01. SERMON UPON JOHN XVIII. 11,

SERMON UPON JOHN XVIII. II.

bulation; (2.) A cup of consolation; (3.) A cup of salvation and thanksgiving.

The first of these is often mentioned: Ps. xi. 6, 'Upon the wicked he shall rain snares, fire, and brimstone, and an horrible tempest; this shall be the portion of their cup.' So the prophet Jeremiah is bidden, chap. xxv. 15, 'Take the wine-cup of this fury at my hand, and cause all the nations to whom I send thee to drink it.' So Ps. lxxv. 8, 'For in the hand of the Lord there is a cup, and the wine is red; it is full of mixture; and he poureth out the same; but the dregs thereof, all the wicked of the earth shall wring them out, and drink them.' Thus God's dispensations are ordinarily expressed by a cup poured out and given to men to drink. And therefore our Lord Christ himself useth this form of speech, not only here, but elsewhere; as Mat. xxvi. 39, 'Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.' It was a dreadful cup that he was to drink of.

The second cup, the cup of consolation, is spoken of Jer. xvi. 7, 'Neither shall men give them the cup of consolation to drink for their father or for their mother;' taken from the Jewish custom of sending it to them that mourned, or to condemned persons. The same is spoken of Prov. xxxi. 6, 7, 'Give strong drink to him that is ready to perish, and wine unto those that be of heavy hearts; let him drink and forget his poverty, and remember his misery no more;' Amos ii. 8, 'They drank the wine of the condemned.'

The third was the cup of salvation, spoken of Ps. cxvi. 13, 'I will take the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the Lord.' Or the cup of deliverance, used more solemnly in the temple by the priests, or more privately in the family. Sometimes called the drink-offering of praise; and to which the 'cup of blessing,' 1 Cor. x. 16, used in the Lord's supper, hath a great respect; for it was always used with certain expressions of commemoration and praise. The first is plainly here intended, the cup of tribulation, so called because our afflictions are measured out by God, both for quantity and quality, either by his justice or by his wisdom and mercy.

2. God's ordering of it, 'Which my Father hath given me.' Christ mentioneth not the malice of his enemies, but the will of God and his Father. His hand in Christ's sufferings is often asserted in scripture: Isa. liii. 10, 'It pleased the Father to bruise him; he hath put him to grief;' Acts ii. 23, 'Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain;' Acts iv. 28, 'For to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done.' God did not excite and instigate those wicked wretches to that cruelty which they exercised upon Christ, yet it was predetermined by God for the salvation of mankind.

3. Christ's submission, 'Shall I not drink it?' If God put a bitter cup into our hands, we must not refuse it, for here we have Christ's example. The meaning is, this bitter passion which the Father hath laid upon me, shall I not suffer it patiently?

Doct. That it is the duty of christians patiently to suffer whatever God hath appointed them to suffer.

The note is plain. I shall discuss it in this method—

SERMON UPON JOHN XVIII. II.

1. That in all calamities we should look to God.

2. That it is a great advantage to patience when we can consider him not as an angry judge, but as a gracious father.

3. That it well becometh his people to endure that willingly which he calleth them unto.

I. That in all calamities we should look unto God: Ps. xxxix. 9, 'I was dumb, I opened not my mouth, because thou didst it.' That is the first thing that quieteth the heart, when we see God's hand in all things that befall us. So Hezekiah: Isa. xxxviii. 15, 'What shall I say? he hath both spoken unto me, and himself hath done it.' If God hath done it, it is time to cease, and say no more; for why should we contend with the Lord? We murmur and repine if we look no higher than second causes; but owning God's hand, we have nothing to reply by way of murmuring or expostulations. So Job, chap. i. 21, 'The Lord hath given, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.' He doth not say, Dominus dedit, diabolus abstulit—The Lord hath given, and the devil hath taken away; nor yet, ὁ Χαλδαῖος ἀφεῖλετο, the Chaldean or Sabean hath taken away; but he owneth God in the providence. Compare the different carriage of David when Nabal slighted him and when Shimei railed on him. The one you have 1 Sam. xxv. 21, 22, 'Now David had said, Surely in vain have I kept all that this fellow hath in the wilderness, so that nothing was missed of all that pertained to him; but he hath requited me evil for good. So and more also do God unto the enemies of David, if I leave of all that pertaineth to him by the morning light any that pisseth against the wall.' A rash speech, because he only reflected upon the unkindness of Nabal, and meditateth nothing but revenge. The other you have 2 Sam. xvi. 11, 'Let him alone, and let him curse, for the Lord hath bidden him.' David then considered not the instrument, but the supreme author; he looked not to the stone, but the hand that flung it, to God's providence, who thought good by that means to chastise him. If we mind providence rather than revenge, we must not reflect on the injury done to us, nor the malice of our adversaries, but the will and good pleasure of God. So Joseph: Gen. l. 20, 'As for you, ye thought evil against me, but God meant it for good.' So he calmeth his heart, and fortifieth it against all thoughts of revenge against his brethren. In short, there are two sorts of evils and afflictions, such as come immediately from the hand of God, or such injuries and afflictions wherein men are the instruments. Patience hath to do with both, that we may bear afflictions from God without murmuring, and injuries from men without thought of revenge. Such as come immediately from the hand of God are not to be looked upon as chances or casual accidents, but the Lord is to be owned in them, and then we must 'humble ourselves under his mighty hand,' 1 Peter v. 6. In injuries from men, we must consider they are also governed by God's providence, and sent by God as well as other evils. Some are patient under an affliction from God, but very impatient under injurious dealing from men; as when a shower of rain falleth from heaven, we bear it quietly, but if one throw a basin of water upon us, we storm, and are vexed at heart. But if we did look through the wrongs of men to God, they would not be so irksome to us, be they injuries in civil commerce, such as oppression, detention of dues, contumelies, reproaches, or persecution for righteousness' sake; see God in all, that you may not fret at it.

Two things we must lay down briefly—

1. That nothing falleth out without God's particular providence: Lam. iii. 37, 38, 'Who is he that saith, and it cometh to pass, when the Lord commandeth it not? Out of the mouth of the Most High proceedeth not evil and good;' that is, nothing is done here below but by a divine disposal and providence, nothing but what he by his secret wisdom hath pre-ordained and appointed.

2. That cross issues and punishments, as well as benefits and prosperous successes, come all of God: Isa. xlv. 7, 'I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace, and create evil: I, the Lord, do all these things.' All evils of punishment come from God, as well as the blessings of providence; and without this principle we could neither be thankful for the one nor humble under the other. We look upon it as a piece of atheism and irreligiousness if we be not thankful for benefits; it is as great an evil if we be not humble under punishments. We count him a profane man that should thank his dungeart for his good crop; and doth not he as much deny providence that in all his afflictions looketh only to instruments, and not to the hand of God? that rageth against men, but doth not take notice of the will of his heavenly Father? It is very notable, Jonah iv. 6, 7, that God first prepared a gourd to shelter Jonah from the scorching heat of the sun, and then prepared a worm that smote the gourd, and deprived him of that comfort and benefit. He that gave us the delight in any natural comfort doth also take it from us. The same hand must be owned in giving and taking, or else we shall not prevent atheism. He that created the gourd created the worm; and he that governed the gourd, and made it a refreshing shadow from the heat of the sun, he governed the worm to eat out the root and life of the gourd. As Christ here saith, not the Jews or pharisees provided this bitter cup for him, but the Father. Ecumenius, an ancient Greek writer on the scripture, in his comment on the Acts of the Apostles, telleth us that once a great plague invaded the city of Athens, and miserably desolated it, which also other histories testify; the citizens being almost consumed, ran to the image of Jupiter with sacrifices, vows, and prayers, to save them from the pestilence, but Jupiter could not do it; then to Saturn, Mercury, Neptune, and other gods, but still in vain, for the plague daily increased, and was more mortal and deadly. And when this was considered in the court of the Areopagites, a wise man among them said, Without doubt these gods known to us did not send this pestilence, because upon our prayers and supplications to them they cannot take it away; there may be some other god unknown to us who sent it, and who alone can cause it to cease, therefore he is to be sought unto, an altar erected to him, and sacrifices and intercessions offered to him, to take away this plague from us. And this writer thinketh that this was the original of that altar which Paul saw with this inscription, 'To the unknown God,' Acts xvii. 23. I have brought this account to show you that all evil is sent by God, and his hand must be acknowledged in it, or else religion will fall to the ground. When the disciples were terrified in a great storm, Christ cometh walking upon the waters, and telleth them, 'Be of good cheer, it is I; be not afraid,' Mark vi. 50. They thought it was a spectre, but Christ saith, 'It is I.' In short, the author of all the annoyances and afflictions that befalleth us in this life is God, their end is repentance, their cause is sin; and this well thought of will silence all our murmurings.

II. That it is a great advantage to patience when we can consider him not as an angry judge, but as a gracious father. The cup which Christ drank off was very bitter, and yet he saith, 'The cup which my Father hath given me.' Now every one cannot apply this comfort, for many are not so much as in a visible relation to God, and others that visibly live in his family yet are not owned and acknowledged by him as his dear children, rather counted bastards than sons, as the apostle speaketh, Heb. xii. 7, 8, 'If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? But if ye be without chastisements, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons.' Not legitimate, but degenerate children. Others have a special relation to God, such as is between father and children: 2 Cor. vi. 18, 'I will be unto you a Father, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.' These have an interest in his dearest love, and a right to his choicest benefits; and they shall know it by his fatherly dealing with them. Now to such this comfort properly belongeth; for though God may punish and afflict others, yet he cannot be said to chastise them as a father, but as an angry judge he doth punish them for their offences and rebellions. Therefore, if you would apply this comfort, you must clear up your interest, enter into covenant with him, and sincerely believe in Christ, and devote yourselves to him, that he may be your God and Father. But because being and seeing are two things, and many that are the children of God may not know themselves to be so, therefore I shall— (1.) State this matter; (2.) Show what an advantage it is to patience.

First, I shall state this matter in these considerations—

1. God is a father by creation or adoption.

[1.] In a more general respect by creation, as Adam is called 'the son of God,' Luke iii. 38. So Mal. ii. 10, 'Have we not all one Father? hath not one God created us?' God is more our Father than our natural parents are; they concur to our beings but instrumentally, but God originally. It is God that formeth us in the womb; we are his workmanship, not our parents', both as to body and soul. As to the body: Ps. cxix. 73, 'Thy hands have made me and fashioned me.' They know not whether the child be male or female, beautiful or deformed; they cannot tell the number of the bones, muscles, veins, and arteries, which God hath framed in such a curious and exact order. But for the soul, which is the better part of man, that is of his immediate creation; therefore God is called, 'The Father of spirits,' Heb. xii. 9. They do not run in the channel of carnal generation or fleshly descent. In this general sense, by virtue of creation, God is the Father of all men, good and bad; which though it give God a title to our love, service, and honour, yet it giveth us no interest in his special benefits, or the fruits of his fatherly love; it moveth God not to stir up all his wrath against them, yet not to bestow saving grace, his favour and image, upon them.

[2.] More especially, and in a more comfortable sense, there is a more peculiar sort of men to whom God is a Father by adoption, and they are his dear children. This title is not by nature, but by grace; the foundation of it was laid in the election of God: Eph. i. 5, 'Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will.' But before this decree could be executed and take place, the redemption of Christ was necessary; for we read, Gal. iv. 4, 5, 'When the fulness of time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.' Sin needed to be expiated by the Son of God in our nature before God would bestow this honour upon any of mankind; Christ was to take a mother upon earth, that we might have a Father in heaven: 'Forasmuch as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same, that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage,' Heb. ii. 14, 15. And besides, this grace is applied to us by the Spirit, who by his effectual operation bringeth us into a state of love and sonship. As a Father by creation, he giveth us our natural endowments; as a Father by adoption, he giveth us the supernatural grace of the Spirit, to sanctify and change our hearts; for regeneration and adoption always go together: John i. 12, 13, 'But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name; which were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.' And by the new nature put into us we are brought into this new state and relation: Gal. iv. 6, 'And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.' The soul that was shy of God then inclineth to him as our Lord, that we may honour, love, and obey him, and as our happiness, that we may seek after him, and live in communion with him. And lastly, the act on our part, that we may be received into the number of God's children, is an owning and acknowledging Christ to all the ends and purposes for which God hath appointed him; if we really entertain him as sent by God to be our Lord and Saviour, we are advanced to this dignity: John i. 12, 'To as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name.' This of the privilege.

2. You having received this grace, it is your duty to get it evidenced, that you may maintain a comfortable sense of your adoption. It is evidenced by the dwelling and working of the Holy Spirit in you: Rom. viii. 16, 'The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God.' He witnesseth objectively and effectively, per modum argumenti, and per modum efficientis causa—by way of argument, and by way of causal efficiency. Objectively, if I have the Spirit of God framing my heart to love, and honour, and fear, and obey him, and delight in communion with him, surely I am a child of God; for where these are, sincere love to God prevaleth: 1 John iv. 13, 'Hereby know we that we dwell in him and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit.' There he speaketh of love to God, and so for

SERMON UPON JOHN XVIII. II.

honour; it is else but an empty title: Mal. i. 6, 'If I then be a father, where is mine honour? If I be a master, where is my fear?' So for fear or childlike reverence, that we dare not offend him: Ps. ciii. 13, 'As a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him.' His children, and those that fear him, are equivalent expressions: 1 Peter i. 17, 'If ye call on the Father, who without respect of persons judgeth according to every man's work, pass the time of your sojourning here in fear.' I illustrate by that, Jer. xxxv. 6, 'And they said, We will drink no wine, for Jonadab the son of Rechab our father commanded us, saying, Ye shall drink no wine, neither ye nor your sons, for ever.' So for obedience: 1 Peter i. 14, 'As obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance;' Eph. v. 1, 'Be ye followers of God, as dear children.' So for delighting in communion with him: Rom. viii. 15, 'For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father;' Gal. iv. 6, 'And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father.' This is most felt in prayer: Zech. xii. 10, 'I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and supplications;' Rom. viii. 26, 'Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities; for we know not what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered;' Jude 20, 'But ye, beloved, building up yourselves in your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost.' Here we have the nearest familiarity with God whilst we dwell in the flesh, and our souls are carried to God as light bodies move upward. This is the matter of the evidence, but the Spirit giveth a sight or sense of this; if he be not grieved and ill-treated, but his sanctifying motions be obeyed, he sheddeth abroad the love of God in our hearts, and filleth us with much joy and peace.

3. If this be faithfully done, and there be no other reason to break our confidence, the bare affliction, or the greatness and grievousness of your afflictions, should not; for these sharp afflictions are not only consistent with this relation, as the instance of Christ showeth, but also it is an act of his fatherly love and discipline. The exhortation speaketh to us as children: Heb. xii. 5-8, 'Ye have forgotten the exhortation that speaketh unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him; for whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? but if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons.' God's children must look to be chastened; neither must our Father's hand be slighted, nor must we faint under it. It is an act of love and kindness to us, that he will not suffer us to go on in our sins. God seemeth to cast off them whom he leaveth to their own hearts' lusts: Hosea iv. 17, 'Ephraim is joined to idols; let him alone.' But he loveth whom he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. The rod of correction will not wholly be laid aside while God's children are in the flesh. In heaven, where there are no dangers, there is no use of it any more, because then we are fully and perfectly sanctified, but here you must be content to submit to the discipline of the family. Certainly you must not question his love because something falleth out contrary to your desires. God is a Father when he frowneth and when he smileth; he is the God of the valleys as well as of the hills and mountains; his love doth not alter with our condition, the comfort of adoption is for such a time.

4. Because of our imperfection both in holiness and comfort, we must submit to the authority of a father, when we cannot see our interest in his special fatherly love. Alas! most are so ill settled in the peace and comfort of the gospel, that every notable affliction reviveth our guilty fears; as the Sareptan said to Elijah when her child died, 'Art thou come unto me to call my sin to remembrance, and to slay my son?' 1 Kings xvii. 18. She looked upon that sad providence as a judgment for her sins; so it is if God awakeneth in us a spirit of bondage. Besides, there is none of us but may justify God, that he is not needlessly severe; yea, some have so sinned, that though they be not filii ira, children of wrath, yet they are filii sub ira, children under wrath; though they need no regeneration or conversion, yet they have grieved the good Spirit of God by walking inordinately, therefore their business is to submit to the authority of God, justly correcting and punishing them for sins: Micah vii. 9, 'I will bear the indignation of the Lord, because I have sinned against him.' And by unfeigned repentance to renew their claim, and promise greater loyalty and fidelity for the future: Jer. iii. 19, 'Thou shalt call me, My father, and shalt not turn away from me.' They must get their wounds healed, make up the breach between God and them, sue out their pardon in the name of Christ, and get a renewed grant of it, and a sense of their adoption.

5. If hitherto you have been quite strangers to God, such providences may be an occasion to begin the relation before they are over, as they are helps to repentance and recovery. Upon the serious working of your souls, the Lord may be found as a father, and admit you into his family. It is said, 'The Lord loveth whom he chasteneth,' Heb. xii. 6. There is a twofold love in God—the love of benevolence, and the love of complacency; the one while we are sinners, the other after he hath made us amiable. Some God chooseth in the fire or furnace of affliction: Isa. xlviii. 10, 'Behold, I have refined thee, but not with silver; I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction.' The hot furnace is God's workhouse; the most excellent vessels of honour are formed there; Manasseh, Paul, the jailer in the Acts; when the prodigal began to be in want, he thought of returning to his father, Luke xv. 17-19. If our ears be opened to discipline, we can own God in the humbling, though not the comfortable way: 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son.' Many that were never serious before are brought to bethink themselves in their afflictions: 1 Kings viii. 47, 48, 'Yet if they shall bethink themselves in the land whither they were carried captives, and repent, and make supplications unto thee in the land of them that carried them captives, saying, We have sinned, and have done perversely, we have committed wickedness; and so return unto thee with all their heart and with all their soul.' The doors of God's family

SERMON UPON JOHN XVIII. II.

are always open to believing penitents, and it is a fatherly providence at last.

Secondly, What an advantage is it to patience and submission to God.

1. God's fatherly relation showeth his love to us; and so we know that by all his chastisements he doth but seek our spiritual and eternal good: Heb. xii. 9, 10, 'We have had fathers of our flesh, which corrected us, and we gave them reverence; shall we not much rather be in subjection to the Father of spirits, and live? for they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure, but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness.' Children, though they take it ill to be beaten by others, yet they take it patiently when beaten for their faults by their parents, who, under God, are the cause of their being and maintenance, and ever in correcting seek their good; much more should we submit to our heavenly Father. Earthly parents may err, wanting wisdom, or being blinded with passion, and so their chastisements are arbitrary and irregular; but there is more of compassion than passion in God's rod; all cometh from purest love, and is regulated by perfect wisdom, and tendeth to the highest end, even our holiness and happiness.

2. It inferreth great love from us to God again. No owning of God is allowed but the practical owning of him; and therefore none own God as a father but those that love him as a father. Now love God once, and nothing that he doth will be grievous to us; for as love sweeteneth duties, so it sweeteneth providences. It cometh from my Father; that doth not only bespeak reverence or submission (Num. xii. 14, 'If her father had but spit in her face, should she not be ashamed seven days?') but welcome; anything should be well taken at his hand.

III. It well becometh his people to endure willingly whatever God calleth them unto.

1. From God. His sovereignty and power; he is too great to be questioned: Job ix. 12, 'Behold he taketh away, who can hinder him? Who will say unto him, What doest thou?' His justice; he is too just to do us wrong: Job xxxiv. 23, 'For he will not lay upon man more than is right, that he should enter into judgment with God.' There is guilt enough in every one to silence us: Ps. exix. 137, 'Righteous art thou, O Lord, and upright are thy judgments.' His goodness; he is too good to do us harm; he knoweth how to recompense us: Ps. exix. 71, 'It is good for me that I have been afflicted.' Nothing but good can come from him who is goodness and love itself. His wisdom and faithfulness; he will afflict us no more than need requireth, or will exceed our strength: 1 Peter i. 6, 'Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season (if need be) ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations;' 1 Cor. x. 13, 'There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above what you are able, but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.'

2. With respect to Christ, whose example should be of force to us both for suffering and patience in suffering. For suffering, there is a certain measure of affliction fitted and prepared for Christ and all his followers; the bitter cup goeth round from hand to hand; the whole wave dashed upon Christ, some drops light upon us: Col. i. 24, 'Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh, for his body's sake, which is the church.' And for patience in suffering: Heb. xii. 2, 3, 'Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who, for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despised the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds;' 1 Peter ii. 21, 'Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps;' and ver. 23, 'Who when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not, but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously.' He hath trod the way before us, and his steps drop fatness: Mat. xx. 23, 'Ye shall drink indeed of my cup, and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with; but to sit on my right hand, and on my left, is not mine to give, but it shall be given to them for whom it is prepared of my Father.' There are two things; if any would be nearer in dignity to Christ than others, it is not in reigning, but in suffering with Christ, in drinking Christ's cup; but for preferment in another world, and to have a larger measure of honour, that is given to those for whom it is appointed. We are to prepare for the cross. The other is, the new covenant engageth us hereunto, for there is an allusion to the sacraments. Therefore Christ useth these notions.

Use 1. Showeth what provision the christian religion maketh for patience: Rom. xv. 4, 'For whatsoever things were written aforetime, were written for our learning, that we, through patience and comfort of the scriptures, might have hope.' This patience and comfort of the scriptures is a higher thing than what is learnt by the institutions of philosophy. Tam in ipsis falsa erat patientia, quam et falsa sapientia—Cypr. Both their patience and their wisdom is false. The grounds of patience from the christian religion are particular providence, adoption, the example of Christ, the assistance of the Spirit, the desert of sin, the fruit of afflictions, both as to the refining of grace and preparing us for glory: Heb. xii. 11, 'Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous; nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them that are exercised thereby.'

Use 2. To exhort us to bear whatsoever God shall lay upon us.

1. Seek this grace of God, both the wisdom and the power to calm the spirit: Col. i. 11, 'Strengthened with all might according to his glorious power, unto all patience and long-suffering with joyfulness;' James i. 5, 'If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask it of God.' Man's strength is not the strength of bulls; it doth not lie in brutish force, but strength of reason. Our own reason is too feeble to encounter our passions if not assisted by grace; they are not healed by time, but spiritual wisdom: Ps. xciv. 19, 'In the multitude of my thoughts within me thy comforts delight my soul.'

2. Expostulate with yourselves, and cite all your passions before the tribunal of reason: Ps. xlii. 5, 'Why art thou cast down, O my soul?

SERMON UPON JOHN XVIII. II.

why art thou disquieted within me?' God puts Jonah to the question: chap. iv. 4, 'Dost thou well to be angry?' So should we argue with ourselves: With whom are you displeased? Is it with God? He doth what he pleaseth; he might cast thee into hell, and art thou angry because of his temporal chastisement? He hath bestowed many mercies upon thee, and shall he not take his seasons to chastise thee? Art thou angry with man? But is not God's hand in it? Hast not thou done so to others? Eccles. vii. 22, 'For oftentimes also thy own heart knoweth that thou thyself likewise hast cursed others.'

Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.—LUKE xxiii. 34.

