The Freedom of the Will, Part

The Freedom of the Will · Part

p. 196A DISCOURSE OF THE Freedome of the Will.

An enlargement upon the Argument taken from the Mediation of Christ.

I Intended to have passed lightly over this Argument. But being moved by some Friends, who by their Understandings have an authority with me, and by their Loves a power over me; I reflected again upon it in my thoughts, and found, as I humbly conceive, that nothing would more confirm and illustrate the Subject of which I treat, than the Mediatorship of our Lord Jesus rightly understood. I do therefore resume it, and shall attempt to unfold its Glories in order to my present design, as clearly, compleatly, and compendiously, as I shall be able.

I shall take for the ground of this part of my Discouse, that Scripture,

Colos. 1.

Vers. 15. Who is the Image of the invisible God, the first-born of every Creature; or, of the whole Creation.

Vers. 16. For by him were all things created, that are in Heaven and in Earth, visible and invisible, whether Thrones, or Dominions, or Principalities, or Powers: all things were created by him, and for him.

Vers. 17. And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.

Vers. 18. And he is the Head of the Body, the Church: who is the beginning, the first-born from the dead, that in all things he might have the preheminence.

Vers. 19. For it pleased the Father, that in him all fulness should dwell.

Give me leave to make some notes upon the version of these words, vers. 15. In Greek it is, foreign, which signifieth both; the whole Creation, and every Creature. Vers. 16. That which we read by him, p. 197is foreign, in him. This in the beginning of the verse. In the end, for him, is foreign, unto, or into him. Vers. 17. By him all things consist, is foreign, All things stood together in him.

In these Verses we have in a lively Draught, or Portrait with incomparable Sweetness and Glory set before us Jesus Christ, with a two-fold Mediatorship; One, in the Work of Nature; The other, in the Work of Grace. In respect to one, he is stiled, The first-born of the whole Creation; In respect to the other, The first-born from the dead, vers. 15, 18.

The first Mediatorship is described, vers. 15, 16, 17. The second, ver…. 18. Both are crowned with a double Epiphonema, or Conclusion v…. 1. That he in all things have the preheminence, vers. 18. 2. It pleased the Father, that in him should all fulness dwell.

In order to my treating of the Mediatorships of Christ, I shall lay down briefly these four grounds.

1. There is no va…, no breach, no gap in the Divine Wisdom or Work. Wisdom is defined by Proclus, foreign, A fulness of things. If there were any … in the Wisdom or Work of God, which is the …rth and Design of his Wisdom: There would be a wound upon i…, and a deformity in the face of it, by the dissolution of the Continuity, of the Unity, of the Harmony.

2. There is no leap in the Divine Work, no passing from one extreme to the other, without a passing thorow the medium, the middlespace or middle-state. This would make that vacuity a breach in the whole, which we before-mentioned, as altogether unsuitable to a Divine, or to any wise Contrivance.

3. There is a two-told Medium, or Mediatorship; One, Medium participationis; A Medium of participation; The other, Medium abnegationis, A Mediator of separation and abnegation. In this last sense, the Seas are Mediums between the Lands, which they divide and keep from meeting. So sin is a medium of separation between God and the Creatures; partaking of neither, inasmuch as it is a privation of Being; dividing both, as an unpassable Gulf between them, while it remains. After the first manner all middle-colours are mediums of Participation and Union between the two extreme colours, white and black. So the Soul is a medium of Union, and Participation between things invisible and visible, comprehending both in it self, and so joyning both in One. Such a Mediator is Jesus Christ.

4. The Lord Jesus then, as a Mediator of Union by Participation, toucheth both the extremes of infiniteness and finiteness; of God and the Creature, comprehends both in One in himself; fills up the middle space between both; is the way, by which God descendeth into the Creature, and the Creature cometh forth from God; by which again God reascendeth together with the Creature, and the Creature returneth unto God.

Having laid down these grounds, I shall now upon them build up and establish the Mediatorship of our Lord Jesus in the Work of Nature, by these three Propositions, as so many stories in this p. 198Divine Palace of our Saviour's Person raised one upon the other.

1. Jesus Christ is essentially, eternally, the only true God, infinitely transcending all Created Excellencies or Powers.

2. The Lord Jesus standeth in the middle between God and all Creatures, comprehending both entirely in One in himself, with an admirable Beauty and Harmony; uniting both by himself with an incomparable Love and Sweetness.

3. Jesus Christ is the Way by which God descendeth into the Creature; by which the Creation cometh forth from God.

The first two Propositions seem to lie in those words; The Image of the invisible God, the first-born of every Creature. Here I hope to discover them, lying clearly and beautifully infolded in the imbraces of each other. I will begin with the Godhead of Christ.

1. Our Saviour, our Jesus is essentially the eternal, the only true God. I shall indeavour to set before our eyes our Jesus unvailed, and shining in the pure unmixt Glories of his Godhead, by the Lights of two Principles, which, I think, will be granted to me by all who acknowledge a God.

1. God is eminently, transcendently a vital Act.

2. God is eminently, transcendently an Intellectual Act.

1. God is eminently, transcendently a vital Act. The Psalmist saith to him, With thee is the Fountain of Life. St. John in the close of his first Epistle saith of him, This is the true God, and eternal life. He is life it self, life pure, absolute, unmixt, unconfined, eternal, infinite, a Fountain ever equally unexhaust, a Sea unbounded.

Life is a perpetual Generation. The chief, and most essential Power of life is to bring forth its like; to propagate and multiply it self in Images of it self. The most perfect Life bringeth forth it self into the most perfect Image. The most perfect Image hath two Properties: 1. It is most perfectly distinct from its Original. Take away the Distinction, and you take away the Generation, the Relation, the Representation, the Image it self. As the Distinction is more or less perfect or imperfect, clear or obscure; so are all these. 2. The most perfect Image is the most exact Representation of its Original, most exactly answering it, neither exceeding, nor falling short, nor varying in any part.

Thus the most perfect Image is most perfectly One, and the same with its Original. Thus God is a vital Act.

2. God is eminently, transcendently an Intellectual Act. In every Intellectual Act three things meet in One, Life, Light, Love.

1. The Intellectual Life brings forth it self into an Image of it self, within it self in one Spirit, one Essence, one essential Act and Form with it self.

2. The Intellectual Light gives the Intellectual Spirit a seeing, knowing, understanding, comprehension, and possession of it self in this Image.

3. The Intellectual Love is the mutual Union and Communion of these two, the Original and the Image; a continual, sweet, pleasing, intimate, essential, and most agreeable motion of tendency, or p. 199inclination to each other, of unexpressible joy and complacency in each other.

The Life here is the Generation ever in Act, ever perfect. The Light is the Image ever actually springing, ever actually compleat. The Love is the conspiration, or the meeting of these two in One, as they are Distinct and One. Where these are most perfect, they are most perfectly distinct, most perfectly equal, most perfectly One, and every One most perfectly and most distinctly all Three in it self. The Original, and the Image most perfectly adaequate to, and exactly in all parts, all properties answering each other, do alike mutually imbrace, comprehend, bring forth each other within themselves, and within each other. The Love being the mutual imbraces and selffruitions of each other equally comprehends both, is equally comprehended of both.

These Three are therefore called Persons, being all equally One; equally Distinct, equally Compleat in one Intellectual substance and subsistence, in an Intellectual Essence and Existence, having equally their Root or Original, their essential Form or Image, their operation; that is, their Life-Spring, their Light, their Love entire in themselves, all infinite, eternal, without Beginning, End, or Bound.

Behold here our Jesus in the high and holy place of Eternity, the Image of the invisible God, equally God with his Father, having his Father in Himself, equally invisible to every created eye, or finite capacity by the same excess of Light and Glory.

Behold here the Jesus of the Christians, at once the Son of God, and God the Father of all; at once the second Person in the Trinity, and the Trinity compleat in himself, which is the Godhead gloriously displaid in the admired, adored, beloved fulness of Power, Beauty, Majesty, of all transcendent sweetnesses of Life, Light, Love and Joy; a Life ever bringing forth it self, a Light or Image ever springing up in the Bosom of this Life, which is it self; a Love, by which this Life and Image are uncessantly, eternally in an endless Circle bringing forth each other, springing up in the Bosom of each other, multiplying themselves into ever-fresh, unsearchably rich Varieties in the mutual imbraces of each other, with sweetnesses and delights unexplicable, ever new, ever full, ever the same.

This is the first and principal sense, in which our Jesus is the Image of the invisible God.

This Image is the most perfect Birth of the Godhead within it self. All Images, all Forms of things, which lie wrapt up in the infinite Virtue or Power of the Godhead, all which it ever brings forth through Eternity or Time; all which it is capable of bringing forth the whole fulness of the Divine Essence or Nature with all the unbounded, innumerable Virtues and Powers, which as so many fresh everliving Springs open themselves in it, flow forth most distinctly, most compleatly into their first, their most true, their most proper Forms and Images here in this Image of which we speak. This Image comprehends them all in One in it self, and so becomes the Paradise of the Godhead in the heighths of eternity.

p. 200Our Jesus, as he is this Image of the Godhead in the Godhead, the second Person in the Trinity, the Birth of the Father, is the first Distinction, the first Variety. He is then the supream, the absolute, the most absolutely unconfined Distinction or Variety; the Fountain of all Variety and Distinction. This is the Wisdom of God with its unsearchable Riches, the first, the most exact Distinction and Distinguisher.

All Distinctions and Varieties of things, which ever do exist, or are capable of existing any where, exist first here most perfect, and most perfectly distinguished. Here they are all most perfectly One in the most entire Unity of the Godhead in the Father, and together with the Father in the Son. Here they are in this entire, most absolute and undivided Unity, as entirely, as highly various and distinct, as they are One. Here by the transcendency and simplicity of the Unity, which is entire thorow all, and every where undivided, each Distinction, each Variety is an absolute unconsined Unity, comprehending most perfectly the whole fulness of the Godhead, with all its endlesly new and various Varieties in its own proper Variety and distinct Form. This is the the amplitude of the Godhead, its Majesty and Glory in its own essential Image within it self. Aristotle, as I remember, in his Ethicks defines Glory or Majesty to be foreign, Beauty with a greatness or amplitude. What is the Glory of our Jesus? what is the Majesty of our God, when he appears in his own Image, casting off every Vail, and discovering his open Face in our Jesus? How doth he with every glimpse of himself fill all the senses, all the understandings, all the capacities of Men and Angels, with the overflowing Pleasures of his Beauty in the heighth and amplitude of it, transcending all Glory, all Majesty in their most exalted heights, in their most extended amplitudes? The supream and most entire Unity, the first, the fullest, the most ample and unconfined Variety meet here both in One. Here they make a Beauty infinitely high, infinitely ample, in the Face and Bosom of which all Beauties, endlesly new, endlesly various spring up, and shine, and smile together; while each distinct Beauty presents the entire Form of the Universal Beauty, with all its distinct Beauties entirely, infinitely new and distinct.

Our Jesus in this Divine Image is the Divine Understanding, the internal, eternal Word in the Divine Mind. In this Image then stand together in One all forms of things, according to their most exact natures and distinctions, as they are ever known to God, as they ever appear before him, whose Knowledge is the only measure and ground of all Truth, both in Being and Knowing.

To what tends this Discourse? To this. Our Lord Jesus in this eternal Image is the Universal, the entire Idea of the Godhead, the Treasury of all Ideas. He is all Ideas in general, each distinct Idea in its proper Unity and Distinction. He is all those unlimited Glories in their most exact Ideas or Images, in which the infiniteness of the Divine Nature is uncapable of being any way figured or shadowed in the finiteness of the Creature. He is all those Glories in their p. 201proper Ideas, yet still with an infiniteness of Glory, which cast forth their beams, and their shadows, which compose the whole Creation, and constitute every particular Creature.

