SERMON LX

SERMON LX

COMMENTARY ON EPHESIANS

SERMON LX

Wherefore remember, that ye being in time past Gentiles in the flesh, who are called Uncircumcision by that which is called the Circumcision in the flesh made by hands.—VER. 11.

I SHALL not open these words by way of exposition; but shall only single out a point which is of great use, and which I shall handle and finish at this time. And it is this, What use and advantage and improvement believers should make of their having been in the state of nature, as you know all once were, whether converted sooner or later. 'Wherefore,' saith the Apostle here, 'remember that ye were once Gentiles in the flesh.'

There are two ways of handling this doctrine:— The one is by shewing the end that God hath in leaving his children in such an estate and condition; and with that I will not at all meddle here at this time.

The second is the use and improvement that is to be made of that condition by them. And what use or improvement may be made of a man's sinful condition, while he was in the state of nature, the same also may withal be made of those sins a man hath fallen into since he was in the state of grace.

The Holy Ghost here, you see, doth exhort us to remember.

'Wherefore remember,' saith he. He had discoursed at large of the state of nature in the former verses, and, saith he, Let this for ever stick with you, let it be ever in your eye: 'Wherefore remember.'

And we may make the following improvements of what the Apostle enjoins to these Ephesians:— First, It should serve us to this end, to magnify the greatness and freeness of God's grace to us. Do but see what Paul saith—for I shall give you his instance and example—in 1 Tim. 1:12. I thank Christ, saith he, for putting me into the ministry. Why so? Because I was 'a blasphemer, a persecutor, and injurious;' but, saith he, 'I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly through unbelief; and the grace of our Lord was exceeding abundant with faith and love which is in

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Christ Jesus.' If a man had been but in Paul's heart, and but seen when he considered that, 'I that was a blasphemer, &c., obtained mercy,' how he brought blasphemer and mercy together, and what a mixture of affections it wrought in his heart! My brethren, that is that which God aims at, to bring contraries at once into a man's soul, and by them to work the most glorious mixture of affections in us, both of confusion in ourselves, and of triumph in the freeness of his grace. To that end, he brings in and preserveth the sense both of his own free grace and of our own vileness, to work this mixture of affection in us. In this same 2d of the Ephesians, where the Apostle had discoursed of their having been in this natural condition, you shall find that he saith twice, 'by grace ye are saved;' he contents not himself to have said it once, but he said it again: so you have it, ver.

5, 'by grace ye are saved;' so you have it again, ver. 8, 'for by grace ye are saved.' If thou hast acknowledged it once, acknowledge it again. You know that rule,—which is an infallible one, and everlastingly holds true,—that of the Apostle in Rom. 5, where sin hath abounded, there grace aboundeth much more. I will not stand to enlarge any more upon that. For it is one of the ends that God had, which I will not now insist upon, for which he did suffer his children to lie in such a condition.

Secondly, You may improve it too for a help to your faith. Though the guilt of sin is in itself, take it in a direct way, one of the greatest opposites to faith that can be, yet God improves it in the heart of a believer to be the greatest help to faith many ways that could have been. As— 1. It helpeth our faith in respect of a sense of our own emptiness.

There is nothing that doth move a man to self-emptiness more, or gives him a greater experience of it, than the consideration of that condition he was once in by nature. For, to be sure, then thou hadst not the least power, not the least ability, not the least faculty, to think one good thought, or to put forth one holy aim towards God, to do anything that might help forward thine own salvation, or magnify and advance the glory of God. There was but one mean to salvation, and that was, to believe. God provided a remedy in Jesus

Christ, a remedy without us which requireth nothing within us but faith. Take any man that was in his natural estate, let him but

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remember that, and he must needs remember this, that he had not the least power to believe; for he was dead, he was empty of all grace, and abilities to exercise grace. And therefore the Apostle saith here in ver. 8 of the 2d of the Ephesians, 'By grace ye are saved through faith,' and that not of yourselves neither, 'it is the gift of God.' He makes this a corollary from this, that they had been 'dead in sins and trespasses,' that they had formerly been in an unregenerate state and condition. A man by the consideration thereof hath experience, that though God provided a remedy, yet he had not a hand nor a heart to lay hold upon it, but he should, if left to himself, have perished everlastingly; and that as God found him a Christ, so he must find him hands to lay hold upon him, or he had been undone.

2. It helps forward this persuasion in faith, which is the spirit of faith, that a man can never be justified by any works of his own: and, I say, this doth naturally rise from the consideration of his once being in the state of nature. It is the strongest argument—I will not much insist upon it, only so much as may now clear it—to persuade or convince the soul that he can never be justified by his own righteousness, though he hath never so much given him afresh and anew by God. Why? Because he was once in the state of nature. 'He hath saved us,' saith the Apostle, in Tit. 3:3–5, 'not by works of righteousness which we have done;' why? by what doth he prove it?

'Because we were sometimes ourselves foolish and disobedient,' &c.

(he mentioneth their natural condition in the verses before.) Our once having been in the state of nature, it spoils, it disenableth all holiness wrought in us by Christ ever to justify us before God. My brethren, the argument why we cannot be justified by our own works doth not only lie in this, that our works are imperfect; for know, they shall be perfect one day, and God if he pleased might make them perfect here: but suppose he had made us perfectly holy in this life, yet notwithstanding still we should not be justified by it.

Why? Because we were once in the state of nature, ungodly persons, and this righteousness which we have now is a borrowed righteousness, by virtue of a new covenant, the covenant of grace, and therefore it can never avail to justify, as works under the covenant of works did, for I say it is but borrowed. And therefore

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see what the Apostle saith, in this Eph. 2:9, 10. Do but mark the scope of these two verses; it is punctual to what I drive at, and now have mentioned. We are not saved by works, saith he, lest any man should boast. Why are we not saved by works? Have believers no works? Yes, but they can never be saved by works. Why? 'For,' saith he, 'we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to good works.'

Here is his reason, and his scope is manifestly this: saith he, There was a time when you had no grace, no holiness, nor nothing in you, you were utterly dead in sins and trespasses; so he saith in the former verse. Well, now you have holiness wrought in you, you are a workmanship created in Christ Jesus to good works, but because it is newly created in Christ Jesus, hence therefore you can never be saved by it. This is a manifest and clear corollary and deduction from this truth, that once they were in a natural condition, as we all were. For if we receive a new workmanship created to good works in Christ Jesus, it is then merely by grace; and we therefore receive it by Christ Jesus, because once we were dead in sins and trespasses; we were in our natural condition, hence therefore these works that flow from this new workmanship can never save or justify a man.

3. It doth teach us in the way of believing one lesson, which we should never have learned but only for the consideration that we were once in the state of nature. It is the highest lesson in faith's school,—so I may call it,—and it is this: that whensoever a man comes to Christ for justification, he should look upon himself as an ungodly person; that although he have never so much grace in him, yet because he once was in the state of nature, and an ungodly person, he is to consider himself, as in himself, so for ever. There is that clear place for it, in Rom. 4:5. The Apostle had proved, and he doth prove there, that we are justified only by faith; and he proves it from the example of Abraham our father, and he takes the example of Abraham after he had lived long in the state of grace; for he quoteth that scripture in Genesis, 'He believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness,' ver. 3. Now what saith he, 'Not unto him that worketh, but to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly,'—he works this out from Abraham's example,—'his faith is accounted for righteousness.' So that now Abraham when he did come to believe twenty thirty years

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after he was converted unto God, he still believed upon that God that justifieth the ungodly. Saith Abraham, I was an ungodly person once, and an idolater, and whatever grace I have now in me, whatever I have done since, that goes upon another account; but still as in myself, when I come to look for justification and for righteousness, I look upon myself as an ungodly person, as if I had no works at all. And that is the meaning of it, 'To him that worketh not,'—that is, that regardeth not in the point of justification, that is, as if he wrought not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly,—'is his faith accounted unto him for righteousness.' This is the faith that is the faith of righteousness, and we should never have had occasion for such a faith as this, had not it been for that condition in which we all lay in by nature.

4. It may help us against temptations of all sorts. Thou that livedst in thy natural condition, it may be many years, and didst begin to see thyself a lost man without the Lord Jesus, it was a very bold adventure of thee when thou didst first put forth thy hand to lay hold upon Jesus Christ. Thou camest then trembling to Christ for pardon of sin, when thou sawest nothing in thyself, nothing at all, there was not any suspicion of grace to be in thee, nothing but the contrary; and yet thou didst believe then. It may be God fell upon thy soul, assured thee of his love too, upon thy believing and throwing thyself upon him. Mark, thou canst never be put more to it—take thy whole course to thy dying day—than thou wast then; for the worst temptation that can befall thee is that thou art in such a state and condition. Why, when thou didst first begin to believe, thou wert in that condition, that is certain; therefore now it is but putting forth such an act of faith now in the midst of such a temptation as thou didst put forth at first, or as all believers do put forth at first; it is but to live by that faith at worst which thou didst at first begin to live by. My brethren, men use to ease their faith by looking to what is in themselves: but look upon yourselves as ungodly; suppose yourselves so, suppose the worst,—I do not say, take it for granted that your state is such, in yourselves you are such;—but suppose it; it is but making that venture upon Christ which you made at first. So that now that first act of faith thou puttest forth upon the consideration of thy former state and

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condition, doth but teach thee and prompt thee what faith thou art to live by in all temptations whatsoever.

5. It is a great help to strengthen a man's faith for perseverance.

Thou wentest on perhaps, as many of the saints have done, many years in a way of sin; thou canst not be, nor art now, in a worse condition than thou wert then in; the Lord did then, when thou wert broke, set thee up again. Why, he will do so again though thou art fallen into sin: all the sins of thy whole life lay upon thee then, and thou camest to God for the pardon of them. What doth the Apostle say in Rom. 5? It is a use he makes of this very thing. 'If when we were enemies,' saith he, ver. 10, 'we were reconciled unto God by the death of his Son.' Did God pardon you, saith he, when you first came to him, having lain in your natural condition all your days before, being enemies unto him? Now, saith he, being reconciled, being now entered into an estate of covenant and friendship with him, 'much more,' saith he, 'being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life;' that is, he putteth the emphasis both by comparing the effectualness of Christ's death and Christ's life in us, as I have elsewhere shewn. But what I quote it now for is, that if God pardoned you then, when you were enemies, and came to him out of your natural condition,—therefore remember but that condition,—surely now having reconciled you to himself, you shall be saved by the life, by the intercession of Christ. My brethren, if we should remain in a mixed condition of sinning, such as we have here in this life, even to eternity, God could pardon us, and he would do it. But relieve your hearts thus, make but a comparison of what you were in your former estate before you were converted, and make the comparison thus: I went on many years in such a way of sin, I knew not God; God all that while loved me, his heart was upon me, and he relieved himself all that while with this: I will let him alone, for I shall have him come to me in the end; and, my brethren, it is certain that God did so. Before ever Paul was converted, God had an eye upon him all that while; he had appointed the time in which he would turn him. Answerably now, thou hast still sin in thee which breaks out again and of gain, and thou thinkest it will undo thee. How doth God relieve himself now?

There is a time, saith God, that I will take this soul up into heaven,

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free him from all sin, and it is but bearing with him, and pardoning of him till then; I did it before, I did but bear with him, and forbear him till my Spirit turned him to me; now it is but bearing with him so much the longer, till such time as my Spirit shall fully sanctify him, and he be taken up unto myself. Thus, I say, help thy faith: and the consideration of God's love to thee and to his children before they were converted, is an evident strengthening of our faith.

6. And lastly, it may help our faith, by moving us to take the faster hold upon Christ. My brethren, though it is the power of the Holy

Ghost that doth help us to believe, and gives us strength to believe, yea, every degree of strength,—that we take a faster hold upon Christ every day than other, it is from the Holy Ghost,—yet the Holy

Ghost useth motives and considerations, he deals with a man herein as with a reasonable creature. Now, when a man shall look back upon his whole life, and consider the sins of his unregenerate condition, and all his sins since; may that man think with himself, If all these sins should now be mine, and I should answer for them myself, what a condition should I be in! But here is my Lord and Saviour Christ, who frees me from them all. This moves a man still to run to him as to a city of refuge, to lay faster hold upon him, to renew stronger acts of faith every day than other. And remember it for that end. If a man hang upon the top of a pinnacle, as I may so express it, the further off the ground it is, and the more danger he sees in falling, the faster hold he will be sure to take; so is it here.

And that is the reason, my brethren, why poor souls when they come first out of their natural condition, make so eagerly and desirably after Christ, and after faith; it is because they have all the sins of their unregenerate condition at once before them, which doth drive them to the Lord Jesus Christ: to him they run as unto a city of refuge, the cry of their bloody transgressions pursuing them.

Therefore now that faith should grow every day stronger and stronger, we have a greater motive unto it, for we have every day before us a greater prospect of sins. And so in all these respects it may serve to help forward faith. 'Wherefore remember,' saith the Apostle, &c.

Thirdly, Another benefit is, love unto Jesus Christ. These advantages which I mention, many of them may arise from sins

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committed since God called you, as well as before, and so may this.

You know that Mary loved much because, it is said, 'much was forgiven her.' I will give you an instance of Paul, in that place I quoted even now, 1 Tim. 1:13, though not to that purpose I now quote it. I, saith he, before was 'a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious, but I obtained mercy,' &c.; 'and,' saith he, 'the grace of our

Lord was exceeding abundant with faith and love which is in Christ Jesus.' What means he here by faith and love? Doth he mean the faithfulness and love of Christ unto him? No, but faith and love in himself wrought toward Jesus Christ; and his meaning is this, that look as I, having been a persecutor, and a blasphemer, and injurious, as I had abounded in all these before, now when God did turn me, the grace of Jesus Christ did make this advantage of it, it made me love him the more. 'The grace of our Lord was exceeding abundant in faith and love.' And remember this: the love God shewed thee when he first turned thee to him, all the time before, as I said even now, his heart and eye was upon thee, himself had appointed a time, a fulness of time, in which he resolved to turn thee; and as he set a fulness of time for Christ Jesus his Son to come into the world and to take our nature upon him, so he hath set in his eternal purpose and decree a fulness of time in which the Holy

Ghost shall come into every man's heart to turn him, and he faileth not a moment of the time; as Christ failed not a moment, but he came in due time, as the text saith, Rom. 5. I say, all the while before still his heart was upon thee; and as he saw Nathanael under the figtree, so he saw thee when thou wast in such and such courses, and he thought with himself, Well, this sinner will come home one day, and oh, as the prophet Jeremiah speaks, when shall it once be!

He longed for that time, for that time in which thy soul should actually be married unto Jesus Christ by his Holy Spirit; and when that time was come which he longed for so much, when that thou didst but begin to think of turning to him, and, as it is said of Ephraim, in Jer. 31:20, didst but smite upon thy thigh, when thou begannest first to express but the least affection to God, the least purpose of turning to him, his bowels stirred within him: 'I do remember him still; I will have mercy upon him, saith the Lord.'

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Fourthly, It likewise may be a treasury to thee for matter of godly sorrow. My brethren, it is a very great error that we may cease mourning for sin when it is once pardoned. No, it is the fittest season then to mourn; and of all graces else take your fill of that. As I heard one once say, when he was upon his deathbed, a day or two before he died,—and as he did indeed spend the time before,—saith he, 'I shall not mourn in heaven,' and so he took his fill of mourning, out of the sense of the love of God for the sins he had committed here. Therefore now be humbled for sin, mourn for it; if not in order to the pardon of it, which thou art assured of, yet to the further manifestation of that pardon; if not in relation to that, yet because it is pardoned; as you have it, Ezek. 16:63, 'That thou mayest be confounded,' saith he, 'and never open thy mouth more, when I am pacified towards thee for all thine abominations.' It is a very great question whether the love of God should break our hearts more for the sins we have committed since we have turned unto him, or those committed before? There are aggravations on both sides, which we may take in their proportion, to work upon our hearts. If we consider the sins since God wrought upon us, there is this to aggravate them, that we have sinned against that God that hath manifested his love to us, and we have sinned against the manifestation of that love. But then, on the other hand, the sins before conversion have this heightening in them too, to make us mourn, that though we knew not then that God loved us, yet certainly he bore a love to us all the while, and out of that love he forbore us, and out of that love he intended to convert us and to turn us unto him.

Fifthly, We may improve it for this end, to make us more zealous for God. It is an improvement which may be made either of our living long in our natural condition, (we may remember it for that end, to quicken our zeal for God,) or it is an improvement also of sins committed since we knew God. It was this that fired Paul so much, inflamed his heart so much, that made him labour more abundantly than all the apostles. None of the apostles persecuted the church of Christ. Peter denied him it is true, and it was a means certainly to intend his zeal; but, saith Paul, none persecuted it but I: which, as it laid him low, so it made him labour more that they all;

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he thought he had never done enough. It is the motive which the apostle Peter useth, 1 Pet. 4:2, 3, 'That he,' speaking of a Christian,

'should no longer live the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God; for the time past of our life may suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles.' As if he had said, If it were fit for you to have the pleasures of sin, yet you may be content with what you have had; let that suffice you, that you have spent so much and so long time in it; you owe nothing to the flesh, therefore it may very well suffice that it hath had so much of your time already, that for the time past of your life you have wrought the will of the Gentiles; that is, have wrought the lusts of the Gentiles. Now, saith he, you should no longer live the rest of your time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God. As it is a strong motive to be more holy, the less of a man's time remaineth in the flesh,—that is the Apostle's argument; 'The day is short,' saith he, and so in Heb.

10, 'by how much the more the day approacheth,'—so it is as strong an argument, by how much more of his time past hath been lost unto God. As by how much the less is to come, for the time to come, should be a motive unto holiness; so, so much of the time past spent in a vain conversation should be a motive too. In 1 Pet. 1:18, having been 'redeemed from our vain conversation,'—that is the Apostle's expression there,—'therefore,' saith he, 'pass the time of your sojourning here in fear: therefore be holy, as he is holy.' That is the exhortation he makes, and these are the motives he useth; compare but the 15th, 16th, and 18th verses together. Such grounds as lie fallow, when you till them you expect the greater crop from them; and so doth God from these who have spent much of their days in sin; and certainly that soil that doth bring forth weeds most, will also be fruitful of herbs when it is sown; and this God expects.

Lastly, You may make this improvement of the remembrance that yourselves were once Gentiles in the flesh, as the Apostle here speaks. Hast thou any friends that thou hast prayed for long, that are still in their natural condition, and thou thinkest there is no hope of them? Do but remember what thou thyself once wert, and how long; remember how long many of these that are now in heaven did lie in that condition ere God called them. 'Such,' saith the Apostle, in 1 Cor. 6:11, 'were some of you.' This is a certain truth,

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that there is never a sermon that hath power in it but the devil is afraid of every man in the church that is in his natural condition; he knows not but that the Holy Ghost may seize upon that man at that time: answerably have thou hope at every sermon of those whom thou hast prayed for. In 2 Tim. 2:24, speaking of the ministers of the gospel, he saith, they must be 'gentle, apt to teach, patient, in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure,' saith he, 'will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth.' If there be but a peradventure that God may do it, and though they oppose too,—for so the Apostle's expression is,—yet be patient, saith he, wait; so the ministers of God should do for those they preach to, and so shouldest thou do for those whom thou prayest for, and hast sought God to turn them. As Paul saith to wives, he bids them not to leave their husbands, in 1

Cor. 7:16; sends them home to them again with a 'What knowest thou, O wife, but thou mayest be a means to turn thy husband?' So, hast thou prayed, and prayed long, for a child, for a husband, for a friend, and still they oppose,—put the case so, for so Paul doth in that place of Timothy,—yea, suppose they have been under a powerful means, and have not been won by the word; the apostle

Peter puts that case too, in 1 Pet. 1:3; yet after all this, 'What knowest thou?' Still pray, still use means; it may be, some little cross, though they have had many to break their hearts, shall work more than all the rest; some by-speech spoken may fall into their hearts, and turn them, when many pertinent exhortations that respect their conditions avail not, though it may be thou hast wondered how they could sit under such exhortations without being moved. And when they have not been won by the word, saith Peter, 1 Pet. 3:1, 2, they may be won by thy conversation.

And so much now for this point, which is indeed a point of great use unto us, and which we are apt, when we have lain long in the state of unregeneracy, to forget, and sail out of the sight of it. You see the Apostle here exhorts these Ephesians to the remembrance of it, and himself, the highest Christian that ever was, lived in the continual sight of it. These and such like uses are to be made of it.

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A SERMON ON EPHESIANS

2:14–16—PART I

For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the wall of partition between us; having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace. And that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby [or, in himself].

IT were a manifest folly, in the judgments of most knowing men, to go about to use in any set way exhortatory motives to persuade to peace and reconciliation the people of God amongst us. The provocations are so high, and exasperations so fresh and increasing, that if I had an audience made up of those alone that have the swaying power of either, and together therewith their most favourable attention, and interest in affection, without prejudice, I should not know how to attempt it with any hope of success. But though the animosities of men's spirits, augmented by coincident circumstances, are gone beyond the power of the persuasions of men in this present paroxysm, yet they are not above the power of God's wisdom and providence, nor the force and efficacy of Christ's blood. You may therefore, in the midst of all contrary appearances, give me leave, though I cannot hope to persuade, yet to believe, (the Catholic Church, and the Communion of Saints, they are in my creed,) and because I believe, therefore to speak, and so to give you an account of my faith as to this issue. Let your faith but wait, and give God time for it, and leave him to effect it his own way. And to this end I have taken this text, Christus pax nostra: 'For he is our peace, who hath made both one,' &c. And my inference is, that therefore the saints shall, and must be one, and reconciled in the end. And this is the best news which in these times can be told you, the seasonablest we can hear of, and is indeed one great part of the glad tidings of the gospel itself, without which it were imperfect, which Christ himself, our peace, who came to

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purchase it, as these words shew, so came to preach, as the very next verse, ver. 17, hath it.

The main and principal intendment of these words is, to give an eminent instance of the efficacy of Christ's mediation, in slaying the enmities that are amongst the people of God themselves, and of his being 'our peace' in that respect; instancing in that, the greatest that ever was, between Jew and Gentile, whom yet, as here, he hath made both one, and hath broken down the partition-wall between us. And however he mentions, in the 16th verse, our reconciliation made with God, of which elsewhere he treats more largely, yet here but by way of confirmation of our faith in this other, of reconciliation amongst ourselves. For the aim of its introduction here is but to shew, how that Christ, in reconciling us to God himself, carried it so, and did it under such a consideration and respect, as necessarily drew on and involved our reconciliation one with another; namely this, that he 'reconciled us unto God in one body,' among ourselves. It is a happy clause, that addition, 'one body,' and on purpose inserted thereinto, to shew that when God was to transact our peace and reconciliation to and with Christ hanging upon the cross, he would not, nor did not, acknowledge himself to him, then reconciled to us by him, upon any other terms, than as withal we were looked at, and represented to him by Christ, as one body, and therein reconciled one to another, whilst we were reconciled to himself.

The connexion of the 16th verse with the 15th discussed: and how that reconciliation to God in one body, ver. 16, is to be understood; whether of that reconciliation wrought for us, or in us.

I meet but with one eminent difficulty in the coherence and contexture of these words, and that is the connexion of these two verses, ver. 15, 16; as namely of these words, 'and that he might reconcile us to God,' ver. 16, &c., with the former, ver. 15, 'having abolished the enmity,' &c. Now this enmity mentioned, ver. 15, is evidently intended of the enmity between Jew and Gentile, as is clear by its connexion with ver. 14, 'who hath made of twain one, and broken down the partition-wall; having slain the enmity.' Now the twain, or the two, thus made one, between whom this enmity was, is not God and we, but the Jews and the Gentiles, of whom he

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had spoken in the former verses, for he adds, 'that he might create both in one new man,' which could not be said of God and us.

Now then the difficulty is, What reconciliation to God in one body that should be, ver. 16, which the Apostle makes the consequent of having slain the enmity between these Jews and Gentiles? For the connexion seems to import the one a consequent of the other, and the words to run thus: 'Having slain the enmity between themselves,' ver. 15, 'that he might reconcile them unto God,' ver.

16. Now this reconciliation to God must be either meant of the work of reconciliation wrought in us, whereby we turn unto God, as 2

Cor. 5:20, 'Be ye reconciled unto God;' or that reconciliation which Christ wrought for us unto God. And whether of these should be intended, is the question; and so withal the question is, Whether those words, ver. 16, 'and that he might reconcile both unto God,' are to be cast unto the 15th verse, as a part of the discourse thereof, or do not rather begin a new and entire discourse, full and complete within themselves?