THE words of the dying are wont to be much observed. When men depart out of the body, they are usually more serious and divine, and speak with greater weight. As a man that is to take a journey trusseth up his bundle or fardle, so when men are to take a journey to God, and are upon the brink of the everlasting state, they are wont to gather up whatever is of a divine and immortal nature. Especially the speeches of the godly dying are to be regarded, who, having laid aside worldly affairs and earthly thoughts, are wholly exercised in the contemplation of heavenly things. Therefore in scripture we read of David's last words, 2 Sam. xxiii. 1, and of Joshua, chap. xxiii. 14, 'And behold, this day I am going the way of all the earth;' but before he goes he would leave this testimony for God: 'Ye know in all your hearts, and in all your souls, that not one thing hath failed of all the good things which the Lord your God spake concerning you, all are come to pass unto you, and not one thing hath failed thereof.' So Jacob, Moses, Simeon: Luke ii. 29, 30, 'Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word; for mine eyes have seen thy salvation.' Paul: 2 Tim. iv. 7, 8, 'I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at that day; and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing.' Now certainly, if any man's dying speeches are to be observed, Christ's are much more. Job said, chap. xix. 23, 24, 'Oh, that my words were now written! oh, that they were printed in a book! that they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever!' It were well if Christ's words were written, not in cedar, but in our own hearts. They reckon seven short speeches of Christ upon the cross, and this is the first; when he begins to break off his silence, it is to pray for his persecutors: 'Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.' In which words there is—

1. Christ's request, 'Father, forgive them.'

2. The argument by which it is enforced, 'For they know not what they do.'

3. Christ's request, 'Father, forgive them.' 'Father' is a word of confidence towards God and of love to his enemies; he mentioned the sweetest relation. 'Father' is a word of blandishment, as children, when they would obtain anything at their parent's hands, cry, Father!

Some observe that when he speaketh of his own desertion he crieth, 'My God! my God!' but now, when he prayeth for the pardon of his enemies, he useth a more endearing relation, 'Father.' But the observation is fond and nice; for Christ in his own case useth the same endearing title: Mat. xxvi. 39, 'O my Father! if it be possible, let this cup pass from me;' and there is a special reason why in his desertion he should say, 'My God! my God!' as suiting the title to his case, Eli! Eli! my strong one! my strong one! He wanted the strong support and the sensible consolations of his godhead. It is most comfortable to observe how Christ upon the cross calleth God 'Father.' He felt him a judge, and believeth him a father. The special work of faith in afflictions is to maintain the comfort of adoption: Heb. xii. 5, 'Ye have forgotten the exhortation that speaketh unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord.' Those that are under chastening may be sons. God doth not always put on the person of a judge when he taketh the rod in his hand; the change of your condition doth not alter, nor make void your interest. God is the God of the valleys as well as the God of the hills. Christ was now, as a man, forsaken and rejected of God, left to the assaults of Satan and scorns of men; and yet in the height of his pains and passion he retaineth his confidence: 'Father, forgive them.' The whole world is not worth the comfort that is wrapped up in that one word, 'Father.' It is a great folly in the children of God to question his love merely because of the greatness of their afflictions. We presently cry out, as Job, chap. xxx. 21, 'Thou art become cruel to me; with thy strong hand thou opposest thyself against me;' that he hath put off all fatherly affection, because we judge of the cross according to the sense of our own flesh. And therefore, merely to question God's love because of afflictions is folly. Rather we may conclude the contrary of the two. Bastards are left to a looser discipline than sons; the bramble of the wilderness is suffered to grow and spread when the vine is cut, and pruned, and pared; the stones that are to be set in the building are most hewed and squared, others lie neglected in the quarry and are left to their own roughness. Multiplied afflictions are a sign God hath a care of you; he will not suffer you to run wild. And therefore, in defiance of the cross, learn to call God Father; look through the cloud of the present dispensation to the love of God towards you.

'Father, forgive them.' Christ speaks as foreseeing the danger and punishment which they would bring on themselves as the fruit of their madness and folly, and therefore he prays, 'Father, forgive them.' This act was provocation enough to move God to dissolve the bonds of nature, to cleave the earth, that it might swallow them up quick, or to rain hell out of heaven upon them. Lesser offences have been thus punished, and one word from Christ's mouth had been enough. But, 'Father, forgive them.' We hear nothing but words of mild pity. When he says, 'Forgive,' he means also convert them; for where there is no conversion there can be no remission.

I shall look upon this prayer under a twofold consideration—

1. As an high moral act of an holy man.

2. As a taste of his mediation and intercession, where we shall consider the public relation he sustained upon the cross.

First, Let us look upon it as a moral action. He doth not threaten fearful judgments, but prayed for his enemies; there was no stain of passion and revenge upon his sufferings: 1 Peter ii. 21, 'Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that we should follow his steps.' And wherein? ver. 23, 'Who when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously.' One great use of Christ's death was to give us lessons of meekness and patience and humble suffering. In this act there is an excellent lesson. Let us look upon the necessary circumstances that serve to set it off—(1.) For whom he prays; (2.) When he prays; (3.) Why he prays; (4.) In what manner.

1. For whom he prayeth; for his persecutors, men that had done him the greatest contempt and villany which their spite and malice could invent. They had mocked and buffeted him, mangled his flesh with scourges, led him like a public spectacle of shame through the streets of the city, and by importunate clamours had gotten him to the cross, and there placed him in the midst of thieves. They had cursed themselves, and yet Christ prayed for them. In their rage they had even appealed to and dared divine justice: 'His blood be upon us and on our children;' but Christ saith, 'Father, forgive them.' Yea, and which is more, they did all this to him when he came to serve the world in a design of the greatest love. Of all things, men cannot endure to have their love slighted. Holy David, when Nabal slighted his kindness, vowed the destruction of him and all his house; but when Christ cometh with higher acts of kindness, he is despised and rejected of men: 'He came unto his own, and his own received him not,' John i. 11. Nay, his own persecuted him, and despitefully used him, and yet he prayeth for them. They omitted no kind of cruelty. The law saith, 'Breach for breach, eye for eye, tooth for tooth,' Lev. xxiv. 20; but when they cry, 'Crucify him,' he cries, 'Forgive them.' Oh, how may we wonder at this, who are so vindictive as we are!

2. When he prayeth; in the very extremity and height of his sufferings. Then, when we are apt to forget our friends, Christ remembereth his enemies; in the very height of his sorrows he mediates for a pardon for them. A man would have thought that the sharp sense of the afflictions wherewith he was exercised should have embittered his spirit; if he would make intercession for sinners in heaven, a man would have thought that he should not have interceded upon the cross. We pardon when the misery is over, and, by the course of affairs, that which was intended for a mischief proveth an advantage; as Joseph did his brethren: Gen. l. 20, 'As for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass as it is this day, to save much people alive.' But Christ in the very act of his sufferings seeketh mercy for the instruments of his passion. Pendabat, et tomm petabat, saith Austin; their rage had brought him to the cross, and there Christ mediateth to bring them to heaven.

3. Who prayeth; Jesus Christ. With honour enough to himself he might have done otherwise; he could have destroyed them with the breath of his mouth or with a beam of his glory. We forgive when we cannot harm. Power efferateth the mind, and makes men fierce and cruel. Many would be cruel enough, but they are restrained either by want of power or opportunity. But here neither was wanting: Mat. xxvi. 53, 'Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray unto my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?' In man's eye that would have seemed a rare vindication of the glory and dignity of his person; but Christ doth not pray, Father, send twelve legions of angels, but, 'Father, forgive them.' One angel had been enough: 2 Kings xix. 35, 'The angel of the Lord went out, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians an hundred fourscore and five thousand.' It would have been more easy for Christ to come down from the cross than to go up thither, that was the greater miracle. Four nails could not have held the Lord of glory, if he had not been nailed and fastened through by his own love and voluntary condescension. But Christ would not be glorious now in acts of power, but of mildness and charity, and therefore it is not, Father, destroy, but, Father, forgive them.

4. How he prayeth for them. He pleadeth their case, and putteth the fairest construction that can be made of an action so foul and enormous; they are poor ignorant people, led with a blind zeal. Christ pitcheth upon the only circumstance that serveth to lessen the offence; of all excuses this is the most plausible: 1 Tim. i. 13, 'I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly, in unbelief;' Acts iii. 17, 'And now, brethren, I wot that through ignorance ye did it, as did also your rulers.' We are wont to strain and force actions to the most rigorous interpretation they are capable of. Iracundia solers est fingendi causus sui furoris—Seneca. Anger is witty to find out causes to justify itself; and if there be aught to justify censure, we omit those alleviating circumstances and necessary mitigations, whereby our asperity may be taken off, and actions be more mildly considered. But Christ saith, Poor creatures! they act out of a blind zeal, they know not what they do; Father, forgive them.

Use 1. Information.

1. It informeth us that the love of Christ is greater than we can think or understand, much less express. If we be afflicted with any pain in the teeth, head, or eyes, we are so overcome with the sense of it, that we can think of nothing else; we neither admit the visit of friends, nor will we trouble ourselves with any business, our pain wholly engrosseth and taketh up our minds and thoughts. But Jesus Christ, in the midst of his agonies and painful sufferings, remembereth not only friends, but enemies, and is solicitous about their salvation. Now if he be thus affected towards persecutors, how is he to the persecuted? They cry, 'Crucify him! crucify him!' but he saith, 'Father, forgive them.' He might justly have called for vengeance, but he prayeth for mercy; nothing was so cruel but they were ready to think, and speak, and do against him in this blind and inconsiderate fury; but he doth not consider their injuries against himself, but their sin against God, and would have that pardoned; and this at the time when they sought not pardon for themselves, but were venting their malice against him. Which surely is an encouragement to the penitent that he will not be hard to be entreated by them that confess and forsake their sins, and fly unto him for mercy. He seeks for pardon for them that sought it not, and considereth not so much what they deserved, as what became himself,

B and the riches of his grace. They curse, and he blesseth; they vomit out scorns and slanders, but he poureth out prayers to God for them.

2. That all sins, even the greatest, except that against the Holy Ghost, are pardonable. What greater sin could there be than crucifying the Lord of glory? yet upon repentance it is forgiven. That it was capable of pardon appeareth by this prayer of our Saviour, and that it was actually pardoned appeareth by Acts ii. When they were touched to the quick with the sense of this crime, and asked what they should do, Peter adviseth them to this remedy, Acts ii. 38, 'Repent, and be baptized every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of sins;' and they found it effectual upon the use of it: ver. 41, 'Then they that gladly received his word were baptized, and the same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls.' And that it is so in the general case, our Lord assureth us, Mat. xii. 31, 'All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men, but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men.' There is no exception of any sin, though it go so high as blasphemy, but the malicious blaspheming the operations of the Holy Ghost, those by which he testified, manifestly and sufficiently, that he was the true Messiah, and their imputing these operations to the devil. But of other sins there is no exception; speaking against the Son of man was not believing him to be the Messiah; that may be forgiven; but blasphemy against the Holy Ghost is resisting his manifestations, affirming them to be done by the devil rather than God, and this shall never be forgiven. Well, then, let us conceive of God's mercy according to the infiniteness of his nature, and of Christ's merits according to the dignity of his person; an ocean of water will wash one sink or filthy hole clean.

3. That remission of sins is the free gift of God, and the fruit of his pity and grace. Christ asketh it of his Father, 'Father, forgive them:' he must be sought to; we cannot merit it of ourselves. David addresseth himself to God, and useth no other plea but grace and mercy: Ps. li. 1, 'Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving-kindness, according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions.' Our work lieth with the Father of mercies and the God of all compassions, that he may be reconciled to us, and seal up his perfect pardon to our souls.

4. That pardon of sins is a special benefit. Christ asked no more than, Father, forgive them. It is a special benefit, because it freeth us from the greatest evil, wrath to come: 1 Thes. i. 10, 'And it maketh us capable of the greatest blessing, eternal life: Titus iii. 7, 'That being justified by his grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life. It is purchased at the dearest rate, even the blood of Christ: Rom. iii. 25, 'Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God.' It is brought about by the highest power, the finger of God, or his all-conquering Spirit, who by converting us, or giving us repentance, maketh us capable of pardon: Acts ii. 38, 'Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of sins;'

Acts v. 31, 'Him hath God exalted with his right hand to be a prince and a saviour, for to give repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins.' It openeth the door to the choicest privileges, the favour of God and communion with him in the Spirit: therefore David pronounceeth the pardoned blessed: Ps. xxxii. 1, 2, 'Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered; blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth no iniquity.'

5. That love of enemies, and those that have wronged us, is an high grace, and recommended to us by Christ's own example. Sure it is needful that we should learn this lesson, to be like God: Luke vi. 36, 'Be ye merciful, as your Father also is merciful;' that we may obey God, who hath required this at our hands. Therefore we must consider not what others have been to us, but what God will have us to be to them, meek, patient, and merciful. Again, we hereby show the purity and sincerity of our love; nature will teach us to love those that love us, but grace only teacheth us to love enemies. This is love with self-denial. They who love us endear themselves to us, the other alienate themselves from us; yet for God's sake we can love them, and seek to draw them out of the snares of the devil, that we may restore them to God.

Use 2. Reproof of those that are cruel and revengeful. How different are they from Christ who are all for unkindness and revenge, and solicit vengeance against God's suffering servants with eager aggravations! Oh, how can these men look upon Christ's practice without shame! How can they look upon these prodigies of love and grace, and not blush! Can there be a greater crime and wrong done to any than was done to Christ? And yet when he was whipped, crowned with thorns, pierced with nails, lifted up upon the cross, he doth not pray for revenge, but pardon; he doth not cry, Justice! justice! but Mercy! mercy! 'Father, forgive them;' he doth not by captious queries and expostulations aggravate the offence, but he alleviates it by a sweet interpretation, 'They know not what they do.' It is strange to think what bloody principles many christians have espoused of late; that we rage against our brethren upon every offence, especially in matters of doubtful apprehension, where men are more liable to mistakes. Oh! it is sad, when God is but a little displeased, to help onward the affliction. I wonder where men learn that cruel and fell spirit into which we are commenced of late; it was wont to be good doctrine, 'Be merciful, as your heavenly Father is merciful.' What is become of all those good lectures of charity, and meekness, and gentleness, which are commended to us in the rule of the gospel and the example of Christ? Certainly when the spirit is exuberated it argues some loss of peace with God. David was never more cruel than when he had violated the peace of his own conscience: 2 Sam. xii. 31, 'And he brought forth the people that were therein, and put them under saws, and under barrows of iron, and under axes of iron, and made them to pass through the brickkiln.' Certainly matters are not right between us and God when men's principles and practices grow bloody and cruel.

Use 3. To exhort us to imitate Christ in being meek, patient, merciful, void of malice, doing good for evil, bearing the worst usage without studying revenge. Surely the same mind should be in us that

SERMON UPON LUKE XXIII. 31.

was in Christ Jesus. Head and members are acted by the same soul; so in the mystical body, Christ and we should be acted with the same spirit; the same spirit of holy love, sweetness, and forgiveness that breathed in Christ should breathe forth in our lives and conversations: Eph. iv. 32, 'And be ye kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.' All his ordinances imply this. In the word we hear of Christ's meekness; his pattern is set forth that we might be like-minded; in prayer we are taught to say, 'Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us.' We break our sponsoring and promise solemnly given in this petition if we do not pardon others. In baptism, 'we put on Christ,' Rom. xiii. 14; we put on his nature and qualities, that is, planting us into his likeness. In the Lord's supper we come to renew our union and communion with him, and to liken ourselves to Christ yet more and more. Christ changeth the temper of those that spiritually feed upon him, as natural meats communicate their qualities to us. The Israelites were more generous because they were so long fed with manna; Nero was more bloody because he sucked the milk of a cruel nurse, who was wont to besmear her dugs with blood; Achilles was more valiant because he was nourished with the marrow of lions. Men's dispositions are much according to their food; certainly those that eat the Lamb should not be wolves, but meek as Christ was, and ready to forgive, and every way transcribe their master's pattern. See how Stephen imitates his master when he comes to die. First he prayeth for himself: Acts vii. 59, 'Lord Jesus, receive my spirit;' as Christ did, Luke xxiii. 46, 'Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit;' and then he intercedeth for his enemies: Acts vii. 60, 'Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.' Here is not only an example of faith; he committed his soul to Christ, but of charity, he deprecateth revenge from his enemies. Moses and other holy ones of God have done so. Moses: Num. xii. 13, 'Heal her now, O Lord, I beseech thee;' when his sister Miriam was smitten with a leprosy for doing him wrong. Aaron, when he was despitefully used, and his calling maligned: Num. xvi. 47, 48, 'He ran into the midst of the people, and behold the plague was begun among the people; and he put on incense, and made an atonement for the people; and he stood between the dead and the living, and the plague was stayed.' David fasted for his enemies when they were sick: Ps. xxxv. 13, 'But as for me, when they were sick my clothing was sackcloth, I humbled my soul with fasting.' We fast against them often, but seldom fast for them. So Paul: 1 Cor. iv. 12, 13, 'Being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we suffer it; being defamed, we entreat.' When we are looked upon and treated as evil-doers, we should bear it patiently, not rage against instruments, but pray the Lord to open their eyes, that they may see the greatness of their sin, in hating and opposing the godly. You should not think the example of Christ an act beyond imitation. You see the holy men of God have attained a great measure of self-denial; do you go and do likewise.

1. In private cases. A man shall meet with offences in the world. All men have not faith; some are absurd and injurious. What a comfort would a man have in his spirit when he can pity their blindness and pardon their malice. They took away the life of Christ, and yet he saith, 'Father, forgive them;' he was slain by them, and yet he prayeth for them. Certainly it is not comely for us to retaliate, to hate, curse, revile, and pursue injury with injury. They that revenge take an example from their enemies, and do them this honour to make them their own pattern; and what comfort can any have to make a wicked man his precedent! Besides, to revenge is to rush into God's tribunal, and to take his work out of his hands: Prov. xxiv. 29, 'Say not, I will do to him as he hath to me; I will render to the man according to his work.' Solomon putteth it into such words as are proper to God, that we may be sensible of the pride and usurpation that is in revenge: and, Rom. xii. 19, 'Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath; for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.' We take upon us to be rewarders when at least we should leave the case to God. You may put it into the hands of the righteous judge: 1 Peter ii. 23, 'When he was reviled, he reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not, but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously.' Besides, it will much interrupt your prayers. Our revengeful dispositions must needs weaken our confidence, for we muse of others as we use ourselves. How can you say, 'Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us,' when we are like vessels broken as soon as touched, and are furious and raging upon every wrong, and the least offence done to us? Alas! their offences to us are nothing like ours to God, either for number or weight. Not for number; no man can wrong us so much as we daily trespass against God. How many neglects and affronts doth mercy put up at our hands every day! Luke xvii. 4, 'If he trespass against thee seven times in a day, and seven times in a day turn again to thee, saying, I repent; thou shalt forgive him.' Seventy times seven is a number too little for the transgressions and offences of one day, and yet we grow peevish and passionate upon every slight fault or wrong done to us. So for the weight; the naughty servant would not forgive a hundred pence when his master forgave him ten thousand talents, Mat. xviii. 24, compared with the 28th verse. There is a great difference between pence and talents; the Roman penny was sevenpence halfpenny, and their talent was one hundred and eighty-seven pounds ten shillings. Their offences cannot be so heinous as ours, because of our great obligations to God, and the dignity of his essence; theirs are against dust and ashes, their guilty fellow-creatures; ours are against the great God. It is proper to christians, that know such an infinite pardoning mercy, to do something above heathens and publicans: Mat. v. 46, 'If ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans so?' Christianity should raise the affections to a greater self-denial, so that we are to love our very enemies. Besides all this, consider the benefit of a meek patience. Revenge is sweet, but you will find more pleasure in meekness. All vexations disturb the peace and quiet of the soul, and I cannot do my enemy a greater pleasure than to let him take away my contentment, and, when I am wronged by others, to wrong myself. Will you hurt yourself by passion and sin because others hurt you by slanders and persecutions? He that will not forgive hurts himself more than he that doeth the wrong; for the injury offered reacheth but to the name, body, or goods, but the desire of revenge wounds the conscience, and provokes God to wrath, and shuts the gate of his mercy against us. The great motive that excites the devil to molest and disturb us by his instruments is not to hurt your bodies, but to tempt your souls to impatience and revenge, and to draw you to other sins; and therefore you do not conquer it as a temptation till you avoid the sin. Job was robbed and plundered, but in all this Job sinned not; to come off with a wounded conscience, this is to be foiled indeed. Besides, conscience will take hold of all revengeful acts. David's heart smote him when he cut off the lap of Saul's garment. Besides, consider the gain of others. Saul wept when he saw David's tenderness: 1 Sam. xxiv. 16, 'And it came to pass, when David had made an end of speaking these words unto Saul, that Saul said, Is this thy voice, my son David? And Saul lift up his voice and wept.' Tenderness is expressed by heaping up coals upon your enemy's head: Prov. xxv. 21, 22, 'If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he be thirsty, give him water to drink; for thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head.' You may make him pliable to your purpose, as lead or wax melted by fire. Such charity doth often procure servants to God and friends to ourselves. It is indeed said there, 'and the Lord shall reward thee.' There are indeed some sour and crabbed pieces that will never be smoother, but if distorted and depraved natures are not won, God will reward thee. Endeavours of reconciliation are not lost with God; though you get nothing but scorn and contempt, you may comfort yourselves with your sincerity, and God will not be wanting. Besides all this, consider the honour of being above an injury: Prov. xix. 11, 'The discretion of a man deferreth his anger, and it is his glory to pass over a transgression.' As it is the glory of God to pardon sin; we think it a disgrace; but the Holy Ghost tells us it is the glory of a man. It is the devil's design to suffer the world to miscall grace; meekness is sheepishness, and patience is a kind of weakness and servility; an argument ignavi ingenii, of a slow dull temper, that hath no sense of things; as astronomers call glorious stars dogs and bears and dragons' tails. Oh, consider this is an height proper to christianity! nature could not reach it; there is no greater servility than to be a slave to one's passions: Ezek. xvi. 30, 'How weak is thy heart, saith the Lord, since thou doest all these things, the work of an imperious whorish woman?' There are no spirits so feeble as those that are swayed by the ruffle of their own passions.

2. In public cases. In these times of mutual provocation we are apt to return evil for evil and word for word, and to curse and pray against one another; but we should labour to return good for evil, for injury doth not justify revenge. Religious quarrels are usually carried on with great hatred and animosity, for then religion feedeth the excess of passion, and instead of being a judge, becometh a party, and that which should be a restraint proveth fuel. The quarrel between Christ and his persecutors was a quarrel of religion, and yet he prays, 'Father, forgive them;' and if Christ did thus, why should not christians? Oh! consider it—(1.) As to open enemies; (2.) As to the undue carriage of brethren.

[1.] As to open enemies. Christ saith, Mat. v. 44, 'Love your enemies, bless them that curse you do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you.' Lest we should excuse ourselves by a colour and show of religion, and so give indulgence to the exorbitancy of our passions, Christ names 'persecutors,' that are not only our enemies, but God's enemies; you are to pray for them, and wish them conviction of sin and reformation. And you see how Christ practiseth his own doctrine, and so taught us not only living, but dying. These were carried on by a blind zeal; alas! that they have no more light nor better principles. I doubt in all our divisions we have not plied this way of love; if we did, they would be soon cured and healed. We pray one against another, and seek each other's ruin and destruction, but when have we commended our enemies to God's grace and pity? And after all, we are apt to baptize our sufferings, which have been the effects of our pride and passion, with the glorious name of persecution, and that exasperateth our spirits, and we think it is but a duty to call for fire from heaven. We know not what manner of spirits we are of. An angry zeal hath the less of God in it, because it is so hastily kindled and so hardly suppressed.

