ordinary capacity.
Rule 8. Christ, in submitting his will, maketh the prophecies, the revealed gospel his rule: and in the matter of duty, is willing to be ruled by God's revealed will; in the matter of suffering, he is willing that the Lord's will stand for a law, to which he doth willingly submit, and will in no fort quarrel with everlasting decrees. To be ruled by the one, is holiness; to submit to the other, is patience: for patience is higher than any ordinary grace, in regard 'tis willing to adore and reverence something more and higher than a commanding, promising, and threatning will of God. It was a grace in Christ most eminent, in the Lamb of God, dumb, meek and silent before his shearers, the meekest in earth and in heaven, that he did not only never resist the revealed will of God, but never thought, motion, nor any hint of a desire was in him, against the secret and eternal decree and counsel of God. Christ will not have us to make images of him, who is the invisible God; but when, in his works of justice, power, love, free-grace, he setteth before us the image of his glorious nature and attributes, he will have us to adore him in these. According to his decree of reprobation, he raised up Pharaoh to be clay to all men; on whom, as on a voluntary and rational vessel of wrath, they might read power, justice, truth, sovereignty; in these works we are to tremble before him, and adore the Lord. So in works of grace, that are the image of the invisible God, the Lord is to be loved, 1 Tim. 1:16. In Paul the chief of sinners, the Lord holds forth an image of the freest grace, no less than in the revealed will of God; for, 1. Christ made an example of mercy and free grace in him. 2. He made a speaking and crying spectacle to all ages, an ὑποῖνʼ ποσις, a printed copy of crying grace to all the world: and in this we are to adore and submit to him. Such a limb of hell hath received mercy, not I, who before men was holier. O submit to this work of grace, as to the copy of his eternal decree, and be silent.
Rule 9. Christ putteth nature and natural reason, that his natural will might seem to plead withall, under the Lord's feet: so it would seem strange. God hath many sons, but none like Christ: he was a son, his alone; he had never a brother by an eternal generation; he was the only heir of the house; but never a son so afflicted as he: this seems against all reason. But Christ brings in his Father's will with an ἀλλα, But, Mat. 26:39; John 12:27; Luke 22:42; Mark 14:36. But thy will be done. 'Tis against submission, to put absolute interrogatories upon the Lord: we love to have God make an account of his providence to us, and that the last and final appeal of the ways of the Lord should be to our reason, as to the great senate and supremest court in heaven and earth. 'Tis true, Christ putteth a why upon God, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? But, 1. with the greatest faith that ever was, a doubled act of believing, My God, my God. 2. With the extremest love, that ever was in a man; 'tis also a two-fold cord of warmness of heart to his Father, My God, my God. 3. 'Tis a word relative to the covenant between the Father and the Son; for my God is a covenant expression, that the Father will keep what he hath promised to his Son; and relateth to the infinite faithfulness of the covenant-maker. 4. God, relateth to the dominion, lordship and sovereignty that the Lord hath, and therefore that Christ will submit to him. 5. Christ's complaint of the Lord's forsaking, sheweth the tenderness of his soul, in prizing the favour of his Father, more than any thing in heaven and earth. And therefore Christ's why is a note of, 1. Admiration: 2. Of sinless sorrow; conjoined with love, tenderness and submission to God. Christ cannot speak to his Father, beside the truth; but every man is a liar; and we seldom put questions and queries upon sovereignty, but we prefer our reason to infinite wisdom. Job is out, and takes his marks by the clouds, and the moon, when he saith, Job 13:24. Why holdest thou me for thine enemy? chap. 3:11. Why died I not from the womb? Why did I not give up the ghost, when I came out of the belly? And Jeremiah 15:18. Why is my pain perpetual, and my wound uncurable, which refuseth to be healed? chap. 20:18 Wherefore came I out of the womb to see labour and sorrow, that my days should be consumed with shame?
All the Lord's works are full, yea with child, of reason, wisdom, and grave, and weighty causes: and though we see not his acts to have a why, yet there is a cause, why he doth all he doth; reason is necessity to him, and an essential ingredient in all his actions.
Rule 10. In this administration of providence, with Christ, the Lord goeth many ways at once: in this very act he redeemeth the world, judgeth Satan, satisfieth the law and justice, glorifieth Christ, destroyeth sin, fulfilleth his own eternal will and counsel. In one war he can ripen Babylon for wrath, humble his church, deliver Jeremiah, punish idolatry. In the same war he can humble and correct Scotland, harden malignants, that they will not hearken to offers of peace; and blow up their haters, that they may be lofty through victories, and be ripened for wrath through unthankfulness to God. Providence hath many eyes so also many feet and hands under the wings, to act and walk a thousand ways at once. There is a manifold wisdom in providence, as in the work of redemption. In every work that God doth, he leaveth a wonder behind him; no man can come after the Almighty, and say, I could have done better than he. 'Tis natural to blame God in his working, but impossible to mend his work.
Rule 11. Nor is Christ made a loser, by losing his will for the Lord, but his will is fulfilled in that which he feared, Heb. 5:7. Providence submitted unto, rendereth an hundred fold in this life, Mat. 19:29. God makes the income above hope, Gen. 48:11. And Israel said to Joseph, I had not thought to see thy face, and lo, God hath shewed me also thy seed. One berry is not a cluster, that two men cannot bear, but 'tis a field, an earth of vine-trees in the seed, Eph. 3:20. He is able to do above all things, ὑπερεκπερισσοῦ, more than abundantly above that we can ask or think, above the shaping or frame of my wards or thoughts. But I can ask heaven, he can give more than heaven, and above heaven; yea, I can think of Christ, but he can give above the Christ that I can think on, because I cannot comprehend infinite Jesus Christ.
Rule 12. Christ is not so intent and heart-bended on freedom from death and this black and sad hour, but he reverences a higher providence, that God's will be done; so are we to look to providence, and we are not to stumble at an external stroke in sad occurrences, when, Job 19:22. God destroyeth the perfect and the wicked. And he furbishes his sword, Ezek. 21:3 and saith, I will draw out my sword out of its sheath, and will cut off from thee, the righteous and the wicked.
Then, 1. Arise, go down to the potter's house, Jer. 18. The earth is God's work-house; for clay, good and bad, are equally on the wheels; Christ as punishable for our sins, though a vessel of burning gold, is under art; sovereignty rolls about three in one wheel, the blaspheming, the repenting thief, and Christ who is virtue, grace, yea glory, in the midst. An elect and reprobate man may be both sewed in the same winding-sheet, they may touch others skins in the same grave, but they are not rolled in, in the same hell. Yea, Ham is saved in the ark, but as the unclean beasts are, he is preserved from drowning, but reserved to cursing.
2. There is a providence of grace, as there is in God a special love of free grace; the good and the bad figs are not in the same invisible basket; there is a pavilion, a cabinet of silk in God's privy chamber, seen to no eye, Psal. 27:5. And upon all the glory shall be a covering, Isa. 4:5. Christ's free and invisible love, is a fair white web of gold, that a saint is wrapped in, in the ill day. Where is he? he is hid, yet he goes thro' the sieve, and sifted he must be, but not a grain of him falls to the earth, Amos 9:9.
3. There have been questions about the prerogative of kings, and the privilege of parliaments too; but undeniably in the market-road of providence, the Lord hath kept a prerogative-royal of justice to himself, to cut off the innocent and righteous with the wicked, in temporal judgments. 2. And of special grace of providence, when the godly man is blacked with a death-mark, and condemned to die; God's prerogative sends him a reprival of grace, above the law, and current of providence, Isa. 38:5. Hezekiah (saith the high landlord) is summoned to flit and remove, yet he shall dwell in his farm of clay, fifteen years. 3. This prerogative dispenseth with fire, not to burn; with the sea, not to ebb and flow, so long as the soles of the feet of Christ's bride are upon the new found sands in the heart of the sea; yea, with hungry lions, not to eat their meat, when they have no food but the flesh of Daniel, beloved of the Lord. Christ here commits himself unto an unseen sovereignty. For Abraham to kill his own only begotten son of promise; to reason, 'tis a work of God, but 'tis a providence of nonsense. Neither law nor gospel, for ought that reason can see, shall warrant it; yet sovereignty commands it, and that's enough. Afflictions of trials, such as the prosperity of the wicked, and the trying sufferings of the godly, seem more to contradict God's promises, and revealed will in the word, than any other visitations of God; therefore, beside that they require patience, they must have faith in an eminent manner. To believe infinite wisdom can tie the murthering of Isaac by his own father, against the law of nature (as it seems) with the gospel, which cannot command unnatural bloods, must require much faith.
Rule 13. Christ declares, when matters are at the worst, there is good will for him, in the done will of God. 'Tis an objection to sense, and to sinless nature in Christ-man? O, dost thou not see sad and four-faced death, is not thy soul, thy darling, in the power of dogs? Hath not hell long and bloody teeth? is not the furnace, the oven of the Lord's highest indignation, for the sins of all the chosen of God, very hot? when the flames of it makes thee a troubled soul, and cause thee to sweat out blood; what blood shall be left for scourging, for the iron nails of that sad cross? True (saith Christ) I have (God knows) a heavy soul, my strength is dried up like a potsherd: This cup casteth a favour of hell and fiery indignation, a sight of it would kill a man, yet I'll drink it; he good and just will of my Father be done, there I stand, further I go not. To be at a stand, and to lay silence on our tumultuous thoughts, who are compassed with a body of sin, and to be satisfied with the will of the Lord, is our safest; we should not be persuaded by the cross, or all that sense can say, far less what sin can say, from this, The will of the Lord be done. The friends of Paul, hearing what he must suffer, say, Acts 20:14. When he would not be persuaded, we ceased, saying, The will of the Lord be done. It is grace to cease and say no more, when we see the Lord declare his mind to us; an holy heart will not go one hair's breadth beyond the Lord's revealed will.
1. Because love, which thinketh not ill, does not black the spotless and fair will of God, when it is revealed to be from God, though hell were in that will.
2. Faith seeth, even in permitting of persecution from Pharoah and Egypt, the Lord's good-will in the burning bush, the very good-will by which he saveth his, people redeemed in Christ, Mat. 11:26; Phil. 1:13. Who dwelleth in the bush, Deut. 33:16. And 'tis considerable that the same good-will, which is the root of reprobation, and of permitting hell and devils, and devils persecuting instruments, to turn his church into ashes, and to a burnt bush; and devils and men to crucify Christ, is free grace, and the root of election to glory, and is extended to the saints, Rom. 9:15, 16, 17; Eph. 1:11. Faith seeth and readeth free grace in a providence, which, of itself, is extended to devils and reprobate men, tho' not as extended to them; and it is an argument of true grace, if any can say Amen to hell and the saddest indignation coming from this will, tho' against a particular will of our own.
3. As we are obliged to adore God, so also his sovereignty and holy will, when 'tis revealed to us; and to murmur against it, because it crosseth our short-sighted, and narrow-witted will, is the highest contempt of God, and that which is the soul and formal of sin, and the determination of a wicked and ill-stated question; whether should my short and pur-blind will, stand for eternity; or the holy and infinitely wise will of God, which had eternity of duration, infiniteness of wisdom, and not seven, but millions of eyes, to advise what was decreed as fittest to be done.
4. Since there is not a fatum, nor an adamantine destiny and irrevocable decree but this; is it holy wisdom to knock hard heads with God? 'Tis true, pride grows green, and casteth out its golden branches in the fattest soil: but, Job 9:4. He is wise in heart, and mighty in strength; who hath hardened himself against him, and prospered? There is infinite wisdom in God, and infinite power to bring to pass his decrees; will clay counterwork God's infinite counsel? The former of all things makes fire-works under the earth against sinners; can sinners make counter-mines to out-work the Almighty? Sure, if he be wise in heart, who hath a most eminent, holy, and just providence in all that falleth out, when we hear that the gospel, and the church of Christ are oppressed in judgment, we are to look on that oppression, as on the sin of other men, and as our cross, and to mourn for it, in the former consideration; and in the latter, as it troubles us, to judge it good, necessary, and better than if it had been otherwise. The formal reason of goodness is the will of God, and your judgment is to esteem that good, which is ill to you, tho' it be four and heavy; for it hath goodness from this, and goodness to you, that the Lord hath decreed it. To be four and sweet, make up a middle taste most pleasant; Christ twisteth black and white in one web; the Jews sins, which he willeth not; and their sin is the redemption of man, which he loveth: and these two are pleasant to behold, and when they are mixed in one, and come from the most wise God, they have beauty to God; far be it from me, to judge them black, or unjust, which are fair, to him.
Rule 14. Christ submits his will to the will of God, in soul-desertions; so should we do. Christ's love to his Father, is no critic, no knotty questionist, to spin, and forge jealousies against the Lord's dispensation in the influence of heaven on his soul. He is willing to lay his soul-comforts in the bosom and free-will of his Father; and in this he judgeth the Lord's will, better than his own will. We have too many querulous love-motions against the reality of Christ's love, when he hides himself. O but we are covetous and soul-thirsty after our own will, in the matter of soul-manifestations! either I see little here, or we idol comforts, and would gladly have a Christ of created grace, rather than Christ, or his grace; and when we are thirsting for Christ, it is his comforts, the rings, jewels, bracelets of the bridegroom, we seek after, rather than himself; it is not an unmixed, not a pure marriage-love, to marry the riches and possessions, and not the person, Mat. 22:2. The kingdom of heaven, is like unto a certain king, which made a marriage [tô hyô autu] for his son, not for his daughter in law. The glory of gospel-dainties, resembled to a marriage, are for the king's son, and the glory of Christ; not for our glory, but for our grace. Christ is the final end, for whom all the honey-combs, the myrrh, the spices, the wine, and the milk of the banquet are prepared, Cant. 5:1. We have need of Christ to cure, even our perfections; there be some wild oats, some grains of madness and will-wit in our best graces. 2. You cannot idolize Christ himself; love in pounds, in talent-weights, is too little for him; his sweet accidents, his delights, consolations, love-embracements are sweet, but swelling, and too fatening; and if Christ send these to a believer, in a box of gold, or in a case made of a piece of the heaven, or of a chip of the noon-day sun, and not come himself, they should not satisfy the soul. Cant. 3:1. I sought him whom my soul loved; watchmen, saw ye him? O it is the beloved himself, that is a great man in the spouse's books; his wine, his spikenard, his myrrh, his ointments, his perfume, the savour of his garments, his apples of love, are all in that heavenly song set out for himself. Love tokens are nothing, duties nothing, inherent righteousness nothing, heaven nothing, if separated from Christ; but Christ himself is all in all.
Our 2d disease is, we forget that he that created the love of Christ in the heart, can only cure our love, when it is sick for Christ: as he that created the first world can rule it, so he that created the second new world, can guide it, and all the creatures in it, tho' our faith stagger, touching his special providence, in particulars of either, as we are deserted, and left to ourselves.
3. We often thirst after comforts, and sense, as the people did, and (Isa. 58:5) were reproved for their fast: Is it such a fast as I have chosen? And Zech. 7:5. Did ye at all fast to me, even to me? So may Christ blame us for the like sin, and say, Have ye thirsted to me, and for me, and not rather for yourselves? Let us examine delusions, and not father them upon Christ, except we know he will own them.
4. We desire a never-interrupted presence and sense of God; whereas Christ submitted to want it for a time, when he saw it was God's will so to do: and tho' we have not, nor can we have positively alway an edge of actual hunger, yet we negatively can be submissive to want, when we see it is his will we want; whereas he is the same Christ, with the same immanent, and eternal love of election, without variation of the degrees of the altitude and height thereof; the same infinite wisdom, when he frowns, and hides his face, and when he shines and smiles in his kingly manifestations. Clouds alter not the sun-light, coverings change not Christ, that he cannot love behind the curtain; except we take a cloud to be the sun, or created sweetness to be Christ. Were the beam separated from the sun, what should it be but as good as nothing? We dream that the curtains and robes of Christ's manifestations of love, add somewhat to his excellency; then he must be of more eminency, when he expresseth himself in love-embracements to us, than when he was from eternity the flower of his Father's delight. Christ's out-side in revealed sweetness, and in transient manifestations of his beauty, must then be more excellent than himself; this is too selfy a conception of Christ. The Lord Jesus is more within, than we can enjoy him, in his love-expressions; he loses none of that immanent sweetness, under his wise withdrawings; tho' you or I, or men, or angels, should never feed upon any time-enjoyments of sweetest love, and manifested glory from his revealed kindness.
5. 'Tis a great query, If it be expedient, that our motion to heaven, should be as the motion of the sun, that never rests, but moves as swiftly in the night as in the day? And if we should ever be on wings, I know 'tis our duty; but even the falling on our own weight, and the conscience of our clay-mould, our short breath, nature's weak legs in walking up the mount, are good for the adding wind and tide, and high sails to the praising of Christ, and free grace: Utile est peccavisse, nocet peccare. It is profitable that we have sinned, that grace may be extolled; it is ill to sin. Even to the nature of man, 'tis good that he hath died, and hath been in the grave; yet 'tis not good, but contrary to nature, to die and to lie in the grave.
6. 'Tis our forgetfulness, that we see not the dearest to Christ have been kept lowest, and most empty in their own eyes; hidden grace extolleth Christ. 2. That often the saints are kept in a condition of sailing with as much wind as blows, with praying, and believing. 3. That yet prayer and the sweating of faith cannot earn, nor promerit the renewed sense of Christ, so as Christ returneth to eat his honey-comb, and his wine, and milk, and banquet with the soul, rather at the presence of these acts, than for them; at some have said, (tho' with no strength of reason) that fire burneth not, the sun enlightneth not, the earth doth not send forth flowers, and herbs; but God, at the naked presence of these causes, doth produce all effects; yet in this case it hath a truth, that the sweating of all supernatural industry, cannot redeem the least half glimpse of God's presence, in the sense of eternal love, when God is pleased for trial to hide himself.
7. Our great fault here is merit, that we tye the flowings and inundations of Christ's love to the beck of our desires; whereas we may know, 1. That the sun doth not shine, nor the rain water the earth, in order to merit. 2. We should know, that grace, and all the acts of grace, are alms, not debt; and, that a rich Saviour giveth grace to us as beggars, and payeth it not to hirelings, as the due, or as wages we can crave for our work; but we love penny-worths better than free-gifts.
But for this cause came I to this hour.
Christ's work of redemption was a most rational work, and was full of causes [dia tuto]; this faith, that to redeem losed sinners, was not a rash and reasonless work.
1. There was no cause compelling. Love cannot be forced, John 3:16. God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, &c. Grace worketh more from an intrinsical cause, and more spontaneously than nature. For nature often is provoked by contraries for self-defence to work, as fire worketh on water, as on a contrary; the wolf and the dog pursue one another as enemies. But grace, because grace, hath abundance of causality and power in itself, but hath no cause without it.
2. Any necessity of working from goodness in the agent, as from such a principle, is strong. 1 Tim. 1:15. It is a true saying, and by all means worthy to be received, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. If the thing be worthy [Gr. pases apodoches] of all receipt and embracing, then it must be good; an agent working from a principle of goodness doth in his kind work necessarily, though he may also work from another principle freely. John 10:11. I am the good shepherd, the good shepherd giveth his life for his sheep. Luke 19:10. For the Son of man is come to seek, and to save that which is lost.