Now you see our Lord Jesus, the Image of the invisible God, and the first-born of every Creature. As he is the Godhead in its full Idea, or essential Form and Image; so is he the whole Creation, every distinct Creature, every distinct Form, Circumstance, Motion, Variety of each Creature in its eternal Idea or Pattern, in its first and most exact Truth, as it is known of God, as it is seen and contemplated by him in that beatifical Glass, where all things appear at once in their most exact Truth, and most exalted Beauty. This Glass is the Idea, or the essential Image of the Godhead within it self. This is our Jesus, our God in the highest and fullest Glories of his Divine Essence.

I have now finished my first task in the Mediatorship of Jesus Christ, his Godhead in its simplicity and absoluteness, the most pleasant and rich ground, the most beautiful and blessed Crown of his Mediatorship. I am sensible how large I am upon this Subject, into how vast a Sea I have cast my self. But, I hope, my Reader, thou findest it a Sea of Divine Beauties and Pleasures, where both our Spirits together swim, dive, and bathe themselves with a sense of unexplicable sweetnesses and satisfactions from the Floods of Light, and of Love at once refreshing and swallowing up into themselves our whole Spirits, our Understanding and Will.

I hope also, if I deceive not my self, as how apt and likely I am to deceive my self in all things, I desire at all times to be sensible; But if I do not now deceive my self, I hope thou seest how pertinent this part of my Discourse is to my principal Theme, for the illustrating and confirming it.

How beautifully, how delightfully do we see in this glorious Image within the Vail, now unvailed by its own Beams, as the rosie Fingers of the Morning of Eternity dawning in the Gospel drawing aside the Vail, the highest Necessity and the greatest Liberty matched and united? What Liberty is equal to this, where a full and pregnant Unity from its own spring within it self, diffuseth it self unto an endless, boundless Variety, triumphing every where, thorow all, in each imaginable point, with the undivided, unconfined fulness and freedom of all its Glories? What necessity so great as this, where this Unity by the eternally unalterable Law of its own nature brings forth it self unvaried into all this Variety; where this Unity, as Links of a golden Chain, joyns all these Varieties by an immediate, immutable order, and connexion to each other; where this binds up all this unbounded Variety in its own streight, and sweet imbraces? What Beauty so beautiful, what Delight so pleasant, what Harmony so agreeable, as this Divine Marriage between the most absolute Unity, and the most ample Variety in the Palace of Eternity; between the most unalterable necessity, and the most unconfined freedom in the Divine Nature? The Schools say, That God alone is Ens necessarium, A necessary Being, the highest Necessity; and that other Beings compared p. 202with him are contingent in respect to themselves. They also teach us, That all this which this supream adorable Being is, in the infiniteness of his Divine Powers and Virtues, in the infiniteness of his Divine Essence, all this he is in a pure, immutable Act. Yet is he in this highest necessity, and most immutable Act, the freest Being the freest Agent.

Do we not in like manner by contemplating this all-charming Person of our Jesus, this supream Image in the Godhead, the Seat of all Beauties and Truths? Do we not see the Liberty of all things in their most proper, most glorious Heads and Springs, in their eternal Originals, their Ideas, the first-born Images of themselves? How do they here each of them reign and spread themselves through the amplitude, and infiniteness of the Divine Variety, seated upon the Throne of the Divine Unity, in the Palace of this Universal Image, or Idea of the Divine Nature, every one in its own distinct Form? Is not this the ground of all Liberty, this the truth of all Liberty, in the inferior Forms, and orders of things, not a freedom from the force, or conduct of their Ideas, their Divine Heads and Springs in the Bosom of the Divine Being; but the Spring of these Ideas in them, forming them, figuring themselves upon them, acting them, diffusing themselves thorow them in all their growths and fruits.

The Metaphysical Truth of things comprehendeth all kinds and degrees of Being, Divine, Natural, Moral, Mathematical; all kinds of Truth, Divine, Natural, Moral, Logical. Every thing, as it is, is metaphysically true. The metaphysical Truth of things is defined to be, the conformity of each thing to its first Truth, to its Idea in the Divine Mind. So far every Logical Truth, the truth of every Proposition Affirmative or Negative is true, as it answers its Idea in the Divine Understanding, which is our Jesus, the essential Image, and so the essential Wisdom, the essential Truth, the essential Liberty of the Godhead, the Mediator of all Births, all Images, of all truth and liberty thorow the whole nature of things. But let us now proceed.

The Lord Jesus being a Mediator, uniting two extremes, toucheth both, standeth in a middle state between both, filling up the middle space, and so maketh both One. We have already seen the Lord Jesus in the heighths of the Godhead, in the excesses of Glory. Let us now take a view of him in his middle-state between both.

2. I shall indeavour to prepare the Way of the Lord Jesus, as he comes forth in the Mediatory Glory of this Middle-state by two general discoveries of his Person and Beauty here.

1. Our Jesus in this middle-state is the Divine Union of Unity, and Diversity; of the Unity of the Divine Nature, of the Diversity of all Created Natures in One Divine eternal Person and Spirit. One of the two Extremes is the supream Unity, comprehending all Distinctions in it self, preserving it self absolutely entire, eternally undivided in all. The other extreme is the Diversity of the Creatures, where the Unity is broken into all manner of Distinction, being every p. 203where imperfect, and at its highest point but the shadow of it self. The middle between these Two is the Union of these extremes, where all the most differing, distant, divided Diversities, the most diverse forms of things dwell together in one Divine Image, in one Divine Spirit and Person; where the supream, and most absolute Unity spreads it self thorow all the Diversities, unites them all in one undivided Glory, shines entirely in the whole, and in each part.

2. Our Jesus in this middle-state, as our God, appears in an allravishing, all-admirable, all-adorable Beauty; in a Beauty distinct from that of the Divine Essence in its simplicity, distinct from that of the Divine Image in the Creation, joyning both in a new Beauty, presenting all the various Beauties of both in a new Variety.

How pure, how pleasant are the Glories of the Godhead in its own essential Image? How pure, how pleasant is the Image of God in the whole Creation, with all the differing Forms and Motions in their whole course and compass from the Head to the Feet, from the first rise to the last end, and rest of all seen in one view at once? How unexpressibly, how divinely transporting sweetest excesses and raptures of most glorious joys is the Harmony between these Two, when they are seen together in one Divine piece, in one Divine Person, in one undivided View and Spirit? This Person, this Prospect is our Jesus in his middle-state. This is his Mediatory Kingdom. This indeed in a Divine, most desirable, and most blissful sense is the Personal Reign of the Lord Jesus. Here doth he in the Divine fairness and fulness of his blessed Person sit upon a Throne of Grace and Glory, thorow the whole Variety of all Uncreated and Created Forms of things, in the whole, and in each part, as in the whole. Here is he the Marriage, and the Marriage-day of God and the Creature, of Eternity and Time, with all its divided Forms, successive Motions, disagreeing changes of Lights and Darknesses, Lives and Deaths. Here is he the Marriage of each thing, with its Idea in his most spacious and most glorious Bosom, where all the Fountains of Being and Beauty, of Life and Love open themselves. Here all things, the highest Lights of Glory, and the lowest shades; the most contracted and obscurest Form with its Idea, infinite in Majesty and Glory, lie together mutually infolded in the inseparable and joyous imbraces of each other, shining thorow, shining in each other, mutually set, as Seals upon the Bosoms and Hearts of each other.

This is Jesus, the same yesterday, to day, and for ever, standing in the middle-space between Eternity and Time; joyning in one Eternity with all its Glories, and Time with all its diverse Births and Successions. This is the first Procession of the whole Creation, and of every Creature in the Person of Christ, before any Creature comes forth into its own proper and single created state. Thus is Jesus Christ in a second sense the Image of the invisible God, and the firstborn of every Creature. Thus all things are made by him, and he is before all; as he is the Divine Draught, and Plat-form of the whole Creation, with the whole Contrivance and Conduct of it from the p. 204beginning to the end, as God first bringeth it forth from his own Mind into a most beautiful and exact model, where he hath it ever before him in its Union with the general and distinct Ideas of it in his own Mind, that he may compare them, and with a pleasure worthy of God himself behold them in their mutual, most exact and Divine Correspondency.

Here Jesus Christ manifestly hath in all things, even in every created form of things, as it is the emanation of some Divine Beam, the preheminence. He is first in every Form. He is there indeed with the excess of a Divine Glory. Here all fulness dwells, with a perfect and full complacency in our Jesus. All Uncreated Glories, all created Forms, as the Births and Images of those Glories dwell together here with incredible Joy, as the fulness of each other, as the Divine Mother and her lovely Child, exactly like its Mother mutually clasping each other with tenderest and immortal embraces.

Having thus prepared my way, I will pass to the more particular Explications of this Mediatory Glory.

1. God, as he is in the simplicity of his Divine Essence, in his first and supream Glory, is the Head of our Lord Jesus in this middlestation. The Head of the Woman is the Man, the Head of the Man is Christ, the Head of Christ is God; according to the Doctrine of St. Paul. Philosophers and Divines frequently express the weak, the shady, the passive, the material part of things by the Female, the Woman; the virtue, the brightness, the active, the formal part by the Male, the Man. If we may so far have respect to an Allegorical or an Anagogical sense in this Scripture; We may interpret the Apostles words after this manner; The visible and corporeal frame of things hath for its head the Angelical Nature and World, which containeth all vital and substantial Acts, all Spirits, all Forms in their separated state. Here are the Essences of all things in their abstracted Beauties. Jesus Christ in his Mediatory Kingdom and World is the Head of the Angelical Image. The Head of this is the Divine World, the Divine Essence.

Plato saith, All the Members were made for the Head. The Head in that spiritual sense, in which we have spoken of it, is the inmost Center, the utmost Circle, diffusing it self thorow all, incompassing, infolding, and comprehending all. It is the beginning, the end, the strength, the truth, the glory of all with a transcendency of excellency in every kind surmounting all.

Thus is God, thus is Jesus Christ, as he is the essential Image of God, the Divine World in eternity, the glorious Head of his Mediatory Kingdom, shining with infinitely rich and delightful splendors above all, over all, in all. Thus is God the Person, the Unity, which brings forth this Divine Image, which spreads himself thorow it, lives and subsists in it, gives it its life and subsistency in himself, joyns it altogether in one Divine piece, by the Unity of one Life, one Spirit, one Person.

2. God is here in a Created Form, appearing with a middle-glory, between the shade of the Creature, and the unapproachable shinings p. 205of the Godhead; uniting both by a Marriage, which all things in Heaven, in Earth, in the Seas, beneath both, celebrate with Divine Feasts and Triumphs.

God in the Creature is seen by a shadowy Image alone, which lie as a Vail upon the pure Glories of his Divine Face and Person. He now shines forth like the Sun in a cloudy day, by that obscure Image of his Coelestial Form, a reflected, refracted Light.

God in the Kingdom of the Father, (the Father of Lights in the simplicity of the Divine Nature) is the eternal Sun at its heighth, at its Noon-sted, in its Meridional Glories.

God in the Mediatory Kingdom, (which is properly the Kingdom of Christ in his personal Reign) resembles the lovely Morning, the golden Hour of the Day, when there is no more shades or pure Light, but both are mixt, and sweetly married into the pleasant Flowers of Saffron or Roses, breathing their sweetnesses thorow the whole Air and Universe. God in Jesus Christ is now the Sun ascending, shining forth in its strength, but not at its full heighth. God and the Creature are like two Lillies or Roses joyned upon one stalk in a fair Morning, or a bright Forenoon; or like two Friends in this sweet season, in a Garden of Roses embracing. These mutually possess, enjoy the full Beauties, the full sweetness each of other, but not fully, clearly, but not compleatly, until the Sun come to its full heighth.

