The Life of Christ

Philippians 3:10. That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings.

The purpose of the Apostle in this place is to arm the church of the Philippians against those false Judaizing teachers that confounded Christ and Moses, circumcision and the Gospel together. This he does by personal arguments from men, and by real arguments from the matter itself. Personal arguments are first from the disposition, quality, and end of those false teachers, whom he describes in verse 3. They are evil trees, and therefore no great heed to be given to the fruits they bear, to the doctrines they obtrude. They are dogs, unclean beasts, that bark only for their bellies, and do not only bark, but watch their times to bite too. They are evil workers; though they come like fellow workers with Christ, pretending much strictness in the edification of the church, yet indeed their business is only to pull down and to pervert. They are the Concision, where the Apostle by an [reconstructed: Ironical] paranomasia shows the end of their doctrines. They preach indeed circumcision, but their business is schism and concision; in the law it was circumcision, God's ordinance, but now being by Christ abolished it is nothing at all but a bare concision or cutting of the flesh, and will in the event prove a rent and schism in the church. The second personal argument is taken from the Apostle's own condition, who neither by nature nor education was an enemy to legal ceremonies, who in all points had as great reason to vindicate the law, and to boast in fleshly privileges as any of those false teachers. Verse 4: He was by nature an Israelite of the whole blood as well as they; by education, of the strictest sect of all, a Pharisee; by custom and practice a persecutor of the church, under that very name because the law he had been bred under was endangered by that new way; and in his course of life altogether unblameable in regard of legal obedience and observations: and lastly in his opinions touching them, he counted them gainful things, and rested upon them for his salvation, till the Lord opened his eyes, to see the light of the glorious Gospel of God in the face of Jesus Christ. The arguments from the matter are first from the substance of which circumcision was the shadow. We are the circumcision, who worship God in the spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, etc. (John 4:23). They boast in the flesh, they have a concision, but we are the circumcision, because we have the fruit and truth of circumcision, the spiritual worship of God, which is opposite to external ceremonies. Secondly from the fullness and all-sufficiency of Christ, which stands not in need of any legal accession to piece it out, and this the Apostle shows by his own practice and experience. What things were [illegible] to me those I counted loss for Christ, because they were things that kept him from Christ before, and he repeats the same words confidently again, that he might not be thought to have spoken them unadvisedly or in a heat. Yes, doubtless and I count all things but loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things. As a merchant in a tempest is contented to suffer the loss of all his goods to redeem his life, or rather as a man will be content to part with all his own beggarly furniture for a jewel of great value (Matthew 13:44). Only here we are to note that the Apostle did not suffer the loss of them quoad Substantiam, in regard of the substance of the duties, but quoad qualitatem et officium Iustificandi, in regard of that dependence, and expectation of happiness which he had from them before. Neither did he only suffer the loss of them (as a man may do of things which are excellent in themselves and use, as a merchant throws his wares out of the ship, when yet he dearly loves them, and delights in them) but he shows what estimation he had of them. I count them dung, that I may win Christ, I count them then filthy carrion: so the word signifies; [illegible], quasi [illegible], garbage and filth that is thrown out to dogs, things which dogs (such as he describes these false teachers to be) may delight in; but the spirit of God in a sincere heart cannot relish nor savor in comparison of Christ. And may be found in him, when I shall appear before the face of God, or may find in him all that I lose for him, that is a most plentiful recompense for any legal commodities which I part from for his sake, not having my own righteousness, etc. Here the Apostle distinguishes a twofold righteousness: legal, which is a man's own, because a man must come by it by working himself (Romans 10:5), and Evangelical, which is not a man's own, but the righteousness of God (Romans 3:21-22), freely given to us by grace through Christ. That I may know Him, etc.: that I may have the experience of his grace and mercy in justifying me freely by faith through the virtue of his sufferings and resurrection.

Here then we have these two things set down: first, the preciousness; secondly, the nature of saving faith. The preciousness is in the whole scope of the place, for the words are a comparative speech, where faith is preferred before all legal or moral performances. The nature is opened by the act of it — knowledge — and the object: the virtue of Christ's resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings.

Regarding the former of these two, the scope of the Apostle in this place is to show that faith is the most precious and excellent gift of God to a Christian man. So it is expressly called by Saint Peter, a precious faith (2 Peter 1:1). For understanding of which point we must note that faith may be considered in a double respect: either as it is a quality inherent in the soul, or as an instrument whereby the soul apprehends some other thing. Now in the same thing there is much difference between itself as a quality, and as an instrument. Heat as a quality can only produce the like quality again, but as an instrument of the sun it can produce life and sense, things of more excellence than the quality itself. Faith as a quality is no better than other graces of the Spirit, but as an instrument it has a quickening quality which no other grace has. The just shall live by faith (Hebrews 10:38).

This preciousness of faith is seen chiefly in two respects. First, in regard of the objects, and secondly, in regard of the offices of it. First, faith has the most precious and excellent object of any other — Christ and his truth and promises. Herein, says the Apostle, God commended his love, in that when we were sinners Christ died (Romans 5:8). This was the sovereign and most excellent love token and testification of divine favor that ever was sent from Heaven to men. God so loved the world, so superlatively, so beyond all measure or apprehension, that he gave his Son (John 3:16). There is such a compass of all dimensions in God's love manifested through Christ, such a height and length, and breadth, and depth, as makes it exceed all knowledge (Ephesians 3:18-19). It is exceeding and unsearchable riches. In one word, that which faith looks upon in Christ is the price, the purchase, and the promises which we have by him. The price which made satisfaction to God; the purchase which procured salvation for us; and the promises which comfort and secure us in the certainty of both; and all these are precious things. The blood of Christ, precious blood (1 Peter 1:18). The promises of Christ, precious promises (2 Peter 1:4). And the purchase of Christ, a very exceeding and abundant weight of glory (2 Corinthians 4:17). But it may be objected, Do not other graces have the same object as well as faith? Do we not love Christ, and fear him, and hope in him, and desire him, as well as believe in him? True indeed, but herein is the excellency of faith, that it is the first grace which looks toward Christ.

Now the Scripture uses to commend things by their order and precedence. As the women are commended for coming first to the sepulcher; the messenger which brings the first tidings of good things is ever most welcome; the servant who is nearest his master's person is esteemed the best man in that order: so faith being the first grace that brings tidings of salvation, the nearest grace to Christ's person, is therefore the most excellent in regard of the object.

Secondly, faith is the most precious grace in regard of the offices of it. Though in its inherent and habitual qualification it be no more noble than other graces, yet in the offices which it executes, it is far more excellent than any. Two pieces of parchment and wax are in themselves of little or no difference in value, but in their offices which they bear as instruments or patents one may as far exceed the other as a man's life exceeds his lands; for one may be a pardon of life, the other a lease of a cottage. One man in a city may in his personal estate be much inferior to another, yet as an officer in the city he may have a great precedence and distance above him. Compare a piece of gold with a seal of silver or brass, and it may have far more worth in itself; yet the seal has an office or relative power to ratify covenants of far more worth than the piece of gold: so is it between faith and other graces; consider faith in its inherent properties, so it is not more noble than the rest: but consider it as an instrument, by God appointed for the most noble offices, so is it the most superlative and excellent grace. These offices which are peculiar to it, I take it, are principally these three. The first is to unite to Christ, and give possession of him. The Apostle prays for the Ephesians, that Christ may dwell in their hearts by faith (Ephesians 3:17). Wealth in the mine does no good at all till it be severed and appropriated to persons and uses: water in the fountain is of no service to me, till it be conveyed from there to my own cistern; the light of the sun brings no comfort to him who has no eyes to enjoy it: so though Christ be a mine full of excellent and unsearchable riches, a fountain full of comforts and refreshments, a sun of righteousness, a captain and prince of life and salvation, yet till he is made ours, till there be some bond and communion between him and us, we remain as poor and miserable as if this fountain had never been opened, nor this mine discovered.

Now this union to and communion with Christ is on our part the work of faith, which is as it were the spiritual joint and ligament by which Christ and a Christian are coupled. In one place we are said to live by Christ, Because I live, says he, you shall live also (John 14:19). In another, by faith, The just shall live by faith (Hebrews 10:38). How by both? By Christ, as the fountain; by faith, as the pipe conveying water to us from the fountain; by Christ, as the foundation; by faith, as the cement knitting us to the foundation; by Christ, as the treasure; by faith, as the clue which directs; as the key which opens, and lets us in to that treasure. This the Apostle explains in the former place, where he shows by what means faith makes us live, namely by giving us an entrance and approach to Christ; for he opposes faith to drawing back, verses 19-30, noting that the proper work of faith is to carry us to Christ, as our Savior himself expounds believing in him, by coming to him (John 6:64-65). Therefore the Apostle puts both together, not I, but Christ lives in me, and the life which I live, I live by the faith of the Son of God (Galatians 2:20). Faith is compared to eating and drinking (John 6), and we know there is no sense that requires such an intimate and secret union to its object as that of tasting, no sense that is the instrument of so near a union as that. So then as the motion of the mouth in eating is not in the nature of a motion any whit more excellent than the motion of the eye or foot, or of itself in speaking; yet in the instrumental office of life and nourishment it is far more necessary: so though faith in the substance of it as it is an inherent quality has no singular excellency above other graces; yet as it is an instrument of conveying Christ our spiritual bread to our souls, and so of assimilating and incorporating us into him, which no other grace can do, no more than the motion of the eye or foot can nourish the body; so it is the most precious and useful of all others. It may be objected, do not other graces join a man to Christ, as well as faith? Union is the proper effect of love; therefore we are one with Christ as well by loving him, as by believing in him.

To this I answer, that love makes only a moral union in affections, but faith makes a mystical union, a more close and intimate fellowship in nature between us and Christ. Besides, faith is the immediate tie between Christ and a Christian, but love a secondary union following upon, and grounded on the former. By nature we are all enemies to Christ and His kingdom, of the Jews' mind, we will not have this man to reign over us: therefore till by faith we are thoroughly persuaded of Christ's love to us, we can never repay love to Him again. Herein is love, says the Apostle, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son (1 John 4:10). Now between God's love and ours comes faith to make us one with Christ — we have known and believed the love that God has to us (verse 16). And hence it follows that because by faith as He is so are we in this world, therefore our love to Him is made perfect, and so we love Him because He first loved us (verse 19). So that we see the union we have with Christ by love presupposes the unity we have in Him by faith; so faith still has the preeminence.

The second office wherein consists the excellence of faith is a consequent of the former, namely to justify a man: for there is no man righteous in the sight of God any further than he is taken into the unity of Christ, and into the fellowship of His merits. God is alone well pleased in Christ, and till a man be a member of His body, a part of His fullness, he cannot appear in God's presence. This was the reason why Christ would have none of His bones broken, or taken from the communion of His natural body (John 19:36), to note the indissoluble union which was to be between Him and His mystical members. So that now as in a natural body the member is certainly fast to the whole so long as the bones are firm and sound: so in the mystical, where the body is, there must every member be too, because the bones must not be broken asunder. If then Christ go to Heaven, if He stand unblameable before God's justice, we all shall in Him appear so too; because His bones cannot be broken. That which thus puts us into the unity of Christ, must needs justify our persons, and set us right in the presence of God: and this is our faith. The Apostle gives two excellent reasons why our justification should be of faith rather than of any other grace. The first on God's part, that it might be of grace: the second on the part of the promise, that the promise might be sure to all the seed (Romans 4:16). First, justification that is by faith is of mere grace and favor, no way of work or merit. For the act whereby faith justifies, is an act of humility, and self-dereliction, a holy despair of anything in ourselves, and a going to Christ, a receiving, a looking towards Him and His all-sufficiency; so that as Mary said of herself, so we may say of faith; the Lord has respect to the lowliness of His grace, which is so far from looking inward for matter of justification, that it itself as it is a work of the heart — to believe — does not justify, but only as it is an apprehension or taking hold of Christ. For as the hand in the very receiving of a thing must needs first make itself empty (if it be full before, it must let all that go before it can take hold on any other thing:) so faith being a receiving of Christ (John 1:12), must needs suppose an emptiness in the soul before.