3. God will seek reasons or occasions without himself, to be gracious to sinners. When no reason or cause moveth a physician to cure, but only sickness and extreme misery; we know grace and compassion is the only cause; Ezek. 36:23. I will sanctify my great name, Why? Which was prophaned among the heathen; and which ye have prophaned in the midst of them; then the true cause must be expressed, verse 22. Thus saith the Lord God, I do not this for your sakes, O house of Israel, but for mine holy name's sake.
4. The Lord taketh a cause from the end of his coming, Mat. 20:28. The Son of man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many. John 18:37. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. John 10:10. I am come that they might have life, and have it in abundance.
5. Something, yea very much of God, is in creation; much of God in his common providence; but most of all, yea whole God, in the redemption of man. God manifested in the flesh is the matter and subject of it, grace the moving cause; most of all his attributes working for the manifestation of the glory of pardoning mercy, revenging justice, exact faithfulness and truth, freest grace, omnipotency over hell, devils, sin, the world; patience, longanimity to man, co-operate as the formal and final causes. It is a piece so rational and full of causes, that as he is happy (Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas) who can know the causes of things; so angels delight to be scholars, to read and study this mysterious art of free-grace, Eph. 3:10; 1 Pet. 1:12. Works without reasons and causes are foolish. The cause why we do not submit to God, is, Because we lie under blind and fatherless crosses: 'Tis true, affliction springs not out of the dust, and crosses, considered without God, are twice crosses. Three material circumstances in crosses are very considerable. Quis, quare, quomodo. 1. Who, for what cause, and how doth God afflict us? Who afflicts, is worthy to be known. Isa. 42:24. Who gave Jacob for a spoil, and Israel to the robbers? The highest cause of causes did it. Did not the Lord, he against whom we have sinned? 1 Sam. 3:18. It is the Lord, let him do what seemeth good to him. 2. For what end God the Lord did this, is a circumstance of comfort; Why led the Lord Israel through a great and terrible wilderness, wherein were fiery scorpions, and serpents, and drought? Deut. 8:16. That he might prove thee, to do thee good at thy latter end. 3. And how the Lord correcteth, is worthy to be known; He correcteth Jacob in measure, Jer. 46:28. Mercy wrapped about the rod, and a cup of gall and wormwood honeyed and oiled with free love, and a piece of Christ's heart and his stirred bowels mixed in with the cup, is a merciful little hell. Psal. 6:1; Jer. 31:18, 19, 20. The law saith, a bastard hath no father, because his father is not known. The Philistines are plagued with Emerods; but whether that ill was from the Lord, or from chance, they know not. The cross to many is a bastard. We suffer from prelates, because we suffered prelates to persecute the saints. Papists shed our blood; Why? Our forefathers burnt the witnesses of Christ, and we never repented. Christ and antichrist are at bloody blows in the camp: antichrist hath killed many thousands in the three kingdoms for religion; that is the quarrel: and when England had often before, and have now opportunity, they will not list Christ up on his throne, nor put his crown royal on his head, but do put it on their own head; but the judgment is not yet at an end. Scotland hath not walked worthy of the gospel, but have fallen from their first love. We take not a deliberate list of every limb, thigh, leg, and member of this national wrath; and we neither see wherefore we are afflicted, nor how.
For this cause came I to this hour.
There is some peculiar act of Christ's will here holden forth, and that is Christ's peculiar intention to die for his people; in which we are to consider the activeness of Christ's will in dying for man, which may be seen,
1. In his free offering of himself and his service to the Father, Psal. 40:6. Sacrifice and offering thou didst not desire, mine ears hast thou opened. Heb. 10:5. A body (that is, the office-house, and instrumental subject of obedience to the death, as the ear is of hearing, and obeying the commandments of God) thou hast prepared me. Verse 7. Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of thy book it is written of me) to do thy will, O God. In these words, Christ is brought in as a servant, with three excellent qualities. 1. Physically, he is fitted with a body and a soul to offer to God for us; as in a servant there are required strong limbs and arms to endure drudgery, in this he was born of his mother, for this sad service: his master furnished him for this, even the seed of man's flesh and blood, for suffering.
2. There were moral habilities in him; promptitude of will. So the Lord is brought in, as a Lord and master in justice crying, servant; O Son and servant Jesus, I have a business for thee of great concernment. At the first word, as all good servants do, Christ takes him to his feet, and compears before his God, his master and Lord, Lo I come, here am I; so servants of old answered their master: what service wilt thou command so hard, which I will not undergo? Master, here's a body for thy work, here be cheeks for the nippers, a face for those that will pluck off the hair, a back for smiting, a body for the cross and the grave. Christ as a servant uncovered, standing on feet, would say, Lord, send me thy servant to the garden, to work under the burden of thy wrath, till I sweat blood; bid me go to shame, to scourging, and spitting: is it thy will I go up on the cursed cross, and be made a curse for sinners, that I be crucified and die; that I go lower into the outer half of hell, the grave, which is a sad journey? Lo, here am I, willing to obey all.
3. There was in Christ, not only willingness, but delight, Psal. 40:8. [Heb. Elohoi haphatzti] My God, I delight to do thy will. Every servant cannot say this to his master, Thy law is in the midst of my heart.
2. His willingness to die was a part of his testament and last-will; he died with good-will, and left in legacy his death, and the fruits of it, his blessing, his heart, his love, his peace, his life to his bride in testament, confirmed by law, to all his poor brethren and friends, Heb. 9:17 and John 14:27. Peace I leave (in testament) with you. But the orphan and the poor friend gets not all that his dying father and friend leaves in testament, but Christ gives possession himself ere he die, My peace. I give to you. But to the point: his latter-will, was willingness to die.
3. No external force could take his life from him, against his will, John 10:18. No man taketh my life from me, but I lay it down of myself; I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. Yet, left it should seem a will-action in Christ, and so not obedience, he addeth, This commandment (that is the will of a superior) have I received of my Father. compelled obedience is no obedience; exact willingness was a substantial and essential ingredient in Christ's obedience. Acts of grace cannot be extorted: can ye tear a shower of rain from God in an extreme drought: or bread from him in your hunger, against his will? Far less, since Christ's dying was an act of pure grace, can any compel him to die for man. Love arrested his holy will, and that made him run apace to die for us: O blessed be his good-will, who burned himself in the bush, in a fire of free-love!
4. Though dying be a passion; yet Christ's dying was both a passion and an action. Will added as much perfume and strength of obedience, as nature, and pain, hardship, shame, and abasement could do; his life was not so much plucked from him, as out of his own hand: as an agent, he offered his blood, and soul; yea, himself to God, through the eternal Spirit, Heb. 9:14. Love was the cord, the chain that did bind Christ to the altar.
5. Christ [dia tuto] on this intention came to this hour; so is [dia] often in scripture. Not only his will, but the flower of his will, his intention was to die, for Christ's eye, and his heart, and his love was on his bride; the intention is the most eminent act that love can put forth. Christ's eye and his heart being upon his spouse, he made our salvation the end and measure of his love: to compass this end, the Lord laid many oars in the water; his rising early, his night-watching, his toiling, his sweating, his sore and hard soul-travel, as being heavy with child of this end, (O might I have a redeemed people) was all his care; and his soul was eased, when dying, bleeding, crying, he went through hell and death, and slept in death's black and cold prison, and his redeemed ones in his arms. When he came to the end of this sad journey, and found his ransomed ones, he said, I have sought you with a heavy heart, fair and soul way, sad and weary; and all is well bestowed, since I have gained you. Let us up together to the hill of spices, to our Father's house, to the highest mountain of frankincense. All that Christ did was for this end, That he might deliver us from this present evil world, Gal. 1:4. That he might be a ransom for many, Mat. 20:28. That we might have life, and have it more abundantly, John 10:10. That he might seek and save the lost. Luke 19:10. That he might present his wife a glorious church to himself, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing: but that she should be holy and without blemish, Ephes. 5:26, 27. That we being dead to sin, should live to righteousness, 1 Pet. 2:24. Christ came to seek, and travelled ever till he found his desire, a redeemed and saved people, and then he rested; even as he journeyed through all the creation, but till he found man, a creature that he made according to his own image, he had no sabbath, no rest. His willingness to die, respected his redeemed people, whom out of mere mercy he loved; and the worth of will and merit respected infinite justice, which he exactly satisfied.
Use 1. Hence we learn, 1. To imitate and follow our pattern Christ in voluntary obedience, delighting to do God's will, and to suffer God's will. 'Tis said of Christ, Heb. 5:8. Though he were a son, yet learned he obedience through suffering. He was the excellentest scholar among all his school-fellows, and yet the rod of God was heaviest, and most frequent on him; he learned his lesson beyond them all. He was quick in understanding, in the fear of the Lord, Isa. 11:3. He had in him an excellent spirit; The spirit of wisdom, of counsel, of knowledge, and of the fear of the Lord; and was holy and obedient to the death, the death of the cross. 'Tis much to learn to be active for God, but more to learn to be passive. That is a profound science. Phil. 4:12. I know how to be abased, —— I am instructed to be hungry, —— and to suffer need. 'Tis the singular art of grace, to know how to love, fear and obey God, under death, pain, and hell. It is a high lesson to learn the mystery of that deep science, of hunger, want, sufferings, stripes, and torment and death for Christ. This is high, Heb. 10:34. Ye took patiently the spoiling of your goods, knowing that in heaven ye have a better, and more enduring substance. They are but accidents we have here, and these very separable. Heaven is all substance. Our obedience passive is not willing, 'tis constrained. We might by grace turn clay into gold, hell into heaven: if we could look in faith and patience, on the persecution, and reproaches of men, as on the brutish and irrational motion of a staff, or an ax that beats and cuts us; suppose we knew no hand under God that wronged us, He curseth, because the Lord hath bidden him. For the freedom of Christ's kingdom, and the right government of his house, and for opposing blasphemies, and reproaching of Christ, his word, scripture, ordinances, We are killed all the day long, and counted the off-scourings of men. Could we over look unthankfulness, malice, persecution from men, whom we with our lives and blood have redeemed from persecution, and behold the highest mover, and first wheel that moveth all under wheels, as if God only were our party, who humbles us that we may be humbled; then should we be silent, and our hearts should not rise at the exorbitances of men. There is too much of nature in our sufferings, too little submissive willingness. The more action of a sanctified will in our sufferings, 'tis the more acceptable, and cometh nearest to Christ, who did both run for the crown, and was active, and endured the cross, and was most passive in an heavenly manner, Heb. 12.
Use 2. Let us learn of Christ to intend obedience, to put a [dia tuto] to our obedience. Many hear the word, but they intend not to hear; many pray, and intend not to pray; many die in these wars for Christ, but intend not to spend their life for Christ: the holy and clean cause of God cometh through many dirty and soul singers. This is the deep art of providence.
Quest. What is a right and straight intention in serving God?
Asser. 1. When the deliberation of a bended will concurs with the intention, 'tis right; as when there is an heart-conclusion for God. Psal. 39:1. I said, I will take heed to my ways, that I offend not with my tongue. Psal. 31:14. But I trusted in the Lord: I said, Thou art my God. Psal. 102:24. I said, O my God, take me not away in the midst of my days. This was an intended prayer. Psal. 119:57. I have said that I would keep thy words.
Asser. 2. The saints are not so perfect in their intentions, as God is their only end. 1. Because a piece of ourself is mixed with our end; there is some crook in our straightest line; an angle in our perfectest circle: when we run most swiftly, because of the indwelling of corruption, we halt a little. 2. Self-denial is not perfect in this life.
Asser. 3. 'Tis good, when God is so preconceived in the intention, as the principal actions and motions both have being and denomination from their predominant element. Honey is honey, though not pure from wax. A believer is not a simple element, nor all grace, and all sincerity. Now in bodies carried with a predominant element, the predominant is affirmed, the subordinate denied. 1 Cor. 15:10. Yet not I, but the grace of God with me. 2 Cor. 4:5. For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves your servants for Christ's sake. Where Christ is the predominant element, he is of weight to sway the whole soul in its motion. And its right-down sincerity (whatever Crisp with Papists say on the contrary) though it require some grains of allowance to make it pass.
Asser. 4. Where self is the predominant, the intention is bastard and adulterate. Jehu saith, Come see my zeal for the Lord; but he only saith it. He could have said, Come see my zeal for myself. In the Jews zeal, Rom 10:1 there is a pound of self-righteousness, for one half-grain of Christ, and of free-grace; therefore 'tis not the right zeal of God.
Asser. 5. There be two characters of an intended end, which are also here: 1. All that the agent doth, he referreth to his end; for his end is his god. The wretch doth all in reverence to gold, that is his end: and Joab did all for court and honour; for the chief end is the man's master, and useth a lordship over him. Christ is so mighty through God, that he darkens the scribes and Pharisees light; because their end lieth in the fat womb of the world, and it is gain and glory; all they do is to make Christ out of the way. So, when the believer fails all winds, rolleth every stone, presseth all means for Christ, as his end, and his weight, then steers he to the right port. Christ's love hath a dominion over Lord-will; one adamant will cut another; the sinner is a rock, Christ's love an adamant. Christ's love setting on the will's intention, burns the soul to the bone. Mary Magdalene cannot sleep, (and it is a ticklesome game where the heart is at the stake) and Christ she must have; apostles, angels, Christ himself shall hear of it, ere she want him. And the rougher and harder the means be, when undertaken for Christ, Christ must be a stronger and more love working end. When torment and burning quick are chosen for Christ, it is like he is the end; for love overcomes a rough and dangerous journey: a sweet and desireable home, is above a dirty and thorny way. Christ's love is stronger than hell. Our affections often take fire from difficulties; as absence of the beloved kindles a new fire; stolen bread, because stolen, is sweeter, and not our nature only; but longing after Christ, nititur in vetitum, inclineth to that which is forbidden. What if Christ be longed for, and loved more when absent, than present?
2. The other character is, that when the end is obtained, all operation for, or about the means, ceaseth, and the soul hath a complacency in the fruition of the end. When the wretch's chests are full, he hath an heart-quietness in gold, Luke 12. Soul, take thine ease. But if the soul have an a king and a disquieting motion after gold is obtained, it is not because gold was not his end, but because he hath not obtained it in such a large measure as he would; or because it is but a sick and lame end, and cannot satiate, but rather sharpen soul-thirst after such corruptible things. When Christ is obtained, the soul hath sweet peace; He that drinketh of the water of life, thirsts no more; appetitu desiderii, as longing with anxiety for this, as we do for earthly things, which we want; tho' he have appetitum complacentiæ, a desire of complacency, and a sweet self-quietness, that his heritage pleaseth him well, and his lines are fallen in pleasant parts, and rests on his portion, and would not change it with ten thousand worlds. Men by this, who are fishing and hunting after some other thing than Christ, may know what is their end; when Christ and reformation come to their doors, they will have neither; but cast out their lines for another prey. Men now fish and angle for gain, in lieu of godliness.
Ver. 28. Father, glorify thy name. Then came there a voice from heaven, saying, I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.
Here is the last article of Christ's prayer, Father, glorify thy name. 2. The return of Christ's prayer, by an audible answer from heaven.
This prayer, Glorify thy name, Father, is of an higher strain: Father, I am willing to die, so thou be glorified in giving to me strength to suffer, and thou redeem lost man by me; and by so doing, glorify thy name. Christ never in his hardest sufferings would be wanting to glorify God. Now, how far the glory of God, in doing and suffering, should be intended and desired by us, in these considerations I propose,
1. We are to prefer the Lord's glory to our own life and salvation: no point of self-denial, and renouncing of self-pleasing, can reach higher than this, when Christ is willing to be the passive object of the glory of God; Put me, Father, to shame and suffering, so thou mayst be glorified. Paul and Moses are not far out, but they are far out of themselves, when the one for the glory of the Lord, in saving the people of God, willeth his name may be razed out of the book of life; and the other, to be separated from Christ, for the salvation of his kinsmen, God's chosen people. When Abraham is willing, that glory to the Lord should be written with the ink of his son Isaac's blood; and the martyrs, that their pain may praise God, they then level at the right end; for that must be the most perfect intention, that comes nearest to the most perfect. This is nearest to God's intention; for he created, and still worketh all for this end, that he may be glorified, Prov. 16:4; Rev. 4:11; Rom. 8:39. Now, if Christ put all to sea, and hazard all he hath, to guard the Lord's name from dishonour, and made his soul, his life, his heaven, his glory a bridge to keep dry and safe the glory of God, that it sink not; and if God would rather his dear Son should be crowned with the cross, and his blood squeezed out, with his precious life, than that any shame should come to his name; then are we to interpose ourselves, even to sufferings and shame, for the glory of God. Suppose a saint were divided in four, and every member with life in it, and torment of pain, fixed in the four corners of the heaven, East and West, and South and North, and the soul in the connexity of heaven, under the pain of the torment of the gnawing-worm that can never die, these five were obliged to cry with a loud voice in the hearing of heaven, of earth, of hell, of men, and angels, and all creatures, Glory, glory be to the spotless and pure justice of the Lord, for this our pain: And when the damned are too noted to speak against their sentence of condemnation, When saw we thee hungry and fed thee not? &c. Mat. 25. It is clear they are obliged to acquiesce to this, that they are made clay-vessels, passively to be filled to the brim with the glory of revenging justice, and ought in hell to praise the glory of revenging wrath, as the saints in heaven are bottles and vessels of mercy, from bottom to brim, filled with the glory of mercy, to praise his grace in heaven, who redeemed them; the one psalm is as due and just as the other. What the damned do not, or do in the contrary, 'tis their sin. One prayed, his death, pain, torment, sad afflictions may out-run him, ere he escape into the grave; yea, that his hell might with his own good-will be a printed book, on which angels and men may read the glory of inviolable justice.
2. We love that the holiness and grace of others were ours, that we might glorify God, but we glorify him not with that which he hath given us; yea, we have a sort of wicked emulation and envy if others glorify God, not we. Moses acquiesced to God's dispensation, the Lord might be glorified in the peoples' possessing of the holy land, tho' he himself should not be their leader; but not at the first. There is a cumbersome piece called, I, Ego, Self, that hath an itching soul for glory due to another.
3. O how unwilling are we, that the Lord's glory over-weigh our ease, and humour? Master, forbid Eldad and Medad to prophesy, saith Joshua. No, Moses will have God glorified, be the instruments who will.
4. There is a twofold glory here due to God, 1. Active; the glory of duties to be performed by us. 2. Passive; the glory of events, that results from the Lord's government of the world; we are to care for both, but we do it not orderly. We are more careful of God's passive glory, which belongs to himself, than we ought to be. Hence say we, What confusions be there in the world? Nation breaks covenant with nation; heresies and blasphemies prevail; Antichrist is yet on his throne; the churches over sea oppressed; the people of God led to the shambles, as slaughter-sheep, and destroyed, and killed; hundreds of thousands killed in Ireland, many thousands in England, and very many thousands about the space of one year taken away in Scotland, with the sword and the pestilence: and the Lord's justice is not yet glorified, nor his mercy in avenging the enemies: the cry of the souls under the altar is not heard, the church not delivered. We would here yield patience to divine providence; God hath more care of his own glory, than we can have. 2. What men take from God, he can repair infinitely another way. But we are less anxious for the Lord's active glory, to do what is our duty, and serve him, and glorify him in the sincere use of means. Some learn their school-fellows lesson better than their own. For God's glory of events, we are to be grieved, when he is dishonoured; but not to take the helm of heaven and earth out of his hand, but leave to God these, who would plunder Christ's crown off his head. We have nothing to do in the glory of events, but pray it flourish; but we take too much ado in it, and we do too little in the in the other.
