Part Ii. Of The Mediator Of The Covenant. Chap. I.
PART II.
OF THE MEDIATOR OF THE COVENANT. CHAP. I.
Q. What room or place hath Christ the Mediator in the Covenants?
A. He hath place in the Covenant of Works as satisfier for us. 2. As a doer and an obedient fulfiller thereof in all points. And he is Mediator and Surety of the Covenant of Grace.
2. The first Adam mars all, the second Adam who makes all things new, mends all. The first Adam was a public sort of stirresman, to whom was committed the standing and falling of all mankind, and in reference to man, the standing of Heaven, Earth, and Creatures in their perfection, and he spoiled all, put all things a-reeling. The second Adam received in his arms the whole Creation that was a-falling for in him all things τὰ παντὰ σύνεστηκε stand fast, Col. 1. 17. And he bears up all by his mighty word, Heb. 1. 3. He satisfied for our sins, and for our breach of the Covenant of Works.
2. He is a full doer and fulfiller of the Covenant of Works most perfectly, by doing, 1 Joh. 3. 7. He who does righteousness is righteous: As he who suffers for the broken Law, fulfills the Law. Rom. 6. 7. He that is dead, δεδικαίωται is freed, justified from sin, in the obligation of it to punishment. So Paul, vers. 8. If we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall live with him. This dying is to believe that he died for us, at least it excludes not that. And if we keep the Law, we are not obliged to suffer: for the Law does not oblige man in absolute sense, both to perfect doing Ff
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and to perfect suffering copulatively, but to one of them. But if we be (legally) dead with Christ, (as his death so excellent doth exhaust sins punishment and is a perfect satisfaction therefore) we are freed or justified from sin, not to suffer or satisfy by suffering for it, as Rom. 8. 3. For what the Law could not do, so that it was weak (by accident, not of itself) through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin condemned sin in the flesh. Τὸ δικαίωμα του νόμου, the righteousness of the Law, the passive righteousness in suffering for the breach of the Law, might be fulfilled in us, 2 Col. 5. 2. And Isai. 53. 5. But he was wounded for our transgressions, c.— 6. The Lord laid upon him the iniquity of us all. But though some suffer as the reprobate do and suffer in this life the beginning of satisfactory judgement, yet are they not loosed from active obedience to the Law as the Law, though they cannot having once sinned, be under the Law as a Covenant of Justification and life: nor is any flesh under that Covenant now.
Q. What place hath Christs righteousness here?
Ans. Pareus, with some others, distinguish between the Righteousness of Christs person, which contains his essential Righteousness, as God, the habitual and actual conformity of the Man Christ, and the perfect holiness of the Man Christ. Such a High Priest became us, as is holy, harmless, c. Heb. 7. 26. And, The righteousness of his merit, in the satisfaction of his suffering, the satisfaction is the formal cause of our Justification which is counted ours: this latter righteousness is acquired, the former is essential.
Now the active obedience of Christ falls under a twofold consideration. 1. As the Man Christs perfect conformity to the Law of God, so as man he was obliged to do and suffer all that he did and suffered, even to lay down his life for man. But had he been only man, his righteousness had neither been by condignity meritorious nor yet satisfactory for us. But 2. The whole course of Christs obedience from his birth to the grave by doing and suffering is to be considered as the doing and suffering of so excellent a person his being born, his praying, preaching dying, coming from a Person God-Man. Now the Law required not praying, preaching of
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God-man the blood of God, or the dying of him who was God- Man. And so all these being both so excellent, and then so undue, have respect of satisfaction to God. 2. The active obedience of Christ and all that Christ did and suffered were performed by him in his state of huminiation: In which he was poor δε ὑμᾶς, 2 Cor. 8. 9. for us, so also by the same ground, a weeping man, hungry, thirsty, weary for us made lower than the Angels by the suffering of death, Heb. 2. 9. Humbled by partaking of flesh and blood, because of the children, Heb. 2. 14. Emptied himself for us, Ph. 2. This was, as Pareus well saith, perpetua quaedam passio paena peccatorum nostrorum, fuit tota vita Christi: All these have a respect of punishment and suffering. For since Christ was both a viator and a comprehensor, and such a holy sinless person, he ought to have had the actual possession of the Crown of Glory from the womb, and so should have been free of weeping, hunger, thirst, weariness, groaning, sighing sadness, persecution reproaches, c. all which adhered to all his active hoiness, and therefore in that his actions were satisfactory passions. For satisfaction is defined a voluntary restoring of the equivalent, and as good in the place of what is taken away, and the good restored must be, 1. Undue. 2. The proper good of the restorer, which agrees to the active and passive obedience of Christ.
Obj. Then Christs very weeping, and praying, being the weeping and praying of God-Man, might have been a perfect satisfaction for our sins; for Christ was God-Man in all his holy actions in the state of humiliation, as in his being crucified, and in his suffering?
Ans. This doth not follow: Because the punishment of the breach of the Law, and not that only but such a special punishment by dying the first and second death according to the threatening of the Law, Gen. 2. 17. In the day that thou eat est thou shalt surely die: was required in the Law and except the threatening of the Law be fulfilled, the Law is not fulfilled: And Paul, Gal. 3. 13. Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the Law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, cursed be every one that hangeth on a tree. Now Christs suffering the death of the cross, the cursed death is that which makes him under the Law. Ff2
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Ergo, There is a Law-righteousness in suffering death. So Gal. 4. 4. God sent forth his Son made of a woman, made under the Law. For what end? 5. To redeem them that were under the Law, that we might receive the Adoption of Sons. How are we redeemed from under the Law? By blood, purchasing to us Justification. Rom. 3. 24. Being justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Jesus Christ, whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins past: And redemption from the curse of the Law, and remission is ever ascribed to the blood of Christ dying, Rom. 3. 24, 25. Ye are bought with a price, τιμὴς called a ransom of Christs blood λυτρὸν ἀντίλυτρον, Mat. 20. 28. 1 Tim. 2. 6. Eph. 1. 17. In whom we have redemption in his blood, the forgiveness of sins. Col. 1. 14. In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins. Rom. 5. 9. Being justified by his blood. 1 Pet. 1. 18. Being redeemed by the blood of the Lamb unspotted and undefiled. 1 Joh. 1. 8. The blood of Jesus Christ purgeth us from all sin. Rev. 5. 9. And they sang a new song (to wit, the four Beasts and the four and twenty Elders) - for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood. 1 Pet. 1. 18. By his stripes which he suffered in his death, Isa. 5. 3. we are healed. Rev. 1. 5. To him that hath loved us, and washen us from our sins in his blood. For though all Christs actions of God-man from the worth of the infinite person be meritorious, yet are they refusable, yea a satisfaction by Covenant, which was the death of God-Man must be also. 2. The word also never speaks of Christs dying for all, but it mentions Justification in his blood, Rom. 3. 24. 25. Rom. 5. 9. Yea, the Scripture adds another end of Christs death, to wit, forgiveness, Col. 1. 14. Eph. 1. 7. intercession at the right hand of God, 1 Joh. 2. 1. that we may receive the Adoption of sons Gal. 4. 5. To make us Kings and Priests to God, Rev. 1. 16. dying to sin, living to him, 1 Pet. 2. 24. That he
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might bring us to God, 1 Pet. 3. 18. The glorifying of God in our bodies, 1 Cor. 6. 19, 20. Redeeming us from our vain conversation, 1 Pet. 1. 18. From this present evil world, Gal. 1. 4. Sanctifiing the people, Heb. 13. 12. Heb. 10. 8 9, 10. All which the Lord must intend in Christs death to Pagans, old and young to all and every one of mankind to whom the Gospel could not come. And what authority have men to devise a redemption general universal, from hell, and not from sin? 2. For life eternal and not for the giving of the Sirit, and for redemption from a vain conversation, and for sanctifying of the people also? 3. A redemption in Christs blood, but no forgiveness of sins in his blood, not any non-imputation of sin nor reconciliation of the world, 2 Cor. 5. 15, 18. 4. A dying of the just for the unjust, but not to bring them to God; a redeeming of them, but not a redeeming of them out of every Kindred and Tongue, and People and Nation (for these People, Nations and Tongues, were redeemed by this way, as well as they) and a washing of them in his blood, but no making of them Kings and Priests to God, a dying for all, but no living to him: contrair to 1 Pet. 1. 18. Rev. 5. 9. Rev. 15. 5, 6. 2 Cor. 5. 15. 5. Christs blood did something (and it is not any thing) to make all saveable, to pacify Justice, satisfy Law, to merit Heaven; but did nothing to soften the heart, mortify and sanctify the will, mind, affections, to remove unbelief, to renew the mind. But it is sure the Lord had not intended to commit heaven and hell any more to a sanctified will, but mutable and lubric in Adam, but to commit all to Christ, to a better Covenant, better promises to a way of free-grace not of nature: Yet these men commit the salvation and damnation of all and every one, to an unsanctified, corrupt rebellious will, Gen. 6. 5. Gen. 8. 21. 1 Cor. 2. 14. Joh. 6. 44. Job. 14. 4. Psal. 51. 5. Jer. 17. 9, 10. c. (except they say, Pagans and all mankind are regenerated, sanctified, justified) yea to a worse Covenant than that Covenant of Works, to an universal Covenant of Grace. That 1. never came to their ears. 2. By which they are in a worse condition than Adam was, who had the Image of God in his soul and a full power to stand, and a clearly revealed Covenant: But all mankind for whom Christ is supposed to die, are born heir, of wrath, but they are
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born in more misery in the bondage of sin, of a blind heart, of a corrupt will, their chains heavier, their furnace hotter in hell, helps fewer. And yet the absoluteness of Sovereignty under the freedom of the Grace of Christ, by this way of Universalists, shines no more now, nay, not so much now as in Adams state, for more is laid upon free-will, and less help to heale the will, than was in the Covenant of Works. And if all die in Adam, and the Second Adam die for all, he must die to loose the works of Satan in all; Now if a weaker course betaken to destroy Satans kingdom now then in Adams state and all be laid upon a weaker will, Satan is stronger now than before: And if Christ do not purchase by his death grace to bow indeclinably the will of all these for whom he died, to cause them live to him, die to sin, to make them Kings and Priests to God, c. but leave their will in a more weak and wicked condition than it was under in the first Covenant, Satan is in this stronger than the second Adam. No more of this here.
It is a question, the Threatening standing Gen. 2. 17. how the active righteousness of Christ can be a cause meriting to us life, and satisfying the Law, when there is no suffering for the breach of the Law which expressly required death in the sinner: Not to say, that it seems too near to make Christs dying needless if his active holiness do the business; Nay, we cannot so teach.
CHAP. II.
Wherein stands our right to christ and the satisfaction made for us by Christ? 2. Faith is not the cause of our right. 3. Christs incarnation and dying are not favours merited by Christ. 4. How Adams sin and Christs righteousness are ours.
Our right to Christ must be considered more accurately than ordinarily it is. Whether it floweth from 1. the merit of Christ: Or 2. from the grace of predestination: Or 3. faith in Christ.
1. Conclusion. Grace is either Objective out of us, as the free love of God having mercy on whom he will; Or subjective, merited by Christ to us and bestowed upon us.
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As touching our right to God as incarnate. 2. As dying for us. 3. As his satisfaction is made ours, are of divers considerations. For is God out of free love sent his Son in the world, Joh. 3. 16. and if he, out of free-grace that separateth the race of man from Angels, took upon him the nature of man, to wit, of Abraham, and not the nature of Angels, Heb. 2. 16. Then sure by the merits of Christs death it cannot come that God came in the flesh to save sinners. For the effect cannot but come from the cause; but the cause flows not from the effect, nor is the effect, to wit, Christs Incarnation and his dying the cause of that love and free-grace of God which moved God to send his Son in the flesh but posterior unto, and latter than that love: for because he loved us, he sent his Son in the flesh to die for us.
2. This cannot then be true (Christ by his dying for the Elect, merited and deserved, that God should be made Man for us) for this should be true also (by the blood of Christ, and by the redemption that is in Christ, God sent his Son in the flesh, and the Son took on him our nature, by the blood of the Covenant) nor can this be true (Christ merited by his death, that he should die for us) for so it should be true, that Christ by his blood shed his blood for us: Whereas because he loved his Church freely, he gave himself for her. Eph. 5. 15. Who loved me and gave himself for me. Gal. 2. 20. Hence 1. though grace be the cause of grace, as because he of grace ordained us to glory, therefore of grace he calls, and because of free-grace he calls, of free-grace he carries on his work, and gives of grace, perseverance and glory. Yet there is a fountain-grace of election to glory, which hath no cause nor merit, not the merit of Christ for its cause; but is the cause of causes and of Christs merits. As one fire may produce another, but the element of fire was not produced by another element of fire, but by God in creation. And one Vine tree brings forth another, but the first Vine Tree was created by the Lord only.
2. Conclus. Nor have we (to speak accurately) right to Christs satisfaction nor to his righteousness by faith. 1. Because the Lords free-grace in laying our sins on Christ, Isa. 53. 6. and his making him sin for us, 2 Cor. 5. 21. does rather give the right to his satisfaction. God would have Christ to stand for so many chosen of
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God upon the Cross, and for no other. 1 Cor. 1. 30. Ye are of him through Jesus Christ, who is made ἀπὸ θεοῦ of God, to us, wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption. Nor is there any act of faith intervening by which Christ became our surety and ransom-payer upon the Cross, and not the surety of others.
2. It is ordinary to our Divines to say, by faith we do apply Christ and his righteousness: but if we speak properly, application is possession and a putting on of Christ and his righteousness. Now title or Law-right to an inheritance and possession of it, are different natures, and have different causes: but faith gives not law-right to Christ his righteousness not so much as instrumentally. My receiving with my hand gold, my eating and drinking the flesh and blood of Christ by faith, Joh. 6. 53, 54 c. doth presuppose some right to that gold: but no man can say that receiving of gold, and eating of bread, and putting on of garments, gives a man right to gold, bread or garments. He that possesseth an inheritance hath some right to the inheritance by birth, buying purchase or gift: the possession in its nature and causes may be unjust, yet it is possession. Nor can it be shown what causative influence, even instrumental faith, hath in our law-right to Christs satisfaction and righteousness, except it were a meritorious cause of our right by way of instrument, which can hardly be said.
3. We may ask how Christ so died for the Reprobate, as his death is a remedy applicable to them by the ordination of God, so as they shall have life eternal, if they believe. For 1. there is either a ius and a Law-right to pardon and life eternal merited by Christs death to the Reprobate, or no such thing is merited. If neither be procured by Christs merit, the Patrons of this way shall say there is no serious offer made to them: yea there is a ius, a title to life eternal and remission, which all the reprobate may challenge,
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even a right to remission and life eternal, so they believe. Well then, it is the same right conditional to life and pardon which is purchased to the Elect: yea, this must be purchased whether they believe or not. Then there is no more in the kind of the Law-right to Redemption and life eternal and remission of sins purchased to Peter, then to Judas or Cain; And therefore hath Christ bestowed as much tender love in dying for the Reprobate as in dying for his friends. And Christ saith there is no greater love than this, Joh. 15. 13. As for the efficacious intention of applying of Christs death to Peter; when as God had no such intention of applying it to Judas, that is an act of eternal predestination, not a fruit of Christs death, and as for the grace of believing, it was purchased to all, Reprobate and Elect, only the Lord applies not his death, and bestows not the grace of believing upon the Reprobate, but for right to faith, to remission, to perseverance, to life eternal, this right must be purchased, but faith itself is never bestowed upon them. But there is a ransom of blood given for faith, and purchased by Christs merit: but Christ is never called the Head of all men, Elect and Reprobate, but the Head of the Body the Church, Eph. 1. 22. Col. 1. 18. And whereas the Head hath merited faith to the Reprobate, and that absolutely (for a condition is not possible) he should bestow it absolutely, else there is no seriousness in the command of believing. And since faith is no meritorious cause of right to remission and life eternal, nor a cause in part, or in whole, of our complete and actual reconciliation, it may well be said, that they all are completely reconciled, pardoned, justified, washen in Christs blood, when nothing is wanting, that completes the nature of remission and justification, for faith is only a condition applying, not a cause buying, nor satisfying for us, and no cause giving in part, or in whole, any new right.
3. Conclus. Should we, by faith, have right to the promise of a new heart, by believing, we should have a new heart before we have a new heart, for none can believe savingly any promise and so neither can he believe that promise that God shall give a new heart, until the habit of faith, which is a special part of the new heart, be infused: For actual faith must flow from habitual faith. Therefore right to that promise must be absolutely purchased Gg
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by the death of Christ to the Elect before they believe.
Quest. How is it that not only penally, but intrinsically and formally we sinned in Adam, and are inherenter sinners in him, but we are righteous in Christ only imputative and why should not Christ be named formally the sinner since he is made by imputation the sinner? As Adams sin is ours by imputation, and we formally and inherently are sinners in Adam.