Faith has two properties (as a hand) — to work and to receive; when faith purifies the heart, supports the drooping spirits, works by love, carries a man through afflictions and the like, these are the works of faith: when faith accepts of righteousness in Christ, and receives Him as the gift of His Father's love, when it embraces the promises far off (Hebrews 11:13), and lays hold on eternal life (1 Timothy 6:12), this is the receiving act of faith. Now faith justifies not by working (lest the effect should not be wholly of grace, but partly of grace, and partly of work (Ephesians 2:8-9)), but by bare receiving, and accepting or yielding consent to that righteousness, which in regard of working was the righteousness of Christ (Romans 5:18), and in regard of disposing, imputing, appropriating to us, was the righteousness of God (Romans 3:21; 1 Corinthians 1:30; Philippians 3:9). To make the point of justification by the receiving and not the working of faith plain, let us consider it by a familiar simile.

Suppose a surgeon should perfectly cure the hand of a poor man from some desperate wound which utterly disabled him for any work: when he has so done, should at one time freely bestow some good alms upon the man, to the receiving whereof he was enabled by the former cure; and at another time should set the man about some work, to which likewise the former cure had enabled him; and the work being done, should give him a reward proportionable to his labor: I demand which of these two gifts are arguments of greater grace in the man, either the recompensing of that labor which was wrought by the strength he restored, or the free bestowing of an equal gift, to the receiving of which likewise he himself gave ability? Any man will easily answer that the gift was a work of more free grace than the reward, though to both way was made by His own merciful cure; for all the mercy which was shown in the cure was not able to nullify the intrinsic proportion which afterwards did arise between the work and the reward. Now this is the plain difference between our doctrine and the doctrine of our adversaries in the point of justification. They say we are justified by grace, and yet by works, because grace enables us to work: we say we are justified freely, not by the works of grace, but by the grace which bestows our justification, and therewith our strength of working to us. For surely God's free grace is more magnified in giving us undeservedly both righteousness and works; than in giving us works to deserve our righteousness.

Secondly, Justification by Faith does make the promise sure to all the seed. If to a beggar should be proposed some excellent benefit upon condition to perform some acceptable and perfect service to the person that offers it; whom yet it would be impossible to please by working, without some exact ability for the duty required; the man might easily doubt of the certainty of the benefit, because his performance of the condition required is uncertain: but if the same benefit should be proposed upon no other act on his part required, then only the acknowledgement of his own want, and the willing acceptance of the thing offered, a man could not be unsure of it. So if the Lord should propose righteousness [reconstructed: or] salvation to a man upon condition of his moral obedience, man's corruptions are so many, and his abilities so weak, his enemies so potent, and his heart so treacherous to comply with them, that the promise cannot be made sure to him upon the concurrence of his own works. But when there is nothing required of a man but to cleave to Christ, nothing but to relinquish his own endeavors, and to accept the help of a sure Savior, and to rely upon the sure mercies of David, this must needs make our righteousness and salvation to be as certain as is the value of the merits, or fidelity of the promise, on which we rely. If there be nothing requisite to the firmness and consistency of a house, but only to be put upon the foundation, then the house must needs be as sure as the foundation; if there be nothing requisite to the safeness of a man's money or writings, but to put them in a closet or box, the things must needs be as safe as the place into which they are put: so since nothing else is required to make our salvation sure but only to rest upon Christ, who is a safe foundation to his Church (Matthew 16:18) and a certain Treasure (Colossians 3:3) Faith which alone puts us into him, does therewith make our Salvation sure to us. Behold I lay in Zion a chief corner stone, elect and precious, (there is both our foundation and our Treasure) now the safety which Faith brings from here is this, He that believes shall not be confounded, or put to shame; in the Prophet it is, shall not make haste (1 Peter 2:6) both words express safety. For a man to rely upon another for any good thing, and at last to fail in his expectation, this must needs shame him in the disappointment of his hopes; but when the hopes of a man are grounded upon the unsearchable riches, and the unfailing promise, and the immutable truth, power, and goodness of God; impossible it is that the faith of such a man should shame or deceive him. When a man is secure and certain of any good thing, he is contented to wait the season of it; David by God's promise, and unction was certain of the kingdom, and therefore he would not take away the life of Saul when it was in his power, but waited till the time of his death by God appointed should come (1 Samuel 26:9-11) but when a man is [reconstructed: unconfident] of a thing, he is ready to snatch at every probability, to make use of every occasion that happens to further his desires. If I should see two men going towards the Court in competition for some office or preferment, and should observe the one to ride night and day in full speed, to deny himself the comforts of the way, and to express much impatience and indignation at every stoppage that met him; the other to take time and leisure, to rely upon the former promises of the prince, or the prevalence of some honorable friends, and to laugh at the greediness of his competitor, I should easily conclude that the hopes of that man were greater, whose [reconstructed: haste was less]: for when a man has a thing already in promise, and that from the hands of a man of whose power and fidelity he has infallible assurance, he is not over vehement for performance, but willingly attends the times and good pleasure of his friend. Now this is the business of faith to give a being to the things we hope for, and though in themselves they be far off, and out of sight, yet to make them subsistent and at hand in the promise, even within the reach and embracement of Faith (Hebrews 11:1, 13). So that Faith does therefore keep a man from greediness and precipitancy in his pursuit, and from confusion and shame in his hopes of good, because it sees them as safe, and certain in the power and promises of Christ, as if they were already made good to him. So then to conclude this point, Faith being the only Grace wherein is magnified the fullness and freeness of God's favor, and wherein is secured his promise to all the seed; It must needs be the fittest grace for a merciful Justification.

The third office of Faith, is having put us into Christ, and Justified us by him, to give us together with Him all other things, which is the conviction that the Apostle makes (Romans 8:32). If He has given us Christ, how shall He not with Him freely also give us all things? These all things, are of two sorts. First, all graces: Secondly, all secular good things. Saint Peter puts them together, and shows how they run from Christ to us, through Faith as the pipe; His divine Power has given to us all things that pertain to Life and Godliness, and that through the knowledge (that is, the Faith) of him that has called us to glory and virtue (2 Peter 1:3).

First all graces: faith is the first grace in a Christian soul, and the spring of the rest. This is the main business of that excellent chapter (Hebrews 11), to show how faith was the master wheel in the lives and actions of those holy men whose renown is there upon record. The Apostle tells us that faith works by love (Galatians 5:6), where by love we may understand either generally the universal habit of all other operative graces, and then the sense is, that faith does as it were actuate and animate all other habits of grace, and apply them to their several works: or rather particularly, that love of God which is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost; and then the method and meaning of the place is this. First, faith shows us the great love of God in Christ: "The life that I live," says the Apostle, "I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me" (Galatians 2:20), where we see the principal discovery that faith makes in Christ, and that it fixes upon is His love to us; and this is a most sovereign and superlative love. "Herein," says the Apostle, "God commended, God heaped together His love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8).

Secondly, faith having thus revealed to our hearts the love of God in Christ, does kindle in them a reciprocal love towards Christ again, working in us the same mind that is in Christ (Philippians 2:5), and inflaming our spirits to a retribution of love for love. "We have believed the love that God has to us," says the Apostle, "and therefore," says he, "we love Him because He loved us first" (1 John 4:16, 19). Thus faith works love.

But now thirdly there is a further power in faith, for it does not only work love, but it works by love as the text speaks: that is, it makes use of that love which it has thus kindled, as of a goad and incentive to further obedience; for that love which we repay to Christ again, stirs us to an intimate and heavenly communion with Him, to an entire and spiritual conformity to Him. And the reason is, because it is a conjugal love, and therefore a fruitful love, for the end of marriage is fructification. "You are become dead to the law," says the Apostle, "by the body of Christ, that you should be married to another, even to Him who is raised from the dead," and the end of this spiritual marriage is added, "That we should bring forth fruit to God," which is immediately after expounded, "That we should serve in newness of spirit" (Romans 7:4, 6). "If a man love me," says our Savior, "he will keep my words": and this obedience is the child of faith as it is set down in the same place, "You shall know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you"; and immediately upon this faith it follows, "He that has my commandments and keeps them, he it is that loves me: and he that loves me, shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to Him" (John 14:20-23). In which place there are these things of excellent observation. First, the noble objects that faith does contemplate, even the excellency of God's love to us in Christ. "You shall know that I am in my Father"; in His bosom, in His bowels, in His dearest affection: one with Him in mercy, in counsel, in power. That He and I both go one way; have both one decree and resolution of grace and compassion towards sinners: and that you are in me, your nature in me, your infirmities in me, the punishment of your sins upon me, that I am bone of your bone, and flesh of your flesh, that you are in my heart, and in my tenderest affections, that you were [reconstructed: crucified] together with me, that you live together with him, that you sit together with me in heavenly places; that [reconstructed: I] died your death, that you rose my resurrection, that I pray your prayers, that you were my righteousness, and that I am in you, by my merits to justify you, by my grace and Spirit to renew and purify you, by my power to keep you, by my wisdom to lead you, by my communion and compassion to share with you in all your troubles; these are the mysteries of the love of the Father and the Son to us.

Now this Love kindles a Love in us again, and that Love shows itself in two things. First in having the Commandments of Christ; that is in accepting of them, in giving audience to them, in opening our eyes to see, and our hearts to entertain the wonders of the Law. And secondly in keeping of them, in putting to the strength of our Love (for Love is as strong as Death; it will make a man neglectful of his own life, to serve and please the person whom he loves) that so we may perform the duties which so good a Saviour requires of us. And now as our Love was not the first mover (we loved Him, because He loved us first) So neither shall it be the last; as the Father and the Son did by their first Love provoke ours, so will they by their second Love reward ours. And therefore it follows; He that loves me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him. This is not meant of a new Love, but of a further declaration of their former Love, namely in a more close and familiar communion, and heavenly cohabitation with them; we will come to Him, and make our abode with Him, we will show Him our face, we will make all our goodness to pass before Him, we will converse and commune with His Spirit, we will sup with Him, we will provide Him a feast of fatted things, and of refined wine, we will open the breasts of consolation, and delight Him with the abundance of Glory. Excellent to the purpose of the present point is that place of the Apostle (2 Corinthians 5:14-15). The Love of Christ, says he, constrains us, that is, either Christ's Love to us by Faith apprehended, or our Love to Christ by the apprehension of His Love wrought in us, does by a kind of sweet and lovely violence win, and overrule our hearts; not to live henceforth to ourselves, but to Him that died for us and rose again: and the root of this strong persuasion is adjoined, namely because we thus [illegible] judge, because we know and believe, that if one died for all, then all are dead to the guilt, and to the power of sin, and ought to live a new life conformable to the resurrection of Christ again. Therefore in two parallel places the Apostle uses promiscuously Faith and a new Creature. In Christ Jesus neither Circumcision avails anything, nor uncircumcision, but Faith which works by Love (Galatians 5:6), neither circumcision nor uncircumcision, but a new creature (Galatians 6:15). The reason of which promiscuous acceptation the Apostle renders the inseparable union between faith and renovation. If any man be in Christ, he is a new Creature (2 Corinthians 5:17).