5. There is a glory of God, twofold also; one of holiness and grace, another of bliss and happiness. This I consider, either as in the kingdom of grace or of glory. In grace's kingdom, the saints for their holiness, and Titus and the brethen, 2 Cor. 8:23. are the glory of Christ. I will place (saith the Lord, Isa. 46:13.) Salvation in Zion, for Israel my glory. Faithful pastors take in cities, and subdue crowns and kingdoms to Christ. Paul conquered many crowns to Christ, 1 Thess. 2:19. For what is our hope, or joy, or crown of rejoicing? are not even ye in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at his coming? Christ wears the church on his head as a crown of glory, Isa. 62:3. How glorious is it to be for holiness, Christ's garland, his diadem, and crown? But in this there is a rent of the crown of heaven, a sovereign peculiar flower due to the king of ages, that no man must seek after; in this, the contexture and frame of the work of redemption is so contrived, that, 1 Cor. 1:29. No flesh should glory in his presence. No man can divide the glory of grace with Christ. In the higher kingdom, there is a glory ordained for saints. The gospel is a glorious piece, which, 1 Cor. 2:7. God hath ordained before the world was, unto our glory. 1 Thess. 2:12. God hath called us unto his kingdom and glory. 1 Pet. 5:4. And when the chief Shepherd shall appear, ye shall receive a crown of glory, that fadeth not away. This is the reward of faithful elders, that feed the flock of Christ. The heaven of glory, is called the holy heaven, Psal. 20:6. The Lord will hear from his holy heaven; and the new Jerusalem, the church, hath a brave crown on her head, Rev. 21:10, 11. She comes down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God. Grace, grace is a glorious thing.
6. O, but we come short in doing and suffering; when our doing, suffering, eating, drinking, dying, pain, abasement, shame, wants this end of the glorifying God; that adds an excellent lustre, beauty, and glory to all that we do. When Christ, the Father, heaven, are tied to the furthest end of all our actions, we are above ourselves. But we differ little in our aims from beasts, when the intention riseth no higher than this side of clay and time, Psal. 49:11. That our houses may continue, Isa. 5:8. That we may be placed our alone on the earth.
Verse. 28. And there came a voice from heaven, saying, I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.
In this answer, observe these, 1. The answer. 2. The airth it came from; from heaven. 3. The way and manner of its coming: by an audible voice. 4. The matter of the answer; I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.
Christ is always answered of his Father; either in the thing he sueth, John 12:42. Or, in that which he fears, Heb. 5:7 or by real comfort, Luke 22:42, 43. Or, in a full and perfect deliverance, Psal. 18:20, 21 compared with Psal. 16:10, 11; Acts 24:25; Acts 5:31. Or, in supply of strength for his suffering, Isa. 50:7, 8.
It is a proof of the worth of Christ's advocation and intercession. If I know myself to be in Christ's prayer book, in his breast, among Christ's askings of the Father; 'tis comfortable. Psal. 2:8. Ask of me, and I will give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. When Christ asketh souls of the Father, he gives him his asking: the Lord cannot withhold from this King the desire of his heart, Psal. 21:2. He asked a wife of his Father, and it was granted. Christ will have them all in one house, to be co-partners of the crown of heaven with him: for, it is his prayer, John 17:24. The king and the queen in one palace. We cannot fall from grace, for we stand by Christ's prayers, Luke 22:31, 32; Heb. 9:24.
We have many diseases, in the matter of the return of an answer, 1. We wait not on an answer; we speak words, we pray not, we breathe out natural desires for spiritual mercies; we have no spiritual feeling of our wants, and there is an end; Psal. 18:41. The wicked cry, but there is none to save; they do not pray, but cry. 2. We storm, and offend that our humour, rather than our faith, is not answered, either at our own time, or that the thing which we ask to spend on our lusts, (as James 4:3) is not granted. 3. We are more careful, and troubled, that we are not heard, than anxious to offer the rent, and pay the calves of our lips, in praying, which is God's due. Were we as serious in worshipping in prayer, as we are desirous of seeking wants, it were good; but there is more seeking in our prayer for ourselves, than there is adoring for God. 4. We employ not Christ as mediator and high priest in praying, and exercising faith so much, as we put forth pith and strength of words, that we may extort rather our needs, than obtain grace; as if praying, and the hearing of prayers, were work and wages, rather than begging, and giving of mere grace. 5. We consider not when we pray, and prayer is not returned in the same coin that we seek; that the Father hearing Christ's prayers, virtually and meritoriously answered all our prayers in substance, and for our good. For, 2. Christ can cull out, and chuse petitions more necessary and fundamental for my salvation, than I can do. 1. He is answered in all points; we are answered often in the general, and in as good only. 3. Christ could with more submission and sense pray, than we can do. Nature in Christ cannot boast and compel God to hear prayers: often our zeal is but natural boasting and quarrelling, as if we could force God to answer. Grace in Christ (and grace is the most lowly and modest thing of the world) prays with all submission, not my will, but thy will be done. 4. All prayers are heard for Christ; ergo, his prayers are better heard than the prayers of the saints; except our prayers be folded in his prayers, they cannot be answered. The perfume, the sweet odours of Christ's prayers are so powerful and strong, as coming from God-man in one person, they must be both asking and giving, desiring and granting, praying and hearing, flowing from the same person, Christ. When our prayers go to heaven, Christ, ere they come to the Father, must cast them in a new mould, and leaveth to them his heart, his mouth: tho' the advocate taketh not the sense and meaning of the spirit from them; yet Christ presenting them with his perfume, he removeth our corrupt sense, so as they are Christ's prayers, rather than ours. Heb. 13:15. Let us by him (as our High Priest) offer the sacrifice of praise (then of prayers also) to God continually. The offering is the priest's as well as the people's, Rev. 8:3 and far more here, because Christ, by his office, is the only immediate person who maketh request to God for us, Rom. 8:34.
From heaven
Hence, Christ troubled in soul, and afflicted believers on earth, keep correspondence and compliance with heaven.
1. Christ's prayers, in his saddest days, have their return from heaven. Posts and messengers fly with wings between God and a soul in a praying disposition; possible, ten posts in one night. Prayer hath an agent lying at the court of heaven, and an open ear there, Psal. 18:6. He heard my voice out of his temple and my cry came before him, even unto his ears. Christ takes care that the messenger get presence, and be quickly dispatched with a return. Psal. 102:19. The Lord (ere the messenger come) looked down from the height of his sanctuary, v. 20. To hear the groaning of the prisoner, to loose those that are appointed to death. So, Lam. 3. Tears lie in heaven as solicitors with God, until he hear; Mine eye trickleth down and ceaseth not, v. 50. Till the Lord look down, and behold from heaven. 1 Kings 8:30. Hear thou in the heaven, thy dwelling place, and when thou hearest, forgive; saith Solomon. Isa. 63:15. Look down from heaven, and behold from the habitation of thy holiness. Our Saviour hath appointed the post-way in that prayer, Our Father which art in heaven. We have a friend there, who receives the packet; An High Priest set at the right-hand of the throne of majesty, Heb. 8:1. Who hath passed into the heavens, Heb. 4:14. And is made higher than the heavens, Heb. 7:26. And liveth for ever to make intercession for us, v. 25.
2. In Christ's hardest straits, comfort came out of this airth. Luke 22:43. When he was in his saddest agony, there appeared unto him an angel from heaven strengthening him. In his lowest condition, when he was in the cold grave among the dead, heaven was his magazine of help and comforts. Mat. 28:2. An angel of the Lord came down from heaven, and rolled away the stone. Heaven came to his bed-side, when he was sleeping in the clods.
3. The saints have daily trafficking with heaven: O my dear friend, my brother, my factor is in that land. Psal. 73:25. Whom have I in heaven but thee? What, are not angels, prophets, apostles, and saints there? Yea; but we have no acquaintance by way of mediation in that land, but Christ: he is the choice friend there, 1 Cor. 15:47. The second man (both first, highest, second and all) is the Lord from heaven.
4. All our good, every perfect gift comes from heaven, Ja. 1:17. Manna came not from the clouds: how then? John 6:32. My Father giveth you the true bread from heaven. We are ill lodged in bits of sick and groaning clay; our best house is in heaven, 2 Cor. 5:2. We groaning, desire to be clothed with our house from heaven.
5. The earth is but the believer's sentinel, or, at best, his watch-tower; but our hope is in heaven. 1 Thes. 1:10. We wait for the Son of God from heaven. Our life and treasure is there, Mat. 6:20. Lay up treasure for yourselves in heaven. Our [Gr. politéuma] our city-dwelling and our haunting, is in heaven, Phil. 1:21.
What acquaintance have ye in heaven? what blood-friend have you in that land? The wicked man, [Heb. Enosh minbaaretz] is, the man of the earth. And Psal. 17:14. Save me from men of time; men of this life. Are you a burgess of time, or a citizen of the earth? or a man of the higher Jerusalem? Imagine there were a new-found land on earth, and in it there be twelve summers in one year, all the stones in the land are sapphires, rubies, diamonds; the clay of it, the choicest gold of Ophir; the trees do bear apples of life; the inhabitants can neither be sick nor die; the passage to it, by sea and land, is safe; all things there are to be had for nothing, without money, price, or change of commodities; and gold is there for the gathering: if there were such a land as this, what a huge navy would be lying in the harbours and ports of that land? how many travellers would repair thither? Heaven is a new land that the Mediator Christ hath found out, it is better than a land where there is a summer for every month of the year; there is neither winter, nor night there: the land is very good, and the fruits of it delectable and precious; grace and peace, righteousness, joy of the Holy Ghost, the fruits of that kingdom, Rom. 14:17 are better than rubies, sapphires, or diamonds: Christ the tree of life is above all lands on earth, even his alone: and there's no need of price or money in this kingdom; grace is the cheapest thing of the world; wine and milk are here without money, and without price, Isaiah 55:1. 'Tis a land that stands most by the one only commodity of grace and glory. Oh, there is little trafficking with heaven; when was you last there? It is an easy passage to heaven; David, who often prayed, even seven times a day, was often a day there. Prayer in faith is but one short post thither. Oh we have too much compliance with the earth.
A voice
The third particular in this return, is the manner: in an audible voice the Lord answereth him. The multitude heard this voice, tho' they understood it not. We read not often of an audible voice from heaven to Christ; only at his baptism, there was a testimony given of him from heaven, Mat. 3:16, 17 and at his transfiguration, Mat. 17 of which Peter speaketh, 2 Pet. 1:18. And this voice we heard, when we were with him on the holy mount. The Lord, in the hearing of men, gives a testimony of his Son Christ, and his good cause. He was accused because he made himself the Son of God; he prays to God, and calleth him Father openly; a voice from heaven openly answering, acknowledgeth him to be the Son of God; tho' they knew not the Lord's testimony from heaven. God maketh a good cause, tho' darkned, to shine as day-light, if men would open their eyes and see, Psal. 37:5. Roll over thy way upon the Lord, and trust in him, and he shall bring it to pass. But flesh and blood saith, innocency lieth in the dark, and weepeth in sackcloth in the dungeon, and is not seen. The Lord answereth, verse 6. And he shall bring forth thy righteousness as the light, and thy judgment as the noon-day. If is true, [Heb. Vatza] signifies to go from one place to another; 'tis here applied to the sun, and elsewhere to things that grow out of the earth, Judges 13:14. The sun in the night seems dead and lost, as if there were no such thing; yet the morning is a new life to the day and the sun. The grape of the wine-tree sown in the earth, is a dead thing; yet it springeth in some days, and cometh to be a fruitful tree. Christ was crucified, and buried; yet the wine-tree grew again; and, Rom. 1:4. He was declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of sanctification, by the resurrection from the dead. The gospel and a good cause seems buried, and weeps in a dungeon. Joseph in the prison, and a sold stranger; yet in the eyes of his brethren he is exalted. The Lord cleared Daniel's cause. Psal. 97:11. Light is sown for the righteous, and joy for the upright in heart. The light and joy of the saints, are often under the clods of the earth.
1. The reformation of religion goes vailed under the mask of rebellion, and of subverting fundamental laws; but God must give to this work, that is now on the wheels, in Britain, the right name, and call it, The building of the old waste places, the rearing up of the tabernacle of David; and cause it come above the earth.
2. The cross is that great stumbling-block, for which many are offended at Christ and the gospel. It is a sad and offensive providence, to see joy weep, glory shamed; this is the gall, the wormwood, the salt of the cross, that the Lord of life should suffer in his own person; yet here is heaven and the Father speaking, and returning a comfortable answer to Christ, in that which he most feared. The cross maketh an ill report of the gospel and Christ: for this the apostles are made a theatre, a gazing stock to men and angels, a world's wonder; and Paul would take this away, Eph. 3:13. Wherefore I desire that ye faint not at my tribulation. Then saints may fall a-swooning at the very sight of the cross in others. And Peter, 1 Pet. 4:12 faith, [Gr. mè xenìzesthe] Be not stricken with wonders, or astonished as at new things and miracles, Acts 17:20 when ye are put to a fiery trial. The comforts of the cross are the sweet of it, and the honey-combs of Christ, that drop upon that sour tree.
3. That the Father saith from heaven, There shall grow the fairest and most beautiful rose that ever higher or lower paradise yielded, out of this crabbed thorn, was much consolation to Christ. Here grows out of the side and banks of the lake of that river of fire and wrath that Christ was plunged in, many sweet flowers: As, 1. A victorious Redeemer, who overcame hell, sin, devils, death, the world. 2. A fair and spotless righteousness. 3. A redeemed, a washed and sanctified spouse to the Lamb. 4. A new heaven and a new earth; behold, He hath made all things new, and hath cast heaven and earth in a new mould. 5. A new kingdom, a new crown to the saints, a choicer paradise than the first that Adam lost. 6. Riches of free-grace, unsearchable treasures of mercy and love: all these blossom out of the cross.
4. The cross is bought by, and in its nature much altered to the saints. 'Tis true, it is become a necessary inlet, and an inevitable passage, and a bridge to heaven; but the Lord Jesus, not Satan, keeps the pass, and commandeth the bridge; and letteth in, and letteth out passengers at his pleasure. But, 1. Christ hath strawed the way to heaven with blood and wars, and forbids us to censure his sad patrimony, in that the servants are no worse than the Lord, and flower of all the martyrs. Though blood hath been, and must be the rent and income of the crown of the noble King of kings, and the consecrated Captain of our salvation; yet it is short, and for a moment, and Christ hath a way of outgate, that none of his shall be buried under the cross, Rev. 7:14; Psal. 4:8. (2.) Christ hath broken the iron-chains of the cross, and the gates of brass: that the cross hath but a number of free prisoners, who have fair quarters, and must go out with flying colours, and be ransomed from the grave, John 16:33; Hos. 13:14. (3.) When you are in glory, and in a place above death; there shall be neither mark, nor print; no ceatrix of the sad cross, on back or shoulder, but the very furrow of tears wiped away, and perfectly washed off the face with the water of life, For the former things shall be done away, Revel. 21:4. Yea the saddest of crosses, the utmost and last blow that the cross can inflict, is death. I should think that Christ is the saint's factor in the land of death; he was there himself, and though he will not adjourn death, yet hath our factor made it cheap, and at an easy rate, all toll and custom is removed, and he hath put a negation upon death, John 11:26. He that believeth shall not die. John 14:19. Much dependeth on our wise husbanding of the rod of God; yet if Christ did not manage, order, and oversee our furnace, it could not be well with us.
I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again
This is the fourth considerable point, the matter of the answer.
Here is a lord-speaker from heaven, testifying that the Lord's name shall be, and was glorified: as, 1. In Christ's person and incarnation, John 1:14. The Word was made flesh, and dwelt amongst us, and we beheld his glory. So the angels did sing at his birth, Luke 2:14. Glory to God in the highest. Christ's laying aside of his glory, and his emptying of himself for us, was the glory of rich mercy. 2. His miracles glorified God. John 2:11. This first miracle did Jesus to manifest his glory. When he cured the paralytick man, Luke 2:12 they were amazed, and glorified God. When he raised Jairus his daughter, Luke 7:16. There came a fear on all, and they glorified God. 3. In all his life he went about doing good; and sought (John 8:49.) to glorify his Father. 4. In his death, God was in a singular manner glorified. When the centurion (Luke 23:49.) saw what was done, he glorified God. The repenting thief preached him on the cross to be a King: and this was a glorifying of Christ in his greatest abasement and shame. Yea, his glory was preached by the sun, when it was, contrary to the course of nature, darkned: and by the rocks when they were rent, and the temple cloven asunder, and the graves opened, when men weakly, or wickedly denied him, and would not only not preach his glory, but blaspheme his name. 5. He was glorified in his resurrection, being declared to be the Son of God, and obtained a name above all names, and was by the right-hand of God, exalted to be a Saviour, and a Prince, to give repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins, Phil. 2:9; Eph. 1:20; Acts 5:31; Acts 3:13. (6.) He shall come again in his glory, Mat. 25:31. And shall be glorified and admired in all his saints, 2 Thess. 1:10. The fairest and most glorious sight, that ever the eye of man saw, shall be, when Christ shall come riding through the clouds, on his chariot of glory, accompanied with his mighty angels, and with one pull, or shake of his mighty arms, shall cause the stars to fall from heaven, as figs fall from a fig-tree, shaken with a mighty wind, and blow out all these candles of heaven with one blast of his ire; and a fire shall go before him, and burn up the earth with the works that are therein; when the higher house of heaven, and the lower of the earth shall meet together, and when mystical Christ shall be glorified.
Use 1. If there be so much glory in Jesus Christ and his sufferings, as he must bear the glory, Zech. 6:13. And all the glory of his Father's house be upon him, Isa. 22:24. His crown of glory on his head, must be so weighty, and ponderous with rubies, sapphires, diamonds, that it will break the neck of any mortal man, king or parliament, to bear it. None on earth have a head or shoulders, for this so weighty a diadem; parliaments have no necks worthy to carry Christ's golden bracelets, nor a back to be honoured with his robe-royal; if they will but take his sceptre in their hand, it shall crush them as clay-vessels: this stone hewn out of the mountain without hands, shall crush the clay-legs of parliaments, and then how shall they stand?
Use 2. God properly glorifies himself; angels and men are but chamberlains and factors, to pay the rent of his glory; and because he will give himself, his Son, his Spirit to us, and his grace, and yet will not give his glory to another; let us beware to intercept the rents of the crown.
Object. The Lord giveth grace and glory, Psalm 84. And he hath a crown of glory laid up for his saints, in the heavens.