Ans. How we sinned in Adam is a point of greater difficulty: For this first sin the tottering and reeling of the specific common nature in Adam is ours, not because he is our father φύσει by nature (though that be a ground of the imputation also) but because he is such a father by Covenant and Law, the Law and Covenant of Works being laid in pawn in his hand. There be three parts of Original sin: A partaking of the first sin of Adam, we all sinned in him, Rom. 5. 12, 14, 15. (2.) The want of the Image of God, called the Glory of God, Rom. 3. 23. (3.) Concupiscence and a bentness of nature to sin, Rom. 7. 7, 14, 17, 18, 23, 24. As to the first, Adams sin is ours really and truly, not so much because it is ours, as because it is imputed to be ours by God, who so contrived the Law of Works as it should be made with Adam not as a single father but with Adam as a public person representing all man, and having our common nature as a father both by nature and Law, which came from the mere free-will of God.
1. Who might so have contrived the first Covenant of Works, that sin should only have been Adams own sin, not the sin of his posterity. For by no necessity of nature, which is antecedent to the free decree of God, are all mankind legally in Adams loins, though naturally they be.
(2.) But children are as naturally in their nearest fathers loins, as we are all in the loins of Adam, and all men are equally of that same specific nature with their nearest Parents, as with their first Parents: Yet the sins of the nearest Parents, by no necessity, are always charged upon the children, but now all have sinned in Adam, Rom. 5. 12, 18.
(3.) Where a sin is inherently and personally there is no need of imputation, which is a free Act of God had Christ been inherently and personally the sinner, God needed not make him, or impute
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our sins to him: as Isa. 53. 6. 2 Cor. 5. 21. and if we had been intrinsically sinners in Adam, his sin had been ours as intrinsically as it was Adams; and as Adam was not the first who sinned by imputation, but personally and intrinsically, so neither should Adams sin have been our sin by imputation, but intrinsically and personally, now the Scripture saith, Rom. 5. 19. By one mans disobedience, many were made sinners, ἁμαρτωλοὶ κατιστάθησαν οἱ πολλοὶ, then they [were] not intrinsically sinners, before they were made, that is, before they were reputed sinners in Adam, or before Adams sin was imputed to them: as we are not intrinsically righteous in Christ, before we be justified and made or reputed righteous in Christ: When therefore our Divines say, we are as guilty of eating the forbidden fruit, as if our hands were there and our teeth, and we did eat in him, the speech cannot be taken physically, personally (for we were not then born) but morally and legally: but our nature was legally there. But when the Elect does sin, Christ is not said to have been in our loins legally, but he was made sin, he was punished so as if he had been the sinner; though there was in Christ no formal guiltiness, no reatus culpae, but reatus poenae.
But we are deprived of the image of God, and inclined to all sin, not by imputation, as the young Lion and the young Serpent have not the bloody and the stinging nature of the old Lion and the old Serpent by imputation, but by natural and intrinsical inherency: Now our holy, harmless, and undefiled High Priest hath no sin in him by inherency.
3. A legal satisfaction and paying of a sum, yea more than the debtor was owing, can never take away a morally inherent guiltiness, nor inherently justify and make innocent the sinner and make him one, who hath never borrowed the money and wasted it, or one who hath never sinned in Adam, and who hath never sinned in his own person: Yea the Law of Works standing as it is most spiritual and holy; It is 1. impossible that he who hath once broken the Law though he be made inherently most holy and perfectly sanctified, can be made righteous, which requires there shall never be one the least sin committed, and what is done cannot be undone. Gg2
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2. The suffering of another, as of the Man Christ, may well stand for what we should have suffered, but cannot remove the inherent blot of sin, and remove fundamental guiltiness. The paying a thousand Crowns for him who borrowed five hundred Crowns and spent them on harlotry and drunkenness, may free the debtor from being in Law, liable to pay the five hundred Crowns but can never free him from being an unjust borrower, and a profuse waster.
3. The two Covenants of Works and of Grace standing, its impossible that the active obedience of Christ can make us actively and inherently righteous, or restore to us our lost innocency.
CHAP. III.
How Christ suffered for us in our room and place. 2. He died not for all and every one. 3. How many ways Christ is said to die in our stead. 4. The Lords so dying for all makes not all saveable, nor the Gospel Preachable to all Nations. 5. Christ died in the stead of the Elect.
The Lord Jesus hath a room in each Covenant, of Works, and of Grace: In the Covenant of Works as a sufferer for the breach of it. Its said by Learned Davenantius, One is said truly and properly to die for another, who dies to procure his good, though the other by his own fault, get no good of his dying for him. But there is not such a Question as this, whether one may truly and properly die for another, but whether Christ in the sense of the Holy Ghost died vere proprie, truly and properly, the just for the unjust, to procure good to the unjust, and yet these unjust may eternally perish and reap no good by Christs dying through their unbelief? 2. Will it not follow that Christ 1. died truly
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and properly for all, and yet, non obstante morte Christi, notwithstanding of the Lords dying, all the world may eternally perish, as say Arminians and Socinians. 3. It shall follow that the immediate, yet the complete effect of Christs death is not actual, but possible saving of all. And Christ hath vere proprie, truly and properly died for them. Nor 4. is it enough to say that Christ had a special intention in dying for the Elect to give them faith, but he had no such intention in dying for the Reprobate. But hence it follows that Christ as properly and truly died for the Reprobate as for the Elect, as touching the nature and intention of his dying; and that he offered as sufficient a ransom for the one as for the other, and that is a mere possible ransom, but as concerning the intention to apply effectually, or no effectual intention to apply the death, there's the difference. But 1. we ask for Scripture, where it is said Christ dying as dying for the world had these two contrair intentions. The Scripture saith, Christ died to gather his scattered children, Joh. 11. 5. to bring to God, 1 Pet. 3. 18. these for whom he died, that they might have life, Joh. 10. 11. live to God, 2 Cor. 5. 15. die to sin, 1 Pet. 2. 24. be redeemed from their vain conversation, 1 Pet. 1. 18. be delivered from this present evil world, Gal. 1. 4. Here is our effectual intention; where is there a place for his dying with no effectual intention to bring any to God? and yet he died for all good and evil, to make salvation possible, say they. It is not enough to coin two intentions in Christ-God-Man dying, and give us Scripture for one of them only, and bid us take the other on trust. 2. Nor is it enough to say all these places speak of Christs effectual dying for his Elect only. For 1. it is not truly nor properly said that Christ effectually died for the Elect only, for he effectually died for no man by this way, because he died only to make salvation possible to all, so as they might perish for ever, notwithstanding of his dying for them: So the efficacy of dying is in Christs intention, and application. Now efficacy of intention and efficacy of application are both extrinsical to his laying down his life. 2. The place, 2 Cor. 5. 15. cannot be expounded by them of only the effect: For it speaks (as they expone it) of Christ dying for all that were dead, as v. 14. and these they say are Elect and Reprobate.
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3. Nothing is said, whether Christ on the Cross did sustain the person of all for whom he died, Elect and Reprobate, and whether he sustained two persons (for he was cut off, but not for himself, Dan. 9. 26.) one for the Reprobate, another for the Elect. And whether he finished the transgression, and made an end of sins, as Daniel saith, 9. 24. that is, of all sins and transgressions, final unbelief and all others: For except he did that, he cannot finish the trangression, make an end of sins, make reconciliation for iniquity, and bring in everlasting righteousness, to these for whom he died; Except either he bring in half a righteousness, or at least imperfect, and never make an end of some sins and transgressions, because men will not have it so, and set bounds to the infinite insufficiency of Christ: Or because he puts an end of sin, and brings in everlasting righteousness conditionally, and is gracious and mercifull as men will, and decrees to show mercy, not upon discriminating rebellion or upon unbelief, which separateth a Reprobate from an Elect, if so it seems good to men, and if man shall have mercy on whom he will, and harden whom he will, or which is all one, if man shall have mercy upon himself, because he will, or harden himself, because he will harden himself. Yet may it be disputable to some, whether grace by which one is effectually drawn to Christ, rather then another, be the grace of predestination continuated and so before Christs death, or a fruit of Christs death and so after. But it may well be said that every created saving grace is a fruit of Christs death, and that we receive the habit of saving grace out of his fulness, and the saving habit infused separateth an Elect from a Reprobate: For it is peculiar to Believers and the Elect to be gifted with one heart, Ezek. 11. 19. and a new heart in the habit, Ezek. 36. 26, and with the spirit of grace and supplication to believe and mourn Zech. 12. 10. and the Spirit and blessing that is powered on the thirsty ground, and the seed Isai. 44. 3. And so must we say, that the same habit as actuated by the Lords Spirit, and as it makes one to believe, and draws him effectually to the Son, actually and efficaciously, and draws not another, is a fruit of Christs death, but this way must glory be a fruit of the death of Christ, but not habitual saving grace. 2. The death of Christ for all is as common a means of salvations as
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the Preaching of the Gospel: And both must be made effectual by efficacious grace, which is not the fruit of the merit of Christ, by this way, and since grace to actually apply the death of Christ, is not given to Pagans and millions for whom Christ died, as these Authors teach, how unsufficient must the death of our Lord be? For it leaves faith as impossible to the reprobates, as if he had never died for them, for neither habitual nor actual faith is purchased to them by this death: Only the Pelagian application is left to them, which they should have had, suppose Christ had never died for them.
2. It is to be considered, how many ways Christ may be said to give himself ἀντίλυτρον a ransom for us, or in our place.
1. Christ hath sufficiently died for all in their room to redeem them. For, pro ἀντι, for men, noteth ever the decree and intention of Christ dying for men; but the sufficiency and worth and intrinsical dignity of Christs death, depends not upon the decree and intention of God for the worth of the death and the blood of him who is God, Act. 20. 28. 1 Cor. 2. 8. and the Lord of Glory is infinite, because of the infiniteness of the person, before and without the decree of God. 2. Nor is it true that Christs dying for all and every one (which is a dream) makes salvation possible to all, so that the Covenant is Preachable to all upon condition of believing Act. 10. 43. To him (Jesus Annointed who went about doing good, and so was man) v. 38. to him (who was slain in our nature, not for all and every man, v. 39. to him) whom God raised up the third day, v. 40. To him gave all the Prophets witness as it is, v. 43.) that through his Name, whoever believes in him shall have remission of sins.
2. And this would be considered (whoso believes in Christ are justified and saved) how it is universal? It is most true thus: There is a sure connection between faith and life eternal, and the connection is decreed of God; or the concatenation of the end and the means, or of the means and the end faith and salvation. And it is true: whether all believe or none at all believe, and whether all or none at all be saved, as is this (whosoever shall keep the Law perfectly, shall be justified and saved by the works of the Law.) But 1. it makes neither faith nor salvation possible to Pagans and
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Reprobates nor perfect obedience in doing the Law, nor Justification or salvation by the works of the law possible to any living man. But the Question is, whether the connection of the former be made true by the decree and revealed will of God promising life to the believer, by no means, but only by this, because Christ died for all and every one. And so this should have been false (if all Pagans and Reprobate and Elect believe they shall be saved) if Christ had died only for the Elect. This must be proven either by Scripture, or by some solid reason from Scripture; for it saith this, Reprobates cannot have life by believing in Christ crucified for them: except it be true that Christ was crucified for them, but none can be saved by believing that Christ died for them, except they also believe that Christ rose from the dead, and ascended and intercedes in Heaven for them. Then one might infer this could not be true, but false (if Reprobates believe they shall be saved) except Christ have died risen again, ascended, and intercedes for all Reprobate and Elect. For true and saving faith the only condition of salvation must lay hold on the Resurrection Ascension, and Intercession of Christ, as well as on his dying for all. The reason why it cannot be true that Reprobates shall be saved, if they believe, except Christ have died for them, is (by this way) they cannot believe that Christ hath died for their sins, except it be true that he died for their sins: Yea, I answer, they cannot believe that Christ rose again for their righteousness, except it be true that Christ also rose for the righteousness of the Reprobates; this latter they cannot say.
It is said by Christs dying for all, God hath now a conditional will of saving all and every one Elect and Reprobate, if they shall believe, which conditional will was not in God, before Christs dying for all. Yea without Christs dying for all, salvation upon condition of believing had been impossible. But not to say that it is unworthy of the Holy Lord, that new wills and new decrees should arise in him, upon any thing that falls out in time, such as the crucifying of the Lord Jesus. Such Doctrine we condemn in Vorstius, and in Arminians, as is well observed by Dr Twiss, such a decree as this, that God should say (I decree, will, and intend remission and life purchased by the death of Christ, to all Pagans
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that never hear the Gospel, to all Reprobates, so they shall believe in Christ: And yet I never decree they shall believe, nor have grace to believe) saith no more then there is a connection between faith as the condition, and remission and life eternal as the thing promised; as when God had decreed that Jerusalem should be burnt, and deny grace to obey; Yet saith Jeremiah from the Lord, Jer 38. 17. If thou wilt assuredly go forth to the King of Babylons Princes, then thy soul shall live, and this City shall not be burnt with fire, and thou shalt live and thine house. And the Lord says to Cain, Gen. 4. 7. If thou dost well (and shall savingly believe as Abel) thou shalt be accepted. Then was that connection decreed of, God it containing a most just condition of life, and a condition to which Zedekiah and Cain were obliged, but that the death of Christ made the Lord to intend and decree conditionally and in any terms, either acceptation to life, or remission to Cain, as the end, and welldoing as the means, or intended to purchase the grace either of the one or the other is not warranted by Scripture, for both the one and the other are the fruits of the merits of Christ: Show 1. how God can will and decree such a thing to the Reprobate: for its as a father would say, I purpose to sell such a plot of ground to my son, so he pay me an hundred Crowns, When 1. the son by no possibility, hath, or can have the hundred Crowns, but only from his father. 2. When the father of his free pleasure hath decreed never to give him the hundred Crowns or the plot of ground. 2. Show how faith is made possible by Christs death, when it is not purchased to the reprobate by Christs death, it is not surely made physically possible by Christs death, if it be said that it is made possible morally, rationally, and objectively to them, because there cannot be an offer of life made to Reprobates, and to all, upon condition of faith, except Christ have died for the Reprobate, that is denied, and never proved: If one should come (say they) to the Antipodes or to such as never heard of Christ, and Preach the Gospel, he should not, before he Preach, look for any new establishing of the conditional Covenant (who ever believes in Christ shall be justified and saved) but should take it as granted, it was made with them before; therefore by Christs death the Gospel of itself is Preachable and may be Preached to all Nations, Hh
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quovis seculo, in any age, as it was to Job. Ans. If any come to the Antipodes and any Nation that ever heard of Christ, having the gift of Tongues, and Preach to such, or by his own industry acquire the gift of such Tongues, and by the strong hand of providence Preach the conditional Covenant, these providences should be a command, and the setting up of a shining torch there should prove these people (as to the elect among them) in Gods mind were a Covenanted people, no less then the Church of Samaria. And there were no need to expect a new establishing of the conditional Gospel-Covenant: But how is that proven to be from this, because God sent his Son to die for all and every one of these Antipodes, and made the Gospel-Covenant with all and every one of them before: the Authors shall be ebb of Scripture here. And if these Antipodes should, all and every one, refuse the Gospel and kill the Preacher, and never one either receive the Gospel or propagate to any that may receive it; Then such an Apostolic mission is not in Scripture, and the lawfulness of that mans call to me is to be questioned: and I should judge, his own Spirit, not God sent him. Nor is this true, that the Gospel is and was Preachable, and of itself may be preached to any age. Job lived before the giving of the Law, and Melchisedeck, and they had the call of God to Preach to them to whom they Preached. 2. It shall be denied that Jonah had sinned, if he had not preached to Nineveh, except God had expressly commanded him to preach to Nineveh, otherwise it had been the sin of Godly Prophets who lived with him in the time of Joash King of Judah, 2 Kings 14. 25. and they had been guilty, as Jonah in not Preaching to Nineveh. Yea all the Ministers and Apostles, and Prophets had sinned in not Prophecying to the Phylistins, Syrians, Persians, Bythinia, Samaria; whereas the Apostles, Mat. 10. 5. Act. 16. 6. were forbidden to Preach the Gospel to the Gentiles, to Asia: and it were strange to say Ezekiel sinned in not preaching to a people of an unknown Language, whereas the Lord expressly says he sent him not unto them, Ezek. 3. 5, 6. and that, Rom. 10. 15. How shall they Preach, except they be sent? is meant of the Apostles, and of all lawfull Pastors. And there may be running and no sending of God to Nations, Jer. 23. 21. and Psal. 147. 19, 20. when he denies, he declared his judgements and his statutes to any Nation, by sent
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Prophets, as he did to Jacob, if the Gospel then was of itself Preachable to all Nations, Prophets unsent might have Preached these same judgements to other Nations, that were Preached to Jacob, though not sent of God. But that place, Psal. 147. and divers others would say he choiced only Israel as his Covenanted People: As Deut. 7. 7, 8, 9. Deut. 10. 12, 13, 14, 15. Exod. 20. 1, 2. Psal. 78. 5, 6. Amos. 3. 1, 2. Deut 27. 1, 2. to them only he revealed the Covenant of Grace, then was it not a Covenant of its own nature that might at any age, be Preached to all Nations. But what is then revealed in these decrees? (of the Reprobate believe, they shall be saved) Ans. Not Gods intention conditional or absolute to save them, or to give them faith or grace merited by Christs death, to believe, for then some good-will and love of election, the Lord should bear toward the election of such, and should desire all the Reprobate to be saved, so they would believe, and yet by this way, no more is there grace purchased to them, by Christ, to believe, then there is grace purchased to them to performe obedience to the Law: Now the Authors will not say that by Christs dying for all, there is a conditional will in Christ, or in the Father, to give life to all who perfectly keep the Law: for this conditional will or means and end, was in God before, and suppose Christ had never died for sinners. 2. This would say that the Reprobate were to believe that Christ died to save them, having purchased life to them, and to believe that he died not to save them all for whom he died, because they are not to believe he died to purchase faith by his death, or grace to believe, without which salvation is impossible: it cannot be said that God absolutely intended to save them, whether they believe or not, even while as there is such a decree in God because he hath decreed both the end and the means, to wit, having ordained them to salvation, and having ordained for them faith; nor is there any such decree in God, toward any but the Elect only, therefore this conditional decree (if all and every one believe, all and every one shall be saved) can infer no love of God through Christ, to the persons of all and every one to have them saved more then this can infer a love of saving all and every one, to be in God, or to have been in the Lord, before the fall of Angels, and men (if all and every one of Hh2
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Angels and men shall perfectly, without sin to the end, keepeth Law, then all Angels, all men, Elect and reprobate shall be saved eternally.) Now no man sound in judgement, can say this conditional can infer that God had a good will to save some Angels, not to save others: More then this (if all and every man believe in Christ they shall be saved (can infer that God hath a good-will to save Reprobate men, and not fallen Angels. In a word, no simple conditional propositions can infer the desire or good will of God to the persons of men, or to have the things done except God effectually work the condition: As this (if all fulfill the Law perfectly, men and Angels, and all men shall be saved by the Law) cannot infer that God hath a good will to the persons of all Angels, and all men to justify and save them all, without exception by the works of the Law; the contrair whereof he decreed. For this connect proposition may stand true with the salvation of all Angels, of all men, of no Angels, or no men, according as the Lord shall be pleased of his good pleasure and free grace to work, or not to work the condition of moving the will of Angels and men to keep the Law. And therefore these connections nihil ponunt absoluti, they place nothing absolutely to persons, but only to things, to wit, 1. that it is the duty and obligation of all Angels and men to perform absolute obedience to the Law, as they would be justified and saved by the Law and its the duty of all men in the Visible Church, to believe in Christ, if they would be justified and saved in Christ. 2. That there is a wise connection between means and end, obedience legal and life, faith and life, according to the approving will of God, and yet neither means nor end may ever come to pass or fall out, and neither means nor end may ever be decreed of God to fall out: Yes, God may decree absolutely that none of the extremes shall exist as God decrees (if Zedekiah shall yield to the King of Babylon, Jerusalem shall not be burnt) and yet according to his decree or will of purpose the Lord hath decreed that the yielding of Zedekiah, and the safety of the Idolatrous City should not come to pass, but the contrair. So God decrees, if Judas repent and believe, he shall be saved according to the will of precept, and yet according to the Lords will of purpose, neither did the Lord decree or intend the repenting and saving believing
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of Judas nor was grace to believe and repent purchased by the death of Christ to Judas (by these Authors) though they boast of the amplitude of Christs death, nor did the Lord by that will of purpose ever decree or intend the salvation of Judas.