[2.] As to undue carriage of brethren: James v. 10, 'Grudge not one against another, brethren;' μὴ στενάξτε, groan not. When they should commend each other to the grace of God, they groan one against another. We should willingly bury the remembrance of their injuries. There cannot be unity, sympathy, brotherly love amongst the Lord's people, unless there be a heart to pity the infirmities of one another, and a proneness of spirit to do good contrary to what they deserve at our hands.

Quest. But is it not lawful to pray for revenge? Zechariah, when he was stoned between the temple and the altar, said, 'The Lord look upon it and require it,' 2 Chron. xxiv. 22; and David in the psalms prays that God would not pardon his enemies.

Ans. We cannot always imitate what the prophet did, who could know by special revelation who had sinned unto death, and therefore cannot use these imprecations unless conditionally. Their curses were predictions, and uttered by the spirit of prophecy, not by any private spirit. Meek and humble addresses to God, and wrestling for their good, suit better with us and the example of Jesus Christ: 1 Peter iii. 9, 'Not rendering evil for evil, or railing for railing, but contrariwise blessing, knowing that ye are thereunto called, that ye should inherit a blessing.' It is more suitable to christianity to wish good to them that curse and injure you. If you will not imitate Christ, you are none of his disciples, nor will he be your Saviour, nor must you think to live and reign with him in heaven. You must overcome yourself, and corrupt nature, that thirsteth after revenge: Prov. xvi. 32, 'He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city.' Overcome and shame the party that doeth the wrong: 1 Sam. xxiv. 17, 'And he said to David, Thou art more righteous than I, for thou hast rewarded me good, whereas I have rewarded thee evil.' Look upon them as objects of pity and compassion rather than of passion and anger: Eph. i. 32, 'Be ye kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.' Consider what God hath done to you that you may do the same to them.

Secondly, The next consideration of this prayer of Christ is as a taste and pledge of his mediation and intercession. So it is prophesied, Isa. liii. 12, 'He was numbered with the transgressors, and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.' Christ was placed in the midst of thieves, as the first clause is explained, Mark xv. 28; and he made intercession, that is, prayed for his persecutors. The whole chapter is a prophetic narration of the acts and sorrows of Christ upon the cross. In this public sense and consideration, let us see what may be gathered out of the clause, 'Father, forgive them.'

1. It is an instance of Christ's love and bowels to sinners; he loved mankind so well that he prayed for them that crucified him. Look on the Lord Jesus as praying and dying for enemies, and improve it as a ground of confidence. Upon the cross he would give us an instance of his efficacy in converting the thief, and of his affection in praying for his persecutors. We were as great enemies to Christ, and as deep in the guilt of his passion, as they: Rom. v. 10, 'When we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son.' The enemies of his kingdom are every way as bad as the enemies of his person. If Christ did not say, 'Father, forgive,' what would become of us? You will say, We are christians; but scandalous sinners renew his sufferings, and 'put him to an open shame,' Heb. vi. 6. Oh, let us adore God for these experiences! It is a mighty ground of hope that Christ hath put in for a pardon; he would not die till he had expressed his reconciliation with his enemies.

2. See what is the voice and merit of his sufferings, 'Father, forgive them.' This is the speech that Christ uttered when he was laid on the cross. The apostle compareth Christ's blood and the blood of Abel: Heb. xii. 24, 'And to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than the blood of Abel.' Abel's blood was clamorous in the ears of God: Gen. iv. 10, 'The voice of thy brother's blood crieth to me from the ground;' and so in the conscience of Cain it crieth, Avenge! avenge me! Christ's blood hath another voice, it speaketh to God to pacify his wrath, and to pardon us, if penitent and believing sinners; it speaketh to conscience to be quiet, God hath found out a ransom. The blood of Christ may speak against us as well as against the Jews, for by our sins we made Christ to die. Oh, be not quiet till it speak peace in your consciences. Christ's blood was spilt in malice, as Abel's was, and might have cried for vengeance on the actors, who were not only the Jews, but we, and it yet speaketh as Abel's did: Heb. xi. 4, 'By it he, being dead, yet speaketh.' It is a speaking blood, and is yet speaking. The speaking of the blood is interpreted according to the words in their mouth wherewith they died: Mat. xxiii. 35, 'That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zecharias the son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the porch and the altar.' Our Lord gathers it from Zecharias' saying, 'The Lord look upon it and require it,' 2 Chron. xxiv. 22. So the words of Christ interpret his death.

3. In the mediatory consideration it hinteth the coupling of his intercession with his satisfaction. On the cross, there he dieth and there he prayeth; he was both priest and sacrifice. The high priest under the law was not only to slay the sacrifice, but to intercede for the people; first the beast was slain without the camp, and then the blood was carried into the holy of holies, and there prayer was made with incense; but before that, Aaron, when he was going into the holy place before the Lord, was to cause the sound of his golden bells to be heard under pain of death, Exod. xxviii. 35. To this I parallel this action of Christ upon the cross. This prayer was as the sound of the golden bells; he would make his voice to be heard by prayer, and then he goes into the holy of holies; the Lord Jesus Christ, when he shed his blood before the tribunal of God, he sendeth forth a prayer. God would have our salvation carried on in a way of mercy and justice, and Christ was to mingle entreaty with satisfaction; as, Lev. xvi. 14, the high priest was to bring the blood within the veil, and to sprinkle it upon the mercy-seat. He must satisfy justice and make an address to mercy, that we that have sinned with both hands may take hold of God with both hands: Rom. iii. 24, 'Being justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Jesus Christ;' it is 'freely,' and yet 'through the redemption that is in Jesus Christ;' these two sweetly accord.

4. This is a pledge of his constant intercession in heaven. The ceremonies of the old law were not only types of Christ, but his visible actions were a kind of types and pledges of his spiritual actions, 1 John ii. 1, 'If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.' He that could pray for enemies will pray for friends, and he that got our pardon by his intercession will promote our salvation. Certainly Christ's glorified soul loseth no affection; he is as earnest with the Father for his friends as ever he was upon the cross for his persecutors: Heb. ix. 24, 'For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us.' Christ doth appear as our advocate in court, not only in our name, but in our stead.

5. It shows the nature of his intercession. It not only implies the everlastingness of his merit, that his blood doth continue to deserve such things at the hands of God as we stand in need of, but it is a continual representation of his merit; it is not a metaphor, but a solemn act of his priesthood. Again, it is not by verbal expressions, such as he used hereupon earth, 'Father, forgive them;' his became the state of his humiliation; but now he intercedes non voce, sed miseratione, not by voice, but by pity. What is it then? Partly his appearing in heaven as God in our nature: Heb. ix. 24, 'Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands,' &c., 'but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us.' He is said to appear before God for us, as the high priest came and presented himself before God with the names of the twelve tribes engraven on his breastplate. Partly in his expressing an actual willingness, or the desires of his holy soul concerning our salvation: John xvii. 24, 'Father, I will that those whom thou hast given me may be with me where I am;' and so he appears in our names, as well as in our nature. Partly by some acts or adoration of the sovereign majesty of God; some address to God there is: John xiv. 16, 'I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another comforter, that he may abide with you for ever.' He doth not only ask the enlargement of his own kingdom: Ps. ii. 8,

'Ask of me, and I will give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession;' but the pardon, comfort, peace, and supply of particular persons: 1 John ii. 1, 'If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.' Partly in his presenting our prayers and supplications: Rev. viii. 3, 'And another angel came and stood at the altar, having a golden censer; and there was given unto him much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne;' and therefore he is called 'a minister of the sanctuary,' Heb. viii. 2. This is the nature of Christ's intercession.

6. The success of Christ's intercession, 'Father, forgive them.' Was he heard in this? Yes; this prayer converts the centurion, and those, Acts ii. 41, above 'three thousand,' and presently after five thousand more, Acts iv. 4. In the compass of a few days above eight thousand of his enemies were converted. Christ is good at interceding; his prayers are always heard: John xi. 42, 'I knew that thou hearest me always.' And therefore let us seek no other mediator; God cannot deny his own Son. Jesus Christ the righteous intercedes for us; let us put all our requests into his hands.

II. I come now to the argument used, 'They know not what they do.' But you will say, Christ elsewhere complaineth of his enemies, that they know him, and refused him out of malice: John xv. 24, 'Now they have both seen and hated both me and my Father;' and therefore he saith, they had no cloak for their sin, but were utterly without excuse, for they could not plead ignorance.

Ans. 1. This is not spoken of all, but of some only. The greatest part were moved with the command, authority, and persuasion of the priests, or blinded with a false zeal to preserve their old religion, and so thought they did God service in crucifying Christ. Those that sinned out of malice, Christ had told them their doom before: Mat. xii. 32, 'Whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come.'

2. They knew him to be a just man, though they knew him not to be the Lord of glory, and that he did many signs which the prophets foretold should be done by the Messias; and therefore at least that he was a great prophet, and as such they should have reverenced and received him, so that they had the less cloak for their sin.

3. Christ excused not a toto, but a tanto, not altogether, but only showeth that they were capable of pardon because of their ignorance. Christ excuseth the sin of his enemies in that manner that he could excuse them; he could not altogether excuse the injustice of Pilate, nor the cruelty of the soldiers, nor the envy of the chief priests, nor the folly and unthankfulness of the people, nor the perjury of the false witnesses; all that he could plead was some ignorance of the dignity of his person: 1 Cor. ii. 8, 'Which none of the princes of this world knew, for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.' The chief men of the Jews did not understand the mystery of redemption, and many were ignorant, not only of the divinity of Christ, but his innocency also: 'They know not what they do.'

Doct. There is a difference between sinners, and it is a more dangerous thing to sin against knowledge than out of ignorance.

1. Some sin wittingly and wilfully, as Cain, Saul, Judas, &c., who against the apparent light of their consciences venture upon the foulest actions.

2. Others sin out of ignorance; either they do not certainly know what they do to be sin, or do not expressly consider it. So Paul in persecuting the church of God: 1 Tim. i. 13, 'Who was before a persecutor, and a blasphemer, and injurious; but I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly, in unbelief.'

3. Some sin knowingly indeed, but out of infirmity, either arising from some great fear of danger and present death, as Peter denied his master; it is done with a troubled mind: these may be recovered to God, but with difficulty. Or else they are hurried to evil by the baits of the flesh, and pleasing temptations: James i. 12, 'Every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed.' Now their case cannot easily be spoken to, for it needs much discussion. It may be by surprisal, and that for one act, and none of the grossest: Gal. vi. 1, 'Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye that are spiritual restore such an one in the spirit of meekness.' The devil many times leaveth no time for deliberation, and bringeth his tempting baits not to the fore-door of reason, but to the back-door of sensual appetite, which being in a rage, blindeth the mind. But if they sin with a strong will, their case is more dangerous; especially if they live and lie in sin after many experiences of the evil of it, their condition is deplorable.

This foundation being laid, let us see how far ignorance excuseth from sin.

[1.] Whatever sin we commit, it is sin, and of itself deserveth damnation. Sin is not determined to be sin by its being voluntary or involuntary, but by its contrariety to the law of God: 1 John iii. 4, 'Sin is the transgression of the law.' Therefore the causal particle for in the text doth not show the reason of pardon, but the capableness of pardon. So Paul's ignorance was not the cause of God's mercy, for sin cannot be the cause of mercy, but only the occasion of it. The nature of sin is not determined by the voluntariness of it, but only the degree of it.

[2.] Ignorance is either antecedent, concomitant, or consequent.

(1.) Antecedent, going before the act, as in the generality of the Jews: Acts iii. 17, 'And now, brethren, I wot that through ignorance ye did it, as did also your rulers.' Out of ignorance and blind zeal they crucified him whom God did make both Lord and Christ.

(2.) Concomitant. A man hath knowledge, but useth it not for the present. It is one thing to sin with knowledge, and another thing to sin against knowledge; he that hath knowledge, but for the present may be blinded by his lusts and carnal affections, sinneth not against knowledge directly, but collaterally only, as he that stealeth or committeth adultery doth not this for sin's sake (for none can will evil as evil), but he only attendeth to the profit and pleasure that is in adultery and theft, but shutteth the eyes of his mind against the filthiness or injustice that is in it; and therefore he is like a man that leapeth from an high place into the water, who first shutteth his eyes, and then casts himself into the flood or stream.

(3.) Consequent ignorance is after the sin or act of the will, either from the depraved disposition of the will: John iii. 20, 'For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved;' or from the just judgment of God: John ix. 39, 'For judgment I am come into the world, that they which see not might see, and that they which see might be made blind.' God inflicts a judicial blindness on men that will not obey the truth.

[3.] Ignorance is either invincible or vincible.

(1.) Invincible ignorance is when there is not sufficient revelation, when it is a thing we should know, but God hath not brought light among us. Thus the heathens are punished for not glorifying God, whom they knew by the light of nature: Rom. i. 21, 'When they knew God, they glorified him not as God;' not because they believed not in Christ, for he was not revealed unto them; but christians shall be punished for not obeying the gospel: 2 Thes. i. 8, 'In flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.'

(2.) Vincible ignorance is when there are plentiful means and great helps to overcome it; then is our ignorance more culpable. This is seen when either ignorance is voluntary and pertinacious, or when there is gross negligence. When it is voluntary: 2 Peter iii. 5, 'For this they are willingly ignorant of.' That they may sin more freely and securely, they will not know what may disturb or trouble their sleep in sin: Job xxi. 14, 'Therefore they say unto God, Depart from us, for we desire not the knowledge of thy ways.' The psalmist says of them, Ps. xcv. 10, 'It is a people that do err in their hearts; they have not known my ways.' They err in their hearts as well as in their minds; when they do not desire to know what they should know, this ignorance is voluntary. Or else it is bewrayed by gross negligence, when a man doeth a thing that, if he were not grossly negligent, he might know to be sin: Eph. iii. 15-17, 'See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise; redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is.' A christian is bound to use all holy means to know all things that belong to his duty, and must bestow much time and diligence upon it. If he is grossly ignorant, it is a sign he hath a mind to put a cheat upon his soul.

Use. Let us beware of sin against knowledge; these sins, of all others, are the most dangerous, whether they be sins of omission; to omit duties that we know to be duties, this is very dangerous: James iv. 17, 'Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin;' or sins of commission, to commit sins that we know to be sins: Rom. ii. 21, 22, 'Thou therefore which teachest another, teachest thou not thyself? Thou that preachest a man should not steal, dost thou steal? Thou that sayest a man should not commit adultery, dost thou commit adultery? Thou that abhorrest idols, dost thou commit sacrilege?' To commit sins that we know to be sins is to involve ourselves in wrath and vengeance. Have a care then of these sins; if you are guilty of them, it cannot be pleaded for you, 'Father, forgive them; they know not what they do.'

He said, It is finished; and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.—JOHN XIX. 30.

THIS is one of the seven words which Christ uttered upon the cross, the last save one; for before his bowing of the head, and giving up the ghost, those words must come in which are mentioned Luke xxiii. 46, 'Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit; and having said thus, he gave up the ghost.'

To make way for these words, we need go no further back than the 28th verse. It is said there, 'After this Jesus, knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled, said, I thirst;' where we may observe—

1. The exact knowledge which Christ had of all his sufferings: 'He knew that all things were accomplished;' namely, all the preparative sufferings which were to usher in his death. All these bitter sorrows were numbered out to him by the divine decrees, and pre-signified in the prophecies; Jesus knew all the exact tale and account of them; a circumstance that doth much commend his love to us. Christ knew how dear the bargain of souls would be to him, and yet he would show his obedience to the Father and his love to mankind. He long since sat down and counted the charges, and yet he came to do his Father's will. When a business proveth hazardous and inconvenient, we are apt to say, If I had known it would have cost me so much, I should never have undertaken it. Christ went not to the cross blindfold; he knew the work of our redemption would be troublesome and painful; that he was to give his back to the smiters, and his cheeks to the nippers; that he was to be hurried from the garden to the courts of men, from the courts of men to the cross, and there to endure acute pains and torments: Jesus knew that all these things were to be fulfilled.

2. Observe, it is said he knew 'they were accomplished.' Christ had a lively feeling of every part of his sorrows, and his senses remained in full vigour to the last, and without any stupefaction. He knew what hour the clock of the divine decree would next strike, or what was the next circumstance whereby he was to discover himself to be the true Messiah. David saith, 'Died Abner as a fool dieth?' 2 Sam. iii. 32. We may say so, Died the Lord Jesus as a fool dieth, in a stupid senseless way, or as one merely passive? Extremity of pain had now surprised the thieves which were crucified with him; we hear no more of them; but Christ's reason and senses are still exercised, and his sorrows made more active by his own apprehension.

3. Observe, 'That the scriptures might be fulfilled, he said, I thirst.' By fulfilling another prophecy God discovereth another note whereby the Messiah might be known. All the passages of Christ's death were appointed with infinite wisdom and love; either they were such as were necessary parts of redemption, or some indications whereby the Messiah fore-prophesied of might be discovered. Here is another prophecy fulfilled in Christ's thirst. The prophecies alluded to are two: one is Ps. xxii. 15, 'My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws; thou hast brought me to the dust of death.' The other prophecy hinteth the act of the Jewish malice: Ps. lxix. 21, 'They gave me also gall for my meat, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.' Here was light enough, or conviction sufficient for any but those who resolved to shut their eyes.

4. He said, 'I thirst.' He had spent much time in watching, lost much blood, his body was tortured with extreme pain, and his soul scorched with a sense of God's wrath; and therefore well might be cry out, 'I thirst.' It is notable that Christ would not declare his thirst till he knew that all things were accomplished; that is, every sad accident except his death. Certainly if we consider the agonies of the garden, where he excerned blood instead of sweat, his scourging, his being buffeted with the soldiers, his bearing the cross, all this might make him thirst before; but when wine mingled with myrrh, a stupefying potion, was tendered to him before, he refused it: Mark xv. 23, 'And they gave him to drink wine mingled with myrrh, but he received it not.' But now, when all was accomplished, he saith, 'I thirst.' He would take no natural refreshment till he had borne all our griefs and sorrows, and every sad passage by which he might promote our comfort was accomplished. He was so mindful of us that he forgot himself. He saith that it was meat to him to do his Father's will: John iv. 34, 'My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work.' Though the cross-work was sad work, yet that was as drink to Christ. After he had sweltered under the torment of so many hours' drouth, he crieth out, 'I thirst.' Christ would make his sufferings as full of merit as possibly he could, and therefore would not receive the least draught of comfort till he had paid our whole debt. We 'do evil with both hands earnestly,' Micah vii. 3, and fill our actions with as much disobedience and rebellion as we can possibly put into them: 'Behold thou hast spoken, and done evil things as thou couldst,' Jer. iii. 5. Sin hath not been cheap to us; we have bought the pleasure of it at a dear rate, with much loss and self-denial; and therefore Christ's sufferings were made as high and extreme as possibly they could be.

Let us now see what they did to Christ when he had declared the extremity of his thirst: 'Now there was set a vessel full of vinegar, and they filled a sponge with vinegar, and put it upon hyssop, and put it to his mouth,' ver. 29. This fact of theirs is diversely construed; some say, they did it out of kindness, and that it was usual to provide a vessel of vinegar, and to have it at hand under the cross of those that were executed; this is probable: others think it an act of spite and malice, partly because it is made an exaggeration of calamity: Ps. lxix. 21, 'In my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink;' and partly because their courtesy to the dying was to give wine and myrrh, and therefore it is said: Prov. xxxi. 6, 'It is not for kings to drink wine, nor for princes strong drink;' and ver. 6, 'Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish, and wine to those that be of an heavy heart;' that is to say, it is not for the judge, but the condemned; and they mingled it with myrrh and hot spices, partly to attenuate the blood, and so to despatch them the sooner, and partly to cause giddiness, that their senses might be the sooner gone. But now, instead of wine and myrrh they gave Christ vinegar and gall to increase his misery; and they prepared it in readiness in case he called for the usual refreshment. And the conjecture of the Carthusian is not amiss, who imputeth it to the malice of the soldiers to change the wine prepared by the charitable women into vinegar, for the greater spite and mockage. And it is said, 'They filled a spunge with vinegar, and put it upon hyssop.' The other evangelists say, 'They put it upon a reed;' and it is hard to conceive then how they could put it upon hyssop. It is probable that hyssop in these countries was tall, as mustard-seed is said to grow up into a tree; and Pliny saith they made staves of mallows in Arabia, which with us is but a slender herb; but hyssop is put for a shrub. Solomon wrote of all herbs, from the cedar to the hyssop, but that is wall-hyssop, which is dwarfish and tender, as ours is.

Observe, when Christ stood in our stead, no comfort was granted to him but what was devised to augment his grief. When his strength was dried up like a potsherd, and his tongue cleaved to his jaws, 'They gave him vinegar to drink,' when he was providing for us a cup of blessings, a torrent and a river of pleasure, of which we might drink: ver. 30, 'When he had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished; and he bowed the head, and gave up the ghost.' When he had received it, that is, tasted it, for they put it into his mouth with a spunge on the top of a reed, then he said, 'It is finished;' that is, as much as was necessary for his humiliation, God's glory, and man's salvation; as much as was decreed, as much as was foretold. And he saith, 'It is finished,' because he was now upon the last work, death, which was coming upon him; and therefore foldeth it in the expression with what is past, 'It is finished,' because the last act was at hand: Mat. xxvi. 28, 'This is my blood of the new testament, which is shed;' that is, which is about to be shed: John xvii. 4, 'I have finished the work thou gavest me to do.' All the sufferings were now completed at death, which he was to suffer for our sins.

Doct. Christ closed not his sufferings till all was finished which he had to do for us.