Secondly, Faith gives us all good things requisite to our condition. Adam was created Lord of his fellow inferior Creatures, invested with property to them all. In his fall he made a forfeiture of every good thing which God gave him: In the second Covenant a reconciliation being procured, Faith entitling a man to the Covenant does likewise re-invest him with the Creatures again. All things, says the Apostle, are yours, and he opens the title and conveyance of them, you are Christ's, and Christ is God's (1 Corinthians 3:23). So elsewhere he says that the living God gives us all things richly to enjoy, that is, not only the possession but the use of the things (1 Timothy 6:17), where by all things we may understand, first the liberty and enlargement of Christians, as it stands in opposition to the pedagogy and discipline of Moses' Law, which distinguished the Creatures into clean and unclean, and so by consequence into useful and unuseful; so that now by any immediate tie of conscience we are not prohibited the free enjoyment of any Creature of God. Secondly by all things we understand not all simply, but all requisites; All that in regard of our state and course are necessary to life and godliness. O woman, says our Saviour, great is your Faith, Be it to you even as you will (Matthew 15:28). This is a large grant to ask what we will and to have promise of obtaining it; but he who promises to believers what they will, does likewise regulate and confine their wills to desire nothing but with subordination to His Will; nothing but their own portion, that which is food convenient for them. The heathen man could say, That man has as much as he desires, who desires nothing but what he has. So we may say of a Christian, he has indeed whatever he will, because God gives him a heart to desire nothing but that which is God's promise and his own necessity.

Now all these things faith gives us, first because it gives us the fountain, and secondly the promises of them all. First faith carries us to the fountain, that is, to God. With you, says the prophet David, there is the fountain of life (Psalm 36:9). And we are of God in Christ Jesus, says the apostle (1 Corinthians 1:30). Now we know there is a kind of all-sufficiency in a fountain; whatever water a man wants, he may have his supply at the fountain; whereas cisterns and broken pits will be presently exhausted. We may observe in many fountains that to the eye they seem to have far less water in them for the time, than some greater torrent or winter flood which [reconstructed: overruns] whole valleys, and carries away woods and stones before it: yet Job tells us that a torrent will make men ashamed in summer, when they turn aside for water to refresh them, and can find none (Job 6:19-20). But he that comes to a fountain for refreshment shall never be ashamed, because it is living and growing water, and so makes a perpetual supply. So the faithful oftentimes have less wealth and abundance of earthly things than other men: yet notwithstanding they have therewith all the fountain, and so by consequence they have more certainty, and more sweetness. First more certainty, for fountain water is living water, and so it multiplies; whereas other men have their water in cisterns that are broken, full of holes and chinks to let it out again: so the prophets tell us of some that drudge and labor, but it is in the fire, their work perishes as fast as it grows; and of others that [reconstructed: earn] wages, but put it in a bag with holes, it falls out as fast as it is put in. What are these holes, this fire that melts, and lets out the estates of wicked men? They are principally these two. First, the lusts of their own hearts — you ask and receive not, because you spend it upon your lusts, says the apostle; and as lust keeps it away, so lust lets it out when we have it. How many great estates have wine and women, hawks and hounds, fashions and compliments, pride and vainglory, humors and projects, quarrels and dissensions, the back, the belly, the eye, the ear, the tongue, the many inventions of an idle head, the many exorbitances of a wandering heart, melted away, and reduced to nothing. Every member of the body, every appetite of the soul, so many chinks to let out an estate. But now the faithful have their lusts abated, their hearts ordered, the dropsy and intemperance of their affections removed, and so all the holes at which God's blessings might soak away are stopped up. Secondly, the cisterns of wicked men are broken, and their bags full of holes by the secret judgment and curse of God punishing their sinful lusts in their sinful gain, blasting and withering their fruitless estates, as Christ did the barren fig tree. We see how the Lord threatens to curse the people for their sins in their going out and coming in, in their basket and in their store: to break the staff of their bread, to take away their cup from their mouth, to take his wine and his oil to himself again, to consume their palaces with fire, to remove their bankers, to discover their treasures, and to seek out their hidden things, to hear the cry of the beam, and of the stone out of the wall, and to pull them out of their nests, even from among the stars, with infinite other the like expressions, in which the Lord uses to show to us the power and vigilance of his justice in the administration of the world. Whereas the faithful have the bread and the word, the creatures and the blessings of God together, and so have more certainty in these things. The woman's oil and meal was not much, yet it increased, and went along with her occasions; there was a spring in the cruse and in the barrel, it was living oil, and living meal, that grew, and held out in the famine. As a man's occasions are, so the fountain supplies him. If he wants a cup, a bucket, a cistern full, there is in the fountain answerable to all his wants: so whatever necessity the Lord brings the faithful to, he gives them an eye to see, a heart to rest in, and to expect in the use of honest means a supply proportional to each of them. And as they have more certainty, so have they more sweetness in the waters which they fetch from the fountain. Water in pits and cisterns rots, and grows muddy and unsavory; so do the creatures of God to wicked men. Cares, fears, jealousies, desires, hopes, ends, infinite commixtures and disturbances deprive the creatures of their native relish and purity. The sweetest wine to an aguish palate tastes of that bitter humor which it there finds. So lusts and curses interweaving themselves with the creatures in a wicked man's hands, must needs take away the sense of their simple goodness, turn their table to a snare, and the things which should have been for their good into an occasion of falling. Whereas the faithful by the word and prayer have the creature sanctified, seasoned, and perfumed to their use again, have the curse of God removed, and their own lusts corrected, and withheld from mingling with them. Thus faith gives us all things in the fountain, more certain, and more sweet, by stopping the holes which did let them out, and by removing the lusts and curses which did before embitter them.

Secondly, Faith gives us all things by giving us the promises. Godliness has the promises of this life, and that which is to come (1 Timothy 4:8). Wicked men have good things only by God's general providence, which makes his Sun to shine as well on them as on the just by a common bounty. But this manner of tenure is liable to many forfeitures, curses, taxations; many inroads and devastations, by wolfish and wasting lusts; and by consequence is not able to settle and secure the heart in the enjoyment of them. But now by Faith in the promises the godly have their hold altered, have their estate settled in a better and surer tenure, delivered from those many encumbrances and entanglements to which before they were obnoxious; so that now a man's heart is secured beyond all doubts or human fears. A poor man may object: I am not wise enough to order my affairs, I am disabled by sickness and weakness to attend my calling, my charge increases upon me, and my probabilities of providing for them wax smaller than before. But yet Faith is able to answer these and all other the like objections, by proposing the promise. Do you live by your own strength? Do you prosper by your own wisdom and industry, or by the blessing and truth of God in his promises? And is God's truth an accepter of persons? Is not his fidelity as firm towards weak and poor, as towards rich believers? Is there any want or weakness, any poverty or deficiency in heaven? Do the promises of God stand in need of man's wisdom or strength to bring them to pass? Can your increase of charge or occasions exhaust the treasures, or dry up the fountains and truth of God? If an honorable and wealthy person has occasions to enlarge his retinue, and live at a higher pitch than before, yet because he has abundance, he does not repine at this necessity. All the faithful are of the household and family of God, who is no whit the poorer in his state and power by maintaining many or few. He gives to all men, and yet he gives liberally (James 1:5), which no rich man in the world is able to do, because as he gives to others, himself decreases. But God gives out of a fountain, as the Sun gives light, which whether it shine to one, or to thousands, retains still equal light in itself, neither can the eyes of men exhaust or draw out the light of the Sun. All the creatures are mine, says God, upon a thousand hills. If a thousand hills can bear corn enough, or feed cattle enough for any poor man's relief, he need not doubt or fear; for God has still thousands of mountains, as it were so many granaries or storehouses, in his truth and promises, for the faithful in any straits to have recourse to. And thus faith gives us all things by entitling us to the promises.

Against all this which has been spoken touching the excellency of Faith, may be objected that determination of the Apostle: Now abides Faith, Hope, and Charity, these three; but the greatest of these is Charity (1 Corinthians 13:13). By which comparison this point touching the precedency of faith seems to be impaired. To which I answer: that the Apostle speaks of a greatness extensive, in regard of duration, Charity being an everlasting grace, but faith pertaining only to this life, as being requisite to the present quality and states of the Church — for faith and fruition are opposed (2 Corinthians 5:7), faith looks upon things in their promises, fruition in their real existence — but now consider faith as an instrument to lay hold on Christ, and the precious promises of life and grace in him, and consider it as a root, a living principle to put the heart in work, to purify the conscience, to inflame the heart to spiritual obedience, and a retribution of holy love to God for all his love to us in his Son; and thus Faith exceeds Charity as the motion of the mouth in eating, which is an act that tends immediately to life, does the motion of the mouth in speaking, which tends not to an end so important, nor absolutely necessary.

Another objection may be this: other graces make a man like Christ, which Faith cannot do, because Christ could not believe to justification, or life, having the fountain of both abundantly in himself, whereas the proper and primitive work of Faith is to carry a man out of himself, and to make him see all his sufficiency in another. To which I answer two ways. First, Christ had faith, though not to such purposes as we: Faith in the common nature of it, as it imports assent to all divine truth, and adherence, or reliance of the soul to the benefit and goodness which the same brings with it — for ratio veritatis and ratio commodi are the two objects of a right faith, or rather several qualifications of the same object — thus it is a legal thing, coming under the compass of those duties of the Law, to which Christ made himself subject. But faith as a condition, an officer, an instrument of justification, so it could not stand with Christ, who was not to be righteous by believing, but to be himself the righteousness of those that believe. But in other respects when the Apostle says, he was heard in that which he feared, when he says himself, My God, my God; it is manifest, that though he had not faith for righteousness, yet he had it for deliverance, that though he were not saved by believing, yet he was obedient in believing. Secondly, it is more to be one with Christ, than to be like him; more to be a part of him, than a picture: now faith makes a unity with Christ, other graces only a resemblance; faith makes a man a member, others only a follower of him; and so in that respect still Faith has the preeminence.