Therefore, 3. this, that the death of Christ is of its own nature preachable to all Nations, in every age, is not true: For the phrase is neither in Scripture, in Old or New Testament, nor is the thing itself in Scripture: For the meaning is, either God may send Apostles in any age to all the Nations of the world to Preach: If that be by his extraordinary power, he may save all the damned, that way. The Preachableness is not the object of our faith: Nor is that Preachableness a fruit of Christs dying for all. If it be meant that God by his ordinary power may send Apostles in any age to all Nations: How is that to be said? Except we say God hath decreed in his will of purpose to send Preachers to all; That cannot be, except his decree be disappointed. Or 3. If it be his command and revealed will that the Gospel be Preached to all Nations, every age, they grievously sin, who Preach not the Gospel to the Brasilians and Antipodes, whether they can speak in their Language or not. And if the Doctrine of the Covenant of its own Nature may so be Preached to all Nations without exception, in every difference of time, then must all the Nations of the earth, in all differences of time, be in a capacity to be a Covenanted people of God, the Church of Christ, the Vineyard of the Lord, his inheritance, the Spouse of Christ, his Body, his Called, and Chosen flock. For to have the Doctrine of the Covenant fixedly Preached to a Nation, and Christ offered to them, is to be the planted Vineyard of the Lord; for to Preach to Macedonia fixedly, they willingly hearing, is indeed the Lords entring in Covenant with Macedonia, and his choosing them to be his confederate people, and the Lords planting a Vineyard; and building a Wine-press in it and setting up a Ministry therein; and therefore the Lord was not in Covenant with them before Indeed to Preach the Word simply to scoffers who reject it, and that occasionally in the passing, so as there is no sort of accepting of the Covenant, nor any fixed Ministry there, is not a renewing of the Covenant with them, nor does it presuppose a Covenant before made with them. 2. It
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is against the wisdom of God that 1. there should be such a band of love, the greatest love that ever was, Joh. 15. 13. lying upon all man-kind, Brasilians, Americans, binding them to thankfull Gospel- obedience, that Christ died for them, yet this obligation of the greatest love, is neither written in their heart, as the Law of nature, nor is it ever revealed to them that they are under so much love by Covenant. 2. How can the Lord say I choosed you, O Israel, among all the people of the earth, and entered in Covenant with you your seed only. For 1. there is no need of a new establishing of the conditional Gospel-Covenant, for it was established with Israel and with all the world before he choosed or called them. 2. He cannot be said to enter in Covenant with them only. For all the world ever was thus Covenanted with God. 3. All the world must be an invisible Covenanted Church, and the fit matter to be a Church. For the Evangel may be Preached est de se anunciabile, not to stones and to rocks, but to all Nations, quovis seculo. 4. Since the Preaching of the Gospel to some Nations, and not to others is an act of the Sovereign pleasure, yea and of the free grace of God to such as this Sun-light graciously doth visit, by this way, the sinful neglect of such as refuse to Preach shall be the cause of the perishing of the elect, a dream.
2. Christ may be said to die for us, as if we had substituted him in our place, in so rigid a sense, as if he had been made our surety to fulfill both the preceptive and active, and also the satisfying and suffering part of the Law in our room. This may please Antinomians, but a doubt it is, if it stand with the truth: For then what ever we, yea all mortal men be (for Christ died for them all, as many teach) most wicked, yet Christs active and surety and cautionary righteousness should be ours, and though we should never believe, yet Christ who fulfilled the Law and preceptive as well as the threatening part, must have believed for all that he died for, and what need we then in our persons either believe or repent? Its true, we need not perform any active obedience, as a part of active fulfilling of that Covenant of Works, which either must have all or no obedience. If it be said that alio titulo, upon another account of thankfulness to our ransom-payer, we owe active obedience: Yet all that Christ died for, both actively
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and passively must be perfectly righteous and justified, having paid the most perfect active and passive obedience that the Law required though we never believe, and Christ must have paid the active part of justifying faith for us. And why, but we should be formally justified in him without faith also? As also, God not we, laid our sins upon Christ, Isai. 53. 6. 2 Cor. 5. 21. and therefore we did commissionate and substitute Christ to die in our room.
Socinus, Crellius, the Raccovian Catechisme, Arminius, contend that Christ died for allfinaliter, for to procure good and salvation to all, so they believe and yet through their own fault, they may haply never be saved: not that he satisfied for us, but died for example as a Martyr (say Socinians) as Paul suffered for the Church, so as we, believing in Christ as in the only chiefe Martyr and witness, who as the only Author declared the Gospel, not as a sufferer and ransom-payer, who redeemed us from the Law, are saved. And as Arminians, he died for our good, not that he died in our room and stead, so as the sins of the Elect were actually taken off them, and translated upon Christ, so as we are actually freed from the punishment of sin, as if we had substiture a Saviour ourselves, and paid our debt ourselves to God; and so according to the rigour of Justice, we might crave by the Law of buying and selling deliverance from punishment, and life eternal from God. But this way they will not have Christ to die in the place and room of any, but only for their good, so as they may die eternally themselves for whom Christ died. Hence, 1. It follows that Christ died for them, but gave no ransom of blood for them for whom he died. 2. Arminians will not have the sins and punishment satisfactory to justice (for of such punishment we speak) actually upon Christ, and translated off the sinner and laid
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upon Christ, and believers actually freed from satisfactory punishment: So that both believers and Christ must actually bear the satisfactory punishment. Which indeed makes believers half-redeemers with Christ: against which we disputed before.
3. Arminians deny that we paid our debts to God, in Christ, paying them for us. So that the broken man cannot be said to have satisfied the debt in, and through the surety who satisfied for him, which in all law in unjust. And since Arminians deny that we paid to justice a ransom for sin, because our Surety Christ paid for us, he must deny that Christ was wounded for our transgressions, and bruised for our iniquities, or that the chastisement of our peace was upon him; contrair to Isai. 53. 5. because we made him not our Mediator and Surety, but God made him Mediator, and laid our iniquities upon him. Isai. 53. 6. But it is accidental in Law, that the debtor substitute the surety, or request him to take the place of surety upon him. But he is a real and most legal surety who not requested, of free grace becomes surety and pays the very same sum in specie, in kind, that the debtor ought to pay: this reason does prove he is both a surety and a gracious surety. As a Kings son who comes in and lays down his head for a malefactor, truly and really dieth and layeth down his life in the room and place of that malefactor, though there was no Covenant nor paction between him and the Kings son, though neither the malefactor, nor any friend in his name did request the Prince to become surety and die for him. Reuben offers his two sons to Jacob as pawns to be slain, if he should not bring home Benjamin safe to his father: And had Jacob accepted of the offer, Reubens two sons who knew not of the bargain had been sureties for Benjamin, Gen. 42. 37. and Judah might have been Law-surety for Benjamin to Jacob, though Benjamin requested him not to take any such place. The Lord the Creditour, and Christ, the Cautioner did strike hands together. Christ put himself in our room, as an hostage, pledge and surety to die for us, and paid the first and second death, the sum that we were owing, according to a paction between the Lord and Christ, and we requested not Christ to be surety, only by believing, we thank him, and subscribe and say Amen to what is done. But in Law we paid, in regard the same
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nature that suffered was ours, and accepted as ours. But Arminians clearly refuse that Christ shall be an hostage and surety for us, because the offended party of his own furnished not one that died for him; and so he strikes at the root of a real sacrifice that is satisfactory to God, because one and the same cannot be both satisfied, and, de suo, of his own, furnish a satisfying surety. For so as his own, Socinus saith, one cannot be both a satisfier and a person satisfied, and this is no satisfaction at all, saith Socinus. (4.) Our believing cannot effectuate this, that Christ hath actually born the satisfactory punishment due to us. Arminius saith, that Christ hath not, actu ipso, actually born that punishment: he must say he hath born it only potentially, potentia. Then its like when we believe he bears that punishment completely, but he cannot die nor suffer, but once; only he must mean that Christ did actually bear our sins, but the satisfactory punishment is not accepted as suffered in our name. But our believing hindereth not but he hath in genere causae moralis meritoriae, really as a meriting cause deserved that God in justice cannot exact from us that same satisfactory punishment that Christ hath suffered for our sins and its impossible that our faith can add any meritorious power to Christs death: and therefore, though not in ourselves and physically, yet really, morally, legally in Christ, deliverance from satisfactory punishment is due to us, we being in Christ legally, and life eternal is due to us, being in Christ according to the rigour of justice, and iniuria irrogata Christo sponsori foret, wrong should be done to Christ, and commutative justice, by which, ex condigno, by condignity, he hath bought freedom from hell, and right to heaven, to these he died for, if we should suffer eternal wrath, in our persons, whether we believe or believe not; for believing is no part of the meriting cause of the satisfying ransom. Yea Christ by right of buying and selling, and we in Christ our surety may claim freedom from the second death, and right to everlasting life, so as God should fail against commutative justice against Christ, and break (with reverence and humble submission to his Glorious Majesty be it spoken) Covenant to Christ, and he should buy with a price more then enough his seed and not get his wages, if these he died for die the second death and come short of glory eternal, if the Lord say to Christ, I promise to thee a seed, Ii
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that they shall be delivered from the second death, and have life eternal providing thou shalt give me a price abundantly sufficient to buy these, to wit, the life and blood of God-Man, and offer thyself a sacrifice upon the Cross to offended Justice. If Christ shall do this and pay the ransom, and Christ get no wages, no saved seed, but they perish through the want of faith only: either must faith be a part of the ransom, which none can say, or then the Lord shall not keep Covenant to Christ. (5.) When Arminius saith that the Lord can nullojure, by no Law, nor Justice crave of us faith and conversion to God, if we have paid our debts, by rigour of justice exactly to God in Christ who legally in our stead and place paid for us, he supposes plainly that God requires faith and obedience of us as a part of recompense made to offended Justice. And Arminius saith, that Christs righteousness is ours, not as performed by him, but as imputed to us by faith: So that faith comes in as a collateral price paid for us as a part of the price, the very act and work of believing being counted ours, and our righteousness before God: Yea but God by no necessity of hurt Justice craves faith and repentance from us.
That Christ died not for our good only, but in our stead is proven. 1. Because Christ in some other more legal way died for us than for Angels, for he died for their good, that he might be made the Head of Angels, Col. 2. 10. Phil. 2. 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. Rom. 10. 9, 11. and he died for the good of the whole Creation that he might make all things new, and restore the creatures to their perfection, which by the sin of man they had lost, Rom. 8. 20. 21, 22, 23. Acts 3. 21. Rev. 21. 5. but he died not as suffering punishment due to the Angels, and the work of Creation in their stead, as wounded for their transgressions, as he died for ourtransgressions, Isa. 53. For the transgressions of us all, Elect and Reprobate as they say, exponing that all Isa. 53. 6. of all and every one of mankind, were upon him.
2. We deny not, but there be considerable differences between Christs dying, and the punishment of the Elect which they were to suffer. As,
1. Ours should have been eternal, because we could never outsatisfy. But the sufferings of Christ, because of the dignity of his person God-Man, were perfectly satisfactory in a short time.
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2. He could not suffer the same pain in number, that we should have suffered, for one and the same accident cannot be in different subjects, nor is the surety to pay the very same sum numero, that the debtor borrowed.
3. The Lord could not but have punished the Elect with hating and aversion of mind, they being intrinsically and inherently sinners. He punished Christ, who was not inherently, but only by imputation the sinner, with no hatred at all, but with anger and desire of showing and exercising revenging justice, but still loving him dearly, as his only Son. But upon this account, Christ must stand in our room, and because of the five-fold oneness and Law-identity and sameness. For,
1. Though physically the surety and the debtor be two different men, yet in Law they are one and the same person, and one and the same legal party, and the same object of justice. Whoso pursues in Law the surety, does also pursue the debtor.
2. The debt and sum is one, not two debts, nor two ransoms, nor two punishments nor two lives to loss, but one.
3. It is one and the same solution and satisfaction, there cannot in Law-justice, come another reckoning, dying, and paymentm-aking after the surety hath paid.
4. There is one and the same acceptation upon the creditor his part, if he accept of satisfaction in the payment made by the surety, he cannot but legally accept of the debtor, and cannot pursue him in Law, but must look upon him as no debtor. To justify him is another thing: It being a forinsical transient declaration of his righteousness who believes. I speak here of an acception of satisfaction to hurt justice revenging sin, not of an acceptation of obedience.
5. Its one and the same legal effect, Christ justified in the Spirit, and risen again, 1 Tim. 3. 16. and we in him as in the meritorious cause are legally justified. Hence he who suffered the same satisfactory punishment, for the same sins committed by us, which in Law we ought to have suffered eternally.
2. He suffered and died for us in our stead and place, especially when the Creditor counts these sufferings, as if we had suffered. So Paul, 2 Cor. 5. 14. If one be dead for all, then were all dead. And Ii2
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the Messiah was cut off and died not for himself, Dan. 9. 26. He did no violence, neither was guile found in his mouth, Isa. 53. 9. Joh. 8. 46. Heb. 7. 26. but he was wounded for our transgressions, and bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed; Isa. 53. 5. 1 Pet. 2. 23, 24, 25. He was delivered for our offences, The Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was cut out of the land of the living, for the transgression of my people was he plagued, Isa. 53. 8. He hare on his body our sins on the tree.
3. He who being made under the Law, paid that Law-debt of satisfaction, which the Elect in their persons should have paid, and thereby freed them from the Law-debt of satisfaction: He sustained the person of the Elect in his suffering. But Christ being made under the Law paid that Law-debt of satisfaction, which the Elect in their persons should have paid. The proposition is out of doubt, none denies the Minor, but that we should have died eternally in our persons, if Christ had not died for us.