1. In what sense it is said, 'It is finished.'

2. The evidences and reasons thereof.

3. What comfort this is to the faithful.

I. In what sense it is said, 'It is finished.'

1. All the scripture prophecies which spake of Christ's death and sufferings were now fulfilled and accomplished; as that he should make his entrance into Jerusalem upon an ass in all humility; this was prophesied of the Messiah: Zech. ix. 9, 'Behold thy king cometh unto thee; he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt, the foal of an ass;' and fulfilled by Christ, Mat. xxi. 4, 5, 'All this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, Tell ye the daughter of Sion, Behold the king cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt, the foal of an ass.' That he should be betrayed by one of his familiars, his own disciple: Ps. lv. 12, 13, 'It was not an enemy that reproached me; then I could have borne it: neither was it he that hated me that did magnify himself against me: but it was thou, a man, mine equal, my guide, and my acquaintance.' So Ps. xli. 9, 'Yea, mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread, hath lift up his head against me;' which was fulfilled, Mat. xxvi. 23, 'He that dippeth his hand with me in the dish, he shall betray me;' and accordingly Judas came to attack him, Mat. xxvi. 47. That he should be sold for thirty pieces of silver: Zech. xi. 12, 'So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver.' Fulfilled, Mat. xxvi. 15. That with these thirty pieces of silver there should be bought afterwards a field of potsherds: Zech. xi. 13, 'And the Lord said unto me, Cast it unto the potter: and I took the thirty pieces of silver, and cast them to the potter in the house of the Lord.' Fulfilled, Mat. xxvii. 7, 'And they took counsel, and bought with them the potter's field, to bury strangers in.' That being apprehended, he should be most barbarously entreated by the Jews, and be beaten and buffeted, and his face defiled with spitting, according to that of Isaiah the prophet: Isa. l. 6, 'I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair; I hid not my face from shame and spitting.' Fulfilled, Mat. xxvi. 67, 'Then did they spit in his face, and buffet him, and others smote him with the palms of their hands.' That they would wound, rend, and tear his body with scourges before they put him to death: Isa. liii. 5, '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.' Fulfilled, Mat. xxvii. 26, 'When he had scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified.' And they did at length put him to death according to the prophecy: 'The Messiah was to be cut off, but not for himself,' Dan. ix. 26. That the death that he should die was the death of the cross, unto which he was nailed hand and foot according to that of David: Ps. xxii. 16, 'They pierced my hands and my feet;' and that of Zech. xii. 10, 'They shall look upon me whom they have pierced.' Fulfilled, Luke xxiii. 33, 'And when they were come to Mount Calvary, there they crucified him.' That he was crucified between two malefactors, one on the right hand and the other on the left, according to that of Isa. liii. 12, 'He was numbered with the transgressors;' Luke xxii. 37, 'For I say unto you, that this which is written must yet be accomplished in me; And he was reckoned among transgressors, for the things concerning me have an end.' He was to pray for his enemies and persecutors, according to that of Isa. liii. 12, 'He made intercession for the transgressors;' and this was fulfilled in that prayer, Luke xxiii. 24, 'Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.' So Ps. lxix. 21, 'In my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.' Fulfilled as before.

That they should divide his apparel, and cast lots for his upper garment: Ps. xxii. 18, 'They part my garment among them, and cast lots upon my vesture.' Fulfilled, Mat. xxvii. 35, 'And they crucified him, and parted his garments, casting lots.' Well, then, all these particulars foretold of the Messiah were exactly fulfilled in our Saviour, and so conduce to settle our hearts in believing his person and office. Well, then, might he say now, 'It is finished.'

2. That the substance of the types were accomplished in him, as that of the brazen serpent, the paschal lamb, the daily and yearly sacrifices, the offering of Isaac; all which prefigured that Christ should die for the sins of the world. As Abraham offered his only son Isaac to God as a proof and demonstration of his faith and obedience: 'Now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, from me,' Gen. xxii. 12; so God gave his Son as a proof and demonstration of his love: 1 John iv. 10, 'Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be a propitiation for our sins.' Isaac carried the wood to the sacrifice of himself, so did Christ his cross. The lifting up of the brazen serpent in the wilderness, that whosoever looked upon it should be healed: Num. xxi. 9, 'And Moses made a serpent, and put it upon a pole; and it came to pass that if any serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived;' this figured Christ lifted up upon the cross, that all those bitten by the old serpent might by looking be cured: John iii. 14. 15, 'And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.' The paschal lamb was slain just at the time when Christ died, and his flesh eaten, not a bone broken, John xix. 33; his blood sprinkled on the door-posts; all which were accomplished in Christ, who is 'the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world,' John i. 29. The daily sacrifice was offered morning and evening, to show our daily use of Christ, who was 'a lamb without spot and blemish,' 1 Peter i. 19. The anniversary sacrifice of the two goats on the day of expiation, Num. xvi., when there was a live goat to be sent into the wilderness, and the other was slain, and Aaron was to put both his hands upon the head of the scape-goat, confessing the sins of the people, and that scape-goat was to carry all their sins into the land of forgetfulness; all which signified the expiation of all our sins by Christ dying for our offences, and rising again for our justification. For the scape-goat was sent into the wilderness far from the sanctuary, to show that all our sins are put far away out of God's sight; the other goat is said to be kept for the Lord, that it might be slain, and be offered to him for sacrifice upon the altar. Well, now, these and all other types were finished, that is, obtained their end and accomplishment.

3. All was finished that was necessary to make him a fit pattern of patience to us; for he had borne the extremity of his enemies' malice, all that man or devils could by the permission of God execute upon him; for he saith, Luke xxii. 53, 'This is your hour, and the power of darkness.' Yea, he had drunk up the cup which the Father had put into his hands, to the very dregs. One end of Christ's death was to give us an example: 1 Peter ii. 21, 'Christ also suffered for us, VOL. XIX.

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leaving us an example, that we should follow his steps.' Now here is a full copy and pattern of the right way of suffering for all his own to imitate.

[1.] From the matter. Are you tempted and opposed by Satan and his instruments? so was Christ. Have you discountenance from men? Christ had much more. Doth God seem to forsake you? so he did by Christ. Are you fain to lie on your knees crying for mercy? Christ 'in the days of his flesh offered up prayers and supplications, with strong cries and tears, to him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared,' Heb. v. 7. Are you mocked, reviled, buffeted, contumeliously used? so was Christ. Are you scourged, put to death by violence? so was Christ.

[2.] From the manner; with meekness and constancy. With meekness, not as swine, but as sheep: Isa. liii. 7, 'As a sheep before the shearer is dumb, so he opened not his mouth;' 1 Peter ii. 23, 'Who when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously.' Though he had not in the least kind offended either God or man, yet he was handled as a sinner; and when foul crimes were laid to his charge, he did not repay his slanderers in their own coin, but resigned himself to God to deal with him and his persecutors as he saw fitting; he vented no carnal passion. So for constancy; he continued till all was finished, and 'became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross,' Phil. ii. 8. When he was tempted to descend from the cross, he would not, but stayed there as long as it was necessary; to show us that we should not descend from our cross, and free ourselves from tribulation by sin till all be finished. If God keepeth us long in an oppressed state without relief or deliverance, do not make haste, but tarry his leisure. If by providence you are unequally yoked, bear your cross as long as God seeth fit to continue it to you. If it be a long imprisonment, a long tedious sickness, or any other affliction, do not descend from your cross till God take it off, and help not yourselves by sin out of affliction.

[3.] From the end; the bitterest trouble will at length have an end. Christ was a man of sorrows all his days, tempted, despised, persecuted, censured, scourged, crucified, but at length the τετέλεσται, 'It is finished,' cometh, and there is a kind of triumph over all his enemies and calamities; to teach us to finish our course with perseverance and patience, that at the last we may say we are come to the end of our sorrows. His laborious pilgrimage was now over, and there will a time come when ours shall be over also. Christ's life was a continual cross and constant affliction, but at length all was finished, and the sorrows of thirty-three years recompensed with glory and honour, and great fruit and success in the affairs of his kingdom. What is a little momentary suffering to the rest of eternity? For a little while he was the despising of men, and the leaving-off of the people; but afterwards God exalted him, and gave him a name above all names. The perfidious Jews rejoiced for a while, but a sad reckoning came afterwards. Judas had small time to enjoy his thirty pieces; Pilate within a while rued his facility and yielding to the importunity of the Jews. But as to afflictions holily suffered, stay a little, and all the bitter part will be over.

4. All was fulfilled which God determined to be done for the expiation of sin; so that no more ransom is to be paid; our debt is satisfied: divine justice hath no more demand to us; sin, Satan, and death are spoiled and disarmed, and way is made for our salvation to be owned, as coming from Christ alone. This is the main circumstance, and therefore I shall explain it a little—(1.) Negatively; (2.) Positively.

[1.] Negatively; and there—(1.) In regard of Christ himself; and (2.) In respect of us.

(1.) In regard of Christ himself. Not as if all the necessary acts of his mediation were now past. Death was just at hand, and was comprised in the expression; his lying in the grave was but the continuation of his abasement, till the time of his exaltation should come. But in the way of satisfying justice he had no more to do; whatever was done afterwards was by way of reward, not to satisfy justice, but to satisfy the world of the dignity of his person. He was to rise from the dead, and ascend into glory; that is, for our more abundant comfort. His resurrection was his solemn acquittance; our surety was let out of prison: Rom. iv. 25, 'Who was delivered for our offences, and rose again for our justification.' His ascension was that we might have a friend at God's right hand to appear for us: Heb. viii. 1, 'We have such an high priest, who is set on the right hand of the throne of the majesty in the heavens;' Heb. ix. 24, 'For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us;' that being in a glorified and exalted condition, he might powerfully apply his purchase, and by his Spirit communicate the fruits thereof to believers. And he is to come to judgment, to bless and reward his people and to punish his enemies. But all the sufferings are now completed, or about to be completed, which he was to suffer for our sins.

(2.) In respect of us. It is not so finished but that something is to be done by the creature. Though the satisfaction be never so perfect, yet there is a necessity of application. The sacrifice and atonement is sufficient, but it must be applied in the way appointed by God. The means of applying are partly internal, which qualify the subject, and make us capable of the benefit of this atonement and satisfaction, which are faith and repentance, and also new obedience as the consequent of both; for repentance is a returning to our duty to God, and faith a thankful owning of our Redeemer, by whom we return; and if we are serious and real, all will end in new obedience and holiness, or else we are liable to wrath still. Faith is necessary: Rom. iii. 25, 'Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood.' Repentance is necessary: Acts iii. 19, 'Repent ye, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out.' New obedience is necessary: Heb. v. 9, 'He is become the author of eternal salvation to all that obey him.' And partly external, by the word and sacraments. The word: John xvii. 19, 'And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also may be sanctified through the truth.' The word calleth upon us to accept of Christ, and that life and mercy which is offered to us in him; the sacraments, which are baptism and the Lord's supper. By baptism we profess and are obliged to put on Christ: Gal. iii. 27, 'For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on

SERMON UPON JOHN XIX. 20.

Christ; or to apply him to ourselves as a garment to the body, that he may communicate to us his righteousness, life, and Spirit; and by the Lord's supper we come more abundantly to take part in this consolation: 1 Cor. x. 16, 'The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ?' The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?' that is, hereby we are solemnly made partakers of the body and blood of Christ, and the benefits purchased thereby.

[2.] Positively; that the work of our redemption, so far as related to sufferings, was now about to be consummated. Christ's sacrifice, which he was about to offer for us, was no imperfect sacrifice. This appeareth by his message to Herod: Luke xiii. 32, 'I do cures to-day and to-morrow, and the third day I shall be perfected;' that is, the work of his office was then fully to be accomplished: Heb. ii. 10, 'The captain of our salvation was made perfect through sufferings.' Christ as mediator seemed to lack something till the full number of his sorrows was accomplished; then he was perfectly fitted to do us good. So Heb. x. 14, 'By one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified.' As to an offering, there needeth no more. A patched salvation, of half of Christ and of half of the creature, will not do good; as if Christ must do a part and we must merit the rest; this is inconsistent with God's design. We must not part stakes with God; this is neither for our comfort, God's glory, nor our Redeemer's welcome to heaven. No; Christ is a workman that needeth not to be ashamed; he could avouch his work before the tribunal of God; all is finished. Now he can plead his right at the bar of justice: Ps. ii. 8, 'Ask of me, and I will give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.'

II. The evidences and reasons of this complete satisfaction.

1. From the dignity of the person satisfying. Two things are required in our mediator that he might be a sufficient undertaker for us. One is, that he should be perfectly holy and righteous; for how could he redeem us from sin, who, being defiled with sin, had needed to be redeemed himself? The second was, that he should be a divine and infinite person; for sin being committed against an infinite majesty, therefore the suffering by which it must be expiated must be of an infinite value. Now both these do perfectly concur in Christ; for as man, 'He was holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners,' Heb. vii. 26; and died, 'The just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God,' 1 Peter iii. 18. He was perfectly holy, even holiness itself: Luke i. 35, 'That holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.' As he was God over all, blessed for ever, he was capable to give a value to his sufferings; to which purpose God is said to purchase the church with his own blood: Acts xx. 28, 'Feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood.' In short, God was resolved to lose no glory by the fall; and therefore, whosoever was the redeemer, he was to restore what Adam took away by the fall. God's authority was violated by the creatures' transgression, whose command was just, and our obedience reasonable. Now it was meet that God should keep up the authority of his law. His majesty also was despised in slighting the threatening, and his holiness

SERMON UPON JOHN XIX. 39.

wronged, as if he did not hate sin; and his justice and truth, as if he would not punish it; his power lessened, for sin is an act of presumption, and implieth a contest with God. Now in all these respects it was necessary that God should vindicate his glory, and be no loser; which was fully brought to pass by Christ, to whom there is in scripture a double fulness and sufficiency attributed. A fulness of grace or holiness: 'For it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell, and by him to reconcile all things to himself,' Col. i. 19, 20. And therefore he is said, 'To be full of grace and truth, that of his fulness we may all receive, and grace for grace,' John i. 14, 16. Besides this, there is a 'fulness of the godhead that dwelt in him bodily,' Col. ii. 9. Not mystically and spiritually, as in believers; not symbolically, as in the sacraments; not typically, as in the law; but bodily, that is, really and personally, as body is opposed to shadow, or noteth a person. Well, then, the argument is strong. If the person satisfying were not only holy and undefiled, but also infinite, the satisfaction also must be infinite, and therefore most perfect and sufficient; for what can be greater and more perfect than what is infinite? And therefore all is finished; if such a person will take a body, and die for us, there needeth no other satisfaction.

2. I reason from the unity of the mediatory office, and that oblation or sacrifice which was made by Christ by virtue of that office: 2 Cor. v. 14, 'If one died for all, then were all dead;' 1 Tim. ii. 5, 'There is one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus.' And as these places prove that there is but one mediator, so there is but one sacrifice: Heb. x. 10, 'By the which will we are sanctified, through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all;' and ver. 14, 'For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified;' Rom. v. 18, 'By the righteousness of one, the free gift came upon all to justification of life;' Heb. ix. 26, 'But now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself;' ver. 28, 'So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many.' The scripture so emphatically insisting upon this term, 'once;' certainly all is finished; there needeth no more to be done by us to satisfy God's justice; that is sufficiently done already.

3. From the greatness of the punishment imposed upon Christ; for if he suffered all the punishments due to us, it cannot be that anything more should be done to pacify God; all is finished. Now Christ omitted none of those things which divine justice required: he 'fulfilled all righteousness,' Mat. iii. 15; 'Was obedient to death, even the death of the cross,' Phil. ii. 8. Yea, and suffered all those things which the law did put upon sinners, either as to loss or sense, as to desertion or as to the curse; and therefore he is said, 'To bear our griefs, and carry our sorrows, and to be wounded for our transgressions, and to be bruised for our iniquities,' Isa. liii. 4, 5; 'To be made a curse for us,' Gal. iii. 15; 'To be made sin for us,' 2 Cor. v. 21. God spared him not, but put him to grief, not out of hatred to his Son, but love to our salvation. Hence those agonies of Christ, and prayers, and tears, and strong cries.

4. From God's approbation of the person and sacrifice of Christ. If God did so far approve the sacrifice of Christ as willingly to accept it

SERMON UPON JOHN XIX. 29.

for our redemption, that upon it he grounded a covenant, and made offers of terms of grace to us, and reconciliation with us, there is no question but that upon Christ's death all was finished. No more was necessary for paying the price and ransom, for God, the most just judge, would not accept of an imperfect satisfaction, or give testimony that he was well pleased with it. But that Christ's person and sacrifice was approved of God is evident, not only as he appointed it; and surely he will accept what he hath appointed; not only also by the miracles which he wrought when alive, which evidenced his commission: Acts ii. 22, 'Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles, wonders, and signs, which God did by him in the midst of you;' but chiefly by the resurrection of Christ, which was not only a testimony of the truth and dignity of his person: Rom. i. 4, 'And declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead;' but it was a clear argument of the perfectness of his satisfaction; for unless he had abundantly satisfied God, how could God, who, as a just judge, had appointed him to die for our sins, raise him up from the dead? Would an upright judge deliver a debtor or his surety from prison unless first full payment had been made? Would God show himself willing to be reconciled to us if yet there remained any wrath to be appeased, any farther ransom necessary to be paid for us? Now in the scripture Christ is sometimes said to rise from the dead to show his divine power; sometimes to be raised by God to show the fulness of his satisfaction: Acts ii. 24, 'Whom God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that he should be holden of them.' When Christ was raised, our surety was let out of prison; and the scripture hath delivered it to us under that notion: Isa. liii 8, 'He was taken from prison, and from judgment, and who shall declare his generation? For he was cut off from the land of the living, for the transgression of my people was he stricken.' The Lord sent an angel to remove his gravestone, not to supply any lack of power in Christ, but to show he was fully appeased and satisfied. Therefore it is said, Heb. xiii. 20, 'Now the God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant.' Mark, through the blood of the everlasting covenant he is become the God of peace; through the blood of the everlasting covenant he brought Christ from the dead. He doth not only do us good, but lets go our surety through the virtue of that blood. The phrase of 'bringing again from the dead,' is emphatical. Christ did not break prison, but was brought forth as the apostles, Acts xvi. 39; the magistrates came to the prison 'and brought them out.' Christ rose not only by his own power, but by the Father's authority. If our surety had perished in prison, we could have no assurance; or if he had continued still under death, the world could have no discharge; but Christ rose again, and is not only taken out of prison, but carried up to God in glory and honour: I Tim. iii. 16, 'Received up into glory.' It is not ἀνέθη, actively he ascended, but ἀναλήφθη, passively he was raised up. God hath rewarded him; and therefore he hath perfectly done his work. God hath not only taken him out of the grave, but taken him up to glory. Certainly God is well pleased since he hath given him not only a discharge, but a reward. Christ undertaking for us is somewhat like that of Reuben for Benjamin: Gen. xliii. 9, 'I will be surety for him; of my hand shalt thou require him: if I bring him not unto thee, and set him before thee, then let me bear the blame for ever.' 'Let me see thy face no more.' Christ undertook to carry it through, and failed not in the enterprise.

III. What comfort is this to poor sinners, since, though there be a full satisfaction, conditions are required which we are not able to perform, ere we can have benefit; and we find sin remaining in us, so that it is finished, and unfinished as to us?

I answer—There is great comfort in God's general grace, before it be particularly applied and exhibited to us in the effects and sense thereof. A sufficient sacrifice and ransom given for you is the foundation of all solid peace, for it is the foundation of the gospel, or of the covenant of grace. I shall prove it by these reasons—

1. Because this answereth the grand scruple which haunteth the creature, and is at the bottom of all our fears; namely, how God's justice shall be appeased: Micah vi. 6, 7, 'Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the high God? Shall I come before him with burnt-offerings, with calves of a year old? will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? shall I give my first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?' The way of appeasing God's anger hath been an old controversy, that hath troubled all nations; and till it be answered and fully determined, man is not 'perfect as appertaining to the conscience,' Heb. ix. 9. Though God be infinitely merciful, yet he is infinitely just; and we can expect no more from his mercy than we may fear from his justice. Guilty nature still presageth evil to us, till there be something penal endured, and something of price and value given to appease justice.

2. That God now looketh for no satisfaction at your hand; it is all done perfectly by Christ; all is finished. He satisfied for us that we might not be obliged to satisfy in our own persons: Heb. i. 3, 'When he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high;' Isa. liii. 5, 'By his stripes we are healed.' It was at his cost that our recovery was brought about.

3. In this provision we see the will of God putting forth itself for our help in the most astonishing way that could be imagined: 1 Tim. iii. 16, 'Without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness, God manifested in the flesh;' 1 John iv. 10, 'Herein is love; not that we loved God, but God loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.' This is such an unusual expression of love, such an engaging instance, so much surpassing our thoughts, that we cannot sufficiently admire it. When God laid such a broad foundation, surely he intended some notable grace to us.

4. Here is a full answer to those usual objections which are raised by broken hearts, as the number, and greatness, and heinousness of our sins; for as such they shall not be your ruin. As great as they are, God can with honour pardon them; for barely to plead the number of sins or greatness of sins, is to lessen the price. The Messiah came, Dan. ix. 24, 'To finish transgression, and to make an end of sin, and to bring in everlasting righteousness.' There is no sin so great but the Redeemer's merit can countervail it. And no man shall perish for the want of the payment of his ransom, or an expiatory sacrifice for his sins. He may perish for his impenitency and unbelief, but not merely for the greatness of his sin; for what sin is so great that it is not or cannot be expiated by the blood of Christ? Christ's satisfaction maketh the salvation of the worst possible; you may have peace with God if you will.

5. It bindeth our duty the closer upon us. No man shall perish but for want of a willing heart to accept of the Redeemer, who hath paid our ransom, and of the grace which he hath brought to us, by which we may be interested and instated in the benefits of this ransom. All things are ready if we are ready: Luke xiv. 17, 'Come, for all things are now ready.' God's fatlings are killed, his wines are mingled; if we will not come to the feast, we perish through our own default. We need confer nothing; all is but to receive the benefits propounded and offered; victory over death, hell, sin, Satan, is ready; yea, heaven is ready, and all spiritual blessings are ready, if we are ready; for the merit and satisfaction of Christ is the great cause of all that blessedness which is offered to the creature. God hath opened the way to all; if they will not enter into it, they perish by their own default. He hath sent preachers into all the world: Mark xvi. 15, 16, 'And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, and he that believeth not shall be damned;' Titus ii. 11, 'For the grace of God, that bringeth salvation, hath appeared to all men.' Let us not refuse our cure, though we must take a bitter potion, though we must enter in by the strait gate of faith and repentance, and walk in the narrow way of self-denial, and all holy conversation, and godliness; yet because it is to life, and the legal exclusion is taken off, let us enter and walk in it. Indeed, if the door were shut against us by the sentence of the law, and there was no way to remove the bars and bolts, our excuse were more just, because then our condition would be hopeless. But now all is finished, salvation rendered possible; now God hath taken away the bars and bolts by which his law shut us out from all hope; let us not set up bars and bolts by our own unbelief and by our own cowardly fears. If man were not man, but a beast, a fool, or a madman, it might more excusably be allowed to them to be led by sense and appetite, and then it were an intolerable thing to crucify the flesh, with the affections thereof; but man, having reason, doth know, or may know, that this command of God is equal; that God doth not only require, but help us to perform it, and prevent us by his grace.

6. It doth not only bind our duty upon us, but it encourages us to repent and believe and obey; for Christ is 'able to save to the utmost all those that come to God by him,' Heb. vii. 25; and he is 'the author and finisher of our faith,' Heb. xii. 2; and doth 'give repentance as well as remission of sins,' Acts v. 31; 'For to you it is given, on the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake,' Phil. i. 29. The first grace is his gift, and his resolved gift to the elect, but all are to take their lot. If it were said to us alone that we should strive to enter in at the strait gate, or that we alone should deny ourselves, and take up our cross and follow him, it were hard; but when the same terms are propounded to all, and when many, young and old, rich and poor, have received them, and have tried God's ways, and it hath succeeded well with them upon trial, why should we fear it? If nobody had done it, or could do it, then we might stick at God's terms. This argument Austin used to himself in his conflicts of conscience, lib. viii. Confess. chap. 11. When he had long withstood offers of grace, he would then propound to himself the example of others: Cur non potcris quod isti, et iste? Isti et iste non in se pouterunt, sed in Domino Deo suo—Why may not I, as well as those holy men and those good women? They did it not in themselves, but in the strength of their God, and the power of his grace. The yoke of Christ will be more easy than we think of, especially when it is lined with grace.