For the first stand many interpreters, and the chief reason for that opinion is the coherence of these words with those next immediately foregoing. 'Having abolished the enmity, that he might create (κτίσῃ) in himself, of twain, one new man, and that he might reconcile both unto God,' &c. The resolve of which seems to be this, that Christ having on the cross wrought in himself this great work for us, to slay the enmity between us, and make both one, by the sacrifice of himself, and this as the antecedent work; that yet there remained two other, as consequent works, as the effects that follow therefrom: namely— 1. To create both one new man, so making actually peace between themselves. And— 2. To bring them both into an actual state of reconciliation with God, by working reconciliation in them towards God; so making them one body.

And the reason for this interpretation further is, that both these two are brought in and yoked in the like tenor of speech: 'that he might create,' &c., 'and that he might reconcile;' as if they were like parallel fruits of that antecedent work, 'slaying that enmity,' mentioned, ver. 15. And according to this parallel, look as creating

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them both into 'one new man' is, and must be acknowledged to be, understood of a work wrought in them, viz., the new creation; so also that other, the reconciling them to God, must be understood of the work of reconciliation unto God wrought in them also. And so the new man they are created into, ver. 15, answereth but unto that one body they are reconciled unto, ver. 16, being one and the same.

And that which increaseth the difficulty is, that if it should be understood of reconciliation unto God himself, wrought by Christ upon the cross, how such a reconciliation should be the consequent of his slaying first the enmity between the saints themselves; so as it should be said he slew the enmity among the saints, that he might reconcile them to God? This is not consonant to reason, seeing rather that, according to the harmony and dependence of theological truths, his reconciling them unto God upon the cross is the antecedent and cause of his slaying the enmity of them mutually; because our reconciliation one with another is rather depending upon, and the fruit of reconciliation with God himself, who being first reconciled to us, all things else are reconciled one to another: as subjects that have been at variance, when reconciled to their prince or head, become reconciled one to another among themselves.

But yet I rather incline to think that other kind of reconciliation between God and us, wrought by Christ for us on the cross, to be intended, ver. 16, and so to be brought in as a parallel with that former reconciliation wrought by him also on the cross, between and on behalf of the Jew and Gentile mutually: and so this 16th verse to begin a new and entire discourse, apart and sejunct from the other, namely, of our reconciliation with God, as the former verses had discoursed of that reconciliation which is wrought for us between ourselves.

And so the main proportions of this parallel are these: That as that reconciliation between Jew and Gentile, wrought by Christ on the cross, had two parts, 1. Positive, making both one; 2. Privative, the removing the impediment that caused the enmity, ver. 15, the consequent of which is, the creating of both into 'one new man:' so the Apostle discoursing, ver. 16, of this other reconciliation with God, he therein intends to make like two parts thereof, answerable

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to the other, only with a transposition of speech. 1. Positive, reconciliation to God in one body; 2. Privative, 'having slain that enmity,' namely, against God. The resolution of all which is as if he had said, Whereas there was a double enmity, one to God, another among ourselves, Christ that is our peace hath dealt with both. He having slain the enmity between themselves, hath made both one; and having slain in like manner the enmity to God, hath reconciled us unto God.

Now that which clears and confirms this connexion is— First, That this renders a more full and just analysis of the words, which is this:— 1. That in ver. 14 he in general proclaims Christ our peace. And then— 2. In the next words proceeds to the two particular branches wherein Christ is made our peace:— (1.) Between ourselves mutually.

(2.) Between God and us. And then— 3. In the handling of either, observeth this parallel in either, namely, between a privative part, slaying the enmity, and a positive part, reconciling, and making one, so enumerating the complete requisites to either.

Then, secondly, To shew that these are indeed two disjunct and complete discourses, of two such heads of reconciliation, he severs the first, ver. 15, from the second, ver. 16, by adding a full period, and as it were a selah to the first, thus sealing up the 15th verse, 'so making peace;' namely, fully and completely, that peace which had been spoken of among Jew and Gentile, that so he might enter anew and distinctly from this, upon that other, of reconciling both unto

God, which he doth, ver. 16.

Then, thirdly, For the close of that l6th verse, that he should in like manner bring in a second time these words, 'having slain the enmity,' upon occasion of his mentioning our reconciliation to God, argues still more his aim to be to cut off the 16th verse from the 15th. For if those words, ver. 16, 'that he might reconcile us to God,' had referred to that other, 'having slain the enmity,' ver. 15, as a part of that sentence not made complete; then this second, 'having

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slain the enmity,' needed not to have been: but doth rather shew that there is another enmity between God and us, distinct from the former intended by him; and so the slaying thereof, joined properly and genuinely with its fellow-conjugate, namely, reconciliation unto

God, as the former, ver. 15, had in like manner been connected with its conjugate also, making both one among themselves. If indeed the Apostle had carried his speech in ver. 15 thus, Having abolished the enmity between them, that he might create one new man, and that he might reconcile both unto God in one body, and so ended his discourse of it, then these two in their reference could not have been parted; but he moreover adding to their reconciling to God, a second time, these words, 'having slain the enmity,'—namely, that between God and us,—he so maketh the 16th verse an entire sentence and period of itself, as the 14th and 15th do make in like manner a full period of themselves: and so the 14th and 15th are to be read and joined thus: 'Christ hath made both'—Jew and Gentile—'one, having slain the enmity' that was between them; thus

Beza and others: and answerably the 16th to this sense, with an easy and fair transposition, 'and having slain,' or, 'and hath slain the enmity,'—namely, between God and them,—'that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross,' on which he also slew that enmity.

And whereas it will be said that the word καὶ, or 'and,' which the 16th verse begins with, seemeth to cast the reference of this upon the former 'slaying the enmity,' ver. 15, and so the latter to be but an emphatical repetition of the same; I answer, that that 'and,' ver. 16, is but all one with 'moreover,' as it is often used, as introducing a new and distinct discourse, added to a former. And so—

Fourthly, As thus understood, the parallel is rendered yet more full; for as there is here found a double enmity, and an answerable double slaying of each, in order to a double reconciliation, so to make up the parallel, which the Apostle intended, yet the more full, there are two further clauses added to each, fitly answering one to another. For as of the one he says, 'having abolished the enmity in his flesh,' ver. 15; so of the other, the latter, in like manner he speaks, 'having slain that enmity in himself,' ver. 16, as the Greek bears, and the margin varies it.

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Now as to any difficulty proposed, that which is left as material to be considered is only this, How his having slain that enmity between us ourselves first, should be conceived to be the antecedent to reconcile us to God.

Now for answer hereunto— First, Besides, that according to that connexion which I have given, the 16th verse should thus make up a full period of itself, and doth keep itself entire within itself, as the fourteenth and fifteenth verses also do, and so not at all referring to the 'slaying enmity,' ver.

15, as hath been explained, which coherence doth at once cut off the whole of that objection at first made: but besides this,—supposing it might take in, and refer to that slaying the enmity, ver. 15, among saints, as the antecedent, or at least, ingredient unto their reconciliation with God,—there may perhaps this just assoilment be given thereto— That, secondly, in order of nature, all enmity must first be supposed removed ere friendship, or, as here, reconciliation can be supposed to be procured: the reason of which is obvious to any judgment; first, peace, by slaying enmity, and then good-will. And so upon this and the like grounds, these words, 'that he might reconcile unto God in one body,' may well be supposed to have a secondary aspect to his having first abolished the enmity between ourselves, ver. 15, as well as our enmity against God, ver. 16. And the Apostle's adding 'in one body,' which he studiously hath done, shews that they being under that notion and respect reconciled unto God by Christ upon the cross, that then withal at the same time, yea, in order of nature, first their enmities one against another were removed, as well as against God himself. All sorts of enmities being to be removed ere any sort of reconciliation attained, surely under that notion they cannot be considered reconciled to God, but withal it must be said, they are at peace, and so made one among themselves; at least, these two do mutually argue each the other. If indeed there had been room left for us to conceive that our reconciliation with God had been so wrought by Christ for us, as for each person considered only single and apart,—though even so it was intended, namely, for each and every person; and this is involved in that other,—then indeed it might have been supposed

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that their enmities to God had been slain and done first away, and reconciliation wrought with him first by one primary act, and then after that, ex consequenti, as a secondary work, our reconciliation amongst ourselves had been cast in, and followed thereupon; or, which is all one, wrought and procured by a second act or intention of Christ's. But if in one and the same very individual act and intention of their being reconciled to God, they were considered as 'one body,' and that this was put in as an involved ingredient thereinto; so you must necessarily suppose their own mutual enmities done away also, at least, together therewith, by one and the same individual act also; and this consideration, if there were no other, is a sufficient salvo to the forementioned difficulty. Now how this reconciliation unto God in one body was performed by Christ on the cross, I shall handle afterwards.

I shall trouble you no further with untying this knot, or the drawing out into one smooth and continued line the series of this coherence. For, however, take the 16th verse in which of these senses you please, the words in the 14th and 15th verses are sufficient bottom for the heads of that whole discourse I intend; for these words, ver. 14, 15, do undeniably, as all must confess, treat of the reconciliation of the people of God among themselves, and sufficiently hold forth these two generals:—

1. The work of Christ upon the cross to procure it: 'He hath made both one, having slain the enmity in his flesh;' and hath virtually, in the virtue of his death, broke down the partition-wall that occasioned it, which in his providence he after ruined. And—

2. The work of Christ by his Spirit in us, creating both one new man in himself.

And now take the other words, ver. 16, in either sense, or in both, which are not inconsistent; however, this is observable even therein, that the Apostle was not content to have setly pursued the saints' reconciliation among themselves, in those two whole verses, the 14th and 15th, but when he speaks of reconciliation with God also, ver. 16, he must needs add and put in that clause also, 'in one body;' the mutual reconciliation then of the saints is, upon all accounts, the principal intendment of the Apostle here.

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The division of the words.—The principal heads of this discourse set out, which are four.

Now for the division of the words, that will fall according to either the larger, or else the more special scope of the words. If we take them in that first and largest comprehensiveness, as treating of both our reconciliation with God, and between ourselves also, and how Christ our peace is both, so they admit of this division and analysis:— I. That the general theme and argument of the whole should be premised in these words, Christus pax nostra, Christ is our peace; which is the inscription of a proclamation of him under one of his eminent royal titles, Christ the great and perfect peacemaker. And then— II. Proclaiming him such, in all the branches or particulars thereof that may argue him such.

First, As a universal peacemaker, as both being a peace between all sorts of persons at variance, and also extending his mediation to the removing of all sorts of enmities. First, persons; as—

1. Between us—that is, among ourselves—abolishing τὴν ἔχθραν, that enmity, ver. 15.

2. Between God and us, slaying that enmity also, ver. l6; thus an universal peacemaker.

Secondly, The establisher of a thorough and perfect peace, both for time past and time to come.

1. Who hath already made and concluded it, as in his own person, ὁ ποιήσας, he hath made it, λύσας, he hath dissolved and broke down, and so not now to be done. And— 2. The same secured for the future, even for ever; these enmities being abolished, ver. 14, 15; that is, utterly abolished, as never to get head; slain, ver. 16, never to revive.

Thirdly, Our complete peace, as in respect to all parts that concur to it, and ways of peace to accomplish it, and make it sure. First, in respect of parts: both—

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1. Negative, by removing and destroying even the very occasion of the enmity, the partition-wall of ordinances, breaking that down; and again, ver. 16, slaying the enmity itself.

2. Positive, expressed in two words, 'reconciling,' ver. 16; 'making both one,' ver. 14, 15. Then— Fourthly, By all sorts of ways accomplishing it:—

1. Representing us in his person, as in one body, ver. 16, personating all his people, and under that consideration reconciling them to God and one another.

2. Meritoriously, taking on his person, as representing their persons, all their enmities 'in his flesh,' or the human nature, says the 15th verse, hanging on the cross, ver. 16, and so offering up that as one common sacrifice to God for all; he is said to 'reconcile all in one body by the cross,' ver. 16.

3. Efficiently, by his Spirit, creating both into one man; of all conjunctions the nearest, and that creation wrought in himself, of all foundations of union the firmest; for they being both created one new man, and united in and to himself, he is able, and will be sure to hold them for ever together. And to put the more evident notice upon all he had said, or should say of him in this respect, he intermingleth in the midst of his discourse this selah, or note of observation, 'so making peace:' take notice of it, says he,—so, or thus, universally, perfectly, completely, and eternally.

And this is one account of the words, and indeed of the whole, and every part and particle thereof.

But if we single forth that more special and principal aim before mentioned, Christus pax nostra, as in relation to making peace amongst us, the elect of God; so, instead of any accurate division of them, I shall only draw forth these four propositions, which will suck into themselves the strength of what these words have in them as to this great point. Namely— I. The story of the greatness of that enmity—the greatest that ever was—between Jew and Gentile, before Christ's coming, and a while after, by reason of those Jewish rites and ordinances of the ceremonial law, which the Apostle by a metonymy termeth therefore the enmity.

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II. The story of Christ's transactions on the cross, by which he virtually slew and abolished this enmity, and meritoriously made them both one, and reconciled both in one body.

III. The story of their actual accord, and becoming one, as the records of the Acts of the Apostles, and they in their Epistles, have presented it unto our view; and the principles by which, and the providences whereby, that partition-wall was broke down, and the enmity allayed, chiefly by creating both one new man in himself.

IV. That the instance of all this was intended by God as a precedent and leading cause under the New Testament, to assure us that whatever should fall out in after-ages, of difference amongst the saints, yet still however they both might and should in the issue be reconciled, and their differences in a like manner allayed and compounded; as also to shew the ways and principles whereby to effect it.

I. The greatness of that enmity which was between Jew and Gentile, until Christ purchased their reconciliation.

For the first, I have to present you out of this text with an instance of the deepest and most lasting enmity, between two sorts of men, chosen to be one body unto God, that shared as then the whole world between them—Jew and Gentile—that ever was, or will be in all ages, which yet was compounded by Christ. View we it first in the general, through those expressions the text useth of it.

The Apostle sets it forth to us, not barely by terms of distance and division, calling them τοὺς δύο, both, or two, and τὰ ἀμφότερα, twain, not simply of being enemies in an ordinary way, but speaks of an enmity in the abstract, τὴν ἔχθραν; a special enmity it was, not that which is common to man against man,—who, as the Holy Ghost that knows our nature tells us, are mutually hateful to, and hating one another, Tit. 3:3,—but a knotted, twisted, combined enmity; that the word λύσας, dissolved it, ver. 14, imports. A stirring, active enmity, that lay not sleeping; this the word καταργήσας, ver. 15, implies. He made it inefficacious, took away the strength, the energy, the operative virtue of it. Yea, and if you will take in, and borrow from the expression, ver. 16, ἀποκτείνας, he slew it, it was a living, spriteful enmity, yea, that had a rage in it; we on the contrary call such a one deadly, because it aims at life. The word bears up to

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this, non tam occidit, quam trucidavit, Christ did not barely kill it, but bloodily, with a rage, as provoked with the fierceness of the enmity itself; for the rage thereof was cruel, and reached up to heaven, as the Scripture speaks.

Likewise an old hatred, as the prophet Ezekiel, chap. 25:15, in his time termed it, speaking of that between the Philistim-Gentiles and the Jews; but this was now grown much older, in all of two thousand years' continuance,—even from the first time wherein

God separated the people from the rest of the nations, as in Abraham by circumcision he did; a wall of separation, if I may pursue the metaphor in the text, whose foundation was laid in Abraham's time when circumcision was first given, for that began the quarrel; reared up higher by Moses' rites, further lengthened and stretched out in all the times of the prophets, throughout all ages, until Christ, who came to abolish it and break it down.

And, lastly, a universal hatred in the Jews to all nations, and in all nations to the Jews; even all that were called τὰ ἔθνη ἐν σαρκὶ,

'Gentiles in the flesh,' and 'Uncircumcision,' by that which is called 'Circumcision,' ver. 11, as all nations were termed and reckoned by them.

Thus God foreordained, that as to honour his Son in reconciling us to himself, he permits the greatest sins and enmities to be in the hearts and lives of those he intends to save, against himself; so likewise, that the highest and toughest animosities should be found amongst those, when he should come upon earth, that were ordained to be his people, to shew the sovereign power and efficacy of his mediation, in constituting them one new man in himself.

These but in general for a foundation out of the text.

The story of the particulars of it hath two branches:— 1. What it was between them before Christ, and the conversion of either to the Christian faith.

2. What after conversion, and that both equally had embraced Christ.

First, Take the elevation of it before, both out of the Scripture and other authentic testimonies: both— 1. Of the Jew against the Gentile.

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2. Of the Gentile against the Jew.

And I shall withal, by the way, make a parallel of the one with the other.

1. Of the Jew against the Gentile. The quarrel was begun indeed by them; they out of their carnal fleshly boasting of their privilege to be the only people of God, as they were, scorned and contemned the poor Gentiles. The 11th verse insinuates this, 'Ye were Gentiles, who were called Uncircumcision by that (nation, namely,) which is called the Circumcision in the flesh.' It began in nicknames, and the Jews were they that began to call names first, as interpreters have observed. And it began early, almost from the time when the seed of Abraham received that first badge of difference. You hear of it in Jacob's time: 'To give our sister to one that is uncircumcised, that were a reproach to us,' Gen. 34:14. And after, amongst all the race of the Jews, both good and bad, in all ages, the same was used as a reproach: as by Samson, Judges 15:18; by Jonathan, 1 Sam. 14:6; by David, chap. 17:26, 36; by Saul, chap. 31:4. They judging it, though but a circumstance, yet far worse than death itself, to 'die by the hands of the uncircumcised,' or have 'the daughters of the uncircumcised triumph,' 2 Sam. 1:20. And in the prophets,

'uncircumcised' and 'unclean' are all one, Isa. 52:1. When they would accurse one to the most accursed death,—as all nations, according to what they have esteemed the worst of deaths, they have accordingly expressed such like curses, as Abi in malam crucem, among the Romans,—Let him die, said the Jew, the death of the uncircumcised; as Ezek. 28:10. When they imprecated the most ignominious burial, Thou shalt lie in the midst of the uncircumcised, Ezek. 31:18. A person excommunicate, accursed, and a heathen, was to them all one: 'Let him be as a heathen,' Matt.

18. And they distinguish themselves from the Gentiles, by appropriating the title of sinners wholly to the Gentiles: 'We that are

Jews by nature, and not sinners of the Gentiles,' Gal. 2:15. And God, foreseeing how apt their spirits were to grow from hence into an abhorrency of all other nations, made a special law to prevent it, concerning some particular nations: Deut. 23:7, 'Thou shalt not abhor an Edomite, for he is thy brother; thou shalt not abhor an Egyptian, because thou wert a stranger in his land.'

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Next, see this enmity expressed in their carriages and dealings with the Gentiles. They not only would not communicate with them in sacris, in holy things, but their zeal was such, and this after the light of Christianity appeared to them, that they would have killed

Paul, Acts 21:31, for no other crime but this: ver. 28, 'This is the man that hath brought Greeks'—that is, heathens—'into the temple, and hath polluted the holy place.' Nay, they accounted it an abominable thing, ἀθέμιτον,—as in 1 Pet. 4:3 the word is rendered, 'abominable idolatry,' and so the Vulgar here,—to keep company, that is, familiarly, yea, or so much as to come unnecessarily to one of another nation, founding all this upon that which was a peculiar command, upon a special ground, against the Ammonites and Moabites, Deut. 23:6, 'Thou shalt not seek their peace nor their prosperity all thy days for ever.' This they extended to all nations, and this to that rigidity that they would not do ordinary courtesies of common humanity:— 'Non monstrare vias eadem nisi sacra colenti,' says Juvenal, lib. xiv., Satyr.; not tell a man's way to a poor wanderer, an act of civility: non ad fontem deducere, to lead to a well for water, which was an act of charity. The woman of Samaria therefore wonders at Christ: John 4:9, 'How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, who am a woman of Samaria? for the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans.' Each one of you, says Christ, will, and that on the Sabbath-day, loose his ox or his ass from the stall, and lead him away to watering, Luke 13:15. But they would not do this much for a heathen, though ready to perish for thirst; not shew him a well hard by, says the same Juvenal, in the same place—

'Quæsitum ad fontem solos deducere verpos'— not give a cup of cold water, which Christ makes the least of courtesies, save only to their own verpi, as we say, vermin, and circumcised ones. So Juvenal scoffs them, et hoc Judaicum jus,—this is the Jewish law.

And no wonder of all this, for indeed they accounted all the heathen as beasts made to be destroyed, upon the mistake of their commission concerning those seven nations, Deut. 7:1, given up by God the judge of the world, in whose sovereignty it was, into their hands. Even Christ, speaking in the common language of the Jews,

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calls the Syrophenician woman, and all the Gentiles, dogs, Matt.

15:26, as the Turks call Christians at this day. Yea, out of their own records, some of the Rabbinical interpreters, upon Deut. 21:11, have delivered that they accounted them feris deteriores, worse than beasts; et nuptias eorum innuptas, their marriages no marriages; and therefore, nec homicidium, nec adulterium, in eos committi posse,—that it was no adultery to abuse their wives, no murder to kill any of them, no robbery to take from them, by never so much violence. Which Josephus Albo justifies, in his disputation adversus

Christianos, giving this reason, that he that lived without their law, and worshipped false gods, was a common enemy,—et in eum illicitum nihil,—and nothing can be unlawful that is done against him by them.

Can malice be supposed to rise any higher? And yet in that nation it did against these poor Gentiles. 1 Thess. 2:16, 17, 'Contrary they are to all men;' and it follows, 'forbidding us to preach to the Gentiles, that they might be saved.' The Apostle, speaking it by way of aggravation of their malice, seems to intend it not only consequenter, that they denied them the gospel without which they could not be saved; but further, intentionaliter, what was in their intentions, that suppose they had thought the gospel a means of salvation, they would have forbade it to be preached to them, 'that they might not be saved.' Is there not work for a peace-maker now?

This on the Jews' part.

And can we think the Gentiles were behind-hand with them? And yet the truth is, the Gentiles were the more moderate of the two, as the 11th verse here, and the parable of the good Samaritan that poured oil into a stranger's wounds, and the story of the Samaritan woman, all shew; for she lays fault on the Jew, that he would not ask water of a Samaritan, and not è contra. It were too much to reckon up all that might be out of their poets and historians. I will but so far make mention of some testimonies of the Gentiles' hatred against the Jews, as they make up a parallel with what hath been said of the Jewish enmity against the Gentiles; thereby to manifest that the Gentiles were even with them, if not in malice, yet in jeers and scorns.

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1. Did the Jews reproach them as uncircumcised, as you heard?

The Gentiles, on the contrary, scorned the Jews as much for circumcision, calling them apellas, Judæus apella; curtos, so Horace; recutitos, so Martial; and Persius, verpos;§ as also Juvenal. There is wit in these, but so unseemly, as I must forbear to English them.

They were jeers at their circumcision.

2. Did the Jews abhor the Gentiles, and not converse with them?

The Gentiles, on the other side, would hold their noses at the Jews when they met them, and cry, fætentes Judæos, stinking Jews. Vel fortuitum eorum occursum oculis horrebant, animo persequebantur,—they abhorred the sight of them, if by chance they met them. And— 3. Esteemed them of all nations the worst. So Marcus the emperor, but passing through Judea to Egypt, and observing their manners, dolenter dicitur exclamasse, O Marcomanni, O Quadi, O

Sarmatæ, tandem alios vobis deteriores inveni; which was as if, when we would express the wretchedness of any nation we accounted most vile, we should say, O you cannibals, yea, barbarous savages, that are found amongst the wildest Africans or Americans, we have at length found and light upon a generation of men worse by far than you. In this manner doth he speak of these Jews.

4. As the Jews turned it into a curse to be a Gentile, as you heard; so the Gentiles in their cursings turned the like upon the Jews. Jer.

24:9 'And I will deliver them to be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth for their hurt, to be a reproach, and a proverb, and a taunt, and a curse, in all places whither I shall drive them.' It was

God's own retaliation upon them, and fulfilled. As we now, so the heathen then imprecated on themselves, I were a Jew if I did so or so; and thus in all places, as the prophet hath it; yea, Jer. 42:18, they were made 'an execration, an astonishment, and a curse.' What can be more?