Now then from the great necessity and preciousness of this duty we may first infer the greatness of their sin, who neglect it, who live with no sense of the want, and little sorrow for the weakness of it, to lie, swear, revel, deceive, to live in the practice of any notorious outrage, and moral enormity, many men esteem heinous and unworthy; but to live in infidelity, without the knowledge or fellowship of Christ, in an utter unacquaintance with their own unworthiness, and unexperience of their everlasting insufficiencies to compass or contrive their own salvation, are things seldom or never seriously thought on by them. And yet infidelity is indeed the edge, and sting of all other sins, that which binds them and their guilt everlastingly upon the soul, and locks them like shackles to the conscience, which otherwise by the help of Christ might easily shake them off. He that believes, says Christ, is not condemned, he that does not believe is condemned already, and the wrath of God abides on him. There is a displeasure which is but for a moment, a wrath which does only sting, and blow upon the soul, and then away; such the faithful themselves after some bold adventure into the ways of sin, may have experience of. And there is a wrath which is constant, permanent, intimately and everlastingly adherent to the soul, which will seize only upon unbelievers. The Spirit shall convince the world of sin because they do not believe, says Christ. Sin there stands in opposition to righteousness, and judgment, or holiness; so that the meaning is, The Spirit shall convince men that they are unrighteous and unholy men, held under by the guilt, condemnation, and power of sin; shut up in fast chains to the wrath and judgment of the great Day; unavoidably cast and condemned in the court of law, because they fled not by faith to that office of mercy and reconciliation which the Father has erected in his beloved Son. All sins do of themselves deserve damnation, but none do in fact infer damnation without infidelity. This was that great provocation in the wilderness which kept the people out of the land of promise, and for which God is said to have been grieved forty years together. How long will this people provoke me? How long will it be before they believe in me? They despised the holy land, they did not believe his word; they drew backward, and turned again in their hearts into Egypt. The Apostle sums up all their murmurings and provocations, for which they were excluded that type of heaven, in this one word, [illegible], because of their unbelief. If there be but one only medicine against a deadly disease, and when that is offered to the sick person he refuse it, and throw it under his feet, the state of that man is infallibly desperate and remediless. There is but one name, but one sacrifice, but one blood, by which we can be saved, perfected, and purged forever, and without which God can have no pleasure in us: how can we then escape if we neglect so great salvation, and trample under foot the blood of the covenant? It is a fruitless labor and an endless folly for men to use any other courses (be they in appearance never so specious, probable, rigorous, mortified, Pharisaical, nay angelical) for extricating themselves out of the maze of sin, or exonerating their consciences of the guilt or power thereof without faith. Though a man could scourge out of his own body rivers of blood, and in a neglect of himself could outfast Moses or Elijah; though he could wear out his knees with prayer, and had his eyes nailed to heaven; though he could build hospitals for all the poor on the earth, and exhaust the mines of India into alms; though he could walk like an angel of light, and with the glittering of an outward holiness dazzle the eyes of all beholders; nay (if it were possible to be conceived) though he should live for a thousand years in a perfect and perpetual observation of the whole law of God, his original corruption, or any one, though the least digression and deviation from that law, alone excepted: yet such a man as this could no more appear before the tribunal of God's justice, than stubble before a consuming fire. It is only Christ in the bush that can keep the fire from burning; it is only Christ in the heart that can keep sin from condemning. [illegible], without me, that is, separated from me, you can do nothing towards the justification of your persons, or salvation of your souls, or sanctification of your lives or natures. No burden can a man shake off, no obstacle can he break through, no temptation can he overcome without faith; shake off every thing that presses down, and the sin which hangs so fast on, and run with patience (namely through all oppositions and contradictions,) the race that is set before you, says the Apostle. But how shall we do such unfeasible works? He shows that in the next words, [illegible], looking off from ourselves to Jesus the author and finisher of our faith. When a man looks inward upon his own strength, he may as justly despair of moving sin from his soul, as of casting down mountains with one of his fingers: but he who is able to give us faith, is by that able to make all things possible to us. The world tempts with promises, wages, pleasures of sin, with frowns, threats, and persecutions for righteousness: if a man have not faith to see in Christ more precious promises, more sure mercies, more full rewards, more abundant and everlasting pleasures: to see in the frowns of God more terror, in the wrath of God more bitterness, in the threats of God more certainty, in the law of God more curses, than all the world can load him withal; impossible it is that he should stand under such assaults; for this is the victory which overcomes the world, even our faith. Satan discharges his fiery darts upon the soul, darts pointed and poisoned with the venom of serpents, which set the heart on fire from one lust to another: if a man have not put on Christ, do not make use of the shield of faith, to hold up his heart with the promises of victory, to hold out the triumph of Christ over the powers of death and darkness; to see himself under the protection of him who has already thrown down the dragon from heaven, who has Satan in a chain, and the keys of the bottomless pit in his own command; to say to him, The Lord rebuke you Satan, even the Lord that has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you; impossible it is to quench any of his temptations, or to stand before the rage and fury of so roaring a lion. Whom resist, says Saint Peter, steadfast in the faith. Our corruptions set upon us with our own strength, with high imaginations, with strong reasonings, with lustful dalliances, with treacherous solicitations, with plausible pretenses, with violent importunities, with deceitful promises, with fearful prejudices, with profound and unsearchable points and trains; on all sides lust stirs and works within us like sparks in a dried leaf, and sets every faculty against itself. The mind tempts itself to vanity, the understanding tempts itself to error and curiosity; the will tempts itself to stubbornness and contumacy; the heart tempts itself to hardness and security. If a man have not faith, impossible it is either to make any requests to God against himself, or to deny the requests of sin which himself makes. It is faith alone which must purify the heart, and trust his power and fidelity who is both willing and able to subdue corruptions. In vain it is to strive, except a man strive lawfully. In prayer, it is faith which must make us successful: in the word, it is faith which must make us profitable: in obedience, it is faith which must make us cheerful: in afflictions; it is faith which must make us patient: in trials, it is faith which must make us resolute: in desertions it is faith which must make us comfortable: in life it is faith which must make us fruitful: and in death, it is faith which must make us victorious. So that as he said of water, [illegible], so may I of faith, it is of all things the most sovereign and precious, because it is of universal use in the life of man. Therefore the Apostle calls men without faith absurd men, because it is an unreasonable and sottish thing for a workman to be without his chief instrument, and that which is universally requisite to every one of his works. A husbandman without a plow, or a builder without a rule, a preacher without a Bible, a Christian without faith, are things equally absurd and unreasonable. And yet thus unreasonable are men usually. By faith Moses repelled and fled from the solicitations of his adulterous mistress; and have they then faith that run upon temptations of lust, let their hearts wallow in the speculations, and their bodies in the beds of uncleanness? Faith made David look to God when Shimei reviled him; and have they faith that dart out oaths, stabs, and execrations at once against their enemy and against God? Faith made Noah when he was warned of God to fear, and Josiah to tremble at his word; and have they faith who mock the messengers, and despise the word, and misuse the prophets, and reject the remedies, and slight the times of their peace and visitation which God gives them? Faith made Abraham put a sword to the throat of his beloved son, the son of blessing, and the son of promise; and have they then faith who will not sacrifice a stinking lust, nor part from a prodigious vanity when God requires it? O what a world of sweetness and closeness is there in sin to our nature, when men love a lust, a rag, a fashion, an excrement, better than Abraham did his son Isaac. Faith made Moses suffer rather the reproaches of Christ than the riches of Egypt; and have they faith, who had rather be without Christ than their profits and pleasures; who subordinate the blood, the spirit, the will, the ways, the glory of Christ to their earthly designs and base resolutions? By faith he feared not the wrath of a king; and have they faith who fear the breath of fools, and would fain be religious, if it did not discredit them, and crush their arts of compliance, plausibility, and ambition? Thus every sin willfully committed is backed and strengthened with infidelity. If men did by faith see him that is invisible, an unapproachable light, and a consuming fire; see the sword in his left hand to revenge iniquity, and the crown in his right hand to reward holiness; look upon his judgments as present in his power, and upon his glory as present in his promises; it could not be that they should go on in such outrages against him and his law. Know you not, says the Apostle, that neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, etc. nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God? Nothing but faith can unbind and unlock the sins from the soul, and by faith not only their guilt, but their power and dominion is removed and subdued.

A second use and inference from this doctrine is to enflame the heart to seek for faith as for a precious jewel, or a hidden treasure. Men are never satisfied with earthly treasures, though oftentimes they heap them up for the last day: how much more careful should they be to lay up a good foundation for the time to come, that they may obtain eternal life? Great encouragement we may have to this end upon these considerations.

First, the more faith a man has, the more comfort he may take in all the good things which he does enjoy. He may look upon them as the witnesses of God's truth and promises, as the tokens of his love, as the accessions and supernumerary accruments to his Kingdom, as the supplies and daily provisions of a Father which cares for us.

Secondly, the more faith a man has, the more security he has against all evils; he may undergo them with patience, with hope, with joy, with triumph, with profit. He may look upon them as needful things, as precious things, as conformities to Christ his Head, as the seeds of peace, righteousness and praises; as rain, though it makes the way foul, yet it makes the land fruitful.

Thirdly, the more faith a man has, the more certain and victorious will his conquests be against his enemies: that which by faith we rely upon, and put on, will be impregnable munition, and impenetrable armor to secure us. The love, the blood, the compassions, the temptations of Christ — these by faith apprehended have pulled down walls, subdued kingdoms, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, and turned to flight the armies of the aliens.

Fourthly, the more faith a man has, the more insight he has into Christ, and those mysteries of salvation which the angels desire to look into. Faith is the eye, and mouth, and ear of the soul, by which we peep through the curtains of mortality, and take a view and foretaste of heavenly things, whereby we have a more secret and intimate communion with God in his covenants, promises, precepts; in his will guiding us by counsel; and in his face, comforting us with his favor.

Fifthly, the more faith a man has, the more tranquility and establishment of heart shall he find in the midst of all spiritual desertions, distractions and difficulties. When a man's wits are nonplussed, his reason posed, his contrivances and counsels disappointed, his heart clouded with sorrow and fear; when he walks in darkness, and has no light — O then to have a sanctuary, an altar to fly to; to have a God to roll himself upon, to lean upon his wisdom, to lay hold upon his covenant, to wait quietly upon the salvation of that God, who does not cast off forever; but though he cause grief, yet will have compassion according to the multitude of his mercies; to commit his way to him who is able to bring it to pass, and to do abundantly above the thoughts, desires, expectations, or petitions of men: what peace and serenity must this be to the [reconstructed: soul] which is otherwise without light and peace?

Lastly, the more faith a man has, the more joy and glory he has in spiritual things, the more contentment and quietness in earthly things. Being justified by faith, we have peace with God; in whom believing, we rejoice with joy unspeakable, and full of glory. Let your conversation be without covetousness, and be content with such things as you have, for he has said, I will not fail you, nor forsake you. Earthly-mindedness and worldly cares grow out of want of faith. In these and a world of like respects should we be moved to seek for this grace: and that so much the more carefully, because the heart is of itself barren, and therefore very unfit to have a foreign plant grow in it; very apt to over-top it with lusts and vanities. We must therefore be diligent to make our assurance full and certain; diligent in the word of faith, and with the spirit of faith. Be you not slothful, says the apostle, but followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises.

Lastly, we must do with faith as men do with precious things — try it, and put it to the touchstone, that we may prove whether it be truly valuable and unfeigned; because there is much counterfeit faith, as there is false money, and deceitful jewels, and wild herbs in the field, which very nearly resemble those that are right and pure. This is an argument which has been much traveled in by men of more learning and spirit; and therefore I will but touch upon it, by considering four principal effects of this grace.