7. When we have once accepted the condition, cleared up our title, then we shall have cause to glory in the Lord, and be sensible indeed that all things are finished which are necessary to our comfort and peace, and that this was a full merit; as Paul would glory in the cross of Christ: Gal. vi. 14, 'God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ;' Rom. viii. 1, 'There is now no condemnation to them which are in Christ.' Then we shall make the bold challenge of faith: Rom. viii. 33, 34, 'Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? it is God that justifieth; who is he that condemneth? it is Christ that died, yea, rather that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.' If Christ had not made a full expiation of all our sins, we were under condemnation still. He doth not say, There is nothing worthy of condemnation in believers; for as long as sin and the flesh remaineth in us (which doth as long as we live in the world), there is a potential guilt of damnation, an intrinsic merit in our actions of death and condemnation; yet the actual guilt or obligation is taken away, because Christ is made a curse for us. Well, then, our solid rejoicing to the last is in this complete satisfaction: Rom. v. 11, 'We rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have received the atonement; it is καυχώμενοι, we glory in God.

Use. Let this raise in us—

1. An hearty thankfulness and admiration of the love of Christ, who would not give over suffering till he could say, 'It is finished;' till he had done enough to glorify God and save the creature; enough for the destruction of sin, as well as the abolition of the curse. Christ did not compound, but paid the utmost farthing. Oh, let us raise our thoughts in the consideration of this love. His enemies interrupted him, and tempted him to give over: 'Save thyself; if thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross,' Mat. xxvii. 40, 42; 'If he be the king of Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him.' But because he was the Son of God and the king of Israel, he would not come down till he was taken down, and all was done that was necessary: 'All God's works are perfect,' Deut. xxxii. 4. The Father ceased not till, upon the sixth day, he had perfected the work of the creation, and upon the seventh day he rested; so Christ will not come down till he had finished the work of redemption on the sixth day, and on the seventh he rested in the grave, and rose early in the morning on the first day of the week, to show the truth of his satisfaction. And the Holy Ghost's work is perfect; all the time of this life he continueth increasing our graces, but in the everlasting sabbatism, when sin shall be no more, his work is brought to an end; and then he shall 'present you faultless before the presence of his glory, with exceeding joy,' Jude 24.

But what were the reasons why Christ would not give over till all was perfected?

[1.] Love to his Father: John xviii. 11, 'The cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?' Christ loved the Father with unspeakable love, and was in like manner beloved by him. Therefore when this cup was put into his hands by his Father, he would drink it off to the very bottom.

[2.] Love to the church: Eph. v. 25, 26, 'Even as Christ loved the church, and gave himself for it, that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water, by the word,' &c.; and Rev. i. 5, 6, 'To him who loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood.' The church was given for a spouse to Christ, but we were polluted and defiled with sin; he would not only cleanse it, but make it a 'glorious church, without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing,' Eph. v. 27. Christ loved the church, and therefore it was not grievous to him to wash it with his blood. Because Jacob loved Rachel, he served seven years for her in heats and frosts by night and day, and 'they seemed to him but a few days for the love he had to her,' Gen. xxix. 20; so the Son of God loved the church, and therefore endured all these indignities and grievous passions.

[3.] He had respect to that eminent glory set before him: Heb. xii. 2, 'Looking to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who, for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is now set down at the right hand of the throne of God.' Though the way was rough, the prize was excellent; and so he ran through all the pain and shame, and attained the eternal crown of glory. He endured cruel pains in his body, and bitter sorrows in his soul, such as never any man did suffer, never any angel could have borne as he did; so dear did it cost our Saviour to make a propitiation for our sins. That which in all this did strengthen and encourage him was the joy set before him, namely, that happy and glorious estate which followed upon his sufferings, so that his burden was made the lighter, and his sorrows much abated. Oh, let us think of this! It is not a lessening his love to us, for he needed not to put himself into this condition. Herein he was our example, to teach us how to sweeten the cross; and as our Mediator he is gone to heaven to prepare a place for us: John xiv. 2, 3, 'I go to prepare a place for you; and if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to myself, that where I am, there ye may be also.'

2. Let it raise in us a confidence of the benefits purchased. For Christ expresseth himself as a conqueror, and in a kind of triumph over the devil and all the enemies of our salvation. The wrath of God is appeased: Rom. v. 9, 'Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.' The law is satisfied: Gal. iv. 4, 5, 'God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law.' Satan is vanquished: John xii. 31, 'Now is the judgment of this world; now shall the prince of this world be cast out.' Guilt is removed: Eph. i. 7, 'In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace.' Sin is subdued: Rom. vi. 6, 'Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.' Death is unstinged: 1 Cor. xv. 55-57, 'O death! where is thy sting? O grave! where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law; but thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory, through our Lord Jesus Christ.' The curse is removed: Gal. iii. 13, 'Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us.' Surely where Christ beginneth he will make an end. We cannot have too high thoughts of the blood of Christ: Heb. ix. 13, 14, 'For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, cleanse your consciences from dead works, to serve the living God.' Let us stand still now, and behold the salvation of God, and echo to Christ's cry, 'It is finished! it is finished!' What can the law crave more than the blood of the Son of God? What will make us perfect as appertaining to the conscience if this will not? Being justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. Christ hath so far obtained pardon and acceptance for us, that he hath made an end of sin for all that are willing to accept of his grace upon God's terms.

3. Let it quicken us to perseverance in our duty, notwithstanding sufferings, till all be ended; that, when we come to die, we may be able to say, John xvii. 4, 'I have glorified thee on earth; I have finished the work thou gavest me to do;' 2 Tim. iv. 7, 8, 'I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness.' If Christ out of love to us would finish the work of our redemption, 'What shall separate us from the love of Christ?' Rom. viii. 39.

4. It teacheth us how to comfort ourselves in death. It finisheth all our labours and sorrows, as Christ showeth when he was about to give up the ghost: Isa. lvii. 2, 'He shall enter into peace; they shall rest in their beds.' Believers have a joy set before them as well as Christ. The wicked cannot say, 'It is finished;' their evils are then begun.

5. Let us believe things to come. The event showeth that all those things were true which the prophets had so long before foretold. The Holy Ghost cannot be deceived, nor can God lie. We are certain that things yet to come shall be fulfilled as well as these which are past. Those who lived before Christ's time had not such an experiment of God's truth as we have. We have seen the coming of Christ; let us so fix our minds on future things, as to draw them off from earthly.

He bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.—I come to the latter part of the text. Some read it that first he died, and then bowed the head, there being no spirit left to support it; but Christ first bowed the head, and then died; he did as it were beckon to death to come and do its office: 'He yielded up the ghost;' his soul was truly separated from his body. The form of resignation we have, Luke xxiii. 46, 'Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit.' Wicked men, because they die against their wills, their souls are said to be taken away: Luke xii. 20, 'Thou fool! this night thy soul shall be required of thee;' Job xxvii. 8, 'For what is the hope of the hypocrite, though he hath gained, when God taketh away his soul?' But Christ yieldeth it up; and for a godly man to give up the ghost noteth his faith, submission, and willingness to depart out of the body. As the prophet saith of Christ, Isa. liii. 12, 'He hath poured out his soul unto death.' Death did not surprise him.

Doct. When all things were finished, Christ freely and willingly gave up the ghost.

His life was not taken away, but resigned; there was much of violence, but no coaction. The term, giving up the ghost, doth not imply the bare death of Christ, but that he died willingly and freely. Nihil in hoc Christo est, nisi profusa liberalitas misericordiae, et remissionis peccatorum—I can see nothing in this Christ but a prodigality of love and mercy. He had freely emptied his veins in the garden; every pore became an eye, and wept blood for your sakes; and now he cometh to pour out his soul.

Reasons why Christ was so willing to die.

1. Out of obedience to his Father. The divine decrees had laid a necessity upon him, and where the Father saith, Must, Christ saith, I will: Mat. xxvi. 54, 55, 'Thinkest thou not that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?' (which was the just number of a Roman army): 'But how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?' Christ willingly took this necessity upon him; it was but necessitas ex hypothesi. Had it not been for his eternal consent it would never have been said, 'Thus it must be;' Luke xxii. 37, 'This that is written must be accomplished;' Luke xxiv. 46, 'Thus it is written, and thus it behoveth Christ to suffer.' It was a necessity of his own making; he was not compelled to accept of the conditions from God, nor forced by the violence of man to yield up his life: John x. 18, 'No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself; I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. This commandment have I received of my Father.'

2. Out of love to us. The Jews crucified him, but love made him die; we had else perished for ever. The law laid it upon us, but love made Christ take it upon himself: Isa. liii. 4, 'Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.' Justice demanded it of us, but Christ said, I will be responsible; exact it of me: Mat. xx. 28, 'Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.' He took life to lay it down at the demand of justice. Justice said, I must have a ransom; Christ said, Take it of me; let these go: Job xxxiii. 24, 'Then he is gracious unto them, and saith, Deliver him from going down to the pit; I have found a ransom.' The Father received it, and Christ paid it; as the angel said to Abraham, Gen. xxii. 12, 'Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou anything unto him.' Justice would have reached forth a deadly stroke to us, but Christ cateched the blow.

3. This would finish his labours. Death was Christ's last enemy, of his person, as well as of his kingdom. He had been harassed and worn out with sorrows; the grave was a place of rest; it was finished as to him: Isa. lvii. 2, 'He shall enter into peace; they shall rest in their beds.' Death was the end of Christ's journey, and all his labours in the flesh. The grave was a dark dismal place till Christ went into it; ever since it is but a chamber of rest, and Christ keepeth the key of it: Isa. xxvi. 20, 'Enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee; hide thyself, as it were, for a little moment.'

4. This furthered his triumph, and made it every way more complete. By dying, Christ carried the war into his enemies' land, and foiled death in its own territory, and made death itself mortal by lying in the grave. The cross and the grave were the means of Christ's triumph; by these the devil thought to foil him, and by these he triumphed: he conquered Satan and sin when they seemed to have most power upon him; like angry bees, they stung him, and disarmed themselves: Heb. ii. 14, 'That through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil;' Col. ii. 15, 'And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it,' ἐν αὐτῷ, i.e., σταυρῷ. On the cross: Eph. ii. 16, 'Having slain the enmity thereby;' that is, by his cross, formerly spoken of. When he was slain himself, then he slew death and the law. Christ's crucifying was his exaltation and preferment. It is twice expressed by lifting up: John iii. 14, 'So shall the Son of man be lifted up;' John xii. 32, 33, 'I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men after me. This he said, signifying what death he should die.' The grave was consecrated and sanctified by Christ's lying there. Duo in cruce affixi intelliguntur, saith Origen; Christus visibiliter sponte sua ad tempus, diabolus invisibiliter invitus in perpetuum—There were two crucified at once; Christ visibly of his own accord, for a time only; the devil invisibly, against his will for ever. Christ received a slight hurt in his heel, but he bruised Satan's head.

5. He was hastening to his own glory: Heb. xii. 2, 'For the joy that was set before him, he endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.' He was thinking of his welcome to heaven. Oh, what sweet embraces there would be between the Father and him! Ps. cx. 1, 'The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand till I make thy enemies thy footstool;' Dan. vii. 13, 14, 'I saw in the night-visions, and behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they brought him near before him; and there was given him dominion and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed.' How the angels should usher him into glory, though there were two left with shining garments to give satisfaction to his disciples! Acts i. 10, 11, 'While they looked steadfastly towards heaven as he went up, behold two men stood by them in white apparel, which said, Ye men of Galilee! why stand ye gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so return in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.' Christ was thinking how his Father would embrace him, put the crown upon his head, bid him sit down at his right hand, and how there he was to be royally attended. And this doth not derogate from his love to us, for he went to prepare a place for us, and, as our forerunner, is entered into glory, and because he lives, we shall live also.

Use 1. To commend the love of Christ to us.

1. That he should die, this was an incomparable condescension of his love. Simeon suffered himself to be bound for his brethren, Gen. xlii. 24; Lot proffers his daughters to save his guests, Gen. xix. 8; but Christ would lay down his life. If it were in our choice, who would die? Who would be tumbled into a pit of darkness, a cold hole, where he should see the sun no more? We would live for ever. It is not put to our choice, but it is in our wishes. But Christ might have chosen whether he would die or no, and yet he died.

2. Christ had more reason to love his life than we have. He had a delicate body, and the social presence of the Godhead. The poorest worm in the world desires to keep its life: Job ii. 4, 'Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life;' that is, a man would part with all, for skins were the barter of those days. And the more excellent the life is, the more desire men have to keep it; as young men, whose marrow is in their bones, to them life is life indeed. The woman that was broken and spent with old age yet spent ὕλον τὸν βιὸν, 'all her living on physicians,' Luke viii. 43. Christ had reason to love life upon a natural respect; he was about thirty-three years old; and upon a spiritual respect, his human nature enjoyed the near presence of the godhead; but when he was in his full vigour and strength, he willingly died.

3. That death which he died was a sad bloody death, the saddest death that any man could die. He was weakened with the agonies in the garden: 'They pierced his hands and his feet,' Ps. xxii. 16. The sinewy parts of his body were pierced with nails, his life dropping out by degrees; the irons opened a passage for his soul. And, which was more than all, he suffered under the wrath of God: Mat. xxvii. 46, 'My God! my God! why hast thou forsaken me?'

4. It was a shameful death; he suffered as a malefactor: Isa. liii. 12, 'He was numbered with the transgressors.' He was crucified between two thieves, in medio latronum, tanquam latronum maximus, as if he were the greatest of them. He was treated as a sinner; we are made the sons of God. Job was called hypocrite by his friends, but he would maintain his righteousness till death: Job xxvii. 6, 'My righteousness will I hold fast, and will not let it go; my heart shall not reproach me so long as I live.' Eusebius Vercellensis chose rather to starve in prison than that it should be said he had eaten with the Arians. Christ takes it patiently to die as a thief, an impostor, a traitor: John xviii. 30, 'If he were not a malefactor, we would not have delivered him up unto thee.' The high priest charged him with blasphemy: Mat. xxvi. 65, 'Then the high priest rent his clothes, saying, He hath spoken blasphemy; what further need have we of witnesses? Behold now ye have heard his blasphemy.' The disciples began to doubt of him, and to look on him as an impostor: Luke xxiv. 21, 'We trusted that it had been he that should have redeemed Israel.'

By God himself, when he had taken our sins upon him, he was dealt with as a transgressor: 1 Peter iv. 1, 'He that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin.' He was as a sinner before: Heb. ix. 28, 'So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many.' An ingenuous man valueth his good name above all enjoyments; there was enough to clear Christ's innocency, yet in the repute of the world he suffered as a malefactor. Oh, how unlike is Christ to the men of the world! Christ is innocent, and accounted a transgressor; they are transgressors, yet would fain be accounted innocent; as Saul said to Samuel, 1 Sam. xv. 30, 'I have sinned, yet honour me now, I pray thee, before the elders of my people, and before Israel.' We are more careful of credit than conscience, and would not be accounted sinners, yet do not fear to be so. What a comfort is this to believers, that Satan cannot lay more to your charge than his instruments did to Jesus Christ.

5. He submitted to this death most willingly. He thirsted, and longed to pay the ransom for us; here was not so much pain and shame as there was willingness: Gal. i. 4, 'Who gave himself for our sins.' There was not only the acts of the Father in giving Christ, but a peculiar act of Christ: 'He gave himself.' How freely did Christ empty his veins, and let out his soul! It was no more to Christ to pour out his soul than for the minister to pour out the wine. We pray as if we were afraid to be heard; we hear as if we were loath to be saved; we serve God as if we were loath to please him; there is a grudging in our acts of duty; but Christ was free, and willing to die for us.

6. His blood was spilt in malice; it might have cried for vengeance, yet it crieth for pardon; it had the perfume of an infinite merit: Heb. xii. 24, 'The blood of sprinkling speaketh better things than that of Abel.' As to Abel's blood, that crieth for vengeance: Gen. iv. 10, 'The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground.' Christ's blood cries for pardon. As to the actors, his blood would not have been a curse to them if they had hearkened to the voice of the gospel. But to speak of ourselves; we by our sins had made our Lord to serve and die, yet doth not his blood speak against us, as Abel's did against Cain; but it speaks to God, to pacify his wrath and to pardon us. Our sins cry, Lord, forgive not: Isa. ii. 9, 'The mean man boweth down, and the great man humbleth himself; therefore forgive them not.' They speak in our conscience, Ye deserve death; but Christ's blood speaketh words of peace and comfort to cleanse it, and make it quiet. When wrath is ready to break out from justice, it still crieth, Father, it is finished; Christ's blood yet speaketh. When the awakened conscience lies in fear of the offended judge, and is vexed with the restless accusations of Satan, the blood of Christ speaketh better things, viz., It is all forgiven; it is all expiated by my merit.

Use 2. This affords much comfort to humbled sinners. Take Christ as freely as he freely offereth himself for you. He resigned up himself to death, and will not you resign up yourselves by faith? He poured out his soul to death, and will not you pour out your souls into his bosom? Consider, all the persons of the Trinity are willing, and will not you? The Father gave him: John iii. 16, 'God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son.' Christ gave himself: Gal. ii. 20, 'Who loved me, and gave himself for me.' The Spirit is willing;

he is grieved with your neglect and refusal : Mat. xxiii. 37, 'How often would I have gathered thy children together as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, but ye would not!' Oh, pour out your souls in faith and prayer, as Christ did his upon the cross.

Use 3. Let us learn to imitate Christ. At the close of his life he said, 'It is finished,' and so 'bowed the head, and gave up the ghost.' Believers have a joy set before them as well as Christ. It is not so with wicked men; they cannot say that with them it is begun; their heaven endeth when they come to die; but God's people should take death cheerfully, if they can say, as Christ, John xvii. 4, 'Father, I have glorified thee on the earth, I have finished the work that thou gavest me to do.' Let the death be violent or natural, it is all one whether we are a peace-offering or a burnt-offering; there is more of man's malice in a violent death, but it cannot hurt us. But alas! men generally do not live as if they did look to die, and therefore they do not die as if they did look to live; and so here they would not die, and there they would not live.

But they sought out many inventions.—ECCLES. vii. 29.

THERE are two things in this scripture—

1. The righteousness of God in his work about men, 'God made man upright.'

2. Man's perverse subtlety in inventing ways of backsliding and apostasy from God, 'But they sought out many inventions.'

From this latter part observe—

Doct. That man fell from the integrity of his first estate, and is ever since full of evil and fruitless inventions.

I. I shall speak to this point as it is represented in the text.

II. Give some considerations as to the general case.

1. The persons, 'they.' The expression was singular before, 'God made Adam upright;' but now plural, not only to include both our first parents, but all their posterity. Adam had his invention, and all his posterity theirs. The devil inspired Adam with a sad and doleful invention, to go about to find out another happiness than God had appointed. Adam could not content himself with this kind of happiness, but fancied to himself an higher perfection, and yielded to follow these new devised ways of blessedness which Satan and his own deceived heart did suggest to him; and this invention hath invented and found out all the sin and misery under which the world groaneth. As Adam had his invention, so all his posterity theirs; we are inventing still to make ourselves more miserable. The least ebullitions of sin are expressed in the old testament by 'imaginations;' in the new by 'lusts.' In the old testament by 'imaginations;' Jer. xviii. 12, 'And they said, There is no hope; but we will walk after our own devices, and we will every one do the imagination of his evil heart;' Gen. vi. 5, 'And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.' In the new by 'lusts;' James i. 14, 'But every man is tempted when he is drawn away by his own lust and enticed;' Titus iii. 3, 'For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts.' Not only the desiring, but the understanding faculty is corrupt; therefore it is said, Prov. i. 31, 'They shall eat the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices;' Jer. vi. 19, 'Behold, I will bring upon this people even the fruit of their thoughts;' meaning the evil which their own devices and practices had procured to themselves. Every one of us has our devices, ways,

D

SERMON UPON ECCLESIASTES VII. 23.

and haunts of sin, whereby we make ourselves more wretched and sinful.

2. Their act, 'They sought out;' that showeth the voluntariness and studiousness of man's defection; it is their own act and deed, and their hearts are set upon it. It is said, Jonah ii. 8, 'They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercies.' They set their minds a-work, prostitute their reason to their senses. All men's projects, what do they tend to but the satisfaction of their own lusts, to cater for the body, and gratify the animal life? 'Making provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof,' Rom. xiii. 14; 'Taking thought what they shall eat or what they shall drink,' Mat. vi. 25. Their care is about the base and brutish part more than about the soul, how to adorn the body and gratify the body; and for this the soul must be made a slave. There is a perverse diligence in men to corrupt themselves.

3. The object, with its number, 'Many inventions.' There is some difference in the translations. Ludoviens de Dieu, because the word for 'many' signifieth also 'great' and 'mighty,' rendereth it, Ipsi autem qua siverunt cogitationes magnatum; meaning by the 'mighty' the angels who were not contented with their own station, but forsook it, Jude 6. Certain it is the devil's first temptation was, Gen. iii. 5, 'Ye shall be as gods;' that is, advance into a more honourable and noble condition than now you are in. These thoughts being suggested by Satan, they ambitiously entertained them. The vulgar readeth it, Se injinitis miscuit questionibus. Adam at first out of curiosity would know good and evil, and ever since we have been sick of questions, questioning this and questioning that, and have no clear light to guide us. The Septuagint render it, ἐξήτησαν λογισμοὺς πολλοὺς, they sought out many ratiocinations. We grope in a maze of uncertainties, and so entangle ourselves the more. Our heavenly wisdom is lost by our sin and rebellion, and instead thereof we have gotten a false carnal wisdom, which is 'cruelty to God,' Rom. viii. 7, and only inclineth us to a false happiness, James iii. 15, to the pleasures, honours, and profits of the present world; and so are given up to an injudicious mind, and are left in the hands of our own counsel, which is the heaviest plague that can light upon a reasonable creature: Ps. lxxxi. 11, 12, 'But my people would not hearken to my voice, and Israel would none of me; so I gave them up unto their own hearts' lusts, and they walked in their own counsels.' For our own wisdom is an ill guide and counsellor, and will never guide us aright in the way to true happiness, but lead us into hogs and pits, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts.

But keeping more closely to our own translation, let me a little open this expression, 'They sought out many inventions.'

First, Observe that man is left to invent, and (since he left the straight line of God's directions) to shift for an happiness for himself. Surely it was better for us when we needed only to accept or submit; we never sped well since we would be our own carvers, and would follow those new ways to blessedness which Satan and our own hearts suggest to us; as a runagate child or servant, that is not content with the father's or master's finding, is driven to a thousand shifts. All our inventions may be disproved by a double reason—

1. They are insufficient to make us happy. We were made for God, and cannot be happy again till we return to God. Being fallen from God, in whose favour alone true happiness is to be found, we invent false ways wherein we seek to attain happiness; but after all our vain pursuits, we can nowhere find rest for our souls. We have but a little vainglory for that eternal glory which we have lost, a little brutish pleasure for that fulness of joy which we might have in God's presence, perishing vanities for the true riches; so that we do but go about: Jer. xxxi. 22, 'How long wilt thou go about, O backsliding daughter?' We do but weary ourselves as long as we keep off from God; you meet with a broken cistern instead of the fountain: Jer. ii. 13, 'My people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.' You may drink many a puddle dry, and yet never quench your thirst; labour your hearts out, and yet not meet with that which satisfieth: Isa. lv. 2, 'Wherefore do ye spend your money for that which is not bread? and your labour for that which satisfieth not? Hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness.' True rest and peace will only be found in God reconciled to us in Christ.