4. He who of purpose took on him our nature, the nature and seed of Abraham, and the legal condition of a surety to suffer for us, he stood in our person and room in suffering for us. But Christ took on him our nature, which is common to believing Jews, and to such also who are casten off of God, Rom. 9. 3, 4. but not as common to them, but as the seed of Abraham Heb. 2. 16.
And 5. Gal. 3. 10. For as many as are of the works of the Law, are under the curse, for it is written, cursed is every one who continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the Law to do them. 13. Christ hath redeemed us from the Law, being made a curse for us-not to reconcile all and every one to himself, or to obtain a potential and far off power of salvation. But, v. 14. That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ, that me might receive the promise of the spirit through faith. Not that we might believe or not believe if we would that is not the blessing of Abraham, Act. 11. 18. Act. 15. 8. 9. Act. 5. 31. Phil. 1. 29. and for his great love he died for us, the just for the unjust, to bring us to God.
6. And it is thus confirmed, Christ in dying is not looked on as a man; Nor 2. simply as a single man dying; Nor 3. as a public Martyr or witness that all, or none at all if they so will, may get good
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of him, but by special paction if he shall lay down his life, and work his work, and suffer for our sins, that which we should have suffered he shall receive his wages and see his seed.
7. As also none who dies as a surety or pays as a surety, but he bears the person of such as he pays for, whoever gives a ransom for another by way of payment, and whosoever as a Priest offers a sacrifice for another, he represents the person offended for whom he offers, so does the Advocate act the person of the Client, the intercessour his person for whom he intercedes.
8. The phrase to die for another as a ransomer signifies to die in the stead and person of another. Demosthenes, orat. ὐπὲρ κτησιφῶντος in lieu of Ktesiphon. For Archias, for Marcellus, he pleads it is in Law as if Archias as if Marcellus, or as if the parties for which Cicero, and Demosthenes do plead, were in persons pleading themselves. Its true, Isocrates hath ὑπὲρ for in bonum, for the favour and good of any, And (for) ὑπὲρ notes also to do or die for the good and profit of others, Col. 1. 24. I rejoice in my sufferings for you that I may fill up the remnant of the sufferings of Christ for his body. But if it cannot be denied, but for Christ to die for his body is somewhat more than for Paul or any Martyr to die for the body, then sure Christs dying for his Church (as the more doth include the less) notes Christs dying for the good of his Church, and somewhat more than for the Churches profit any may see Stephanus his Thesaurus.
ὑπὲρ (For) is often the same with ἀντὶ, Paul, Rom. 9. I would wish to be separated from Christ, for my brethren; that was not that they might be saved or not it were contrair to his prayer. 2 Cor. 5. 15. If Christ died for all, then all were dead. The bread is my flesh which I will give for the life of the world. The good shepherd gives his life for his sheep. I lay down my life for my sheep. Greater love than this hath no man, that a man should give his life for his friends. It is expedient that one die for the people, Joh. 11. Christ hath died for the ungodly, Rom. 5. in their stead. For the just, v. 7. ἀντὶ for noteth most frequently
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vice, loco, in the place and stead: As also, תחת 2 Sam. 18. 33. would God I had died for thee, Absalom. The LXX. the Syriac version, and the Chalde paraphrase, in thy stead, I would I had died, and thou remained alive. Gen. 22. 13. A sacrifice for Isaac, instead of Isaac, Gen. 44. 33. I shall remain pledge (saith Reuben) for the lad, תחת בני in pawne for the lad. Num. 3. 12. I have taken the Levites for all the first born, instead of the first born. So LXX. ἀντὶ παντὸς πρωτότοκου.
2. When a ransom is given for another in point of justice, Mar. 10. 45. Christ gives his life a ransom for many, Mat. 20. 28. He came to give his (dear precious) life a ransom instead of many, 1 Tim. 2. 6. ἀντὶ λύτρον, a counter ransom for all. Mat. 5. 38. Eye for eye, tooth for tooth. Exod. 21. 23, 24. Thou shalt give life for life. Give that piece of money for thee and me, Mat. 17. Isa. 43. 4. I will give men for thee, and people for thy life.
3. It is used thus, when a man is given in place of another, Pro. 11. 8. The righteous is delivered out of trouble, and the wicked cometh in his stead, Job 34. 24. and he makes others to stand in their place, Heb. as before, Psal. 45. 16. instead of fathers shall be sons. Job 16. 4. Oh! if your soul were in my souls stead.
4. It is when the son comes in the room and stead of the father, or one kils another, which is a sad exchanging of one person for another, and though the following King does not act in the person, or by the name and authority of him who went before, yet there is one person changed, and another reigns in his place and roome. 1 Chro. 14. 1. Abijah slept, and Asa his son reigned in his stead. LXX. ἀντ' αὐτοῦ 1 King. 3. 7. Thou hast made thy servant to reign in the room of David my father. LXX. ἀντὶ δαβὶδ τοῦ πατρός μοῦ. [1] King. 11. 43. Rehoboam reigned in his stead ἀντ' αὐτοῦ, Chal. Paraphrastes. pro eo 31. Abijah reigned in his stead, ἀντ' αὐτοῦ. 2 King. 1. 17. Joram reigned in
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his stead, LXX. ἀντ' αὐτοῦ 1 King. 15. 28. Baasha slew him and reigned, ἀντ' αὐτοῦ 2 King. 8. 15. He slew him, and Hazael reigned, ἀντ' αὐτοῦ. 2 Kin. 15. 10. Shallum slew him, and reigned in his stead ἀντ' αὐτοῦ ver. 14. Menahem slew him, and reigned, ἀντ' αὐτοῦ ver. 30. Hoshea smote him, and reigned, ἀντ' αὐτοῦ. So Esth. 2. 4. Eccl. 4. 15. 2 Sam. 17. 25. Gen. 30. 2. 1 King. 16. 10. Zimri reigned, ἀντ' αὐτοῦ. Ezek. 16. 32.
Joseph heard that Archelaus did reign in the room of Herod his father, Mat. 2. 22. Tremellius, and Trostius both turn it, loco Herodis, Mat. 5. 38. eye for eye: Its the same word חלף Mat. 17. 27. give it for me and thee. The same word Luk. 11. 11. if his son ask a fish, for a fish instead of a fish. Tremellius and Trostius, in place of a fish, loco piscis, he will not give him a serpent. Rom. 12. 17. neither render evil for evil: So the same in both Languages is, 1 Thes. 5. 15. ὀρᾶτε καὶ σοῦ μὴ τὶς κακὸν ἀντὶ κακοῦ ἀποδῶ, and 1 Pet. 3. 19. and 1 Cor. 11. 16. Her hair is given her instead of a covering. The same word in the Syriack is 1 Pet. 3. 18. The Lord Christ died, the just for the unjust: instead of the unjust, Christ is, Gal. 3. 13. made a curse for us, in our stead. Mat. 20. 28. Syriac, that he might give his life a redemption for many, חלף vice multorum. And the same is Mar. 10. 45. and Rom. 5. 6. in due time Christ died for the wicked, ὑπὲρ ἀσεβῶν. Syriac, חלף רשןעא pro, vel vice improborum. 8. While we were sinners Christ died for us. חלפון ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν in our place, 2 Cor. 5. 15. If one died in place of all men, all were dead. Mark. 14. 24. This is my blood of the New Testament which is shed דחלף for many, loco multorum, Luk. 22. 20. This cup is the New Testament in my blood, which is shed in place of you. Joh. 10. 11. The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep, in place of his sheep: The same word, Joh. 11. 50. Know ye not that it is expedient that one man die in the place of the people, and that the whole people perish not. Then the intrinsical end of Christs dying consisteth not with the perishing of these for whom he died: for he died that the whole people should not perish. 1 Tim. 2. 6. Who gave himself a redemption for every man. Tit. 2. 14. Who gave his soul instead of us. Heb. 2. 9. Who tasted death in the place of every
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man. 1 Pet. 2. 21. Christ died in stead of us, 1 Pet. 4. 1. Rom. 9. 3. I pray that I were separated from Christ instead of my brethren. The same word so constantly used can hardly signify, for the good and profit either of things or persons: As Luk. 11. 11. will the father give the son a serpent instead of a fish, for the good and profit of a fish? 1 Thes. 5. 15. See that none of you render evil for evil, i. e. evil for the good and profit of evil? a wild sense, and it is wilder in the case of persons, when it is said, the son reigns, ἀντὶ πατρὸς αὐτοῦ, so often by the seventy Translatours, instead of his father, that must be for the good and profit of the dead father. But nothing can be wilder, than to say Jehu killed Ahabs seed, and Zimri slew his Master Elah, Hoshea slew the King, and he reigned in his stead (as the Seventy say not once) that is, he reigned for the good and profit of the King whom he slew, and so slaying of Kings, and rooting out the race and posterity of Kings, shall be their good and profit.
Socinus, and the Catechisme of Raccovia, saith, if to die for sinners be as much as to die in the place and stead of sinners, then to die for sins must be to die in the place and stead of sins, then to die for sins must be to die in the place and stead of sins. Ans. These and the like argue much the vanity of Socinus, if this be retorted, as justly it may. Then as Christs dying for sinners, is for the good, profit, saving, believing, and confirming of the faith, establishing the comfort of sinners, then by the like Christs dying for sins, must be to save sins from hell, to bring sins to God, that sins should not live to themselves, and to establish the faith, the consolation of sins; whereas Christ died not for sins as for sinners, that he might save sins, but to dissolve the works of the devil to take away sin, 1 Joh. 3. 9. Joh. 1. 29. Christ dies one way for sins, and another way for sinners: The Physician one way cures the disease that it may be rooted out and be no more, and another way the diseased person, that he may live and be in health.
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CHAP. IV.
How we are in Christ dying, and crucified in him. 2. A twofold crucifying of us with Christ. 3. A discourse of mortification. 4. The actings of the mortified. 5. That we are to be mortified in our affections to every thing that is not God.
It is objected, that we were not born, nor had we any being, when Christ died, then we died not in Christ, nor could we rise, ascend to heaven, nor sit in heavenly places with him? Answ. But 1. in Physical actions there is required the real existence of the worker. Not so in legal actions, for as we had no being, who now believe, when Christ died, so our sins had no being; How then could our sins, that were not, deserve punishment? Yet I desire to believe that Jesus Christ 1 Pet. 2. 24. his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree. And that he was wounded for our transgressions, and bruised for our iniquities, who now live, Isa. 53. 5. and they cannot deny this, who teach that Christ died for the sins of the world, none excepted. And the child in the womb, when the father is absolved from treason is really and in Law restored to his fathers inheritance: And the sucking child may be crowned a King, and take possession of a Kingdom, and take the oath of loyalty of the subjects in the person of another, though physically he neither do, nor know what is done, but sleep in the arms of the nurse. So we legally in Christ satisfied, our nature in Christ was crucified, and we, though not born, did satisfy and suffer satisfactory punishment in Christ. Heb. 1. 3. Having by himself purged our sins, he sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high. Heb. 9. 28. So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many. And in him we were (legally) crucified, and dead to the Law: As Gal. 2. 19. so as Christ once being dead and crucified, the head and members, whole Mystical Christ is dead to the Law, and Christ can die no more, for he cannot satisfy and pay the debt twice: And so we are in him dead to hell, to wrath, to Law-vengeance. Satan raises a discussed plea against Kk
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the conscience, thou art a sinner, and under the curse of the Law. There is no answer to that, but by believing I was with Christ, crucified, and am dead to the Law and died to death first and second. For Christ suffered mystical, Christ legally satisfied, and so did I in him, (I speak not now of personal suffering with, or for Christ) and therefore that is a plea of Satans forging and taken away. And unjust summons may be answered by non-compearance; and by the appeal of faith to Christ who having paid the debt sits Judge upon his own debts, which he himself paid, and therefore cannot suffer these for whom he died to suffer for his proper debt, which once he paid. The husband cannot endure the wife to be imprisoned for the debts which he made his own and fully satisfied.
Obj. 2. All men must die and return to dust, and so must sinners, as the Law requires, therefore Christ died not for thee?
Ans. Socinus, and Crellius object the same, which Satan doth. For that death in the hue and colour of Law-wrath is holden before a believer now and then under doubting as a temptation. For we suffer not death such as Christ suffered, to wit, for sin, watered and affected with the curse of the Law; nor must we measure death from body or bulk of departing, but from the salt, and worst of death, which is the curse, and that being removed, we never die, Joh. 11. 26. Joh. 5. 24. no more look upon death in the Law for there it reigns, but in Christ, and in him death is dead and removed; the formal demeriting power is removed, when the Law is satisfied: And a believer being dead to the Law is dead to the curse and to the worst of death, as Christ is dead to it now.
Obj. 3. But the conscience of the believer, suppose there were no devil, challenges him of sin, and therefore that he is under a curse?
Ans. The conscience may be the factor and deputy of Satan in that also, for it is the deposing of Christ from his Office of Mediator
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in satisfying and answering by his death all the demands of the Law, there is none but Christ, when the Law demands blood and the torments of the second death, can plead any thing on the contrair. Rom. 3. 19. We know that what things soever the Law speaks, it speaks to these that are under the Law: but the Law speaks not then to a believer, for he is under grace, and so is not in terms of treating or parleying with the Law. Christ was crucified, and the believer is legally crucified with Christ, buried and risen again with Christ. 1. Then the Law is not his judge, it spake to Christ and condemned him and put him to death, when he was under the Law, and condemned you in him, now you say, Christ is not condemned crucified, when ye enter in a new treaty with the Law to receive a new sentence from it, and thus ye undo what Christ hath perfectly done. 2. To hearken to conscience componing and making another paction with the Law than Christ hath made, is to take the plea that Christ hath embarked in, off his hand; ye are to stand still and be silent, and believe that Christs dying, and your dying in him, is a closing of a satisfactory bargain with the Law. Christ condemned sin in the flesh, by taking on his flesh the curse due to us for sin, and for sin, that is for sins cause, that it might be taken away, he sent his Son to die, Rom. 8. 3. and judge and condemn sin. 3. This is to mistate a question well debated and discussed by Christ; for he being the end and perfection of the Law, hath silenced, and satisfied the Law, and to what use can it serve to make a new plea and a bastard controversy with a satisfied party, or to hearken to conscience which craves in the name of mistaken Law well paid debts, and this is but Satan abusing the Law, and feigning Letters of Caption in the name of the Law to trouble the quieted conscience of a believer. But its safest to say, I stand to what Christ hath done and suffered to fulfill the Law, and I believe I was crucified in him, judged, and condemned legally in Christ: and what can you seek more of an ill-doer? He is condemned, crucified, hanged on a tree, and so is justice quieted. Some raise the devil and a storm in the soul, and cannot calm it again: It is not good to provoke, irritate, and waken a sleeping dog. There is quietness and peace of believing what Christ hath done as well done, and comfortably to rest on his deed by faith. Hence a case Kk2
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of some, who, because they are under deadness and security, desire a wakening of conscience, and Satan hath taught some to commit some heinous guiltiness, that they may fall in the hand of justice, and so be wakened, and Satan gives them their fill of it. Hence, we had rather take a Law-way which is not Gods way, as lie under deadness; there may be a legal looking upon deadness, whereas it is a Gospel sin that we should be humbled for, and in which we shall not please ourselves; but no man freed from the Law and brought out of prison should be willing or desirous to return to the dungeon again. We should let God guide us under a fever and not be our own Phystians, but be quiet at Christs part, if he be pleased to cure by contrairs, and to quicken me by deadening me, or to make a soul humble by smiting with a spirit of pride: its good, we are to submit.
Obj. How could we be in Christ as in our surety (for saith Arminius) we did not give nor appoint Christ to be our Cautioner or Surety?
Ans. It is evil arguing of Arminius or Satan, who would make the union either natural or legal betwixt us and Christ, weak, far off, general, and such is betwixt Christ and Pagans and all the world: But this reason is nought, for we sinners were not born and very nothing, when God made the first Adam our father and head in Law as in nature, nor had we any hand or action in substituting the first Adam in his place, and yet we sinned in Adam, and his sin is ours, by divine imputation. But can any deny but Christ on the Cross did act the cause of many believers not born? This is peculiar to this dispensation, that the creditor not the debtor, appoint both the Law-head, and the Evangelic Surety. The Surety had from us a Cautionary, sponsory, and deputed nature, but no subscribed commission from us, it was in the heart of the Creditor by grace efficacious to obtain our consent, and to make a sort of legal marriage assuming our nature before we either knew our husband, or gave consent to the marriageCovenant. As the Advocate speaks in the person of the Client absent and sleeping when the Client hears and sees how his cause is promoved, he both assents unto, and renders thanks and praises to the Advocate: and so the absent and far off Client not knowing
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any thing does act in the Advocate. And how many answers doth our Advocate in Heaven make for sinners on earth in his pleadings, of which we know not in particular any thing? Nor doth Christ speak or plead for believers as a private man, nor appear in his Name as it were, but in our person.