The first is a love and liking of those spiritual truths which by faith the heart assents to: for according as is the evidence and preciousness of the thing believed, such is the measure of our love to it. For saving faith is an assent with adherence and delight, contrary to that of devils, which is with trembling and horror; and that delight is nothing else but a kind of relish and experience of the goodness of that truth which we assent to. Whereupon it necessarily follows even from the dictate of nature (which instructs a man to love that which works in him comfort and delight) that from this assent must arise a love of those truths from which such sweetness does issue. By the first act of faith we apprehend God a reconcilable God; by the second a reconciled God; for faith shows us God's love to us in Christ, proposes him as altogether lovely, the chiefest of ten thousand, and thereby [reconstructed: begets] in us a love to Christ again: and this love is a sincere, uncorrupted, immortal love; a conjugal and superlative love; nothing must be loved in competition with Christ; every thing must be rejected and cast away, either as a snare when he hates it, or as a sacrifice when he calls for it. Therefore God required the nearest of a man's blood in some cases to throw the first stone at an idolater; to show, that no relations should preponderate, or over-sway our hearts from his love. Christ and earthly things often come into competition in the life of a man. In every unjust gain, Christ and a bribe, or Christ and cruelty; in every oath or execration, Christ and a blasphemy; in every sinful fashion, Christ and a rag, or Christ and an excrement; in every vainglorious affectation, Christ and a blast; in every intemperance, Christ and a vomit, a stagger, a shame, a disease. O where is that faith in men which should overcome the world, and the things of the world? Why should men delight in any thing while they live, which when they [reconstructed: lie] on their deathbeds (a time speedily approaching) they shall never be able to reflect on with comfort, nor to recount without amazement and horror? Certainly he that fosters any Delilah or darling lust against the will and command of Christ, well may he delude himself with foolish conceits that he loves the Lord Jesus; but let him be assured, that though he may be deceived, yet God will not be mocked; not every one that says, Lord, Lord, shall be accounted the friends of Christ, but they who keep his Commandments.

The second effect of faith is assurance and hope, confidently for the present relying on the goodness, and for the future waiting on the power of God, which shall to the full in due time perform, what in his word he has promised. I have set life and death before you, says Moses to the people, That you may love the Lord your God, and that you may obey his voice, and that you may cleave to him, etc. We are confident, says the Apostle, knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord. When once the mind of a man is wrought so to assent to divine promises made in Christ as to acknowledge an interest, claim, and propriety to them, and that to be at last actually performed, not by a man, who may be subject both to unfaithfulness in keeping, and disability in performing his promises, but by Almighty God, who the better to confirm our faith in him, has both by word and oath engaged his fidelity, and is altogether omnipotent to do what he has purposed or promised: impossible it is but from such an assent grounded on the veracity and all sufficiency of God, there should result in the mind of a faithful man, a confident dependence on such promises: renouncing in the meantime all self-concurrency, as in itself utterly impotent, and to the fulfilling of such a work, as is to be by God's own omnipotence effected, altogether irrequisite: and resolving in the midst of temptations to rely on him, to hold fast his mercy and the profession of his faith without wavering, having an eye to the recompense of reward, and being assured that he who has promised will certainly bring it to pass.

A third effect of faith is joy and peace of conscience: being justified by faith we have peace with God. The God of peace fill you with all joy and peace in believing. The mind is by the relish and experience of sweetness in God's promises, composed to a settled calmness and serenity. I do not mean a dead peace, which is only an immobility and sleepiness of conscience, like the rest of a dreaming man on the top of a mast, but such a peace as a man may by a syllogism of the practical judgment, upon right examination of his own interest to Christ, safely infer to himself. The wicked often have an appearance of peace as well as the faithful, but there is a great difference. For there is but a door between a wicked man and his sin, which will certainly one day open, and then sin at the door will fly upon the soul: but between a faithful man and his sin there is a wall of fire, and an immovable and impregnable fort, even the merits of Christ: the wicked man's peace grows out of ignorance of God, the law, himself: but a righteous man's peace grows out of the knowledge of God, and Christ. So that there are two things in it, tranquility, it is a quiet thing, and serenity, it is a clear and distinct thing. However, if a faithful man has not present peace (because peace is an effect not of the first and direct, but of the second and reflexive act of faith) yet there is ever with all faith the seed of peace, and a resolution to seek and to sue it out.

The last effect of faith which I shall now speak of is fructification; faith works by love. And it works first, repentance, whereby we are not only to understand grief for sin, or a sense of the weight and guilt of it, which is only a legal thing (if it proceed no further) and may go before faith; but hatred of sin, as a thing contrary to that new spirit of holiness and grace, which in Christ we have received. For as sense of sin as a cursed thing (which is legal humiliation) does arise from that faith whereby we believe and assent to the truth of God in all his threatenings (which is a legal faith): so the abominating of sin as an unclean thing and contrary to the image and holiness of God (which is evangelical repentance) does arise from evangelical faith, whereby we look upon God as most merciful, most holy, and therefore most worthy to be imitated and served. Secondly, renovation, and that twofold. First, inward in the constitution of the heart which is by faith purified. Secondly, outward in the conversation and practice, when a man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things, and as he has received the Lord Jesus so walks in him. Now in all our obedience we must observe these three rules. First, that binding power which is in the law, does solely depend upon the authority of the lawgiver who is God. He that customarily, and without care of obedience, or fear of displeasure, or antipathy of spirit, breaks any one commandment, ventures to violate that authority which by one and the same ordination made the whole law equally binding, and by consequence is habitually, and in preparation of soul a transgressor of the whole law (James 2:10). And therefore obedience must not be partial but universal, as proceeding from that faith which has respect equally to all God's will, and looks upon him as most true and most holy in all his commands. Secondly, as God, so his law is a spiritual and a perfect law, and therefore requires an inward universality of the subject, as well as that other of the precepts which we walk by. I mean such a spiritual and sincere obedience of the heart, as may, without any mercenary or reserved respects, uniformly sway our whole man to the same way and end. Thirdly, in every law all matter homogeneous and of the same kind with the particular named, every sprig, seed, original of the duty is included, as all the branches of a tree belong to the same stock. And by these rules we are to examine the truth of our obedience.

Before I draw down these premises to a particular assumption and application, I must for caution's sake premise that faith may be in the heart either habitually, as an actus primus, a form or seed, or principle of working, or else actually as an actus secundus, a particular operation; and that in the former sense it does but remotely dispose and order the soul to these properties; but in the latter it does more visibly and distinctly produce them. So then according as the heart is deadened in the exercise of faith, so do these properties thereof more dimly appear, and more remissly work.

Secondly, we must note that according as faith has several workings, so Satan has several ways to assault and weaken it. There are two main works of faith, obedience and comfort, to purify and to pacify the heart: and according to these, so Satan tempts. His main end is to wrong and dishonor God, and therefore chiefly he labors to disable the former virtue of faith, and tempts to sin against God. But when he cannot proceed so far, he labors to discomfort and crush the spirits of men: when he prevails in the former, he weakens all the properties of faith: when in the latter only, he does not then weaken all, but only intercept and darken a Christian's peace.

For understanding this point, we must note that there are many acts of faith. Some direct, that look outward towards Christ, others reflexive, that look inward upon themselves. The first act of faith is that whereby a man having been formerly reduced to extremities and impossibilities within himself, looks upon God as omnipotent, and so able to save; as merciful, and in Christ reconcilable, and so likely to save if he is sought to.

Hereupon grows a second act, namely a kind of exclusive resolution, to bethink himself of no new ways; to trust no inferior causes for salvation, or righteousness, to sell all, to count them all dung, not to consult any more with flesh or blood, but to prepare the heart to seek the Lord (Galatians 1:16; 2 Chronicles 30:19; 2 Kings 7:3-4). To resolve as the lepers in the famine at Samaria, not to continue in the state he is in, nor yet to return to the city, to his wonted haunts and ways, where he shall be sure to perish: and from this resolution a man cannot by any discomforts be removed, or made to bethink himself of any other new way, but only that which he sees is possible and probable, and where he knows, if he finds acceptance, he shall have supplies and life enough: and this act may consist with much fear, doubt, and trembling. The Syrians had food, and Samaria had none, therefore the lepers resolve to venture abroad. Yet this they cannot do without much doubting and distrust, because the Syrians whom they should meet with were their enemies. However this resolution overruled them, because in their present estate, they were sure to perish, in the other there was room for hope, and possibility of living; and that carried them to Esther's resolution: If we perish, we perish — such is the act of faith in this present case. It is well assured that in the case a man is in, there is nothing but death to be expected; therefore it makes him resolve to relinquish that. It looks upon God as plenteous in power and mercy, and so likely to save, and yet it sees him too as armed with justice against sin, as justly provoked and wearied in his patience; and therefore may fear to be rejected, and not saved alive. Yet because in the former state there is a certainty to perish, and in the latter a possibility not to perish, therefore from hence arises a third act, a conclusive and positive purpose to trust Christ. I will not only deny all other ways, but I will resolve to try this way, to set about it, to go to him that has plenty of redemption and life. If I must perish, yet he shall reject me; I will not reject myself — I will go to him. And this act or resolution of faith is built upon these grounds.

First, because God's love and free grace is the first original mover in our salvation. If God did begin His work upon prevision of anything in and from ourselves, we should never dare to come to Him, because we would never find anything in ourselves to ground His mercy toward us upon. But now the love of God is so absolute and independent, that it does not only require nothing in us to excite and to call it out, but it is not so much as grounded upon Christ Himself. I speak of His first love and grace: Christ was not the impulsive cause of God's first love to mankind, but was Himself the great gift which God sent to men therein to testify that He did freely love them before. God so loved the world, that He gave His Son. Herein is love, not that we loved Him, but that He loved us and sent His Son. The love must needs go before the gift, because the gift is an effect, a token, a testimony of the love. Christ first loved the Church, before He gave Himself for it. Now then if the first love of God to man was not procured, merited, or excited by Christ Himself as Mediator; but was altogether absolute: much less does the love of God ground itself upon anything in us. The whole series of our salvation is made up without respect to anything of ours, or from us. He loved us without cause or ground in ourselves. For we love Him, because He first loved us. He elected us of mere grace, without cause or ground from ourselves. There is a remnant, says the Apostle, according to the election of grace; and if of grace, then is it no more of works, otherwise grace is no more grace. He called us without intuition of anything in ourselves, says the Apostle, not according to our own works, but according to His purpose and grace He called us with a holy calling. He justified us without any ground in or from ourselves, freely by His grace, when we were enemies and ungodly persons. He saves us without any ground in and from ourselves. By grace you are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. There is nothing in us of which we may boast in the matter of salvation, and therefore there is nothing in us which should make us despair or flee from God: for all the gradations and progresses of our salvation are alone from His grace.

Secondly, because there is an all-sufficiency in the righteousness and merits of Christ, to cleanse all sin, to consummate all our salvation, to subdue all our enemies, to answer all our objections, to silence all challenges and charges that are laid against us.

Thirdly, because of the manifold experiences which many other grievous sinners have found of the same love, and all-sufficiency. When faith looks upon a converted Manasseh, upon a thief translated into paradise, upon a persecutor turned into an Apostle; and when it considers that God has a residue of spirit still, that the blood of Christ is an inexhausted fountain, and that these spectacles of God's compassion are in the Scriptures exhibited, that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope, and that God in them did show forth all long-suffering for a pattern to those who should after believe in Him: it then makes a man reflect inward upon himself, and resolve to try that gate, at which they have entered before.