In the Schools, the knowledge of things is divided into three kinds:

1. Meridianam, the Meridional, or Moon-Light of Knowledge.

2. Matutinam, The Morning-Light.

3. Vespertinam, The Evening-shade.

1. The Noon-Light of Knowledge, is the sight of things in their eternal Ideas, in the eternal, essential Idea, or Image of the Godhead, which is the eternal Word, our Jesus.

2. The evening shade is the Creature appearing in its self by its own obscure and fading Light.

3. The Morning-Light of Knowledge is applied by some to the second quire in the first Order of Angels, the Cherubims. These are the Lights flowing from the Second Person in the Trinity, the Light of eternity, and of the Divine Essence; as the Seraphims the first quire are Love, the Love-Unity, the Angelical Figure of the Father, the Unity in the Trinity, the Fountain of all Divine Births, of all Divine Loves and Lights; the Love-Spring, and so the Life-Spring in the Godhead.

In these Angelical Loves, the Seraphims are all forms of things, as in their first, their sweetest created Love-Springs, and Love-Unions.

In these Angelical Lights, the Cherubims are all forms of things, as in their first, their richest created Beauties and Ideas.

But these Cherubimical Beauties, these Angelical Ideas are too faint and fading to be the Morning-Light. All created Glories, the most p. 206heavenly, are no more than Evening-Glories, which the setting Sun hath left behind him. They all by degrees sink into the darkness of the night, and disappear for ever.

Our Jesus alone is the Day-spring from on high, the Rosie Morning, and the rising Sun. In him alone all created Loves and Beauties, Cherubim and Seraphim, rising again from the depths of night unto a new Sweetness and Glory, have their eternal day.

Thus the Spirit speaketh to the Lord Jesus in the Psalmist, and the first of the Hebrews, The Heavens wax old as a Garment: thou changest them, and they are changed. But thy throne, O Lord, endureth for ever and ever. See in the Heavens, in the powers, sweetnesses, and beauties of Heaven, a night of old Age, and of Death. See in this Death a Day-Spring of new and immortal Glories in the rising of the Lord Jesus upon them, and their rising in the Circuit of his Throne. He alone sits upon that Throne of ever-new, ever-springing, eternal Light. But thus much of this second Character of Jesus Christ in his Mediatorship or Middle-state.

3. God in his essential Image replenished with the eternal Ideas and Patterns, the Original Forms of things, is in this second Image, thorow the whole, universal Form, in all the particular and distinct Forms, the Root and Seed of all. This is the Vis plastica, the Ratio seminalis, the formative Power, by which, the formal reason or proportion according to which, all things in their created Image spring up, are framed, are acted in their essential, accidental Forms, Powers, Operations, and Motions.

The Father hath sent me forth, and I live by the Father. All mine are thine, and all thine are mine. Thine they were, and thou gavest them me. This is the Language of Christ concerning his Father, and to his Father. The eternal Idea of the Godhead, which is our Jesus in the heighths of his Divinity, the distinct Ideas in the Bosom of this Idea of the Divine Essence are respectively the proper Places, the Parents, the Patterns, the Husbands of Jesus Christ in this Middle-Image, and in all the particular Images, which shine here, as Stars in their native Heaven, as Flowers in their Garden-beds, to which in the Song of holy Loves, the Cheeks of this Jesus are compared.

Thus is our Jesus in the Gospel divinely drawn in an admirable Picture, representing him after his descent out of this state rising again in it. He is presented to us in his transfiguration on the Mount, with his Face shining like the Sun in its strength, and his Garment as the Light. O most admirable and Divine Figure of our Jesus in his Mediatory Kingdom and Glory!

The Face, the Person of our Jesus is the Sun it self, the eternal Sun, the Divine Nature shining forth in the strength of its light and heat, its Beauties and Loves. The created Image is, as the Raiment upon this Person, but a Raiment of Light, of the Flower of Light, Sun-shine of the Godhead; a Garment made of a Contexture of Beams, living in, and springing immediately, freshly every moment from this entire Person, which is all one most clear and lively Face of the most compleat and Original Beauty.

p. 207The Divine Person is not hid, but shown by this Garment. Mi Jesu pelluces, Our Jesus shines all clearly thorow it; far more clearly, than a beautiful Person swimming all naked in a clear stream, or the richest Diamond in a Case of purest Christal.

The Person here, the Divine Sun is at once the eminent Head of all the Beams shining above them; the vigorous Root of all the Beams springing up in them; the pleasant and glorious flower flourishing forth from the end of every Beam; the full Glory filling with it self each part of the Beam, and every where in every Beam presenting it self entirely to every eye.

All the Beams in One are one entire Image of this Sun. Every distinct Beam a distinct Birth and Figure of a distinct Ideal Light and Glory in this Sun. Yet is the Sun in that full compass of all its Glories seen by every eye in every Beam.

For so is this Divine Sun, the essential Idea of the Godhead, the same, one, undivided, entire, full, in all the Ideas, in all the Original Forms, and Patterns of each Creature.

The Beams here are Daughters, Sisters, and Brides, to the Sun. They flow forth immediately from it. They stand upon the same root of the Divine Nature and Personality. God is the only Person in this Jesus. Both are cloathed with the same Image. Both by mutual embraces lie in the bosoms of each other, wrapt up together in the same Joys and Glories.

Yet are the Beams and created Beauties in this Mediatory Image, not only distinct, as the Ideas in the Godhead, where the most perfect Distinction is married to the most absolute Unity, with a most exact equality. But all the Forms of created Glory here have besides a distinction from their Sun, the Divine Glory, and from each other; a diversity, also an inequality, a subordination in an hypostatical or personal Unity. But I now anticipate my self; This will have a more proper place in the following Character of our Jesus in his Mediatory Kingdom.

4. Christ here in his created Nature is a Spirit, a great and universal Spirit, comprehending the whole Creation eminently in himself, before it have a subsistence in it self. The whole Creation is here in greater majesty, in greater clearness and glory, than in it self, when it is freshest and fairest. It is the very Iustre and effulgency of the Godhead it self, all transparent; the Divine Essence at once shining thorow it, filling it, cloathing and comprehending it; as a Temple founded upon it self, framed by it self of its own most immediate Light, and clearest brightness.

The King's Daughter is said to be all glorious within, and her Garments of wrought Gold, Psal. 45.

The first Marriage is that of the most High, and holy Trinity, to which eternity it self is the Marriage-day celebrated with Joys and Glories, transcending all measures or bounds. The Father and the Son are here mutually the Bridegroom and the Bride, while both are in both, the Father in the Son, the Son in the Father; the Love-Spring in its lovely and beautiful Image; the Lovely-Image, the first p. 208and highest Beauty in its Love-spring, the first, the sweetest, the fruitfullest Love and Fountain of Loves. The Holy Spirit, the conspiration of both these in One, is their Marriage-band and Marriagebed, where they preserve entire their Unity, and their Distinction in a most blissful Union to make their Loves and Joys more full. From this Marriage-bed doth flow the God-like Race of Divine Ideas surmounting all numbers and natures of things.

The second Marriage is in this Middle-Glory between the Uncreated and created Beauty, joyned together in one Divine eternal Person and Spirit. The Divine Nature is here the King and the Bridegroom; this created Spirit is the Kings Daughter, his Queen, and his Bride.

This Queen is described to be all glorious within, and to have her Garment of wrought Gold.

The Hebrew word within, signifieth properly in her Person, in her naked Face, which are within all her Garments and Vails. Her God, her Bridegroom, Jesus in his essential Image, her eternal Idea, is her Person, her Face, her internal Form. Thus is she all glorious within; For the Lamb himself, her Bridegroom is her Glory. The Glory of the Lord himself in his eternal Splendors enlightneth all within.

This Queens Garment is all of wrought Gold. The word Wrought, signifieth properly a work of Eyes set all over the Garment. So Dr. Hammond expoundeth it, Her Garment was all over set with round Oes, like so many Eyes or Suns wrought in Gold. The created form of this Spirit being the pure lustre of the eternal Sun, the Divine Essence, is the Queen's Garment. The numberless Ideas of the Divine Nature, in each of which the Godhead it self is entire in its Sacred Unity, comprehending all its Ideas, or Variety in a Variety entirely thorowout, infinitely fresh and new, form in this Garment secondary Ideas, their own most immediate, fairest and fullest Effulgencies, or Life-Pictures. In every one of these is this Queen also, according to the Original Patterns in her Father, King, and Bridegroom, compleat with all the full Glories of her Person, and equally distinct in a new Variety of all her Glories, as a new Queen, a new Person, a distinct Spirit. These are the Divine Suns and Eyes in the Garment of this Queen, in which the eternal Eyes and Suns shining in the Divine Essence look forth, as thorow Casements of pure, living, and immortal Christal. Each Form, each distinction of every kind in the Creation here below is such an eye, such a Sun wrought in Gold, such a Spirit of incorruptible Glory, such a Bride and Queen to the eternal King. Every one in particular is a spiritual and heavenly Member; all together make up the spiritual and heavenly Body of our Jesus in this Personal Kingdom of his, where he in his own Person is a Kingdom to himself, containing the Creator with the Creation in all their Amplitudes and Varieties, married together into one Person, Spirit, and Glory, which is to it self Bride-groom, Bride, Ofspring, and All.

See if this be not that heavenly Hierusalem, the Hierusalem above, which is indeed free in the spacious embraces, and unlimited Amplitudes p. 209of the Godhead; which at the same time is by the inviolable sweetness of a sweetly-invincible necessity, the eternal Law of supream Love confined to these embraces, in which she becometh the glorious Virgin-Mother of us all.

Is not this the Hierusalem, whose heavenly transparencies, whose Divine lustre, whose unstain'd, incorruptible Beauties and Virtues are figured by Gold, Pearls, precious Stones, and Glass, Glass of Christal? Is not this that Bride of the Lamb which cometh down from God, out of the Heaven of the essential Image of the Godhead, as out of the Bosom of her Father and Bridegroom, with this Character, in which the perfection of Beauty, and the sum of all Perfections is divinely seated; Having the Glory of God?

But let us here a while feast our Understandings and Affections, our whole Persons with all our Powers upon our Jesus, whom all our desires cannot equal. Let us endeavour to take a more distinct and exact view of the Mediatory Glories of his blissful Person in this divinely-admirable piece, his created Image.

For this end we will fix our eye for a short season upon the threefold Riches of this Work:

1. The Variety.

2. The harmonious Order in each part of the Variety.

3. The Unity of the whole, of each part with the whole, and with it self.

Now, gentle Reader, let me humbly fore-warn thee, that I may not seem too far to transgress the laws and limits of that Method, which I have prescribed to my self, in treating of the Mediatorship of our Lord Jesus, by touching here in this part, and taking in all things of the Creator and the Creature, of the Fall and the Recovery, of Nature and Grace. I intreat thee therefore to consider and bear in thy mind, when thou meetest with this, these three things.

1. The Person of our Lord Jesus in this Mediatory Image, of which I speak, unites all. Here God is come down somewhat from the heighths of his unapproachable Light nearer to us. Here God is with a delicate and transparent Veil of his own clearest Beams, not hiding any of his Glories, but tempering them after the sweetest manner to a more pleasing suitableness unto us, that we may with a more agreeable familiarity, and a more familiar delight feed the eyes of our minds with them.