5. As they esteemed all other nations as dogs and beasts, the Gentile doth the like by them, and reckons them but as swine, the most contemptible of beasts, and this in a witty retortion from the Jewish practices— 'Nec distare putant humana carne suillam;'

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putting this interpretation upon their forbearance to eat swine's flesh, that mankind and swine were alike to them.

6. As they hated all nations, so the Gentiles resented accordingly this catholic spirit in the Jew against them all, which turned their hearts universally to hate them. Ahasuerus had one hundred and twenty-seven provinces, amongst which the Jews, as we read, had enemies in them all, Esther 8:9, and 9:16, compared, whom the king's letters restrained with difficulty from falling on them in every nation. And they accuse and arraign the Jews—

1. As hurtful to kings and provinces, Ezra 4:15; as continually moving sedition, in the same place, Ezra 4:15, 'They are a people that of old time have moved sedition.' And the same aspersion went current among the Romans and Greeks many hundred years after.

'These men being Jews, do exceedingly trouble our city,' Acts 16:20, say the Philippians to the magistrates of the city. They lay their accusation that it was the genius of the nation: it is their known custom so to do.

2. As unsociable to the rest of mankind. Antiochus's friends, in Diodorus, pleaded thus against the Jews: 'That they alone of all nations were unsociable, and not capable of any mixture or coalescency with them, no, not at table:' μηδένι ἄλλῳ ἔθνει τραπέζης κοινωνεῖν τὸ παράπαν. In Esther you have the same intimated, chap.

3:8, 'There is a certain people,' speaking of the Jews, 'scattered abroad, and dispersed among the people, whose laws are diverse from all people,' &c.

3. The Gentiles accused them as enemies to all nations; so in that of Diodorus, μηδὲ εὐνοεῖν, that they wished well to none; and not only so, πολεμίους ἐπιλαμβάνειν πάντας, to account all others enemies. So also Tacitus, lib. v., Adversus omnes alios hostile odium, a hostile and deadly hatred is in them against all others; yea, μισάνθρωποι, haters of mankind; so also it follows there in Diodorus. It is strange the Apostle should express it in the very same manner, and near the same words, 'They are contrary to all men, and God they please not,' 1 Thess. 2:16, 17.

4. As they founded their hatred against the Gentiles on this, that they were worshippers of other gods, so the Gentiles accused and detested them as hostes immortalium deorum, enemies of the

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immortal gods. And religion was the cause of all this; these rites here were the partition-wall.

And, lastly, under the notion of such a manner of persons as these, were they universally hated by all nations, as the books of the prophets do shew, especially Ezekiel and Jeremiah, where the cup is carried to all nations, for no other crime than their enmity to the Jews; likewise the books of Esther and Ezra. And accordingly persecuted they were upon that account; banished out of Rome again and again, as by Claudius, Acts 18:2, so by other emperors; and at last they destroyed both their city and commonwealth.

You have seen the enmities of both; and was there not cause to wish and pray, as David, Psalm 14, upon the like occasion, Oh that the Salvation (or, Saviour and Messiah) were come out of Sion, or,

The desire of all nations were come!

This for the story of their enmity before their conversion; that of their enmity and dissensions that continued after, though proper to this, yet comes more fitly in, and cannot be disjointed from the third part of this discourse, where it will have its place in order, to shew how those enmities were actually allayed and composed between them.

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A SERMON ON EPHESIANS

2:14–16—PART II

What hath been done on the person of Christ himself on the cross, virtually and representatively, towards our reconciliation mutual.—A twofold reconciliation between the saints themselves, in and by Christ, held forth in the words, and distinguished.

THIS second is to unfold the transactions by which Christ hath virtually slain and abolished all this enmity, and procured this peace.

Now, to make way for the distinct handling of what belongs to this second head, from what is to follow in the third, and to sever the one from the other, I desire that in the text this difference may be observed between the things that Christ hath done for the effecting and accomplishment of that peace:—

1. What was transacted and done simply and abstractly in his own person alone, for the procurement of it, on the cross.

2. What he works efficiently in us, (though concretely, in himself, upon us,) by his Spirit, and through providences, to the full accomplishment thereof.

The first of these belongs to this second head; the last of these takes up the third head.

Only for the clearing of this method I shall desire it may be noticed, how evidently in the text these two sorts of workings by Christ are distinguished each from other, and ranged there in the order I have proposed them.

Here is manifestly a double making of these twain one: the one expressed in time past; the other as to come, and to be perfected.

First, ὁ ποιήσας, who 'hath made both one,' ver. 14, and λύσας, 'having abolished,' ver. 15, in his own flesh personally. Secondly, ἵνα χτίσῃ, 'that he might make both one.' The first antecedent, and already done; the other consequent, and to be accomplished: the latter distinguished from the former as the consequent or effect

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from its cause. 'He hath made both one, that he might create both into one new man;' the influence and virtue of the first bringing about the latter. And— Secondly, Accordingly in the original these two are further distinguished by words of a different import, though our translation hath taken no notice of it, but hath folded them up each under one and the same word, 'making one,' so making them one indeed. The first, ποιήσας, 'making one,' ver. 14, is of a more large signification, and is applicable and extendible to express, as here also is intended, a virtual, influential making us one in his own person, before we are made one in ourselves. The latter, χτίσῃ, more restrictive, properly and strictly signifies creation, 'creating both one,' or making both one by a new creation. And therefore, 'in one new man' is added, as the product of this second kind of making. And this imports a physical efficiency and working upon us, a moulding and forming us by creation into this oneness among ourselves, although the mould in which this latter is wrought and cast is his person also, 'in himself;' yet not in himself, considered personally and alone, but as uniting us to himself, and so working upon us concretely, through, in, and by himself. And therefore—

Thirdly, They differ, the first being performed in himself singly, personally, when he was in this world, and especially on the cross, and is therefore expressed as past,—'hath made both one,'—as a business done and perfected already, as much, in respect of such a way making one, as ever it shall be; the other to be effected afterwards in us, in our several ages, and by degrees, as the new creature is; 'that he might create of two one new man.'

To illustrate the difference of these two makings one but in one parallel instance,—although the like duplicate is found, and distinction holds in all kind of works done in us, and for us, by Christ,—because it is the next akin to this. The parallel is that of reconciliation, or making peace between God and the saints. These two works, as they are the nearest twins of all other done for us by Christ, so are they herein exactly parallel and alike. Now, unto the accomplishment of our reconciliation with God a double reconciliation is necessary. The one wrought out of us, in Christ's person for us, 'God was in Christ, reconciling the world;' the other in

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us, 'We beseech you to be reconciled unto God,' 2 Cor. 5:19, 20. The like holds in this our reconciliation mutual. Or to set the likeness of these gemelli to your view in another glass,—that is, another scripture,—that gives forth the nearness of the resemblance of this sort of reconciliation, in parallel words and lines to those in the text; it is Col. 1:20. He says, first, 'Christ having made peace by the blood of his cross, to reconcile all to himself.' This is a work already done, and done for all at once, meritoriously and representatively, as there it follows, 'in the body of his flesh through death,' ver. 22.

After which he speaks of another reconciliation of us, wrought in us, towards God too, in these words, 'and you that were enemies hath he now reconciled.' This latter, therefore, wrought since and after the former, was perfected as the effect of it. The very same, or like here, you have expressed of that reconciliation, or making one of the saints mutually, which we have in hand. First, 'He hath made both one,' ver. 14, 'in his flesh,' ver. 15, 'in one body by the cross,' ver. 16; thus meritoriously and representatively. Secondly, 'that he might create of twain one new man;' so efficiently. Both must go in their several seasons and successions to the effecting thereof, or there would not be peace.

I have given you the grounds for these general heads out of the text. I come to such particular branches of each, as into which the text also spreads itself, and is a root unto them.

Two branches of what Christ did in his own person on the cross to reconcile the saints:—1. By way of sacrifice, and taking on him their enmities. 2. Of representation, 'in one body,' in himself.

That which is proper, as was said, to this part, is what hath been done in Christ's own person. The particulars hereof are two, which I find in the text, to the materials of which I confine myself, and shall take them in that order wherein they lie.

1. By way of sacrifice, having taken on him before God the enmities of both against each other, and so offering up his flesh as a sacrifice for both.

2. By a voluntary assuming and gathering the persons of all the elect into one body in himself, he representing and sustaining their persons, and so 'in one body' reconciling them unto God.

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Both are expressly and distinctly mentioned:— The first in these words, 'having abolished the enmity'—namely, between them—'in his flesh;' which flesh, taking on him their enmities, was made a sacrifice on the cross; and therefore, in the 16th verse, 'by the cross,' is added.

The second in these words, 'that he might reconcile both to God in one body.'

And though both these were performed at once and by one individual act, yet that act is to be looked at as having these two distinct considerations concurring in it; and the first, in order of nature, making way for the second, as in opening the connexion of the 15th and 16th verses I have already shewn. I must handle them, therefore, each apart:— How Christ's offering up himself as a sacrifice to God, and his standing as a common person in our stead before God, should abolish all our enmities against God himself, and reconcile us unto him? This is ordinarily and generally apprehended, and were proper to speak of, if our reconciliation to God himself had been the theme set out to be treated of. But how these very same acts and transactions of Christ should, together therewith, conduce to our reconciliation one with another? This only is genuine at this time, and to be eyed as the direct and proper level of what doth ensue, although even this is so involved with that other, that this cannot be explicated without supposing and glancing thereat. This but to set and keep the reader's eye steady to the single mark aimed at.

The first branch. Two things to explicate the first branch:—1.

That Christ's offering himself was intended as a sacrifice for enmities between the saints, as well as against God.

Two things are distinctly to be spoken unto for the clearing of these things:— 1. That the offering up Christ's flesh on the cross was intended as a sacrifice, as well for our reconciliation mutual, as for reconciliation with God.

2. How, according to the analogy of the ends, use, and intent of sacrifices of old, the offering up of Christ's flesh should be intended

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and directed as a sacrifice to take away these our own enmities, and make peace and friendship amongst ourselves.

For the first, which is the ὅτι of this point, that as a sacrifice it was so intended, the whole frame and contexture of these words doth evince it.

First, When he says, ver. 15, that he 'hath abolished the enmity in his flesh,' he doth undeniably intend that enmity which was between these twain, the Jew and Gentile; this hath been proved before; and therefore he is found particularly to instance in the rites of the ceremonial law, which by a metonymy he calls the enmity, as the outward occasion of that bitter enmity in each other's hearts.

Now then— Secondly, That this enmity was taken away by his flesh as a sacrifice— First, The laying together the phrases of the text evinceth it; as when he says he 'hath abolished this enmity in his flesh'—

1. In saying, 'the enmity in his flesh,' it necessarily imports his having taken that enmity in or upon his own flesh, to answer for it in their stead. Even as well as when in the 16th verse he is said to have 'slain the enmity'—namely, against God—'in himself,' thereby is intended that he took that enmity on himself, undertaking to pacify and allay, and by being himself slain, to slay it.

2. In saying in the time past, that he 'hath abolished it in his flesh,' this notes out a virtual act perfectly done and past, as in him, by virtue of which it is to be destroyed actually in us after. Unto which— 3. Add that in the 16th verse there is an additional word, 'by the cross,' put in, which, ἀπὸ τοῦ χοινοῦ, or in common, is to be referred to the abolishing of this enmity in his flesh, ver. 15, and reconciling us mutually, as well as to the slaying of the enmity against God, mentioned ver. 16, as that which equally and alike shews the way how we are to understand that in his flesh he hath perfectly abolished both these enmities, namely, by taking on his flesh that enmity, and offering it up upon the cross as a sacrifice for it. For to say, 'by the cross,' or, 'by the sacrifice of himself on the cross,' is all one; so as what the one verse wants, the other supplies. 'In his flesh,'

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says the 15th verse; 'by the cross,' says the 16th. And, which will warrant this, we have elsewhere both put together, Col. 1:20, 22, 'By the blood of his cross, in the body of his flesh, through death.'

Secondly, The paralleling this place with that of Col. 2 argues this.

The enmity here instanced in by a metonymy is the rites of the ceremonial law, which he is said to have made void or weak. Thus expressly, ver. 15, 'Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, the law of commandments in ordinances.' Now the abolishing thereof is, in that second to the Colossians, expressly said to have been by the sacrifice of his flesh on the cross; or, which is all one, that by his being nailed to the cross, he nailed it to his cross: Col. 2:14, 'Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross,' which fully accords with this text, 'He abolished it in his flesh by the cross.'

Lastly, for a winding up of this, the parallel which the Apostle observeth in his discourse, between his effecting our peace and reconciliation with God, and this our peace and reconciliation one with another, will induce to it. He being first alike in common termed 'our peace,' ver. 14, in respect to either. Then to demonstrate each apart, a double enmity, as I observed at first, is distinctly and apart mentioned by him: the one, ver. 15; the other, ver. 16. Of the one he says he hath 'abolished;' of the other, he hath 'slain' it: of the one he says, he hath 'abolished it in his flesh;' of the other, 'in himself,' as the Greek hath it, ver. 16. And so those words, 'by the cross,' are common to each, as those first words, 'he is our peace,' were to all that followed. And so, as the parallel hath hitherto run along in these particulars, so it holds on, that look how in this, or by that way he slew the enmity between God and us on the cross, by the same way he abolished the enmity between the Jew and Gentile, or the people of God mutually. But he slew the enmity between God and us on the cross, by taking these our enmities against God on himself; and they being found on him, he was slain and sacrificed for them on the cross, and thereby slew them, and reconciled us to God. In like manner then it is to be understood, that he first took all our enmities against one another on his flesh, 'in his flesh,' says the text,—and it was the general intent of sacrifices, to be offered up for what was laid upon them, or reckoned to them,—and so our

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enmities being there all found in his flesh, that flesh was offered up for them; and so they were all dissolved, and abolished, and made weak, as the text speaks of them, in his being dissolved or made weak, as 2 Cor. 13 and Phil. 2 speak in like manner of him.

So then, as there was a double enmity, and a double slaying, which the Apostle mentions, so there must be in this one sacrifice a double consideration, in the intention thereof. It is a sacrifice serving at once to slay and abolish both the one and the other, he being in common alike and indifferently termed, 'our peace,' as in relation to either; there being nothing also done for us by Christ, but the like was first done on himself.

The second thing to explicate the first branch: That one end or use of sacrifices, both among Jews and Gentiles, was to ratify peace between man and man, as truly as between God and man; and that Christ's sacrifice holds an analogy herein to other sacrifices.

This being cleared, I come to the second, the διύτι namely, to demonstrate how, according to the analogy of the ends and use of sacrificing of old in the shadow, Christ's sacrifice was likewise intended and directed to make peace between man and man, Jew and Gentile, as truly and as genuinely as between God and man.

For the illustration of this, we must know and consider that of old feuds or enmities between man and man were removed and put to an end by sacrifice; and also leagues of amity and friendship, even between man and man, were anciently ratified and confirmed, and reconciliation established by sacrifices. And as by sacrifices, so likewise after sacrifices, or, over and besides sacrifices, by eating and feasting together, and this both among Jews and Gentiles; of which latter, namely, that by eating together friendship was sealed, we shall have further use anon, to confirm and explicate this very notion in hand. I say, leagues of peace and friendship were used to be ratified by sacrifices solemnly before God; so to make such covenants a matter of religion, to bind the stronglier, and not to be merely the obligations of human faith and honesty; even by this, that men did find them ratified in the presence of a deity, which they worshipped as their god, by so solemn and religious an action, which did withal invocate from God a curse upon the infringers of

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that peace and friendship made thereby. This to have been their use I am to clear.

We may consider, that though all sacrifices were offered up before and unto God, yet not all only by way of expiation or atonement made unto God, or as expressions of thankfulness unto him; but some were sacrifices of pacification, and federal in their intention, between man and man, being offered up before God as a witness and avenger. This to have been one use of sacrifices is evident both among Jews and likewise Gentiles, who were in their sacrifices and the rites thereof imitators of the Jews.

First, The Jews. Jer. 34, from ver. 8, &c., we read, that Zedekiah the king made a solemn covenant with the people, and they with their servants, to let them go free, according to God's law on that behalf made, Exod. 21:1, and Deut. 15:12. And this sacrificial covenant was solemnly performed in God's house, and before God, as ver. 15 and 18. The rites of it were, they 'cut a calf in twain, and passed between the parts of the calf, even the princes, and all the people,' ver. 19, in token that it was one common sacrifice between all those parties, masters and servants, and the joint act of each: which being thus solemn before God, carried with it an implicit or tacit execration, that if either brake this covenant in this manner confirmed, then let

God so deal with them as this calf sacrificed was dealt withal. And therefore these having broken this covenant, ver. 11, which breach of faith was the occasion of this part of Jeremiah's message to them,

God threatens to bring the curse invocated and signified by that rite upon them, and to retaliate the like unto them. Ver. 18, 'I will give the men that have transgressed my covenant;' so he calls it, because the matter of it was his command, and it had been ratified before him, as it follows, 'which have not performed the words of the covenant which they had made before me, when they cut the calf in twain, and passed between the parts thereof.' That 'therefore I will give,' is verbum similitudinis, as it is often used, whose meaning is, I will make them as that calf, I will answerably deal with them, and so it is explained: 'I will give them into the hands of them that seek their life,' and expose them to the sword of the slayer, to slay at his pleasure, as you have done this beast which you have sacrificed;

'and their dead bodies shall be for meat to the fowls of the heaven.'

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The like intendment of sacrifices, with the same rite, and like imprecation to confirm leagues and covenants and end feuds, was in use among the heathen, as might be evidenced by many quotations, which I have met withal. To instance in one out of Livy, which is most punctual to the thing in hand, and parallel to the former out of Jeremiah. 'They cut a beast in two; the midst and the head, with the bowels, were placed at the right hand of the way, and the hinder parts on the left hand, and both the armies (that made the league) passed between this divided sacrifice.' And as the same rites with the former are expressed in this, so the same imprecation is recorded at the making of this covenant, and by sacrifice confirmed, recorded by the same author, when these two nations,

Albans and Romans, made this league: Qui prior defecerit, tu ilium, Jupiter, sic ferito, ut ego hunc porcum hodiè feriam;—'Let God strike him that breaks it, as I strike this swine,' said the sacrificer.

'Et cæsâ jungebant fœdera porcâ.'

The Holy Ghost speaks in like language: 'My people that have made a covenant with me by sacrifice.'

To bring all this home to the point in hand. There being to be a perpetual league and covenant of peace, to be struck between Jew and Gentile and all other the elect of God who should be at variance in any age; and Christ having interposed himself as a Mediator for us to God, he did withal undertake to be an arbiter between them, and us all among ourselves, for all our differences also. And as he offered up his flesh as one common sacrifice upon the cross, at once to be expiatory to God, to blot out the sins and enmities of ours against God himself; so also pacificatory between man and man,

Jew and Gentile, and all other the elect; and therein answering to, and fulfilling one true end and intendment of sacrifices, as well as in the other of making atonement to God. And the text, you see, having said first that he is made our peace, in making both one, ver.

14, and then pointing us to his flesh, as in which he bore their enmities, ver. 15, and then carrying us to the cross, ver. 16, it evidently, as was said argues that he was made our peace by being thus made a pacificatory sacrifice for both. And surely, if there were no other reason to confirm it, all sacrifices, in all their ends and uses, having been but shadows of this; and his flesh, and the

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sacrificing it, being the substance; this eminent sacrifice of his must needs be supposed, as such, to have the perfection, use, and efficacy that all other sacrifices could any way be supposed subservient unto, or it had not been the complete perfection of them; especially there being this need of having his sacrifice directed to this end as well as to that other, there falling out so great animosities among those that were members of him; which, as it called for a sacrifice to be offered up to allay and destroy them, so Christ in sacrificing himself would not leave out nor lose this part of his glory and perfection in this respect.

Hence accordingly, as here he is termed 'our peace,' so elsewhere the 'covenant of the people,' and both in the like latitude of sense and meaning. When here he is called our peace, the meaning extends not only to his being our peace between God and us, but between ourselves also; so when he is called the covenant of the people, it intends not only his being a covenant unto God for us, but a covenant before God of us; or, as there it is expressed, of the people of God, namely, among themselves. He is twice so called, and with much evidence as to this sense. Isa. 42:6, 'I will give thee for a covenant of the people,'—that is, says Sanctius, to the Jew,—'and for a light of the Gentiles;' and thus a covenant of both. And, chap. 49:8,

'For a covenant of the people, to establish the earth;' that is, to this end, to settle in peace the whole earth, both Jew and Gentile; so then a covenant of the people, as you see, even in this very respect: peace on earth among men, as well as good-will towards men, from God in heaven, being the foot of that song that was sung at his birth, and the sum of what is here said. 'He is our peace.'

The analogy between the rites of such pacificatory sacrifices and this sacrifice of Christ's, as offered up for our mutual enmities. And how this end and intention of Christ's sacrifice is held forth in the Lord's Supper.

Now observe further a correspondency unto those rites mentioned, that were used in those sacrifices of peace, also held forth in this sacrifice of his. The beast in such cases was divided and cut in twain, for both parties to pass through, and so peace to be made between them; and Christ, to make both or twain one, as here, was divided and cut, as it were, in twain, the Godhead for a time

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forsaking the manhood: 'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?' His soul also being by death separated from his body, his joints loosened, to dissolve this enmity; the vail of his flesh rent, to rend the partition-wall. Thus he was cut in twain, as one common sacrifice between both.

And again, as the sacrificing of the beast cut asunder was reckoned the common joint act of both parties in such a case, and they were esteemed by God and by one another each to have a hand in the sacrificing of it, and as consenting to the covenant and peace that was intended to be entered into and ratified by it; so here in this. And though we then personally existed not, yet all we being considered in him by God, who gave us to him, and by himself, that voluntarily sustained our persons, and he offering up himself as a sacrifice on our behalf, and for our behoof, and in our names; hence his will in offering up himself was voluntas totius, the act and will of the whole body whose persons he sustained; our wills were thereby involved in his will, his act was our act: and it may be truly said that a covenant of peace was then made before God by us, and for us; for he was our priest therein for us, as well as our sacrifice.

And hence, in a further correspondency to the manner of those typical sacrifices, therein although the priest only offered up the sacrifice for the people, and in their name and stead, yet to shew it was their act, they used to eat of it after, or of that which was offered up with it. The interpretation of which eating thereof by the people, the Apostle gives us to be this, 1 Cor. 10:18, they that did eat of the sacrifices were partakers of the altar; that is, thereby they declared the sacrifice to be theirs, the offering it up to be their act, that they partook, and had a hand in it, as if they had been at the altar with the priest himself. Just in like manner, to shew that we were reckoned consenting to, and partakers in this sacrifice of Christ our priest, and that it was our own act, we do in like manner partake of that sacrifice by eating of it; the Lord's Supper being, as Tertullian rightly termed it, participatio sacrificii, which notion the Apostle there confirms in a parallel of the Lord's Supper, in this very respect, to the case of those sacrifices then; for unto this purpose it was that he brings in that instance of the sacrifices, ver.

16, 'The bread which we break,' says he, 'is it not the communion of

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the body of Christ?'—namely, considered as sacrificed once upon the altar of the cross,—and so by eating thereof we are all partakers of that one bread as the thing signifying, and of that one body sacrificed as the thing signified; and so by this way of partaking therein, namely, by eating thereof, is shewn, as in the sacrifices of old, that it is our own sacrifice. And this not only as Estius upon the place, who says, 'that by eating they were accounted partakers of the sacrifice, as that which was offered for them;' but further, as Grotius,1 speaking of the Lord's Supper, upon Matt. 26:25, 'They are in Christ's intent,' says he, 'through their eating thereof, so partakers of this his sacrifice, (quasi ipsi hoc obtulissent,) as if themselves had offered it up.' And thus to hold forth this previous consent of theirs was one part of Christ's intent in instituting eating and drinking in the Lord's Supper, in a correspondency to the like mysterious intent in the people's eating of the sacrifices of old. Grotius indeed puts the reason why it is to be esteemed as if we had offered up that sacrifice only upon this, 'Because it was offered up by him,' says he, 'that had taken their nature.' But I add out of this text, because he had taken on him their persons, in one body, and their enmities, and stood in their stead as their priest as well as their sacrifice; and so it was to be reckoned their act on his cross, as much as the people's then, who used to bring the sacrifice to the priest, who there offered it alone upon the altar: whereas here we ourselves were brought to Christ by the Father to undertake to be a priest for us, and he voluntarily undertook our persons. And so as Levi is accounted to have offered tithes in Abraham his father when he paid them to Melchizedek, so we much rather to have offered up a common sacrifice of peace amongst ourselves when Christ offered up himself.