Fourthly, because there is a generality and unlimitedness in the invitation to Christ. Come to me all that are weary. Let everyone that will come. There is in Christ erected an office of salvation, a heavenly chancery of equity and mercy, not only to moderate the rigor, but to reverse and revoke the very acts of the law. Christ is set forth or proposed openly as a sanctuary, and ensign for the nations to flee to; and He has sent His ambassadors abroad to warn, and to invite every man. As a fountain is open for any man to drink, and a school for any man to learn, and the gate of a city for any man to enter, and a court of equity for any man to relieve himself: so Christ is publicly and universally set forth as a general refuge from the wrath to come, upon no other condition than such a will as is not only desirous to enjoy His mercy, but to submit to His kingdom, and glorify the power of His Spirit and grace in new obedience.

Fifthly, because God Himself works the work and the will in us. For in the new covenant God works first. In the first covenant man was able by his created and natural strength to work his own condition, and so to expect God's performance: but in the new, as there is difference in the things covenanted, then only righteousness and salvation, now remission of sins and adoption; in the means or intermediate causes, which are now Christ and His righteousness and Spirit; in the stability, that a perishable, this an eternal and final covenant, that can never be changed; in the conditions, there legal obedience, here only faith, and the certain consequent thereof repentance: so likewise is there difference in the manner of performing these conditions; for now God Himself begins first to work upon us, and in us, before we move or stir toward Him. He does not only command us, and leave us to our created strength to obey the command, but He furnishes us with His own grace and Spirit to fulfill the command, and when He bids us come to Him, He does likewise draw us to Him. In this covenant the first treaty is between God and Christ. For though the covenant be between God and us; yet the negotiation and transaction of it is between God and Christ, who was a surety of the covenant for us. For first God in His decree of love bestowed us upon Christ. (Yours they were, and you gave them to me) we were chosen in Him: we to be members in Him, and He to be a head and fountain to us of all grace and glory. For God had committed to Him an office of power to redeem His Church, and He received a commandment from His Father to finish the work of mediation.

Secondly, being thus made Christs, partly by the gift of God's eternal love, partly by Christ's own voluntary susception of that office whereby He was to be a Head and Captain of Salvation to His members; God in due time reveals Himself, His Name, Power, and Covenant to us: I have manifested your name to the men which you gave me, and this is the tender of the Covenant, and beginning of a Treaty with us. And here God begins to work in us: for though the Covenant be proposed under a condition; yet God gives us as well the condition as the Covenant. Our faith is the operation of God, and the work of his power: that which he requires of us, He does bestow upon us; and here the first work of God is spiritual and heavenly teaching. The second, is the terminus, or product of that teaching our learning which I call God's work, not as if we did nothing when we are said to learn, and to come to Christ; but because all that we do is by the strength and grace which from Him we receive: we come to Christ as a child may be said to come to his mother, or nurse, who holds him at a distance from herself, and draws him nearer and nearer when she calls him. Thus as we were made Christs by donation, You gave them me; so after likewise by incorporation, and unity of natures with him in his spirit, and having this Spirit of Christ, He thereby works in us the will and the deed, and thus our seal [illegible] is put to God's covenant, and we have a record of it in ourselves in some measure; whereas [reconstructed: unbelief] makes God a liar, by saying either I look for life some other way, or I have nothing to do to depend on Christ for it, though God have proposed Him as an all-sufficient Savior. Now then when man has experience of God's working this will in him, when he finds his heart opened to attend, and his will ready to obey the call: when he is made desirous to fear God's name, and prepared to seek His face, ready to subscribe and bear witness to all God's ways and methods of saving; That He is righteous in His judgments, if He should condemn; wonderful in His patience, when He does forbear; mighty in His power, wisdom, and mercy, when He does convert; unsearchable in the riches and treasures of Christ, when he does justify; most holy, pure and good in all His commands; the sovereign Lord of our persons and lives, to order and dispose them at His will; on the sense and experience of these works does grow that conclusion and resolution to cleave to Christ.

Lastly, because this act of faith is our duty to God: As we may come to Christ because we are called, so we must come, because we are commanded. For as Christ was commanded to save us, so we are commanded to believe in Him. From these and the like considerations arises a purpose to rely on Christ. But yet still this purpose at first by the mixture of sin, the pragmaticalness and importunity of Satan in tempting, the inexperience of the heart in trials, the tenderness of the spirit, and fresh sight and reflection on the state of sin, is very weak, and consists with much fear, doubts, trepidation, shrinking, mistrust of itself. And therefore though all other effects flow in great measure from it, yet that of comfort, and calmness of spirit, more weakly; because the heart being most busied in spiritual debatements, prayers, groans, conflicts, strivings of heart, languishing and sighing importunities of spirit, is not at leisure to reflect on its own translated condition, or in the seed's time of tears to reap a harvest of joy. As a tree new planted is apt to be bent at every touch or blast of wind, or children new born to cry at every turn and noise, so men in their first conversion are usually more retentive of fearful, than of more comfortable impressions.

The last act then of faith is that reflexive act, whereby a man knows his own faith and knowledge of Christ, which is the assurance of faith upon which the joy and peace of a Christian does principally depend; and has its several differences and degrees according to the evidence and clearness of that reflection. As beauty is more distinctly rendered in a clear, than in a dim and disturbed glass; so is comfort more distinct and evident according to the proportions of evidence and assurance in faith. So then to conclude with this general rule: according as the habits of faith are more firm and rooted; the acts more strong, constant, and evident; the conquests and experiences more frequent and successful; so are the properties more evident and conspicuous. For the measure and magnitude of a proper passion and effect, does ever follow the perfection of the nature and cause from where it proceeds: and therefore every man as he values either the love and obedience he owes to God, or the comfort he desires in himself to enjoy, must labor to attain the highest pitch of faith, and still with Saint Paul to grow in the knowledge of him and his resurrection and sufferings. So then upon these premises the heart is to examine itself touching the truth of faith in it. Do I love all divine truth, not because it is proportionable to my desires, but conformable to God who is the author of it? Can I in all estates without murmuring, impatience, or rebellion, cast myself upon God's mercy, and trust in him though he should kill me? Do I wholly renounce all self-confidence and dependence, all worthiness or concurrence of myself to righteousness? Can I willingly, and in the truth and sincerity of my heart, own all shame and condemnation, and acquit God as most righteous and holy if he should reject me? Do I not build either my hopes or fears upon the faces of men, nor make either them or myself the rule or end of my desires? Do I yield and seriously endeavor a universal obedience to all God's law, and that in the whole extent and latitude of it, without any allowance, exception, or reservation? Is not my obedience mercenary, but sincere? Do I not excuse myself for the least sprigs of sin, for irregular thoughts, for occasions of offense, for appearances of evil, for motions of concupiscence, for idle words, and vain conversation, for anything that carries with it the face of sin? And when in any of these I am overtaken, do I bewail my weakness, and renew my resolutions against it? In a word, when I have impartially and uprightly measured my own heart by the rule, does it not condemn me of self-deceit, of hypocrisy, of halting and dissembling, of halving and prevaricating in God's service? I may then comfortably conclude, that my faith is in some measure operative and effectual in me: which yet I may further try by the nature of it, as it is further expressed by the Apostle in the text; That I may know him.

Here we see the nature of faith is expressed by an act of knowledge, and that act (respectively to justification) limited to Christ; This is eternal life to know you, and him whom you have sent: where by knowledge I understand a certain and evident assent. Now such assents are of two sorts; some grounded upon the evidence of the object, and that light which the thing assented to does carry and present to the understanding; as I assent to this truth, that the sun is light by the evidence of the thing itself: and this kind of assent the Apostle contradistinguishes from faith by the name of sight. Others are grounded upon the authority or authenticness of a narrator, upon whose report while we rely without any evidence of the thing itself, the assent which we produce is an assent of faith or credence. Now that faith is a certain [reconstructed: assent], and that even above the certainty of mere natural conclusions, is on all hands I think confessed: because, however in regard of our weakness and distrust, we are often subject to stagger, yet in the thing itself, it depends upon the infallibility of God's own Word, who has said it, and is by consequence nearer to him who is the fountain of all truth, and therefore must needs more share in the properties of truth, which are certainty and evidence, than any proved by mere natural reasons: and the assent produced by it is differenced from suspicion, [reconstructed: hesitancy, doubt] in the opinion of schoolmen themselves. Now then inasmuch as we are bound to yield an evident assent to divine truths, necessary to this it is that the understanding be convinced of these two things. First, that God is of infallible authority, and cannot lie nor deceive (which thing is a principle by the light of nature evident and unquestioned.) Secondly, that this authority which in faith I rely upon is indeed and infallibly God's own authority.

The means whereby I come to know that may be either extraordinary, as revelation, such as was made by the Prophets concerning future events; or else ordinary and common to the faithful. This the Papists say is the authority of the Church. Against which if one would dispute much might be said. Briefly (granting first to the Church a ministerial, introductory, persuasive, and conducting concurrence in this work, pointing to the star, which yet itself shines by its own light, reaching forth and exhibiting the light, which though in itself visible, could not be so ordinarily to me, unless thus presented; explaining the evidence of those truths to which I assent for their own intrinsic certainty:) I do here demand how it is that each man comes to believe? The collier will quickly make a wise answer, as the Church believes. But now how or why does the Church believe these or these truths to be divine? Surely not because the Church has so determined; our Savior himself would not be so believed. If I bear record of myself, my record is not true. Well then, the Church must needs believe by the Spirit which leads it into all truth. And what is the Church, but the body of Christ, the congregation of the faithful, consisting of diverse members? And what work is that whereby the Spirit does illuminate and raise the understanding to perceive aright divine truth, but only that ointment which dwells in you, says the Apostle, whereby Christ's sheep are enabled to hear his voice, in matters of more heavenly and fundamental consequence, and to distinguish the same from the voice of strangers?

Now, have not all the faithful this unction? Does it not run down from the head to the skirts of the garment? Are we not all a royal Priesthood? And in both these respects anointed by the Spirit? And having all the Spirit, (though in different measures and degrees) is it not in congruity probable that we have with Him received those vivifying and enlightening operations which come along with him? Capable is the poorest member in Christ's Church, being grown to maturity of years, of information in the faith. Strange therefore it is, that the Spirit, not leaving me destitute of other quickening graces, should in this only leave my poor soul to travel as far as Rome, to see that by a candle, or rather by an ignis fatuus, which himself might more evidently make known to me. For the Spirit does beget knowledge. We have received the spirit which is of God, that we might know the things which are freely given to us of God. And again, Hereby we know that we dwell in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit. And again, Hereby we know that He abides in us, by the Spirit which He has given us: Especially since we must take even the determinations of the Church and Pope, (though they were infallible in themselves) at second hand as they pass through the mouth of a Priest, whose authority, being not infallible, nor apostolic, but human, it is not impossible but that he may misreport His holy Father, and by that means misguide and delude an unsettled soul.

Again I demand, How does it appear to me, that the Judgment of the Church is infallible, when it alone is the warrant of my Faith? That this is itself no principle, nor to the light of natural reason [reconstructed: primo intuitu] manifest ex evidentia terminorum, is most certain. For that this company of men should not err, when other companies of men may err, cannot possibly be [reconstructed: immediately] and [reconstructed: per se] evident, since there must first needs a priori be discovered some internal difference between those men, from where, as from an antecedent principle, this difference of erring or not erring must needs grow.