Here is the Creation in the whole Circuit of it, with an Amplitude and Glory far beyond, far above it self. Here it lies together all, as one piece not only in it self, but in the most richly heightned Light of Christ's Divine Person and Spirit. Here it lies in Union with the Divine Nature in its essential Image, filled with the eternal Ideas, the numberless Original, and exemplar Glories of all things, composing one piece, subsisting and shining in one Person together with these.

No Form or Person in nature drawn with greatest care and pleasure by the hand of the most skilful Painter, a Titian, Portogenes, or Apelles; or contemplated in its Idea, shining in the Intellectual p. 210Light of some excellent and Divine Spirit, so far transcendeth it self, seen by a common eye in it self: As the whole Creation, with each minute, part and motion, is glorified here in the Spirit and Person of our blessed Jesus, with an heightning far transcending the most exalted Beauties of its own proper state.

Here the Creation appears as the Sun-beam, where it is immediately united to the Sun, being far more full, far more bright, and crowned with the Sun.

This is that Divine Glass, which God in his supream Wisdom hath framed, that himself may have ever before him all his Works, as they are presented here in one most lively and lovely view; as also that his Work, his Creature in this Glass alone may take a view and measure of it self, of him, of his way, and his glory.

Think then, Christian Reader, that all things here treated of, are now before thee in this Divine Spirit and Person, as Flowers of Spices in those beds of Spice, which are the Cheeks, the Face of thy Jesus, thy Beloved, thy Delight, Thine and Ours.

2. This Discourse of the Creation and Redemption, as they lie here in the Person of Christ, their efficient, exemplar, and final Cause, prepares our way for our contemplation of them in their proper places. We know things by the knowledge of their Causes.

3. Our stay here will be compensated with the compendiousness of our way in the following parts of our Discourse upon the Mediation of Christ. He that hath newly seen a Rose flourishing upon its stalk and root in the Garden, with a more easie and transient view takes in the beauties of a painted Rose, so far as he respecteth nature alone.

It is now time to come to a Distinct Contemplation of that threefold excellency which we mentioned; The Variety in this Divine Piece, the Order of the Parts, the Unity of the whole, and of each part.

1. The Variety, which renders the beauty and the delight in any piece more full, is, that it self be most full. The things, which make the Variety any where full, are these:

1. The Variety from its highest state extends it self to the most remote distance, by even and united steps, that all the distances be full.

2. The Variety passeth into, and loseth it self in the Contrariety carried to its greatest heighth, and to the utmost point. This most enlargeth the Variety; most heightens and sets off the Unity, the Beauty; most excites, enlargeth, and heightens the Understanding. This is of so great a moment, this containeth so Divine a secret, so high a mystery of something surprising, transporting, beyond that, which is understood: that no Work of God or of man wrought with any skill wanteth it, or rather hath not the greatest skill laid out upon it to carry it farthest. No Work pleaseth our Eye, our Ear, our Mind, all falls flat to all, where the Shades, the Discords, the Contrarieties are wanting. The wisest man saith of the wisest God in his Ecclesiastes, That God hath set one thing over against another, that p. 211man may find nothing to add to the perfection of his Work: Light and Darkness, Life and Death, Contraries one opposed to another. How in an History, in a Theatre do we take the greatest pleasure to have afflicting passions of pity, fear, grief raised in us even unto sighs, a real melancholy, and tears, while we know, that this is only a part in the whole; a Scene, which adorns and heighthens the beauty of the whole, and then loseth the melancholy of its shade, and discord in the universal lustre and sweetness?

3. In the last place, that which makes the Variety full, is the return of the whole thorow the Contrariety by a sweet and full close into its Unity; the return by the Contrariety from its low estate, to its first and most perfect heighth.

The Lord Jesus in his Mediatory Person, is the fairest, the richest Draught or Portrait of the Divine Design and Work, as it lies in the Divine Mind; animated and heightned by the most immediate, intimate, mutual Union with the Divine Mind. Here therefore is to be expected the most ample Variety.

The Lord Jesus is stiled in the Scriptures, The Wisdom of God. He is the Wisdom of God in every sense.

1. He is the Wisdom of God in the Divine Mind.

2. He is the Wisdom of God in the Divine Work brought forth from that Mind.

3. He is the Wisdom of God in the Divine Model of that Mind, and Work, intervening between both, and uniting them.

Proclus defines Wisdom to be foreign, a fulness of things. Our Jesus is the highest Wisdom, the first, the fullest, the richest Variety. St. Paul gives to this Wisdom the Epithete of foreign, a large Gallery, or Porch in Athens, painted at the cost and order of Pericles by the most skilful Artists, with the most exquisite skill, and with that which is the most heightned point in this skill for life and delight, the greatest Variety, was called from this peculiar excellency, the Variety in the Pictures, foreign.

Our Jesus is replenished and adorned with the richest Variety of Divine Forms, which that Divine Painter, Naetura Naturans, the eternal Nature, the eternal Spirit is capable of bringing forth. Thus is our Jesus become not foreign, but foreign, a Porch or Gallery of Divine Variety, for God himself, and all his holy Ones to walk in. Here do they contemplate themselves, the Ideas of their own Spirits, all their Works in their liveliest and sweetest Figures. Ah! how is the King, how are all his glorious train tyed eternally in this Gallery!

But thus much for the first excellency in this Mediatory Person of Christ.

2. The second is the Harmonious Order of all the Parts. These are five.

1. Divine Love in its eternal Original; or the Divine Unity at its full heighth. This is Jesus Christ in his Godhead, as he is the essential Image of the Godhead, One with the Father; as he is the Head, the Root, the Bridegroom. To himself in his created Image, sprung forth p. 212from, subsisting in the Bosom of the essential Image and Glory.

All Forms in the heighth and exactness of their several Distinctions, in their first, their fullest Variety, are here at the heighth, in the absoluteness of the Divine Unity, which is most heightned purity, the perfection of Light and of Love.

2. Divine Love descending into an Image of Light; or the supream Unity in a clear and sweet Union with Diversity. This is properly our Jesus in his Middle-state, in his Mediatory Image. Here are all forms of things, with all their Distinctions, at once in the most perfect Unity, and in a Diversity with a subordination. Yet is this a clear and shining Diversity, a Diversity without distance or division, every where full of the Divine Unity.

3. The third Part in this Glory of Christ, is, the Divine Love declining into a shadowy Image; or the Divine Unity shaded with the Diversity, yet sweetly figuring it self upon the Diversity, and subsisting with all its Glories beneath it. This is the Divine Love in a sweet sleep fill'd with a pleasant dream, where all the Divine Forms, vailed with the shading Diversity, seem to act a Divine Masque to the Divine Musick of eternal Love, seeming to sound at a great distance thorow these shades.

In the first of Genesis, a deep darkness is the ground of the whole Creation. This is exprest by Bohu, and Tohu. Bohu, He is in it. Tohu, the last bound, ultima linea rerum. This is the Chaos, the ground of the first Creation, a Divine shadow which the Divine Glory casteth from it self, with which it surrounds and vails it self, in which himself with all Divine Forms doth lie, as the glories of a Plant in its seed under the Earth; or as Man with all his Intellectual, Angelical, Divine Powers, Notions, Glories in a deep sleep. This the Jews call the darkness round about the Throne of God, and apply to this the black Locks like a Raven upon the Bridegrooms head of fine Gold, in the Canticles. This is the Philosopher's Materia prima Metaphysica, first Metaphysical Matter, out of which Angels, Coelestial Bodies, Elementary Forms sprung, as Flowers out of the ground of Paradise.

Out of this Darkness God called the Light of the first Day, the Primitive Light of the Creation, which by varying it self with the Diversity of shades from this ground of the Divine Darkness, springs forth into all the several Lives, Forms and Motions, thorow the whole Nature of things.

This is not the true Light, which hath no darkness in it; but the shadowy Image of that Light. The Darkness, out of which, and in the midst of which this Light shineth, is the sweet sleep of the eternal Love. The Light is the pleasant dream in this Divine sleep. Thus Man the Diapason, or full Musick of the whole Creation, composed of all the several Forms, as several Notes, is said to be made Betzelem, in a shadowy Image of God. The same word is used by the Psalmist, where man is said to walk in a vain show. In which respect the Holy Spirit pronounceth the purest Beauties and Joys of the earthly Paradise to be Vanity, Dreams, and no more; the shadows p. 213or figures of things in a Dream; Man in his best state is altogether Vanity.

I beg thy leave, Christian Reader, here to make use of that History, if not in an Allegorical, yet an accommodated or Allusive sense. God cast Adam into a deep sleep, and then divided Eve from him, and brought them together again, no more as one person, but two. Before the Spirit had said, God made man, Male and Female made he him; As if Man had been then like the Angels, which neither marry nor give in marriage, but comprehend both Sexes, with all their Progeny, as a full Quire in one Person, in one Spirit. For thus they say of Angels. Every one is both Male and Female in himself, a God-like Unity, diffusing it self within it self into all Variety, with a Divine amplitude, without division or distance.

But thus our Jesus first is both Bridegroom and Bride within himself; he comprehendeth the Divine Nature, the Universal Image of the whole Creation in one Divine Person, Spirit, Life, Image, Joy and Glory. But then by the Law of the eternal Harmony in the Divine Nature, in its essential Image, he falls into a sweet, and deep sleep. In this sleep, as in a Divine dream, is the Bride divided from her Bridegroom. Now they with their Race of Divine Forms meet in diverse Persons, as shadows of themselves. Yet do they in their Pe…sons, in all their Motions, bear the Divine Impressions, and amiable Figures of their eternal Ideas, in the Love and Light of eternity. These eternal Ideas, while they sleep in these shadows, yet awake beneath them, above them, to act them, to shadow forth their own Sweetnesses and Beauties upon them.

These shadows of this dream are indeed shadowy, compared with the eternal Glories: yet have they a real Being, a real existency in thei… own place and order. But we will now pass to the fourth part of this Divine Piece.

4. This is the Divine Unity, opening it self in the shadowy Image into a Contrariety, the utmost point of its Variety. This is the Divine Love in a storm, in its dream and sleep. The Divine Love is here in a disguise. God, who is Love, calleth the Work of Wrath, his strange Work. The ministry of the Law, and the Letter, which casts a Vail upon the Face of God, is the same in the Language of the Scriptures. We read in the Revelations, Of the Wrath of the Lamb. Wrath is the darkest disguise upon the eternal Love, the eternal Meekness and Gentleness, the Lamb, our Jesus.

In this state of Contrariety, Sin and Death have their entrance. Our Jesus, the Lamb, eternal Love is here slain and crucified by the Sin of the Creature. In this death of his the whole Creation dies. Here this Lamb, the Divine Love in the region of Death, in the midst of the Powers of Darkness, and Death becomes a Sacrifice for every Creature. By dying for sin, as he dies by sin, he makes an end of sin and death; he takes away the subject, the ground of Sin and Death, the mutability of the Creature, the shadowyness of the shadowy Image in its dissolution and restauration. He at once scattereth the fearful dream, and awakens it out of its sleep, that it may dream no more, but see the light of Life.

p. 214Divine Poets (which with most inspired and acquired skill, raise, refine, and delight the best Minds, by awakning in them the richest, the liveliest Images of the Divine Work, and the Divine Mind,) place the greatest, the sweetest life, and heightning of their Figures in the foreign, and the foreign, the knot, and the untying of the knot. This part in the Divine Design and Work is both these, the knot, and the untying of the knot. The Law lets in Sin, Sin brings in Death, the shadowy Image is the Root and Seat of all these. The death of Jesus Christ makes an end of Sin, swallows up Death into Victory, dissolves the shadowy Image, sows it again by its dissolution in the Bosom of the Divine Love, as they lie down together in its grave. Here it springs up again immediately into a Child of Light, in the Image of Light, the heavenly Image. In this Light it springs up an Immortal Bride in the Arms of its Bridegroom, the eternal Love. Thus the Grave of Love is changed into a Bridal Bed.