And hence also likewise, as in those pacificatory federal sacrifices between two parties of men, whoever of them went about to violate or infringe the terms of peace that sacrifice was intended to confirm, did, by reason it was his act, bring upon himself the curse which ceremonially and visibly was inflicted on the beast or sacrifice slain: so here this act of sacrificing of Christ for mutual peace, being thus interpretativè ours, and our consent involved, hence, I say, in like manner, whoever goeth about to break this

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covenant and seeketh to uphold the enmity among the people of God, he doth not only renounce his own act, but, what in him lies, frustrates that intention of it, and so further incurs the imprecation unfolded in it, and brings upon himself the blood of the covenant, as, in allusion to this curse, according to the implied intent of such a sacrificial covenant, the Apostle speaks, Heb. 10.

Now, further to finish this branch, let this be added: that Christ was not simply offered up as a sacrifice to confirm a mere or bare league of peace and amity between us,—sometimes such sacrifices before spoken of were designed only to make and bind new leagues and covenants between such parties as never had been at variance,—but here in this case of ours, as there was a covenant of amity to be struck, so there were enmities to be abolished and slain, as the text hath it, and that by this sacrifice and slaying of his flesh; which cannot be conceived otherwise to have been transacted, but that, as in other sacrifices offered up, the trespasses were laid upon the head of the sacrifice, and so in a significant mystery slain and done away in the death of the thing sacrificed. And that as in that other way of reconciling us to God, 'the Lord did lay upon him the iniquities of us all,' namely, against himself, as Isaiah speaks in allusion unto the rites, and the signification thereof in those sacrifices, to which this text similarly speaks when it says, 'he slew the enmity in himself,' ver. 16; so answerably it was in this, which is its parallel, all the enmities and mutual injuries and feuds between us, the people of God, were all laid upon him, and he took them in his flesh, and in slaying thereof slew these also, and abolished them, that so he might reconcile them in one body. And so the same nails that pierced through his hands and feet, did nail all our enmities, and the causes and occasions of them, to the same cross, as Col. 2 insinuates. So as we are to look upon Jesus Christ hanging upon the cross as an equal arbiter between both parties, that takes upon himself whatever either party hath against the other. Lo, here I hang, says Christ dying, and let the reproaches wherewith you reproach each other fall on me, the sting of them all fix itself in my flesh, and in my death die all together with me; lo, I die to pacify both. Have therefore any of you ought against each other? Quit them, and take me as a sacrifice in blood between you: only do not

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kill me, and each other too, for the same offence; for you, and your enmities, have brought me to this altar of the cross, and I offer myself as your peace, and as your priest; will you kill me first, and then one another too?

And thus, if taking all your sins against God himself upon his flesh, and sacrificing it for you, is of prevalency to kill and slay that enmity, much more is it of force to kill these your enmities also.

Thus like as by assuming the likeness of sinful flesh, he killed the sin in our flesh; so by taking these our enmities and animosities in his flesh, he slew and abolished them; and as his death was the death of death, so of these. And like as he cured diseases, by taking them on himself by sympathy, it is said of him, when his healing of them is recorded, himself took our infirmities, and bore our sicknesses. And as not our sins against God only, but our sicknesses by sympathy; so not our enmities against God only, but our animosities one against another; and by bearing them, abolished them; by dying an arbiter between us, slew them. And therefore in the text he is called 'our peace,' not our peacemaker only, when this peace among ourselves is spoken of, to note out, as Musculus observes, that he was not only efficiently our peacemaker, the author of our peace, but our peace materially, the matter of our peace, by the sacrifice of himself. God is styled our peacemaker, our reconciler,—'God was in Christ reconciling the world,'—but not 'our peace.' This is proper to Christ; and why, but because he only was the sacrifice of our peace, and bore our enmities? even as he is not only called the Redeemer,—so God also is,—but redemption itself.

Now for a coronis to this first branch, and withal to add a further confirmation yet that Christ's death was intended as a sacrifice to these ends, for amity and unity among God's people, we may clearly view and behold this truth in the mirror of the Lord's Supper; one most genuine and primary import whereof, and end of the institution of it, being this very thing in hand. I shall have recourse thereto again in the next branch also, upon the same account that now.

The Lord's Supper, in its full and proper scope, is, as you know, a solemn commemoration of Christ's death offered up upon the cross; or if you will, in the Apostle's own words, it is a shewing forth his

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death till he comes. And do this, says Christ, in remembrance of me, namely, in dying for you; and so withal to commemorate, with application to themselves, the principal ends and intendments of that his death, which is therein acted as before their eyes. Hence therefore I take this an undoubted maxim which no knowing

Christian will deny, and it is the foundation of what I am now abuilding: that look what principal ends, purposes, or intendments, this supper or sacrificial feast holds forth in its institution unto us, those must needs be looked at by all Christians, in the like proportion, to have been the main ends and purposes of his death to be remembered. So that we may argue mutually, from what were the ends of Christ's death, unto what must needs be the designed intendments of this sacrament. And we may as certainly conclude and infer to ourselves what were the intendments of his death, by what are the genuine ends of that sacrament. These answer to each other, as the image in the glass doth to the principal lineaments in the face; the impress on the wax, to that in the seal; the action, the sign, and remembrances, to the thing signified and to be remembered.

Now it is evident that Christ upon his death instituted that supper, as to be a seal of that covenant of grace between God and us, ratified thereby; so also to be a communion, the highest outward pledge, ratification, and testimony of love and amity among his members themselves. And accordingly, it being in the common nature of it a feast, look as between God and us, it was ordained to be epulum fœderale, a covenant-feast between him and us,—the evidence whereof lies in this, that he invites us to his table as friends, and as those he is at peace withal, and reconciled unto,—so in like manner between the saints themselves, it was as evidently ordained to be a syntaxis, a love-feast, in that they eat and drink together at one and the same table, and so become, as the Apostle says, 'one bread.' And again, look as between God and us, to shew that the procurement of this peace and reconciliation between him and us was this very sacrifice of Christ's death, as that which made our peace, God therefore invites us, post sacrificium oblatum, after the sacrifice offered up, to eat of the symbols of it; that is, of bread and wine, which are the signs and symbols of his body and blood

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sacrificed for peace: so in like manner doth this hold, as to the peace between ourselves. And we may infer that we were, through the offering up thereof, reconciled one to another, and all mutual enmities slain and done away thereby, in that we eat together thereof in a communion, which was a sacrifice once offered, but now feasted upon together; and doth shew that Christians, of all professions or relations of men, have the strongest obligations unto mutual love and charity; for the bread broken and the cup are the symbols of their Saviour's body and blood once made a sacrifice; and therefore they eating thereof together, as of a feast after a sacrifice, do shew forth this union and agreement to have been the avowed purchase and impetration of the body and blood so sacrificed.

There was a controversy of late years fomented by some, through popish compliances, that the Lord's Supper might be styled a sacrifice, the table an altar, which produced in the discussion of it, as all controversies do in the issue some further truth, the discovery of this true decision of it: that it was not a sacrifice, but a feast after and upon Christ's sacrificing of himself, participatio sacrificii, as Tertullian calls it, a sacrificial feast, commemorating and confirming all those ends for which the only true and proper sacrifice of Christ was offered up, and so this feast a visible ratification of all such ends whereof this is evidently one.

A digression, shewing—1. That eating and drinking together, especially upon and after a pacificatory sacrifice, was a further confirmation of mutual peace, both among Jews and Gentiles; and,

2. That the eating the Lord's Supper hath the same intent and accord thereunto. The harmony of all these notions together.

Now therefore, to draw all these lines into one centre, and to make the harmony and consent of all these notions the more full, and together therewith to render the harmony more complete between the Lord's death, and its being intended as a sacrifice to procure this peace, and the Lord's Supper as a feast after this sacrifice, holding forth this very thing as purchased thereby, and so further to confirm all this. Look, as before I shewed, as in relation to the demonstration that Christ's death was intended as a sacrifice for such a peace, that that was one end and use of sacrifices, both

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among Jews and Gentiles, to found and create leagues of amity between man and man; so it is proper and requisite for me now to make another like digression, as in relation to this notion of the Lord's Supper, to shew how that also by eating and feasting together, especially after or upon such a kind of sacrifice, these leagues of love were anciently used to be further confirmed and ratified: that so it may appear that as according to the analogy of such sacrifices, Christ's death was a sacrifice directed and intended to that end, so also that according to the analogy of such feasting in and upon sacrifices, this eating and feasting together upon the symbols of that sacrifice by believers is as genuinely intended a seal of this reconciliation amongst them, and that in a due correspondency and a answerableness to the genuine intent of that sacrifice itself, as that which had purchased and procured it.

I might be as large in this as in the former. When after a grudge and enmity passed between Laban and Jacob, Laban, to bury all things between them, would enter into a covenant of peace: 'Come,' says he, Gen. 31:44, 'let us make a covenant, I and thou, and (that by a sign, for he adds) let it be a witness between thee and me.' Now what was that sign and witness? In ver. 46, it is said they took stones, and made a heap, and did eat there; and, ver. 54, 'after an oath passed,' ver. 53, Jacob offered a sacrifice on the mount, and called his brethren (or kinsmen) to eat bread; and early in the morning Laban departed. The like did Isaac with Abimelech, Gen.

26:28; David with Abner, 2 Sam. 3:20. I single forth chiefly those two, because the parties that used and agreed in this signal rite were, the one Jews, as Isaac and Jacob; the other Gentiles, as Abimelech and Laban: to shew at once that this way of covenanting was common to them both, as the former by sacrificing was also shewn to be.

And further, that this rite of eating together the Gentiles themselves did use, especially after such sacrifices as were federal, unto this intent, that by that superadded custom of eating together upon or after sacrificing, they might the more ratify and confirm such covenants, first made, and begun by sacrificing. This seems to be the intendment, Ex. 34:15, 'Lest thou make a covenant'—God speaks it to the Jew—'with the inhabitants of the land, and thou go a whoring after their gods, and do sacrifice unto their gods, and one

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call thee, and thou eat of his sacrifice;' namely, upon pretence of confirming that covenant, which, having first been contracted and agreed on, they might further be drawn on to sacrifice, and so eat of the sacrifices also with those heathens, in token of confirming such a league, as was the known common manner and custom of each to do.

Yea, and those that were more barbarous and inhuman among the Gentiles, when they would put the more binding force into their covenants, or some such more solemn conspiracy, they used to sacrifice a man,—a slave I suppose,—and eat his flesh and drink his blood together; which, because they judged the more stupendous, they judged would carry with it the deepest and most binding obligation. Thus we read in Plutarch, those Roman gallants entering into a covenant, drank the blood of a man, whom first as a sacrifice they had killed: σφαγέντος ἀνθρώποῦ ἐπισπείσαντες αἷμα. And the same Plutarch says of another company,—those conspirators with Catiline,—that they sacrificed a man, and did eat his flesh,

(καταθύσαντες ἄνθρωπον ἐγεύσαντο τῶν σαρκῶν,) so to bind and unite each other more firmly to stick fast and close together in so great an undertaking, by the most sure and firmest way that their religion could invent. And Ps. 16:4 makes an express mention of such among the heathens, terming them their drink-offerings of blood. See also Ezek. 39:17–19. Men and nations less barbarous took wine instead of blood, to confirm their leagues after sacrifices, it being the likest and nearest unto blood, the blood of the grape.

Now then, to bring all this home to the point in hand: Christ our passover, and so our sacrifice for us, having been slain and offered up for our mutual peace, hath instituted and ordained us believers to keep this feast,—it is the Apostle's own allusion, agreeing with, and founded on the notion we have been prosecuting,—and that to this end, that by partaking of it as a sacrifice, and by shewing forth his death, we might hold forth all the avowed ends of that sacrifice with application to ourselves; the eminent ends of the one as a sacrifice, corresponding and answering to the eminent cuds of the other as a feast. A feast it is of God's providing, and he the great entertainer of us at it, in token of peace between him and us; for he it was who prepared the sacrifice itself, and unto whom, as a whole

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burnt-offering, Christ was offered up. But God is not as one that sits down and eats with us, though he smelt a sweet savour in it; we are the guests, and he the master of this feast; and yet he thereby proclaims and professeth his being reconciled, in that he causeth us to sit down at his table. And this is the prime and most eminent significancy of it; and to hold forth this intent thereof, as between God and us, others have prosecuted this notion. But there is another more conspicuously suited to the notion which hath been driven, and which is no less in the intention of the institution itself, and indeed of the two more obvious to outward sense; and that is, that the persons themselves for whom it is prepared, that do visibly sit down, and do eat and drink, in proper speech, the bread and cup together, that they are agreed and at peace each with other. God is but as an invisible entertainer, but our eating and drinking together is visible to all the world; we outwardly shew forth his death, and do withal as visibly shew forth this to have been the intent of it. Yea, and if we could raise up those nations of old, both Jews and Gentiles, and call together the most part of the world at this day, and should but declare that this is a feast, especially a sacrificial feast, a feast after a sacrifice, offered once up for our amity and peace by so great a mediator; the common instinct and notion which their own customs had begot in them would presently prompt them, and cause them universally to understand and say among themselves, These men were at enmity one with another, and a sacrifice was offered up to abolish it, and to confirm a union and pacification amongst them, and lo, therefore, they do further eat and participate thereof, and communicate therein; a manifest profession it is that they are in mutual love, amity, and concord one with another, and thereby further ratifying that unity which that sacrifice had been offered up before for the renewing of. This is truly the interpretation of that solemn celebration, even in the sight of all the heathens, and unto the principles of all the nations among whom sacrifices were in use; yea, and this they would all account the strongest and firmest bond of union that any religion could afford. And add this: the more noble the sacrifice was, as if of a man, being a more noble creature, the more obliging they

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accounted, as was observed, the bands of that covenant made thereby.

Now our passover is slain, our peace is sacrificed, not man, but Christ God-man; he sanctifying, by the fulness of God dwelling personally in him, the sacrifice of that his flesh, and human nature, to an infinity of value and worth. He hath become a sacrifice of our mutual peace, was cut in twain; and to complete this union among ourselves, he hath in a stupendous way appointed his own body and blood to be received and shared as a feast amongst us, succeeding that sacrifice once offered up. 1 Cor. 10:16, 'The bread we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? The cup, the communion of his blood?' (so speaks Paul, a most faithful interpreter of these mysteries;) and a communion of many, as one body? as it follows there. It is strange that a heathen, speaking of one of their sacred feasts, intended to confirm an agreement between two great personages, should use the same expression: communicârunt concordiam,—they are said to have communicated concord; and this because they communicated together in the same feast dedicated to their chief god, and which was ordained to testify concord between them. The Apostle calls it in like manner a communion, whereby many are made one bread, in that they eat of that one bread, which whilst they eat and drink in, they eat and drink the highest charity and agreement, each with and unto other.

But that this sort of peace and love, namely, mutual among the receivers, was an avowed intendment of our partaking of the Lord's

Supper, needs not to be insisted on; this import of it hath taken the deepest impression upon the most vulgar apprehensions of all that profess Christianity, of any other. To be in charity with their neighbour, &c., hath remained in all ages of the church, upon the spirits of the most ignorant and superstitious, when those other higher ends and intendments of it were forgotten. My inference therefore is strong and sure: that what was thus eminent an intention of this feast upon a sacrifice, must needs be, upon all the former accounts, as eminent an intention of that sacrifice itself, as such.

Only let me add this: that though all the people of God will not, some of them not at all, many not together, eat of this feast, through

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difference of judgment,—and it is strange that this, which is the sacrament of concord, should have in the controversies about it more differences, and those more dividing, than any other part of divine truth or worship,—yet still however this stands good to be the native original end and institution of the ordinance itself, and so by inference, this to have been the intent of Christ's death as a sacrifice to the same end; of which death, to be sure, they all must partake, and unto which Christ they must have recourse, even all and every person, that are, or shall be the people of God. And by so doing, they find themselves, upon all these accounts forementioned, engaged and obliged unto peace and concord with all the saints in the world, how differing soever in judgment, in him who is our peace, and by that sacrifice hath made both one.

And thus much for this branch, which treats of what Christ hath done in his own person to procure this peace.

The second branch, What Christ did by way of representation of our persons. That phrase, 'in one body,' explained.

The second branch of this first head is, What Christ did by way of representation of our persons, and how that conduceth to this mutual reconciliation of the saints among themselves? This we have in that small additional which is found, ver. 16, 'That he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity.' The meaning whereof is this, that he did collect and gather together in one body all the people of God; that is, did sustain their persons, stood in their stead, as one common person in whom they were all met, representing them equally and alike unto God, and so reconciled them to God in one body. As you heard, he bore their enmities in his flesh, and so abolished them; so withal he bore their persons, considered as one collective body, and under that consideration reconciled them to God.

And this superadds to the former consideration, of being a sacrifice for their enmities mutually, for that he might have been, and have performed it for each of their persons, considered singly and apart; but further, we see was pleased to gather them into one body in himself.

If you ask me, Where and when this representation of all the saints was by Christ more especially made, and when it was they

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were looked at by God as one body?—the text tells us, on the cross, by which he thus reconciled us to God in one body.

I will not now insist on that which at first, to make my way clear, I was so large upon: that that kind of reconciliation of us, wrought by Christ for us on the cross, is here intended; to all which this may be added, that it was that reconciliation which at once took in and comprehended all, both Jew and Gentile, in all ages, into one body; which was never yet since actually done, but therefore then was done in himself. That which is now only left for clearing my way is the opening the import of those words, 'in one body,' which clause is that I take for my foundation of this second paragraph.

There is a question among interpreters, Whether by this 'one body' in the text be meant the church only, considered as one mystical body in Christ, or only the body and human nature of Jesus

Christ himself, hanging upon the cross? I would, to reconcile both senses, take in both, as conducing to the reconciliation of us.

1. Supposing, which is necessary, Christ's person, his human nature, or 'his flesh,' ver. 15, to be the ubi, the substratum, the meeting-place, and rendezvous of this other great body of the elect, where this whole company appeared and was represented, so to be reconciled unto God. For indeed what the Apostle mentions here apart, and at distance each from other,—his flesh, ver. 15, and body, ver. 16,—these elsewhere he brings together: Col. 1:22, 'Having made peace in the body of his flesh, through death.'

2. Which body, as hanging upon the cross, was clothed upon, when most naked, with this other body, which he himself took on him to sustain and represent, and to stand in their stead, even the whole body of his elect; his body, personally his, becoming by representation one with his other body, mystically his. In sum, in the body of Christ personal, as the body representing, the whole body of Christ mystical, as the body represented, was met in one before God, and unto God. And in that one body of Christ personal were all these persons, thus represented, reconciled unto God together, as in one body, by virtue of this representation.

The influence that our being reconciled to God in one body hath into our reconciliation mutual, in two eminent respects.

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If any shall ask, What influence and virtue this their being considered as one body, met in his body, and under that consideration reconciled to God, hath into their reconciliation one with another?—I answer, much every way; neither is it mentioned last, as last in order, but as the foundation of all other considerations thereto belonging.

1. In that they were thus all once met in one body, in the body of Christ, both in his intendment and his Father's view, this consideration, if no more, hath force enough in it to bring them together again in after-times. Even this clandestine union,—such indeed in respect of our knowledge of it then, yet having all three

Persons the witnesses in heaven present,—this pre-contract, this anticipated oneness, this forehand union hath such virtue in it, that let them afterwards fall out never so much, they must be brought together again, and be one. Heaven and earth may be dissolved, but this union, once solemnised, can never be frustrated or dissolved; what God and Christ did thus put together, sin and devil, men and angels, cannot always and for ever keep asunder. His Father's donation of them to him, and Christ's own representation of the same persons to his Father again, have a proportionable like virtue in them; for there is the same reason of both. Now of the one Christ says, 'All that the Father giveth me shall come to me,' John 6:37.

Christ mentions that gift of them by the lump to him by the Father, as the reason, or cause rather, why they could not ever be kept from him. And as none can keep them from him, because given of the Father to him, in like manner, and for the like reason, the whole body of them cannot be kept one from another, because presented by him again to the Father. Christ mentions both these considerations, as of equal efficacy, in that prayer, whereby he sanctified that sacrifice of himself John 17, 'Thine they were, and thou gavest them me.' 'All mine are thine, and thine are mine;' and I pray, ver. 21, 'that they all may be one,' and that in this world, 'as we are.' Christ then not only died for his sheep apart, that they might come to himself, as John 10:15, but further, that they might be one fold, as it follows there. And as the Evangelist interprets Caiaphas's prophecy, he died to 'gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad,' John 11:51, 52. To make sure which

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gathering to come, he in and at his death gathered them together representatively; they met all in him, and ascended the cross with him, as Peter's phrase is of all their sins,—therefore much more their persons,—1 Peter 2:24, Ὃς αὐτὸς ἀνήνεγκεν ἐν σώματι αὑτοῦ ἐπὶ τὸ ξύλον,—He himself carried in, or together with, his body, our sins up to the tree;—Ascendere fecit sursum simul cum seipso.

The cross was the first general rendezvous in this world, appointed for him and his members, where they were crucified in him, and with him, as the Apostle often speaks. Christ told the Jews,

'If I be lifted up,' John 12:32, speaking of his death on the cross, ver.

33, 'I will draw all to me.' And here you see the reason of it, for in their lifting up him, they lift up all his with him, as hung to, and adjoined with him in one body, in his body. This great and universal loadstone, set in that steel of the cross, having then gathered all these lesser magnetic bodies, pieces of himself, into himself, the virtue thereof will draw them all together in one again, as they come to exist in the world. They may be scattered, they may fall out; but as branches united in one root, though severed by winds and storms, and beaten one from and against another, yet the root holding them in a firm and indissoluble union, it brings them to a quiet order and station again. And if the now scattered Jews must one day come together, and make one body again, because those dry bones, the umbræ, the ghastly shadows of them, were seen once to meet in Ezekiel's vision; how much more shall the elect coalesce in one new man, because they once met in him that is the body, and not the shadow? If those Jews must meet, that the prophecy, the vision might be fulfilled, these must much more, that the end of his death, and his hanging on the tree, may be fulfilled, in whom all visions and promises have their Amen and accomplishment. As in his death, so in his resurrection also, they are considered as one body with him: Isa. 26:19, 'Together with my dead body shall they arise,' says Christ, and both in death and resurrection, one body, to the end they may be presented together in one body all at last, Col.

1:22. And in the meantime, in the efficacy of these forehand meetings, are they to be created into one new man, ver. 15, and that even εἷς, one individual man, Gal. 3:28, not ἐν, one bulk, body, or thing only. This one new man, which they are to grow up into,

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answereth exactly to that one body which was then gathered together, represented, and met in him on the cross, bearing the image of it, and wrought by the virtue of it.

2. The second is, that if such a force and efficacy flows from their having met once, as one body, then much more from this, which the text adds, that they were reconciled to God in that one body. This clause, 'in one body,' was on purpose inserted together with their reconciliation to God, to shew that they were no otherwise esteemed or looked at by God as reconciled to him but as under that representation, view, and respect had of them, as then, by him, that so dum sociaret Deo, sociavit inter se. Their reconciliation with God was not considered, nor wrought only apart, singly, man by man, though Christ bore all their names too; but the terms were such, unless all were, and that as in one body and community, together among themselves, reputed reconciled, the whole reconciliation, and of no one person, unto God, should be accounted valid with him. So as their very peace with God was not only never severed from, but not considered, nor effected, nor of force, without the consideration of their being one each with other in Christ.

Insomuch as upon the law and tenor of this original act thus past, God might, according to the true intent thereof, yea, and would, renounce their reconciliation with himself, if not to be succeeded with this reconciliation of theirs mutually. And although this latter doth, in respect of execution and accomplishment, succeed the other in time,—the saints do not all presently agree and come together as one body,—yet in the original enacting and first founding of reconciliation by Christ, these were thus on purpose by God interwoven and indented, the one in the other; and the terms and tenure of each interchangeably wrought into, and moulded in one and the same fundamental charter and law of reconciliation mutual, than which nothing could have been made more strong and binding, or sure to have effect in due time.

The reconciliation of the saints to God considered, as in one body; held likewise forth in the administration of the Lord's Supper: and one eminent foundation of the institution of fixed churchcommunion hinted therein.