Neither is there a feigning of a person here, or a borrowed and fained redemption there be these five here. 1. A Redeemer Christ. 2. Persons redeemed, sinners. 3. A Lord from whom we are redeemed, the Lord Jehovah, not simply, as God, he is the party from whom we are redeemed, but God as the offended Law-giver, who had us liable to external punishment. 4. There was a price, the life and blood of God, which though not profitable to God (for that is extrinsical to satisfaction real) yet an abundant compensation to justice for declarative glory taken from God which is the nature of real satisfaction. 5. There is here a God just, true, holy, unchangeable, to whom the price is paid. Nor does Christ sustaine the person of the enemy Satan from whom we are redeemed, for he is but the lictor, who then had no right to detaine us, we are redeemed from evils of sin and punishment: Nor doth Christ in suffering sustaine the person of God. Hence, from our being crucified with Christ crucified, something is to be said in a practical way of our mortification; for mortification flows originally from Christs death, we being crucified in him and with him, Gal. 2. 20.
Q. What is mortification?
A. It is a deadening of the whole powers and inclinations of the soul in their bentness and operations in order to things forbidden by the Law of God, or in things indifferent commanded. Hence, not the affections only, but the understanding and mind must be deadened. And therefore this is no mortification until sin original be subdued in its damnation by Christs death, and in its dominion by the Spirit of Sanctification, A tree is not withered while standing on its root, bulk and branches are green and flourishing: Its much to know the withdrawing of sap and life from the root and the vital parts of old Adam. The ebbing of a River is not the drying up of it; the new birth only is mortification.
Q. 2. Since mortification comes only from Christs death, what is the influence of Christs death herein?
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Ans. The influence is real, ad modum causae physicae, the merit of blood hath bought us from our vain conversation, 1. Pet. 1. 18. Christ dying doth merit by blood the Spirit, and infused grace, which deadens the whole life of sin. Evangelic Arguments from ten heavens, from ten Gospels working morally and in a suasory way, cannot more work mortification than touching can make a real change on a dead corps; we were legally dead and crucified in Christ, and with Christ, when he died, many not being born then: But in the infusing of the life of God, Christ applies the real principle of mortification. Now the redeemed from a vain conversation, 1 Pet. 1. 18. from the present evil world, Gal. 1. 4. is as real and proper a bargain, except we follow Socinus, as redemption from the wrath to come. 2. Christs death hath an influence moral and suasory to work mortification: As 1 Pet. 1. 16. Be holy. 17. Pass the time of your sojourning in fear. For ye are bought with his blood from your vain conversation. And 1 Pet. 5. 1, 2. Christ hath suffered in the flesh, therefore be mortified to your lusts, and serve them not, as the Gentiles do: So Col. 3. 1, 5. But the action moral of the Gospel doth not work upon the natural man: for like works upon the like; carnal reason upon a carnal spirit; and spiritual Arguments upon a renewed man; as an Argument from a painted feather works upon a child, more than an Argument from an inheritance, which no doubt will work upon a man come to age, and yet neither the one nor the other works upon a renewed mind to remove him off Christ his rock. Hence it is, 3. that Acts of Omnipotency are used as moral Arguments: also, God works in you to will and to do, therefore work out your salvation. And choosing, redeeming, calling, justifying, quickning, converting, are brought in as causes in Scripture, both real and moral; but they work morally on reason, where there is an impression of faith and principle of life. The Gospel works on an unrenewed man to persuade him almost to be a Christian: Ye may persuade a youth to a course, and get his word, consent, and write; but because reason is green and young, he falls off it again but a man of judgement shall stand to it: yet if he be not renewed, reason is also green and raw before a spiritual temptation.
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Quest. What are the actings of a mortified man?
Answ. No actings. 2. Slow actings and lent. 3. Actings indifferent. 4. Glosing with contrair providences, reproaches, work not on mortification to fire the man. Psal. 35. 12. They speak mischievous, things. 13. But I, as a deafe man, heard not. David feared to be the reproach of the foolish: Such a case, though from God, would raise a cry in a child of this world. Psal. 39. 9. I was dumb, I opened not my mouth, because thou didst it. A mortified man is dead to the voice of men-singers and women singers, and musical instruments of all sorts, Eccles. 2. 8. and houses, gardens, vineyards, orchards, great possessions, cattell, treasures, gold, silver are all as music to a dead man: and repenting Solomon now mortified, looks on them as a wise man upon experienced vanity and vexation of spirit. Will he sing and dance at a shadow? Except a mad man, none will do that. 2. If any thing, without a child of God, work upon him, they move him not much: Psal. 131. 2. Surely I have behaved and quieted myself, as a child that is weaned of his mother, my soul is even as a weaned child. Acts 20. 24. None of these things move me: I make not much reckoning of bands. Peter, 1 Pet. 4. 12. will have the saints not to think burning quick, strange, graces motions are quiet, slow, modest there is not much fire in the spirit of a weaned child: A mortified soul is as a sea that hath no winds, nor low ebbings, nor high spring tides. Grace stirs leisurely and lently toward all things, except to God: were there ten Paradises offered to it, it cries not, a dying mans pulse beats weakly, Grace shouts at nothing, wonders at, and admires nothing; weeps slowly, laughs slowly, sings weakly, eats slowly, drinks not wantonly, feasts, and yet trembles and fears whether it be the outward or the inward man: David says it well, Psal. 62. 2. He only is my Rock-I shall not greatly be moved. The believer sings, and yet he is not wanton; and weeps and yet is not sad; dies, and yet lives; is fervent in the cause of God, and yet stayed and composed in spirit. 3. The actings of mortification are indifferent, not fixedly bent upon any thing but God, no not upon the Ark and spiritual comforts. Weeping David, 2 Sam. [15.] 25. saith to Zadock, carry back the Arke of God into the City (better I want my comfort, than the Arke be
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taken) if I shall find favour in the eyes of the Lord, he will bring me again and show me both it and his habitation. 26. But if he say, I have no delight in thee, here am I, let him do to me as seemeth good unto him. O how sweet, when for God, Moses can lay down his personal satisfaction in a share of life eternal. What if he trample upon my eternal Crown, I should lay it down at his feet; and is not this mortification? Should he hide his face, for eternity, from me, and I never see him in his manifestations, so his glory shine in my everlasting sad desertion; there is required an indifferency to all created things without; no peremptory and absolute fixedness of the affection to any good, God excepted, is good: the contrair of this is an ingaging of the heart more than is right to any thing, give me children, or then I die, there should be a contented living without children if God so will: love the creature, as if ye loved not, the Lord would have us hungring for the creature, and yet not eagerly desiring, and thirsting, and yet have a lent and well ordered appetite to drink: love the child, but let the heart cleave leisurely to the child. Plowing, and no heart-labouring, buying, and selling, and no heart-ingaging to the bargain is best here. 1 Cor. 7. They that have wives should be as if they had none. 30. And they that weep, as though they wept not; and they that rejoice, as though they rejoiced not; and they that buy, as though they possessed not. In the acting of affections toward the things of this life, as father, mother, husband, wife, children, houses, gaine, beauty, honour, and new bought farm, there would be a godly distance of the heart from the thing ye do; Loving and no loving; rejoicing, and no rejoicing; weeping, and no weeping; speaks most mortification. We cannot do here, except sinfully we over-do, and the out-goings of the heart to the creature must be fiery, which is childish, whereas mortification is a gracious well composed grave temper of the aged in Christ. There is a fire-edge and a servour or fever of affections even to spiritual objects that are created at the first conversion for mortification does not so soon begin as the new heart. As for God, love as one that loves, desire and desire, and when he hides himself, weep as if you weeped so the weeping be terminated upon God, not upon his dispensations, to quarrel at, and censure
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his ways, but let the out-goings of the heart to God, and to Christ loved and longed for, be with fire, and full strength, Cant. 3. 1, 2, 3, 4. Cant. 2. 5. Psa. 42. 1, 2. 3. Psa. 84. 1, 2. Joh. 20. 13. Luk. 7. 38. Rev. 1. 17. 4. Its mortification to have a heart closing with all providences. Phil. 1. 21. To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain: To live is good, to die is good, because the Lord so wills, the Lords giving is to Job praising, and the Lords taking away is to Job praising. Phil. 4. 12. I know both how to be abased, and how to abound: every where, and in all things I am instructed, both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. If I die, it is good; if I live, it is good; if I be full, and rich, it is good; if I be hungry, and poor, it is good; if David be on the Throne, it is good, and he sings Psalms: if he be chased barefooted, and ashes on his head, by the ascent of Mount Olivet, it is good; he also praises and sings Psalmes, 2 Sam. 15. 30. Psa. 3. 1, 2, 3. If he be at home in his house, it is good, he praises, Psa. 30. Psa. 101. If he be banished in the wilderness, and chased from the house of God, it is good, he praises, Psal. 42. Psal. 63. Psal. 84. Nothing falls wrong to a mortified soul. The people cry Hosanna, Christ bids them rejoice, their King comes, Zech, 9. 9. The wicked spits on his face, and plucks off the hair that is good, Isa. 50. 6. I gave them face and back to be doing their will. Heat to a gracious spirit is good, cold is good, joy is good, sorrow is good health is good, sickness is good: Ezekiah gets a victory, the Assyrians are slain, that is good. Isaiah prophecies that all that are in his house, and his treasures shall be spoiled, and his children carried captive, good is the word of the Lord: Is spoil and captivity and the sword good? Yea, Ezekiah closes with it, Isai. 39. 8. Grace wonders at nothing, laughs at nothing, weeps at nothing but faintly, rejoices at nothing wantonly; closes with all, says Amen to all: for Christ was crucified for me, and I am crucified in and with him.
Q. 3. What are the species or sorts of mortifications, that we may know the true mortification?
A. 1. It is hard to give the division of them logically: There is 1. a natural mortification, there is no fire in the affections of sucking infants to Crowns, Kingdoms, to treasures of Gold and Silver, Ll
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that is not mortification, but virtually there is as much fire in a flint stone, though formerly it be cold, as may burn twenty Cities. Concupiscence driven away from the aged, Eccles. 12. the hearth-stone is cold, and there is in it such a deadness to lusts, not because of deadness of sin Original, it lives, as the souls of the old men live, but because the tooles are broken, the animal and vital spirits are weakened, the man loves the journey, but the horse is crooked and laid by, there is nothing of Christs death here.
2. There is a compelled mortification, sickness and withered arms and legs, and strong fetters in the prison, poverty and want, care for bread, and the armed man poverty that hath a sharp sword, necessity blunts the affections in their second acts, the man hath no mind of whoring: And many drink water, who through Christ crucifying are not mortified to wine and strong drink. 1. There is often in this, an ignorance of Christ crucified, and no faith. 2. A reluctancy to divine dispensation, and no gracious submission to God, which is in one crucified to the world.
3. There is a Philosophic mortification to the creatures, which are seen by the light of nature to be very nothing and most unsatisfactory to the natural man: but there is no supernatural deadness in the heart wrought by the death of Christ. Archimedes and other great spirits, sick of love to know the nature, motion, and influence of the stars, and pained with a speculative disease of books, and to know much, do contemn and despise honour, gaine, pleasure, the three idols, of ambitious, of covetous and voluptuous men; but there is no deadness, no blunting of the operations of the soul toward the idol world, flowing from the believed in the crucified Lord of Glory, except you say that Plato, and Aristotle, and such were crucified with Christ: Learning works not morfication.
4. There is a religious or a madly superstitious mortification. The Monks (saith Luther) dreamed that the world was crucified unto them, and they unto the world, when they entered into their Monasteries, but by this means Christ is crucified, not the world: Yea, the world is delivered from crucifying, and is the more quickened by that opinion of trust they had in their own holiness
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and righteousness. Col. 2. 23. In will-worship, in humility, and neglecting of the body; not in any honour to the satisfying of the flesh. There is much vain and counterfeit mortification; and Papists have as good warrant to sacrifice their lives to God, and to offer a bloody sacrifice unto God, under the New Testument, as to shed their own blood in whipping and scourging, and such bloody worship, hath the ground of mortification that Baals Priests had to lance themselves with knives to the effusion of blood. And the same may be said of pilgrimages, of voluntary poverty, in which (as Luther said) the world and all their lusts are quickened.
5. Not unlike to this is the Pharisees mortification, in which they are not crucified with Christ, but alive and vigorously strong to self-righteousness, to merits, to dead works.
6. There is a civil or moral mortification which hath divers branches. As 1. Seneca teacheth that nature is satisfied with water for drink, and a turfe for a house, yet he was a covetous man himself. And shall Horatius Cocles be a mortified man, because he defended the Romans against the three Curiatii alone? Though the bloody Gallant killed his own sister? And was the state mortified who pardoned him that bloody fact, for his gallant service? And Decius father and son who suffered so much for their Countrey, and loved it more than their own blood? And must Africa us Major, and Cato, who suffered for the liberty of the public, and Diogenes, who lived on herbs, be mortified men to the world? But what avails it to be dead to the bulk of a bit body of clay, and yet be alive to vain-glory? 2. There is an occasional deadness rising from the sight of a father, a brother, a friend dead, not from the death of Christ. An unbeliever dies with his word, I would not live for all the world and we are like water spilt on the ground. The house is burnt all spoiled, treasures, and the stock, by land and sea-robbers are plucked away; and riches have wings. Hence, mortification transient for a time: but lusts fallen in a swoon, are not dead, they rise again and live. 3. There is another transient mortification as Dr Preston observes, when the conscience is affrighted with Judgement, and some fire-flaught of restraining grace is up. 4. A good calm nature naturally either dull and stupid, or some clement and meek disposition, and free of Ll2
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the fire that often follows the complexion, and hampered in with teachers, parents, company, education, learning, seems a mortified nature. But that is true mortification that flows from faith in a humbled crucified Saviour and it is not to believe that Christ was mortified in our room and place, as Saltmarsh and Antinomians would say. Faith in Christ crucified is our mortification causatively, in radice, not formally.
Q. 4. To what things must we be crucified?
Ans.Gal. 6. 14. To all things created, to the world; we condemn and despise and hate the world, and the world does value us nothing.
1. There is a deadness to self which was in Christ our samplar of mortification Rom. 15. 1. Let us not please ourselves, but bear the infirmities of others. 3. For even Christ pleased not himself. Self loved and adored, and mortification do not consist, too much life in apprehension, and admiring self, argues deadness of deadness and of mortification. Was not Christ a noble self? Yet for the Lord, and his ransomed ones, Christ got above noble excellent self. It is true, there is a renewed spiritual self, a new I in the Saints, οὐκ ἐτὶ ἐγὼ, Rom. 7. 17. Now it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwells in me. Gal. 2. 20. It is not I that lives, but Christ lives in me. Mortification sets us above new ἐγὼ renewed self, and regenerated and crucified I; it being a created excellency that we are not to adore.
2. Mortification requires a deadness to the will, as in Christ, not my will, but thy will be done: Much life in the will to created things, speaks little or no mortification. Christ excelled in this, Joh. 5. 30. I seek not mine own will, but the will of him that sent me. O what court, and power, and life hath our will? And how soon the will is broken and dead, then is the man broken, dead and crucified with Christ. Much will, much life of sin: See Joh. 5. 40. Ye will not come. Luk. 19. 14. We will not have this man to reign over us. See Mark 6. 25. Mat. 1. 19. Mark 15. 15. Acts 24. 27. Acts 25. 9. Luk. 10. 29. Rev. 22. 17. All will, argues no mortification.
3. There is required deadness to our life, which was eminently in Christ, Mat. 20. 28. 1 Tim. 2. 6. Joh. 10. 11. So Paul, Acts 20. 24.
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Ye speak of bonds and affliction, But none of these things move me, neither count I my life dear to myself, so that I may finish my course with joy. To be mortified to life, is to hate the life, Luk. 14. 26. for Christ. And Revel. 12. they overcame: mortification was their victory. v. 11. They overcame, for they loved not their lives unto death: Love of life is the life of sin when its not loved in God.
4. We must be dead to wisdom, and to all the gifts of the mind, for the wisdom of the world is foolery, and God hath befooled it, when it comes in competition with the wisdom of the Gospel, 1 Cor. 1. 18, 19. except we be dead to it, we cannot glory in the Lord. 27, 28, 29. Compared with v. 31.
2. There must be a deadness to learning, to books, and bookvanity, Eccles. 12. 12. There is no end of making many books, and much study is a weariness of the flesh. Eccles. 1. 17. And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly: I perceived that this also is a vexation of spirit. 18. For in much wisdom is much griefe, and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow. Paul spake more with tongues than they all, 1 Cor. 14. 18. but he was dead to that gift, he had rather have brought them nearer to Christ 1 Cor. 4. 10. We are fooles, and hardly we can away with that; but we are fools for Christs sake, and for the interest of Christ and the Gospel, let us be so counted. Its nearness to Christ that makes us for him to be willing that what is most eminent in us be trampled upon, even shining wisdom, sciences, arts eloquence, knowledge which puffeth up. Yea, there is (3.) required a deadness of the knowledge of Gospel-mysteries 1 Cor. 13. 2. Paul was not rude in knowledge, but he was dead to that, and would not glory in that. And (4) they are not crucified with Christ not dead to opinions and sides, and to lead factions: I am of Paul, I am of Apollo, was no honour to Paul in his own esteeme, 1 Cor. 1. What? was Paul crucified for you? or were ye baptized in the name of Paul? Who excels in learning, who admires
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not his own, the birth of his own mind? If it were but to hold there be ten new worlds in the Moon, and millions of worlds in the otherside of this world? My brethren, be not many masters. Ah! we are not dead to the Chair, the Pulpit, every one loves to be counted and called Rabbi. The blessed Man Christ confesses that he knows neither the day nor hour of the Son of Mans coming; yet there are who dare define the time of his coming, and the day. The mind is a proud and haughty thing, and we are not dead to it; the mind is not mortified to the mind, 1 Cor. 8. 1, 2.