Now then I demand, what is that whereby I do assent to this proposition (in case it were true) That the Church cannot err? The Church itself it cannot be, since nothing bears record of itself, and if it should, the proof would be more ridiculous than the opinion, being but idem per idem, and petitio quaestionis. Above the Church a priori there is not any light but the scriptures and the spirit. Therefore needs by these must I assent to that one proposition at least. And if to that by these, why then by the same light may I not assent to all other divine truths, since it is evident that the same light which enables me rightly to apprehend one object, is sufficient also to any other, for which a lesser light than that is presumed to suffice? So then a true faith has its evidence and certainty grounded upon the authority of the Word, as the instrument, and of the spirit of God raising and quickening the soul to attend, and acknowledge the things therein revealed, and to set to its own seal to the truth and goodness of them. But how do I know either this word to be God's Word, or this spirit to be God's spirit, since there are sundry false and lying spirits? I answer, first, ad hominem, there are many particular churches, and bishops, which take themselves to be equally with Rome members, and bishops of the universal Church. How shall it invincibly appear to my conscience that other churches and bishops all, save this only, do or may err? And that this, which will have me to believe her infallibility, is not herself a heretical and revolted Church? This is a question controverted. By what authority shall it be decided, or into what principles a priori resolved? And how shall the evidence of those principles appear to the conscience? That the Popes are successors of Peter in his see of Rome, that they are doctrinal as well as personal successors, that Peter did there sit as moderator of the Catholic Church, that his infallibility should not stick to his chair at Antioch, as well as to that at Rome; that Christ gave him a principality, jurisdiction, and apostleship to have to himself over all others, and to leave to his successors; who though otherwise private men, and not any of the penmen of the Holy Ghost, should yet have after him a power over those Apostles who survived Peter (as it is manifest John did.) That the scripture does say any title of all this, that the traditions which do say it are a divine word, are all controverted points: and though there be sorceries more than enough in the Church of Rome, yet I doubt whether they have yet enough to conjure themselves out of that circle, which the agitation of these questions do carry them in. But secondly, there are sundry lights, there is light in the Sun, and there is light in a blazing or falling star. How shall I difference these lights will you say? Surely I know not otherwise than by the lights themselves; undoubtedly the spirit brings a proper, distinctive, uncommunicable majesty and luster into the soul, which cannot be by any false spirit counterfeited: and this spirit does open first the eye, and then the Word, and does in that discover [reconstructed: those insignia veritatis — marks] of truth and certainty there, which are as apparent as the light, which is without any other medium, by itself discerned.

Thus then we see in the general, that saving faith is an assent created by the word and spirit. We must note further that this knowledge is twofold: first, general, mental, speculative, and this is simply necessary, not as a part of saving faith, but as a medium, degree, and passage to that. For how can men believe without a teacher? Secondly, particular, practical, applicative, which carries the soul to Christ and there fixes it. To whom shall we go? — you have the words of eternal life; we believe and are sure that you are that Christ. I know that my Redeemer lives. That you being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend, and to know the love of Christ (Ephesians 3:17-18). I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me (Galatians 2:20). By his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many (Isaiah 53:11). This saving knowledge must be commensurate to the object known, and to the ends for which it is instituted, which are Christ to be made ours for righteousness and salvation. Now Christ is not proposed as an object of bare and naked truth to be assented to, but as a Sovereign and saving truth to do good to men. He is proposed as the desire of all flesh. It is the heart which believes; with the heart man believes to righteousness, and Christ dwells by faith in the heart; if you believe with all your heart you may be baptized (Romans 10:10; Acts 8:37). And the heart does not only look for truth but for goodness in the objects which it desires, for an all-sufficiency and adequate ground of full satisfaction to the appetites of the soul; such a compass of goodness as upon which the whole man may rest, and rely, and to which he may have a personal property, holdfast, and possession. So then in one word, faith is a particular assent to the truth and goodness of God in Christ, his sufferings and resurrection, as an all-sufficient and open treasury of righteousness and salvation to everyone which comes to them; and thereupon a resolution of the heart there to fix and fasten for those things, and to look no further.

Now this faith is called knowledge. First, in regard of the principles of it, the word and spirit: both of which produce faith by a way of conviction, and manifestation. Secondly, in regard of the ground of believing, which is the knowledge of God's will revealed: for none must dare demand or take anything from God, till he have revealed his will of giving it; he has said, must be the ground of our faith. Thirdly, in regard of the certainty and undoubtedness which there is in the assent of faith. Abraham was fully persuaded of God's power and promise; now there is a twofold certainty: a certainty of the thing believed, because of the power and promise of him that has said it; and a certainty of the mind believing. The former is as full and sure to one believer as to any other, as an alms is as certainly and fully given to one poor man who yet receives it with a shaking and palsy hand, as it is to another that receives it with more strength. But the mind of one man may be more certain and assured than another, or than itself at some other time: sometimes it may have a certainty of evidence, assurance, and full persuasion of God's goodness; sometimes a certainty only of adherence, in the midst of the buffets of Satan, and some strong temptations, whereby it resolves to cleave to God in Christ, though it walk in darkness, and have no light. Fourthly, and lastly, in regard of the last reflexive act whereby we know that we know him, and believe in him. And yet both this and all the rest are capable of growth, as the Apostle here intimates; we know here but in part, and therefore our knowledge of him may still increase. The heart may have more plentiful experience of God's mercy in comforting, guiding, defending, enlightening, sanctifying it, which the Scripture calls the learning of Christ, and thereupon cannot but desire to have more knowledge of him, and communion with him: especially in those two great benefits, his resurrection and sufferings.

And the power of his resurrection.] The Apostle's desire in these words is double. First, that he may find the workings of that power in his soul, which was showed in the resurrection of Christ from the dead, that is, the power of the Spirit of Holiness, which is the mighty principle of faith in the heart. That Spirit of Holiness which quickened Christ from the dead, does by the same glorious power beget faith and other graces in the soul. It is as great a work of the Spirit to form Christ in the heart of a sinner, as it was to fashion him in the womb of a virgin.

Secondly, that He may feel the resurrection of Christ to have a power in Him. Now Christ's resurrection has a twofold power upon us or towards us. First, to apply all His merits to us, to accomplish the work of His satisfaction, to declare His conquest over death, and to propose Himself as an all-sufficient Savior to the faithful. As the stamp adds no virtue nor matter of real value to a piece of gold, but only makes that value which before it had, actually applicable and current: so the resurrection of Christ, though it was no part of the price or satisfaction which Christ made, yet it was that which made them all of force to His members. Therefore the Apostle says that Christ was Justified in Spirit. In His death He suffered as a malefactor, and did undertake the guilt of our sins (so far as it denotes an obligation to punishment, though not a meritoriousness of punishment;) but by that Spirit which raised Him from the dead He was Justified Himself, that is, He declared to the world that He had shaken off all that guilt from Himself, and as it were left it in His grave with His grave clothes. For as Christ's righteousness is compared to a robe of triumph, so may our guilt to a garment of death, which Christ in His resurrection shook all off, to note that death had no hold fast at all of Him. When Lazarus was raised, it is said that He came forth bound hand and foot with grave clothes, to note that He came not out as a victor over death, to which He was to return again: but when Christ rose He left them behind, because death was to have no more power over Him. Thus by His resurrection He was declared to have gone through the whole punishment which He was to suffer for sin, and being thus justified Himself, that He was able also to justify others that believed in Him. This is the reason why the Apostle uses these words to prove the resurrection of Christ, I will give you the sure mercies of David, for none of God's mercies had been sure to us if Christ had been held under by death; our faith had been vain, we had been yet in our sins. But His work being fully finished, the mercy which thereupon depended was made certain, and as the Apostle speaks, sure to all the [illegible]. Thus as the day wherein redemption is victorious and consummate is called the day of redemption: so the work wherein the merits of Christ were declared victorious is said to have been for our justification, because they were thereby made applicable to that purpose.

The second work of the power of Christ's resurrection is to overcome all death in us, and restore us to life again. Therefore He is called the Lord of the living, and the Prince of life, to note that His life is operative to others. We are by His resurrection secured first against the death and law, which we were held under; for every sinner is condemned already. Now when Christ was condemned for sin, He thereby delivered us from the death of the law, which is the curse: so that though some of the grave clothes may not be quite shaken off, but that we may be subject to the workings and fears of the law upon some occasions, yet the malediction thereof is forever removed. Secondly, we are secured against the death in sin, regenerated, quickened, renewed, fashioned by the power of godliness, which tames our rebellions, subdues our corruptions, and turns all our affections another way. Thirdly, against the hold-fast and conquest of death in the grave, from where we shall be translated to glory: a specimen and resemblance of this was showed at the resurrection of Christ, when the graves were opened, and many dead bodies of the saints arose, and entered into the city. As a prince in his inauguration or solemn state opens prisons, and loosens many which there were bound, to honor his solemnity: so did Christ do to those saints at His resurrection, and in them gave assurance to all His of their conquest over the last enemy.

What a fearful condition then are all men out of Christ in, who shall have no interest in His resurrection? Rise indeed they shall, but barely by His power as their Judge, not by fellowship with Him as the first fruits and firstborn of the dead; and therefore theirs shall not be properly, or at least comfortably a resurrection, no more than a condemned person's going from the prison to his execution may be called an enlargement. Pharaoh's Butler and Baker went both out of prison, but they were not both delivered; so the righteous and the wicked shall all appear before Christ, and be gathered out of their graves, but they shall not all be children of the resurrection, for that belongs only to the just. The wicked shall be dead everlastingly to all the pleasures and ways of sin, which here they wallowed in. As there remains nothing to a drunkard or adulterer after all his youthful excesses but crudities, rottenness, diseases, and the worm of conscience; so the wicked shall carry no worlds nor satisfactions of lust to hell with them, their glory shall not descend after them. These things are truths written with a sunbeam in the book of God: First, that none out of Christ shall rise to glory. Secondly, that all who are in Him are purged from the love and power of sin, are made a people willingly obedient to His scepter and the government of His grace and Spirit; and have eyes given them to see no beauty but in His kingdom. Thirdly, hereupon it is manifest that no unclean thing shall rise to glory. A prince in the day of his state, or any royal solemnity, will not admit beggars, or base companions into his presence. He is of purer eyes than to behold, much less to communicate with unclean persons. None but the pure in heart shall see God. Fourthly, that every wicked man waxes worse and worse, that he who is filthy grows more filthy, that sin hardens the heart, and infidelity hastens perdition. From where the conclusion is evident, that every impenitent sinner, who without any inward hatred and purposes of revenge against sin, without godly sorrow for the past, and spiritual renovation for after-times, allows himself to continue in any course of uncleanness, spends all his time and strength to no other purpose, than only to heap up coals of juniper against his own soul, and to gather together a treasure of sins and wrath, like an infinite pile of wood to burn himself in.

Again, this power of Christ's resurrection is a ground of solid and invincible comfort to the faithful in any pressures or calamities though never so desperate, because God has power and promises to raise them up again. This is a sufficient support: first, against any either public or private afflictions. However the Church may seem to be reduced to as low and incurable an estate as dried bones in a grave, or the brands of wood in a fire, yet it shall be but like the darkness of a night — after two days he will revive again; his goings forth in the defense of his Church are prepared as the morning. When Job was upon a dunghill, and his reins were consumed within him; when Jonah was at the bottom of the mountains, and the weeds wrapped about his head, and the great billows and waves went over him, so that he seemed as cast out of God's sight; when David was in the midst of troubles, and Hezekiah in great bitterness — this power of God to raise to life again was the only refuge and comfort they had. Secondly, against all temptations and discomforts: Satan's traps and policies come too late after once Christ is risen from the dead; for in his resurrection the Church is discharged and set at large. Thirdly, against death itself; because we shall come out of our graves as gold out of the fire, or miners out of their pits, laden with gold and glory at the last.