2. They plunge us in farther misery. It is true both as to opinions in religion and as to practice.

[1.] As to opinions in religion. If men apprehend some misery, how vain are their inventions about the remedy! All their devices show how desperate the disease is. The philosophers, when they had found out a god, yet were 'vain in their imaginations,' Rom. i. 21; when they sat abroad on a religion, they hatched nothing but what was ridiculous: 'And professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.' The Egyptians, who vaunted themselves to be the fathers of all sciences, worshipped onions and leeks, and their gods grew in their gardens; they were planted and cultivated by their labourers before they were worshipped by their princes. The Romans, who excelled all nations for their morality and civility, made gods of all things, for war and peace, fears and passions, agues and fevers. And still the religion of heathens, Turks, and pagans are so far from being the remedy, that they are a part of the disease, and remove man further off from God. All men's inventions to pacify God's wrath do further provoke him: Micah vi. 6, 7, 'Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the high God? Shall I come before him with burnt-offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?' Go to, false christians! it was never well with the world since men were guided by inventions rather than institutions; while they hope by their own penances and exterior mortifications to appease God, he is the more alienated from them.

[2.] So as to practice. Whilst instead of dependence and downright simplicity they fly to their own shifts, and will help themselves rather than trust God, they involve themselves the more. There is one principle of sincerity, to depend upon God's all-sufficiency: Gen. xvii. 1, 'I am the Almighty God; walk before me, and be thou perfect.' But they that do not trust God cannot be true to him. When men will be inventing, and shift for their own happiness, they never carve to themselves a good portion, but have enough of their devices at last. Besides, our false happiness which we pursue after, and our inventions about it, are not only vain, but pernicious and destructive: John iii. 19, 'And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil.' If we love our own dark counsels rather than God's provision for us and the remedy offered to us, our case is the more doleful.

Secondly, Observe, these inventions are many. Here I shall inquire—(1.) What are these inventions? (2.) Why many?

First, What are these inventions? We must distinguish—

1. There are profitable inventions for the good of society and benefit of mankind, such as are civil arts and disciplines, manufacture and occupations, which conduce much to the good of the present world, and do repair those natural defects which were introduced by the fall. Now, though these are not intended in this place, yet two things I shall say upon this occasion—

[1.] The one is, that if man would have been contented to be at God's finding, many of these would not have been needed; such a deal of do would not have been needful to man in innocency. It is sin hath made so many necessities, and lust still multiplieth them.

[2.] The other is, that though since the fall we can find some remedy for our natural defects, yet for the spiritual distempers of the heart we can find no cure. By art man can melt the hardest metals, and make them capable of any form, but to soften the heart, and make it capable of God's image, that is past the skill of men or angels. There is no creature so fierce but 'it is tamed and hath been tamed of mankind,' James iii. 7; but yet man cannot tame his own heart; it is God must turn us, or we are never turned. How many inventions hath man found out to repair the ruins of the fall! Grammar and rhetoric to polish our speech, logic to refine our reason, ethics to reform our manners in civil converse, economics to govern families, politics to model kingdoms and commonwealths; but nothing to tame and subdue the heart to God? It is God that 'createth in us a clean heart, and reneweth a right spirit,' Ps. li. 10; even he that made it at first.

2. There are sinful inventions, taken in a more limited sense, for those exquisite studied ways of sin wherewith many please themselves; as we read of some that were 'inventors of evil things,' Rom. i. 30, who find out such wickedness as the world was never acquainted with before; as new-fashioned oaths, lusts, torments. This argueth the height of wickedness; and such are the more corrupt of the corrupt sort of men. These are not principally intended in this place, yet may be comprised here.

3. The inventions here intended are such as by which we start away from God and corrupt ourselves. This more general sense of the words compriseth two sorts of inventions—

[1.] Those many crooked counsels and devices whereunto men are carried by their own corrupt hearts, when once they had forsaken God and the straight rule of his law. We read, Jer. xvii. 9, 'That the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?' There is a bottomless, unsearchable depth of wickedness in the heart of man, which none can discover but God; it is wily, fraudulent, prone to deceive, full of windings and turnings, wiles and sleights; no creature in wicked subtlety and dissembling can go beyond him. The scripture delighteth in this term, 'inventions' and 'imaginations;' Gen. vi. 5, 'All the imaginations of the thoughts of his heart were only evil continually;' and Jer. xviii. 12, 'We will walk after our own devices, and we will every one do the imaginations of his evil heart.' The heart of man is in continual action, framing and moulding things within itself; and because there are many cunning fetches and secret devices within the heart, by which they seek to put out their own eyes, that they may not apprehend themselves to be so vile and filthy as indeed they are, and a deceitful heart smooths evil, and presents it under another notion, therefore they may be called, and are in scripture called, 'devices' and 'inventions.' There is so much remainder of light and conscience since the fall, that there needeth a great deal of craft to varnish sin, to insinuate it with any satisfaction to the conscience; a great deal of diligence to compass it, and a great deal of art to hide it from the world, that it may not make us hateful or obnoxious to disgrace and disrespect; and to hide it from ourselves, that we may live in it with greater leave and allowance from those remainders of reason which are yet left within us. True wisdom is plain and simple; it needeth no disguises to palliate it from the judgment of conscience or the notice of the world: 'Wisdom is justified of her children;' Mat. xi. 19, 'This is our rejoicing, the testimony of our conscience, that in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God, we have had our conversation in the world,' 2 Cor. i. 12. But with sin it is not so; there are many inventions for the hiding, palliating, excusing, and defending of sin; it is the great power of the word to discover them: Heb. iv. 12, 'For the word of God is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.' These are the most secret acts of the soul. Intentions respect the end, thoughts respect consultations about the means. There is an artificial dexterous managery of sin: Eph. ii. 3, 'Fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind,' θελήματα τῆς σαρκὸς καὶ τῶν διανοιῶν, that is, imaginations and lusts. Now of these inventions I shall say two things—

(1.) The more studiously and dexterously any sin is carried on, it argueth the worse temper of spirit, and the sin is the more aggravated: 'To be wise to do evil,' Jer. iv. 22; 'To devise iniquity, and work evil upon our beds,' Micah ii. 1; 'The wicked plotteth against the just, and gnasheth upon him with his teeth,' Ps. xxxvii. 12. The subtle designer of sin is worse than he that occasionally lapseth into it. The good may be overtaken or overborne, but to dig deep to hide our wickedness, and sit abroad upon it, is the greatest evil.

(2.) That sinful inventions for the hiding and palliating of sin never succeed well, but involve us the more. I shall not instance in the worst of men, how they are forced to add sin to sin, and help out one wickedness with another, which at last bringeth upon them the feared evil with the greater violence; but even in the best of men, that you may the more loath these sinful inventions. David had many inventions to cloak his sin with Bathsheba, but how ill did they succeed at last! When sin hath got a tie upon a man, and a man hath done some evil from which he cannot well acquit himself but with some loss and shame or other inconvenience, then it is a mighty snare, unless he cover it or maintain it, or some other way help himself by adding some other sin to it. Thus usually in this case men have their inventions, shift off a fault with a lie, and imagine it in a sort necessary for their safety to be evil; and out of this seeming necessity heap and pile up sin upon sin, and transgression upon transgression. This, I say, was David's case in the matter of Bathsheba and Uriah. Surely he had never proceeded to such black thoughts, to plot the murder of a person so worthy and innocent, but to salve his credit and cover his dishonest act, when other arts and shifts failed and took no effect. Admit one sin, and the devil taketh this advantage, that he will force us for the defence of that to yield to more. Thus Sarah's unbelieving laughter brought forth a lie: Gen. xviii. 12-15, 'Then Sarah denied, saying, I laughed not; for she was afraid.' Peter, when he had denied his master with a plain single denial, 'I know not the man,' Mat. xxvi. 70, he proceedeth after to a denial with oaths and execrations: 'Then began he to curse and to swear, saying, I know not the man,' ver. 74. If he had prevented the first sin with ordinary courage and boldness, he had not thus entangled himself; but one sin must help out another, though still to our loss and trouble. Eudoxia, wife to Theodosius junior, having received of the emperor her husband an apple of incredible beauty and bigness, gave it to one Paulinus, a learned man, whom she prized; he, not knowing whence the empress had received it, presents it as a rare gift to the emperor, who thereupon sending for his wife, asked her for the apple; she, fearing her husband's displeasure if she should say she had given it away, answered she had eaten it; upon this afterwards the emperor produceth it, and in his jealousy killeth innocent Paulinus, and hateth his wife. If she had not told an untruth at first, she had not fallen into the sin of lying; but giving way a little, she is drawn into a greater sin, her innocent friend lost his life, and she her husband's favour ever afterwards. All this is spoken that we may beware of evil inventions, which never succeed well, nor to the content of the party that useth them.

[2.] These inventions are put for our pursuits after a false happiness. True happiness is only to be found in the favour of God, and in the way appointed by God; but man would be at his own dispose, and would invent and find out an happiness for himself, and be sufficient to himself for his own blessedness, without any dependence upon God. Now, when man was thus fallen off from God, God was disobliged from providing for him, and so man is left to his own shifts. But alas! how ill doth he provide for himself! This being the very thing intended in the text, I shall a little more amply dilate upon it in several propositions.

(1.) When man fell from God, he fell from him tanquam a principio et fine, from dependence upon him as the first cause, and respect to him as his chief good and last end. His dependence was loosened, because he distrusted God's provision for him, and would be a god to himself, his own principle, rule, and end; live from himself to himself, according to his own will. So that self-love came in the place of love to God; he that before sought nothing but God, began now to seek himself, and thought he should find in himself what he lost in God.

(2.) Man being once off from God, never of himself cometh on again, but rangeth infinitely, being guided by his own will and wit: Jonah ii. 8, 'They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercies.' Man being fastened to such objects as he liketh, keepeth aloof from God, whom he liketh not, and will not come at him as long as he can make a shift without him: Jer. ii. 31, 'We are lords; we will come no more unto thee.' And though he wandereth hither and thither, he finds no rest for his soul, for he seeketh happiness where it is not to be found, in the riches, honours, and pleasures of the present life.

(3.) Though he meet with often disappointments, yet he is unwilling to return even after God hath showed a remedy, and brought life and immortality to light in the gospel, in which way he may have peace and happiness, and so rest for his soul. God hath showed us the way to rest: Jer. vi. 16, 'Ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls;' Mat. xi. 28, 'Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.' But yet man is for his shifts still, till God changeth his heart and giveth him counsel in his reins, and disappoints him in his worldly inventions and pursuits, by blasting the creature, or occasioning some wound in his conscience. God speaketh often in his word, but it is disregarded till he speak by real arguments, and speak to the quick, so as to force an hearing; till he take away their comforts, or take away their use of them, by some languishing sickness or anguish in their own conscience, or both; by smiting them with a rod dipped in guilt: 'When thou with rebukes dost correct man for iniquity, thou makest his beauty to consume away like a moth,' Ps. xxxix. 11; so that then they see the fruitlessness of all their inventions, their vain pleasures, costly buildings, great honour and riches, how little these can stead them against the wrath of an angry God. So loath is man to submit to God's remedy; he laboureth all that he can to patch up his sorry happiness, and is very unwilling to confess his misery; he turneth and windeth every way, and seeketh help from the creature before he will be brought to implore aid from grace; he will use all means within his grasp and reach, till his despair teach him to return from whence he fell, and that it is better to seek God's favour than continue his vain pursuits: Hosea ii. 7, 'I will return to my first husband, for then it was better with me than now.'

Secondly, Why many inventions?

1. In opposition to that one straight line which leadeth to true happiness. Christ telleth us, 'One thing is necessary,' Luke x. 42, namely, to serve and please God, and enjoy him for ever. To enjoy God and please him is that one thing which is enough. But error is manifold; though there be but one path to heaven, yet there are many ways of sinning and going to hell. Every man hath his several course and way of sinning: Isa. liii. 6, 'All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way;' according to the several constitutions and business and affairs of men. Velle suum cuique est, nec voto vivitur uno. As the channel is cut, so corrupt nature in every man findeth an issue and passage. No sin cometh amiss to a carnal heart, yet some are more kindly and suitable; one is worldly, another sensual, another proud and ambitious. It is our wisdom to observe our own haunt, and the tender parts of our souls: Ps. xviii. 23, 'I was upright before him, and I kept myself from mine iniquity.' All sin is but carnal self-love disguised; or many, with respect to the successive entertainment of divers sins: Titus iii. 3, 'Serving divers lusts and pleasures.' Sins take the throne by turns. By age and experience men grow weary of former vanities, but others are adopted into their room, and so their lusts are but exchanged, not abrogated. Now we are fallen from our primitive happiness, we multiply means and cares; yea, at the same time the pleasures of the flesh draw the sinner several ways: James iv. 1, 'Whence come wars and fightings among you? Come they not hence, even of your lusts, which war in your members?' Desire of riches contradicts idleness, and the toilsome cares and labours of this world that ease which the flesh affecteth; disgraceful lusts are contradicted by ambition and pride.

2. Many inventions, in opposition to that simplicity and singleness of heart which original rectitude did include. The heart of man was originally of one constant, uniform frame; but now, instead of simplicity, there is a multiplicity. The heart now is never right till it be one with God. Therefore David prays, Ps. lxxxvi. 11, 'Unite my heart to fear thy name.' He begs a heart entirely fixed upon God, who, as our great end, uniteth all our affections in this one scope, that we might please him, and enjoy him as our chief good and last end; that fixeth man's mind; which otherwise will be tossed up and down in perpetual uncertainties, and distracted by a multiplicity of ends and objects, that it cannot continue in any composed and settled frame. No one part of our lives will agree with another. A divided heart breedeth an uncertain life: James i. 8, 'A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways;' the whole not firmly knit together by the power of the last end running through all; so that our lives are a mere lottery, the fancies and appetites we are governed by being jumbled together by chance. The heart by natural corruption is loosed from God, and distracted with variety of vain objects, which offer themselves to our senses. The interest of the world and flesh is taken into competition with God; and whilst the heart rangeth abroad, it is such a variable and double heart as will never be true to God; and while men are tossed from one dependence to another, and do not firmly adhere to God, being weaned from the vanities of the world, they are carried hither and thither by their perverse affections, sometimes to one thing, sometimes to another.

3. With respect to that one object who alone was sufficient for us. They that have left God, and would find happiness in the creatures, need many creatures before they can patch up any sorry tolerable happiness to themselves. One broken cistern can yield but little refreshing, Jer. ii. 13; so many disappointments make them look more about. God made man for himself, capable to enjoy him; now he is an infinite eternal good. We desire an infinite eternal good, still such as may quiet and satisfy us; therefore man being made capable of enjoying God, who is infinite, and finding himself not satisfied with a few or many things, always seeketh after new things. Here is his

SERMON UPON ECCLESIASTES VII. 23.

error, that he seeketh after that which is infinite, among those things which are finite, and so wandereth up and down groping for an eternal good: Acts xvii. 26, 27, 'And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on the face of the earth; and determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitations; that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us.' As we depart from God, we are gone from unity, and are left distracted and confounded in the multitude of the creatures. Quærunt in varietate creaturorum, quod amiserunt in unitate creatoris—They seek in the variety of the creatures what they have lost in the one God.

Use 1. Is to represent the misery of fallen man, that we may take up a lamentation for him, and bewail our departure from life and blessedness, and forsaking it for sin and misery. They have cast off God, and set at nought his counsel, and given themselves over to many fruitless and hurtful inventions. For alas! man being left to the counsel of his own desperately wicked and deceitful heart, what doth he look after? What may be expected from him but that all his thoughts and projects should be for the satisfaction of his lusts, to serve his pride, avarice, revenge, pomp, pleasure, and vanity? God is not in all his thoughts; he cares not whether he be pleased or displeased, honoured or dishonoured.

Here consider the disorder and danger of this state.

1. The disorder introduced hereby.

[1.] The creature is preferred before God; for all their projects are how to live at ease in the world, not how to please and enjoy God; and so they 'forsake their own mercies for observing lying vanities,' Jonah ii. 8. They seek an happiness apart from God, who is 'their own mercy;' that is, they might have had from him all that which the mercy of an all-sufficient God can afford. And for what do they forsake him? For 'lying vanities.' In regard of their emptiness they are vanities; and in regard of their disappointing our expectations, 'lying vanities.' They do deceive us with a vain show, and in the issue miserable disappointments. And mark, these must be observed, followed after with a great solicitude and care, whereas the other is freely offered to us; it is our own in the offer, and it is our own fault if it be not our own in the choice. So Jer. ii. 13, 'My people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and have hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that will hold no water.' God is the well-spring of all manner of good, a fountain that runneth constantly, and never faileth; and such would he have been to us if we had continued loyal and dutiful to him. Besides the leaving of the ever-living, all-sufficient, and ever-flowing fountain of all good, they have betaken themselves to poor paltry vanities, that will yield them no real and solid refreshment.

[2.] The body is preferred before the soul; for all our inventions run upon the body and the pleasing the flesh: Rom. xiii. 14, 'And make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof.' But the precious and immortal soul is little thought of and cared for. They sit down well appaid with carnal contentments: Luke xii. 19, 'Soul, take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry; thou hast much goods laid up for many years.' They do not rise to any thoughts of an higher life, never think of that immortal soul they carry about with them, but only use it to cater for the body, that the body may be well fed, and clothed, and adorned. Our business is to seek rest for our souls; if we would invent and consider, we should look after that: Jer. vi. 16, 'Ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls.' We are never in our wits again till this be the project and design we travel with. But alas! this is not thought of. The neglected soul may easily complain of hard usage. What are our thoughts but what shall we eat, and what shall we drink, and how shall we make a fair show in the flesh? If we look after the soul, it is to adorn it with secular learning and wisdom, which is but to serve the flesh in a more cleanly manner, and to gratify our worldly ends, our pride, or our interests. We look after flowers rather than fruit; those adornments of the soul which are for pomp rather than life, and for present use rather than eternal benefit.

[3.] They prefer earth before heaven and time before eternity. All their business is rather to make sure of the prosperity of the body than the salvation of the soul. And though it is plain, and they do or may know and see that this will not cure their diseases, nor ease their pain, nor save them from the grave nor hell, yet because riches will help them to live in pleasure and reputation with the world, and in plenty of all things, and to have their will as long as they live, that is enough for them, for they care not for the pleasures and happiness which are to be enjoyed in the other world. Though death and the grave may put an end to all they have here much sooner than they imagined, yet their minds and hearts are set upon these things as their happiness, and will not be diverted from them; they have their portion in this world: Ps. xvii. 14, 'From men which are thy hand, O Lord; from men of the world, which have their portion in this life, and whose belly thou fillest with thy hid treasure: they are full of children, and leave the rest of their substance to their babes.'

2. The danger. As it is a base thing to act so disproportionately to the light of reason, so within a little while it will be a bitter thing: Jer. ii. 19, 'Thine own wickedness shall correct thee, and thy backslidings shall reprove thee; know therefore and see, that it is an evil thing and bitter that thou hast forsaken the Lord thy God, and that my fear is not in thee.' Sure it will be bitterness in the end to forsake the Lord, and walk in the inventions and imaginations of thine own heart. You are posting to your eternal misery, where a reflection upon your evil choice will be the greatest part of your misery: Isa. l. 11, 'Behold, all ye that kindle a fire, that compass yourselves about with sparks; walk in the light of your fire, and the sparks which ye have kindled: this shall ye have of my hand, ye shall lie down in sorrow.' The allusion is not to such a fire as burneth and consumeth, but such as doth warm and cherish. Those stakes which wicked worldlings rely upon for succour will in time prove their greatest calamities, and those tufts and fuzes which they promised the greatest comfort to themselves from will occasion the greatest sorrow; the brands which they heaped together will afford them little heat and light, but smoke to vex and choke them. He that will warm himself by his own sparks can expect no other issue from his own rash folly and God's righteous vengeance.

Use 2. To exhort us not only to lament it, but to come out of this condition. And here to this end—

1. Renounce that crooked carnal wisdom which is man's undoing. Man at first seeking to be wise, became a fool. Now 'he must be a fool, that he may be wise,' 1 Cor. iii. 18; a fool to the flesh and the world, that he may be wise to God.

2. Give up yourselves to God in covenant, as your Lord and felicity. A man is never in his wits till he cometh to this: Ps. xxii. 27, 'All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord.' Our misery is in departing from him, so our happiness is in putting ourselves into his hands again. Now you must give up yourselves to him as your supreme Lord and chief felicity or happiness, depending upon him as your happiness, obeying him as your Lord; obey his counsel though against your own reason, and stick to his ways though they seem to be against your present happiness. Remember that duty is safety, that cleaving to God with loss is better than departing from him with seeming gain; and God, that outwits the subtle designer, doth take care of and preserve the plain and simple person, that avowedly adhereth to him, when all the contrivances of foolish and worldly-minded men prove vain and unprosperous. Your obedience will be your safety. Dependence and obedience do mutually cherish one another; the more we depend, the more we obey; and the more we obey, the more we depend; and so they discover one another. Let us show our dependence on God, that in all the changes of this life, by a firm, fast adherence and resolution, we stick fast to God, whatever comes of it, using no means but what he allows, and counting his favour our happiness. They that depend not on him are left to their own inventions.

3. Your great design must be to approve yourselves to God: 2 Cor. v. 9, 'Wherefore we labour, that, whether present or absent, we may be accepted of the Lord.'

Use 3. It showeth what need we have to give up ourselves to the conduct of God's word and Spirit. Man is so full of his own inventions that none can be safe but they that depend upon God for direction: James i. 5, 'If any man lack wisdom, let him ask it of God.' Such a fallible creature as man is in point of truth, such an impotent creature is he in point of power, such an indigent creature in point of happiness and self-sufficiencies, such a sinful corrupt creature, so full of imaginations and lusts, so many crooked dispositions in his heart, so many wiles to justify his irregular choice, so many temptations, and they represented with such sophistry, that he should be willing to accept of direction. Yea, the people of God themselves have need of the direction of the word, in regard of the weakness of their understandings and the perverseness of their affections.

1. Our understandings are so weak, that we are ignorant of many things necessary to be known; for we know but in part. If we know something in general, we fail in particular application; both in general and in particular. If we know things habitually, we do not actually consider them, being hindered by multitude of business, or the violence of temptations, or lulled asleep by the pleasures of the flesh: Eccles. v. 1, 'They consider not that they do evil.'

2. Our affections are perverse, and so addicted rather to be led by sense than right reason, that there is great danger lest, seeing and approving that which is better, we follow what is worse, contrary to our knowledge and conscience: Rom. ii. 18, 'And knowest his will, and approvest the things that are more excellent, being instructed out of the law.' And therefore the best had need to pray with David: Ps. exliii. 10, 'Teach me to do thy will, for thou art my God: thy Spirit is good; lead me into the land of uprightness.'

Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return unto God that gave it.—ECCLES. xii. 7.