O that I had the anointing of Bezaleel and Aholiab upon me, to draw the Divine Model of the Tabernacle of God in this part of the heavenly Image, the Contrariety, the Scene of Wraht! We should see without Badgers skins sullied, parched with dust, sand, and Sun. We should see it in the midst of a desolate Wilderness, round about it a Land of Graves, and fiery Serpents. But all this while within shine, flourish and flow all the precious, the pleasant things of the whole Creation, and in the Bosom of these, as Divine Figures unfold themselves all the blissful and glorious mysteries of the eternal Beauties and Sweetnesses of the Divinity unvailed. Within are the richest materials, colours, works: In the midst of all, as the Center, the Spring of all is God himself upon the golden Mercy Seat, the Thrones of Grace and Love, within the golden Wings which the Cherubims of Glory spread round about it to make a Pavilion for it.

Thus true is it, that the Law is the Gospel, eternal Love vailed; the Gospel, eternal Love and Beauty shine forth with naked Faces in the Law it self, when the Vail is taken off.

But let us trace more exactly the steps of Divine Love, which all drop Myrrh, incorruptible Sweetnesses, as he passeth thorow the Divine Mazes, the curious Windings of this Divine Labyrinth. To this end we will consider this state of Contrariety, or of Wrath in its several Causes; efficient, material, formal, final.

St. Paul lays a clear and rich ground for us, when he treats of this Subject. His words are these, What if God willing to declare the Power of his wrath?

Having such an Idea of the Divine Goodness of God, that he is the supream Love, the supream Unity, the supream Good, which are all divers words expressing one thing: Where I meet with the darkest, the dreadfulest appearance in his Births, his Works, I find my Spirit excited to seek the sweetest and delicatest Roses among these Thorns, a Face filled with the richest smiles beneath these Vails, the Divinest Wealth, Skill, and Figures in the Vails themselves, as in that before the Holy of Holies.

p. 215Those Scriptures on such occasions sound with an heavenly Melody in mine Ears, awakning and calling forth my Spirit to the expectation of some divinely-beautiful, transporting and transforming sight: He putteth the greatest comeliness upon the most uncomely parts. It is the Glory of God to hide the Matter, the Word, the eternal Word or Wisdom, the Divine Beauty and Love: But it is the Glory of a King, of the Royal Priesthood, the Kingly and Priestly Mind, to find it out, to enter within the Vail, to draw aside the Vail, and discover the Glory.

These words, What if God willing to declare the Power of his Wrath? present to us this whole state of Wrath, as it comprehends the Law, Sin and Death, in its three-fold Cause, Efficient, Exemplar, Final.

The Idea of Wrath in the Divine Mind is a Variety in the gloriouslyample, and delightfully-vast Variety of the supream Unity, the eternal Love. This Ideal Wrath in the Idea of the Godhead, the Person of Christ, as he is the essential Image of the Father, in the Bosom of the Father, is a beautiful and blissful Variety in the Beauty, and most high blisses of the Godhead. It is a Love-part in the triumphantly-joyous and glorious Variety of the eternal Love. This Sun-like Idea in the supream and eternal Sun of the Divine Essence, is the efficient, the exemplar, and final Cause of this Contrariety, this wrathful state. This is its first, its most universal, most intimate efficient. This, its Original, exactest Pattern. This, its Principal, its Ultimate End.

Eternal Love it self in this Idea, is the Divine Framer, the Divine Actor, the Divine Close of the whole Scene, of this Wrath-part in the Love-play. Here it begins, here is its way, here it ends in its Divine Ide…, in the Bosom, in the Face, in the midst of the Varieties, the Beauties, the Blisses of eternal Love. Without this part in the Variety, they were all imperfect. Love it self without this Lovespot, this beautiful and delightful Wound would have an eternal Cloud and Wound upon it.

A great Philosopher teacheth us, That Power is an Unity, containing manifold Forms in it self, which it shoots up, and sends forth from it self according to the Law of its own proper Harmony. Every Idea in the eternal Mind is a Divine Unity. The Ideal Wrath there, is an Unity comprehending in Divine Images all the Forms, all the Varieties of this Love-part, the Divine Wrath, in it self. This is the eternal Reason of the whole Ministery of the Law, and of Wrath in the Creation; the displaying of this part of the Divine Variety by Divine Figures in its proper place in the Divine Work. Thus God shows the Power of his Wrath. He seals the Creature with this Idea, with the impression of the Divine and eternal Glory in this Divine Idea also.

According to the Language of St. Paul; Now Grace, Divine Love, overflows us in all Wisdom and Prudence. Jesus, that essential, compleat Idea of the Godhead, is the Divine Wisdom. The innumerable Ideas in this Divine VVord, or Mind, in this Univeral Idea make p. 216up that, which the holy Apostle stileth, All VVisdom. When Jesus the essential Image of all Lights and Loves, in the Father of Lights and Loves, hath wrought upon the Creature the clear and full engravings of all the Ideas in the Divine Mind; then hath he finished it unto a compleat Image of himself. Now doth this Spirit of Grace, of Love, and Beauty flow forth upon it in all wisdom, in all the various Lights of heavenly Beauty, in all the various sweetnesses of the heavenly Love.

When this work of wrath shall be seen in the whole piece of the Divine Design, when it shall be seen in Union with its Divine Idea, in the light and brightness of its eternal Pattern: What a pomp and triumph of Divine Love, Joy and Glory, shall we see it; how will it increase the pomp and triumph in the Godhead, and its Work? So we see it there, where I now treat of it, in the heavenly Image, in the Mediatory Person of Christ.

St. Paul presenteth this Joy and Glory to the Disciples of Christ: All things, saith he, are yours, things present, and things to come, this world, Life and Death; all things are yours, and you are Christs, and Christ is Gods. So far as we by Jesus Christ are united unto our proper Idea in the Divine Mind, which is our Mansion, or Apartment in our Fathers House; we through the Unity of the eternal Spirit, which by a Love-Union binds up all the Ideas in every one, behold, possess, converse with, enjoy all things in their eternal Ideas, their Original Truths and Glories. All things here are cloathed and filled with the richest Lights of Divine Beauty, the purest Sweetnesses, and sweetest Joys of Divine Love. But thus much for the Universal, the Ideal Cause, efficient, exemplar, final.

The material Cause of this Contrariety is the subject, where it is immediately seated; the ground, out of which it immediately ariseth. The shadowy Image, the Creature in its shadowy state, is the subject, and seat of this wrathful appearance. The ground is the shadowyness, the darkness, the ground of defectibility and mutability.

The form of this legal or wrathful state is composed of many Circumstances. God, who is the eternal Truth, the only, ever-glorious Life and Substance, appeareth in a shadowy Image. God, who is Love pure, unmixt, perfect, unbounded, who hath all pleasantness in his Face and Person, who is all of him in every part, in every glance, the Spring and Center of all desirableness and delights, covers this most amiable, most attracting Face and Person with a Vizard of Clouds, Tempests, and Fires, as on Mount Sinai.

In this Form he divides between himself and the Creature. He sits upon the Throne of his Sovereignty and Dominion founded on Righteousness, and attended with the Ministers of his Justice. He setteth the Creature upon the root of his own shadowy Temporaries, faint and fading Principle, cloathed with the Beauties and Purities of an heavenly Image in an earthly Form. He imposeth a severe Law upon him, urged and pressed with terrible Menaces, a Law to be observed and performed by the shadowy Power of this fading Principle.

p. 217The Law imposed is, that by the virtue of this temporary Root, he preserve the Beauties of the heavenly Image in himself eternally pure and entire; that he keep his heart chast, unstained from all the Glories appearing in this shadowy Image, which alone are ever present with the senses, and all the powers of the Soul; that he place his Heart, all the love of his Heart to the eternal Truth, the unseen Glory hid beneath the shadowy Image, and appearing from the midst of dreadful Tempests, devouring Flames, encompassing and guarding the Beauties of the shadowy Image.

The Creatures sading Root, no more fed from the rich ground of Eternity, now fails; the shadowy Beauties wither, the Darkness springs up, and over-casts all. Sin from this bed of darkness springeth up, and takes life. Sin by occasion of this shadowy Image, in which God appears, turns all heavenly Love, all Divine Charity into Lust and Concupiscence, by terminating it upon the shadow. From the vizor of severity and wrath which God now puts on, sin takes occasion to bring forth in the Creature averseness from God, enmity towards him, the fiery soarce of all hellish passions.

Thus, as the Wax is turned to the Seal, eternal Love by the force of the eternal Idea treasured up in it self, in the midst of the rich Varieties putting on a form of Contrariety, becometh an occasion for a form of Contrariety and Enmity, (which is the Root and Essence of all sin,) to spring up in the Creature.

The Contrariety on both sides heightens it self unto the utmost extremity, that the Idea of Wrath may fully display it self in all its forms and forces to make this part of the Divine Variety full.

So is accomplished that which St. Paul speaketh of himself, as a figure of Mankind: Sin taking occasion by the Law, taking life from the Commandment deceived me, and so slew me. The shadowy Light of the Divine Beauty: the shadowy sense and life of the Divine Love is now extinguished in the Creature, or, which is worse, corrupted and depraved. The whole face of things is covered with a foul and horrid tempest of darkness, lust and wrath. This tempest riseth to its height, when Jesus Christ, the God of Love, with his essential Image, with his Mediatory Image, with his Angelical Image, in which he is the first Creature, the immediate Head of the shadowy Image, with the full Glories of all these vailed beneath the fleshly form of fallen man taken from the Virgin Mary, and espousing it to one person with himself, in all those beautiful and blessed Images, riseth up, and appeareth in the midst of this Tempest, and is slain by the fury of it. All the Contrarieties, the enmities of God, and the Creature meet in him, as the mark of them all. The rage of the Creature, heightned to the utmost height of all sinfulness, burns out upon him, sealing up the s… of all guilt.

The Wrath of God in i… …tmost force, set on by the Divine Justice, Holiness and Glory, descends upon him at once satiating it self, and making him a Sacrifice for all the World.

Thus is the knot in the Divine Design at once tyed faster, and united in the Death of Jesus Christ. This part of the Divine p. 218Variety the Contrariety now carried to its utmost point is finished. In the Death of Jesus Christ, the first, and Universal Creature, the Head, and Spirit of the whole Creation in the Divine Workmanship, the whole Creation dies. The shadowy Image, the seat, the ground of Sin, Death and Wrath, is dissolved in the Grave of Jesus Christ, that, as eternal Love in him riseth again, returning to its own proper form and place, it may carry up all the Births of Love together with it self, opening it self in its own Divine Sweetnesses and Beauties, as a new ground and root beneath all. This is the form of the wrathful state.

The ends of eternal Love, as it acts this part under a disguise, next to the Ultimate end, the eternal Glory in the Divine Idea, are these. The shadowy Image, beneath which the true and eternal Glories lie as in a sleep, is discovered to be a shadow, and then dissolved. The darkness of its ground arising to swallow up the Light of the Divine Figure in this Image, when it hath so manifested it self, vanisheth away in a moment, being swallowed up into the eternal Light of the Divine Love. Eternal Love in the Person of Christ now sings that Song; O Death, I will be thy death.