5. We are not dead to Mammon: O who is like Christ and refuses to be a rich King, Joh. 6. Paul, 2 Cor. 8. 9. For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that thought he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor: He had a greater mind than that he could live to riches. Paul, Acts 20. 33. saith not I have sought neither silver nor gold, as the Godly judge, Whose oxe have I taken, 1 Sam. 12. 3. but I have coveted no mans silver or gold, or apparrel: The life of lust to riches is in the trusting in it. Job 31. 24. If I have made gold my hope, or have said to the fine gold, thou art my confidence; Or, 25. have rejoiced because my wealth was great. Its true, a beggar and an extreme poor man that cannot have bread, is not troubled nor much tempted to seek a Kingdom and the millions and tons of gold that many rich ones have; but yet there are speculative desires and rolling waves and floods of wishes in the heart for these: and because hunger and want of bread is his door enemy lying between him and the hope of great riches the man is neither mortified to the love of bread nor to the millions of gold that the heart is sick after. And as there be diverse kinds and species of pests, and they are not all of one kind, yet all contrair to the blood and heate of life: So are there sundry kinds of unmortified lusts about riches according to the sickness of the desire.
Obj. But is not the desire of food and raiment natural, how then is it faulty?
Ans. The desire simply is natural, and the Ants and the Conies do desire. But the desire 1. beyond measure. 2. With a sinfull doubting that they shall not have it, which reproacheth Omnipotency. 3. A desire wider than that of Ants and Conies, of
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that which is more nor sufficient, which would destroy and not feed but over-feed, is the faulty desire; as sickness desires drink more then sufficient not for health, but to seed the disease, it is the desire of the disease rather than of the man diseased; and the forbidden desire is the sin.
Obj. 2. May not a child of God desire more than enough, how then is he mortified?
Ans. If the desire of more than enough come from the habit of covetousness, the man is not mortified to Mammon: all sinful habits in the child of God are broken, and lessened, and chased into inclinations, or to the habit of Original corruption slackened and by grace subdued; but in every child of God there is sin dwelling and the flesh, Heb. 12. 1. Ro. 7. 17, 18. 1 Joh. 1. 8, 10. Jam. 4. 5, Gal. 5. 17. and the old man, which is put off by degrees, Eph. 4. 24. Col. 3. 5, 10. which is a habit of corruption not in full vigour, but sickning, decaying, and a dying daily, but even a grown child of God from this broken and sick habit may, temptation invading, and the Lord withdrawing his influence of grace, may break out into gross acts of covetousness, adultery, murder, as is clear in David, Lot, Asa, and that saith that mortification is complete in none. And there is too oft a sort of sinful resurrection of the habit of sin and the flesh, so that David seems not to be David, but an adulterer, a murderer: As we see it is the same River that swels over its banks, that it was before, but the overflowing is from without, from the clouds and from excessive raine, the river also hath a receptive capacity in itself to exceed its banks and channell: So hath a child of God from strong temptation from without, and broken corruption from within a more than his own ordinary quality and swelling over his channell; To teach us that our mortification is a work not of a day, but of our whole life. Neither would the wise Agur pray against riches, Prov. 30. if temptations contrair to mortification did not follow them.
6. There is a necessity of deadness to honour, and to learn the noble and excellent art of self-contempt, that the Spirit shall teach us that spiritual lesson to be willingly trampled on, and the face spitted on, and the hair plucked off the cheeks, as our blessed Lord went out and in the way met with spitting and shame,
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Isai. 50. 6. Mat. 26. 67. Mat. 27. 26. O great word! Phil. 4. 12. ὄιδα δὲ ταπεινούσθαι, I have learned to be abased. 1 Cor. 4. 12. Being reviled we bless, being persecuted we suffer, being defamed we intreat, we are made as the filth of the world, and are as the offscouring of all thengs unto this day. περίψημα πὰντων, the sweepings of the house. Erasmus, the filth wiped of any thing. Valla, the filth that sticks to the shooes. The Syriac hath a word that noteth the dung of the belly. As the condemned man tumbled into the sea, as a sacrifice to Neptune from a steep place was called peripsema: So Budeus thinks Paul alludes to heathen-expiations. And when they reproached me, David, Psal. 38. 13. But I was as a deafe man that heareth not, as a dumb man that opened not his mouth. The sense and discerning of heat and cold, of railings and applauses, would be dead: That is mortification, when the sense of hearing is dead to sounds, to music, and to pleasant songs, these are not delightfull to a crucified or hanged man, when the life is out: Nor can all the sweet smells, flowers, roses, precious ointments, affect the smelling of a crucified man, nor all the fair and magnific palaces, meadows, gardens, rivers, mountains, hangings, painted pictures, work upon the sight or eyes of a crucified man. When the heart is ravished with honour, as the man who said the glory of Themistocles hindered him to sleep in the night, as little mortified as Themistocles, who said sleep was taken from him, and he was raised out of his bed in the night by reason of the brave trophy and renown of the victory of Miltiades, that renowned man of Athens, who, as is known, with 10000 Greeks, put to flight 60000 Persians. And Alexander the Great, his heart must have been waken at the sound of honour, who, when a messenger came running to him full of joy, said what shouldst thou tell me, but that Homer is alive again? For he thirsted for nothing so much as honour: And how soft and very nothing is the spirit that is broken with riches or honour and pleasure? And often men judge themselves mortified, because they are dead, it may be to riches, but alive to ambition and desire of honour. As Nebuchadnezzar spared no charges for his gods, his pleasure, but he was alive to honour, Dan. 4. 30. Is not this great Babylon, that I have built for the house of the Kingdom, by the might of my
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power, and the honour of my majesty? Satan doth often change Post-horses, and can seemingly deaden men to riches, when they are not mortified, and yet the heart is strongly vigorous to honour. When it was told Zeno, that his ship, which he did trade withall, was broken: Well done, Fortune, (saith he) thou compellest us to go within our cloake; he meaned, To live upon the glory of virtue and learning, when riches are spent and gone, was well done. But mortification, in the habit and root, is like the works of nature. The Sun equally enlightens the whole Air from the East to the West: Life comes in equally upon the whole Embryo and birth. Saving mortification goes through the whole soul. Christ merited by his death deadness to honour as well as to riches; Though in the actual subduing of lusts Dr Preston does well observe that there is not that labour required in subduing and mortifying all sins. For love of sin being the dominion, life and castle of sin the more love to the heart-idol and to the right eye, the harder it is to be mortified. Some sins cleave to us as our hair and nailes, as a custom of some sinful words, these are sooner mortified; and yet if mortification be not in the heart, these take life again, as hairs and nailes cutted and shaven grow again. The trees in winter are not dead: but there be master-devils and strongly rooted heart-darlings, pride, covetousness to which we are mortified, with a huge greater deal of pains and wresthng, for they are to men as the eye and the right hand.
7. We are not soon dead to injuries. Our blessed Copy in this excels: Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. And Stephen, Act. 7. 60. Lord lay not this sin to their charge, Colos. 3. 13. Forgiving one another. Yea, but he wronged me, and injuries have a strong impulsion upon our spirits. I cannot forget it. If any man have a quarrel at any (saith he) let it fall: even as Christ forgave you, so do ye also. Shall not Socrates witness against us, who answered his friends, willing him to accuse before the Judge a vain youth who did smite him with his foot, If an Ass lift his heels against me, shall I lift my heels against the Ass? And the youth was so convinced that he hanged himself. And he said nothing to a multitude of reproaches casten upon him in the Theater, but, I am vexed with words in the Theater as Mm
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in a great banquet. But natural reason mortifies men to injuries, as cold water allays and for a time softens the pain of the childs burnt finger, but the pain is the greater when the water is removed; Or as want of money mortifies a man to drunkenness, he drinks not excessively not because the heart will not dare to sin but because he cannot. The word backed with influences from the death of Christ strongly mortifies to all sins.
8. And the soul is not easily deadened to an office or place of a Prince, a Ruler, a Master, a Prophet, a Teacher. Abishai, 2 Sam. 16. 9. Why should this dead dog curse my Lord the King? Let me go over, I pray thee, and take off his head. David standeth not much upon cursing the Lord the King. He is so mortified to that style, as he forgets it, and v. 10. he saith, Let him curse, because the Lord hath said unto him, Curse David. He saith not, the Lord hath bidden him curse the Lord King David. Answerest thou the High Priest so? Its a great word. Christ was the Messiah, that is a great Office of King, Priest, and Prophet: but he was willing to forget his Office, by way of taking much on him, that he might fulfill his Office by way of suffering. As Rulers and such as are in place must so far be dead to their office and place, as they must be willing to bear in their bosom the reproaches of all the mighty people, and to have their footsteps, even as Rulers, reproached, Psalm. 89. v. 50, 51. Places and office too often have an influence and strong enough on our unmortified hearts. But there are some providential sufferings that befall Rulers, as Rulers, against which they should be hardened, knowing that the Lord suffers in them.
9. It should be our work to be deadened to pleasure. I have married a wife, and therefore οὐ δύναιμαι ἐλθειν, I cannot come. This is the most lively lust. There is a mortified eye, Job 31. 1. I have made a covenant with mine eye, why then should I look on a maid? Mortified eye-looks call for mortified heart-looks. Its an old sin, Gen. 3. 6. And when the woman saw the tree that it was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes,—she did eate.
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Mortified Joseph saw sin ingaven on pleasure, Gen. 39. 9. How then can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?
10. There must be a deadened heart to all the three, to the world, 1 Joh. 2. 15. Love not the world, nor the things of the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world, Jam. 4. 4. There is some life between the friends of the world and the world, and James doubteth not to call that enmity with God, and the three great Idols of the world, gain, glory, and pleasure, cannot make any happy, which Heathens, Plutarch, Cicero, Seneca saw: and therefore they pressed a contempt of the world. For strength is the glory of the Elephant or the Bull rather than of man, and plucked away by age and time; And beauty is no less uncertain, being made up of quantity and colour, and the Rose and the Lilly hath more of it than man. Riches have wings, and render not the owner happy: Nobility is a borrowed good, and the Parents glory, not ours: And Honour is the opinion and esteem of men, and we yet cannot be dead to nothings, to shadows, to emptiness and to vanity: and fair buildings are well ordered dead stones.
11. They are not rightly mortified who are not deadened to creature-comforts, to father and mother, for they forsake, and the mother may forget the fruit of her own womb but the Lord cannot forget his own, Psal. 27. 10. Isa. 49. 15. My friends, Job 19. 19. 2. All my friends. 3. All my inward (and dearest) friends, 4. Abhor me. Forsaking is hard, but abhorring is most sad. Yea, even in the Cause of God Paul is put to this, 2 Tim. 4. 16. At my first answer no man stood with me, but all men forsook me. 2. So must the Church be dead to foreign forces, Hos. 14. 3. Asher shall not save us, we will not ride upon horses, and the people must be dead and sit still from help from Egypt, Isai. 30. 7. For the Egyptians shall help in vain, and to no purpose: and therefore have I cried concerning this, Your strength is to sit still. Sitting still is a ceasing from relying upon the Chariots and strength of Egypt, as being dead to them: For thus saith the Lord, the holy One of Israrael, in returning and rest shall ye be saved, in quietness and in Mm2
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confidence shall be your strength: and ye would not. And 4. his people must cease from man whose breath is in his nostrils: for wherein is he to be accounted of? Isa. 2. 22. and be dead to multitude: for, Psal. 33. 16. No King is saved by an host, a mighty man is not delivered by much strength. 17. An horse is a vain thing for safety. The help of the creature substitute in the room of God, having the lustre of blue and purple, or clothed in scarlet, riding upon horses. Young men of desire, Ezek. 23. 23. do easily dazzle our eyes, and when we are not renewed in the spirit of our mind, unsanctified hearts are weak in apprehending, and more weak in discerning of things. 5. So must there be a deadning of the husband to the wife Job 19. 17. to servants, Job 15. 16. to sons, 2 Sam. 16. 11. of the mother to the daughter, of the daughter in law to the mother in law, Mic. 7. 6. to blood-friends.
12. All the godly and zealous Prophets said Amen to the word of the Lord, even Christ with sighs and tears, to the extreme desolation and ruin of Jerusalem, Luk. 19. 41. Mat. 23. 37, 38. and Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isaiah, Micah, Hosea, c. to the ploughing of Zion as a field to the sword, captivity, to the laying waste of the land without inhabitants, Isa. 5. 9. Isa. 6. 10 11, 12. Jer. 9. 1, 2, 3 4. Jer. 16. 1, 2, 3, c. Mic. 3. 12. Hos. 4. 3. Hos. 5. 6, 9, c. There must be a deadning to our Country and Mother-Church, that the glory of justice may shine; yea, to our fathers grave, our own bed, our own fire-side.
13. The Lord will have Isaiah and the godly dead to Laws and Government to vision and prophecying, when Judge and Prophet shall be taken away, Isa. 3. 2. and children shall be their Princes, and babes shall rule over them. v. 4. and the vineyard broken, and the hedge spoiled. And he will have the godly dead to King, and Priest, and Law, 2 Chron. 15. 3. Now for a long season Israel had been without the true God, and without a teaching Priest, and without Law, Hos. 3. 4. Hos. 10. 3. And now shall they say, We have no King, because we feared not the Lord: What shall then a King do to us? Hence we must be mortified to every thing created which the Lord may take from us.
14. And upon this account there is required a deadning of our hearts to shipping and trading with diverse mighty Nations, as we
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see in the case of Tyre, Ezek. 27. of Babylon, Rev. 18. 11, 12, 13. Jer. 51. so are we to be mortified to fair houses, Isa. 5. 8. stately cities, Isa. 14. to all the Cedars of Lebanon, that are high and lifted up: to all the Oaks of Bashan, to all the high mountains, to every high tower, to every fenced wall, to all the ships of Tarshish, to all the fenced cities: For the day of the Lord may be upon these, Esai. 2. to all fair Rivers, to Oxen, Horses, Chariots, fair acres of Land, to Vineyards, to Olive trees, Ezek. 29. 4, 5. Isa. 50. 2. Exod. 7. 19. Deut. 28. 31, 40, 41, 51. to seed time and harvest, Deut. 28. 38. Hag. 1. 6. to corn, wine, oil, to cattle, increase of kine and flocks of sheep, Deut. 28. 51. Amos 4. 9. to Vine-trees, to Fig-trees, to seasonable rains, grass and fruitfull fields, Joel 1. 4, 5, 7, 10. Jer. 14. 3, 4, 5, 6. to peace, safe down-lying, and safe rising, Lev. 26. 36. for in all the hand of the Lords anger is stretched out.
15. The Lord would have us dead to valiant and to mighty men, to Captains, Isa. 3. 1, 3, 4. Yea, he makes true, Psa. 76. 5. The stout-hearted are spoiled, they have slept their sleep, and none of the men of might have found their hands. 6. At thy rebuke, O God of Jacob, both the chariot and the horse are cast into a dead sleep: And therefore he will have us dead to courage in war. Who brings on faintness and terror upon the spirit, when the sound of a shaking leaf shall chase men, Lev. 26. 36. And when the Lord sends a trembling of heart, and failing of eyes, and sorrow of mind, Deut. [28.] 65.
16. We are called to be dead to honourable birth, blood, and noble Families, when Princes are filled with contempt, and these that were clothed in scarlet, embrace the dung-hill, Lam. 5. 12. Isa. 40. 23, 20.
17. And we must be dead to the vigorousness of youth, when we read Eccl. 12. 1, 2, 3, c. And Barzillai his complaint, 2 Sam. 19. 35. Can I taste what I eate? Can I hear any more the voice of singing men and singing women? And why but this should make us dead to sports, pastime, dicing, gaming, dancing, feasting, chambering, wantonness, to all plenty and fulness, when God can remove the appetite, and give bread or remove bread, and give the appetite. So as the Lord leaves that doome on you,
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Lev. 26. 26. And when I have broken the staffe of bread, ten women shall bake your bread in one oven, and they shall deliver you your bread again by weight, and ye shall eate and not be satisfied. So is Solomon dead to laughter, Eccles. 2. 2. I said of laughter, it is mad.