Answ. That glory is but matured and ripened grace, God's glory is the eminent, celebrious, and high esteem that men and angels have of God, as God, or the foundation of this; to meddle with this is to encroach upon the crown and prerogative-royal of God. Glory imparted to saints in heaven, is but a beam, a lustre, a shadow, or way of that transcendent and high glory that is in God; and is as far different from the incommunicable glory of God, as the shadow of the sun in a glass, or in the bottom of a fountain, and the sun in firmament. We may desire the chips and shadows, and rays of glory; but beware that we meddle not with that which devils and men always seek after, in a sacrilegious way.
Use 3. We are hence taught to admire the excellency of the unsearchable knowledge and skill of divine providence. Out of Christ's abasing himself to take on him our nature: 2. Out of his miracles, that were just nothing to blind natural men: 3. Out of his death and shame, the Lord extracteth the most eminent and high glory of his name. That omnipotency should triumph in the jaw-bone of an ass, in a straw, in a crucified man, commends the glory of God, and the art of his workmanship; to make gold out of clay and iron, diamonds and rubies out of the basest stones, would extol the art of man. A creation out of nothing, and flowers, roses, forests, woods, out of cold earth, is the praise of the wisdom and power of the Creator; the baser the matter be, the art of the author is the more glorious, if the work be curious and excellent.
God here, 1. Out of death, shame, sinful oppressing of the Lord of glory, raiseth the high work of man's redemption. 2. When we spill business, and mar all, through sinning and provoking God, then Israel must bring a spilt business to God, that he may right them, Judg. 3:10, 11. God can find the right end of the thread, when matters are ravelled and disordered. We see now, nations confounded, enemies rising against us: but blood, wars, confusions, oppression, and crushing down of Christ and his church, are good and congruous means, when they have the advantage of being handed by omnipotency. When we work, the instrument must be as big as a mountain; and then our eye cannot see God, for the bigness of the instrument. God regardeth not the nothings, and the few that he worketh withal. Dead men can fight, when God putteth a sword in their hand; men shall fall under wounded men. Beware of robbing God of his glory. Did ever a decree or a counsel of God part with child? Or can omnipotency bring forth untimely births, or prove abortive? You see Christ now in the death-house of Adam's sons, and wresthng with hell; yet God, by Christ at the weakest, works his end: death is a low thing, sin is far more base; but when God acts at the end of either, they have a scope and end as high as God, to glorify God.
3. If God hath been, and must be glorified in all that is done, what do we do, to trouble ourselves to seek glory one of another? We are created for this end, and 'tis our glory to fetch in glory to God. What? can the airy applause of men be golden stilts for cripples to walk to heaven withal? Or, can the people's poor hosannas be silken sails to our ship, or golden wings, that by these you may sail and fly up to heaven? Where is Belshazzar who but built a house for the glory of his own name? Where is Herod, who did receive one word of a god, which the people did steal? Do not these fools take little room in print, and, at this day, as little in the clods of the earth? The Roman state would not permit Christ to be a God: what was their doom? Must not a kingdom cast its bloom, fall, and wither, that will not suffer Christ to be a king in his church?
Ver. 29. The people therefore that stood by, and heard it, said, it thundered: others said, an angel spake to him.
Another effect of the prayer of Christ doth follow in the people. They had sundry judgments of this answer from heaven: some said, it was thunder; for they understood it not: others, nay, but it is above nature; an angel hath spoken to him.
It thundered
Doth not any rude shepherd, or the most simple idiot know a thunder? 'Tis a place that holds forth to us, how ignorant we are of God, and of the gospel-way. Consider what was in this answer: 1. It was the gospel. In what language it was spoken, (belike not in a known language) cannot be determined out of the text. 2. It was a clear expression of that communion between Christ and his Father. 3. What God means, or what is his sense in his word or works, is unknown to us. 4. That they say the gospel is a thunder, and a word of nature, is a mere imagination and a dream. Yet these ways are among themselves all false, and they do not agree one with another.
Consid. 1. The gospel is the will of God from heaven; yet it is a riddle, a parable not understood, Mat. 13:14. In the law it is written, with men of other tongues and other lips will I speak to this people, 1 Cor. 14:21. And Isa. 29:11. And the vision of all is become unto you as the words of a book that is sealed, which men deliver to one that is learned, saying, read this, I pray thee. And be saith, I cannot: for it is sealed. Verse 12. And the book is delivered to him that is not learned, saying, read this, I pray thee. And he saith, I cannot; I am not learned 1 Cor. 1:18. For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish, foolishness.
Consid. 2. God reasoneth not only with men's minds to convince them; but also with their will and affections. Acts 9. Christ from heaven proposeth a syllogism to Saul's fury, 'Tis hard for thee to kick against pricks. God hath logick against anger, which hath neither ears nor reason; for if he could not out-argue Laban's hatred, and the haters of the saints, to whom he saith, Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm, Psal. 107 he would not speak to their affections, nor would it be said, that in their affections they repute Christ and the gospel foolishness, if there were not a contrariety between the affections and the gospel.
Consid. 3. The understanding is a dark lantern that hath some light within, but casts none at all our, to apprehend things above hand: and as the will is irony and stiff to heaven, so it is waxy and apt to receive the impressions of the flesh, except Christ draw by the curtain of the flesh, to let you see the glory of the gospel. Otherwise, God speaks, and Samuel saith, Eli, here am I, for thou calledst me. To the woman of Samaria, Jacob is greater than Christ; and Jacob's well, as good as the water of life. Justice often puts one seal on the gospel, and another on the man's two eye-lids, that the vision is as dark as mid-night.
Consid. 4. The communion between Christ and the soul, as here between the Son Christ and the Father, is quid pro quo, a thunder, a work of nature, or any thing to the natural man; God speaking to the heart, is a mystery to him. John 6:52. The Jews say among themselves, How can this man give us his flesh to eat? Very hardly, according to their papistical fancy of a bodily eating. 2. The high esteem of Christ above other beloveds, is a mystery to natural saints, in so far as they are natural. 'Tis a strange question for professors of the gospel to say, What more is in Christ than other well beloveds? Yet they say it, Cant. 5:9. (3.) The natural understanding is the most whorish thing in the world; there is a variety of fancied gods there. According to the number of thy cities, were thy gods, O Judah, Jer. 2:29. They have made them molten images of their silver, and idols according to their own understanding, Hos. 13:2. The understanding, even in the search of truth amongst the creatures is a rash, precipitate, and unquiet thing; and like a silk-worm, first makes a work of many threads and then lies fettered and entangled in that which came out of its own bowels. The mind spins and weaves out of itself fancies, dreams, lies, and then its work must be spent on these, and so creates its own chains and fetters. But in the matters of God it runs mad, plays the wanton; in the gospel knowledge it turns frantick, and when it comes to move and act within the sphere of supernatural truths, it but laughs and sports till it come out again, 1 Cor. 1:23. If Christ preached be foolishness, then Christ himself must be a fool to the Grecians, the excellentest wits in the world. 1 Cor. 2:14. The gospel cannot come within the brain of a natural man, but as a notional fancy, a chimera. Yea, when the greatest wits came to the borders of divine truth, to look on the outside of divinity, called Theologia naturalis, to look on the Lord's back-parts, and contemplate and behold God in his works, they knew not what to make of God, Rom. 1:23. Some thought God to be a dainty bird of paradise; nay, said other great wits, he is a four-footed beast; nay, said another, but he is a creeping thing: and the most eminent of them, even head of wit among them, said he was a corruptible man, yea all of them, [Gr. Emataiothesan en tois dialogismois auton.] They turned vain, foggie, reasonless, and stark-nought in their finer discourses and reasonings, in weighing and posing things. Gen. 6:5. The frame of the heart of man is only evil. [Heb. Jetzer] Gen. 8:21 signifies, a potter's vessel. Isa. 29:16 Your turning of things up-side down, shall be reputed as the clay [Heb. Hojjozer] of the potter: from the root [Heb. Jazer] to think, desire; to form a thing of clay as the potter doth. From this is the potter named: [Heb. Jozer] Zech. 11:13; Gen. 2:7; Deut. 31:21. I know their imaginations, or earthen pots, that be in the heart, mind, and head of men. Many vain frames are in our heads, as there be variety of pots, bottles, and earthen vessels in the potter's house. Many wind-mills, many pitchers and clay-frames are in the vain heart, but they are evil, wicked, and only evil from the womb. But especially, how many devices and new moulds of religions, and sundry gods are in the heart of men? How many sundry opinions of Christ, are in men's brains? For concerning Christ, Mat. 16:14. Some said he was John the Baptist, some Elias, and others Jeremiah. 4. The love and affections are most whorish, light, and wanton; if Martha seek not one thing, she seeks many things: no one God is the natural man's God. It may be maintained, that an unrenewed man hath not one predominant, but indefinitely, sin is his king; and as many sins, as many kings. Rom. 5:14, 17; Rom. 6:7, 8, 9. 'Tis true, pride, covetousness, or some particular sins may come to the throne by turns, as either complexion, strength of corrupt nature, or times bear sway; for as Satan is not divided against Satan, so not any natural man will be a martyr for a false god, or a predominant lust, in opposition to another known false god, tho' all may oppose the gospel. The Lord complains of a whorish heart, that playeth the harlot with many lovers, Jer. 3:1 and heaven and saving grace stands on an indivisible point, like the number of seven; one added, one removed, varieth the nature: no man is half in heaven, half in hell; almost a christian is no christian. When Adam fell from one God, he fell upon many inventions; not upon one only, Eccles. 7:29. Our wandering is infinite, and hath no home: either God is a thunder, or then he is an angel speaking from heaven.
Consid. 5. Men think the supernatural ways of God a thunder in the air, which is most natural work; the ebbing and flowing of the spirit, either natural joy or melancholy, naturally following the complexion of the body. 'Tis grace that puts a right sense on the works of God, as on the word: we are no less heterodox in mis-interpreting the ways and works of God, than in putting false and unsound senses on his word. Emerods plague the Philistines; they doubt if chance, or if the God of Israel have thus plagued them. Moses works miracles, the magicians work miracles, and the Egyptians doubt whether their false god, or the living God that made the heaven and the earth, hath wrought the miracles. When God and nature both work, natural men, or saints as natural, betake themselves to the nearest god. As sickness comes, the natural man saith, neglect of the body, health, the moon, humours, the air, cold weather did it; but he looks not to God. And the believer, guilty of a breach of the Six command, in neglecting of second causes, and in needless hurting the body, seeth not this; but fathers all upon God, only in a spiritual dispensation, and considereth only dispensation in God, not sin in himself. 2. Mercies grow invisibly, and we see not; we are ready to sleep at mercies offered. When Christ knocks in love, we are in bed: Cant. 5. (3.) Judgments speak in the dark, but we hear not: the Lord fatneth some slaughter-oxen for hell, and death is on some men's faces, even the second death on their person, but they see not. 'To hear the Lord's rod, and who hath appointed it,' is the man of wisdom's part, Mic. 6:9. There is an orthodox wisdom and will, as there is an orthodox faith. Will, as well as the mind, can frame syllogisms; every unrenewed man hath a faith of his own in the bottom of his will. 2 Pet. 3. Some are willingly ignorant; some, Jer. 9 through deceit refuse to know the Lord; whereas lust puts out reason, and takes the chair. Lust hath stout logick against Christ; a fleshly mind vainly puffed up, is a badge of bastard-wit, out-reasoning all the gospel. O but grace is quick-eyed, sharp, and a witty thing, to see God vailed in, under the curtain of flesh; to see Christ and heaven through words, and the gospel with child of so great a salvation!
Consid. 6. What wonder that there be divisions about Christ. Some will have the Lord speaking from heaven, a thunder; others an angel. Christ is the most disputable thing in the world, Mat. 16:13, 14 there be five religions, and sundry opinions touching Christ; the Scribes and Pharisees had many sundry opinions, and one of them is the right way only, ten false. John 7:40. Many say Christ is a prophet. Verse 41. Others said this is the Christ; others no, shall Christ come out of Galilee, and there was a division among them. Luke 2:34. Christ is for a sign that shall be spoken against. And amongst Christ's sufferings this is one, Heb. 12:3. He sustained [Gr. antilogian] contradiction of sinners. Mat. 24. Many false Christ shall arise. There is but one heaven, and one way to heaven; and there is but one hell: but there be thousands of ways to hell: from one point to another, you can draw but one straight line; but you may draw ten thousand crooked, and circular lines. The truth is one, and very narrow, the lie is broad and very fertile and broody, error is infinite. 'Tis a blessed thing to find wisdom to hit upon Christ, and adhere to him; there be some dicers and cozeners, Ephes. 4:14 that lie in wait to deceive the simple; and they cast the dice for heaven, and can cast you up any thing on the dice, either one, or seven. Do you then resign yourselves in this wood of false religions that now is, to Christ to be led to heaven. Many now teach, there be some few fundamentals; believe them, and live well, and you are saved. And many false teachers, that turn the gospel upside-down, say it is the same gospel, though the head be where the feet should be; and for errors, we wrong the truth, so long as we hold nothing against fundamentals: should a man remove the roof of your house, cut down the timber of it, and pick out all the fair stones in the wall, and say, friend, I wrong not your house, see the foundation-stones are safe, and the four corner-stones are sure; in the mean time, the house can fence off neither wind nor rain; would not this man both mock you and wrong you? He that keeps the foundation Christ, shall be saved, though he build on it hay and stubble, 1 Cor. 3. 'Tis true. But it was never the intent of the Holy Ghost, that a man believing some few fundamentals, though he hold, and spread lies and false doctrines, is in no hazard of damnation; or that he hath liberty of conscience, to add to the foundation hay, and stubble, and untempered mortar, and daub dirt upon the foundation Christ, and not sin; the place speaks no such thing; but of this elsewhere.
Others said, it was an angel
These come nearer to the truth; for they conceive there is more in his voice, than a work of nature, such as a thunder is; they think an angel spoke to Christ; and they are convinced, that Christ keeps correspondence with heaven and angels.
Angels have been, and are in high estimation among men always; and there is reason for it.
1. There is more of heaven in angels, and more of God, than in any of their fellow-creatures. Sinful men have been stricken with fear at the fight of them; they are persons of a more excellent country than the earth. John the apostle did overvalue an angel, Revel. 19; Revel. 21. And fell down to worship him.
2. Angels elect and chosen, never lost their birthright of creation, as men and devils have done; they were created as the lilies and roses, which, no doubt, had more sweetness of beauty and smell, before the sin of man made them vanity-sick, Rom. 8:20 but they have kept their robes of innocency, their cloth of gold, above 5000 years, without one spark of dirt, or change of colour, for they never sinned; innocency and freedom from sin, hath much of God. Adam (as many think) kept not his garments clean one day courtiers of heaven and saints should walk like angels, and keep good quarters with Christ. Grace is a pure, clean, innocent thing; teacheth saints to deny ungodliness; and so much the more have angels of God, that they are among devils and sinful men, and yet by grace are kept from falling; the more grace the more innocency. Grace as pardoning hath its result from sin, but is most contrary to sin. Grace payeth debt for sin, but taketh not on new arrears; 'tis abused grace that doth so.
1. But these, thus convinced that the Lord's voice is more than a thunder, go no further; they say here, Others said, it was an angel.
Hence, touching conviction,
Pos. 1. Conviction of conscience may be strong, and yet at a stand. Never man spake like this man, say the Jews, yet they hate him. John 7:28. Jesus cried in the temple, as he taught, saying, Ye both know me, and ye know whence I am; I am not come of myself, but he that sent me is true, whom ye know not. Verse 29. But I know him. Then they knew Christ for conviction, and they knew him not; for, They crucified the Lord of glory; and if they had known him under the supernatural notion of the Lord of glory, they would not have crucified him, 1 Cor. 2:8. Felix trembles, and is convinced, but imprisons Paul. The devils believe there is a God, and tremble, Jam. 2. But light is made a captive, and made a prisoner, Rom. 1:18. 'Tis a most troublesome prisoner, it holds the conqueror waking, and yet he cannot be avenged on it.
Pos. 2. Conviction, turned to malice, becomes a devil; the Pharisees convinced, go on against heaven, and the operation of the Holy Ghost. And the Jews saw the face of Stephen, as it had been the face of an angel, Acts 6:15. Yet, Acts 7:57, 58. they run on him, and stone him to death.
Pos 3. Conviction maketh more judicial hardning than any sin; it revengeth itself upon heaven; hell near heaven is a double hell John 12:37, 38. Though he had done so many miracles before them, yet they believed not. A reason is, verse 40. He hath blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart.
Pos 4. Omnipotency of grace can only convince the will. Preachers may convince the mind, and remove mind-heresy; but Christ only can give ears to love, fear, sorrow, and remove will heresy, John 6:45. There be reasonings and logick in the will, stronger than these in the mind: the will hath reason why it will not be taken with Christ, John 5:40 and a law, Rom. 7:23 of sin, why it is sweet to perish, and death is to be chosen.
Pos. 5. It is the right conviction of the Spirit, to be convinced, 1. Of unbelief: 2. Of the excellency of Jesus Christ, that I must have Christ, cost me what it will; say it were all that the rich merchant hath, Mat. 13:45, 46. There is a white and red in his face, hath convinced the man's love, and hath bound his affection, hand and foot; that he takes pains on despised duties, that lie under the very drop of the shame of the cross, Acts 5:4.
Pos. 6. To be willing to do a duty that hath shame written on it, as to be scourged for Christ, as the apostles were; and for an honourable Lord of council as Joseph of Arimathea was, to petition to have the body of a crucified man to bury, it being a duty near of blood to the cross; both apparent loss, and present shame, is a strong demonstration, that the whole man, not the mind only, but the will and affections, are convinced. Some duties grow among thorns, as to 'be killed all the day long, and to take patiently the spoiling of our goods, for Christ.' Some duties grow among roses, and are honourable and glorious duties, as to kill and subdue, in a lawful war, the enemies of God. The former are no sign of wrath, nor the latter of being duly convinced of the excellency of Christ, except in so far as we use them, through the grace of Christ, as becometh saints, or abuse them; but it is more like Christ to suffer for him, than to do for him.
Pos. 7. God will have some half gate to heaven, tho' they should die by the way; some are more, some less convinced; the more conviction, if not received, the more damnation. The gospel is not such a messenger as the raven, that returneth not again: Isa. 55:11. My word that goeth forth out of my mouth, it shall not return to me void, it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it. The gospel, and opportunity of reformation, falleth not in the sea-bottom, when a nation receives it not, but it returns to God to speak tidings; we will not give an account of the gospel, but the gospel gives an account of us. 2. Even when the ordinances are rejected, they prosper, Isa. 55:11 to harden men; they are seed sown, and rain fallen on the earth; they yield a crop of glory to God, even a sweet savour to God, in these that perish, as in those that are saved; 2 Cor. 2:15, 16. The lake of fire and brimstone, as a just punishment of a despised gospel, smells like roses to God.
30. Jesus answered and said, This voice came not because of me, but for your sake.
31. Now is the judgment of this world, now shall the prince of this world be judged.
Now followeth the other effect of Christ's prayer, toward the world.