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The impress and resemblance of this, namely, Christ's reconciling us to God in one body, we may likewise perceive—and I shall mention it the rather, to make the harmony of this with all the former still more full—in the administration of the Lord's Supper, in which we may view this truth also, as we have done the other.

That supper being ordained to shew forth his death, look, as he died, so it represents it. As therefore Christ was sacrificed, representing the general assembly of saints, and so in one body reconciled them to God; so this supper was ordained, in the regular administration of it, to hold forth the image of this, as near as possible such an ordinance could be supposed to have done it. For, answerably, the seat, the ἑδραίωμα of it, is a communion of many saints met together in one body, and not otherwise. Thus 1 Cor.

10:17, 'For we being many are one bread and one body.' He had said, ver. 16, that the Lord's Supper was the communion of the body of Christ, &c.,—that is, a communion of Christ's body, as to each, so as of a company united together among themselves,—and accordingly the Apostle subjoins this as the reason, 'For we,' whom you see do ordinarily partake of it, are many, not one or two apart; and those 'many' are 'one bread, and one body:' one bread, as the sign; one body, as the thing signified.

And thus we are then considered to be, when Christ as dying is communicated by us. For to shew forth his death is the end of this sacrament. The seat, therefore, or subject of partaking in this communion of Christ's body and blood, and which is ordained for the public participation of it, is not either single Christians, but a 'many,' nor those meeting as a fluid company, like clouds uncertainly, or as men at an ordinary, for running sacraments, as some would have them, but fixed, settledly, as incorporated bodies.

Which institution having for its subject such a society, as then, when Christ's death is to be shewn forth, doth suitably and correspondently set forth how that the whole church—the image of which whole universal church these particular churches do bear, as a late commentator hath observed upon that place—was represented in and by Christ dying for us, under this consideration of being one body then in him.

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And there is this ground for it, that the whole of that ordinance was intended to represent the whole of his death, and the imports of it, as far as was possible. So then look, as the death itself and his bitter passion are represented therein, both of body, in breaking the bread, which is the communion of his body; of the soul, in the wine, which is called the communion of his blood; and this is the blood of the new testament, so expressed in allusion to that of the old, in which the blood was chosen out as the nearest visible representer of the invisible soul that could be. The life lies in the blood, for the spirits, which are the animal life, do run in it; so spake the old law, and the poet the same— 'Sanguine quærendi reditus animaque litandum.'

He terms the sacrifice of the blood, the sacrifice of the soul; and so wine was chosen as the nearest resemblance of blood, being also the blood of the grape.

As thus the death itself in all the parts of it, so the subject for which he died, his body, and that under that very consideration he died for them, as one body, is in like manner as visibly and plainly held forth; every particular church bearing by institution the image of the whole church, as therein it hath also all the privileges of it, fitly shewing forth thereby not only that Christ died for them singly and apart considered,—which yet is therewith held forth here in that each personally doth partake thereof,—that might have been sufficiently evidenced if every person or family apart had been warranted to have received and eaten this sacrificial feast alone, as they did the passover and the sacrifices, Lev. 7:18; but the institution is for many, which very word Christ mentions in the institution, 'This is the blood of the new testament, shed for many;' which word I believe the Apostle had an eye unto when he said, 'We being many, are partakers,' &c. Christ indeed principally aimed therein to shew that his intent in dying was for a multitude of mankind, the whole body of his elect; yet because he inserts the mention hereof at the delivery of those elements, and that the ordinance itself was suited to hold forth this intent, the Apostle takes the hint of it, and adds this gloss and construction upon it, as glanced at in it: that according to the institution and import of this ordinance, the partakers hereof are to be a 'many,' not one or two

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alone, and these united into 'one body,' to the end that thereby may be held forth this great intendment in his death, that he died for the many of his church, as one collective body.

This, however, we are sure of, that this way of partaking this supper, as in one body, was to the Apostle a matter of that moment that we find him bitterly inveighing in the next chapter, that the same individual church of Corinth, when they came together in one for that and other ordinances, should, of all ordinances else, not receive this ordinance together in such a community; but perverting that order, should, even in that place appointed for the meetings of the whole church, divide themselves into private several companies, and so make this as a private supper, which in the nature and intendment of the institution of it was to be a communion of the whole church or body together. Insomuch that he says, 1 Cor. 11:20, 'This is not to eat the Lord's supper; for in eating'—namely, this sacramental supper—'every one takes before (others, perhaps, do come) his own supper,' together with the Lord's, and so maketh it as a private collation, or as ἴδιον δεῖτνον.

'Wherefore, my brethren, when you come together to eat' that supper, 'tarry one for another,' to make a full meeting of the whole body; and as for other suppers, every man is at liberty to take them at home as he pleaseth, ver. 33. The Apostle is thus zealous in it, as he had reason, because hereby is shewn forth one principal mystery in Christ's death; for from this, at least upon occasion of this particular, as well as any other, doth the Apostle utter this great maxim, 'Ye shew forth his death till he come,' ver. 26. Of such moment in their import and significancy are things, thus small and mean in the eyes of some, that yet are full of mystery in Christ's intendment.—And thus much for the second head.

Notes 1. "Christus vult in se credentes participes fieri ejus sacrificii, planè, quasi ipsi hoc sacrificium obtulissent, quia oblatum ab eo qui naturam eorum susceperat."

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A SERMON ON EPHESIANS 3:17

That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith Some general premises touching the whole prayer

THIS prayer of Paul's for the Ephesians is according to the utmost elevation or height of his own experience of what he could pray for.

I give some general animadversions, as premises upon the whole prayer first, ere I enter upon this particular part of it.

1. That all the three Persons, and the dispensations of each of them, are all of them mentioned, though the order of them be inverted; for he begins with the Spirit, the last Person, 'That ye may be strengthened with all might by the Spirit;' that is the first petition. Secondly, 'That Christ,' who is the second Person in the order inverted, 'may dwell in your hearts by faith.' Thirdly, 'That you may be rooted and grounded in love;' that is, of the Father, to whom love is especially attributed in Scripture. And then ultimately, and last of all, that the Godhead, and so the communication of all three Persons, may be manifested in you, and to you, and upon you: 'That you may be filled,' saith he, 'with all the fulness of God;' that is the first, that all the three Persons are here mentioned.

2. In the second place, that which he prays for is, what dispensations Father, Son, and Holy Ghost have towards us after conversion. He writes to saints already, and he doth not pray for their conversion, or what operations or influences the three Persons have in conversion; he supposeth that: but the things he prays for are what are after conversion. As when he saith, 'that Christ might dwell in their hearts,' he supposeth them to have been already in Christ. Dwelling is a continuance of inbeing. Also when he adds, that ye may be 'rooted and grounded in love,' he supposeth them 'to be first planted into the love of God.

3. He prays for what in this life is to be obtained: as when he prays that Christ may dwell in their hearts by faith; now faith in the other world ceaseth.

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4. I add this, it is for what is attainable by all saints, though not attained but by few. He prays indeed that all saints may comprehend,—not only you Ephesians, but all saints,—'that ye may comprehend with all saints.' But alas! the most of saints complain that they have not this; that they perceive not that Christ dwells in their hearts by faith, that they are rooted and grounded in love, but want a settled assurance, which is a being rooted in love; nor are they filled with all the fulness of God.

There are two things I shall prosecute upon this passage:— I. That Christ dwells in us.

II. That he dwells in our hearts by faith.

I. An explication of Christ's dwelling in us, and of his union with us: whether by his person first and immediately, or only by his

Spirit and graces effectively.

I shall explain this great point by way of answers to several queries.

Query 1.—How is it so peculiarly attributed to Christ that he dwells in us seeing we find in Scripture that the other two Persons dwell in us also?

1. The Father dwells in us: 1 John 4:12, 13, 'If we love one another, God dwelleth in us.' And 'hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit.' And, ver. 15,

'Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God.' Now it is evident that it is God the Father spoken of, for he speaks of him in the next words, ver. 14, who 'sent his Son to be the Saviour of the world;' and he speaks of God as distinct from Christ: 'Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God'—there is Christ—'God dwelleth in him.' Who? The Father.

My brethren, by the way I observe, this seems to have been a phrase to express a man to be a Christian by, that God dwelt in him, and Christ dwelt in him. Thus in the primitive language; for you see he brings signs of it: 'Hereby we know that we dwell in him, and he in us;' and so again, in 1 John 3:24, 'He that keeps his commandments dwells in him, and he in him. And hereby we know that he abideth in us, by the Spirit which he hath given us.' So that he makes this to be the character of a Christian, that he is one in

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whom God dwells, and Christ dwells; and this to be the sign of it, that he keepeth his commandments, and hath his Spirit in him. The like language you have in 2 Cor. 13:5, 'Know ye not that Christ is in you,' &c. This of the Father, that he dwells in us. But—

2. The Spirit dwells in us: Rom. 8:11, 'He that raised up Jesus from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.' Here is the Holy Ghost dwelling in us too.

3. You see Jesus Christ dwells in us too. That you have here in this place. So he prays 'that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith.' So that all the three Persons dwell in you; that is the first animadversion, which is introductory to others that follow.

Query 2.—But then you will say to me,—and it is the second query for the explication of the text,—How are these distinct? How is it that God the Father dwells in us? and how is it that God the Son dwells in us? and how is it that God the Holy Ghost dwells in us?

Truly, brethren, it is a very hard thing to distinguish it. Yet often you find some eminent character or other attributed to one Person by an eminence which is proper to him, and not to another; whereby there is some distinction which ariseth unto us. Now take this of dwelling in us, and you shall find that distinction thus:—

1. God the Father is said to dwell in us by love. God the Father doth more eminently dwell in us by our apprehensions of him in love; both in his love to us, and our loving of him: so you will find it in 1 John 4:16, 'And we have known and have believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.' Brethren, a man that hath great apprehensions, or any true apprehensions of the love of God to him, and his heart is kept dwelling and abiding on them, he doth thereby dwell in God the Father. If you look to the whole Scripture, the eminent property that is ascribed to the Father is love: 'The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God the Father.' Though Christ loves us too, yet it is the Father's love is the original of all. The more you apprehend the love of the Father, whether you do it in assurance, or whether you do it in adoring that love, and cleaving to that love, and following after that love you apprehend in the Father; the more you do this, the more doth God the Father dwell in you: therefore the Apostle prayeth 'that Christ may dwell in your hearts

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by faith, that ye being rooted and grounded in love:' but it is in the love of God the Father. But— 2. Jesus Christ dwelleth in us by faith,—so it is said here,—and we live in Christ by faith: Gal. 2:20; 'I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God.' But doth not Christ dwell in us by love too? It is certain that Jesus Christ dwelleth in us by love too; for he is our husband, and therefore it must be that he also dwelleth in us by love. But yet for all that, though he dwell in us by love as well as the Father, yet our converses with him are more eminently by faith; he dwelleth in us by faith,—not but that the Father dwelleth in us by faith too,—but Christ more properly. And in Acts 20:21, it is called

'repentance towards God, and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ:' not but that we repent unto Christ too, but faith is the most eminent thing towards Christ in this life. But— 3. The Spirit is said to dwell in us also; but, my brethren, the Spirit is not said to dwell in us by faith: which yet is not to be understood as if we do not believe in him, but that the soul doth exercise the main of its acting of faith upon Christ, as its more specially delighted object: but the Spirit lies, as it were, hid in the heart, and works faith in us towards Christ, and love in us towards God. I do not say that we are not at all to exercise faith and love upon the Spirit: there is faith in the Spirit,—it is said in the Creed, 'I believe in the Holy Ghost,'—and love to the Spirit, in a Christian; as you find

Rom. 15:30. It is said there, 'for Christ's sake, and for the love of the Spirit.' So that there is a love towards the Spirit in a Christian; a love in us to the Spirit, for the Spirit's own love to us. As also, because it is the Spirit that sheds abroad the love of God in our hearts. The Spirit works in us love to God and faith in Christ Jesus: but he lies hid, and as it were dormant in our hearts, and we little perceive how he is in us.

I shall add another query for the further explanation of the text:— Query 3.—Doth Christ dwell in our hearts only by faith? or doth he not otherwise dwell in us than by the exercise of our faith upon him? Doth not the person of Christ himself dwell in us, and not only by our faith?

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I answer, according to that light I have,—and I humbly submit what I shall say,—Christ himself dwells in you immediately by himself. That is my answer; and I oppose it to those that either say that he dwells in us only by his Spirit, or to many others who would lower that also, and say that both Christ's and the Spirit's dwelling in us is but by the graces they work in us; for still, in their speaking of this union, they express no more; and not so only, but also so limit it thereto herein. It must be acknowledged that their graces do dwell in us, and that they with their graces. Yea, others say, that his very dwelling in us by faith is but by faith as it is a grace; which were all one and to say, he dwells no otherwise in us by faith than as he doth by our mourning for sin, and by every act that is holy which we put forth, for they are graces. Even as some have said of late that we are justified by love, and mourning for sin, and every grace, as well as by faith. No, brethren, Jesus Christ dwells in us by faith, taking him as its most proper object appointed for it, and by going out of ourselves to him: Gal. 2:20, 21, 'I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.' And faith, by letting him into the heart, is as the eye which lets in the sun, or any other beautiful object, into the fancy, and the common sense, stirring the affections; and this is peculiar unto the grace of faith to do. But to say Christ dwells in us only by his graces, how doth this bring those great things which Christ himself, John 14, 17, and other scriptures do speak of this union, unto so great a lowness? As when Christ is said to be 'our life,' Col. 3:4, which yet some would have understood only causaliter, merely as the cause of our life, or grace in us. But Gal. 2:20 speaks, if not further, yet more clearly: 'It is not I that live, but Christ lives in me.' And it is certain, all principles of life, whatever life it be, must be the most intimate indwellers in them which are said to live thereby. The animal and vital spirits and the blood, that are said to be the life of a beast, as in the Old Testament, do run and dwell within the body, and veins, and arteries, and may be said to be the most proper inmates. And so the principal parts of the body, as the heart, &c., that are the fountain of life; especially

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the rational soul that acts all in us. And this holds true of Christ much more; he is intimior intimo nostro.

Rollock, both in his English sermons upon the Colossians, and his Latin comments on the Galatians and the Colossians, also urgeth this. 'The manner of speech,' saith he, ' "Christ our life," notes this, that that spiritual life we begin to live here is not so much a life different from his life, as it is the very life that Christ lives himself, the very same in number; that same very life, and no other, extends to us, so far as we are capable. Liveth the body another life than the head? There is but one life in the man, and that the head hath, the same the whole body hath, and it quickeneth every member of the body. And there is a nearer conjunction and inbeing betwixt Christ and us than there is between this head of ours and the body.' And in the Galatians, 'the Apostle says not,' says he, ' "by Christ I live," but it is, "Christ liveth in me.' "

And the comparison that the Holy Ghost useth about Christ's being our life at the resurrection, (and the same holds of all spiritual life begun here,) in 1 Cor. 15, that as 'Adam was made a living soul,'—that is, a rational and animal soul dwelt in a body, and animated, inspiring it with life,—that so, in like manner, Christ is to us 'a quickening spirit.' And by 'spirit,' it is not the Holy Ghost who is there meant, for it is spoken of Christ himself, the second Adam; and Paul says, 'The Lord is that spirit,' 2 Cor. 3:17 and he speaks of Christ as quickening our souls. And the parallel in that 1 Cor. 15, in respect of us, runs thus: that as the soul dwelling in Adam's body made him to be a living soul, so Christ, as the Lord that spirit, dwelling in us, quickens us, enliveneth us, both here and hereafter.

If there were a head so full of life, as if joined to a body wholly dead, or having the dead palsy, and could yet quicken it so far as it should live, and be a living, active animal; this must be done by its union with it, and diffusing its own vivific life and spirit into the members of that body; now this is the case between Christ and us.

He not only raiseth us up from the dead, by an efficient power, but also he doth by himself quicken us, and therefore dwells in us as the soul that enlivens the body, And this is by his Godhead or divine nature, that he is thus able to dwell in us: which is called 'the Spirit of holiness' in him, Rom. 1:4; and, Heb. 9:14, 'the eternal Spirit' by

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which he 'offered up himself.' And that divine nature, as dwelling first in his own humanity, doth by coming into us as a sovereign soul into our dead souls, he quickens us; and so lives in us, as Gal. 2, and is not as one wholly without us, that by an external power raiseth, as he will do wicked men, much less by another only, viz. his Spirit, the Holy Ghost only, but himself immediately; and so he is the primum vivens in us in respect of spiritual life. And whereas you will say, the graces wrought are an inward principle of spiritual life,—vitale principium, as the schools call them,—yet he is intimior intimo nostro; more within us than we ourselves are within ourselves, or our own graces. And hence it is that when Paul speaks of this life of graces, and of our spiritual life as it is in us, whilst comparing it with Christ's living in us, he doth as it were renounce that of his graces to be his life, or the chief inward principle of living, in that Gal. 2:20, not absolutely, but in comparison unto

Christ's being our life. 'Nevertheless, it is not I that live, but Christ lives in me:' and that not I is not only his carnal corrupt I, or self which he renounceth, (ego non sum ego,) but even his spiritual I, as in that like abrenunciation it is to be understood, 'Yet not I, but the grace of God that is with me:' it is his spiritual I as it is his own, he renounceth in that speech likewise, in Rom. 7; when he says it is 'not I, but sin,' the I or self there, is his regenerate self; it is his inward graces, which yet in comparison unto Christ he denies, in Gal. 2. It is observable also, that there is this difference in scripture language,—and we find it in both those places, Gal. 2 and Col.

3,—that when he speaks of our dying to sin, he puts that indeed upon a conformity with. Christ and the operation of Christ: 'I am crucified with Christ,' but he says not that Christ died in him. But when he comes to express our life, he says, 'It is not I, but Christ that lives in me,' for the reason aforesaid. The body of sin in us, which is ourself, dies with him; but in, or by, or with its dying in us, through the body of Christ, as Rom. 7, Christ is never said to die in us. But then when he comes to that point of his being our life, and that the life we have by him be spoken of, then we are not only said to be alive with him, but plainly that he lives in us.

I find that divines say that our union with Christ is a substantial union; that is, it is a union of the substance of his person and of

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ours, which the Lord's Supper is the symbol of, and is ordained to signify: and therefore not only by his Spirit or graces.

Query 4.—But the far greater question will be, Whether Christ dwells in us, and is made one with us, only by his Spirit's indwelling in us first and immediately, and not that himself first and immediately?

Now towards this I must first say,—which I shall after explain,—I could never see any reason against this, that the person of the Son of God, in and with the divine nature of him, may not, by means or reason of his union with the manhood in which he personally dwells first, and then through his relation to us thereby,—may not, I say, dwell in us, as well as the third Person, the Holy Ghost, doth, which our divines very generally affirm; yea, and that he should as immediately dwell in us as the Spirit.

1. What! hath the addition of the manhood unto his person made that person, as he is God, incapable of dwelling in us immediately, as well as the person of the Spirit? Is he disprivileged thereby, whenas indeed by reason of his relation to us as God-man it is that he doth dwell in us any way?

2. It hath also seemed somewhat strange to me that he that is ordained to be the means of our union with God, and is the prime object and terminus of our union, the designed bridegroom that is to be married, the person to be one and in conjunction with us: 'I in them, and thou in me, that they also may be one in us,' as in John 17.

It were strange, I say, that be who is the person in whom and by whom the union is effected with himself and the other two persons, and is the person most concerned in this matter of union; that himself should be married, and come to be in his nearest conjunction with us only by a proxy, viz., the Holy Ghost, and him to be sent into our hearts only to dwell in his stead: insomuch as I have been much inclined further to think that Christ joins himself to us first and immediately, and then we are made one with the Father, and then he sends his Spirit into our hearts.

Brethren, you have heard lately something of God's electing us to union with himself; but you have heard withal that Christ is the means of that union with God, and the immediate means, yea, and the first means: and to it is proposed in those scriptures where the

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weight of union is put upon the foundation of it, in John 14, 17, God united his Son immediately into one person with a man, and then ordained him, and that union of his, purposely, among other things, to bring about a union of us with himself. 'That they may be one in us,' speaking to his Father, says Christ there. How one in us? 'As thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee; that so they also may be one in us.' Then take ver. 23; mark the order, 'I in them, and thou in me.' So as I take these, says Christ, to be one with me; and so thou, Father, comest to be in them by me. You have the like in John 14:20, 'I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.' The person of the Father dwells in the person of the Son, yea, in the man Jesus. And so far as the thing is capable, he prays for a like union between us and themselves, but by means of himself. And therefore first now, we are capable to have the person of Christ dwell in us immediately, and yet to have room left of an infinite distance between the Son of God dwelling in the man, as personally one person with him, and his person to dwell in us immediately, and not by graces only.

Other divines have expressed this thus: that it is a substantial union, or dwelling in us substantially; whereby I understand, and I believe it to be their meaning, that the person of the Son doth dwell in our persons, though not as one person with us; which is the man

Jesus' sole and only privilege, who is the founder of this our union.

But we have the next union unto that which can be supposable, or which we are capable of. And surely he that dwells, as he is God, in common in all the creatures, his person and Godhead may well be thought to dwell in us by a special appropriated inhabitation, ns in his own house, which we are, says the Apostle, Heb. 3, yea, and not only so, but his body also. And this union did Christ, in whose human nature the Godhead dwells bodily, or personally, bring in for us, not only such a union as Adam had, in whom it is true that the Spirit dwelt but by graces, which were the only bond of that union; and therefore when graces were forfeited and failed, that union was instantly dissolved: for the Spirit's union was founded thereupon. And verily the forementioned speeches which Christ expresseth our union by, do give the loud sound of higher things by far than that union with God which Adam had, as to be 'one in us,'

&c., John 17, by a union next degree unto that which the man Jesus,

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as then and now one person with the Son, had and enjoyed, and thereby with the other two persons of the Trinity. And perhaps if our union with himself, who is there made the means of our union with the Father, had needed to have been first and immediately made by the third Person, the Spirit, he would have said, 'The Spirit in them, which Spirit is mine, and I in the Spirit, and thou in me.'

And this had been meet and requisite to have been said, if the Spirit had necessarily been the person who should first have come between Christ's self and them, ere Christ could have been united to us; but he there mentions not the Spirit explicitly at all. The Father dwells not in the human nature of Christ but by the Spirit; and then why may it not be allowed that the person of Christ should dwell first in us by himself immediately, and then to send his Spirit? Yea, I would have it inquired, whether at all Christ is said to dwell in us by his Spirit? Indeed that the Spirit of Christ is in us, and that the Spirit of the Son dwells in us, is often said; but this is far from saying that he dwells in us by his Spirit, much less that his person dwelleth in us but as by his Spirit dwelling in his stead.

Query 5.—You may ask now in the fifth place, What need the Spirit of God to dwell in us, if that the person of Christ, the Son of God, in his own person, immediately dwell in us, and doth all for us, and in us?

Brethren, shall I give you a short answer: It is ex abundanti, out of the abundancy and fecundity of the Godhead, which hath three

Persons in it, and the exuberancy of the love of God, and of all the three Persons in the Godhead, towards you; that so you may have the whole of the Godhead, both divine nature and all the three

Persons to dwell in you: yet so as Christ's person is still to be understood to be the medium or means of this union of the other two; and that not only by meriting or purchasing this union with the other two for us, and with himself, but by his own inhabitation first and immediate in us.

I shall give you a plain instance. You know that the human nature of Jesus Christ is now personally united to the Son of God. I will but ask him that asks the former question the very same question concerning Christ, that this questionist asks concerning us. Why and how doth the Spirit dwell in that human nature? Is it not that by the

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second Person's personally dwelling therein, the fulness of the Godhead, and all those glorious fulnesses, do dwell in that man also? And doth not the second Person dwell in him, and fill him immediately by his personal presence in him, and with him, with all graces? And doth not he, and is not he fully sufficient to act all in him that is any way to be acted by him? Was not that human nature raised up by that Spirit of holiness, that is, the divine nature in him? as Rom. 1:4. What needed he then to have the Spirit above measure?

The ground is, that where one Person is, there the other must needs be also: and therefore the gifts and graces in the man Jesus without measure are attributed to the Spirit, as well as to the second Person, the Son, in him; and his being raised up is ascribed to the power of his Father in him, as well as to the second Person, Rom. 6.