18. There is required a deadness to Ordinances, the Tabernacle is not God: David may be banished from it. The Temple is a Type of Christ, yet it is burnt with fire and the Sanctuary profaned: And the Lord required a sort of lentness or leisureliness of motion of the heart toward these, and will have his people in their exile resting upon this, Ezek. 11. 16. Therefore say, thus saith the Lord God, although I have cast them far off from the heathen, and although I have scattered them among the countries, yet will I be to them as a little Sanctuary in the countries where they shall come. And they who remained still at Jerusalem reproached their poor captivated brethren, as hated of God, and gloried in themselves as Citizens and Inhabitants of Jerusalem, saying, v. 15. to the exiled brethren, Get you far from the Lord, unto us is this Land given in possession. They were not mortified in looking upon the Holy Land and City, but vainly gloried in it. And therefore there are two things in Ordinances. 1. God that fills the Ordinances. 2. The external bulke of them. Mortification to God and his presence in ordinances, is not that we here require, for the affections cannot be vigorous enough in following God. There may be a limiting and binding of God to means, to the Temple, Sanctuary, hearing Seals, and a fleshly heat and liveliness to means, and bare and naked Ordinances; and in both these there is so far required a deadness, as there would be an honest submission to all these, when the Lord deprives us of Ordinances, and a retiring into the fountain, to the Lord himself, that he may be all in all. So some cannot sleep except the Bible be under the head in the night: Some tie their faith and comfort so to one man, if he be not their Pastor, nothing is right. But so much of Christ, or the substance of Gospel-promises must be neglected, as means and instruments, and Ordinances are Idolized: In a word, mortification calls for liveliness of affection to God in Christ, and a holy deadness to all things that are not God.
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19. There is necessary here a deadness to works, for there be these defects in them. 1. They cannot save, Eph. 2. (2.) They were not crucified for you, let them not have the place and Chair of Christ. 3. They cannot quiet the conscience, because they cannot justify. Paul Preached from Jerusalem to Illyricum, laboured more abundantly than they all, was unrebukable, was conscious to himself of nothing, yet was he as dead to these as to very nothing, 1 Cor. 4. 4. and to loss and dung, Phil. 3. 8. Hence must we be dead to the idol of Godliness, for its not God.
20. And dead to godly men in point of confidence, we must not know the Man Christ after the flesh, 2 Cor. 5. 16. nor any mere man, to cry man up as God, (every man is a liar) is contrair to Gospel- mortification.
21. It were good to pray much, and to be dead to prayer: One of the maine causes why we cry and pray much and are not heard, Psal. 22. 2. Psa. 69. 1, 2, 3. is, because that which is proper to God the hearer of prayer, to with confidence and hope, we give to prayer which is not God. We pray to our own prayers, and to our own wresthng often, rather than to God: and we believe praying does the business and works the charm as if prayer were Omnipotency itself.
22. Nor are we dead to faith and hope, but we believe in faith and in believing, and we hope in our own hoping in God. But was faith crucified for you? How many fetch peace pardon and righteousness not from Christ, but from their act of believing? Hence a case, whether some may not fervently pray and believe strongly, and yet be disappointed in the particular they pray for and believe they shall have? Certain it may be especially when we are dead to Omnipotency and alive to praying and believing, and lay more weight on faith in God than on God and on praying to God then on God himself. What Antinomians say unjustly we give to works, to wit our peace with God, they and many unduly give to faith, not to Christ.
23. We fail in being more alive to comforts than to God the Comforter: the infant may at once both suck the breasts, and also sleep. And is one flower more to be smelled than they whole Garden? And shall feelings and raptures, and manifestations of God
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in his out-goings be courted and over-courted by us beyond the God of all comforts? There is need that the heart be deadened to sense, for feeling and sense is fiery and idolatrous; and were sense more mortified at the out-goings of faith, hope, love, it were good, for our faith should be the more lively and vigorous to lay hold on God. Q. Is it not law full to be taken and feelingly delighted with the influences of God? Ans. Sure, feeling of itself is not faulty, the fieriness and excessive fervour of feeling is faulty, especially when terminated upon created actings of love, faith, joy, desire, hope, and not upon influences as coming from the free grace of God, otherwise, we are but sick and pained of love of our own gracious actings, because they are our own; and this is the sickness of selfishness. Ah! a Godhead, a Godhead is not known.
24. Nor must we be, in a too lively way, taken with our own stock, nor trust in the habit of grace or the new heart: for grace in us is a created rose that spreads fair and broad, and smells well, but it is not God nor Christ, that we may learn not to trust in ourselves, ἐφ' ἑαυτοῖς, 2 Cor. 1. 9. But why but we may trust in our renewed selves now furnished with a stock and infused habits the excellent blossoms and blooms of heaven? Nay, not in ourselves thus fitted, but in God who raises the dead: for its not possible both to trust in renewed self and in God: And Paul never meant that any that professeth Christ, is to lean upon sinful self or upon lost and condemned self. And sure it as self to be alive to infused habits, as to misken Christ, and think, being once a convert, we can fend ourselves all the rest of the way to heaven without Christ, we need not Christ for a Guide or a Tutor, its within us may save us. And nothing can be more contrair to a living the noble and sure life of continual dependency by faith on the given Leader of the people, Jesus Christ, than to trust on habits of grace, they are not Christ.
25. Ah! who is that mortified as to be dead to the created sweetness of joy, and the right-hand pleasures of God, and the formal beatitude of glory, and alive to the only pure objective happiness of glory? And yet that is mortification, to love and be sick and thirsty for heaven, not for the pleasures of the Garden, and the
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Streets of Gold, and the Tree of Life, and the River of Water of life, but for only God, the heaven of heavens: And therefore we cannot be alive to pure and the only abstracted and unmixed Godhead, except we be thus dead to heaven.
26. There is a deadness to the letter of the promise: The promise (saith Mr Ambrose) is but the Casket, and Christ the Jewel in it, the promise is but the field, Christ is the Pearl hid in it. Christ removed, the promise is no promise or but sapless signs.
27. We must also be dead to the rays, out-shinings and manifestations of God to the soul here and must transchange God in all presence and all love-embracements, and no more: but be dead to the house of wine, to the lifted up banner of love, to love-kisses of Christ, to the love-banquets, and to the felt lying, as the beloved, all the night between the breasts: for these nearest communions are not God himself. There is required a godly hardness for receiving sparkles of hell and some draughts of sore trying wrath, and the hell of his most wise and righteous frownings, and necessary absence and night of hiding himself.
28. And should not the Church be dead to providences of fair weather, and Court, or the blessing of a godly King David, Hezekiah, and mortified to miraculous deliverances dividing of the red Sea, defeat of enemies, to confirmation of the truth by Martyrdom and sufferings to blood? He who is dead to himself, and his body and ease, and hardened against contradictions of sinners, against torment of body, cold, imprisonment, sickness, death, if God give or withdraw, he is dead to both.
28. All who are dead with Christ are dead to all dead worship, sapless ceremonies, and formal worship Col. 2. 20. Gal. 4. 9. and are lively in the serving of God and fervent in spirit, serving the Lord: And rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh, Phil. 3. 3. Rom. 12. Nn
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CHAP. V.
Of the Covenant of Redemption between God and the Mediator Christ. 2. Christ is not a bare witness to confirm the Covenant, but the author of the Covenant. 3. The Socinian way of works cannot quiet the conscience. 4. Christ is upon both sides of the Covenant. 5. Justice mediates not. 6. Reasons of the entrance of sin
Isaiah 49. 8 I will preserve thee (saith the Lord to Christ) and give thee for a Covenant of the People.
Hence, the 1. Question: How is Christ said to be given as a Covenant of the people.
Ans. As Isa. 49. 6. he saith, I have given thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth: that is, as Act. 13. 46, 47. I have thee O Christ, to be the Preached Light, and Guide of the Gentiles, and the Preached Saviour declared and proclaimed by the Preaching of Paul, Barnabas, and the Apostles and Pastors. So I will give [thee] for the Covenant, that is, the Preached surety and Mediator of the Covenant, Heb. 7. 22. Heb. 8. 6. When the first Covenant was broken he makes with us an everlasting Covenant, even the sure mercies of David, Isa. 55. 3. 2. I will give thee as the only one who is the subject of the Gospel and Covenant of Grace: For to Preach Christ and to Preach the Gospel and New Covenant are all one. 3. I have given thee to be the confirmer of the promises they are all, yea and Amen in the 2 Cor. 1. 20. Gal. 3. 16. And 4. by thy death thou confirms the Covenant, and seals it with thy blood, Heb. 9. 15, 16, 17, 22, 23, 24. Heb. 13. 20.
Q. But Socinus denies that Christ is the purchaser or the obtainer by his blood (as it were) of the New Covenant, for he did not by his death procure or merit pardon to us, he is only the surety or Mediator of the Covenant. And Crellius and he say the cause why the confirming of the Covenant is ascribed to the death of Christ, is because as by a slain beast and divided into two parts, Covenants of old were established, so by the death of Christ the Covenant of Grace was solemnly confirmed and sealed?
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Ans. Christ is so the Surety as Mediator, as he is also the Author of this Covenant, as God, Exod. 3. 6. It was he who said, I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. 1 Cor. 10. 9. Let us not tempt Christ, as some of them tempted him, and were destroyed of the Serpents. And this is he who led them, and brought them out of Egypt, Num. 21. 6, 7. whom they tempted in the wilderness, 5, 6, 7. And he ascribes to himself the Covenant Heb. 8. 9. Not according to the Covenant that I made with their fathers c. And it is clear, that the pardon of sin promised in the Covenant, Jer. 31. Heb. 8. is never ascribed to the blood of Martyrs, but every where to Christs blood, Eph. 1. 7. Col. 1. 14. Rom. 3. 25. Rev. 1. 5. 1 John 1. 8. Heb. 9. 14, 15, 22, Heb. 10. 16, 17, 18.
2. That he is the Surety also of the Covenant, is expressly said, Heb. 7. 22. and the Mediator thereof, Heb. 8. Nor can it be said that the death of the Testator does properly give faith and authority to the Testament, for the authority and justice of the just or unjust will of the Testator, addeth unto, or diminisheth from the authority of the Testament; for the Testators will is the principal efficient cause of the Testament, the death of the man is only a necessary condition, by which the right of the Testator to these goods is transferred from him (who now being dead needs them not) into friends, to whom they are left in Legacy; and so death is but an antecedent condition of the right to the goods. 3. Christs dying to bear witness to his own Gospel is only the secondary end of his death, in so far as secondarily remission of sins is made known to us after the principal end of his death, to wit reconciliation, remission, pardon, redemption, and life is purchased to us by way of merit: And sure the truth of pardon and redemption is hugely more confirmed and sealed by the whole company of the Martyrs, and made known to the sons of men then by the death of one single man, Maries Son: Nor does the Scripture ever commend Christs love to us in sealing the Gospel with his blood as the only way to life, or making this the most strong Argument to move us Nn2
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to believe in God, and obey Christ, because Christ died for sinners, and rose again to make the Gospel true-like, and worthy to be believed, as the Martyrs do: but love shined in this, that in dying we have redemption and forgiveness and life in his blood; And since godly and sound believing. Martyrs died for this end, especially to glorify God, and seal the truth, John 21. 19. Rev. 2. 13. Mat. 10. 32. Luke 12. 8. Mar. 8. 38. Luke 9. 26. 2 Tim. 2. 12. Rev. 12. 11. we must have most properly forgiveness of sins in the blood of Steven, and Antipas, and the rest of the Martyrs. And miracles do abundantly seal the truth of the Gospel; And so doth the holiness of profession, John 10. 32. Mar. 16. 20. John 5. 35, 36. Mat. 5. 16. but never are we redeemed, justified, saved by Christs and the Apostles miracles and holy life, for any thing we read in Scripture; but we have life by Christs blood as by a ransom, a price to buy us.
Q. Hence, 1. case: May not the conscience be quiet by the way of Socinus, which lays aside a ransom given to Justice?
Ans. The experience of the godly man wakened in conscience saith to this, when he is chastened with pain in his bed, and the multitude of his bones with strong pain, and the mans soul draws near to the grave, and his life unto the destroyers, and the man stands in need of an Interpreter, one among a thousand to show unto man his righteousness, Job 33. 19, 20 21, 22, 23. Then God is gracious to him, and saith, deliver him from going down to the pit, I have found him a ransom: He is not quiet while God say, my Prophet, deliver him from Hell and the pit, which he so much fears, for my offended justice hath found a ransom in Christ, and I am pacified with him. Yea, and the conscience must be purged from dead works, by his blood who offered himself without spot to God through the eternal Spirit, Heb. 9. 14. Yea, and there is no remission of sins without shedding of blood, ver. 22. Not of Bulls or Goats, for the blood of beasts leaves still conscience of sin, Heb. 10. 1, 2. Then it must be the blood of Christ, ver. 5, 10. who was crucified and made a curse for us, Gal. 3. 10. such a curse as we must have eternally, according to Divine Justice, suffered. Yea, if works done by the exemplary grace of a Martyr, such a holy man as Christ, who was never wounded for our transgressions, nor
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bruised for our iniquities, then Christ died in vain, and there was no ransom of blood given for our sins, only God of free-will made an innocent man a curse, and would have him crucified neither for his own sin nor for ours; well then, may good works without the blood of a sinner or surety take away sin: And the conscience sprinkled with good works may well calm a guilty conscience, yea, and according to the measure of good works is the measure of assurance of peace with God. Now we see the most tender David, Job, Hezekiah, Heman, who walked most with God, have not alway most assurance of peace and righteousness with God, but most dreadfull doubtings of conscience, according as by faith they apprehend the ransom of full satisfaction, or were dazzled and darkned in their apprehension; yea sure, without the ransom of blood, of free-will, all receive a dry and unbloody pardon by doing the Commandments of Jesus Christ. The Socinian faith which looks to an exemplary Martyr whom God of no justice, but in vain, and for no cause delivered to death but of mere free pleasure whereas there might be, and is forgiveness without shedding of blood: contrair to Heb. 9. 22. Rom. 3. 24, 25 c. even good works done in imitation of Christ.
Q. 2. Another case is here: Is Christ on our side of the Covenant, and on the Lords side? This would seem no satisfying of justice. Ans. It is true, the case would seem no quieting of conscience. If 1. Christ-God were not the same offended God, who out of sovereignty of free grace doth condescend to make a Covenant of grace, and so is upon Gods side. 2. If Christ were not a Person different from offended God, as the Godhead is common to all the three, so in a voluntary and admirable dispensation and Oeconomy the Kings Son a Person different from the Father, taketh upon him our nature; And 3. having mans nature which offended, and so being fit therein to satisfy wrath, and fit therein to merit, to sanctify the people with his own blood, might well be upon our side: and theres no scenic, no seeming, but a most real satisfaction here, in that there is a most full and real compensation made to offended Justice, and our faith laying hold on this, the conscience is quieted. As I sinned in the first Adam legally, so I satisfied in the second Adam. Obj. But Justice saith, The same
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person that sinned, the same must suffer and satisfy, and no other. Ans. Justice saith so, but that part of justice by the graciousness and mercifulness of the Just God is, and may be dispensed withall: So as Justice as Justice seeks payment, the Creditor as the Creditor seeks recompense and restitution: But by whom Justice determines not, whether payment and satisfaction be made by the same very person who offended, or by a fit surety in the person and place of the offender, as it determines not whether as much or far more be restored then was taken away, so there be a compact and voluntary agreement between the satisfier and the satisfied. Hence, Justice being 1. offended, is not (to speak so) the interposing and the mediating attribute of God; but Sovereignty of Free grace and mercy interposeth. 2. Justice may seek payment from the only offending party, and from no other, from Adam and his posterity only; but Justice doth not indispensably, and by necessity of nature exact payment from the only offender and from no other. 3. The conscience of the believer may with sweetness of admiration and peace rest upon satisfied Justice, and adore interposing grace, and be quickened from looking unto, and loving interposing grace, to obey and take on the labour of Gospel-love to run the ways of his Commandments. 4. It is not an act of Law, nor of Justice, to give, or find out a satisfier, but an act of love, grace, and infinite wisdom.
Q. 3. A third case is, how can the believer look upon life eternal as a gift, if it be sold at so condign a price as Christs blood?
Ans. It is not fit to speak of this mystery, but with holy reverence, life eternal is bought to us, and we are said to be bought with a price, 1 Cor. 6. 19. 1 Pet. 1. 18. 1 Tim. 2. 6. Matth. 20. 28. Now it is unworthy of Christ that the fruit of his death should be only grace, not glory, and such a grace as is lubric, uncertain, renders us indifferent but much weaker to believe or not believe, that is, as Socinians say, to earn and win the wager of Glory by a new Gospel-working which is our righteousness, and merit to glory: For sure Pagans are more sinfully weak in the Second ADAM who died for them, as Socinus will, then mankind were in the first Adam. The Scripture saith that Christ gave himself for his Church, that he might present her a glorious Church, Ephe. 5. 25.
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27. 1 Thes. 5. 9. For God hath not appointed us for wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ. 10. Who died for us. 2 Tim. 2. 10. Therefore I endure all things for the elects sake, that they also may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory. Jude 21. Looking for the mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. Rev. 5. 9. Thou hast redeemed us to God by thy blood, c. Acts 20. 28. Feed the Church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood. Eph. 1. 7. In whom we have redemption through his blood. 11. In whom also we have obtained an inheritance. We are not afraid to call eternal life a fruit of Christs death, that is, of the merit of his death: See Joh. 10. 10, 11, 28. John. 3. 14, 15, 16.