1. In general. The prayer is answered (saith Christ) not so much for my cause, to comfort me, (for he might otherwise be comforted) as for you, that ye may believe in me, hearing this testimony from heaven. 2. In particular: he sets down the fruit of his death, 1. On the unbelieving world; they shall be judged and condemned. 2. On the spiritual enemies, and by a Synecdoche, the head of them; Satan, the god of this world, shall be cast out, and sin, and death, and hell with him. 3. The prime fruit of all, v. 32. When I am crucified, by my Spirit of grace, the fruit of the merit of my death, I will draw all men to me.
This voice came not because of me
Christ's well and woe, his joy, his sorrow, is relative, and for sinners. Christ, as Christ, is a very public person, and a giving-out Mediator. And it addeth much to the excellency of things, that they are public, and made out to many: as the sun, the stars, the rain, the seas, the earth, that are for many, are so much the more excellent: it is a broader and a larger goodness, that is public. Heaven is an excellent thing, because public, to receive so many crowned kings, and citizens, that are redeemed from the earth. The gospel is a public good for all sinners: eternity is not a particular duration, as time is, that hath a poor point to begin with, and end at; but the public good of angels and glorified spirits. Time indeed is a public thing; but because 'tis the heritage of perishing things, it is not public in comparison of eternity. And Christ, because a public spirit, for the whole family of elect angels and saints in heaven and earth, is a matchless excellent One. And 'tis observable, that there is nothing in heaven, that is the seat and element of happiness, and the only garden and paradise of the saints' felicity, but it is public and common to all: the inhabitants, the glorified saints and angels, all see the face of him that sitteth on the throne, (of degrees of fruition, I speak not;) they all drink of the water of life; all have access to eat of the apples of the tree of life, there is no forbidden fruit in heaven; all have the blessing of the immediate presence of the Lamb, and there is neither need of sun, or moon, or light of a candle to any; all equally enjoy eternity, there is one lease and term-day to the lowest inhabitant of glory, and that is eternity; there is common to them all one city, the streets whereof are transparent gold; that the poorest inhabitants of a town, walk on a street of gold of Ophir, is a great praise to the city: it is common to them all, that they shall never sigh, never be sad, never sicken, never be old, never die; and eternal life is common to them all; and then all feel the smell of the fairest rose that angels or men can think on, the flower, the only delight, the glory, the joy of heaven, the Lord Jesus; all walk in white, and can sin no more. Then, a public spirit, who is for many, is the excellentest spirit. Men of private spirits, who carry a reciprocation of designs only to themselves, and die and live with their own private interests, are bad men. When ourself is the circle, both centre and circumference, we are so much like the devil, who is his own god, adores himself, and would have God to adore him, Mat. 4:9. Now, Christ is the most public, relative, and communicative Spirit and Lord that is. 1. All Christ's offices are for others than himself; he is not a Mediator of one: a Redeemer is for captives, a Saviour for sinners, a Priest for offenders and trespassers, a Prophet for the simple and ignorant, a King to vindicate from servitude all that are in bondage; the Physician for the sick; and this speaks for you, sinners. 2. Why did he empty himself, Luke 19:10; 1 Tim. 1:15 and come into the world? For sinners. 3. Why was he a fitted sacrifice to die? John 17:19. For their sake also sanctify I myself, that they also may be sanctified by the truth. 4. His dying was a public and relative good, John 10:10 For his sheep. For, John 15:13 his friends. For, Rom. 5:10 his enemies. For his wife, to present a bride without spot or wrinkle to God, Eph. 5:25, 26. 5. And he rose again for us, even for our justification, Rom. 4:25. 6. And whose cause doth Christ advocate in heaven now? Ours. For us, if we sin, 1 John. 2:1 he interceeds for us, Heb. 7:25. That we may have boldness to enter into the holy of holiest, Heb. 10:19. 7. Christ hath so public an heart, that he longs to return again, and to see us, John 14:3. I will come again, and receive you to myself. A surely is a very relative person, and for another: the head is for all the members, the meanest and lowest; and it is not enough to him to rent the heaven, and dig a hole in the skies once, when he was incarnate, but he makes a second journey, in coming down to rent the heaven, and fetch his bride up to himself. They are hence rebuked, that so improve Christ, as if he were a jewel locked up in a cabinet in heaven, to be touched and made use of by none: Oh, I am a sinner, I am a wretched captive, what have I then to do with so precious a Lord, as Christ? But, I pray, (1.) Wherefore is Christ a Saviour? is he not for sinners? Wherefore a Redeemer? Is it that he should lie by God, as useless? Was he not a Redeemer for captives? (2.) What if all the world should say so? Christ should be a Saviour, and save none; a Redeemer, and ransom none at all; for all are sinners, all are captives. Christ's very office begets an interest in the sick to the physician: claim thine interest, O sick sinner.
Now, this voice was unknown to those that heard it, and yet it was for men that understood it not: Christ acteth for us, when we are sleeping. The people of God were to be seventy years in Babylon, and were going on in their obstinacy; yet then God saith, Jer. 29:11. I know the thoughts I think toward you, (you know them not; I love you, but ye know not) even thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end. Many glorious mercies are transacted in God's mind, without our knowledge: ere the corner-stone of the earth was laid, he had made sure work of our election to glory, Eph. 1:4; Rom. 9:11. (2.) The everlasting covenant between the Father and the Son, that blessed bargain of free-redemption in Christ, was closed from eternity, Jer. 32:39, 40. To do us good, when we are far off, and know no such thing, is a great and free expression of love. (3.) We should be narrow vessels, not able to contain our joy, without breaking, if we understood what an house not made with hands were prepared for us in the heavens; but our life is hid with Christ in God, it appears not now what we are. You never saw the bride, the Lamb's wife, broidered with heaven, free-grace, and riches of glory. Every saint is a mystery to another saint, and that is the cause that love to one another is so cold: every saint is a riddle, and a secret to himself. It was a privileged sight, even a privilege of the higher house, and of the peers of heaven, that John saw, Rev. 21:10. And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great and high mountain, and shewed me the great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God, v. 11. Having the glory of God: and the light was like a stone most precious, even like a jasper-stone, clear as crystal. Here is a King's daughter, a beautiful princess, in the gold of heaven's glory, arrayed with Christ. Who seeth this while we are here? Every one seeth not such a sight of glory.
Use 1. If there be such an active application on God's part, that Christ is fitted and dressed for sinners, there should be a passive application on our part: O what an incongruity and unsuitableness between Christ and us! He is a Saviour for sinners, we are not sinners for a Saviour: he is open and forward to give, we narrow and drawing to receive. A physician, that thrusteth his art and compassion to cure, is unfitting for a sick one, froward and unwilling to be cured. We should be for Christ, as for our only perfecting end; but it is not so. Oh, men are for their own gain from their quarter, Isa. 56:10. Their eyes and hearts are not but for covetousness, Jer. 22:17. For the glory of their own name, Dan. 4:30. For the continuance of their houses to many generations, Psal. 49:11. For the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof, Rom. 13:14.
Use 2. If Christ be for the saints, then all other things are for them; all things are theirs; death is a waterman to carry them to the other side of time; the earth the saints inns; the creatures their servants; as sun, moon, stars, are candles in the house for them: providence for them, as the hedge of thorns, is to fence the wheat, the flowers, the roses, not the thistles; and all because Christ is their Saviour. v. 31. Now is the judgment of this world, now shall the prince of this world be cast out.
Two enemies are here judged, the world and Satan.
As touching the former enemy; we are to consider the time, Now: 2. The enemy, the world: 3. The restrictive pronoun, This world: 4. That which Christ acteth, He judgeth the world. But what is meant by the judgment of the world? Some understand, that now, by Christ's death, is the right constitution of the world, as if the world were put in a right frame, and delivered from vanity, and restored to its perfection by Jesus Christ's death. Others think, by the world, is meant the sin of the world, or the sinning world; in that Christ condemned sin, in the flesh, by his death But by the world is meant the reprobate, and wicked world, that are here ranked with Satan, for Christ in his death gives out a doom and sentence on the unbelieving world; because they receive not him; as John 3:19. This is the [Gr. Krisis] judgment of the world, that light is come into the world, and men loveth darkness, &c.
Now, for the first of these: we see that hope helps the weak; before Christ yoke with devils, hell, and death, he seeth and believeth the victory: it was now a dark and a sad providence with Christ in his soul-trouble; but hope lying on the cold clay, prophesieth good; hope among the worms breathes life and resurrection, Psal. 16:10. 'Thou wilt not leave my soul in the grave.'—v. 11. 'Thou wilt shew me the path of life.' Psal. 118:17. 'I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord.' He was at this time, in regard of danger, almost in death's cold bosom. Saw you never hope laugh out from under dead bones in a bed? Boily, rotten, and half-dead Job, chap. 19:26. 'I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day on the earth: v. 26. And tho' after my skin, worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh I shall see God.' And 2 Cor. 5:1. Hope doth both die, and at the same time prophecy heaven and life: 'We know, if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heaven.' Would any man say, Paul, how know ye that? The answer is, faith holdeth the candle to hope, and hope seeth the sun in the firmament at midnight. 'We know, if this house be destroyed, we have a better one.'
2. Hope is one of the good spies, that comes with good tidings, be not dismayed, God will give us the good land. When they were plucking the hair off Christ's face, and nipping his cheeks, hope speaks thus to him, and to all standers by, Isa. 50:7. For the Lord God will help me, therefore I shall not be confounded: Therefore have I set my face as flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed. It is a long cable, and a sure anchor, Heb. 6:19. 'Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast, and which entereth into that which is within the vail.' Hope is sea-proof, and hell-proof, and Christ is anchor-fast in all storms: Christ in you the hope of glory, Col. 1:27.
3. A praying grace is such a prophesying grace, as both asketh when he prayeth, Father, glorify thy name, and taketh an answer; so doth Christ here take an answer. 'Now is the judgment of this world, now shall 'the prince of this world be cast out.' He was not yet cast out; but hope in Christ, with one breath, prayeth, Father, save me from this hour; and answereth, I shall be saved: the world, and the prince enemy, shall be cast out. It is a won battle, all shall be well. Faith and hope laugh and triumph for to-morrow, Psal. 6. Rebuke me not, Lord, in thine anger, v. 4. Return, O Lord, deliver my soul; v. 8. He takes an answer, For the Lord hath heard the voice of my weeping: v. 9. The Lord hath heard my supplication. Psal. 35. He prays, that the angel of the Lord would chase his enemies; and he answers himself in antedated praises, v. 9. And my soul shall be joyful in the Lord. v. 10. All my bones shall say, Lord, who is like unto thee? &c. He makes a bargain afore-hand; hope layeth a debt of praises upon every bone and joint of his body. Psal. 42. Banished, forgotten, and withered David, complains to God, and in hope takes an answer, v. 8. Yet the Lord will command his loving kindness in the daytime. We have need of this now, when Scotland is so low. They cannot fall that are on the dust, and more thousands under the dust, with the pestilence, and the sword, and the heart-break of forsaking and cruel friends, that not only have proved broken cisterns to us in our thirst, but have rejoiced, as Edom did, at our fall, than ever stories at one time, in ancient records, can speak; and God grant, friends turn not as cruel enemies as ever the idolatrous and bloody Irish have been. 'Yet there is hope in Israel concerning this thing.' The Lord must arise, and pity the dust of Zion: our bones are scattered at the grave's mouth, as when one heweth wood. Though we sit in darkness, we shall see light. Some say, There is no help for them in God. O say not so; they that are now highest, must be lowest: God must make the truth of this appear in Britain, Ezek. 17:24. And all the trees of the field shall know, that I the Lord have brought down the high tree, and have exalted the low tree, and have dried up the green tree, and have made the dry tree to flourish; I the Lord have spoken it, and have done it. Others say, We shall be delivered, when we are ripened by humiliation for mercy. No, 'tis not needful it be ever so. God sometime first delivereth, and then humbleth, and hath done it; the Lord delivered his low church, when they were in their graves, Ezek. 37 but they were never prouder, than when they loaded the power, the faithfulness, and free grace of God with reproaches, and said, Ezek. 37:11. Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost, we are cut off for our parts.
This world
This is the lost world, 1. Because it is the judged world, John 3:19. (2.) It is that world of which Satan is prince; the world being the damned, is the worst of the creation; which I prove from the word, and withal shall give the signs and characters of the men of the world.
1. The world is the black company that lies in sin, all of them, 1 John 5:9. The whole world lies in sin; they are haters of Christ, and all his, John 15:18. If the world hate you, ye know (saith Christ) that it hated me before you.
2. They are a number uncapable of grace, or reconciliation; which is terrible, and have no part in Christ's prayers, John 17:9. I pray not for the world: nor of sanctification; the Comforter that Christ was to send, is, John 14:17. The Spirit that the world cannot receive.
3. It is one of the professed enemies on Christ's contrary side, that he overcometh, and we in him. John 16:33. In the world, you shall have tribulation. They are the only troublers of the saints. But be of good cheer, I have overcome the world. 1 John 5:4. Whosoever is born of God overcometh the world.
4. It is a dirty and defiling thing, Pure religion (saith James 1:27.) keeps a man unspotted of the world. It is the praise of the church of Sardis, Rev. 3:4 that there was amongst them a few names that had not defiled their garments; but kept themselves from the pollutions of the world: it is a sooty pest-house; there be drops of soot that defiles men in it.
5. There can be no worst character, than to be a child of the world; it is a black mark, Luke 16:8. You know the Hebraism; children of disobedience; that is, much addicted to disobedience; as the son hath the nature of father and mother in him: children of pride, of wrath; much addicted, and far under the power of wrath, and pride; so the sparks of fire are called, Job 5. [Heb. Benei resheph] the daughters of the burning coal: then a child of the world, is one that lay in the womb of the world, one of the world's breeding, opposed to a pilgrim and a stranger on the earth: for a stranger is one that is born in a strange land, Psal. 119:19; Psal. 39:12; Heb. 11:13. And contrary to a child of light; who hath the pilgrim's sigh, ordinarily night and day; Oh, if I were in my own country. Wrong him not; his mother is a woman of heaven, she is a mighty princess, and a King's daughter, Rev. 21:10. The new Jerusalem, the church of God came down from heaven: Father, mother, seed, principles, and all are from heaven. 2. There is a spirit called the spirit of the world, 1 Cor. 2:12. This spirit is the genius, the nature and disposition of the world, 1 John 2:16 and is all for the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life; and these be the world's all things. Such a soul knoweth not the white stone, and the new name, nor can he smell the rose of the field and the lily of the valley; nor knows he the King's banqueting-house, nor the absence or presence of Christ in the soul; the man's portion is in this world, Psal. 17:14 within the four angles of this clay globe.
This world.
The world, the Lord Jesus judgeth, is this world; a thing that cometh within the compass of time, and may be pointed with the finger.
1. It is near our senses, therefore called, Gal. 1:4. The present evil world, the world that now is, on the stage: So, 2 Tim. 4:10. Demas hath forsaken me, and hath loved [Gr. tôn nyn aiona] the world that is upon its present now. The world that is on its post, and now, in its flux, motion and tendency to corruption, 1 Tim. 6:17. Charge them that are rich in this world, that they be not high-minded; this world is opposed to eternity, and to life eternal, for the which the rich are to lay up a sure foundation, Luke 20:34. The sons of this world marry, and are given in marriage. v. 35. But these that shall be counted worthy of that world and resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage. v. 30. Neither can they do any more [Gr. aeôn ekìnos] that world; this puts a great note of excellency on the world to come.
2. This world is a thing that comes under our senses, and that [Gr. tò dè tì] a single one creature, that we may point with our finger. Satan from the top of a mountain shewed Christ, [Gr. pasas tàs basilèias kosmu] All the kingdoms of the world, and the glory, or opinion of them, Mat. 4:8. And it is, Luke 4:5 all the kingdoms, [Gr. tês ockoumènèsten stigmê chrònu] he shewed him the fancy of the habitable earth in a point of time; the life to come cannot come under your senses. Ye cannot point out the throne of God, and the Lamb, and the tree of life, and the pure river of water of life, that proceeds out of the throne of God, and of the Lamb, there be such various treasures of glory in the infinite Lord Jesus, so many dwelling-places in our Father's house, that ye cannot number them all. The kingdoms of this world, and the glory of it comes within tale and reckoning; I grant this is meant of the structure and dwellings of the world, but they are the settled home of reprobate men.
It were good, if we could believe that the [Gr. sphèma] of the world, the figure and paintry of this house of lost men, 1 Cor. 7:30 is in a trance, and passing away: ah! are ye conformed to the world? Your condition is woeful. The world swears, and so do you, the world serves the time in religion, and so do you; the world is vain in their apparel; the world cozens, lies, whores, and so do you; the world hates Christ and his friends, and so do you; the world lies in sin, it is the fashion of the world, and so do you. Oh! if you would be conformed to the new world, in righteousness and holiness. 1. The inndwellers are all the children of a king, and princes, and their mother a prince's daughter. 2. The lowest piece of the dwelling-house of that other world, the heavens, we see, are curious work; any one pearl, or candle of sun, or moon, or stars, is worth the whole earth, setting aside the souls of men. 3. The foundation of the city is precious stones, Rev. 21 &c. What fools are we, who kill every one another for pieces and bits of the Lord's lowest footstool; for the earth, the seat of the worldly man, is but the footstool of God.
The Judgment of this world
How did Christ condemn and pass sentence on the wicked world in his death.
1. He did it legally, in that his offering a sufficient ransom for sin, there is a seal put on the condemnation of all impenitent men, that they shall 'not see life, but the wrath of God (that they were by nature under, being the captives of the law) 'abideth on them,' John 3:36. 'Because they believe not in the Son of God,' John 16:9. Christ's dying day was the unbelievers dooms-day.
2. He condemned the world declaratorily, in removing the curse from all the persecutions of the ill world; which was also more than a declaration, it being a real overcoming of the world, John 16:33. He hath removed all offence from the enmity and deadly feud that the world beareth against the saints. Christ's good-will in dying, hath sanctified, sweetned, and perfumed the world's ill-will to the saints.
3. He judgeth the world in his death exemplarily; as it is said, Heb. 11:7. Noah condemned the world, in preparing an ark. So Christ's example of obedience in dying for the world, at his Father's command, John 10:16 condemns the world's disobedience. Christ dying, and in his thirst, not master of a cup of water, is a judgment of the drunkard; his dying, his being stript of his garments, is a condemning of vain and strange apparel; his face spitted on, saith beauty, is vanity; his dying between two thieves saith, a high place among princes is not much, when the prince of the kings of the earth was marrowed with thieves; his being forsaken of lovers and friends, condemneth trusting in men, and confidence in princes, or the sons of men: all this is for our mortification, that we love not the world, for it is Christ's condemned malefactor.
Now is the prince of this world cast out
Here two things are considerable, 1. Who is the prince of this world. 2. How he is by Christ cast out.
The prince of this world is Satan, so called, John 14:30. And the prince that rules in the children of disobedience, Eph. 2:2 called with a higher name, 2 Cor. 4:4 [Gr. hò theos tu aionos toutou,] The god of this world. What princedom, or what godhead can the devil have in the world? or, who gave to him a sceptre, a crown, and a throne? for Satan hath a throne, Rev. 2:3.