IN the beginning of this chapter Solomon presseth us to remember our creator while yet young: many have been too late acquainted with God, but never any too soon. His arguments are—

1. From the wearisome evils of old age, very rhetorically described in ver. 2-6, 'While the sun, or the light, or the moon, or the stars be not darkened, nor the clouds return after the rain: in the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease, because they are few, and those that look out of the windows be darkened; and the doors shall be shut in the streets, when the sound of the grinding is low; and he shall rise up at the voice of the bird; and all the daughters of music shall be brought low: also when they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fear shall be in the way, and the almond-tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail; because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets: or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern.' That is a time of expense, and needeth cordials rather than work and service. Therefore, while the prints of God's creating bounty are fresh upon us, it is best to exercise ourselves to godliness.

2. From the certain approach of death, as the final issue of the present life; therefore we should prepare for this change, think of God betimes, and secure a better life before this come to the last period. This argument is in the text, 'Then shall the dust return to the earth,' &c. Man consists of a body and a soul; the text telleth you what shall become of both.

1. Here is represented the state of the body after death.

2. The state of the soul.

1. The state of the body; it shall be resolved into the matter out of which it was made. Dust it was in its composition, and dust it shall be in its dissolution: 'Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was.'

2. The state of the soul in the other world: 'And the spirit shall return to God that gave it.' Where—

[1.] The nature of it, or what kind of substance the soul is; it is a spirit, or an immaterial substance.

[2.] The author of it, who is God: he gave it; he gave us the body too, but the soul in a more especial manner.

[3.] The disposal of it, or in what state it remaineth after death; it returneth to God. It is not extinguished when the body is dissolved into dust, nor doth it vanish into the air, but returneth to God.

All true wisdom consisteth in the knowledge of God and ourselves; we cannot know ourselves unless we know the parts of which we do consist. This text giveth you a right notion of them both; for it telleth you what they are, and what shall become of them. They are conjoined, but distinct; and therefore, when the union betwixt them is dissolved, they go several ways. We are concerned in them both, but more in the soul, which hath the pre-eminence above the body. The one is visible, and therefore its changes are known; but the other is invisible, and therefore more unknown; but the state of both is equally certain, for as certainly as the body returneth to the dust, so doth the soul return to God.

First, For the first branch, 'Then shall the body return to the earth as it was,' I shall not stay upon it.

1. It giveth you the right notion of the body; it is but dust moulded up into a comely shape, which is an effect of God's wisdom and power, to make such a curious frame out of the dust of the ground. We read in the history of the plagues of Egypt, that the magicians were not able so much as to bring forth lice out of the dust of the ground, Exod. viii. 18, 19; but God could raise such a beautiful structure as man's body is. But though it speaketh God's power, yet it showeth our frailty. Our body is here called 'dust;' it is not brass, or iron, or stone, or stiff clay, but dust, and shall return to the earth as it was. Dust hath no coherence or consistence, but is easily scattered with every puff of wind; so is our earthly or dusty tabernacle with every blast of God's displeasure: Gen. xviii. 27, 'Behold, now I have taken upon me to speak to the Lord, who am but dust and ashes;' Isa. xl. 15, 'Behold, the nations are as a drop of the bucket, and they are counted as the small dust of the balance.'

2. What shall become of it? 'It shall return to the earth as it was;' Gen. iii. 19, 'Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return;' Ps. civ. 29, 'Thou takest away their breath; they die and return to their dust;' Ps. cxlvi. 4, 'He returneth to his earth.' Which should teach us to take care for a better estate: 2 Cor. v. 1, 'For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.' The soul dwelleth now in an earthly house; it should look out for a more glorious mansion.

Secondly, Of the soul three things are spoken, which are so many arguments to prove its immortality, which is the subject I mainly intend—

1. The kind of it; it is a spirit. The matter of which the body is made is the earth, and so it is still maintained: 'He bringeth forth food for them out of the earth,' Ps. civ. 14; and so breedeth and casteth out corruption every day; but the soul is a simple substance, not compounded of corruptible principles, and therefore cannot be resolved into any. The body liveth by the soul and from the soul, but the soul dependeth upon nothing but God. The argument is good; it is incorporeal and immaterial, therefore immortal; for mortality hath reference to some compounded substance, which hath in itself some principle and cause of motion, as well as a material and passive part, that may be moved by that principle, and signifieth no more but a capacity of the material and passive part to be deprived of the inward and active principle of its motion. In short, if the soul die, it must be from the violence of some external power, or some principles of corruption within; not by violence without: Mat. x. 28, 'And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul.' And it hath no principles of corruption, whereby it should destroy itself, for it is a spirit.

2. The author; 'God gave it.' Our bodies are also his workmanship, but the soul is immediately framed by God, both in the first creation and the continual propagation of mankind. At the first creation, we read the body was created out of the earth or the dust of the ground, but the soul out of nothing, but immediately breathed into Adam by God: Gen. ii. 7, 'And the Lord formed man out of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.' And still the soul is immediately created by God: Zech. xii. 1, 'He stretcheth forth the heavens, and laid the foundation of the earth, and formeth the spirit of man within him.' The creating of the soul is reckoned among the works of his omnipotency: Heb. xii. 9, 'Furthermore, we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence; shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits?' The fathers of our flesh are distinguished from the Father of spirits. Our natural parents under God are the instruments of our natural and earthly being, as they procured the matter out of which our bodies were derived; they are τῆς σαρκὸς πατέρας, 'the fathers of our flesh,' but God is πᾶτηρ πνευμάνων, 'The Father of our spirits.' The spirit of man runneth not in the material channel of fleshly descent; it is not educed out of the power of the matter, but immediately made by God.

3. The disposal of it. When it flitteth out of the body, 'it returneth to God;' that is, to God as a judge, to be disposed of by him into its everlasting estate. God challengeth souls as his, or belonging to his government, as universal king and judge of the world: Ezek. xviii. 4, 'All souls are mine.' He will give to every one according to his works, adjudging and sentencing them either to heaven, the mansion of the blessed, or 'spirits of just men made perfect,' Heb. xii. 23, or to hell, the place where damned spirits are kept in prison: 1 Peter iii. 19, 'He went and preached unto the spirits in prison.' The body is not said to return to God, but to return to the earth as it was; but the soul is said to return to God; therefore the whole man dieth not, and is not extinguished with the body. All these particulars import the immortality of the soul.

Doct. That the soul of man is immortal, and dieth not when the body dieth, but remaineth in that estate into which it is disposed by God.

First, There is a threefold immortality—

1. An essential immortality, which importeth an absolute necessity of existence; so it is said, 1 Tim. vi. 16, 'God only hath immortality.'

2. There is a natural immortality, which hath a foundation in the being of the creatures; so the angels and spirits of men are in their nature immortal, so as they cannot be destroyed by any second cause, and have no principle of corruption in themselves, though by the power of God they might be annihilated.

3. A gratuitous immortality, or by gift and courtesy; so the body of Adam in innocency, non conditione corporis, but beneditio conditoris; not by the condition of his body, but the bounty of his maker: so the bodies of the faithful after the resurrection shall be immortal.

Secondly, Let us prove this, that the soul is immortal, and subsisteth after the separation. The point is necessary to be discussed; for till we are established in the belief of this truth, we shall fear no greater judgments than what do befall us in this world, nor expect greater mercies than what we enjoy here; and so never take care to reconcile ourselves to God, or to deny the profits of the world and the pleasures of sense, that we may attain a better estate. An holy life will never else be endeavoured or produced to any good increase; for such as men's belief is of an immortal or never-dying condition in heaven or hell, such will the bent of their hearts and course of life be; therefore the salvation of our souls is said to be the end of our faith: 1 Peter i. 9, 'Receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls.' There the 'end' significth either the scope or the event; if you take it for the scope, the great end of faith is to lead us from all worldly happiness to an estate after this life: Heb. x. 39, 'But we are not of them that draw back unto perdition, but of them that believe to the saving of the soul.' Sense saith, Spare the flesh; but faith saith, Save the soul. This is the scope and mark to which it tendeth. If you take it for the event and issue of things, all our believing, praying, enduring suffering, rejoicing, pleasing, and glorifying of God, endeth in this, the saving of our souls. Therefore let us see how it may be proved, both by scripture and by the light of reason.

1. By scripture, which is the proper means to beget faith. Dives desired one to go from the dead to tell his brethren of an everlasting estate of torment and bliss: Luke xvi. 27, 28, 'I pray thee, father, that thou wouldst send him to my father's house; for I have five brethren, that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment;' intimating thereby that the cause of his own sin and theirs was unbelief, or a not being persuaded of a world to come. Alas! we have but an obscure prospect of an estate after this life, and therefore indulge sensual delights. But what cure and remedy? Dives thought a spectre or apparition would be the best cure of this atheism; but Abraham or Christ thought otherwise: he referreth them to Moses and the prophets; that is, the holy scriptures, for all the books then written and received in the church are comprised in that expression. Since we are sick of the same disease, this will be our best remedy. We are told, 2 Tim. i. 10, that Christ 'hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.' It is the privilege of the divine revelation to represent this truth with more clearness and certainty.

1. With more clearness. There is a mist upon eternity, which is only dispelled by the light of the gospel. Reasons from nature may in some measure acquaint us with an everlasting estate, yet what kind of happiness it is that attendeth the godly, and what misery shall befall the wicked, it telleth us but little; but the scripture sets down enough to invite our hopes and awaken our fears. Heathens had some conceits of Elysian fields and places of blessedness, and some obscure caverns appointed to be places of torment, fitted to work men into a blind superstition; but the word of God hath given us such clear discoveries of future happiness and misery as that we may know what to hope for and what to fear; and if well improved, will breed in us a true spirit of godliness.

2. In regard of certainty. Nature may give us some dark guesses and uncertain conjectures, so as the heathens, that had no other light, were ready to say, and unsay in a breath what they had spoken concerning our estate to come; but the gospel is a sure word, apt to beget faith, not a wavering opinion. Go to sense, which judgeth by the outside of things: Eccles. iii. 21, 'Who knoweth the spirit of a man that goeth upward, and the spirit of a beast that goeth downward to the earth?' By sense we see mankind, as the beasts, to be conceived, formed in the belly, brought forth, nourished, to grow in strength and stature, wax old, and die; by the eye we can discern no external sensible difference; so that if we consult with mere sense, all religion and hope is gone. Go to reason, and that will tell us indeed that there is a difference between a man and a beast; that man knoweth and desireth things which the beasts do not and cannot; and that the reasonable soul hath operations independent of matter and of the body, and therefore it is probable it can subsist without the body; for the manner of working showeth the manner of being. But there is cold comfort in a bare may-be. The gospel showeth it shall be. As a glass, it doth discover this state to us; as a rule, it guideth us to the enjoyment of it; as a motive, it persuadeth us to seek after it; as a charter and grant, it doth assure our title to it: it is full fraught and thick sown with this kind of seed.

Therefore let us see what the light of scripture saith to this point.

[1.] It discovereth to us everywhere the doctrine of the eternal recompenses, two places, and two estates, wherein souls abide after death, heaven and hell: heaven, the mansion of the just: John xiv. 2, 'In my Father's house are many mansions.' And hell, the place of torments: Mark ix. 44, 'They are cast into hell, where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.' And as soon as the soul passeth out of the body, it is in one of these: Luke xvi. 22, 23, 'And it came to pass that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom; the rich man died also, and was buried: and in hell he lifted up his eyes, being in torments.' He had a pompous funeral here upon earth; for it is said, 'he died, and was buried,' which is not said of Lazarus. These are truths not spoken of once or twice, but everywhere.

[2.] The covenant showeth it, which is God's solemn transaction with his subjects, and consists of precepts or laws, invested with the sanction of promises and threatenings. Christ argues thus: Luke xx. 37, 38, 'Now, that the dead are raised, even Moses showed at the bush, when he calleth the Lord the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; for he is not the God of the dead, but of the living.' He proves the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the body.

E

(1.) His commands; all of them imply such an estate, and some of them express it. All imply it; as faith in Christ. We believe in his name to obtain eternal life: John xx. 31, 'But these things are written, that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you might have have life through his name;' and John v. 24, 'He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life.' Repentance: Acts iii. 19, 'Repent ye, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord.' Therefore it is called 'repentance unto salvation,' 2 Cor. vii. 10; and 'repentance to life;' Acts xi. 18, 'Then hath God also to the gentiles granted repentance unto life.' So new obedience: Heb. v. 9, 'He became the author of eternal salvation to all that obey him;' Acts xxvi. 7, 'Unto which promise the twelve tribes, instantly serving God day and night, hope to come.' And some express it: He hath commanded us 'not to labour for the meat that perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life,' John vi. 27; 'Not to lay up treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and thieves break through and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven,' Mat. vi. 19, 20; and 'Strive to enter in at the strait gate,' Luke xiii. 24. Now, if there were no such thing, all these commands would be in vain. Would God flatter us into a fool's paradise, and command us to look after a thing of nought?

(2.) The sanction. And there—(1.) The threatening, which is damnation, or the second death: Mark xvi. 16, 'He that believeth not shall be damned.' Is this a vain scarecrow? and need God govern his subjects by a cheat or a lie? (2.) The promises; he promiseth eternal life to them that obey the gospel and seek after this immortality: Rom. ii. 7, 'To them who, by patient continuance in well-doing, seek for glory, honour, and immortality, eternal life;' Rev. ii. 10, 'Be thou faithful to death, and I will give thee a crown of life.' Be faithful in making good your baptismal vow, improving talents, withstanding temptations. So to comfort us against fears, losses, and sorrows: Luke xii. 32, 'Fear not, little flock; it is your Father's good pleasure to give you a kingdom.' Now, would God overreach us, and lead us with chimeras and vain hopes?

[3.] The mediator of the new covenant showeth it; his coming from heaven, the place of souls, the region of spirits, and his going thither again at his ascension.

(1.) His coming from heaven. Wherefore was Christ incarnate, and clothed with our flesh, but that we might be apparelled with his glory? John x. 10, 'I am come, that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.' To lay a foundation for our eternal happiness.

(2.) His going to heaven, his entering into that glory he spake of, and so giving a visible demonstration to the world of the reality of it: 1 Peter i. 21, 'Who by him do believe in God, that raised him up from the dead, and gave him glory, that your faith and hope may be in God.' There he remaineth at God's right hand, to open heaven to all believers. Christ, when he died, recommended his spirit to the Father: Luke xxiii. 46, 'Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.' And so do believers to Christ: Acts vii. 59, 'Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.' If the soul did perish with the body, why should we commit it to Christ?

[4.] The Holy Spirit is given to form and prepare us for this estate, therefore by consequence to assure us of it: 2 Cor. v. 5, 'Now he that hath wrought us for this self-same thing is God, who hath also given unto us the earnest of the Spirit.'

(1.) Look to the graces of the Spirit. We are made partakers of the divine nature to draw us off from the world to heaven: 2 Peter i. 4, 'Whereby are given to us exceeding great and precious promises, that by these you might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.' Now will God fit the soul for such a blessed estate when this life is ended; and shall we never enjoy it? If we consider the soul not only as being an inward principle of life and sense, but also of reason, it proveth the immortality of it, much more as sanctified and ennobled by grace: Rom. viii. 10, 'The body is dead because of sin, but the spirit is life because of righteousness.' Believers have a life wrought in them by the Spirit, which is the pledge and beginning of eternal life; for they are sanctified and purified, and fit to be brought into the sight and presence of God. The apostle doth not draw his argument there from the immortality of the soul, for that is common to good and bad; the wicked have a soul that will survive the body, but little to their comfort; their immortality is not an happy immortality; but he taketh his argument from the new life wrought in us by the Spirit, which is the beginning and earnest of a blessed immortality: the new life is an eternal principle of happiness.

(2.) Look to the comforts of the Spirit, from the love of God and the hopes of glory: 1 Peter i. 8, 'Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory;' Rom. v. 2, 'And rejoice in hope of the glory of God.' Now is it a fancy that holy men rejoice in? Look, as the terrors of a wounded conscience are the foretastes of hell-torments, called somewhere the pains of hell, so the comforts of the Spirit are the first-fruits of heavenly joys, to set us a-longing for more: Rom. viii. 23, 'And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the first-fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.' Now by all these things let us rouse up a drowsy faith, and triumph over that carnal atheism and unbelief that worketh in our hearts. Is the whole scripture false, and the christian religion a well-devised fable, our Redeemer an impostor, and the covenant of God a dream, and the comforts of the Spirit fanatical illusions? And were they all deceived that embraced the christian religion, that took such pains in subduing the flesh, so freely hazarded their interests, and life itself, on the promises of Christ and the hopes of another world? Are the wisest men the world ever saw fools, and the ordinances of Christ a customary superstition, and these rejoicings and foretastes of the children of God a mere deceit and imposture? Surely it cannot be. Therefore this is true, that the soul dieth not with the body, but is in that estate into which God disposeth it.

II. By the light of reason.

First, I shall urge such arguments as the scripture directeth us to.

1. From the nature of the soul. It is a spirit, and such a principle of life as hath light in it: John i. 4, 'In him was life, and the life was the light of men.' The soul of man differeth from the soul of a beast, for that hath only life and sense in it; but this hath light, and therefore was designed to more noble and glorious ends than merely to quicken and enliven the body. The soul of the beast is mortal, because it is created only to serve the body, and knoweth nothing, desireth nothing, delighteth in nothing but what belongeth to the pleasure and welfare of the body; but now the soul of man apprehendeth things past, present, and to come, is capable of tongues, arts, and sciences, and things abstract from bodily sense; it can discourse about God, angels, and all kind of spiritual beings, about eternity and immortality, and propound and debate questions and doubts concerning the world to come. The beasts look only to their food and the propagation of their kind; they know nothing, and can conceive nothing, of man's affairs; but now man's soul is not only capable of being ennobled and improved by moral virtues, and such things as fit us for human society, but is capable also of conformity to God, by being made holy and upright, and of communion with him in holy duties and acts of grace: I John i. 3, 'And truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ.' The beasts desire not the company of men, as we do of God and of the blessed spirits. In short, there is a greater affinity between the souls of men and angels than between the souls of beasts and men: Ps. viii. 5, 'Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels.' Well, then, can it be imagined the souls of men, furnished with such capacities of understanding, are nothing but a little puff of air, that is dissipated in dying, or a little vital heat, that is extinguished with the corporeal matter, or only the vigour of the blood? That soul that can so much soar aloft above the interests and concernments of the body, and take such a marvellous delight and contentment in spiritual things as the view of all manner of truths, must that follow the state of the body? Shall that creature that cometh so near the angels die like the beasts? or rather, become like the angels of God that always behold his face? Yea, that creature that draweth so near to God in the majesty of his person and the abilities of his mind, that was created after God's own image, and for the worship and service and enjoyment of God, shall he die as the beasts that perish? It cannot be imagined.

2. The scripture mentions words that imply its independence of the body, or that it doth not so wholly depend on the body that it cannot subsist and act without it; they go several ways, as in the text: 3 John 2, 'I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, as thy soul prospereth;' 2 Cor. iv. 16, 'For which cause we faint not, but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day.' And experience teacheth the truth of these things, that the body and soul seem sometimes to have no communion with one another, so different are their functions and offices. You shall often see men decrepit in all the members of the body, who yet have the motions of their minds as strong and as nimble as when in perfect health; and when they are upon the borders of death, without vigour and pulse, their understandings are more sublime than before, and their thoughts more refined. It is true the indispositions of the body clog the soul in things that are to be acted by the body; but in what the soul acteth apart, in the midst of aches and pains their strength of mind is entire, and their comforts never more raised than in bodily weakness. Therefore it lives and acts apart from the body.

3. The scripture directs us to this argument, that this is the general persuasion of all mankind, that there is a life after death; and it instanceth in that that is most sensible, and of every day's experience, our desires and fears.

[1.] Desires. The soul hath a natural desire of immortality, which, if it should not enjoy, that desire were in vain; but God doth nothing in vain. The apostle intimateth this, how men feel about for something eternal and infinite: Acts xvii. 27, 'That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him.' Every man would be happy, and eternally happy; for otherwise he would be tormented with a fear of losing that which he counteth his happiness. See Ps. iv. 6, 'Who will show us any good? Lord, lift thou up the light of thy countenance upon us;' Mat. xiii. 45, 46, 'The kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant-man seeking goodly pearls, who, when he had found one pearl of great price, he went and sold all that he had, and bought it;' John vi. 34, 'Lord, evermore give us this bread;' Num. xxiii. 10, 'Let me die the death of the righteous.' Other creatures besides man are satisfied with what they have here; but the soul of man is satisfied with nothing but the eternal enjoyment of what is good, an immortal estate, an infinite good. Every one that loveth himself would be happy, and, if he could, everlastingly happy. The saints, and those that are taught of God, pitch upon the right way: Ps. xvii. 15, 'As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness; I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness.' But this is the universal inclination of all mankind. Whence cometh this desire to be so universal, if there be nothing to satisfy it? Every natural appetite was given us for some purpose, and have things designed for their satisfaction; and therefore there is that immortality we all seek after, not in our bodies, they must return to their earth; not in fancy, that is a shadow; this is like the pleasure which those take that want children in playing with little dogs: it lieth in the soul, in the eternal enjoyment of God.

[2.] Fears, which presage and foretell such an estate to our great disquiet. Conscience fears a judgment after this life: Rom. i. 32, 'Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death.' And a state of misery to come: Heb. ii. 15, 'Who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.' At death these fears are more active and pungent: 1 Cor. xv. 56, 'The sting of death is sin;' and surprise the guilty soul with greater horror and distraction; then they are summoned to their great account. If the soul were mortal, why should men be afraid of torments after death? They anticipate the miseries of the life to come, not as it puts a period unto their natural comforts, but as it is an entrance into everlasting miseries.

4. The scripture directs to this argument, the justice of God for the comfort of the faithful: 2 Thes. i. 5, 'Which is a manifest token of the righteous judgment of God.' The sufferings of the faithful are a demonstration of a future estate. There is a God: if there be not a first and fountain-being, how did we come to be? for nothing can make itself; or how did the world fall into this order? This God is just, for all perfections are in the first being. If we deny him to be just, we deny him to be God and the governor of the world: Rom. iii. 5, 6, 'Is God unrighteous, who taketh vengeance? God forbid; for then how shall God judge the world?' Now it is agreeable to the justice of his government that it should be well with them that do well, and ill with them that do evil, or that he should make a difference by rewards and punishments between the wicked and obedient. It seemeth uncomely when it is otherwise: Prov. xxvi. 1, 'As snow in summer, and as rain in harvest; so honour is not seemly for a fool.' When the wicked are exalted, men look on it as an uncouth thing. Now this reward and punishment is not fully dispensed in this world, even in the judgment of them that have no great knowledge of the heinous nature of sin, and the judgment competent thereunto. Yea, rather, the best are exercised with poverty, disgrace, scorn, and all manner of troubles, their persons molested, their names cast out as odious, when the wicked live in pomp and ease, and oppress them at their pleasure. Therefore, since God's justice doth not make such a difference here, there is another life wherein he will do it; otherwise we must deny all providence, and that God doth not concern himself in human affairs, and that a man may break his laws, oppress his people, and no great harm will come of it: Zeph. i. 12, 'The Lord will not do good, neither will he do evil;' and God would seem indifferent to good and evil; yea, rather partial to the evil, and to favour the wicked more than the righteous, which is blasphemy, and a diminution of God's goodness and holiness: Ps. xi. 6, 7, 'Upon the wicked he shall rain snares, fire and brimstone, and an horrible tempest; this shall be the portion of their cup. But the righteous Lord loveth righteousness, and his countenance doth behold the upright.' Obedience would be man's loss and ruin, and so God would be the worst master: 1 Cor. xv. 19, 'If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.' They that forsake the sinful pleasures of this life, hazard all their natural interests, row against the stream of flesh and blood, would be ill provided for by their religion. Therefore there is another life wherein God will reward his people.