The Ideal, the eternal, the truly Divine Lives and Beauties, from the Mediatory Person of Christ, which lay hid beneath the Foundations of this World, and shadowy Image, now spring up in the shadowy Image by its dissolution. Now the shadowy Image riseth again into its Ideal, Divine Life and Form. Now is it with a solemn and universal Joy married to its eternal Idea, its Original Pattern, and Archetype in the Bosom of the heavenly Image, the Mediatory Person of our Lord Jesus. Now is that shadowy state of the Creature, and the scene of wrath in that shadowy state, (like a Masque at Midnight, when Princes are married) a triumphant enlargement of the Varieties, a Divine heightning of the Beauties and Sweetnesses in the Joys of this Bridegroom and Bride, the Creature, and its Ideal Glory, its Original Form eternally united in Jesus Christ.

Thus I have endeavoured to represent the proportion, and harmonious Order of the parts in this heavenly Person of our great and glorious Mediator. The supream Unity is the supream Love and Light. This descendeth by just degrees through all steps of the Variety unto the lowest figure, and obscurest shadow of it self. Through the darkness of this shadow, it brings forth it self into the remotest distance of Contrariety. Through this Contrariety dissolving the shadow and breaking up the darkness, it returns by even degrees to its own first heights.

Now, gentle Reader, stay a while, contemplate with me the divinely admirable Order, Harmony, Beauty of this part the Contrariety, which is the proper Seat of all Dis…der, Discord, and Deformity.

1. This is the Wrath of the Lamb, the eternal Love and Meekness, which maketh it self a Sacrifice to its own Wrath. This is eternal Love in a disguise. All pleasantnesses in the Face of the supream Love and Beauty, our Jesus, our God, lie hid beneath this Vail.

p. 2192. It is in the deepest shade, and darkness of the most shadowy Figure of it self, that Love springs up into this strange Form. In the holy Gospel we read of the Kingdom of Heaven, That while the men of the Kingdom slept, the Enemy came and sowed tares. In the 73. Psalm, It is said of this state of wrath at the 20. verse, As a dream, when one awaketh, so, O Lord, when thou awakest, shalt thou despise their Image or shadow. Eternal Love seems sweetly to sleep in the earthly Paradise, by its descent with all its true and substantial Glories into a shadowy Image. In the depth of this sleep, this state of wrath springs up, as a troublesome dream. By the trouble of the dream is Love it self awakned, by which awakning the trouble, and the dream both vanish, and as empty, unsubstantial things, lose themselves in the sweetness of eternal Light. Ficinus esteems him a great Person, who saith to himself of all things here; It may be, that all this is a dream.

3. This is a new scene of Variety, which the Divine Unity openeth in it self, by which it declareth its amplitude and greatness. Here are all forms of things again entirely new, at the greatest height of Variety in their Contrariety. Here also are all Forms of things anew, in a new and Divine Figure, inasmuch as the Contrariety also beareth the Divine Impression of its own proper Idea in the Divine Mind. As the fulness of the Divine Mind with all its Ideas and glorious Forms meet in that Idea above: So doth the Divine Image, with all its Glories, form it self into a new Figure with a Divine Variety in this state of Wrath.

4. See how the Goodness, the Justice, the Power, the Wisdom, the Holiness of God are here illustrated and glorified. The Divine Goodness and Love by descending through a shadowy darkness into the Contrariety of Divine Wrath, gives occasion to the Creature to rise up into its Contrariety of Sin; that this may be the mark of the Divine Displeasure. This is the Glory of the Divine Goodness and Holiness, that sin can take no birth, and have no place, but in its Wrath, when it is vailed beneath this strange Form of Contrariety and Enmity. As this Enmity hath no Object, but the evil of Sin: So sin hath its birth and place to this alone, as its proper end, that it may be the mark of the Divine Wrath; that the Goodness, Purity, Love of the Divine Nature may be manifested in its high and irreconcilable opposition to the Evil, the Filth, the enmity of Sin.

Now these two Contrarieties heighten themselves one by the other, till they come to their utmost point. Then the Contrariety of the Divine Wrath, as an unquenchable flame, swalloweth up in it self the enmity of Sin. Then doth this Wrath also having lost the force of its opposition by losing its Object, lose it self also in the Beauties of the Divine Goodness, and in the sweetness of the Divine Love.

Yea, the fire of this Contrariety not only consumeth it self, but the darkness also, and the shadowy Image, where it hath its seat and root. By this dissolution, the eternal Love re-ascends to its Throne, where all this scene of wrath and shadows rise again into a p. 220Life of Glory, and remain as eternal Beauties and Sweetnesses in the unsearchable rich Variety of the Divine Beauty and Love. Here they remain as eternal heightnings of all their Sweetnesses and Glories.

How unexpressible is the Wisdom, and the Love in the contrivance of this Scene, by which all these things are brought to pass in it? Eternal Love it self, our Jesus, in its own Divine Person and Form, comes forth into the midst of this Contrariety. He heightens both to the utmost extremity, by making himself the Object of both. He comes full of Grace and Truth. So he raiseth the evil of Sin, which hath its Kingdom in shadows, lyes, and enmity, to the highest rage of opposition against himself. Then he takes the guilt of all Sin thus heightned upon himself, exposeth himself, as a Sacrifice for it, to the fiercest flames of the Divine Fury.

While these flames seed upon his Sacred Person, they at once consume all the evil of Sin, by consuming the whole shadowy Image in its Divine Root. In this blessed Person the fire of Wrath meets with all the Beauties, all the Sweetnesses of the Divine Holiness, the Divine Love and Goodness. In these it meets with a Divine Satisfaction, a Divine Atonement. The Wrath and the Contrariety now ceaseth, being reconciled and charmed by these Divine Harmonies into the Unity of eternal Love.

Thus is the Cross of our Lord Jesus the utmost bound of things. In this Cross the Divine Design is finished, the Mystery is finished, the Vail is rent; all things in Heaven and on Earth are reconciled, and gathered up into One, tuned to a Divine and Universal Harmony, which is the Musick of Eternity. Now is that Song sung, O Death, where is thy sting: O Grave, where is thy Victory. The sting of Death is Sin, and the strength of Sin is the Law: but thanks be to God, who giveth us the Victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ on his Cross hath swallowed up the Law, Sin, and Death in the Victory of the Divine Love, the Divine Purities, the Beauties of Holiness and eternal Life.

Eternal Life, eternal Love; that is, our Jesus now cries with a triumphant shout, O Death, I will be thy Plague and Death!

This is the Day of the manifestation of the Righteous Judgments of God. Now in the close and end of all, the Divine Design through all the parts and passages of it, clearly opens and unfolds it self. Now it appears unto all Eyes and Hearts to be all throughout in every point of it divinely-beautiful and pleasant, transcending the Understanding, the Affections, the Expectations, the Desires, the most unbounded Imagination of all Men or Angels, proportioned only to a God, and that God, which is so Light, that there is no darkness in him: So Love, that there is no Fury in him. Now is that found clearly, compleatly true. All his ways are ways of peace, and all his paths are pleasantness.

This is our God, and we will praise him: our Fathers God, and we will exalt him. This is our Jesus, whom our Soul loves, we will rejoyce in him, and wait for him.

p. 221Pardon me, courteous Reader, if I seem something longer in this tract of my Discourse, describing that most beautiful and Divine Harmony, with which all things lie together most delightfully in this shining Seat of all Truth, and enflaming Object of all Love, the dear and adored Form and Person of our great Mediator. This is the Eye, the Heart of my design and work. If the entire and naked Face of Divine Truth were rightly drawn, and set before us in any degree answerable to the Life in this heavenly Image, how powerfully would it attract all Understandings into its embraces? how pleasantly would it subdue them to it self, far beyond the force of all Disputes and Syllogisms, which gather up only small divided and dead parts of this Divine Form; like Ae as collecting the scattered members of his Son Absertus, thrown up and down at diverse distances by his bloody Sister Medea, to retard his way; Or like the Philosophers in Boetius, which take hold of the Garment only of Divine Truth, and tear that into deformed shreds, of which they possess themselves, and in which they glory.

If I could entirely conceive that of which I seem to my self to have some little, but rich, and pleasant glances; If I could clearly express and conveigh into the Minds of men, that which I conceive of the nature of God, and his Work, which, appeareth to me, to have been gathered from all things Humane and Divine; from Poetry, Philosophy, and Theology: From Nature and Grace; the letter of the Scriptures, and the Spirit, according to my little acquaintance with them, and less understanding of them: I am, perhaps too vainly, apt to perswade my self, that I should make the noblest Conquest, a Conquest of Hearts, which would be equally Conquerors with me, partaking equally in the Joy and Glory of the Conquest.

For what Understanding would not gladly be swallowed up into the richly unfathomable Depths of the Divine Wisdom; if it were touched with this sense, that the whole Understanding and Mind of God in its utmost and unlimited compass is taken up, and filled with a Love of equal extent to it, and equally unlimited? What Understanding would not joyfully lie down for ever, and lose it self in the gloriously soft and bright Bosom of the Divine Wisdome, if it once by the least sweet glimpse perceived this, that the Divine Wisdom throughout is no other, than the beautiful and blissful Harmony of the Divine Love, that all the Work of his Wisdom within and without is a deep, delightful, God-like contrivance of Love, on which the whole Godhead layeth out it self to the utmost of all its unbounded fulnesses and treasures; For this Love to bring forth, and express it self with all possible advantage, with all beautifyings, sweetnings and heightnings, as in the whole contrivance, so in each part and point of it; through all which this Love, by this Wisdom conducteth it self with an inevitable force and sweetness. This is that which the holy Apostle hath testified, speaking of things which he had seen, when the Father revealed Jesus Christ in his Spirit, that God by Jesus Christ in his Grace, that is, his Love hath abounded towards us in all Wisdom and Prudence.

p. 222What Will of Man or Angel, if it had in it self the greatest Arbitrarin…s, and highest Soveraignty over its own Actions, would not with unexpressible pleasure resign its Arbitrariness, its Soveraignty, its self, and all, to the Divine Will, when this Will should appear unto it in nothing Arbitrary, but Goodness it self, its own Object, Rule, and Perfection, a Goodness eternal, unalterable and inviolable: The supream and universal Goodness, containing in it self all kinds and degrees of Goodness at an equal height with it self: A Goodness, which bringeth forth it self into the supream and universal Beauty, its proper and essential Image, to which every Will by its own Principle, and most essential activity and motion is carried with a necessity and irresistableness most rational, and most voluntary; that is, most divinely-harmonious and agreeable.

What Spirit endued with an Understanding, and a Will, can forbear from casting it self with most enamoured, and most sweetly forcible transports into the Arms, and absolute Conduct of this our Jesus, this our God, when by the first, and most obscure beam of his own Light it is awakned unto this Divine Sight, that this Jesus, our God, is Goodness it self, most pure, most perfect, whose continued Birth and essential Image is Truth it self; Beauty it self: Truth and Beauty in their clearest Glories, in their highest Sweetnesses, in their fullest Amplitude, Extent and Majesty; Truth and Beauty comprehending all things within themselves, as one Truth and Beauty with themselves, bringing forth all things from themselves, as Flowers from their Garden-beds, filling all, shining through all, forming themselves upon all? Shall not the Understanding and Will of every Spirit now be as Wings of Divine Light and Love, on which the Spirit flies with a sweet and a swift strength into the Bosom of the Lord Jesus, that here by its Understanding it may feast it self with an Appetite and Delight ever new, upon the supream Goodness in its heavenly Image of the eternal Truth; that here by its Will it may lie down for ever with a most blissful Rest, with the fulness of all unexpressible complacency, in the fruition of the supream Goodness shining forth upon it, immediately clasping and enfolding in its own naked, immortal, most precious, most pleasant Form, the perfection of Beauty, the Essence of all Beauty, Truth, Goodness, and Love in One? But it is time now for me to pass from this second Excellency in the Mediatory Form and Person of our Jesus, the Harmonious Order and Proportion of the parts.