The devil is not 1. A free prince. 2. Not an absolute monarch. 3. Nor a lawful king; not free, because he is a captive prince, reserved in everlasting chains of darkness, unto the judgment of the great day, Jude 6. The Son of God is the only free prince in the world, there be none independently free in heaven and earth but he, John 8:36. The kingdom of grace is an ancient free estate; and never was, and never can be conquered, not by the gates of hell, Mat. 16:18; Zech. 12:3 and in that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone, tho' all people of the earth be gathered together against it. Sure, Christ is a free king, by all the reason, and lawful authority in heaven and earth, Psal. 2:6, 7. Hell is no free princedom, all in it are slaves of sin, John 8:34, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44. The liberty of loving, enjoying, seeing, and praising God, and leisure, or thoughts, or cares to do no other thing, is the only true liberty, and liberty to be a king, and absolute over lusts, and wicked will, is the only liberty, Psal. 119:45. I shall walk [Hebr. barehabah] in latitude, in breadth, in liberty; for I seek thy precepts. 2. He is not an absolute prince. 1. He is under bail, and in chains of irresistible providence; Satan's providence, in power, is narrower than his will and malice; or otherwise he had not left a church on earth. 2. He can do nothing without leave asked and given, against Job; nor could he winnow Peter, till he petitioned for it. (3.) He is not a lawful monarch, but usurpeth; and therefore is called the god of this world, 2 Cor. 4:4 not that he hath any godhead, properly so called.
1. It is true, a black monarch weareth Christ's fair crown, and intrudes on his throne, in every false worship; Levit. 17. He that killeth ox, or goat, or lamb to the Lord, in the camp, and bringeth it not to the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, unto the priest, v. 7. Offereth sacrifice to devils, 2 Chron. 11:15. Jeroboam ordained him priests for the high places, and for the devils, and for the calves that he had made.
2. To fear the devil, the sorcerer, or him that can kill the body, (as Satan may bear the keys of prison-houses, and the sword, Rev. 2:10) more than the Lord, is to put a godhead on the devil.
3. Satan usurpeth a godhead, over that which is the flower and most godlike and divine piece in man, the mind. 2 Cor. 4:4. In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them that believe not: and he makes a work-house of the souls of the children of disobedience, Eph. 2:2 they are the devil's forge and shop, in whom he frames curious pieces for himself.
4. His crown stands in relations: fathers, tyrants by strong hand, and lords by free election were kings of old; so the devil is a father, hath children, and a seed, Acts 13:10; John 3:10 the world his conquest, and his vassals, Acts 10:38; 2 Tim. 2:26; 1 Pet. 4:3, & 5, 8 are the world which he governs and rules, by the three fundamental principles of his catholic kingdom, which he hath holden these 5000 years, 'The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life, 1 John 2:16. Sinners hold the crown on die devil's head; their loyalty to prince Satan acteth on them to die in wars against the Lamb and his followers.
A cause is not good, because followed by many. Isa. 17:7 in that day when the church is but 'three or four berries on the top of the olive-tree, a man, one single man, shall look to his Maker.' Men come to Sion, and follow Christ in ones and twos of a whole tribe, Jer. 3:14. They go to hell in thousands; a whole earth, Rev. 13 worship the western beast; and the eastern leopard hath the far greatest part of the habitable world; Indians and Americans worship Satan. Christ's are but a little flock; ah the way to heaven is over-grown with grass, there the traces of few feet are to be seen in the way: only you may see the print of our glorious fore-runner Christ's foot, and of the prophets, apostles, martyrs, and the handful 'that follow the Lamb.' Follow ye on, and miss not your lodging.
Shall be cast out
There is a two-fold casting out of Satan; one for his first sin, a Pet. 2:4. God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, Jude verse 6. This is a personal casting out, not spoken of here; but Satan must have two hells; for though the gospel was never intended to Satan, yet Satan is guilty of gospel rebellion, in that the dragon fighteth with the Lamb, and the weak woman travelling in birth, by the gospel, to bring forth a man-child to God. And (2.) as Satan is the mystical head and prince of that condemned body, he is cast out; and he hath a power in regard of the guilt and dominion of sin, both over the elect and the reprobate. Christ's death hath broken hell's bars, and condemned sin in the flesh, Rom. 8:3. And dissolved the works of the devil, and taken his forts and castles; and, 1 John 3:8 taken many of Satan's soldiers captives. Death was the devil's fort-royal; hell is his great prison-house, and principal jail: these he hath taken, 1 Cor. 15:55, 56; Hos. 13:14. I will ransom them from the power of the grave, I will redeem them from the power of death. O death, I will be thy plague: O grave, I will be thy destruction. And these captives can never be ransomed out of Christ's hand again; for (saith he) repentance shall be hid from mine eyes. When Christ spoils, he will never restore the prey again. He hath overcome the world, John. 16:33. And that was a strong fort; and he hath delivered the saints from the dominion of sin, because they are under a new husband, Rom. 6:6, 7, 8, 9, 10; Rom. 7:1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. All crosses have lost their salt and their sting; even as when a city is taken by storming, all the commanders and soldiers are disarmed: and when a court is cried down by law, all the members and officers of the court, judge and scribe, and advocates that can plead, pursevants, jails are cried down; they cannot sit nor lead a process, nor summon a subject: so when Christ cried down Satan's judicature, and triumphed over principalities and powers, and annulled all decrees, laws, hand-writings of ordinances, that Satan could have against the saints, Col. 2:14, 15 all the officers of hell are laid aside; the devil is out of office by law, jure; the jails and pits are broken, Isa. 49:9. That thou mayst say to the prisoners, go forth: to them that are in darkness, shew yourselves. Zech. 9:11 When a righteous King cometh to the crown, he putteth down all unjust usurpers.
If Satan be cast out, we are not debtors to the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof, Rom. 8:12. Sin hath no law over us. There is a law of sin, a dictate of mad reason, by which the sinner thinks he is under the oath of allegiance to Satan, and his crown, sceptre, and honour he must defend; but there is no reason, no law in hell, and in the works of hell. And if he be once cast out, who is this usurping lawless lord, if you sweep the house to him, and take him in again to a new lodging, one devil will be eight devils; for Satan, thus cast out, will return with seven devils worse than himself; remember Lot's wife, if ye be escaped out of Sodom. Look not over your shoulder with a wanton and lustful eye to old forsaken lovers, let repentance and mortification be constant.
Now is the prince of this world cast out.
But yet to consider more particularly, Satin's princedom, and Satan's power: I add yet more of these two heads.
1. The power of Satan.
2. The punishment of Satan.
His power is held forth, in that he is a prince.
1. In his might and power natural.
2. In his power acquired.
3. In his power sinful, and judicially inflicted.
The devil's power, he was created in, both in the mind and will, and executive faculty, by no scripture or reason can be imagined to be less before the fall of these miserable spirits, than the power of their fellow angels.
1. The angels being all created holy, and according to God's image, they must have been created with their face to God, and in their proper place and sphere: and so with power to stand in their place. Now what station can these immortal spirits be created in, rather than in a state of seeing God? 2. Satan abode not in the truth, (saith the Lord Jesus, John 8:44) and the bad angels left, (saith Jude verse 6.) [Gr. tò ídion oiketerion] their proper dwelling. These two places compared together, seemeth to hold forth that truth, and the first truth; God seen and known, though not immutably, was the first element, native country of the angels: they must then see God and his face.
'Tis a bold and groundless conjecture of some rotten schoolmen to say, that truth from which the angels are said to fall, was the gospel-truth; and that, They envied that man was in Christ, to be advanced above the angelic nature.
1. 'Tis a dream, that the gospel was revealed to the devils before their fall; for then their own fall and future misery, that they were to be kept eternally in chains of darkness, on the same ground, must be revealed to them. What horror and sadness must fill Adam's mind, and the angel's spirit, if hell and the necessity of God manifested in the flesh, was revealed to them in the state of happiness? 2. The mystery of the riches of the glorious gospel was hid from the beginning of the world; and the glorious elect angels come in time, Ephes. 3:8, 9, 10. To learn that manifold wisdom of God; and delight in Peter's time, to look into it, as to a great secret of God, 1 Pet. 1:12. We have not then reason to think this secret was whispered in the ears of the devils, before they fell.
2. 'Tis true, Mat. 18. The elect angels. [Gr. dià pantòs] always now behold the face of Christ's Father; for now they are confirmed, that they cannot look away, and turn their eyes off God's face; even when they come down as servants, to the heirs of glory on earth, they carry about with them their heaven, and the pleasures of the court they enjoy; no reason their posting among sinners should decourt them, or deprive them of the actual vision of God: but it followeth not therefore the fallen angels never saw the face of Christ's Father; it follows only, they saw it not immutably, and in a confirmed way of grace and [Gr. dià pantòs,] always, as now the elect angels do.
2. 'Tis no princedom in Satan to know the thoughts of the heart; this is proper to God only, 1 Kings 8:39; Jer. 17:10; Psal. 44:21. Nor hath he, or the good angels, any immediate princedom over the will, to know what are my thoughts, or to know one anothers thoughts, or to act immediately upon free will; not because the thoughts of the heart are objects of themselves so abstruse and high, that they are not intelligible; for a man's own spirit knows the things in himself, 1 Cor. 2:11. Yea (2.) then they could not be known by revelation; for God cannot by revelation, cause a finite understanding comprehend an infinite object; because the object exceedeth the faculty in proportion infinitely. The thoughts of a man's heart, cannot so exceed the understanding faculty of a man, far less of an angel; therefore God, in the depth of his wisdom, by an act of his own free will, not from any mistiness or intrinsical darkness of the object, hath cast a covering over the thoughts of man's heart, that they are not seen clearly to any other men or angels. Nor could human societies, now in the state of sin, subsist, if but the father could read the heart of the son.
Nor have angels, good or bad, any immediate princedom over free will: nor would I say, Satan is the author, yea, or the immediate tempter to all sins: many sinful thoughts, and wicked acts are transacted in this dark chamber of presence, the heart of man, to which Satan can have no personal access, neither with his eyes to see, nor his hands of power to stir or move in them. The heart is the privy garden, weeds grow there without Satan's immediate industry; he may knock or cast fire-balls over the wall, or in at the windows, or send letters and messages in, but he cannot immediately talk with the heart, or act immediately on the will; we are to keep this virgin-love of the heart to Christ; he can ravish it, and none but he. 'Tis the will that maketh the bargain in sinning: with all keeping keep the heart. We make away the created dominion over free will, that God gave us in our creation.
3. Satan hath a princedom, in, 1. Knowledge natural; 2. In acquired knowledge. In natural; because he is a piece of light, a lamp once shining in heaven; but now, for his sin, smoking and glimpsing in hell. The natural intellectuals of the devil are depraved, not removed. 'Tis a question, if he can remain a spirit, if that candle were extinct, by which he believeth there is a God, but trembleth, Jam. 2. The acquired knowledge of the devil is great, he being an advancing student, and still learning now above five thousand years; and he that teacheth others, becometh more learned himself: he is the great mint master and coiner of knowledge, in magicians, wisemen, soothsayers, sorcerers, is a careful reader in turning over the pages of the book of nature, and the whole works of creation. But still Satan studieth man, better than man doth himself: he knoweth nature, in general, may sin: and that corrupt nature, must sin: he observeth second inclinations of humour, complexion, temper of body, disposition, ere he tempt; as no seaman sails, till he know how the wind bloweth: and he learned that by the prophets, and experience, which he saith, Luke 4:34. I know thee who thou art, the holy One of God.
4. He hath a particular princedom of power, legally, over mankind, till Christ set them at liberty; as the executioner hath over the condemned man, from the judge Heb. 2:14. Christ took part with the children of flesh and blood, that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is the devil; verse 15. And deliver them, who through the fear of death, were all their lifetime subject to bondage. Satan, from men's sins, hath a sort of conquered princedom, till the Son of God make us free, John 8:36. And this princedom he keepeth over all the sons of disobedience, as their father, John 8:44 as the king of the bottomless pit: and we have no ground to say that Satan at the day of judgment leaveth off to be king, because the damned and the devil and his angels are said to be tormented together in everlasting fire, Mat. 25 for comunion in pain, maketh not Satan to have no angels under him, or damned men, whom he torments.
Quest. But how keepeth Satan still power over Job, Peter, to winnow them and afflict them, in this life, if Christ hath cast him out of his princedom?
Answ. 1. 'Tis mere service for the trying of the saints and mortifying of their lusts, not dominion, not any legal power, such as he hath over the sons of disobedience, whom he keepeth captives at his will.
2. In relation to Satan it is a mere grant of permission; as a nobleman forfeited for treason, and kept some years in prison, before he die, hath the liferent of his own lands, for his necessity, not by heritage as before, but by a grant or gift of grace, from the bounty of the prince and state; so hath Satan, not by grace to himself, but by a grant of mere permission, as it were his liferent to tempt, winnow, and try the saints, so long as Satan is in the way to his full doom in hell. Now, if Christ had not spoiled Satan, and dissolved his works; the use of his power had been, as it were, heritage, to Satan, in regard the law giveth him a sort of right over sinners, not made free in Christ. Yet I do not say, its his proper right, because Satan sinneth in tempting any to sin, yet the temptation, as it falleth passively on the sons of disobedience, is a work of divine justice, and as it falleth on the saints, an act of spotless and holy dispensation, for most just reasons known to God.
2. Satan is a prince in regard of magnificence, called a prince, a prince of the air, a god, for he hath a royal army under him, the devil and his angels, are a great host, Rev. 12:9. The devil, and Satan, and his angels, were cast out; verse 7. The dragon and his angels fought with Michael; and he hath legions garrisoned in one poor man, he hath kept the fields above these five thousand years, with a huge and mighty army, both by sea and land. Eph. 6:12. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, and powers, against the rulers in the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Here be great persons in eminent places, and they can lead armies against us, and have in every single soldier, a strong garrison of concupiscence, and fleshly lusts, that war against the soul, 1 Pet. 2:11. And the flesh is a strong fort-royal, a tower of imaginations, which exalt themselves against a strong King, the Lord Jesus, and cannot be his captives, but by the mighty power of God, 2 Cor. 10:5. The devil is not a despicable and poor enemy to be despised, it is not good war-wisdom to despise a mean enemy, far more should we not sleep, but watch and be sober; when the peers of hell, and princes and rulers in high places, who have the vantage of the mount above us, are against us.
3. Satan's princedom is especially seen in tempting to sin; which, that it may be better cleared, I shall shortly shew what a temptation in general is. 2. Open Satan's power in tempting. To tempt is to take a trial of any, to try what is in them; therefore the nearest end of tempting is knowledge; now the ways or manner of bringing out this knowledge, rendereth the temptation good or ill: for God tempteth, and Satan tempteth. "So temptation is a working upon the senses, reason, inclination, affections, by which any is, or may be moved under the colour of good, toward that which is offensive to God."
1. Temptation is a working, or an act of stirring in the tempter, not physical, but moral, and objective; no tempter, who is only a tempter, can by any real action fire the will. Satan doth but knock, by his logick, at the out-side of the door, but cannot open. Free-will is a tender, excellent piece of creation; and either the best or the worst of the whole creation of God. See well to it, 'tis a work of your whole lifetime to watch this door.
2. Temptation is an act of moving, or stirring the powers of man: as when wine is stirred, and wine and dregs are jumbled through other; or a fountain troubled, and water and clay mixed in one; hence every tempted person is some way a sufferer, though he know not particularly it is so. As the fish tempted with the bait, the bird with the fowler's song, are sufferers, tho' they know not; there is a breaking in upon the fancy, sense, reason, will, and affections to strike a hole in the soul; so tempting is called piercing, though the fool going to the chambers of death, knoweth not that it is for his life, Prov. 7:23. To be tempted is a matter of great concernment; illumination is most necessary here, and specially to know that God aimeth at the trial of our faith, and other glorious ends. And that, 1. Satan seeks some of his own work in us, as God seeketh to bring out some of his work in us. 2. That Satan aims to go between the believer and his strong hold. 3. That he aimeth at house-room in the soul.
3. The temptation works upon both the inward and outward man; on senses, fancy, mind, inclination, will and affection, but hath a special design at the soul.
4. By the temptation any is, or may be moved to sin; for all tempted, are not actually induced to sin. Christ was really tempted of the devil, but was never induced to sin. Satan shot his arrows at Job for nothing; he lost his labour in seeking the failing, and drinking up of Peter's faith. Therefore to be tempted of the devil, or the world, is not a sin.
5. The temptation worketh under the colour of good. The first printing iron and master-sampler of tempting, hath this character of apparent good; Gen. 3:6. The woman saw that fruit was good. 1. Because tempted persons are reasonable creatures, and as instinct taketh with birds, and beasts, and poor nature swayeth elements in their motion, so reason is a strong tying chain.
2 Every temptation hath a garment, or rather a shirt of truth in the understanding, and coming under the shadow and roof of the desiring faculty as good, nothing hindereth it to take, but a marring of the understanding, in apprehending some black spot, in the fairness of it; when Satan saileth fair with favour of the wind, and cometh in his whites, and in cloth of gold, as an angel of light, we are as readily moved often (such is our childishness) with good-like as with good. Believe not therefore a white devil, because white. O because to yield your tongue to lick a honey-temptation, under the vail of sweetness. Receive things rather because lawful, than because good or pleasant. 2. Believe it, there can be no reason for sin, no reason can wash the devil to render him fair; neither thirst, nor company, can be a reason of drunkenness. An injury cannot justify every war and blood-shed; because injury is a sin, and to wash one sin with another, is as if you should wash a soul face with inkwater. 3. Believe sin to be folly and darkness, and light of reason can be neither father nor mother to folly and darkness; holiness is white and fair, within and without.
6. The object of the temptation, in the definition; the terminus ad quem, is that which is offensive to the majesty of God. That we may understand this, remember four are said to tempt; 1. God, his tempting neither in the condition of the work, or intention of the worker, is sin, But the Lord proveth you (saith Moses to Israel) that be might know, whether ye love the Lord your God. 2. Our own lusts tempt and lead aside, Jam. 1:14. And as fire cannot but make fire; so both in the intention of the work and the worker, the end of temptation is sin. Concupiscence is a mother that cannot bring forth a good daughter. 3. If men tempt to sin, as a magistrate, by good laws tempteth wicked men, the end is not necessarily sin in the intention of the doer; tho' no man can formally tempt another to sin, but he sinneth and tempteth to sin both ways. And when Satan tempts, he driveth ever at sin; both ways we are to fear God, to watch, to stand out, when he tempteth.