Secondly, I shall urge other arguments for the immortality of the soul.

1. The capacity of the soul argueth the immortality of it. Now it is capable—(1.) Of civil arts; (2.) Of owning the distinction between good and evil; (3.) Of knowing immortality and matters of everlasting consequence; (4.) Of knowing God and his attributes; (5.) Of the divine nature, which consists in the knowledge and love of God; (6.) Of a sweet familiar communion with him. Let us see how all these capacities will prove the matter in hand.

[1.] The being capable of civil arts will prove the soul's spiritual substance, far excelling the beasts in dignity; for it is capable of all kind of learning and witty inventions; as grammar, and the knowledge of tongues and rhetoric, to form and polish our speech; logic, to refine our reason; ethics, to order our manners; medicine, to cure the distempers of our bodies; by physics, or by natural philosophy, it knoweth all kind of things, all ranks of beings, from God and angels to the smallest worm; yea, it acquireth such skill as to make use of all creatures for its own benefit: James iii. 7, 'For every kind of beasts, and of birds, and of serpents, and things in the sea, is tamed, and hath been tamed of mankind.' The power and skill of man is large, and reacheth through the whole creation; by one means or other man mastereth them. Now what doth this signify but that man hath a soul different from the souls of the beasts? Job xxxv. 11, 'He teacheth us more than the beasts of the field, and maketh us wiser than the fowls of heaven.' And that will contribute much to the matter in hand. Solomon puts the question, Eccles. iii. 21, 'Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of a beast that goeth downward to the earth?' Mark, there he asserts that the spirit of the man goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast goeth downward; there is an ascent ascribed to the one, and a descent to the other; upward implieth heaven and heavenly things; downward, the earth and earthly things. The human soul ascendeth to God, the universal judge of all the world, whose throne is in heaven; but the soul of the beasts taketh its lot among all earthly things, which are at length resolved into earth, water, and air. In the creation, God is said to breathe into man the spirit of life; not so of the beast. So in the dissolution; the one returneth to God, the other leaveth off to exist, and when they die, they are no more.

[2.] It is capable of owning the distinction between moral good and evil. He that doth not acknowledge it is unworthy the name of man; for to love or hate God is not indifferent; nor to kill a neighbour, or hunt an hare in the woods; to use lawful matrimony, or for a man to pollute himself either with promiscuous or incestuous embraces. Now, if our souls differed not from the soul of a beast, they could have no such apprehension or conception. The beasts know pain and pleasure, but they have no knowledge of virtue and vice, as is sensible to every one that considereth them; but man hath: Rom. ii. 14, 15, 'For when the gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves, which show the work of the law written in their hearts.' Well, then, man hath a life beyond this, a further end of his actions than a beast, which is to approve himself to God, to whom he must give an account, whether he hath done good or evil; for a conscience supposeth a law, and a law supposeth a sanction both of reward and punishment, and a sanction a judge, to whom a man is accountable. And if man were but an higher and wiser sort of beast, he would but differ gradually from a dog or a swine. Now no man would be used as a beast, and made a slave to any one that can master and tame him, and sold in the market as a beast; if this be his lot by his infelicity in the world, he would look upon it as an uncouth thing, and that it would be to sin before God to use him so. Therefore there is a distinction between men and beasts; men die not as the beasts die.

[3.] They are capable of the knowledge of immortality, and can frame curious disputes and accurate debates thereof, which showeth they are not altogether incapable of the thing itself; for the beasts know no other life beyond what they enjoy, and mind no other, and care for no other; and therefore the estate of man will be different from theirs.

[4.] Man is capable of knowing God and his attributes, which the beasts are not, because they were never made to enjoy him: 'He hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true,' 1 John v. 20. They are capable of knowing their relation to God as his creatures and subjects, and so are obnoxious to his judgment, and that nothing here can make them happy, and that God alone can do it: Ps. iv. 6, 7, 'There be many that say, Who will show us any good? Lord, lift thou up the light of thy countenance upon us. Thou hast put gladness in my heart, more than in the time that their corn and their wine increased.' That happiness lieth not in what men ordinarily seek it in, riches, honours, and pleasures, but in the favour of God; that here we do not enjoy him to the full, and that therefore we must seek after another life; here we seek God, in the world to come we find him, and therefore cannot rest in this partial enjoyment. Man is ever seeking after an immortal blessedness. Now this capacity is not in vain; the soul is restless till it find him.

[5.] Man is capable of a divine nature, which consists not only in the bare knowledge, but love of God: 2 Peter i. 4, 'Whereby are given to us exceeding great and precious promises, that by these you might be partakers of the divine nature.' He is capable of the image of God: Eph. iv. 24, 'And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.'

[6.] Man is capable of a sweet familiar communion with God and friendship with him: 1 John i. 3, 'And truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ.' Therefore the state of man dying must needs be different from that of a beast, who hath no knowledge, no desire, no love to God, no capacity of communion with him, unless it be in respect of receiving the effects and bounty of his common providence.

2. The dignity of man: 'God made him a little lower than the angels, and crowned him with glory and honour,' Ps. viii. 5. Now if he were not immortal, he would be of all creatures most miserable; his reason only would serve to make him capable and apprehensive of the greater calamity and trouble. Sure it is that man is the masterpiece of this visible world, in respect of the majesty of his person, the abilities of his mind, and his sovereignty over all the works of God's hands, all which are marks of special favour of the creator to man above other creatures. Now, if God hath given to man the next place in order of dignity to the angels above his other creatures, what would his love signify if he be in a worse condition than the beasts, and liable to so many cares, encumbrances, grief, and remorse of conscience, which the beasts are freed from? Alas! considering the calamities of his life, infirmities of his body, perplexities of his mind, his reason is a sad privilege to him, and his torment rather than his blessedness, whilst it only giveth him a doleful remembrance of what is past, a care about what is present, and awakens fears of what is to come. The beasts indeed have a sense of what is present, but no remorse for what is past, no presage of what is to come; but man hath all these, a bitter remembrance of sins past; and for present evils, they are more than those of the beasts, such as poverty, banishment, imprisonment, slavery, loss of estate, sundry sicknesses and diseases, and man hath a more bitter sense and apprehension of them. And for time to come, he hath a foresight of the end, which the beasts have not: so that we have twenty-fold more cares and labours than they have, who live in tranquillity and liberty, and free from those disquiets which vex mankind, and have no remorse to sour their pleasures, either from the afflictive remembrance of what is past, or solicitude about what is to come. Therefore if our happiness were here only, man would be less happy than the beasts, many of whose lives are longer and sweeter, who have a more sincere use of bodily pleasures. But here is their happiness; God had provided some better thing for them to be enjoyed in the other world. It cannot be imagined that he hath made his noblest creature in the world with a nature that should be a necessary misery and vexation to itself, above the calamities incident to the rest of the creatures. The very apprehensions and desires that a man hath of an higher good would be a torment and burden to him if there were no calamity else, for he seeth a better estate which he cannot enjoy; as an horse tied up from the provender which is near unto him and cannot reach it. Our nature inclineth us to know and love that we cannot obtain: we can think aforehand of our death and abode in darkness, which beasts cannot, for they are not troubled with these thoughts: yea, we fear miseries after death, and know not how to be exempted from them. Now it is incredible that God should make his noblest creature most miserable, by setting before his eyes a certain death, and possible torments and miseries after death, and provide no remedy against these things.

3. God governeth men by the hopes and fears of another life, and therefore such a life there is, and so the souls of men are immortal. The reason is, because God needeth not to govern the world by deceit and lying: this would be against his holiness and benignity, and would destroy the very government he would establish; for it would tempt us to insincerity, and to cheating and deceiving others; for men are no better than their religion, it were well if they were as good. The foolish, bad, and ignorant may use such arts; but the wise, holy, and good would not. In ludicrous things we fright our children with bugbears and names; but in such a serious thing as the government of the world, it cannot be imagined that God should use such an artifice.

[1.] That God governeth the world by the hopes and fears of another life is evident, not only by the tenor of the christian religion, where the covenant between God and men is established by such threatenings and promises, but by the consent of all nations where government is secured and upheld by such a persuasion. Now if the soul be not immortal, and there be not firm reasons to induce us to believe that it is so, why hath such a conceit been rooted in the minds of men of all nations and all religions, not only Greeks and Romans, but barbarians, and people least civilised? They all received this opinion from hand to hand, from their ancestors; and the nearer men trace it to the original of mankind, the more clear and pressing hath been the conceit thereof. Lapse of time, which ordinarily decayeth all things, hath not been able to deface it out of the minds of men; the sense of an immortal condition after this life hath ever been accounted the great bridle upon the world; and being spread throughout the universe, hath with all forwardness been received among all nations, and hath borne up against all encounters of sin, and hath maintained itself in the midst of those revolutions of human affairs wherein other truths are lost.

[2.] There is a necessity of this government, as suiting best with the nature of man, which is much moved by the hopes and fears of good and evil after death. That man is governed by hopes and fears, common sense teacheth us; that the hopes and fears of the present life are not sufficient to bridle carnal nature, and withstand temptations, and keep us in the true obedience and love to God to the end, experience also showeth, because for the satisfaction of our lusts we can dispense with temporal evils, as the lecher in the Proverbs, chap. v. 11, 'And thou mourn at the last, when thy flesh and thy body are consumed.' Besides, if it were so that these motives of temporal good and evil were sufficient, man were more to be feared than God, which killeth and stabbeth all religion at the heart; for man useth this engine of temporal punishments and inconvenience; they do execution on those that break their laws. Now Christ teacheth us: Luke xii. 4, 5, 'I say unto you, my friends, Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will forewarn you whom you shall fear: Fear him which, after he hath killed, hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear him.'

[3.] The necessity to it appeareth to meet with secret sins, such as fornication, privy atheism, malice, adultery, murder, perjury, hypocrisy, treachery, theft, deceit. He that believeth not a life after this may secretly carry on these sins without impunity. Man cannot see the heart, or make laws to govern it, therefore no man can know or punish these secret sins; therefore, if men can but hide their sins, they are safe. So for the sins of men powerful in the world; for who can call them to an account here for their filthiness or cruelty? Job xxxiv. 18, 'Is it fit to say to a king, Thou art wicked? and to princes, Ye are ungodly?' There is no restraint to those who have none above them; and all secret wickedness would be committed without fear. So that to deny the immortality of the soul, or a life after this, would take away all honesty, and open the flood-gates to all villany and evil practices. Who would make conscience of entire obedience to God, enter in by the strait gate, walk in the narrow way, row against the stream of flesh and blood, work out their salvation with fear and trembling, and consecrate their time to God, if there were no other life after this nor happiness to be there expected? Alas! we plainly see the contrary. Who are so lewd and hardened in their sensualities as they that are tainted with this conceit? That not only the denial, but the forgetfulness of this estate worketh this effect. They make the best of the present life: 1 Cor. xv. 32, 'Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we shall die.' Such atheistical thoughts are very common: ver. 33, 'Be not deceived; evil communications corrupt good manners.' But a deep sense of this immortal estate is the fountain of all sobriety, righteousness, and godliness; and all that is virtuous and praiseworthy hath been done in the world upon this account. Therefore, who are the better men, those that believe the immortality of the soul, or those that believe it not? And who are likely to be in the right, wicked wretches, or holy, serious, and considering men?

[4.] The duties which God requireth of us show it. Man is obliged to divers duties which are difficult and displeasing to the flesh, and which we should never perform without a serious belief of the soul's immortality; such as these, to forsake the sinful pleasures of the world, to mortify and tame the flesh, diligently to exercise ourselves to godliness, to suffer the loss of all outward comforts, yea, of life itself. All these are commanded; the mortification and keeping down the body, Col. iii. 5; diligence in the heavenly life, Phil. iii. 13, 14; fortitude and patience under the greatest trials, as Moses is propounded for an example, Heb. xi. 24-26; not to faint in the greatest tribulations, 2 Cor. iv. 16-18; yea, to expose life itself, Luke xiv. 26. Now would God, who is so loving to mankind, bind us to displease the flesh, and enjoin us so many duties which are harsh and troublesome, yea, some of them hurtful and detrimental to the body, if he had not provided some better thing for us? Would he, all whose precepts are for our good, and who hath made self-love so great an help to our duty, be so hard to us, but that he knoweth how to recompense this diligence and self-denial? He saith, 'Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on,' Mat. vi. 25; but he saith, 'Keep the soul with all diligence,' Deut. iv. 9. Would he be so earnest in pressing us to look after the soul, and strengthening and adorning the inward man, if the soul were to perish with the body? Surely, if all depended upon the body, the body should be more cared for; but it is quite otherwise. Scripture and reason show the body is only to be cared for in subordination to the soul, and that our chiefest work should be to furnish our souls with knowledge and grace. And they are the worthiest men who do most busy themselves about divine and heavenly things; whereas they are the basest who care so much for the body, and make a business of those things which they should do only by the by. Certainly if there were an end of us when the body faileth, we should abhor nothing so much as death, desire nothing so much as the good of the body; nothing would be so dear to us, but we would part with it to keep off the death of the body, for then there would be an end of us. Death would be the chiefest evil we could suffer, and that which would deprive us of all other good; nothing should be feared and abhorred like death, and we should lie, forswear, or do anything to avoid it. But this principle would not only destroy all generous actions, but introduce all dishonesty and sin into the world; for as we should never venture our lives upon any reason and inducement, though never so just, so we should stick at no evil to preserve life, and the conveniences which belong thereunto.

[5.] The desires wrought in us by the Spirit of God, to see and enjoy God, argue the immortality of the soul: Rom. viii. 23, 'And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the first-fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our bodies;' 2 Cor. v. 2, 'For in this we groan earnestly, desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven.' We prove another life, not only by the inclination, instinct, and disposition of nature towards happiness in general; the universal desire of all mankind is to be everlastingly happy, this proveth it; for this desire being universal and natural, is not frustrate; nature doth nothing in vain: but the desires and groans of the sanctified do much more prove it, for they do more forcibly direct and carry our hearts to a certain scope and end; and they are excited by the Holy Spirit, for he imprinteth a firm persuasion of this happiness, and stirreth up these desires after it; and that in our sober and severest moods, when we are solemnly conversing with God in his holy worship, in the word, prayer, meditation, and the Lord's supper, and all other holy duties, then he most raiseth these affections towards heavenly things; and also he leaveth this heavenly relish upon our hearts at other times, as the reward of our eminent obedience to God; and the more serious and holy any are, the more do they feel of this. Now these desires being of God's own infusing, they will not be disappointed; therefore those who make the hopes of the world to come their happiness, desire, and joy, will one day be partakers of the blessedness of it: their groaning, seeking, and longing, will not be in vain, for God will give the satisfaction where he giveth the desire.

Use 1. Is terror to the wicked and ungodly. Your souls die not with the body, but must enter into endless torments. The body perisheth, but the immortal substance will for ever subsist in a state of woe or weal. Now how brutishly and much beneath a man do they live who wholly give up themselves to carnal pleasures and worldly pursuits, that live as if their souls did die with their bodies, and they should never hear of them more! They make no provision for their everlasting estate. Three evils I charge upon these men—

1. These men do not believe that which scripture and reason showeth to be certainly true, and so do not show themselves either christians or men. The great design of scripture is to give them a prospect of another world, and to assure them of a life after death. And will you not receive God's testimony? Are God's threatenings a vain scarecrow; are the promises a golden dream? Go and reason, if the soul abideth not after it flitteth out of the body, it is either because it cannot be or act, or because God will not suffer it to be or act, or hath not clearly declared it shall be so, so that no certainty can be had thereof or hath declared or expressed himself to the contrary. Now none of these things are true.

[1.] Not the first. The nature of the soul is such that it showeth plainly that it can live without the body. A spirit can subsist by itself; that which God hath fitted to endure for ever, he hath designed it to endure for ever. Now the soul as a spirit is fitted to live for ever, and it can live without the body, for it is ἀντοκίνητος, it doth of itself move itself. Is it the body that supports the soul, or the soul that supports the body? Heathens have thought so upon this argument, and will not you? Cum venerit ille dies, qui mixtum hoc divini humanique, secernat, corpus hic ubi inveni relinquam, ipse me diis redeam—When that day shall come, when the divine spirit shall be severed from the human body, I shall leave the body where I found it, and yield up my spirit to the gods.

[2.] Is it because God will not permit it to be, or act without the body? Whence doth that appear? To us christians he hath appointed a mediator to receive our souls.

[3.] Or is it because he hath doubtfully expressed his mind? You are not sure there is no such life; it is impossible you should know or prove the contrary. The question between the infidel and the christian is not whether there be a world to come? but whether he can prove there is none? You cannot prove the falsity of the christian hope by any sound argument that there is no heaven nor hell; for aught you can say or know there are both, and it were best to take the surer side. In a lottery, men will venture some small matter. Some of the heathens that disputed against it or doubted of it, yet acknowledged it to be a supposition conducing to virtue and goodness.

[4.] God hath not declared his mind to the contrary, but plainly told us that it is so. It is easy to presume that a thousand to one but it is so. Natural reason, consent of nations, fears of a guilty conscience, or presages of eternal punishment, the whole drift of the christian religion, the example of Christ, all prove it. Those wretches that outface religion accuse Christ of a lie, and the wisest men of the world of folly, their own consciences of imposing a cheat upon them to check their vain pleasures, and, in defiance of light within and without, smother all conceits of a world to come.

2. They do not consider these things, and weigh them, that they may come to understand what is their end and business here. Alas! are we so near everlasting joy or misery, and yet neglect it; yea, it may be, scorn and oppose those that make it their chiefest care and labour to prepare for it? How long have you lived in the world, and scarce ever asked the question or thought seriously, What shall I do to be saved? You are desirous to give full and ample satisfaction to your dying part, yea, have pampered it, and over-clogged it; but your business is not to pamper the body, but to save your souls. Now you should show yourselves men: Isa. xlvi. 8. 'Remember this, and show yourselves men; bring it again to mind, O ye transgressors!' Think aforethand, What would poor deluded souls, that are in their everlasting estate, give if they might be trusted with a little time again, if God would but try them once more, that they might mend their past folly? They have lost their souls for poor temporal trifles. But alas! now, though we are daily drawing near to our long home, yet we little think of it; we are almost come to our journey's end, and we never consider whither we are going.

3. They do not improve these things, nor live answerably, which is a further degree of brutishness: I's. xlix. 12, 'Man being in honour, abideth not; he is like the beasts that perish;' Jude 10, 'What they know naturally, as brute beasts, in those things they corrupt themselves.' They are strangers to the heavenly mind, and wholly governed by carnal sense; they live as if the soul did serve for no other use but to keep the body from stinking. Their principles have no influence upon their practice; they talk of the immortality of the soul, yet spend all their care upon the body.

Use 2. Is caution.

1. Do not hazard your souls for things that perish. Let nothing entice us to forfeit or hinder our endless happiness: Heb. x. 39, 'We are not of them who draw back unto perdition, but of them that believe to the saving of the soul;' Mat. xvi. 26, 'What is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?'

2. Do not betray the souls of others for a little pelf, as ignorant and careless ministers do, so they have the maintenance. Love to souls is the great thing we learn of our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself 'a ransom for them,' Mat. xx. 28. Ministers should have the bowels of Christ: Phil. i. 8, 'For God is my record how greatly I long after you all in the bowels of Christ; pity those that are going to hell, and ready to perish everlastingly.

Use 3. Is exhortation, to persuade you to make it your mark and scope to look after this immortal state of blessedness. Let us leave things that perish to men that perish: John vi. 27, 'Labour not for the meat that perisheth, but for that meat which endureth to everlasting life.' Surely this argument should persuade us to heavenly-mindedness. Earthly things are of short duration, and shall quickly leave us, and when they are gone, they are to us as if they had never been, a shadow, a dream, or something that is next to nothing; but the fruit of godliness abideth for ever: 1 John ii. 17, 'The world passeth away, and the lust thereof; but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.'

Motives.

1. You know more of the dignity of man, who is created after the most perfect pattern, the image of God himself: Gen. i. 26, 'So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him.' Redeemed at the dearest rate, the blood of the Son of God: 1 Peter i. 18, 19, 'Forasmuch as ye are redeemed, not with corruptible things, as silver and gold, &c., but with the precious blood of Christ,' and designed and ordained to the highest end, the glorifying and enjoying of God: Rom. xi. 36, 'For of him, and through him, and to him are all things.' Surely they should be more sensible of their immortality, and serve God more than the rest of his creatures.

2. You profess that religion which hath brought life and immortality to light, and the end of which is the saving of the soul. Now, though you have the profession of christians, you have not the spirit of christians if this be not your daily business and scope. What have you done for the saving of your souls? if all your business, cares, and fears are about the body and the interests of the bodily life, you have the spirit of the world, not of God. Are not your souls worth the looking after? that which is the scope of your religion should be the business of your lives and actions, that a christian may correspond and answer to his christianity, as the impress doth to the seal.

3. You are God's witnesses: Isa. xliii. 10, 'Ye are my witnesses, saith the Lord.' What proof do we give of a reasonable immortal soul? Heb. xi. 7, 'By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house; by which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith.' Do we propagate carelessness and atheism, or a mindfulness of the world to come?

4. If we are satisfied with present things, we have no more to look for: Ps. xvii. 14, 'From men of the world, which have their portion in this life;' Mat. vi. 2, 'They have their reward;' Luke vi. 24, 'Woe unto you that are rich, for ye have received your consolation;' Luke xvi. 25, 'Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things.' It is sad to be put off with these things, with riches, honours, favour of men, and a little temporal greatness.

SERMON I.

And from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, and the first begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth. Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father; to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.—Rev. i. 5, 6.

THE sacrament is an abridgment of the gospel, and we shall best suit the end of it when we lay before you the sum of the gospel in one entire view. This scripture presenteth us with the principal parts of it. It carrieth the form of a doxology or a thanksgiving; wherein observe—

1. The person to whom this doxology is directed, 'To him;' that is, to Jesus Christ, 'the faithful witness, the first begotten from the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth.'

2. The reasons or matter of it. Wherein—(1.) The moving cause of all that Christ hath done for us, 'He loved us.' (2.) The benefit obtained for us, 'He hath washed us from our sins in his own blood.' (3.) The fruit of it, 'And made us kings and priests unto God and his Father.'

3. The doxology itself, 'To him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.'

Doct. That the Lord Jesus deserveth everlastingly to be honoured, landed, and praised by all the saints that make mention of his name.

John having occasionally mentioned Christ, falleth into this doxology.

Reasons. (1.) From what he is; (2.) For what he hath done for us; (3.) For the fruits and benefits we have thereby.

1. From what he is. He is described—(1.) To be 'the faithful witness,' who hath made known the will of the Father with all fidelity and certainty. (2.) As one who, being crucified, rose from the dead as our first-fruits, ascertaining our resurrection: 'The first begotten from the dead.' The apostle saith, Col. i. 18, 'The first-born from the dead.' The resurrection is a kind of birth, and Christ is the first-born or first-begotten, because he was the first that rose from the dead in his own strength, and vanquished death.