How the Spirit worketh liberty
not much proof, that if we be not in Christ we are slaves, as Augustine saith in his book De Civitate Dei, 'He is a slave though he domineer and rule.'
A man till he be in Christ is a slave; not of one man or of one lord over him, but he hath so many lords as he hath so many lusts. There are but two kingdoms that the Scripture speaks of, that is, the kingdom of Satan and darkness, and the kingdom of Christ; all therefore that are not in the kingdom of Christ, in that blessed liberty, they must needs be shoaled ‡ under the other kingdom of Satan. This is a ground. Therefore I speak shortly of it, as an incentive and provocation to stir us up, to get into Christ, to get the Spirit of Christ, that we may have this spiritual liberty, or else we are all slaves, notwithstanding all our civil liberties, whatsoever they be.
Now, 'where the Spirit of Christ is there is liberty,' there is freedom from that bondage that we are in by nature, and which is strengthened by a wicked course of life. For though we be all slaves by nature, born slaves, yet notwithstanding by a wicked course of life, we put ourselves into bonds and tangle ourselves; so many sins and so many repetitions of sin, so many cords; the longer a man lives the greater slave he is. Now when the Spirit of Christ comes, it frees us from all; both from the natural and from the customary§ slavery.
How the Spirit worketh liberty Now this liberty is wrought by Christ and applied by the Spirit. What
Christ works he makes it ours by his Spirit, which takes all from Christ. As Christ doth all by the Spirit, so the Spirit takes all from Christ. All the comfort it hath is from reasons taken from Christ, from grounds from Christ, and doctrines from Christ, but yet both have their efficacy—Christ as the meritorious cause, and the Spirit as the applying cause. The Spirit discovers the state of bondage we are in by nature, and it discovers withal a more excellent condition; and as it discovers, so likewise the Spirit of God brings us to this state, by working faith in that that Christ hath done for us. Christ hath freed