intolerable,) the needs of nature and the provisions of Providence, sleep and business, refreshments of the body and entertainments of the soul; these are to be reckoned as acts of bounty rather than mercy: God gave us these when he made us, and before we needed mercy; these were portions of our nature, or provided to supply our consequent necessities: but when we forfeited all God's favour by our sins, then that they were continued or restored to us became a mercy and therefore ought to be reckoned on this new account. For it was a rare mercy that we were suffered to live at all, or that the anger of God did permit to us one blessing, that he did punish us so gently: but when the rack is changed into an axe, and the axe into an imprisonment, and the imprisonment changed into an enlargement, and the enlargement into an entertainment in the family, and this entertainment passes on to an adoption; these are steps of a mighty favour, and perfect redemption from our sin and the returning back our own goods is a gift and a perfect donative, sweetened by the apprehensions of the calamity from whence every lesser punishment began to free us. And thus it was that God punished us, and visited the sin of Adam on his posterity. He threatened we should die, and so we did, but not so as we deserved: we waited for death, and stood sentenced, and are daily summoned by sicknesses and uneasiness; and every day is a new reprieve, and brings a new favour, certain as the revolution of the sun on that day and at last, when we must die by the irreversible decree, that death is changed into a sleep, and that sleep is in the bosom of Christ, and there dwells all peace and security, and it shall pass forth into glo and ries and felicities. We looked for a judge, and behold a Saviour! we feared an accuser, and behold an Advocate! we sat down in sorrow, rise in joy: we leaned on rhubarb and aloes, and our aprons were made of the sharp leaves of Indian fig-trees, and so we fed, and so were clothed; but the rhubarb proved medicinal, and the rough leaf of the tree brought its fruit wrapped up in its foldings; and round about our dwellings was planted a hedge of thorns and bundles of thistles, the aconite and the briony, the nightshade and the poppy; and at the root of these grew the healing plantain, which, rising up into a tallness, by the friendly invitation of heavenly influence, turned about the tree of the cross, and cured the wounds of the thorns, and the curse of the thistles, and the malediction of man, and the wrath of God. "If God be thus kind when he is angry, what is he when he feasts us with caresses of his more tender kindness ?" All that God restored to us after the forfeiture of Adam, grew to be a double kindness; for it became the expression of a bounty which knew not how to repent, a graciousness that was not to be altered, though we were; and that was it which we needed. That is the first general: all the bounties of the creation became mercies to us, when God continued them to us, and restored them after they were forfeit. 2. But as a circle begins every where and ends no where, so do the mercies of God; after all this huge progress, now it began anew: God is good and gracious,' and 'God is ready to forgive.' Now, that he had once more made us capable of mercies, 'Si sic irascitur, quomodo convivatur ? God had what he desired, and what he could rejoice in, something on which he might pour forth his mercies. And, by the way, this I shall observe, (for I cannot but speak without art, when I speak of that which hath no measure,) God made us capable of one sort of his mercies, and we made ourselves capable of another. God is good and gracious,' that is, desirous to give great gifts: and of this God made us receptive, first by giving us natural possibilities, that is, by giving those gifts he made us capable of more; and next, by restoring us to his favour, that he might not by our provocations be hindered from raining down his mercies. But God is also ready to forgive:' and of this kind of mercy we made ourselves capable, even by not deserving it. Our sin made way for his grace, and our infirmities called on his pity; and because we sinned we became miserable, and because we were miserable we became pitiable; and this opened the other treasure of his mercy, that because our 'sin abounds,' hisgrace may superabound.' In this method we must confine our thoughts: 1. Giving, "Thou, Lord art good, 2. Forgiving. and ready to forgive, plenteous in mercy to all 3. God's mercies, or the mercies of his giving, came first on us by mending of our nature: for the ignorance we fell into is instructed, and better learned in spiritual notices than Adam's morning knowledge in Paradise; our appetites are made subordinate to the Spirit, and the liberty of our wills is improved, having the liberty of the sons of God; and Christ hath done us more grace and advantage than we lost in Adam: and as man lost Paradise, and got heaven; so he lost the integrity of the first, and got the perfection of the second Adam: his 'living soul' is changed into a quickening spirit;' our discerning faculties are filled with the spirit of faith, and our passions and desires are entertained with hope, and our election is sanctified with charity, and our first life of a temporal possession is passed into a better, a life of spiritual expectations; and, though our first parent was forbidden it, yet we live of the fruits of the tree of life. But I instance in two great things, in which human nature is greatly advanced, and passed on to greater perfections. The first is, that besides body and soul, which was the sum total of Adam's constitution, God hath superadded to us a third principle, the beginner of a better life; I mean, the Spirit: so that now man hath a spiritual and celestial nature breathed into him, and the old man, that is, the old constitution, is the least part, and in its proper operations is dead, or dying; but the new man is that which gives denomination, life, motion, and proper actions to a Christian, and that is renewed in us day by day. But secondly, human nature is so highly exalted and mended by that mercy, which God sent immediately upon the fall of Adam, the promise of Christ, that when he did come, and actuate the purposes of this mission, and ascended up into heaven, he carried human nature above the seats of angels, to the place whither 'Lucifer, the son of the morning,' aspired to ascend, but in his attempt fell into hell. For (so said the prophet) the son of the morning said, I will ascend into heaven, and sit in the sides of the north,' that is, the throne of Jesus seated in the east, called the sides or obliquity of the north. And as the seating of his human nature in that glo rious seat brought to him all adoration, and the majesty of God, and the greatest of his exaltation; so it was so great an advancement to us, that all the angels of heaven take notice of it, and feel a change in the appendage of their condition; not that they are lessened, but that we, who in nature are less than angels, have a relative dignity greater, and an equal honour of being fellow-servants. This mystery is plain in Scripture, and the real effect of it we read in both the Testaments. When Manoah, the father of Samson, saw an angel, he worshipped him;' and, in the Old Testament, it was esteemed lawful; for they were the lieutenants of God, sent with the impresses of his majesty, and took in his name the homage from us, who then were so much their inferiors. But when the man Christ Jesus was exalted, and made the Lord of all the angels, then they became our fellow-servants, and might not receive worship from any of the servants of Jesus, especially from prophets and martyrs, and those that are ministers of the testimony of Jesus.' And therefore when an angel appeared to St. John, and he, according to the custom of the Jews, fell down and worshipped him, as not yet knowing, or not considering any thing to the contrary; the angel reproved him, saying, 'See thou do it not; I am thy fellow-servant, and of thy brethren the prophets, and of them which keep the sayings of this book: worship God; or, as St. Cyprian reads it, "worship Jesus." God and man are now only capable of worship; but no angel: God, essentially; man, in the person of 1 Judges, xiii. 2 2 Rev. xxii. 9. 3 De Bono Patientiæ. |