The third Excellency in this Mediatory Form of Christ is the Unity of the whole, and of the parts, as in themselves, so with the whole. The ground of this Unity is two-fold: 1. The Spiritual Nature. 2. The Divine Person.

1. One ground of this Unity is the Spiritual Nature of all things here. St. Paul speaking of the Lord Jesus in this his proper Kingdom and Glory, saith of him, The Lord is that Spirit. That Spirit in the same place he describeth to be the Spirit, in which the Vail, the Shade, and Cloud of Flesh is entirely removed; where all things are with open face in the Liberty of the Divine Light and Glory. The p. 223Lord Jesus faith of himself, The words that I speak unto you, they are Spirit, and they are Life. It is the Spirit which quickneth, the Flesh profiteth nothing. Jesus in his Mediatory Kingdom and Glory, casts off the Vail of Flesh, as from his Divine, so from his Humane Nature. The days of his Flesh are now past. He is a quickning Spirit, all Spirit and Life. His Humane Nature is now all Spirit; and by having the Godhead, hath the Fountain of Spirits and Life in it self. All his words in this spiritual state, are substantial, living, immortal Spirits, springing forth from, and abiding in himself, as their heavenly Root and Element. After this manner do all Forms of things arise and flourish in him, being his words of Power and Glory, as the Images in Humane or Angelical Understandings are the words of those Minds.

Spirits are Unities. There is with them no distance of Space, or division of Parts. All Spirits intimately, entirely, throughout, penetrate, possess, and inhabit each other, transcending all this Image, and measure of space, of place, of corporeal extension. The streets in the heavenly Jerusalem, are said to be Gold and Glass. If I conjecture aright, Jesus Christ in his Mediatory State is this glorious City, where the great Assembly of the First-born, all Spirits born of the Father of Lights, Humane or Angelical, on Earth or in Heaven, dwell together in One. It is expresly said, That this City hath the Glory of God, that the Glory of the Lord … it, and that the Lamb is the Light thereof. How agreeth all this with that Description of Christ, the brightness of the Glory of God?

In this City of glorious and immortal Spirits, which is it self the Spirit of Unity, and of Glory, where Jesus Christ is built up, not only into a Temple, but into a City in this Spirit, the streets, the lowest Forms of things are Gold and Glass. Such gold as hath the transparency of glass. Such glass as hath the substance, the solidity, the glory, the incorruptibleness of Gold. Thus is the Unity in the spiritual Nature of things most beautifully, and most agreeably figured to us. Like Gold, it is every where full of it self, compact and uniform, sending forth continually all various Forms, as Beams of Glory. Like Glass, it discovereth all Forms of things within it self; in every point of it self, by a perfect transparency, all Forms of things endlesly appear in each form. At every single view, at every single glance the eye of the Spirit is every where terminated, no where bounded, every where at rest, no where restrained.

2. The second ground of the Unity in this heavenly Image is the Divine Person. All things here are joyned by an hypostatical, or personal Union: all are one Person. A Person is an Intellectual Unity, an Intellectual Essence compleatly existing and subsisting in it self. The Unity here is not that only of an Intellectual, but of a Divine Person: God is the Person here. As is the Person, such is the Unity: both are supream. The eternal Spirit, God himself in the height of Eternity, makes both Natures, the Uncreated with the Created, one in our Lord Jesus, without any confusion, or lessening the Distinction between the Natures themselves.

p. 224The Unity of a Person is understood by these three Maxims concerning it in Metaphysicks.

1. The Person is the Subsistence, or the Existence: that Unity which is both the Spring, and the Chanel, the Center, and the Circle of the whole Essence or Nature, by which it is one by it self, and distinct from all other things, distinct from it self, as it lies in its Causes, and is there one with them.

2. All Operations are from the Person.

3. All denominations belong to the Person.

The Person then is the indivisible Unity, which within it self, according to its amplitude, springs up into all Varieties of Forms, Operations, Denominations through the whole Essence and Nature in its utmost extent. This is that which works all in all Operations, which appears in all Forms, which hath all names and denominations, which in all these is one, and the same, hath one Form, one Name, which comprehendeth all entirely, clearly, distinctly, undividedly.

According to these grounds we shall see a three-fold Divine and Personal Unity in this Mediatory Form of Christ.

1. The whole is one, entire, and Divine Person, altogether compleat, all over divinely beautiful and pleasant. All Distinctions, Diversities, Distances, Divisions, Contrarieties meet here without distance, diversity, or division in the supream Unity of one Divine Person, onc all-glorious Spirit, one Life, one most harmonious Image, one Love, one eternal Joy. Behold the Beauty of this more than heavenly Person in these several Elements, which compose all Beauty.

1. Here is the Variety of lines and colours. All forms of things in their richest Variety lie together here.

2. Here is Light; The substance of the created Image in this Person is the Flower of Light, the most immediate, sweetest, freshest Sunshine from the Face of the Godhead it self.

3. Here is Life esteemed the chief part of Beauty. Here is the Life of Love. As it is Life which heightens; so is it Love which sweetens all. A Divine, eternal Spring of Life and Love openeth it self in every part, and from every part with most pleasant intermixtures diffuseth it self through the whole. Thus are all the Beauties here perpetually in sweetest motion in the liveliest and loveliest activity of mutual fruition, and the delightful exchange of their Divine Sweetnesses, their never-fading Pleasures.

4. All this Variety, Light, Life, and Activity, are composed into, and governed by the most charming, the most exact, the most universal Harmony.

5. The eternal Sun of Beauty it self, the eternal Spirit of Harmony, the Godhead it self with open Face, with all its unclouded Sweetnesses, all its unvailed Glories fills all, springs, shines forth with golden smiles, in every part cloaths the whole Image, is the Unity of all, the Person in all. This is the first Unity, the Unity of the whole.

p. 2252. The second is the Divine, the Personal Unity in each part. Such is the Virtue, such is the undivided simplicity of the Spiritual, the Divine Unity in this Person, that the Unity, the Person, the Variety of the whole, is equally, perfectly entire, and distinct in each part, in every point of the whole. Thus, as there is one Body, and many members; so is Christ in this his spiritual and heavenly Body. But such is the spirituality, the heavenliness of this Divine Body, this Divine Person, that in every distinct Member, the Unity of the Person, and of the heavenly Body; the Person in its full Amplitude, in the greatness of its Majesty, the whole Body in all its glorious Variety, is most compleatly the same, and distinct in every member. Thus we read, that in the Throne of God, and the Vision of his Glory represented by Ezckiel, and St. John, The Lamb was in the midst of the Throne, as the Center dissusing it self through the whole Circle. There appeared also in the midst of the Throne four living Creatures, which are interpreted by learned Divines, to be four principal Ideas; the four-fold Spring and Head of all Ideal Lives and Glories, into which the supream and universal Idea, the Lamb immediately distinguisheth it self, like the Fountain of Eden in its four great streams. These four living Creatures are so described, that every one hath its own distinct Form, that yet all are said to have one and the same Form. Every one is said to have the form of a man, which is the entire and universal Harmony of all forms; the form of that man which rides in the Firmament above the heads of them all, the Lamb himself. This is the second Unity.

3. The third is the Unity of all parts with each other, and with the whole. Every part equally subsisteth, and shineth in all the other parts, and in the entire Face of the whole, as in it self, being every where most perfectly distinct, and the same. So we read concerning those four living Creatures, Whithersoever the Spirit of the living Creatures was to go, they still went forward, and never turned. This is the force of the Unity of each part, and with the whole. Without change, at once every part stands distimctly in every form of Beauty, Pleasantness, Glory; In all the richness of their Divine Motions, and Activities ever full, ever new. The beautiful and Divine Face of each part, of the whole in each part, standeth and looketh at once every way in every part of the whole, and in the whole. Now have I finished the three-fold Excellency of our Jesus in this Divine Image and Mediatory Glory.

Before I pass from it, let me entreat you to cast your eye for a little space upon two Divine and delightful sights here.

1. There is no particular Form so little, or so low; there is no privation so empty, or so dark, which hath not its two-fold Idea or Archetype here. We read, That Death and Hell are open, and manifest before the eyes of the Lord. Where are the Forms of things so divided and broken, as in the dust of Death? What privations so shady and black, so empty and desolate, so deformed, horrid and dreadful, as those of Death and Hell? Yet are Death and Hell manifest before the eyes of the Lord. Is not this Jesus the Divine p. 226Glass and Light, in which alone all things appear to himself, and to his Father? Are not these Archetypes, or Ideal Patterns in Christ, both the Divine Eyes, with which the eternal Spirit looketh upon all things; and the Divine Objects, which alone he beholdeth with these Eyes, the Divine Images in these Eyes?

Then Death and Hell, all particulars, all privations are evidently and eminently here in the beautiful Form and Person of our blessed Mediator.

Here they are in their proper Ideas, in their distinct and heavenly Patterns, their eternal Truths. But here they are no more particulars or privations, inasmuch as every part, every point of this Divine Image, where these Ideas are seated, is both the Center diffusing it self through the whole Image, and a Circle comprehending the whole with its full Majesty and Glory in its own distinct propriety and form. Thus the Psalmist sings divinely of this heavenly Mystery to Jesus Christ. The Darkness hideth not from thee, but the Night shineth as the Day; the Darkness and the Light both alike. This is the first of those heavenly sights, to which I invited thee.

2. See if our Jesus in this Mediatory Image be not the Jerusalem above, ever new, altogether heavenly, our Mother, which bringeth us forth under the Apple-Tree, the Tree of Love in the heavenly Paradise, which beareth us upon her sides, and dandles us upon her knees, through our whole course, in all our motions and changes of our Birth, Life, and Death; which milketh forth from her Breasts abundance of Glory upon us. See if this be not that City of the living God, having the Godhead it self for a Foundation, where all things dwell together in their heavenly Patterns, and eternal Spirits. See if this be not Jerusalaiim, two Cities in one, compacted together by one eternal Love, into one eternal Spirit and Person, the created and the Uncreated Image, where the First-bron, the whole Creation in general, all Creatures in particular in their first-born Original Images and Truths dwell together. See if this be not that Kingdom of God universal over all, the last of all, without end, eternal, which is Righteousness, Peace, and Joy. The Righteousness of all Divine incorruptible Harmony and Beauty; the Beauties of Holiness, the Beauties of the Divine Nature in its most unstained, unmixt, highest Purity; that Peace and Joy which is the most ravishing Harmony of all things, as they spring, shine, and sing together in the Unity of the Divine Light, Life, and Love, in the ever dear and delightful Person of our blessed Mediator.

I have proceeded thus far in our Discourse of the Lord Jesus, as he is the Mediator of the Creation, the way by which God descendeth into the Creature, and the Creature cometh forth from God. To this end, he necessarily toucheth both the extremes, is immediately united to both, and unites both in himself in a middle state between both. I have spoken of the Lord Jesus, as he toucheth the extreme above, and is God with God, the essential Image of God, the Original Seat and Image of all Forms of things in their first state. We have treated of him in his middle state, where he is the Union of p. 227God and the Creature, of all Forms of things uncreated, created, joyned together in one Light and Spirit of Glory.

I now pass to the third Consideration of our Mediator, as he toucheth the lower extream of the Creature, as the Creature cometh forth from God into its single and proper state through him.

3. Jesus Christ, as he is the Mediator between God and the Creature; as he is One with God, so also is he One with the Creature, that he may bring forth the Creature from God, bring back and home again the Creature to God, to make both one in himself. I shall endeavour to make plain this part of Christ's Mediatorship, the immediate coming forth of the Creature through Christ by several steps.