To bring this home to this point in hand, of Christ's dwelling in us, you must know that take the human nature of Christ, considered as such, and the Holy Ghost dwells no otherwise therein, for the manner or kind of his indwelling, than he doth in us, although in two things there is a vast difference. First, in the measure or degree; secondly, in the right or ground of his doing it, there is an infinite difference; but for the kind or manner he is in us as in him, and but in us as in him.

It is true that the union of the second Person, the Son, with his human nature, is of a higher and superior kind than that union which the Holy Ghost hath with him as he is man; for the second

Person is one person with that man, but so is not the Holy Ghost, nor is the Father, nor in that manner united to that nature. It is true also that, take the second Person, considered simply as God, and a person in the Godhead, without the assumption of the manhood, that then it must be said that the Father and the Spirit did and do dwell in him, so as not in us, by a circumincession, as the schoolmen term it; which I cannot stand to explain. And so they dwelt in that divine person before the human nature was taken up into union with it, and do still in an appropriate manner, and shall, and must do so to eternity. But withal it is as true, that in the human nature that is taken up and made into one person with the Son, both the Father and Spirit do dwell therein, as simply considered, but with the same kind of union wherewith they dwell in us. And the

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reason hereof is, for their dwelling in the human nature is nut that they are personally united thereunto, so as it might be said that the Father is one person with the man Jesus, or that the Holy Ghost is one person with that man. No, it is only the man and the Son of God that are become one person; much less is it to be said that the man is essentially become God. And if neither of these, then it must remain that the Holy Ghost dwells in him as man; but by the inhabitation both of his person, and by the same Holy Ghost's person, filling him with gifts and graces above measure; now thus in our measure and proportion also it must be said that he dwells in us. And again, if the man Christ were united in one person with the Father, and into one person with the Spirit, then one and the same human nature would be indeed the three, by virtue of such a personal union, if any such were. He then must be said to be one person with all of them together, and with each of them asunder. He might be termed the Father and the Spirit, as well as the Son of God.

Now if these two persons, the Father and the Spirit, dwell not thus in that human nature personally, nor each as one person, respectively with the man Jesus, then it remains that they dwell but in the same kind, or in that manner, in that nature, wherewith they dwell in us; which is that their persons dwell in us, with their operations of graces, but not personally.

As to the right whereupon the Spirit and the Father dwell in the human nature of Christ, that is infinitely transcending this of the Spirit's dwelling in us; for the Father and Spirit do dwell in his human nature, as he is now become one of the persons—the man,

God's fellow—in their communicative society together.

For lay but these things together. First, All three persons are essentially one God, although persons distinct enjoying that Godhead. And thus the Father and Spirit do dwell naturally or essentially in him, as he is the second Person, simply considered.

And thus do each of the persons dwell one in another, and hold an intimate indwelling, and converse one in and with another; though as persons distinct. And this mutual union of the persons one in another is the highest and nearest that can be, and is indeed founded on the identity of the Godhead. But then, secondly, come to that union which the persons of the Father and Spirit have with the

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human nature in the Son, which is founded not upon an essential oneness with the Son, but is merely personal; that is, in its being one person with the Son. And so, thirdly, from these two doth spring forth a right to that human nature, by way of privilege, he being one person with one of them,—namely, the Son,—that the persons both of the Father and the Spirit should dwell therein, according to its utmost capacity of having union with them, which is not personal.

And this is a necessary consequent of the two former assertions. But still it riseth not up that they should be personally united unto that man, who is thus personally united to this one distinct person, the Son; and but so united to him alone.

From whence two things follow:— First, That for the kind of their union, it is the same that is in us; for it is lower than that of a personal union with that man.

Secondly, There is a right due to that human nature, supposing its personal union with the Son, that they should dwell in that nature; which right is not to be found in us to our union. And this right is of that manhood, founded upon a double account:—

1. For else the man who is now one and the same person with the second Person, should be deprived of a personal privilege appertaining necessarily to him; which is to participate in the most near and intimate communion with those other two persons, Father and Spirit; into fellowship with whom he is now so highly admitted, unto the utmost that as a man so united he is capable of. And therefore as of these three Persons it is said to be, considered as they are persons, that the Father is in the Son, and the Son in the Father; so this privilege must of right descend unto the man, to enjoy the most intimate indwelling of them in himself which a creature now made a person with them, can be capable of. And surely above what all other creatures have a fitness or right to receive. Yea— 2. The divine person of the Son would be dishonoured if they did not so dwell in this human nature, according to his utmost receptivity of having them to dwell in him: it is the natural efflux or overflow of their dwelling in the person of the Son, simply considered, that breaks forth into a union with the man; that when the man is united once, they having their divine inbeing in that

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second Person, which is essentially, should break forth into an indwelling and possession of that manhood. And God forbid I should make any comparison at all between the indwelling of them in us we speak of, and that their indwelling in Christ's human nature, in these respects, thus stated. But as for that other respect, the kind of it, mentioned therein, the likeness and similitude may and doth hold, the infinitely distant proportions for degrees, &c., being observed. And we are as capable to have the person of the Spirit to dwell in us for the kind of an indwelling as the human nature of Christ is. But our right to the Spirit's indwelling in us is wholly derived, and but by Christ's right for us, and by our relation to Christ, and also by his purchase of the Spirit for us; which are all secondary, and wholly precarious, and borrowed.

These things being forelaid, as to the points forementioned, which have been given in the answer to the foregone queries, I come to confirm them by instances, from the example or similitude of the Spirit's dwelling in Christ's humanity, to be in that kind that is in us; my assertion being this— That Christ's, and so the Holy Ghost's, dwelling in us, is not only, or primarily for, and by that his person works such and such graces in us, and the actings thereof; but that his person first gives himself and comes into us, in order to work these effects.

This I confirm from the similitude or likeness of the Spirit's dwelling in Christ's human nature.

1. I would ask, doth the Spirit dwell in the human nature of Christ by his graces and operations only joining himself to it? No, but the person of the Holy Ghost fills the whole substance of that nature with his own person: that precious ointment, the Spirit, which Christ's humanity is anointed withal, doth wholly diffuse himself into the whole and inwards of him; and thereby, and from thence, and therewith, fills that holy one, with those odours of gifts and graces which he so infinitely abounds in. And as concerning us, it is, in Rom. 8:11, thus spoken of us, and of the Spirit in us: that 'he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken our mortal bodies by his Spirit,' or as it is in the margin, 'because his Spirit that dwelleth in us:' the Holy Spirit dwells in our bodies when dead and in the ground. Our bodies are his temples—1 Cor. 6:19, 20, 'What?

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know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? for ye are bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's'—as well as our souls, and he never ceaseth to dwell in them, after he is once come into them; as he did not withdraw from Christ's body. And I am sure you will not say, as to what concerns us, that he dwells in the bodies of the saints when they are dead, by his graces; the soul carries them all to heaven with it and in it; it is therefore his person, that having once taken them into his possession, and acted in them, keeps possession in them until the resurrection.

2. Another part of this likeness between these two indwellings is, that, look, as because the Son of God, the second Person, dwelling first in, and possessing the human nature of Christ as one person with him, that then and thereupon the Spirit comes to dwell in that nature also; and that so it is in his indwelling in us, as to this respect that Christ first dwells in us, and then sends his Spirit to dwell in us; though upon another ground and right, as was said, than that whereupon the Spirit dwells in Christ.

3. As for that point of Christ's divine nature, or as he is second Person and subsisting in that nature, his dwelling as such immediately in us; I argue thus from what hath been said, that this divine nature, and he as second Person, and so the divine nature in him, is as capable and able to dwell immediately in us as the Spirit, the third Person, is: whose Person many divines acknowledge to dwell immediately in us and in our persons, and not by his graces only; and then, why may not the second Person also, and the divine nature of him? Why may not that person fill us immediately with his Godhead? For as such he is a Spirit, yea, that Spirit in that he is

God, John 4:24. And spirits do and can easily mingle; the Godhead, that is a Spirit, can readily join with our souls that are spirits, and be both in them, and through them, as Paul speaks. Satan, a spirit, can possess your bodies; yea, he doth fill the hearts of men oftentimes, in that intimate way and manner which a man is not able to do, as the Scripture speaks. Can Satan do it because he is a spirit, and cannot Christ and the Spirit of God much more intimately and closely, who is God, and as he is God? And it is his divine nature

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that is termed spirit in Christ often in Scripture, in distinction from his humanity, which in a contradistinction is styled his flesh; doth his being united to that man debar him, or hath it made him incapable of this? Surely no, for even after the day of judgment, when it is said that 'God shall be all in all,' 1 Cor. 15:28, many understand it—and it cannot well be understood otherwise in its coherence—that God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and the Godhead in them all, shall in an immediate manner be all in all to the saints for ever, and immediately dwell in us for ever. And yet the second

Person shall not then lay down his being man, no not to all eternity; for it is in respect thereof that Christ is said in that very place to be subject to his Father for ever, and therefore continues God-man for ever; for in respect thereof it is that his Father is greater than he, and so that he continues subject to his Father. There is then no obstacle that the second Person subsisting in the divine nature should be united to us immediately, from this his personal union with the man. And that there is a capacity, that he as second Person may do this, may further appear, in that both Father and Spirit are now, and shall one day be so united to us, as hath now been observed, though indeed at that day, the effect of that immediate union, or of God's being all in all, will be an answerable immediate communion and enjoyment of Father, Son, and Spirit, which is suspended in this life, but then consummated.

But you may say, Doth not this hinder, that now since the second Person is united to the human nature, that whatever he doth, he doth only through the humanity and by it, and so unites himself to us only by it? Likewise that he unites himself to us as he is Mediator, and therefore as God-man, and not simply as second Person; for that were but what is common to the other two persons, if his divine nature, as such, should thus, as I seem to affirm, unite himself unto us? And therefore the divine nature unites himself no otherwise to us, than by the union first of the human nature with us, and not immediately his divine nature, or as second Person?

For answer unto which I give these following cautions and explanations:— 1. This foregoing assertion of mine is not to be understood as if the second Person did perform this act of union of himself with us,

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singly considered, as second Person separate from the human, or without all consideration or relation had to the human nature, either of his actual union with it which hath been from his incarnation, or of God's ordination he should be man, and his own undertaking so to be, which was before his incarnation.

No; but, first, I affirm that unless the second Person had been actually united to the human nature as now he is; and withal, unless he had been ordered by God so to be, he had not united himself unto any of us men, neither before his incarnation nor since.

2. Hence, secondly, when I say the second Person subsisting in the divine nature doth immediately unite himself to us, I mean not by that immediateness that the second Person, considered as separate from, or without all consideration of his union with the human nature, doth, or should have ever come to dwell in us; but by immediateness I understand immediate putting forth of an act of uniting his divine nature unto us. So that though the union of the divine and human nature be either in actual assumption or God's ordination, as before the assumption, the necessary prerequisite unto the divine nature's actual union with us, and in the virtue of which, as necessarily presupposed, it always comes to pass that the divine nature of the second Person is united unto any, either under the Old Testament or the New; yet that human nature is not, nor was not, the medium, or organ, much less the sole way or means by which the divine nature is united unto us, but it is his own immediate exerting that act: not to be understood as to this sense, that the human nature in Christ were the only immediate uniter by which alone the divine comes to be one with us, and so itself to be but mediately united; as the soul in the body takes hold of a thing by the hand only immediately, but itself doth not so much as touch it immediately. It is one thing for one to do a thing by reason of another, and another to do it by the means and intervention of another's doing it, or as by the sole immediate act of another. As the soul doth many rational acts immediately itself whilst it is in the body, and by reason of its dwelling in the body, or to the things and persons in the world it hath to do with, by reason of its being in the body, and not otherwise, which if single and separate it would not do, wherein yet it useth not the body, as by which it doth them. One

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may do a thing himself immediately, and yet upon the virtual intuition or consideration of some other thing or person he is joined with, which has the influence of a moral cause: but to do a thing by another, as the necessary organ, or physical cause, as when a man's hand cannot immediately cut but by the intervention of a knife or sword. Here— 3. I utterly deny that the divine nature in Christ should not work an act of mediation in us and for us, but by the physical virtue or instrumentality of the human nature, and particularly this of union with us, for which to me there is this evidence. The saints of the Old

Testament were united to Christ as their head as truly as we; but it could not then be by the physical virtue put forth by the human instrumentality of such a kind. For that nature was not in respect of physical existence extant, who then must be the immediate uniter, by his own vis or power exerted in it; and it is certain such a power must have been exercised in it; who but the second Person subsisting then in the divine nature, or, if you will, the divine nature subsisting in the person; and it could be no other, that either he who was extant then must himself immediately do it; or there was no immediate union of Christ at all to any saint under that dispensation. And this may well stand with what was said in the second caution, that the virtual consideration the human nature to be one day united, and in the virtual intuition thereof, this union with the saints was then made as well as now; yet it was not so as that any vis, or physical virtue of that nature, could be instrumental, as by which it might be said that the divine nature did it by the human; the divine nature of the second Person, that was the immediate cause of it. A man doth a thing in the virtue of a law, or order of state, but yet himself doth the act immediately; so the second Person, that then acted in the virtue of God's ordination of the manhood, and his own undertaking that he should be man, and sustaining that person. And surely if he did thus unite himself before, he may do it now the humanity is assumed; for—besides the former reasons, which will reach to prove this—otherwise the saints of the Old Testament should have a higher union, and so a greater privilege thereby, than we now under the New have. For their union was the immediate act of the divine nature, and the

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Godhead in the second Person dwelt immediately in them then, which now dwells in us but mediately by our union with the human nature, and the divine nature dwells but secondarily in us. It might have been said of them that they were partakers of the divine nature in such a manner as we are not. Hence—

4. Although the second Person, as he is God, be immediately united, yet the ground of this union is such as is proper and peculiar to him as he is God-man; as it may not be alleged as an absurdity upon this my assertion, that if the second Person so dwell as God in us, that then upon the same account the other two persons may be said to dwell in us too, for they are God as well as he. Thus the Papists urge.

But for answer, the fallacy lies in this, that though his union with us be as he is God, as the subject of this indwelling, yet for the ground of that his uniting himself, as God, to us, it is not as God simply considered, but as dwelling, or ordained to dwell in our nature personally, which additional empowered him for the union; but this additional ground is wanting in the other two persons. And although the persons of them dwell in us, subjectively considered, as they are God as well as he; yet they take of his, for the ground of that their dwelling in us, they borrow that from him. It is certain that, had not the divine person in Christ had personal union with that man Jesus, that neither God the Father nor the Spirit had ever come to dwell in us, nor the second Person himself neither; it is in the virtue of this that they all dwell in us. And so this my assertion, as it introduceth not a ground common unto the other two persons with him, the second Person, and sole Mediator, but borrows, as it were, the ground of their indwelling from him, and that of his; so it may be improved to prove that he as God is the ground, yea, the sole means of our union with the Deity, and so may well be allowed, in the application of, or effecting this union in us, to be the first indweller himself, and first to unite himself unto us. And thereby is it that the other persons come and make their habitation with us; that Father, Son, and Holy Ghost come and make their abode with us, as Christ says.

But, secondly, it may be added that his union with the human nature was not only the ground of the other two persons dwelling in

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us and his own, which is an honour proper to him; but further, that there is some special peculiarity in the union itself which he hath with us, that is not found in the union of the other two persons with us; for he unites himself to us as our husband, and so in an appropriate way the relation of husband speaks union, as the special fruit of it, or indeed in which it consists, and distinguishes the person of him that is so from all others. Now that relation, as Zanchy observes, is properly Christ's, and so as not the Father's nor the Spirit's. It was the voice of the Son before the human nature assumed, Hos. 2:19, 20, 'I will betroth thee unto me for ever; yea, I will betroth thee unto me in righteousness, and in judgment, and in loving-kindness, and in mercies. I will even betroth thee unto me in faithfulness; and thou shalt know the Lord.' And he is the Lord there utters it, whom they should know as a wife her husband; there must be some further specially eminent thing in our union with Christ as our husband that is not in our union with the other two; for as the relation of union is, such must the union itself be.

Thirdly, That it is by virtue of his being our Mediator in both natures, that his divine nature cometh to dwell immediately in us, and all the whole virtue be fundamentally in him as he is God and second Person, and that is the virtue of drawing us into union with himself; as it is the loadstone itself that draws the iron, yet it exerts this more efficaciously when set in steel, yet still so as each nature works in every mediatory act proper to each nature; hence the divine nature in the second Person dwells in us as he is God. The man Jesus dwells in us according to his capacity as he is man, yet both joining still so to do according to their ability proper to each.

These things have been concerning our union with Christ, but the main thing, fourthly, is Christ's dwelling in our hearts by faith. Let there be a union of Christ in us, as hath been spoken before, yet you will say, What is all this to his dwelling in us by faith? Why do you make this query? Why, his dwelling by faith in us is only on our parts, whereas now his person dwelling in us, as hath been discoursed, that as his dwelling in us is on his part; and the Apostle doth not pray here that Jesus Christ's person might dwell in our persons, but that we acting faith upon him on all occasions,—and we have all occasion so to do,—he might thereby manifest himself

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in our hearts. Christ dwelling in us by faith is not the dwelling of his person in our persons, for he takes hold of us before we believe, and works faith in us, but it is when our faith hath taken hold of him. He dwells in us by the continual acting of our faith upon him; and this is after our conversion.

My brethren, there is a threefold union with Christ. The first is relative, whereby we are said to be his and he ours. As you know he is called our husband, and the church is called his wife; and before husband and wife company together there is such a relation made by marriage; and the husband may be in one place, and the wife in another, so that there can be no communion between them, and yet be man and wife. So is the union between Christ and you as complete in the relation, before he act anything upon you, though he be in heaven and you on earth, as if you were in heaven with him. The second is an actual inbeing of his person, which is as the soul dwells in the body. The third is objectivè, by way of object: when by faith we view Christ as the faculty doth view an object; as the sight of a person doth let down the idea of him into the heart of another. Christ as the object of faith is said to dwell, and to dwell in us so far as we act faith towards him; this is that the Apostle prays for. He prays not that his person may dwell in them, but that he might dwell in them by faith. Brethren, to explain this to you, what is it for Christ to dwell by faith: I shall give you these assertions to explain it:— Assertion 1.—It is an operative dwelling: the person of Christ may be in us, and is in us, when faith doth not operate and work in us; there may be that real inbeing. As when a man is in a swoon, his soul is in him; and when the arm is out of joint, it is still united to the body and the head, but it cannot operate; which is the case of men when they fall into presumptuous sins. For Christ to dwell in us by faith is that there may be a continual eying of Christ, and acting on Christ by us, as an object who hath virtue to convey into us, and to come in upon our hearts, and work upon our souls; that is the first: for Christ to dwell in our hearts by faith is by operation and working, whereof faith is the instrument.

Assertion 2.—That, the person of Christ dwelling in us, there are thousands of operations and influences of Christ's person in us

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whereto our faith contributes nothing. Christ's working in us is not to be limited to that; it were ill for us if it were so. Jesus Christ works a thousand and a thousand operations in our souls to which our faith concurs nothing; it were ill for us if Christ did work no more in us than we have faith for; our faith is too narrow to limit and bound his operations by. I will give you an instance. There were two disciples went to Emmaus, but they knew not that Christ talked with them; yet, said they, he warmed our hearts; and yet they did not believe nor act faith upon him. Christ dwells in us and works in us, when we act not and know not our union, nor that it is he that works. But, saith the Apostle, I pray that Christ may do nothing, but that your faith might go along with him in it. Oh! that were blessed and glorious indeed, that Christ should do everything in you, and for you, through your believing and exercising your faith on him for it; and so that through your faith on Christ all might be derived unto you; and that the whole management of the dispensations of God towards you might be by faith; and that we might attain the highest indwellings and operations in us through faith.

Assertion 3.—That when the Apostle prays that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith, it is not only by faith as justifying, but all sorts of ways whatsoever, whereby we are to exercise faith upon Christ, and that through all ways whatsoever; and that thereby

Christ might still take their hearts, and dwell in their hearts, be the occasion what it will be; whatsoever it be in Christ that is considered and eyed by them. My brethren, Jesus Christ, whole

Christ, contains a wonderful deal more than as the object of your faith justifying; Jesus Christ is a mighty large thing for your faith and your thoughts to work upon. All that you know of his person, all that you know he hath done and will do, all these are matter for the exercise of your faith on Christ. Jesus Christ serves for infinite other things than to justify us, and faith serves for infinite other things than to justify us; yet this I must add, that no man can act faith upon Christ heartily, spiritually, or effectually, for other things, that hath not first acted faith upon Christ for justification. If a man have not acted faith for his justification on Christ, he will have no heart to go to him for sanctification, deliverance, freedom from wrath, hell, and other things. No, according as we act on him for justification,

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we shall act on him for other things; but all I drive at here is to shew that faith is acted on Christ for other things beside justification. Gal.

2:19, 'I am dead to the law,' saith the Apostle, 'that I might live unto God;' to live to God is the whole life of a Christian, and not only to live the life of justification; and then he adds, ver. 20, 'I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh is by the faith of the Son of God.' Hence I gather that Christ's living in him extends not to justification only, but to the whole life of a Christian; he adds also that Christ's living in him is by faith, and that the whole course of his life in this world is by faith. So that this I gather as a strong argument, that all the life of the Apostle to God, every manner of way, whether natural or spiritual, it was by faith on Christ.

My brethren, take the whole of Jesus Christ, whatsoever you can know of him, or learn of him, for you to act faith upon him, to view him as such, thereby Jesus Christ is let down into your souls dwelling in you, making impressions upon your souls according to what you know of him; and he doth accordingly work in you dispositions to him, adorations of him, according as you know him; so he works also in you affections to him, and all holy impressions whatsoever: so he works in you according as you act faith on him, or think of him in any consideration whatsoever, whether in his death, or resurrection, or any other consideration.

Brethren, set your hearts to think on Christ as dying for your sins, and see what dispositions of heart this works in your souls unto

Christ; and so go over other considerations of Christ; inure your hearts thus to think of Christ, and join prayer to God to work with you, and you will find that going from one thing to another, all of Christ will affect your heart; and Jesus Christ hereby works upon you, applieth himself to you, supplies you, and changeth your heart into his likeness and image.

Grace in us should be so wrought in us to such a height as that nothing but the image of Christ should be in the actings of our hearts; and that there should be in us dispositions suitable to everything we know and believe of Christ, that so Christ, thus in his image, may indeed dwell in your hearts by faith; for the image of Christ in you is called Christ: and I might give you scriptures for it.

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Act faith on Christ as dying for you, and you shall see that it will make a lust to shrink and die in you. As one said of a lust at a sacrament, that when he acted faith on Christ as dying, his lust shrunk and skulked presently; so would it be with us: and indeed we need no other religion but this, to act faith upon Christ constantly, and then we should find all this in us; though we are apt to be discouraged that we find it not presently.

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THE SECOND SERMON ON EPHESIANS

3:16–21 That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God. Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we can ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen.

IT is the prayer of the Apostle Paul, according to the elevation of his own experience, which he wisheth and prayeth that all saints may be brought unto, that with all saints you may be 'able to comprehend what is the length, and breadth,' &c. There are several petitions, and you need seek no connexion of them one with another, as you do not in the Lord's Prayer; they are as pearls upon a string.

The Apostle doth involve and enwrap into this prayer here the principal interests and efficacies of all three persons, and what they do for us after our conversion. Here is the Spirit, and what he is principally to do for us: ver. 16, to 'strengthen us in the inner man with might by his Spirit.' Here is what more properly concerns Jesus

Christ to do for us: it is 'that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith.' Here is what concerns the Father: 'that you may be rooted and grounded in love,' in his love, 'and may be able to comprehend with all saints the height,' &c. I understand these words to belong to the Father, because it follows, 'that ye might know the love of Christ.' And there is the height of all, the Father, Son, and Holy

Ghost: 'that you may be filled with all the fulness of God,' and that

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which is in God. That is the first observation; it comprehends all three persons.

I put it in, it is what they do for us after conversion; for when he says, 'that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith,' he doth not mean that you are to be converted, but he supposeth an inner man; it is not the union with Christ, but Christ after dwelling in us, it is what is done for us after conversion. He prays for men supposed already converted; he prays for them, and all saints, who are already saints. So as this thing concerns men converted already.

The third is, he prays for such things as are attainable in this life.

Why? 'That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith.' Faith is not in the other life; Christ doth not so dwell here in our hearts, neither are we so rooted in love against all doubts and diffidences of the love of God towards us. And this that is the last, to be 'filled with all the fulness of God;' there is a forerunner of what is in heaven in the hearts of believers here.