Q. 4. A fourth case: Many stumble, some in that God permitted sin to enter, which he might have hindered, knowing he should be thereby under a necessity either to torment men in hell, or torment on earth his most innocent Son Christ?
Ans. Socinians, Arminians, yea, Pagans, and all enemies to Christian Religion, are burdened with the same seeming reason: For if God, or their gods may hinder wickedness, and yet do not hinder it, they bring themselves, or the true God, that they must be necessitated to torment the sinners.
2. There be reasons unanswerable, why if we yield (and it is a shame to deny) that God is able to hinder sin to enter in the world, or that he is not infinitely wise so that he hath not most weighty reasons why he suffers sin to be: As 1. if sin come freely in the world without the will of God, either the Lords dominion over sin must be none at all; or the creatures dominion of free-will must be dependent upon the dominion of grace and Sovereignty. 2. The out-goings of free grace must eternally be hid, if sin had never been. As there had been no field for the expressions and blossoms of eternal flourishing revenging justice: As also, the creatures arms are short, and could not reach the eminent degree of manifesting the glory of free-grace and pardoning mercy but the Lord aimed at this. And 1. the relation of a Saviour and a sinner, of the Physician and the sick must be known; Now a Physician hath not relation actual to all sick, all the world over, but only to his own patients, his own sick ones, who by Covenant, feeling their
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danger, have laid the weight of life and death, of righteousness, of salvation over upon that one only Saviour, and live, diet, apply salves medicine, only by the direction of this Physician, and do receive medicine receipts from no other.
2. Infinite wisdom made choice, beside other infinite possible ways, of this only way of redeeming: and here glorious Sovereignty shines, he wailes out, Judas, Magus, Pharaoh, to be fire-wood and coal to the River of fire and brimstone, and made so many sinful pieces of sick, brittle clay, overgilded with the habit of grace, of free righteousness, of glory to be the eternal harpers and proclaimers of the glory of his grace; whereas he might have made these stones, and wormes, for he created Angels and wormes, and all out of the Mother Nothing, by his good pleasure. And it must be a wonder of unsearchable Sovereignty, that should not for eternity have been concealed, such a number of Angels and men, whom he set up in the heaven of heavens as heirs of glory, to be everlasting Heralds and Trumpeters to sound out experienced grace and mercy, might have been if so it had pleased him, lumps of everlasting vengeance in the eternal lake, and all that are condemned, and suffer the vengeance of eternal fire, both Devils and men are chips and pieces of beings hewen out of the same rock (if so we may speak) of that huge and vast Nothing, and might have been up before the Throne filling the Chairs and rooms of the now heirs of glory, thou believer might have been in the seat of Judas, scorched in his furnace in hell, and Judas might have had thy Throne and thy Crown up with him eternally who sits on the Throne, and with the Lamb.
3. He might have keeped all the sons of men and all the Angels, in a sinless condition, to be courteours to proclaim the glory of Law-goodness and of the never broken Covenant of Works, but then there should never have been such a thing known to the generations to come, as that Ark of glory, that huge and boundless all-fulness of the indwelling Godhead in the Man-Christ. Sure had there been none sick such a suffering Physician to heal us had never been, none lost would have said there is no Saviour, none dead in sin, would say, there is no need of such a Lord and Prince of life, by whose swelling wounds we are healed, Isai. 53.
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4. Nor was it fit that this should never be known to Angels and men, that the Lord honours so many redeemed sinners with a grant and licence to love so high so precious a Redeemer, and as it were to mar and black his fairness and desirable excellency with our feeble and sinful weak love, he being so far above our love or faith or praises.
5. The Gospel wonders should not be an eternally sealed book to men and Angels, as, Revel. 12. 1. that wonder in heaven, A woman clothed with the Sun, and the Moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve Stars, should be known. And what was showed to John was to be shown to the Churches, Rev. 21. 10. And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great and high mountaine, and showed me that great City, the holy Hierusalem descending out of heaven from God. 11. Having the glory of God. I mean here the wonders of grace, mercy, declared justice: and that the most High should empty Himself and the Godhead be united to clay: that there should be such a high Bridegroome, so low and sinful a Spouse: that death should conquer death: that Nothings of clay should sing their debts, eternally cast down their crowns, being made of sinners glorified Kings, and not be ashamed to cast down their crowns before him that sits on the throne. Nor should the gifts and graces of God be hidden, Rom. 8. 32. He that spared not his own Son,—how should he not with him, χαρίσεται, give us all things, be grace to us all? How should he not make heaven and earth free grace to us, and all a mass of grace to us? Eph. 1. 6. ἐν ὡ ἐχαρίτωσεν ῆμᾶς, He hath begraced us all over in Christ. 1 Tim. 1. 13. But I obtained mercy, as dipped in a sea of mercy. Luk. 1. 28. Haile Virgin, κεχαριτωμενη, filled with free grace. Let us forgive one another, Col. 3. 13. as Christ begraced pardon to us, ἐχαρίσατο ὑμῖν. That we might know, 1 Cor. 2. 12. τὰ χαρισθέντα, the things that are freely given us. And what a debt must that be the forgiving of ten thousand talents, more than to forgive millions and tons of gold?
Hence the Question, whether Law-innocency and never sinning, or Gospel-repentance and rising again in Christ, be most excellent? It is answered, 1. Simply to us: It is better and morally more excellent never to fall, never to be sick, than to rise in Christ and Oo
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be healed by such a Physician. But sinning and falling being considered in relation to a more universal good, there is more excellency in Gospel-rising than in Law-standing: As, 1. there is more feeling deeper sense in the woman which did wash Christs feet with her tears, and wipe them with the hair of her head, then in some who never so fell. And Christ may hold forth something of this, Luk. 15. 7. Likewise I say unto you (saith Christ) there is more joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninty and nine just persons that need no repentance. True it is our Saviours scope is not to compare repentance and Law-innocency together, or to show that the Pharisees needed no repentance, as if they were not in a lost condition: but to show what joy was in heaven with the Lord the father of the forlorn son and in the Angels, at the home coming of repenting sinners. And is not a Jewel of ten thousand millions of more worth than a Diamond that is not worth the eighth part of that sum? Adams innocency and never sinning should have been by the common influences of Law-love, and the same may be said of Angel-innocency. But Gospel-repentance is the gift procured at a dearerrate, Christ was exalted a Prince to give repentance Acts 5. 31. Neither should there be sense and such loving sense of free grace in the forlorn son, had he never fled away from his father, and never been so received with a welcome of grace which he believed, before he felt it.
CHAP. VI.
Q. 11. Whether there be any such thing as a Covenant of Suretyship or Redemption between Jehovah and the Son of God. That there is such a Covenant, is proven by eleven Arguments.
No doubt, Christ God-Man is in Covenant with God, being a person designed from eternity, with his own consent, and in time yielding thereunto, and yet he stands not in that Covenant- relation that we stand in: as we shall hear.
Arg. 1. What Argument does prove that there is a people in Covenant with God, who call the Lord their God, as Zech. 13. 9.
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Jer. 32. 38. Isai. 25. 9. The same shall prove Christ to be in Covenant with God: As who can say, he is my God, he must be in Covenant with God. As Jer 31. 33. I will be their God, and they shall be my people, Ezek. 11. 20. Ezek. 34. 24, 25, 30. Now this is clearly aid of Christ, Psa. 89. 26. He shall cry unto me, thou art my Father, my God, and the Rock of my salvation: The Son, the only begotten of the Father saith, thou art my God, Heb. 1. 5. And again, I will be to him a Father, and he shall be to me a Son. It is expounded of Christ, but was first spoken of Solomon, the Type, 1 Sam. 7. 14. My mercy, that is, my Covenant-mercy to the Son of David and his seed, shall stand sure as the days of heaven, Psal. 89. 28, 29, 34, 35, 36. 1 Chron. 22. 10. He shall build a house for my Name, he shall be my Son, and I will be his father. Then follows the Covenant- promise: and I will establish the Throne of his Kingdom over Israel for ever; which is expounded, Psal. 89. 28, 29, c. of Christ, a Covenanted King as long as the Sun and Moon endures, 34, 35, 36. and cannot agree to David, whose Kingdom in now gone. As also, Christ flees to this Covenant in his extreme suffering, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Psal. 22. 1. Mat. 27. 46. So Psal. 40. it is Christ who saith, v. 8. I delight to do thy will, O my God. And it is a Covenant compellation, my God, and spoken by him, v. 6. Mine ears thou hast opened, who removes all sacrifices, and offers himself a sacrifice, Heb. 10. 5. A body thou hast prepared me. So also, Psa. 45. 7. Thou lovest righteousness and hatest wickedness: Therefore God, thy God (a Covenant-word) hath annointed thee with the oil of gladness, above thy fellows. See glorified Christ glorying in this, Rev. 3. 12. Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the house of my God, and he shall go no more out: and I will write upon him the Name of my God (which is) New Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God: Four times he calls him his God. The Lord speaks in his Type, Psal. 118. 28. he who comes in the Name of the Lord, and is made the head of the corner: Thou art my God and I will praise thee, thou art my God, I will exalt thee. Christ is a noble example in this, teaching us to ride at this anchor of hope, thou art my God by Covenant. Mic. 5. 4. Christ shall feed in the Name of the Lord his God, Isa. 55. 4. Oo2
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Arg. 2. Is taken from the Lords way of calling of Christ to his Office of Mediator: So, he who is the Lords chosen, called, and sent servant, is either engaged in the service, by necessity of nature, so that God cannot choose, but he must choose and call him, and he must, by the same necessity of nature, be chosen and called to that service, or he is the Lords chosen and called servant by free agreement and consent of the Lord who calls, and of the party called, which is a Covenant between Master and Servant, the Lord and the sent Ambassadour who is sent, the Lord, the Messenger who comes with such news. Now of Christ it is said, Isai. 42. 1. Behold my servant whom I uphold, my chosen in whom my soul delights. And of mere grace and free-love, both God sent him, and he came, Joh. 3. 16. 1 Tim. 1. 15. for by no necessity of nature was Christ sent to preach glad tidings to the meek, to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, Isai. 61. 1. to say to the prisoners go forth, Isa. 49. 9. For Isai. 42. 6. I the Lord have called thee (saith he) in righteousness-7. To open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison-house. Nor can we say, that any thing, but the good will of the Lord did conclude or determine him to send: 1. To save men, not Angels, Heb. 2. 16. 2. Some men, not others; Joh. 15. 13, 14. 3. So ill deserving men, as lost ones, Luk. 19. 10. sinners, 1 Tim. 1. 15. Rom. 5. 6, 8. (3.) When the Lord speaks of the Covenant of grace, Ezek. 37. 23. he adds a word of this Covenant, I will cleanse them, so shall they be my people, and I will be their God. 24. And David my servant (the son of David Christ, for David was dead) shall be King over them, and they all shall have one Shepherd. Ezek. 34. 23. I will set up one Shepherd over them, and he shall feed them, even my servant David, he shall feed them, and he shall be their Shepherd. 24. I the Lord will be their God. And Zech. 13. Jehovah owns Christ as this Shepherd, as one of his hiring. v. 7. Awake, O sword, against my Shepherd. Mal. 3. 1. The Messenger of the Covenant, whom ye delight in, behold he shall come, saith the Lord of Hosts. Hence, this David is the Servant, Shepherd, and Messenger of the Lord, either by nature, which cannot be said, for the Man Christ is by Nature his servant, but
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Christ-Mediator, God-Man, is not so his servant, or he is so by free consent, on the Lords part, who hires and sends him, and on Christs part, who graciously condescended to be hired, and undertook for us; which all along must be understood of no servile reward.
Arg. 3. Christs voluntary yielding to the work, proves this, if Christ, God-Man willing to empty himself and take on him our nature, did offer his service to God, saying, Sacrifice and burnt offering thou didst not desire, Psal. 40. 6. Heb. 10. 5. a body thou hast prepared me. 7. Then said I, lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me) to do thy will. And if Christ-God-Man did willingly lay down his life of his own goodness, and no man could take his life from him, against his will, Joh. 10. 11, 18. Joh. 18. 5, 8. Joh. 14. 31. Luk. 9. 51. Then is Christs free consent to be our Surety and Redeemer, to seek and to save us, clear, Matth. 20. 28. Luk. 19. 10. And if it pleased the Lord to bruise him, Isa. 53. 10. and of love to give him to the death for us, Joh. 3. 16. Rom. 8. 3. 32. Mat. 21. 37. then the Lords consent that he should be our Surety, Saviour, and Redeemer, is no less evident. Now a mutual agreement between Jehovah, and the Son for one and the same undertaking is a compact and Covenant, to have us saved.
Argument 4. Is from the agreed upon giving and taking between the Father and the Son where there is a free giving of some to the Son to be ransomed, and keeped, upon the Fathers part, and a most free closing of the Son to own and answer for the given and to lose none, but to raise them at the last Day, There certainly is a Covenant gone before, as Jacobs reckoning with Laban, Gen. 31. 39. That which was torn of beasts, I brought not unto thee: I bare the loss of it; of my hand didst thou: require it, whether stolen by day, or stolen by night. 40. (Thus) I was, in the day the drought consumed me, and the frost by night; and my sleep departed from mine eyes. This evidently speaks a Covenant upon Labans part, delivering his flock to Jacob, as to a servant and shepherd, saying, I contract with thee, I deliver my flock to thee, answer for them: make an account to me of dead and living. And on Jacobs part, a taking burden Covenant-ways to take care of
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them; and a Covenant-yielding, require thou at my hand old and young, weak and strong of the flock: I bind myself to keep them. So Christ hath delivered and given to him of the Father, so many by head and name, Joh. 17. 2. As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many, ὁ δεδώκας ἀυτῷ, as thou hast given him. 12. Those that thou gavest me, οὑς δέωκας μοὶ ἐφύλαξα I have kept, and none of them are lost. Joh. 6. 37. All that the Father hath given me, shall come unto me, πᾶν ὃ διδώσι μοὶ ὁ πατὴρ, and the comer to me, I will in no wise cast out. 39. And this is the Fathers (Covenant-) will that sent me, that every one which seeth the Son and believeth on him, may have everlasting life, and I will raise him up (by Covenant and Gospel promise) at the last day. And what speaketh stronger consolation than the Father gave me to the Son Christ to be saved, and the Son undertook for me hath given a written band under his hand to keep me? O what happiness! that I am not mine own keeper, but that Christ hath given it under his hand and the Father the Son have Covenant-wise closed and stricken hands, the one having given and the other received me a keeping. 2. My soul enter thou not into their secrets who lay all peace comfort, assurance of salvation upon their own Socinian faith, that is, their indifferent relying upon the Saviour Jesus and their own holiness, watchfulness, obedience, love to God. Sure, the comfort, joy, peace, assurance subjective that they have in their conscience, can be no stronger than the objective and fundamental certitude of standing persevering overcoming flowing from free-will which is woeful free and indifferent to persevere and stand, or not to persevere, not to stand but to fall away. Its a stronger consolation (and the strongest should be the Christians choice) that is founded upon the Fathers giving and the Sons receiving of sinners; and the faith of salvation to me which relies and leans upon Christs undertaking for me, that I shall not be lost nor casten out, then upon my undertaking so myself.
The fifth Argument is from Christs receiving the Seals, Who so receives in his body the Seals of the Covenant of Grace, Circumcision, and Baptism and yet needs no putting off of the body of the sins of the flesh, by Circumcision, and needs no forgiveness of sin,
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no regeneration, no burying with Christ in Baptime, as Col. 2. 11, 12. Rom. 6. 3, 4, 5. and eats the Passover, and needs not that the Lamb of God take away his sins, as Joh. 1. 19. since he is holy, and without sin he must be under the Covenant, and God must be his God in some other Covenant than sinners are, for these seals are proper to a Covenanted people strangers and Pagans might not receive them, but these in Covenant only, Gen. 17. 7. Exod. 12. 48. Mat. 28. 20. Col. 2. 11, 12. and Christ must have received Seals for other uses and ends then sinners received them, to wit, to testify that he was the God of both Jews and Gentiles, and that he was the undertaker for us, in a Covenant of suretyship for us, to perfect a higher command than any mortal man was under, to wit, to lay down his life for sinners, Joh. 10. 18. and beside that, for our cause he was made under the Law, to fulfill all righteousness, and so was Circum ised, Luk. 2. 21. Baptized, Mat. 3. 13, 16, 17. did eate the Passover with the Disciples, Mat. 26. 18, 19, 20. Mar. 14. 18. Luk. 22. 13, 14. he in coming under that state in which he must, because a man, fulfill the Law, and be under even Gospel- commands so far as they were suitable to his holy Nature testifieth in obeying all commands even of the Moral Law (and as the Son of God he was under no such obligation) that he was under a special ingagement, and compact to God, for the work of Redemption. And we are taught to feel what inbred delight and sweetness of peace is in duties; when Christ Covenants with God to come under the Law, and under the hardest of commands to say down his life for sinners, because it was a Law and command by Covenant, that hath most of obedience which hath most of a Law.
Q Was Christ such an one, as needed seals to his special Covenant with the Father?