Lastly, we must from here learn to seek those things that are above where Christ is gone. Christ's kingdom is not here, and therefore our hearts should not be here. He is ascended on high, and has given gifts to men, as absent lovers send tokens to each other, to attract the affections, and call there the thoughts. If Christ would have had our hearts rest on the earth, he would have continued with us here, but it is his will that we be where he is: and therefore we must make it the main business of our life to move toward him. Things of a nature incline to one another even to their prejudice. A stone will fall to its center, though there be so many obstacles in the way, that it is sure to be broken all to pieces in the motion. The same should be a Christian's resolution. Christ is his center, and heaven is his country, and therefore there he must conclude to go, notwithstanding he must be broken in the way with manifold temptations and afflictions. Saint Paul desired, if it had been possible, to be clothed upon, and to have his mortality swallowed up of life, and to get whole to heaven. But if he may not have it upon such good terms, he will not only confidently endure, but desire to be dissolved and broken in pieces, that by any means he may come to Christ, because that, being best of all, will be an abundant recompense for any intervening damage. It is not a loss, but a marriage and honor for a woman to forsake her own kindred and house, to go to a husband: neither is it a loss but a promotion for the soul, to relinquish for a time the body, that it may go to Christ, who has married it to himself forever.

And the fellowship of his sufferings] This fellowship notes two things: first, a participation in the benefits of his sufferings; secondly, a conformity of ours to his. First, his sufferings are ours; we were buried and crucified with him, and that again notes two things. First, we participate in the price of Christ's death, covering the guilt of sin, satisfying the wrath of God, and being an expiation and propitiation for us. Secondly, in the power of his death, cleansing our consciences from dead works, mortifying our earthly members, crucifying our old man, subduing our iniquities and corruptions, pulling down the throne of Satan, stripping him of all his armor, and destroying the works of the Devil. And this power works: first, by the prophetic office of Christ, revealing; secondly, by his regal office, applying and reaching forth the power of his blood to subdue sin, as it had before triumphed over death and Satan.

But here the main point and question will be, what this mighty power of the death of Christ is thus to kill sin in us, and wherein its causality consists. To this I answer that Christ's death is a threefold cause of the death of sin in his members.

First, it is a meritorious cause. For Christ's death was so great a price that it did deserve at God's hand to have our sins subdued. All power and judgment was given to him by his Father, and that power was given him to purchase his Church with. And this was among other of the covenants, that their sins should be crucified. He gave himself to God's justice for his Church; and that which by that gift he purchased was the sanctification and cleansing of it. Now as a price is said to do that which a man does by the power which that price purchased: so the blood of Christ is said to cleanse us, because the office or power whereby he purifies us was conferred upon him under the condition of suffering. For it was necessary that remission and purification should be by blood.

Secondly, it is Causa exemplaris, The death of Christ was the exemplar pattern, and idea of our death to sin. He did bear our sins in his body on the tree, to show that as his body did naturally, so sin did by analogy and legally die. Therefore the Apostle says that he was made sin for us; to note that not only our persons were in God's account crucified with him to justification; but that sin itself did hang upon his cross with him to mortification and holiness. In which respect Saint Paul says, That he condemned sin in the flesh, because he died as sin in abstracto. And in this regard of mortification we are said to be planted in the likeness of Christ's death; because as when an ambassador does solemnize the marriage of his king with a foreign princess, that is truly effected between the parties themselves, which is transacted by the agent, and representative person to that purpose and service [reconstructed: authorized]: so Christ being made sin for us (as the sacrifice had the sins of the people emptied upon him) and in that relation, dying; sin itself likewise dies in us. And there is a proportion between the death of the cross which Christ died, and the dying of sin in us. Christ died as a servant, to note that sin should not rule, but be brought into slavery and bondage: He died a curse, to note that we should look upon sin as an accursed and devoted thing, and therefore should not with Achan hide, or reserve any: He drank vinegar on his cross, to note that we should make sin feel the sharpness of God's displeasure against it; he was fast nailed to the cross, to note that we should put sin out of ease, and leave no lust or corruption at large, but crucify the whole body thereof. Lastly though he did not presently die, yet there he did hang till he died; to note that we should never give over subduing sin while it has any life or working in us. Thus the death of Christ is the pattern of the death of sin.

Thirdly, It is Causa Obiectiva, an impelling or moving cause as objects are. For objects have an attractive power. [reconstructed: Achan] saw the wedge of gold, and then coveted it. David saw [reconstructed: Bathsheba], and then desired her. Therefore the apostle mentions lusts of the eye, which are kindled by the things of the world. As the strength of imagination fixing upon a blackamoor on the wall made the woman bring forth a black child: so there is a kind of spiritual imaginative power in faith to crucify sin by looking upon Christ crucified. As the brazen serpent did heal those who had been bitten by the fiery serpents — obiectum fides, merely by being looked upon: so Christ crucified does heal sin by being looked upon with the eye of faith. Now faith looks upon Christ crucified, and bleeding, First, as the gift of his Father's love, as a token and spectacle of more unsearchable and transcendent mercy, than the comprehension of the whole host of angels can reach to. And hereby the heart is ravished with love again, and with a grateful desire of returning all our time, parts, powers, services to him, who spared not the son of his own love for us. Secondly, It looks on him as a sacrifice for sin, and expiation thereof to God's justice; and hereby the heart is framed to a humble fear of reproaching, voiding, nullifying to itself the death of Christ, or by continuance in sin of crucifying the Lord Jesus again. It is made more distinctly, in the sufferings of Christ, to know that infinite guilt, and hellish filthiness which is in sin, which brought so great a punishment upon so great a person; And hereupon grows to a more serious hatred thereof, and carefulness against it, as being a greater enemy to his Jesus, than Judas that betrayed, or the Pharisees that accused, or the soldiers that crucified him; as being more sharp to the soul of Christ than the nails or spears that pierced his sacred body. How shall I dare (thinks the faithful soul) to live in those sins by which I may as truly be denominated a betrayer and crucifier of him that saved me, as Judas, or Pilate, were? Thirdly It looks on him as our forerunner into glory, where he entered not but by a way of blood. From where the heart easily concludes, if Christ entered not into his own glory but by suffering, how shall I enter into that glory which is none of mine, if I shed not the blood of my lusts, and take order to crucify all them before I go?

So then none can conclude that Christ died for him, who finds not himself set against the life of sin within him, in whom the body of corruption is not so lessened, as that it does no more [reconstructed: rule] to waste his conscience or enrage his heart. If a man grow worse and worse, his heart more hard, his conscience more senseless, his resolutions more desperate, his [reconstructed: fear] more dead, his courses more [reconstructed: carnal] and worldly than before; certainly the fellowship and virtue of the blood of Christ has hitherto done little good to such a man. And what a woeful thing is it for a man to live and die in an estate much more miserable than if there never had been any Jesus given to men? For that man who has heard of Christ, at whose heart he has knocked, to whose conscience he has been revealed, and yet never believes in him to righteousness, or sanctification, but lives and dies in his filthiness, shall be punished with a far more severe condemnation, than those of Tyre, Sidon, or Sodom, that knew nothing of him. O then let us labor to show forth the power of Christ's death, and that he died not in vain to us. Though we cannot yet totally kill, yet let us crucify our corruptions, weaken their vigor, abate their rage, dispossess them of the throne in our hearts, put them to shame: and in as much as Christ has suffered for sin, let us cease from sin, and live the rest of our time not to the will of the flesh, nor to the lusts of men, but to the will of God.

The second part of our fellowship in sufferings with Christ is the conformity of ours to his. In all our afflictions he is afflicted; and Saint Paul calls his sufferings the filling up of that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ. Not as if Christ's sufferings were imperfect (for by one offering he has perfected for ever them that are sanctified.) But as Christ has personal sufferings in corpore proprio, in his human body, as Mediator, which once for ever he finished: So he has general sufferings in corpore mystico, in his Church, as a member with the rest.

Now of these sufferings of the Church we must note that they have no conformity with Christ's in these two things. First, not in Officio, in the office of Christ's sufferings; for His were meritorious [illegible] satisfactory; ours only [illegible], and for edification. Secondly, not in [illegible] & [illegible], not in the weight and measure of them; not so bitter, heavy, and woeful as Christ's were. For the sufferings of Christ, upon any other creature, would have crushed him as low as hell, and swallowed him up forever. In other respects there is a conformity of our sufferings to Christ's; so that He esteems them His.

Our sufferings are: First, such as we draw upon ourselves by our own folly; and even in these afflictions which Christ as the King [illegible] over His people inflicts upon them, yet as their Head and fellow member He compassionates and as it were smarts with them. For Christ is so full of tenderness, and so acquainted with sorrows, that we may justly conceive Him touched with the feeling of those pains, which yet He Himself sees needful for them. Secondly, such as are by God imposed for trial and exercise of those graces which Himself gives; and in these we have a twofold communion and conformity to Christ: First, by association; Christ gives us His Spirit to draw in the same yoke with us, and to hold us under them by His strength. That Spirit of Holiness by which Christ overcame his sufferings, helps our infirmities in ours. Secondly, in the manner of undergoing them, with a proportion of that meekness and patience which Christ showed in His sufferings. Thirdly, such as are cast upon us by the injuries of Satan and wicked men. And these also bear conformity to Christ's, as in the two former respects, so thirdly in the cause of them, for it is Christ only whom in his members Satan and the world do persecute. All the enmity that is between them is because of the seed of the woman. If Christ were now among us in the fashion of a servant and in a low condition as once he was, and should convince men of their wickedness as searchingly as once he did, He would doubtless be the most hated man upon the earth. Now that He is conceived of, as God in glory, men deal with him as Joab with Abner, they kiss and flatter him in the outward profession of His Name and Worship; and they stab and persecute Him in the hatred of His ways and members. And this is the principal reason why so many stand off from a thorough embracing of Christ and his ways; because when they are indeed in His body, they must go His way to Heaven, which was a way of suffering. They that will live godly in Christ Jesus must suffer persecution, and be by wicked men esteemed as signs and wonders to be spoken against, and that not only among pagans, and professed enemies to the Truth, but even in Israel, and among those who externally make the same profession.

But this should comfort us in all our sufferings for Christ's sake, and for our obedience to His Gospel; that we drink of our master's own cup, that we fill up that which is wanting of His afflictions, that Christ Himself was called a Samaritan, a devil, a wine-bibber, entrapped, spied, snared, slain; and He who is now our Captain to lead us, will hereafter be our Crown to reward us; we may safely look upon Christ's issue, and know it to be ours. First, we have Christ's fellowship in them; and if it were possible, a man were better be in hell with Christ, than in Heaven without Him: for His presence would make any place a Heaven, as the King makes any place the Court. Secondly, we have Christ's strength to bear them. Thirdly, His victories to overcome them. Fourthly, His intercession to preserve us from falling away in them. Fifthly, His graces to be the more glorified by them, as a torch when it is shaken shines the brighter. Sixthly, His compassion to moderate and proportion them to the measure of strength which He gives us: and lastly, His crown on our heads, His palm in our hands, His triumphal garments upon us, when we shall have tasted our measure of them. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, works for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen, are eternal.