Fourthly, Observe that they are the highest things attainable by Christians. Paul prays here according to the utmost latitude he would have Christians attain unto, when he prays here that they may comprehend with all saints the height, &c. His meaning is not that all saints did attain it, but lie prays that they may attain it; to enjoy all the fulness of God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. It is the highest thing in heaven, when God shall be all in all; it is a thing beyond the love of God and the love of Christ, it comes after all; it is the highest thing he prays for, yet attainable. And because it is the highest he could ask, therefore it is he concludes his prayer thus:

'Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we are able to ask or think, according to the power,' &c. The meaning I take to be this. He here asks such high things for you, as are beyond the thoughts, the ordinary thoughts of Christians; he doth not intend to ask heaven now, but to ask what is in this world to be given, and they are so great things as you need go to a God that is able to do above what you are able to ask or think, in the abundancy of his grace; above all you are able to think by what experiences you yet have had and ordinarily have attained unto. It is as if he had said, There are things attainable comprehended in

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what I have prayed for beyond what you think, and beyond what I have asked, and yet they are attainable.

Fifthly, They are attainable by all saints, though not attained.

Therefore he prays that they may 'comprehend with all saints;' not that they do, but that they may: and therefore they are attainable.

The use of these animadversions or observations.

First, It is matter of comfort. Most saints will say, I have not the experience of these things in that height he speaks of. But thou mayest be a saint notwithstanding.

Secondly, Another is a use of provocation, that we would set ourselves to seek God for these things. In respect of spiritual attainments that we never thought of, we content ourselves, and think it a great matter to be in a state of grace, and to have an interest in Christ; but be not so content, but ask for things that are above what you are able to ask or think: so doth the Apostle here. I have done with the general.

I come to the second petition, ver. 17, 'that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith.' This I would open as my present task and work; I shall do it by degrees; attend from one step to another.

There may be these questions made upon it:— Quest. 1.—Why doth (he mentions the three persons, as you heard) why doth he not say, That the Spirit may dwell in you by faith? that God the Father may dwell in you by faith? He ascribes that as more proper to the Spirit, that he strengthens them in the inner man; but when he comes to Christ's part, 'that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith:' why are faith and Christ thus coupled?

The answer is easy. It is because Christ is appointed between us and the Father as the means by whom and through whom he conveys all to us, and that through faith. Rom. 3:25, 'Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood,' &c. He hath set him forth, and there he is for you to exercise your faith upon. As he hath ordained Jesus Christ to be the great medium or means betwixt us and himself, so he hath ordained faith as the principal instrument in us to treat with Christ. Look in Acts 20:21:

'Testifying repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus

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Christ.' You see that conversion, or turning the soul, that is attributed to God, to him as the object of it especially; but faith is pointed to Jesus Christ. 'Repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ.'

I will not enlarge further upon this than thus. Brethren, when the soul turns to God, the orderly method is that it should go to Jesus

Christ, immediately and first to him, and through him to God, and in him to God, for pardon, and all else. John 14:6, 'No man comes to the Father, but by me,'—they are places well enough known to you,—therefore in John 6:45, 'They shall be all taught of God' to come to me, says our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. The Father, when he means to save a soul, directs that soul to his Son; the soul comes humbly before God the Father, and God the Father says, Go to my Son; he secretly teacheth the soul. 'No man can come unto me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him. It is written in the prophets, They shall be all taught of God. Every one therefore that hath heard, and learned of the Father, cometh unto me.'

Brethren, it is certain that of all things else, we in our own natural dispositions are most remote in going to Christ. We go to the Father, and to God; that all nations do by a natural instinct; they have in their hearts some knowledge of a God, and will run to their own performances, and they will turn to God, and leave their sins, and set up duties that God requires, which they have omitted, but still they will not go to Christ till the Father put an instinct into them. Why did the beasts go into the ark? God put an instinct into them, that they should go by couples; so God puts an instinct into the soul to go to Christ: and hence, he that hath heard and learned of the Father, comes to me, says he. And therefore faith and Christ are coupled, as you see, and yoked in this place. And when the soul hath come to Christ, by observing and seeing, as Joseph's brethren did the countenance of Joseph, what his countenance is, what his entertainment is, how he looks upon them: 2 Cor. 4:7, therein we see

'the glory of God, in the face of Jesus Christ.'

That is the answer to the first question, Why faith and Christ are thus coupled together in a more immediate conjunction, that when he would pray, that he say, 'that Christ may dwell in the heart by faith?'

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Another question is, How Christ is said to dwell by faith, and how the Holy Ghost is said to dwell?

But a second thing I would speak to, is this: What is this same dwelling in Christ by faith, and the extent of it?

Truly, brethren, I shall answer it at last more fully. In the meantime, it is not justifying faith only; when we hear of Christ and faith, presently we think it is putting forth an act of justifying faith.

No, brethren, it is not so here, Christ doth not dwell in us only, nor most properly, by faith justifying. It is called justifying faith because it justifies; but this is a dwelling, Christ dwelling. Christ justifying us is but one act, or one benefit which he bestows; but here is a dwelling, and this extends further. The Apostle supposeth the soul justified, but that he may dwell. John 15:3, 4, 'Now are ye clean through the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me, and I in you.' Abiding here in John, and Christ dwelling in Paul, are all one.

Says he, 'You are clean;' that is, You are now, through my grace and Spirit put upon you, purified by faith, you are regenerated, and it hath been wrought much by my word that I have spoken to you.

What remains? All the rest of your lives to dwell in me, and I to dwell in you. 'Abide in me, and I in you.' Now that you are thus made clean, that is the next thing you are called upon to do

My brethren, you must know there is a twofold union with Christ, and Christ with us:— 1. A relative union; that is, whereby he takes upon him the relation of being a husband, and to be one with us all sorts of ways, which the relations of unity do express. And this union is fully and completely done when first we are turned to God, and when Christ first takes us, as ever it shall be. Your relation doth not increase, it hath not degrees; your union with Christ, that he is one with you, and you with him, in respect of the relation to him, is complete. As in marriage, you know that persons, before they come to communion one with the other, are as much man and wife as ever they shall be, for the relation; but then he takes her home to his own house, and dwells with her, forsakes father and mother and cleaves to his wife, and, as the apostle Peter says, they dwell together. Just so it is have; the relative union whereby Christ is one with us, and we with him, as man and wife, as all relations else that speak

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oneness, is full and complete at first. When you are in heaven, you are not more in Christ than when first turned.

2. But after he hath taken you, there is both a substantial union and a communicative union, which is expressed here by indwelling, whereby he communicates to you all those things which the relative union serves for. A man is married but once, but they do communicate one with the other all their lives, dwelling together, being helps one to the other, being one flesh, &c. This gives some light to John 17:22, 23, 'The glory thou gavest me I have given them, that they may be perfect in one.' Perfect in one! not till they are in glory.

So then the communication of holiness, and the communication of glory, are but still consummating that union which the relation first brought in. So then, you may understand what it is for Christ to dwell in the heart. Take the first, it is for him to communicate all good things that the Father hath appointed him to bestow upon us; but then, secondly, it imports that we receive them by faith, and by faith fetch them from him. This is the ground why it is called an indwelling, and what is meant by it.

The next question will be. What faith is towards Christ, by which he dwells in us, as the apostle here prays?

Brethren, it is not faith justifying only; I do not find that Christ is said to dwell in us by that, though it is part of it; but it is that faith wherewith we any way deal with Christ, for anything whatsoever.

Faith in Christ is not only faith justifying; faith hath to do with Christ for a multitude of things to be communicated to the soul besides justification. I use to say there are three things adequate one to the other. There is God the Father's grace bestowing, Jesus

Christ's redemption meriting and bestowing, and there is faith in us to apprehend and apply all these. These three are adequate, that is to say, of like extent in the subordination of the one to the other. For example, all that was in God's heart to bestow, all grace, of what kind soever, that Jesus Christ was made the instrument of purchasing; there is not anything which God the Father means to bestow, but God the Son hath purchased it, and serves God and his purposes in bestowing it upon us: so as there is not that thing in the heart of God to be given to us, but Jesus Christ answerably procures it, and endows us with it. So that Christ is adequate to all God's

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purposes whatsoever. Then come we to ourselves. There is a little principle called faith, which goes out of itself both unto God and unto Christ; and—mark what I say—all that ever Jesus Christ purchased, and that Jesus Christ shall bestow on us, faith is the instrument that shall receive it, and go to Christ for it. There is not that thing in the heart of God but Christ hath purchased; there is not that thing Christ hath purchased and means to bestow, but faith is the instrument to apprehend and apply it. Now justification is but one piece, but there are many things, I know not how many things else, which Christ hath to bestow upon us besides justifying us; and we have a principle, namely, faith, in us, that serves not only for justifying, but sanctifying, for strength, obedience, everything.

Hence then it is not only faith justifying, but faith upon Christ all sorts of ways; faith answers to the whole of Christ, and it is not only faith justifying, but faith in the whole extent of it, wherein we do receive, or may receive, anything from Christ, and thereby he dwells.

The next question is, What is it to have Christ thus dwell in the heart by faith?

Supposing faith taken in this large sense, I shall answer two ways:— 1. By the reality of the thing.

2. By the metaphor of dwelling.

First, By the reality of the thing. Take it as the Apostle prays for it, and he prays for the highest, it is to have a spiritual sight and knowledge of Christ, which makes him present to the soul, whole

Christ, and especially his person, and with him all that we know of him, or hear of him, as occasion is to make use of it; which sight and knowledge doth withal let Christ down into the heart, and affects all there, takes possession of the heart, and doth this in a constancy; this, as Paul prays for it, is the indwelling of Christ by faith. I shall speak to every one of these.

First, It is to have Jesus Christ continually in one's eye, an habitual sight of him. I call it so, because a man actually thinks not always of Christ; but as a man doth not look up to the sun continually, yet he sees the light of it, so here faith, in John 6:40, is

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called the seeing of Christ: 'Every one that seeth the Son, and believeth on him.' And our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, speaking of himself, says, Psalm 16, 'I have set the Lord always before me.' So therein ye should carry along, and bear along in your eye, the sight and knowledge of Christ, so as still there is at least a presence of him accompanies you which faith makes.

Secondly, It is a spiritual sight of him, it is to know him as the truth is in Jesus, really, that makes faith to differ from all the faith that is in the world.

Thirdly, It is whole Christ to dwell, and the whole of him, to dwell in you by faith; it is Christ in the text, not Christ as justifying or dying only, but the whole of him; for there is that in faith that is capable to take in the whole of him, and for him to affect the heart accordingly. There is a parallel scripture to this, Gal. 1:16, 'When it pleased God to reveal his Son to me.' For Christ the Son to reveal himself to a man, it is for the whole of himself to dwell in the heart by faith. It is not only revealing Christ to me, but it is revealing

Christ in me. Oh, it hath been a vain and wicked imagination, that every man hath a Christ within him, only it is not revealed, and the work of salvation is but revealing what is in the heart already: whereas for Christ to be revealed in us, is for Christ to be so revealed as to be in the midst of us, and for Jesus Christ to dwell in the heart continually, receiving in abundance of him; and to have the image and representation of all he is, and that I know by him, in my heart; and it is whole Christ, not one piece of Christ. Brethren, the whole of Christ, and not one piece of him only, all his words, and all his speeches, is Christ dwelling in you by faith; you receive all them, it is whole Christ.

Fourthly, It is all of Christ, all about him. You read of a great many things of Christ, of his dying, rising, how he walked, what he is to his people in his relations, in his dealings. If faith hath Christ present with the soul, and knows but any one thing, more and more of Christ, thereby is Christ said to dwell in the soul, by letting him into the soul and into the heart, and affecting the heart with him.

Saith the Apostle, Gal. 4:19, 'I am in travail with you till Christ be formed in you.' He speaks it of the point of justification. Christ justifies by restoring their faith to that again, and drawing their

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hearts to seek it in Christ: this is Christ formed in them, for that thing to take my heart and possess my soul, is for Christ in and by that particular thing to dwell in me. John 15, 'If you abide in me, and my words abide in you,' &c.; abiding is dwelling. Let him dwell and have a power upon my soul, this is for Christ to abide; every beam of Christ is Christ dwelling himself, being present by faith to the soul.

Fifthly, When Christ, and all of Christ, every beam of him, is not only known, but takes and affects my heart. You see the heart is made the subject of Christ's dwelling; it is not to dwell in the notion, in your brains. You have no more of Christ dwelling than as your hearts are affected. This is express, 2 Cor. 3:18, 'We all, beholding with open face the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, by the Spirit of the Lord.' First, there is spiritual beholding; he speaks of Christ: and of what of Christ? Not only of his person, but of all that is to be known of Christ. Adam's graces had not glory, but all of Christ hath. It is such a beholding as, letting Christ and his glory into the soul, doth change it, turn it, leave the impressions upon a man; and this is done by the Spirit of the Lord. By the Spirit of the Lord, the Holy Ghost is not meant; for he said in the words before, 'The Lord is that Spirit.' Christ himself is, and he by his force and power, when he comes into the soul, doth change it, fill it, quicken, strengthen it, and leaves impressions upon it. As the burning-glass contracts all the beams of the sun to a point, but it is the beams of the sun that sets on fire the cloth, so it is the Spirit of the Lord that fires our hearts. Thus to know Christ is to dwell in him.

Lastly, I said in a constancy; that is it Paul prays for, the very word 'dwelling' imports so much. What! by faith as sleepy, idle? No, it is by faith as acting. What! to possess him by fits? No, to enjoy him, and to have the heart taken with him, for some constancy. The expressions for 'dwelling' in Scripture are plain. 'Abide in me,' says he; do not stir out of doors from me, for I dwell in you; do you 'abide in me, and I in you.' Jesus Christ is ordained to be—if we had faith enough to keep him in our hearts—a constant dweller by faith, and he dwells actually. 'We will come and make our abode with him,'

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says he, John 14:23.—By this you have explained what it is for Christ to dwell in the heart by faith.

To give you some particulars:— First, Take the person of Christ, to have a sight of his person, to have that along in the preciousness of it, in the valuation of it. I have seen the King of Glory, saith Isaiah. He speaks it of Christ. To have

Christ dying, and Christ rising, and Christ ascending, and not only so, but Christ himself. Brethren, the intercourse between this indweller and our souls is between persons, those that dwell in the same house, the familiarity is between persons; therefore our eyes are to him. 'To you he is precious,' saith he; John 14, 'I will manifest myself to him.' That is one particular.

This is attainable, nay, it is the strength of the import of Christ's dwelling by faith, as you heard out of the 16th Psalm, 'I will always set the Lord before me.' This should so take the heart, that your souls should always have the impression, the image of the grace of that person, of his meekness, holiness, fear of the Lord. He was quick in understanding, discerning what was the will of God, and what not; he had the fear of God upon him, he was aiming and seeking the glory of God continually. These were the graces of his person. To have the impressions of these graces left upon the soul, this is for Christ to dwell in you by faith. You shall not need to be told Christ was meek and lowly; no, this is more than a sermon concerning Christ.

Again, It is to know Christ in all his work of mediation, what he did: that he was circumcised, that he was derided, crucified, died, rose again, ascended, sits in heaven; faith taking all these things of Christ, if it be high, raised, spiritual faith, such as Paul here prays for, it will leave the image of all these acts upon your hearts.

Brethren, though we content ourselves with an inner man, which inner man is a conformity to the law of God and his grace, such as Adam had, and such as saints under the Old Testament had; and that it is true, and perfect, and good grace, I acknowledge; and it is a piece of Christ, for Jesus Christ had the law written in his heart, hating sin, loving righteousness, as well as we, as Ps. 40 shews. But there comes upon the holiest conformity to the law in us, which is the new creature, a new tincture. The substance was, the

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conformity to the law, the holiness that is agreeable to the law; but faith comes and reveals Christ, and God by faith reveals his Son in us; and what then? Whereas I had hatred to sin before, I looking upon Christ crucified, I die to sin, upon the faith and consideration of it. Here hatred of sin is now dying with Christ after the similitude of his death. Here what Christ did by way of mediation for us leaves impressions and frames the heart accordingly. Faith should be so powerful that we should no sooner think of Christ's dying but lusts should die: in like manner, that Jesus Christ rose, that when I consider that Jesus Christ rose again for me,—Christ is risen alive, as the primitive Christians used to say,—that therefore the soul should be moved to live in newness of life, finding a virtue to come from the thoughts thereof. Here faith brings in by spiritual sight the resurrection of Christ, leaves impressions suitable; and the image of these things are wrought in the soul, and become motives to a man to die to sin and rise to holiness.

O brethren, that all of Christ were but turned into our hearts, still as we know him, and think of him; no sooner to think of his death, but to die withal to the world; no sooner to think of his being crucified, but to find lusts tortured and shrinking: so no sooner to think of Christ circumcised, but to cast off the foreskin of your heart, which is self-love. So as not only a conformity to the law may appear in it, but that Christ should come over again with a new image of his, in all things whereby we may be affected of him.

Further, if you grow up to assurance,—for here he prays for such as are rooted and grounded in the love of God,—let assurance of these things come in, that Christ did all this for me; and then let the soul deal with Christ about every particular of him, in their kind, as done for it. And, oh, how powerfully will every particular affect the heart, with suitable reflections answering thereunto! The love of Christ shewn in every particular, will constrain us into affections correspondent thereunto. Such a faith, working by love, will work, directly and naturally, dispositions towards Christ in the heart.

Now faith of assurance will be able to apply all that ever Christ hath done, as done for itself. Such a one will run over all the Scriptures again and again; and when there he finds Jesus Christ died for sinners, This is for me, saith he; God laid the iniquities of us

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all upon Christ, and I am one of the number; he bore my iniquities, God laid them all upon him. Jesus Christ is risen, this he did for me, that I should rise in newness of life here; and in the meantime he is gone to heaven, and there he keeps a place for me. And this way of application I understand to take up much of Paul's sense in that Gal.

1, 'He revealed his Son in me;' I know all he did was for me. And this application of Christ you find in Gal. 2, 'I live, yet not I, but Christ in me, who loved me, and gave himself for me.'

And if you obtain this kind of application of Christ by way of assurance, it will cause Christ to dwell in you, and yourselves to dwell upon Christ to purpose. You shall not need to force your thoughts into the meditation of him, but it will cause your thoughts to dwell upon Christ to purpose, that hath done thus and thus for you; and that continually your whole life in the flesh, as Paul there, will be your living by faith on the Son of God.

Thus I have instanced in some particulars how far off are we Christians in this age from what was in the hearts of those times, and was in this great saint's experience, who prayed for all saints after this rate, to the end of the world.

Although we have not attained all this, yet let us seek after these things, to attain them. Let us not content ourselves that Christ is ours, as to our state; but let us seek that he may operatively dwell in us thus by faith. This we should pray for, this we should contend after. It is in this life to be had, and that in some constancy, else he would never have prayed for it thus. Do not content yourselves that Christ hath a relation to you, but seek this completive communicative oneness, which is the filling up of that relation.

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A SERMON ON EPHESIANS 5:30–32

For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.

THE doctrine of the gospel hath been the subject which I have designed to handle; and, in the first place, to shew that it was God's intention that the story of Adam—which you read of in the beginning of his book, in the volume of his book, as he saith, Heb. 3, in the beginning of Genesis—should hold forth a shadow and type of the most fundamental truths of the gospel: so that, as it was said of old that the whole creation was but Deus explanatus, so we may truly say that the story of Adam is nothing else but Christus explanatus, Christ explained.

First, I might shew that in Adam's creation, in the union of his soul to his body, the dwelling of a reasonable soul in a body of clay, there was a shadow of the dwelling of the divine nature in the human nature of Christ, out of 1 Cor. 15:45, where the Apostle quotes the very words, when Adam was made and created, to be a type or a forerunning prophecy of our Lord and Saviour Jesus

Christ. It is true, saith he, 'the first man Adam was made a living soul;' 'the last Adam,' typified out hereby, 'is a quickening Spirit.'

Secondly, Take the condition of Adam's soul as it had the image of God in it, either for knowledge or else for holiness, it fell infinitely short of the state of believers under the gospel, if their holiness were made complete as his was. The image of God and the knowledge of God in Adam was natural; it was but in a natural way, suited to the nature of man as he is reasonable and as he is man; it was merely but what was due to such a creature, if God would make him such. But the knowledge of God, and the image of God that follows thereupon under the gospel, is every way supernatural, so as eye hath not seen, nor hath ear heard, as the Apostle speaks in 1

Cor. 2:9; nor, as it is quoted out of Isa. 64, man from the beginning of the world, no, not even Adam himself, hath known 'the things that

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thou hast prepared,' under the gospel, 'for them that love thee.' How it fell short, I cannot now stand to declare.

Adam was made according to the image of God; the image of God in him was but a shadow of that image of God which shines in Christ the second Adam, and which he stampeth upon the hearts of believers, they being translated and transformed into his image.

As Adam in his creation was a type of Christ and his church, so when God said, Gen. 1:26, 'Let us make man after our image, after our likeness,'—and he speaks this of male and female when he said it,—he intended it of Christ and his church, whom then he had in his eye, and had set up as the pattern of all. So as indeed our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ was the great pattern which God had set up, and man made at first was but as a little picture taken thereby.

Therefore you shall find, in Heb. 1, that as Adam was the image of God, so our Lord and Saviour Christ is said to be the express image of his person, ver. 3, and the brightness of his glory. So that look now how the image of a king in his son, or how the image of a man in a statue of brass, from head to foot, doth differ from his image in a little tablet which you carry upon your breast; so doth the image of God in Christ differ from that image which he stamped upon the heart of man even in innocency.

There was a threefold image of God in the person of Jesus Christ, which exceeded that image of God in the heart of Adam:—

There was, first, that essential image, as he is the second Person in the Trinity, which is as invisible as God himself.

But then, secondly, in Christ, as he is God-man, in whom the fulness of the Godhead dwells, there is an image of God exceeds all the image of God in the angels, or in man at first; and why doth it exceed it? Do but you consider with your selves, if you were to draw the picture, the image of a man, is there not more in the face, in the head, than there is in all the body? So there is more in our head,

Christ, than there is in all saints and angels, than there is in the church itself, much more than was in Adam. If Jesus Christ, as I there said, had but only been set up in heaven, for us to gaze upon his person, and upon all the excellences of God that do shine in him, then is yet such a brightness of glory shines therein as doth not in all the creatures, nor could do, though God had made never so

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many. You shall see what David saith, in Ps. 17:15, foretelling of his seeing Christ after the resurrection. 'As for me,' saith he, 'I will behold thy face in righteousness: I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thine image.' His meaning is this, I comfort myself that when I shall awake, that is, when I shall rise again,—for you know that death is compared to a sleep, and therefore he expresseth rising again by being awakened,—I shall be satisfied with thine image, that is, with thy Son Christ.

Thirdly, Besides the image of God which shines in the person of Christ, which we shall see in heaven when we awake, as David shall do, there is an image of God which shines in the works of Jesus

Christ, which he did here below; there is an image of all the attributes of God which breaks forth in the works of Christ's mediation, and in all his offices. As there is the glory of the sun, and the glory of the beams of the sun, so there is the glory that is in the person of Christ, and the image of God that is there; and there is the image of God that shines in his beams, in the works of mediation which he hath done, and the fruits and benefits of it, in the truths that have been told of him in the gospel. And as Jesus Christ is a middle person between God and us, so the story of his works of mediation put together presents us with a middle image of God, between that in his person, and what is in the creatures besides. So as indeed God did set him up as an image by which he made the little picture of Adam. 'Let us make man,' saith he, 'according to our image;' and so Adam was but a shadow and type of what was in Christ. There is a new edition of all the attributes of God which ariseth out of the story of Christ. And though as God's person is more excellent than his works, so the image of God in Christ's person is more excellent than that image of God which shines in his works; yet even in the works of Christ there is such an image of God as excels the image of God in angels or in all the creatures besides.