2. Now we are to consider, that tho' Satan be sentenced already, and as a malefactor under bail, and in chains, yet hath he leave to walk to and fro in the earth, and is not yet cast in prison, nor are we freed from his temptation, the personal persecution and malice of Satan, as we are from the persecution of the damned now in hell, who did persecute us here on earth, but cannot now. No doubt but as the good angels struck the men of Sodom with blindness, so the ill angels have the like power on the senses, a man possessed with the devil was both dumb and deaf, Job 2:6. Satan smote Job with sore boils, from the sole of his foot unto his crown; and so devils have power over the senses, and bodily organs; and so of necessity over the blood, to cause rottenness in it, which must be in boils, and to alter and infect the humors Psal. 78:49. Evil angels were ministers of the Lord's plagues on the Egyptians. But I shall not think it a good argument, to prove, that angels can jumble the humors, to make many things appear without that they are not; and that they can work on the internal senses, the fancy and imagination, because we ourselves, by an act of free-will can stir up the memory of things, and provoke our fancies to the apprehension of things: Ergo, angels either good, or evil, can do the like. This is but a sorry poor reason, for we ourselves can do many things within ourselves, which the angels cannot do; I know the thoughts of my own heart, when they come forth in act, 1 Cor. 2:11. No angels good or ill can know them; I can with an obediential act of free-will, by grace, set my free-will on acts to command my memory, fancy, imagination, thoughts, to meditate on bypassed experiences of divine favours, and sweetly solace myself in God, with these thoughts; no angels in heaven or hell, can determine my free-will to those spiritual acts; yet, by the grace of God, I can do it. Nor is that true, whatever an inferior power can do, that a superior can much more do: if there be orders in angels, a superior angel cannot determine the will of an inferior, as he himself can do. Sure, my knowledge and will are inferior powers, in comparison of angels, 1 Cor. 13:1 yet have I greater dominion over my own understanding and will, than the angels have over my understanding and will, and can know my own actual thoughts, and determine mine own will by grace, which no superior powers of angels, or any else, save the Almighty, can do.
I rather conceive, that the outward and inward senses, humours, imagination, fancy, memory, being natural agents; and scripture clearly shewing, that angels and devils can, and do work upon natural agents, have a power over all our dispositions, temperature, senses, fancy, imagination, memory; therefore what is natural in the acts of understanding and memory, not moral, angels do, and may know. What heart-secrets devils know from the disposition of body, paleness, redness, trembling, dejected countenance, are good conjectures, and surer it may be than we can apprehend, but no certain knowledge.
God only knows all the thoughts of man, and his secrets, 1 Kings 8:39. For thou (even) thou only knowest the hearts of all the children of men. Prov. 15:11. Hell and destruction are before the Lord, how much more then the hearts of the children of men? He that can read hell and destruction, and all the secrets of darkness, can also read, as a book opened at noon-day, the midnight-thoughts of all the children of men. Psal. 44:21; Jer. 17; Rom. 8:27; 1 Thess. 2:4; Rev. 2:23; Acts 1:24; Pro. 17:3; Pro. 21:2; Job. 22:24, 25. Yea, to know the present thoughts, is proper to God, Mat. 19:4. And Jesus, knowing their thoughts, said, Wherefore think ye evil in your heart. Nor can angels see the present thoughts come out in action; for otherwise, the man himself knoweth his own thoughts, when he actually thinketh them, 1 Cor. 2:11 else he could not be convinced of the sinfulness of them, nor comforted in the spiritualness and preciousness of them.
It is a fond opinion of some, who say, angels can see the thoughts of the heart, when they are, but not what they are, whether they be good or bad, love or hatred; for that is nonsense, to see moral acts, and not to be able to pass any judgment on them; or, that angels see our thoughts, but not whether they be intense and vehement, or cold and remiss; for it is proper to God, as the searcher of hearts, to know the secrets of the heart, and all the qualities of it, that he may accordingly judge them. And if angels see them as moral acts, they must know the vehemency, or slowness of them; the scripture placeth also the difficulty of knowing the thoughts, and the distance, and remoteness of them, from the understanding of men or angels, in the thoughts themselves, not in the vehemency or slowness of the thoughts; and it is but an evasion that some have, that angels may know the thoughts, and acts of the will in themselves, but not know to what end they are directed; and that the intention of the mind is the great secret that God hath reserved to himself. Because, 1. The scripture placeth the secrecy of the free acts of will and understanding in the acts themselves, and not in the intention; for so most of the actions of men and angels, their speaking this, not that; their walking in this city; their eating, sleeping, now, not another time; their praying, hearing, reading, shall be secrets known to God only, not to angels or men, just as the acts of understanding, the will, are; because the particular intention, whether we do these sincerely, for a good or bad end, yea, often for what end we do them, is amongst the secrets of the heart, as far distant from the understanding of men or angels, as any secret can be. 2. The intention of all our elicit acts, that issueth from will and understanding, are also acts of the heart and reins, that fall under the present question, and the greatest secrets in man, Heb. 4:12.
Neither see I any reason, from the disproportion between the knowing faculty and the understanding of angels, why angels may not know the thoughts of my heart, as well as I know them myself: nor can the reason be, Suarez saith, because angels, tho' they have sufficient power in the faculty of understanding, to know these things, yet have not in their understanding the species, the babies, images, and representations of heart-secrets. But with his good leave, this is petito principii; for the question is, How cometh it to pass, that angels, who have the species of higher and more profound things, as of the natural knowledge, that there is a God, that he is infinite, eternal, yet have not the species of an object far inferior, and yet intelligible, to wit, of the heart-actions of a man? 2. When I ask how cometh it, that an angel, or a man, knoweth not this? I ask indeed, how cometh it to pass, that an angel, or a man, wanteth such a species of such a thing? So Suarez saith in effect, 'angels know not heart secrets, because they know not heart secrets.' I conceive, God hath laid a covering over the hearts of men and angels, from his own free and wise will, and reserved that secret to himself: for God gave speech to men, and a way how angels should communicate their thoughts to angels and men, which is angel-speaking; and this gift had been useless, if angels and men could intuitively read and behold the thoughts of one anothers hearts: nor is it useful for the end of reasonable nature, for love and society, that we know the secrets of one anothers hearts; for the Author of nature giveth not that by nature, which with less impeachment of love, and not without danger of contention and hatred, may by industry be acquired. And we should take heed, what is written in the book of our heart, when such a searching eye readeth it, as God; and will one day read out to the hearing of men and angels, all these secrets, Eccles. 12:14. Except we be pardoned in Christ, many state-secrets, many soul contrivances may come out, to our everlasting shame.
And for this cause, we are to bless the Lord, who hath reserved from Satan's princedom, and left out of his charter any power to compel our will. It is true, Satan hath a bordering, or (as it were) some out-land princedom over Saul's will, in that he can sit and ride on his melancholy; so as he is moved to throw a javeling at Jonathan, and to seek to kill David! yet so as he, that is so acted by an evil spirit, is blame-worthy; and then it must be presumed, that he hath some do minion over his will, Acts 5:2. Peter faith to Ananias, Why hath Satan filled thine heart, to lie to the Holy Ghost? Here the Holy Ghost arraigneth not Satan, but Ananias for a lie, which yet came from the father of lies. Which is, 1. Because there was fewel and powder in the hearth before, and Satan did but blow the bellows, and brought forth the flame. 2. Because we willingly join, and love to have it so. 3. Because the act of sinning cometh formally from free-will, which cannot be forced, but may keep out the siege without violence, but yet basely rendereth.
If Satan be the prince of the air, and can raise mighty storms and winds, that can smite the four corners of an house, which is not like an ordinary wind, that bloweth from east or west, or north or south, but rather right down, Job 1:19. If he have power of floods, and seas, and be a roaring lion, and, by reason of his sagacity and skill in the secrets of nature, can do wonders, tho' no miracles, as to raise the dead, by applying actives and passives together; no question, the Lord letting loose some links of the chain he is fettered withal, he can work curiously and strongly on the walls of bodily organs, on the shop that the understanding soul lodgeth in, and on the necessary tools, organs, and powers of fancy, imagination, memory, humours, senses, spirits, blood, so nearly joined with the soul, as will, understanding, conscience, and affections sit in dangerous neighbourhood with such malignant spirits.
It is (no question) hard enough to give an exact delineation of the length and breadth of the borders of the princedom of Satan; nor is it necessary, for our edification, to know all the secrets and mysteries of the devil's power, how he assumeth a body, what he can do in the sphere of nature, how he acts upon men: sure, he hath some in his snare, as poor birds, who are taken captives by him at his will, 2 Tim. 2:26 and that he sitteth at the helm, as it were, of some, and acts and stirreth them so, the wind and tide of their lusts complying with him, that they cannot chuse but fail, and walk according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience, Eph. 2:2. And that he can borrow tide and fair wind at his nod, and woo the soul by the shop and office-house, the body, the flesh, the senses; and reciprocally, act, indirectly, by foreign embassies and missive letters, on the will and understanding, and the lusts, that are domestick friends within, to draw in the senses, and the fancies, and imagination, to join with him; as is clear in his first dealing with Eve. It is not his way, to deal with the senses only, or with reason only, or to keep such a method, as peremptorily to begin at one before another; but in Satan's first temptation of Eve, he acteth collaterally and reciprocally; he acteth on the ear, by speaking; and on the mind, by speaking reason, Hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree? Doth he so strictly tie you? Is that reason and justice, to put a law on an apple? Then you may not eat of every tree, which God hath made for eating. And Satan worketh on the sense by reason, Gen. 3:5. For God doth know, that in the day ye eat, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods knowing good and evil. And this wrought upon the sense; for it is added, v. 6. And the woman saw that the tree was good for food. And again by the sense of seeing, Satan wrought on the will, to bring out the consent, verse 6. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat. So Satan can make the body a tempter to the soul, and the soul and reason, a tempter to the body; as when the husband is leprous, and the wife infected with the pestilence, he rendereth her a leper, and she rendereth him sick with a running botch. When the body is pampered, and the vessels full, it draweth the soul's consent to fleshly lust; and the soul findeth reason, but corrupt reason, why the body should be a member of an harlot. And there is mutual help between concupiscence and conscience; the one tempting with strong acts of lusting, the other tempting with lustful reason, shew it should be so, and may be so; as in a water-work, drawing water from such a place, twenty empty buckets come down, twenty full buckets come up, and every one serveth another, for one common work. Nor is it a wonder that one devil doth kiss and embrace another.
Cast out
The prince of this world's casting out, leadeth us to a further consideration of Satan's punishment: as there is a double sin in Satan, so a double punishing and casting out. The ill angels first sin I determine not; 'they abode not in the truth; they kept not their first and proper station.' God made all things good, and placed them all in due and fit houses and stations, and God was the station and house of the angels; the devils first left God, and left their own house; 'tis like they would have been higher, and affected a godhead: they would not sit contentedly, in the place God set them in. Shifting spirits, climbing men, that would be higher than God hath placed them, and would be without their own skin, and above their own element and proper sphere, have this, as a grain of the ill seed, that the old serpent spewed in Eve. The devil knew how to go out of his own house, and to climb above his own proper station, and he would lead Eve up the stairs, whither he did climb himself, to seek to be like God, knowing good and evil, Gen. 3:5. The whole creation was like a well ordered army, at the beginning, all kept rank, and marched in order; the devils were the first soldiers in the army that spilt the comely rank, and marred the first order: the prince of darkness, that great lord of confusion, made the first jarring, and sampler and prime discord in the sweet musick, and song of the praises of the Creator, that all creatures did sing: Therefore God the Creator, in his justice, spared not him, and his fellow-mutineers, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them unto chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment, 2 Pet 2:4. Christ, as Mediator, did not inflict this punishment on the fallen angels.
Now, there is a second sin of the devils, and that is not only the casting down of man, but the continuing without retreating in the first sin. 1 John 3:8. He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. John 8:44. Satan was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth; because there is no truth in him. What, is not Satan's first sin a transient act gone and past; is Satan this day in the very act of murdering all mankind, and of murdering Adam and Eve, who many thousand years ago are dead? It is true, the act, physically considered, is gone; but morally, Satan is yet on that same sin, 1. Because he did, and doth spin out, in a long thread, the very first sin; and all Satan's life from that day to this, is one continued act of apostasy: in, 1. the not retreating, nor repenting his first sin, and his first murder; Satan's hands are wet and hot this very day with the blood of Adam and Eve's soul. 2. In the continuing in, and approving of the act of his first sinning, by still envying the glory of God, malicing his workmanship and image, so as the guilt of that sin goeth along with him. Hence, Christ addeth his seal, as Mediator, to the Lord's first sentence of justice, in casting him out of heaven; and in regard he continueth in that sin, and addeth new soul murderers, to his first transgression, in tempting, tormenting, hating, opposing the redemption of man, the gospel, the offices of Christ, the church of Christ; Christ cometh in by his office as his judge, to add to his chains. In which a word,
1. Of the punishment of devils.
2. Of Christ, as he is the judge of devils.
The punishment hath relation to his first sin; his first sin was against the Holy Ghost, in that being a lamp of light, shining up in the high palace, and standing before the throne, wanting not any wicked principle of concupiscence within, or any habitual aversion from God, looking God in the face, and beholding the first truth, he sinned against God, and therefore was made an examplary spectacle to angels and men, of pure and unmixed justice, without mercy, and cast down to hell, without hope of a Saviour, or redemption, Heb. 2:16. For verily he took not on him the nature of angels, but the seed of Abraham.
The evils of punishment inflicted on Satan, are, 1. His being cast out of the presence of God, never to see his face again, nor enjoy his favour. 2 Pet. 2:4. For God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell. Hence, from this, schoolmen infer a second punishment, a perpetual sadness and dejection of mind, for the loss of that happy fruition of God. But I much doubt, whether sadness or the want of God's lovely presence, can consist with the extreme hatred of God and fiery averseness, implacable wrath, and burning envy, that Satan hath against the glory of God, or image of God, or any thing of God; especially against the Lamb and his followers, against whom he warreth continually; a sadness there may be in him, because he is a rational creature, in regard he is fallen from the good of happiness, not of holiness; but conjoined with wrath and hatred against God; and this is without question in all the damned.
2. The pain inflicted on the understanding, is the hurting of his natural speculative knowledge. Sure, if he see not God as the first truth, he seeth all deductions from the will, sovereignty, wisdom, justice of God, &c. more darkly than he did before; but, if his natural speculative knowledge was utterly lost, there should be no foundation remaining in him of wrath and envy against God, and his creatures and image. 2. His true and saving practical knowledge is lost, and in place thereof a crafty, versutious cunning, deceitfulness and subtilty to deceive and tempt; such as is in the serpent to sting: such a bloody instinct as is in the dragon, in the lion to devour: but otherwise, the devil is the first fool of the creation of God, and hath played the fool above five thousand years; for in rational policy, the tempting of our first parents to sin, tho' it was a master-piece of wit, was the ruin of his kingdom; and the serpent, even in the crucifying of Christ, did buy a scratch in Christ's heel at a dear rate, with the bruising and grinding to powder the head and life of the serpent, and the full destruction of his kingdom. And by experience, Satan knoweth he is a loser, in tempting and persecuting the Lord Jesus and his members, yet malice having put on the light of prudence, he knowingly soweth sin, blood, wrath, in Christ's field; and in so doing, he sweateth in labouring the vineyard of the Lord, to make an harvest and vintage for Christ.
3. Infused grace Satan hath not at all; because grace supernatural is a stem and blossom of heaven: 'tis hard to think, that since Satan was thrust out of heaven, any of the fruits or blossoms of that paradise can grow in him. Acquired knowledge Satan may have. And,
4. From this Satan hath faith against his will, Jam. 2:19. It is necessary in the specification rooted in a natural understanding; but in the exercise, as it were, forced and compelled; he would wish to want the constraining power of a natural knowledge; so as this is a wicked faith, and a tormenting virtue in the devil, as it is in many wicked men, who desire nothing more than to have conscience cut off from their soul: as some men are so pained with a gangrene in the foot, that they are willing their leg be sawn of: or like a man that hath a necessary servant, and most useful, and yet because he hath one intolerable gad, he must put him away. For light addeth fear and terror to some distracted persons, and maketh them out of measure furious; therefore ye must close door and window on them, and they are more sober when they have least light: so here, glancings of conscience serve but to make some see ghosts of hell, and terrifying sights.
3. Satan can have no hope of deliverance, but knoweth his prison-door is locked on him with a sad key, eternal despair; that so long as the Almighty liveth; and is God blessed for ever, so long shall he be miserable. Would sinners lend their thoughts and faith to eternity, that runneth out in so long a thread as ever and ever, and on pain, horrour, and torment for ever and ever, it might be they would not run and sweat so much in the way of sin.
6. Obstinacy, and invincible obduration and hardness, lieth on the mind, will, and affections of the devils; the cause of which, is his habitual continuance in, and love of the sin against the fair shining and convincing light of seen and enjoyed God, the justice of God, and the withdrawing of all grace and remedies against wilful hardning of the heart.
7. The breaking of Satan's hopes and counsels in all his ill attempts, his burning hatred of God, the Lamb's victories over the dragon, the chaining and bordering of his malicious power, &c. are great punishments.
8. I dare not, nor cannot determine, what the fire is that tormenteth him, nor the place of hell; 'tis more praise worthy labour, to seek to be delivered, in Christ, from it, than to search curiously into it.
Satan's judge and caster out, is Christ; as may clearly be gathered from the words, Now is the prince of this world cast out. Hence,
Consid. 1. When Christ came to the office of Redeemer and Mediator of his church, to deliver his people out of the hands of Satan, he found Satan under old treason committed against God; for, before this, he kept mankind captive, and found him under a sentence for it, and cast down to hell: and because Christ was God, and the same God equal with the Father, therefore he made good his Father's deed, and putteth his seal and amen to that sentence; and for new treason against God, in man his image, whom God had made lord and little king of the earth, Christ gave out a new sentence against Satan, Gen. 3:15. I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed: it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.
Consid. 2. All punishment on Satan is now inflicted by the Mediator Christ; for since Satan came in the play, to appear a Satan and adversary to man, he set up another kingdom of darkness, opposite to the kingdom of the Son of God, Col. 1:13; John 14:30 he persecuteth the woman that brought forth the man child, Revel. 12:13 he goeth forth in his instruments to gather the kings of the earth, and the whole world, to the great battle of that great day of God Almighty, Revel. 16:14 and maketh war with the Lamb, Revel. 17:13, 14 he is accuser of the brethen, Revel. 12:10. The king of the bottomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath his name Apollyon, Revel. 9:11. He is the arch-destroyer, and destroyeth all in relation to the man Christ and his church; therefore is Christ raised up a Redeemer, a Saviour, to revenge the cause of his brethren, and came in the flesh to destroy Satan, his kingdom and works, to enter in Satan's house to bind the strong man, and spoil him of his goods, Heb. 2:14; 1 John 3:8; John 14:30; Mat. 12:29, 30; Gen. 3:16; Col. 2:15, 16. And when Christ, by reconciling all things in heaven and earth to God, Col. 1:20 became the head of angels and men, Col. 2:9; Col. 1:18; Col. 2:10. He was stated in a headship over all the tribes of men and angels, to confirm the good angels that they should not fall, and to redeem fallen men; and when all state-solemnities at the coronation of Jesus Christ are performed, and the Father had said, Psal. 2:6. Yet I have set my King on my holy hill of Zion; Acts 5:31 he must, by his office and royal place, reign over the rebels, that are mixed with the willing subjects, and bruise them with a rod of iron, whether they will or no: and as when there is feud and wars between two houses, and blood on either side, there is an heir born of one of the houses to make peace between them, and take order with and subdue the rebellious, who refuse peace, and to revenge the injuries; so were there wars between the sovereign Majesty of the Lord our God, and both angel-nature and mankind. Angels and men had highly injured the Lord, and wounded his honour; Christ Jesus, a born heir of the seed of David, and of the royal line of heaven, God equal with the Father, comes to the crown, and makes peace between the Lord and men, and so far reconcileth the good angels, that they cannot fall out with God, but stand by the grace of the new heir; and Christ revengeth upon the devils and the world the wrongs done to God, and subdueth both under God.
