Chapter 1: The Porch or Entrance into the Words, Together with the Proposition

Happiness is the mark, and center which every man aims at. The next thing that is sought, after being, is being happy; and surely, the nearer the soul comes to God who is the fountain of life and peace, the nearer it approaches to happiness; and who so near to God as the believer, who is mystically one with him? He must needs be the happy man: and if you would survey his blessed estate, cast your eyes upon this text, which points to it, as the finger to the dial: For all things are yours. The text may not unfittingly be compared to the Tree of Life, which bore twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month; there are many precious clusters growing out of this text, and being skillfully improved, will yield much fruit.

In the words we have the inventory of a Christian, All things are yours; a strange paradox, when a believer can call nothing his, yet he can say, all things are his. I have often thought a poor Christian that lives in a prison, or some old cottage, is like the usurer, who though he goes poor, and can hardly find himself bread, yet has thousands out at use: so it is with a child of God, as having nothing, yet possessing all things. What once the philosopher said, Solus sapiens dives, Only the wise man is the rich man; give me leave to say, only the believer is the rich man; here is his estate summed up, All things are his.

Before I come to the words, there is an objection must be removed, if all things are ours, there seems to be a community: what is one man's, is another's.

Answ. The Apostle does not speak here of civil possessions; Paul did not go about to destroy any man's property; for though he says All things are yours; yet he does not say, what any man has is yours.

Object. But is it not said, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉; They had all things common? (Acts 2:44)

It is true: but first, this was purely voluntary: non fuit praeceptum, sed susceptum; there was no precept for it.

If it be objected, that this was set down as an example to imitate.

1. I answer; examples in Scripture are not always argumentative: the Prophet Elijah called for fire from heaven, to consume the captains and their fifties; but it does not therefore follow, that when one Christian is angry with another, he may call for fire from heaven. Thus the primitive saints out of prudence and charity, had all things common; it will not therefore follow, that in every age and century of the Church, there should be a common stock, and every one have a share.

2. I answer; though the Disciples had all things common, yet still they held their property, as is clear by Peter's speech to Ananias: 'While it remained, was it not your own? and after it was sold, was it not in your own power?' It is true in one sense, what the primitive Church had, was not their own; so much as could be spared was for the relief of the saints, thus all things were common; but still they kept a part of their estate in their own hand. There is as the schoolmen observe, duplex jus, a double right to an estate, a right of property, and a right of charity. The right of charity belongs to the poor, but the right of property belongs to the owner. For instance, God made a law, that a man must not put his sickle into his neighbor's corn. We read that the Disciples being hungry when they went through the fields on the Sabbath, did pluck the ears of corn, there was charity; but they must not put the sickle into the corn, here was property. This I the rather speak, because there are some, that when God has made an enclosure would lay all common: it was Satan pulled down Job's hedge. The Lord has set the eighth Commandment as a fence about a man's estate, and he that breaks this hedge, a serpent shall bite him. Thus having taken that objection out of the way, I come now to the text.

And it falls into three parts. 1. The inventory, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉, All things. 2. The proprietors, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉, All things are yours. 3. The tenure, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉, you are Christ's. Which three branches will make up this one proposition.

Doctrine. That all things in heaven and earth, are the portion and prerogative of a believer. A large inventory — All things: we can have but all. And the Apostle uses an ingemination, he doubles it, to take away all hesitancy and doubting from faith.