Spiritual liberty and bondage
sun is all light, and where the light and heat of the sun is there is fruitfulness. So Christ is all Spirit, and where the Spirit of Christ is there is spiritual liberty.
It were expense of time to no purpose to tell you of the divers kinds of liberty. In a word, liberty is that that all desire, but our miscarriage is in the means of it, the way to attain to it. Here we see whence to have it, from the Spirit of Christ. Liberty is a sweet thing, especially liberty from the greatest enemies of all. If outward liberty be such a sweet thing—liberty from tyranny and base servitude, it is a thing that man's nature delights in; and the contrary, man as a man abhors; and he hath not the nature of a man that doth not abhor it,— what shall we think then of the liberty of the Spirit from the great enemies that daunt the greatest monarchs in the world? Liberty from the anger of the great God; and liberty from Satan, God's executioner; liberty from the terror of conscience, from the fear of death, and hell, and judgment; what shall we think of liberty in these respects? Therefore we speak of great matters here below when we speak of liberty.
Now liberty is either Christian or evangelical.
You may think this a nice difference, but there is some reality in it.
(1.) Christian liberty is that that belongs to all, even to those before Christ. Though they have not the term of Christians, yet they were members of Christ. Christ was head of the church 'yesterday, and today, and for ever,' Heb. 13:8.
Spiritual liberty and bondage (2.) Evangelical liberty is that that is more appropriated to the times of the gospel since the coming of Christ. Now the liberty that belongs to Christians as Christians, is perpetual from those grand enemies, the greatest enemies of all, spiritual and inward liberty. In
evangelical liberty, besides that, there is another outward liberty, from the ceremonial and moral law and such like; and a liberty from the restraint of the law. The Jews were under many restraints, that under the gospel in this time we are not. I speak therefore of liberty as it runs through all ages of the church, not of evangelical merely since the time of Christ. Where the Spirit is, both these liberties are now since the coming of Christ. Now in that the Holy Ghost saith here, 'Where the Spirit of Christ is there is liberty,' it supposeth that we are in bondage before we have the Spirit of Christ.
That is a supposed ground and truth, and indeed so it is. For out of Christ we are slaves, the best of us all are slaves. In Christ the meanest of all is a free man, and a king. Out of Christ there is nothing but thraldom. We are under the kingdom of the devil. When he calls us we come. We are in thraldom under the wrath of God, under the fear of death and damnation, and all those spiritual enemies that I need not mention. They are well enough known to you by often repetition. There is no man but he is a slave till he be in Christ; and the more free a man thinks himself to be, and labours to be, the more slave he is. For take a man that labours to have his liberty, to do what he list,* he thinks it the happiest condition in the world; and others think it the best condition to have liberty not to be tyrannised over by others. It is the disposition of man's nature without grace. They account it a happiness to have their wills over all other, but the more liberty in this, the more slavery. Why?
The more liberty that a man hath to do lawlessly what he will, contrary to justice and equity, the more he sins. The more he sins the more he is enthralled to sin. The more he is enthralled to sin the more he is in bondage to the devil, and becomes the enemy of God.
Therefore if a man would pick out the wretchedest man in the world, I would pick out the greatest man in the world if he be naught,† that hath most under him; he hath most liberty, and seeks most liberty, and accounts it his happiness that he may have his liberty. This is the greatest thraldom, and it will prove, when he dies and comes to answer for it, the greatest thraldom of all. Therefore the point needs