Consid. 3. It is considerable, that wisdom and counsel is here in war: Satan foiled man, and subdued him, as his vassal and slave, to the condemnation he himself was under; and man must be king, lord and judge over devils. Angels, who envied man's happiness, and destroyed mankind, must appear personally, be arraigned, sentenced, and condemned before the man Christ. Man was shut out of paradise by the envy of angels; now hath the man Christ the keys of paradise, of heaven and hell, and death and the grave. Christ's garments are wet and stained, not with Edom's blood, Isa. 62. But (to borrow the expression) he goeth to heaven in triumph, and his apparel red with angel-blood, and so leadeth captivity itself captive. Other warriors take away the life of the living; but he taketh away the life of death itself. Others subdue captives; never one, save the man Christ, subdued captivity.
Consid. 4. Victory over devils, by the man Christ, is more glorious, than if God had interposed absolute sovereignty and power, because mercy, grace, truth, justice, are the sweet ingredients, going out with the blood of God in it; and omnipotency is much seen, in that one little despised man of clay, totally routeth and destroyeth Satan, and many legions, so that tho' devils keep the fields, and daily fight; yet they can never make head again against Christ, nor win one battle, or pull one captive out of Christ's hand.
Consid. 5. Heaven is not conquered again, nor hell and devils subdued by a sudden surprise, or a stratagem, but in fair wars, and in an open set battle, Col. 2:15. He on the cross made a shew openly, and trumphed over devils.
Use 1. If God only know the heart, and its secrets, and men and angels cannot; we should aim and study sincerity; one witness of integrity here, is more than millions of witnesses, this one witness? the searcher of hearts, will cast a man, though he had a jury of angels to absolve him, and all the men on earth were on the inquest and assize, to carry him up above the skies, and the heaven of heavens, as more innocent than all the angels; and if angels, all angels and men were on your jury to condemn you, to be as foul and guilty as the prince of devils, yet, Rom. 8. If ye be in Christ, verse 33. Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth; verse 34. Who is he that condemneth? Rest upon the testimony of no man; there be thousands fair and spotless standing before the throne, whom the world condemned to hell, as soul and black; we may instance in Jesus Christ, his apostles and the martyrs of Christ; and thousands the blind world have written in heaven amongst the stars, and gods above the clouds, in the quire of angels, as Augustus Cesar, and thousands of these whom Jesus Christ did never own, but as enemies. O what is the worth and price of a conscience sprinkled in the blood of the Lamb? And what a precious voice is the testimony of the spirit? And what a valid pass and a Magna charta, a noble testificate, is that in heaven and eternity, if Jesus Christ say, Behold a true Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile.
Use 2. What is light, and knowledge, though you had as much as the devils have, who are torches and lamps of hell for knowledge, if all your wisdom be against Christ? 'Tis a black condemnation, Jer. 4:22. My people are foolish, they have not known me, they are sottish children, and they have no understanding. Yet they are wise as the devil is, they are wise to do evil, but to do good they have no knowledge. They go for heads of wit, and wise men, who are deep, politick, profound state-atheists, who can, with their contrivances, roll about the wheels of two kingdoms, and can stir the helm of Europe, and yet know nothing of God, but all their wit runneth in the devil's channel, to plot, brew, and hatch wickedness, lies, subvert the cause of the just, crush the widow, murder and starve the fatherless, bear down religion, set up a human, earthly, civil structure of government in Christ's kingdom. Let them go for wise men, but they are wise for the devil; let the Lord speak to such, Jer. 8:8. How do ye say, we are wise, and the law of the Lord is with us. —— Verse 9. Lo they have rejected the law of the Lord, and what wisdom is in them? Can these be wise men and great state-wits, and not rather state-sots, who reject the wisdom of God? 'Tis now counted state-wisdom in Scotland, to patch up a false peace with Amalek, contrary to the covenant of God; tho' Saul give the Amalekites and their kings peace, God will give them no peace.
Use 3. If Satan be so understanding and subtile, so active a spirit; then the Famulists err, net knowing the scriptures; for they say, the devil is nothing, yea, nor the creature any thing; but God; as (saith the bright star, Cap. viii. pag. 68, 69.) "Nothing is but God and his will: pag. 77. There is nothing in the creature, which is not the creator himself; and therefore the sun is no sooner hid, but the beams cease to be; so if God hide himself, and withdraw his hand from the creatures, they suddenly return to their nothing. But as the beam and heat, tho' they contain nothing but sun and fire, yet lookt upon essentially as they are in themselves, they are not sun and fire, but only a certain dependent, or a spark of those: right so the creature, though all it consisteth of, is God; yet considered in the own proper nature, depends upon God; 'tis consequently somewhat." And that blasphemous piece, called Theologia Germanisa, written by a priest in high Dutch, and Englished by Giles Randal, printed at London 1646, by toleration, faith, "sin and the devil is nothing; but when the creature will challenge any good to itself, as to live, know, briefly to be able to do any thing that can be termed good, as tho' that good thing were appertaining to it, then the creature averteth itself from God, and that aversion is sin. And the devil's sin was, that he did arrogate this to himself, that he was something, and would be something, and that something was his, and in his right and power; this arrogancy, to be I, to myself to be me, and to be mine, was Satan's aversion and fall, and this is still in use." So this author. Hell and the devil cannot devise subtiller and vainer blasphemy; for so the creature is not the creature, the devil is not a creature, not a spirit, not a tempter, not the prince of the air, not a roaring lion, not a liar; and the Holy Ghost, in terming the devil an angel created in the truth, should sin. 'Tis true, nothing hath being of itself, and independently, and as the cause of all being, but only God, the cause of causes, and prime fountain of being, goodness and actions: but hence it cannot follow, that creatures are not true beings, by participation of, and dependence upon the first ocean, fountain, and cause of all being; and that goodness and actions may not be ascribed to them from their derived being they have from God.
2. Christ-man, in ascribing to himself that he is man, that he doth the will of his Father, that he loved his own to the death, should sin. Which is blasphemy.
3. It is false for men or devils, and sinful arrogancy, to say, they can subsist, or do keep their being, without a dependence on God, the only first essential being; but it is contrary to all truth, that they sin, when they say, they are the creatures of God, and the dependent rays and beams that flow from God and the good creatures of God (though by created and dependent goodness) they neither lie nor sin, nor commit any act of arrogancy; then should it be sin to say that there were any creatures in the world, which is to bely the scripture.
4. 'Tis the cursed self-denial of Familists, to say, when they do good or ill, righteousness or sin; 'Tis not I, but God in me that doth all. And so that there is but one spirit of life that acteth, and working in all things in heaven, and in earth, and that is essentially God, and the will of God, which is all one with God.
5. That vain annihilation, and nothinging of ourselves, in being and working, yea to the annihilating of the man Christ, under pretence of extolling God, because God worketh immediately all good and evil in us (say they) and we but suffer God's will; and when we thus are mere patient, and suffer God to work his will in us, we are God himself, perfect as God, conform to his will, nothing in ourselves, we being no creatures, but the creator. 'That God manifested in the flesh, is God manifested in the flesh of all men; that the passion of Christ, in itself, is imaginary, but Christ crucified is our pains and tribulation, which we should welcome as Jesus Christ, and so cast all our afflictions into the furnace of Christ's torments; as it is said, let that mind be in you that was in Christ.' Bright star. Cap. 18. pag. 205. This (I say) is the dreadful blasphemy now printed and preached at London, without controulment, for the which the judgments of God, sad, and heavy, cannot be far from the land. I crave the reader's pardon, that I named such nonsenses and fooleries.
Use 4. By all means beware of sins against light, such as the devil's first sin was. 1. To sin with a witness in the breast, and a witness in heaven, is to laugh at Christ in his face. 2. 'Tis the devil's back fall; he, by such a sin, fell first from heaven, by staring God on the face, and out-daring light, God, conscience, and actual conviction; the devil, no question, by himself, was warned of his sin, and how dear it would cost him, before he sinned. Suppose we that there is a way in a mountain of ice, where thousands in former times have slidden and fallen, and bruised all their body and bones to powder, would we willingly climb the same rocks, and dream we should escape the same danger? Legions and millions of devils fell and bruised their souls to dust, on sins against light and knowledge; yet do we too daringly climb the same rocks, and sin daily against the sun-light of the gospel-grace of God, teaching us to deny ungoaliness, and worldly lusts, and the warnings of our own conscience; yea, too many go on against supernatural illumination, and we will but leap the damned devils unhappy leap; we know not that victory over one grain-weight of light, leaveth behind it pound weights of disposition and bentness to farther provoking of the Lord: a daring boldness to look God in the face, and sin turneth quickly in the very sin, as near in kin to the devil's sin, as can be; and rendereth it devilish to stoop, and fall down before the light of shining command, as the elect angels do, who receive God's commands with wings, and fly upon obedience as ministring spirits.
Use 4. Harden not your hearts, be not obstinate in evil, that is the plague of devils also. Men render themselves devils; with their own hands, they open hell, and go in, and lay the devil's chains and setters on their own will and mind, when they resolutely, and deliberately, resist God, and God in a deep judgment in them bindeth them, and they cry not; he is deservedly a captive, who twists his own cords and chains about himself. Self-induration is a self-hell, and a self-bondage. How afraid should we be to keep loose watch over the heart, or to give the reins to our own will, to go on against God? For he, 1. Needs no more, but lose an army, and a strong armed garrison of sinful thoughts, are so many spirits of hell, that are within the town already, and they can destroy us. 2. The devil is near-by to put in our heart all wickedness; he hath the command of the out-works, the humours, fancy, disposition, the spies, and posts that go in and out, the senses; we have no need to lay the bands of a covenant on the eye, and if the devil be master of all the forts and sconses without the walls, we are in no small danger.
Use 5. From Satan's power and opposition against us, we want not both motives and encouragements to watch. For, 1. Satan is a great party; he is a prince, Ephes. 2. And 2. A prince above us, the prince of the air. 3. He hath large territories; the text faith, he is the prince of this world. 4. He is not a common prince, he is a prince of kings; many kings of the earth give their power and strength to him, and so he is a principality. 5. Not that only, but he has a great army, principalities, powers, rulers, potentates; we have a mighty army of lords and kings to fight against. 6. The more spiritual the enemy be, and the more subtile to come in at closed iron gates, and through strong walls, the more dangerous; Satan, for all your keys and locks, will be at the inner door of the heart, ere ever ye know of it: you watch, and he is at your elbow, and covenanting with your watches on the walls to corrupt them. 7. When the enemy is strong, if he be wicked, so much the worse. Now, Ephes. 6:12 we fight against wickedness itself, against spiritual wickedness; the more wicked the enemy is, he hath a greater mind to fire, and destroy. 8. The more active, the worse is the enemy: Satan hath no office, but to be the butcherer and executioner of justice, and hath no distractions to withdraw him; he may attend upon bloods and soul-murthers, and walketh in a circle, compassing the earth to and fro, and goeth about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. 9. He hath friends within us, every saint is a divided party.
2. The quarrel is not money, civil liberties, laws, houses, lands, nor corruptible things, yet we run and strive for pence and pounds; but here peace of conscience, an incorruptible crown, 1 Cor. 9:25 the Lord's glory is the garland at the stake.
3. We have noble witnesses. The Father, the Lord Jesus, the Spirit of glory, the glorious angels are beholding us.
4. The battle will not last for centuries, nor for many scores of years; the issue will be quickly, death will end the controversy.
5. We have Christ on our side, he hath spoiled principalities and powers; the Lord the master of the game, hath promised us his might, his strength, all his forces, grace, wisdom, power, his angels, that are stronger than ill angels; here angels against angels, God engaged against hell.
6. We fight, but with a broken and overcomed devil, both spoiled, Col. 2:15 and disarmed, Heb. 2:14; 1 Cor. 15:55, 56.
7. There is little required of us to victory, but a strong negative; consent not, render not, treat not with the enemy, though he fire, and kill.
8. The loss is the greatest of all, eternal misery; once fully end, close and make a covenant with the enemy, and ye can hardly be ever able to rebel, or make head against your conqueror; but once a slave, and eternally a slave.
9. The garland is fair and glorious, the tree of life that is in the midst of the paradise of God, Revel. 2:7. The hidden manna, the white stone, and the new name, verse 17. Power over the nations, and the morning star, ver. 26, 27, 28. To be clothed in white, and his name confessed before Christ's Father, and his holy angels, Rev. 3:5. And he is made a pillar in the house of God, and on him is written the name of Christ's God, and the name of the city of Christ's God, Jerusalem that cometh down out of heaven, and Christ's new name, verse 12. And he sits with Christ on a throne, and with the Father of Christ, verse 12.
10. The victory is certain, and ours by promise, all which should arm us with sobriety; a drunken warrior is seldom victorious, worldly pleasures and lusts are above our head and strength; and to put on the whole armour of God, and watch and pray, is wisdom.
Use 6. Let us thankfully acknowledge our obligation to Jesus Christ, who hath cast out this prince of this world. What service owe we to Jesus Christ who hath ransomed us from such an enemy? Sure we are his debtors for ever; the captive's whole service is little enough for his ransom-payer.
And, 1. We cannot be the servants of the world, if Christ have ransomed us from this present evil world, Gal. 1:4 and from the prince thereof. It is base to be the vassal of the tyrant, from whose hands we are redeemed; the world is but Satan's vassal.
2. He is a spirit, who hath redeemed us from a cruel spirit. Christ-God is a Spirit, out-side-service cannot please him. When corruption, like poison, strikes into the heart, and the hands are pretty clean, 'tis most dangerous.
3. Redemption argueth not freedom from infirmities, but from such sins as are called the pollutions of the world. There is sin in all; but in the redeemed, sin defileth the actions, not the person, because he is washed; in the hypocrite, it blacketh both person and actions.
4. We cannot serve our ransom-payer in the strength of false principles, or natural gifts, but of his own grace.
5. Glorify God, by shewing forth his glory, for ye can add nothing really to him; and he will really glorify you, and put a weighty crown on your head, and also pay you home in your own coin, and declaratorily glorify you. I will confess him (saith Christ) before my Father, &c.
Verse 32. And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to me.
We have spoken of the power of Christ's death, and of his enemies, the world, and Satan. Now Christ speaks of the power of his death on the elect, in drawing sinners to himself.
The scope of the words is to hold forth the efficacy of Christ's death, in drawing sinners to him. In which we have these considerable points.
1. The drawing itself.
2. The drawer, I will draw, faith Christ. Christ is good, and of excellent dexterity at drawing of men to God.
3. The persons drawn, All men.
4. The persons to whom; the terminus ad quem; To me, faith Christ.
5. The condition; if I be lifted up from the earth: which is not a note of doubting, whether he would die for us, as we shall hear, but of a sure condition.
6. The way and manner of his lifting up from the earth is expounded, verse 33. To signify, to the hearers, what sort of death he would die, to wit, the death of the cross.
Of drawing itself; these are considerable.
1. The expression and metaphor of drawing.
2. The reasons moving Christ to draw; the fountain causes, and the disposition and qualifications going before drawing, in the party drawn.
3. The manner of drawing, or the way, and if it be some other thing than justification.
4. The power and efficacy of drawing.
[Gr. Elkyo] to draw; as the word [Heb. Maschach] Cant. 1:4. Draw me, we will run after thee, is first, a word of violence and strength. 1 Kings 22:34. A certain man drew a bow [Heb. Maschach] Job. 14:1. Wilt thou draw Leviathan with thy book? John 21:11. Simon Peter [Gr. Elkyse,] drew a net to land. Acts 16:19. They caught Paul and Silas [Gr. Elkysan,] and drew them to the market-place to the rulers. 2. Drawing is by wiles, and persuasion, or love; for (wiles is covered or pretended love) Judg. 4:6. Draw them (by persuasion) to mount Tabor to battle. Hos. 11:3. I will draw them [Heb. emschechem] with cords of man, with bands of love. It is such a drawing as is ascribed to the whore, (though another word) Prov. 7:21 the whore, which made the young man to decline, with the softness of her lips, in fair words, forced him. Jam. 1:14. Every man is tempted, when he is led, or drawn aside, by his own lust, and enticed. This drawing is by wiles, to steal a man off his feet. So Psal. 10:9. A bird is drawn in the net. It is then a word borrowed from bodily strength, which draweth heavy bodies out of one place to another, by strong hand. The sinner is a heavy creature. Grace is a strong thing to pull the man out of his element. There be then in Christ's drawing, 1. Violence. 2. Persuasions of love, strong love runneth from the heart, thro' all the nerves and veins of Christ's right arm, to draw a sinner to God. 3. There is art and wiles, which is nothing but masked love: for wiles cannot work on the soul to draw it, but by the taking of reason with apprehension of good; hope is the painted net that draweth men to Christ, and the hope of the prey draweth the fox to the net, the hope of food, the bird to the snare. The violence that Christ useth, is not on the reason, will, or any vital principles of the soul; no principles of life can act as principles of life, from external drawings and stirrings, life is an internal thing; the line and first point of the line, in motions of life, is from within; all the violence is done to the corrupt accidents, and sinful qualities of the soul; as to darkness, and sinful ignorance, to unbelief, frowardness and sourness to Christ, hatred of God, eminty of the carnal mind to the law of God. Put the will once on moving, and set the wheels a stirring toward Christ, (which is all the difficulty) and the principles of life smile on Christ, and move apace; but the corruption of will must be removed first: as suppose, a milstone were kept fast in the air by a strong chain of iron, there is violence required to snap in pieces the iron chain, but none at all to draw the milstone down to the earth, its falls down of its own accord; this is but a comparison; for the will, in its motion to Christ, most not only be freed from the dominion of the clog of the body of sin, and these natural chains and fetters; but Christ must put new principles, and a new life, and new wings, and new wheels; and with them act, stir, and move the will; and then, he drawing, we run, Cant. 1:4.
He that is drawn to Christ, John 6:44 is not altogether willing; as the fish hath no propension of nature to be haled out of its own element; all the propension cometh from that which setteth the will on work. A child taketh medicine, but his propension is stirred from the sugar, that pleaseth his taste. He learneth, being hired; that which sets him on work, is not the good that he seeth in the book, nor the beauty that he conceiveth to be in virtue and learning; its the apples, the babies you give him as his hire, that acteth him; nor is the will here forced. A hireling carries a burden, not with a forced will, but there is nothing in the burden that doth take his heart; but the sweating under the burden, come all from money; he is hired, and therefore doth all from the stirrings of his will, that ariseth from his wages. Men's coming to Christ, comes not from their natural good-liking they bear to Christ, but from some higher principle within, and the discovered excellency, that the spirit lays open to the soul.