Go, take a holy man, there is the image of God in his heart, and there is the image of God in his works of righteousness, which he doth according to the principles in his heart, and of God's law written there. Therefore the new man, which is created after the image of God, is not only said to consist in an inward renewing of the Spirit, but in putting on works of holiness, and putting away

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lying and the like sins. For the image of God lies in works, as well as in a man's heart. Answerably now, there is the image of God shining in the works of Christ: and therefore when you read that Christ is called the wisdom of God, there is one attribute, and the power of God, there is another, it is not spoken simply of what is inherent in his person, but of what appeareth in his works, what appeareth in what he hath done and the fruits of it; and he is called the wisdom of God and the power of God in the abstract. Adam might be said to be wise, and he might be said to be holy, but he could not be called the wisdom of God, nor could he be called the holiness of God, but so Jesus Christ is. And he is not so called either in respect of that essential image,—that is, as he is second Person,—or of that image of God which shines in his person as he is God-man, but of what shines in the works that he hath done; as he is made unto us righteousness and sanctification and redemption, as it follows there in 1 Cor. 1:30. So he is called the wisdom of God and the power of God, &c.

So as now if you take the infinite wisdom of God, that ariseth out of the story of the life and death of Christ, out of his resurrection, ascension into heaven, &c., and the fruits and ends of all these, there is a higher wisdom of God appears even in these works of Christ, than appears in all the creation besides.

And so of the power of God too. It is not only that he, being God and man, hath power to do what he will,—that is proper to his person,—but go take the works that he hath done, that he hath overcome sin, and hell, and death, and the wrath of God, that he was manifested to be the Son of God with power in rising again, as Rom. 1:4; in this respect he is called the power of God.

And so likewise, in the third place, as he hath ratified and made good all the truths of God, as all the promises of God are yea and amen in him, so he may in that respect be called the truth of God.

And so also he may be called the justice of God, because God in him hath manifested such a righteousness as never else would have been manifested. He hath not only manifested in his person that he is righteous, but in his works, in that he hath satisfied the wrath of his Father.

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And so likewise he may be called the love of God; for the highest manifestation of love that ever God shewed lies in what Christ hath done for us, in that God gave his Son, and his Son gave himself.

Herein lies the height, and depth, and length, and breadth of the love of God, which passeth knowledge, as the Apostle speaks, Eph.

3:18, 19.

And, lastly, to instance in no more, by the same reason that he is called the wisdom and the power of God, he may also be called the patience and the long-suffering of God; for by reason of the blood of Christ, and by an overplus of it into the bargain, as it were, it is that he is patient with all wicked men, suffers them to live, lets the world stand to this day.

Now go, take this image of God that thus shines in Jesus Christ, not in his person only, but in his works, which is yet a lower image than what is in his person, and that is a lower thing too than what is in him as he is second Person; and, I say, Adam was but a mere empty shadow in comparison of this substance which God had in his eye when he said, 'Let us make man according to our image.'

Having thus shewn you that Adam in all these respects was but an empty image in comparison of the man to come; having spoken somewhat of his creation, and likewise somewhat of the image of God in him, I will now come to speak concerning his marriage: for all that I have now said is but an introduction to what the text which I have read holds forth; it is but to connect what I have formerly delivered with what I shall now do.

In these words, then, the Holy Ghost doth make Adam to be a type and a shadow of Jesus Christ, in his marriage with Eve. As he was held forth his type in his creation at first, as he was held forth his type in that he was a shadow of the image of God in him; so take his marriage with Eve his wife, and the Apostle tells us that therein he was also but a shadow. 'For this cause,' saith he, 'shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.' Where are these words? Look in Gen. 2:23, and there you shall find them. 'Adam said, This is now bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they

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shall be one flesh.' The Apostle, you see, takes the same expressions, and tells us this is a great mystery: there was in these words of Adam, saith he, a mystery held forth, which I interpret of Christ and the church.

Now, then, for the making this good, will you consider what the Apostle exhorts to in the words before? He exhorts husbands to love their wives, and wives to be subject to their husbands, as Christ hath loved his church, and as the church is subject unto Christ; and to enforce this argument, he brings this pattern. For, saith he, will you know what was the mystery of marriage at the first, in the state of innocency? The marriage of Adam and his wife Eve was intended as a type and shadow of Christ and his church; and from the example of Christ's love to the church he enforceth the duty of the love of the husband to the wife; and from the example of the subjection of the church to Christ, enforceth the duty of subjection of wives to their husbands. He boldly quoteth what is said in Gen. 2 of the marriage of Adam and Eve. There saith Adam, She is bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh; saith Paul here, We are of his flesh, and of his bone. For this cause, saith Adam, shall a man leave father and mother. For this cause, saith the Apostle also, shall a man leave father and mother. And this is a great mystery, saith he: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.

There are some that say that this is only spoken by way of allusion, as when it is said in 2 Cor. 4:6, that God created light out of darkness, the Apostle there in the new creation alludeth to the old.

But, my brethren, it is not only by way of allusion, but by way of type, and a prophecy intended by God therein. And the reasons are clearly these:— 1. Because the Apostle doth found his argument of the duties of husbands and wives upon it; now allusions may illustrate, but they do not afford arguments to duty. Mark how the Apostle speaks:

'Wives,' saith he, ver. 22, 'submit yourselves to your own husbands, as unto the Lord.' And, ver. 25, 'Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church;' and why? Because, saith he, that in marriage, and marriage at the first, the marriage of Christ and the church was intended as the great example. It was not therefore a bare similitude, but a pattern; and unless the marriage of Christ had

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been intended as a pattern in the marriage of Adam, this had been a weak argument.

2. Therefore, in the close of all, he gives us an account why he had produced the example of Christ and his church; and his account is this. Because, saith he, this was the mystery that was intended by it, even in the marriage of Adam. To that end consider how, first of all, he calls this interpretation of his of the story of Adam's marriage, applying it to Christ and his church, a mystery. Now what is a mystery? A mystery is that which hath one thing signifying, and another thing signified; as in Rev. 1:20, 'The mystery of the seven stars, and the seven golden candlesticks. The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches; and the seven candlesticks are the seven churches.' Mark how he explaineth what a mystery is; it is a thing signifying, and a thing signified. So when the Apostle here had quoted the words of Adam's marriage in Gen. 2, as you have heard, and said of it, 'This is a great mystery;' he adds, 'I speak concerning

Christ and his church:' which is all one with that John saith in the Revelation, as if the Apostle should have said, The mystery of Adam's marriage is the marriage of Christ and the church; that is, this is that which is intended by it, and which God had in his eye. A parable is called a mystery in the Scripture, as in Luke 8:10. Why?

Because it holds forth a similitude, and a thing signified thereby. So in Dan. 2:28, Nebuchadnezzar's dream is called a mystery. 'There is a God in heaven,' saith Daniel there, 'which revealeth mysteries;' so it is in the original; because he dreamed one thing, and another thing was intended by it. So Adam's marriage is called a mystery.

Why? Because the story of it is one thing, it is the story of the marriage of the first man and his wife; but the secret, the thing intended by it, is another. I speak, saith he, concerning Christ and his church.

And so now the meaning of the words which the Apostle useth is briefly this. I say, saith he,—that is, I make this interpretation of it, and he was the first that did open the mystery of it;—I tell you a mystery, as elsewhere he saith, that which you have not known, I now hold forth to you. You read the story of Genesis merely of Adam and Eve, but there was a further mystery in it. This that I have said of leaving father and mother, of being bone of his bone,

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and flesh of his flesh,—so you read the wife is of the husband, in Gen. 2—this, I say, saith he, belongeth εἰς Χριστὸν, (so it is in the original,) it is to be applied only to Christ. I speak it of him, and I apply it unto him, as the matter signified thereby. And then, if you mark it, in the last verse of this Eph. 5, he saith, 'Nevertheless, let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband.' His meaning is this: I would have you take the place literally notwithstanding, do not think this is all the meaning of it; there still lies a literal duty upon you, though there is a mystical sense in the thing.

And so much now for the opening of the text itself. I shall now come to shew wherein this type lay, and compare Adam's marriage with the marriage of Jesus Christ and his church mystically intended by it.

There is a great question among interpreters, whether every marriage, as well as that of Adam's, was intended as a type of Christ.

I will not stand to decide that, I will only handle and shew how Adam's marriage was; that 'this is a great mystery' pointeth to him, to that marriage of his. Adam did not understand it, when he said,

'This is bone of my bone,' &c., 'and for this cause,' &c.; as Caiaphas, in John 11:51, did not understand when he prophesied that Christ should be put to death. Those words in Gen. 2, 'For this cause shall a man leave father and mother,' &c., are made the words of God, and not of Adam; for God intended Jesus Christ by it, as the Apostle here doth. But to come to the particulars wherein the type holds, I shall resolve it into four heads:— I. Let us consider the counsel that God had about Adam's marriage with Eve, and it was the type of the counsel of God about Christ's marriage with his church; and this is a great mystery, even the counsel that God held in his eternal decrees concerning Christ and his church, shadowed out by what he here speaks of the marrying of Eve to Adam.

1. The Lord made Adam before he thought of a wife for him; and so in order of God's decrees, Christ was set up first, who therefore is called the 'first-born of every creature,' Col. 1:15, and the 'first-born among many brethren,' Rom. 8:29; who is called the head, and therefore was set up first. Now when God had made Adam, and

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made him first, what is the counsel of God about him? Read Gen.

2:18, 'And the Lord said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an helpmeet for him.' So did God say of the man

Christ Jesus, when he had ordained him in his eternal purpose, It is not good for him to be alone; he shall have fellows, as the saints are called in Ps. 45:7. God intended, and said with himself, he shall not be in heaven alone. You have the Scripture speaking in the very same language in John 12:24, 'Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground, and die,'—Christ there speaks this of himself,—'it abideth alone.' I must not be alone, saith he, I must have company with me.

And though he speaks this in relation to his death, yet it was God's primitive decree that Christ should not be alone: and because it was so, therefore because man fell, and could not otherwise be saved and brought to heaven but by Christ's death,—therefore, saith he, I must die, that I may not be in heaven alone; otherwise I must be reduced to what Adam was at first reduced to; that was to be alone, and that is not meet.

2. The next counsel God held about Adam was this. He went and viewed all the creatures that he had made, and amongst them all, saith Gen. 2:20, 'there was not found an helpmeet for him.' So when

God was in consultation who should be the wife and spouse of Jesus Christ, he views the angels first, but he refuseth them; he in no wise took on him the nature of angels, Heb. 2:16. Why? Because he would not be a husband to them, and he is nowhere called so. There was none else, none was found to be a match fit for him, but the sons of men, whose nature he meant to assume; and not all of them neither, he viewed all the sons of men, and he took but to remnant out of them, 'The election hath obtained it, and the rest were hardened,' saith he, Rom. 11:7. He viewed all that he could have made, that is more, and out of all he chose those whom he hath elected. Herein

God did but act his own eternal purposes and counsels concerning his church, pitching upon a few creatures whom he chose out of all those whom he either had or could have made, to be a meet help for his Son Jesus Christ.

You will say, Is the church a helper to Jesus Christ? Wherein is the woman a helper to the man? She is pleasant to him; she is a companion for him. The like is said of the church; she is a helper to

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him in two respects. First, she is his glory, as in 2 Cor. 8:23; they are, saith he, 'the glory of Christ;' even as the wife is said to be the glory of the husband, in 1 Cor. 11:7. And then, secondly, she is a comfort to him. You will wonder that the church should be so to Christ; but you shall see it in Psalm 45, where, speaking of the church and Christ, saith he, ver. 10, 'Forget thine own people, and thy father's house,'—he speaks in the same language that he doth here,—'so shall the king greatly delight in thy beauty.' Therefore in this very chapter, Eph. 5:27, he saith that Jesus Christ is to present to himself a glorious church; that, as Zanchy well says, in heaven he will set her up full of beauty and glory,—Behold, here is she that I have made to delight in,—and the glory he will put upon her he continually presents to himself to delight in. Therefore you shall find, in John 15, that his joy is said to be in his church: Keep my commandments, saith he, so shall my joy be in you. And in Eph.

1:23, the church is called his fulness; 'which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all.' He ascribes as much to Christ as can be; he saith he filleth her and all things else, and yet in a sense she is his fulness too. She is a helper to him.

3. When Adam was alone, before God made the woman, he blessed Adam, and in him blessed her afterwards to be made. This you may find in Gen. 2. He gave all the world unto Adam, and in giving it to him he gave it to his wife, and to his seed that should come of her. So was it here, when Jesus Christ and God were alone in heaven before the world was, he undertaking to be a husband,

God considering the church in him, he did 'bless us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in him.' He gave all to Christ, and in Christ gave all to her, and to all her seed, and to all that should come of her. All is yours, saith the Apostle because you are Christ's, and Christ is God's, 1 Cor. 3:22. Here you see the counsel that God held concerning Adam and Eve in their marriage, it holds with God's eternal counsel concerning the marriage of Christ and his church.

II. Let us come to the creation of the woman out of the man, and you shall see still that the mystery runs on.

1. Eve was made out of Adam, so was the church out of Christ.

God could have raised up seed to Abraham out of stones, out of nothing. No, but as he did take something out of Adam and made

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the woman of it, so he took of Christ, and made the church; as you have it, John 16:14. Therefore it is mightily observable in the text that we are not said to be os ossis, in the genitive case, but ex ossibus ejus, as noting out the subject-matter out of which we were taken. All were made out of one, so saith the Apostle, speaking of Adam; and all are made out of one, so saith the Apostle also, speaking of Christ and his church, Heb. 2:11. We are all seminally in Jesus Christ, and we are os ex ossibus ejus, bone out of his bone, and flesh out of his flesh. If you read Gen. 2:23, you shall see the reason given why the woman is said to be bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. The text tells us it is because she was taken out of man. The Holy Ghost in the Greek follows the same emphasis. We are, saith he, ex ossibus, bone out of his bone, taken out of him. Which is true in two respects.

For, first, consider the church mystically, as she is a church, as she is holy, and as she is glorious; and whatsoever she hath, as she is such, it is wholly out of Christ, she is bone out of his bones in that respect. 'Of him ye are in Christ Jesus,' saith the Apostle, 1 Cor. 1:30.

And, 'We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus,' and out of Christ Jesus, Eph. 2:10. That look what bones Adam had, the same bones the woman had when she was made; look what flesh he had, she had likewise. So it is true of Jesus Christ and his church by way of analogy, in a spiritual and mystical sense: as Eve received bone for bone, and flesh for flesh, and eye for eye, and hand for hand; so look what graces Christ hath, the church—take her qua church, as she is beautified with graces and glory in heaven—has 'grace for grace.' There is nothing that Christ hath but she hath also, and so we are bone of his bones, and we have it out of him too, that is, from him. And therefore in the 26th verse of this chapter it is said that he

'sanctifieth and cleanseth the church, that he might present it to himself a glorious church.' Look what holiness and what glory she hath, it is all from him.

But I think, secondly, that when he saith we are bone out of his bones, and flesh out of his flesh, there is a further thing meant. The church is not so only, if you take her in respect of her graces, and qualifications of glory and grace, having the same graces that Christ hath, making an allusion to bones and to flesh, members of the

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body, and graces, members of the mind. That is not all the Apostle's scope; but I take it further the meaning is this, that Jesus Christ having a human nature, ordained first to be his, we, taking the substance of that nature, have also the same. There is one scripture that seems to contradict it, that is Heb. 2:14, where it is said,

'Forasmuch as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same.' It is easily answered; for flesh and blood there, is meant the frailties of man's nature: and so the Apostle's meaning is this, that whereas we, through sin, had subjected ourselves to the frailties of flesh and blood, he took part of the same. It is clearly his scope there.

But yet, because Jesus Christ was ordained to the substance of a human nature, therefore were we so too; and we are chosen in him, and so we are ἐκ τῆς σαρκὸς αὐτοῦ, καὶ ἐκ τῶν ὀστέων αὐτοῦ, flesh of his flesh, and bone of his bones, fur the substance of our nature.

It is an excellent distinction one hath: Christ is os ossis, bone of our bone, in the genitive case; but we are ex osse, bone of his bone, taken out of him. How came Christ to be the Saviour of the church?

What saith he, ver. 23? 'He is the head of the church, and he is the Saviour of the body.' First a head, then a Saviour. Why was Christ ordained to die? Was that God's primitive decree concerning him?

Or did he not think of sending Christ to be a head till such time as he thought of sending him to die? No, he thought first of sending him to be a head. How do you prove that? Because he therefore left father and mother, for this cause, because he was a head. The text is express in ver. 31. He having first made him a head to us, we are members of his body, he having ordained us to be of the same nature, of his flesh and of his bones, therefore it was that he died.

'For this cause,' saith he, 'shall a man leave his father and mother;' the Apostle applies this to Christ, 'I speak concerning Christ and his church,' saith he. He left his Father in heaven, and his mother on earth, to give himself for his church.

And that is the first thing wherein Adam was a type of Christ, in respect of Eve's creation; she was taken out of him.

2. Out of what part of Adam was she taken? The text saith, in Gen.

2:21. that the Lord cast him into a deep sleep, and then opened his side, and took Eve out of it. It was indeed, in the letter of it, to shew

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the equality of the wife to the husband; she was not taken out of his foot, but out of his side, because she is to be a companion to him. In this also was Adam a type of Christ, the church was taken out of his side; and the apostle John, chap. 19:34, you shall see, makes a great matter of it. 'One of the soldiers,' saith he, 'with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water. And he that saw it bear record, and his record is true: and he knows that he says true, that ye might believe.' It is a strange thing that in the midst of a story the Apostle should come and put such an emphasis upon this passage. This, saith he, I observed above all else, and this I bear record of. Why? It was not in respect of the miracle of it; for in the pericardium, the purse that a man's heart lies in, there is water for the cooling of the heart, and if you pierce that, water will presently issue out. It was not therefore, I say, in respect of the miracle of it that he takes such special notice of this passage,—that upon the opening of his side there came forth blood and water,—but in respect of the mystery of it. Therefore the same John, and only he of all the apostles, in 1 John 5:6, saith, 'This is he that came by water and by blood, even Jesus Christ' He makes that the evidence that he was the Messiah, because out of his side came water and blood,—water to sanctify his church; so saith Paul here in this Eph.

5:26, 'He sanctifieth and cleanseth his church by the washing of water.' She is taken out of his side, and water cometh out of his side to cleanse her; and blood also. Water to sanctify and purify her; and blood to justify her, and to make her, and to 'present her, a glorious church to himself,' as the text hath it also.

3. When was all this done to Adam? It was when Adam was asleep. When was it that Christ's aide was opened? It was when he was asleep, when he was dead: 1 Cor. 15:20, 'He is the first-fruits of them that sleep,' for so death is often called in the Scriptures. Isa.

53:10, 'He shall see his seed,' because he died, and offered up his soul for sin; and 'he shall see of the travail of his soul, and be satisfied.'

4. If you look the story in Genesis, the text saith that of the rib that the Lord had taken from the man, he made the woman. Read your margin, 'He builded the woman,'—for she is a more curious frame than the man,—he built her, shewed a great deal of art in making

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her. Now you shall find in the Scripture that Jesus Christ is called the foundation; and what is his church? It is his building, built up for him with a great deal of art and architect. In Eph. 2:20, the Apostle useth the very same expression, 'Ye are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone; in whom all the building fitly framed'—or, as the word is, artificially framed, harmoniously, with all the art and curiosity that can be—'groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord: in whom ye also are built together for an habitation of God.'

5. When he had taken the woman out of the man, what doth God do? He closeth up the flesh again; here is no hurt done, the man is as sound, lived as long, yea, would have lived to eternity, if he had not sinned, for all his loss. And what hath Jesus Christ lost by his death?

Nothing; he hath got a church by the means. 'He was made,' saith the Apostle, Heb. 2:9, 'a little lower,' or, for a little while lower, 'than the angels,' that he might bring many sons unto glory. He endured pain upon the cross, he endured to have his side pierced, and his soul wounded, to have his church taken out; all is closed up again, and the man Christ Jesus is in heaven for ever, and his church shall be for ever with him. This is all that is lost.

And so much now for the second head wherein this type holdeth.

The first I told you was God's eternal counsel about Christ and the church, which answereth to the counsel that was about Adam and Eve, when she was made; the second was about the creating of her out of him.

III. The marriage itself. And concerning that the text saith— 1. That God did bring the woman unto Adam, Gen. 2:22. So God, when he had chosen his elect, did present them unto Jesus Christ.

He did this in his eternal purposes; and he doth do it when he calls them home unto him. He did it in his everlasting purposes; he shewed Jesus Christ what a glorious church he would give him for him to delight in for ever; and Jesus Christ was so taken with her beauty that he never leaves till he hath made her as glorious as she first rose up to him in God's eternal presentation of her to him.

Therefore saith the text here, in Eph. 5, 'he presenteth to himself a glorious church;' it is an allusion unto that in Gen. 2:22. A disease was befallen her, but Christ doth never leave till he hath restored

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her to her primitive beauty in which she was presented to him. So that Jesus Christ did not choose his church, she was brought unto him. 'Thine they were, and thou gavest them to me.' As in God's everlasting purposes he brought them first to Christ, so when Christ hath died, when he hath shed the water and blood out of his side, who is it that still brings every soul unto Christ? It is the Father,

John 6:44, 45, 'No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him. It is written in the prophets, And they shall be all taught of God. Every man therefore that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father, cometh unto me.' God speaks to the heart of every soul who cometh unto Christ; he speaks as a father-in-law doth to a daughter whom he would have to marry his son, speaks to her heart, puts an instinct into it. 'Daughter,' saith he, Ps. 45, 'forget thy people and thy father's house.' He speaks in Adam's language in this second of Genesis, giveth that counsel to his church, and so she cometh to Christ.

2. When she was brought unto Adam, he consenteth and owneth her. So doth Christ; those whom his Father hath given him, and whom he hath brought unto him, he owneth; insomuch as he will not pray for a soul but them: 'I pray not for the world, but for them whom thou hast given me.' None other comes to him but whom God thus bringeth; and when they are brought he owns them, he knows them all by their names; so the expression is, John 10. Therefore, in John 6:37, 'All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.' For when a poor soul that God from everlasting hath given him comes to him, he instantly owneth that soul, as Adam did Eve. This is that soul I died for; this is the soul that water and blood came out of my side for, with an intention to wash. This is the soul I took a view of among all the rest, and this soul pleased me, and there was a beauty put upon it then; therefore I will sanctify and cleanse her by the washing of water, till

I have presented it glorious to myself, that I may delight in her for ever.

And so much for the third head. The last that I shall mention is— IV. The consequent of Adam's marriage; which was—

1. A union; and the story of Adam's marriage affords us such a union as no marriage else besides. Both became one flesh; and not

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only so, she was not only one flesh with him because of her relation of wife, and as man and wife afterwards were, and now are; but she was one flesh with him too, because she came out of him. She was both caro una, and she was also de carne, or ex carne, she was both one flesh with him, and she was out of his flesh also. Our children, they are out of our flesh; but they are not caro nostra, as wives are, they are not our flesh. And wives, they are our flesh; but they are not ex carne, and ex osse, out of our flesh, and out of our bone. But so it is here in Adam's marriage, Eve, she is united to him in both the nearest and dearest relation; Adam is both a husband to her, and a father.

2. 'For this cause,' saith Gen. 2, 'shall a man leave father and mother.' Did not Christ do so? John 16:28, 'I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world.' Christ was 'in the bosom of his

Father,' John 1:17, 18, and he left his Father, and 'took upon him the form of a servant,' Phil. 2:6, came and dwelt amongst us, served for his church as Jacob did for Rachel. Christ was a lover, he did it out of love to his church, left his Father. Nay, not only so, but his Father forsook him; 'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?'

And he left his mother too, when he was here below. When those came to him that he was to die for, and his mother sent for him, saith he, Who is my mother, and my brethren, but those that hear the word of God, and keep it? And when his mother sought him, and was careful about him, being found of her, saith he, Dost thou not know that I was about my Father's business? And when he hung upon the cross, he left her, a poor woman, (to die for his church,) to be taken care of by John. When he was thirty-three years old, he left her in the world, and went to heaven to take care of his church. And thus he left father, and he left mother also, for his church.

And, my brethren, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, as he is married thus to his church, he will shew himself the most fond and perfect lover that ever was. As he is the Saviour of his church, which is his body, so he will come and fetch her at the last unto himself.

I might be very large in this, but I have confined myself, not only to what riseth from the state of every man's marriage, but what was proper and peculiar to Adam's, held forth in Gen. 2, to which the Apostle here alludeth when he saith, 'This is a great mystery, but I

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speak concerning Christ and his church.' And so I have done with the allusion and with this text, and have in some measure shewn that in the story of Adam is contained a typo and shadow of the story of Christ and of the gospel.

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