1. Jesus Christ having descended with his Original and essential Image, into an Image of Light, all clear and transparent, in every point of which his essential Glories shine brightly forth: Next to this, he comes down into a shadowy Image. There all the Glories of the two former Images are altogether obscured, and hidden beneath this Vail. They appear only by a shadowy Figure of themselves formed upon the darkness of this third Image.

In this shadow of himself, the Lord Jesus retaineth entirely the Unity of his Divine and eternal Person. All the three Images, the Lights of Glory, and their shadow dwell together in the Unity of the same Person. So do they mutually enfold one another. So do they mutually subsist, appear, and act in each other according to the proper Form of each Image and state. The shadow shines, and is a substantial Glory in the Glory of the Images above. The Images above, with all their substantial Glories, are shadows in this shadow: As St. John saith, The Word was made flesh, so is God here become a shadow of himself. God is the Person in this shadow. This shadow subsists in the Person of God.

The superior Images spread forth the darkness of this Image from themselves, over-spreading themselves with it. They themselves, with all their Glories, are as a Divine Seed in it. They are the seminal Virtue, the seminal Reason or Form springing up through this darkness, and filling it throughout with Divine Figures of themselves. As the Plants, Flowers and Fruits, which God made to spring up out of the ground of the Garden in Eden. Thus is this shadowy Image divinely-beautiful and rich, all an earthly Paradise, bearing the Figure of the heavenly Paradise, which it hath for its proper Seed and Root hidden within it. Jesus Christ in his essential Image is as the substantial and Divine Body of all Glories. In his Mediatory Image as a Garment of Light, with which that Body cloaths it self, all composed of its own richest Beams. In this third Image, as a shadow cast from both these.

2. Jesus Christ in this shadowy Image is the first and universal Creature, a created Spirit, the immediate Head and Pattern of the whole Creation in general, of all Creatures in particular, Men and Angels. He is the first Draught, or Life-Picture of the whole Creation, from whence all the Creatures are taken, as so many Copies of this Original. The superior Images are the Life it self, by which p. 228this Original and Life-Picture is drawn. Thus is Jesus Christ in a third sense the Image of the invisile God, and the first-born of every Creature: St. Paul seemeth in that place, Coloss. 1. 15. to have intended this as the principal sense: For he immediately adds, That all things were made by him, whether visible or invisible, and that he is before all things, and in him all things did consist, or stand together. Then, when in the consequence of this, he had said, that Christ is the Head of the Church, the first-born from the dead; he gives this as a reason relating to both states of Nature and Grace, of the Creation, and the new Creature in the Resurrection, that he in all things might have the preheminence: The word is there foreign, that he might be the first in all things, the first in Order, Dignity and Power: The first Creature in Nature, and in the Creation; the Head of Nature, and the whole Creation: The first new Creature in the Resurrection from the dead, when Nature and the whole Creation was fallen under the power of death, and the Head of the Resurrection. The Jews seem to represent Jesus Christ to us in this station of the Creation, as the first and universal Creature, by two mysteries of theirs: For they teach us, That the Soul of the Messias was one of those things, which were before the World was. They say also, That the Light of the first Day was a pure and clear Light, in which the whole Creation in its whole compass with all Forms of things contained in it, through its whole duration from the beginning to the end, with all Revolutions and Changes, universal or particular, were all clearly seen at once in one View and Prospect, as one entire, most beautiful, Divine Image or Picture. They say also, That at the Fall of Man, this Light was withdrawn and hidden beneath the Throne of God, until the days of the Messias.

The Arians of old acknowledged Jesus Christ in this state as a created Spirit, the first and universal Creature above, and before all things, the Head of Angels, and of the whole Creation. Thus they acknowledged him to be God by representation, deputation, denomination and generation; as being immediately begotten and brought forth from God, as the first created Image of the Uncreated Glory, comprehending all other created Images originally in himself. They ascended right thus high, if they had not rested here, but by this shadowy Image had been pointed to the Mediatory Image in Life, and by the beams of that guided to the essential Image in the Godhead. Our natural senses teach us, That there is no shadowy reflected and refracted Light, where there is not first a pure Light and Sun-shine; that the purest Light of the sweetest Sun-shine hath above it the Original Light, the essential Light in the Body of the Sun, which is indeed the Body of the Sun, the Sun it self in its essential Form and Image. But let us pass to our third step.

3. The Lord Jesus in this shadowy Image is immediately the efficient, the exemplar, the final Cause of the whole Creation. As Light, and all the beams flow from the Sun, their formal Cause, as immediate Figures and Images of him: So doth the whole Creation in general, and each Creature in particular flow forth from him by p. 229continued emanations. He is the ground out of which they rise, in which they grow and flourish, on which he figures and forms himself, according to his various Excellencies, as the proper fruit of them all, into which they sink down, and return with all their Life and Sweetness, when they disappear. Thus are all things made by him, and for him, that he may live and shine forth in all. In him, saith St. John, was Light, and that Light was the life of man; where he speaks of the Creation of things by Jesus Christ.

4. I am now come to my last step. Jesus Christ in this shadowy Image is in the whole Creation and in every Creature, as its proper Seed. He is the seminal Virtue, which puts forth it self through the whole Creation, from the beginning to the end, in every Essence of each Creature; in all the powers of every Essence, in all the operations of each Power. He is the seminal Reason, the seminal Form and Proportion, which springs up equally in like degrees in each Creature, together with it in all the states and modifications of it, forming it and figuring it in all. Thus saith St. John, when he treats of him under this term foreign, Ratio, the Reason of all things, and that in order to the Creation, that without him, or apart from him, nothing was made, or came to pass, that was made, or came to pass. He lives; he dies; he flourisheth, he falls; he triumphs, he suffers in all with all: In him was Light, saith St. John, and that light was the life of man: The Life of Christ, as it was in Christ, the Seed of every Creature, was the Life of the Humane Form, the Light of all Forms, as they meet together harmoniously in the Humane Form, or as they appear distinctly in their proper places to man to serve and entertain him. This was the Light of every Form, as it sparkleth forth in all its Qualities and Acts; as it appeareth in all states and changes. This Light of Life in Christ was the Life and the Light of every Beauty, every Sweetness, every Form of things in every Creature: Together they did spring, together they did fade, being ever inseparable. So was the Creature continually figured and framed in all states by the immediate, inseparable presence of the Lord Jesus with it. When the Creature falls and dies by sin, then also is Jesus Christ slain in it and by it.

If the Life in Christ be the light of man, and so of all things, then is the retiring of this Life like the setting of the Sun, the darkning of all, the over-casting of all with the shadow of Death. But then this eternal Love, the Lamb, our Jesus, dies by our death together with us, that he may become in death a Sacrifice to expiate the guilt of his blood lying upon us: So he becomes also the Seed of immortality and the Resurrection from the Dead, that, as he riseth, we also may rise in him, together with him. Yet is the difference great between his manner of dying, and ours. He knows what he doth in both these Deaths. We know not at present what he doth, nor what we our selves do in either of them. He sins not, falling short in nothing of the Glory of God, which ever fills his Heart, his Eye, and his Hand through all darknesses and deaths, he carries on the Ideal Glories of both the Archetypes, his two superior Images, and so the universal p. 230Design and Beauty of the whole Work in the Creation, which is to be a compleat figure of these, having its beginning and ending in them. By virtue of the Personal Union, he at once carrieth down with him the Light of all the Glories, the Musick of the universal Harmony in both these superior Images, into these Deaths, and also comprehendeth these Deaths in the Light of these Glories, in the Musick of this Harmony, as part of the Glory and the Harmony. This he doth as the Head, the Seed, the First-fruits of the whole Creation. Thus he lives and dies in every Creature. Thus they that are new born into him, most beautifully, most blessedly live and die together with him.

2. I pass now from the first part of the Mediation of Christ, that in the first Creation, the descent of things, the coming forth of the Creatures from God. I come to the second Part, the Mediation of Christ in the new Creation, the Redemption, the return of the Creature to God.

I shall endeavour to set before you this Mediatory Work of our Jesus, of our God and Saviour.

First, In the parts of it, as they lie in the Person of the Lord Jesus, the Head and Pattern of the new Creature.

Secondly, In the progress and propagation of it through the whole Body belonging to this Head.

1. The parts of it most commodiously for my purpose are contained in this three-fold Division: 1. The Incarnation of Christ, and his Life in the Flesh. 2. The Sufferings and Death. 3. The Resurrection and Ascension of our Lord Jesus.

1. The first part of the Mediation of Christ in the Redemption, is his Incarnation and Life in the Flesh. We have seen the eternal Light and Love, our Jesus, our God, gradually descending in a three-fold form: 1. We have seen him in his essential Form and Godhead, comprehending all Varieties of things in their Original and eternal Glories. 2. We have seen him in his Mediatory and spiritual Form, the Marriage of God with the Creature in one Spirit and Glory, where all the Uncreated Glories, and all the Creatures according to their distinct Essences in spiritual and incorruptible forms, as two are one. 3. We have had a delightful view of the same Jesus in both these Divine Forms, set with innumerable and distinct Glories, descending into a shadowy Image of himself, where he becomes the proper and immediate Head of the first Creation, in whom all the Creatures consist and flourish together, according to their shadowy Originals in the first-born strength and beauty of this created state. 4. Our Lord Jesus with these universal Beauties subsisting together, and mutually enfolding each other in the Unity of the same Divine Person, goeth down one step lower from the beautiful face of the Earth into the dark places, and nethermost parts of it. This last step of his descent is at once also the first step of his Ascent and Return. Together with man, and the whole Creation falling by sin, he also falls, but altogether without sin. He subsists in the whole Creation, and in each particular Creature beneath the p. 231universal Ruine, being the weight of all. Here he is the Seed maintaining the Remainders of the Divine Image in nature obscured, deformed, wounded, broken and slain. Obscured, deformed, wounded, broken and slain in it, together with it; He maintaineth the Relicks of the Life of this natural Image in the midst of death. This he doth by a new spring of Grace opening it self in fallen Nature, by the virtue of his Mediatory and essential form now putting forth themselves through his shadowy form in the Creature thus lapsed. Thus is he both in one the old Seed of the first Creation, and the new Seed of the new Creature, which thus in the heavenly Image of the Mediatory Form of Christ makes its way, and breaks forth through the ruines of the earthly Image. This is the promised Seed, the Seed of the Woman, the Seed of the Divine Image both in Nature and in Grace, which gives a new Birth to Nature. This Seed propagating it self through all Generations in the fulness of time, when the season is now for Eternity to shine out through the extended shadow of Time, and to break it up into its own clear Light, springs forth from the Womb of the Virgin Mary into Flesh and Blood, in the dejected form of fallen man; Made in all things like unto us, sin only excepted.

The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, or tabernacled in the midst of us, John 1. The Word was made flesh. See there the Incarnation of the Son of God; He tabernacled in the midst of us; behold his Life in the Flesh. Two Natures meet in one, the Word and Flesh, God and Man: The manner is exprest, the Word is made or become Flesh, not by transmutation. The Word ceaseth not to be the Word. The Godhead in its essential Image retaineth all its Glories, its immutability and eternity in Flesh; neither is the Word made Flesh by any kind of composition. The Divine Nature in flesh retaineth its simplicity, its purity, its absolute, all-comprehending, incomprehensible Unity. The Word is made flesh by assumption, taking the Humane Nature into the Unity of the same Divine Person with it self. God in his essential Image, in the entireness, absoluteness, and Unity of his own undivided unconfined Person with the fulness of his eternal Glory descendeth into Flesh. The eternal Spirit, which is Jesus himself in his Divine Form and Power, comes down upon, over-spreads the Virgin Mary with his Ideal force: He also becomes the seminal Virtue in her. So he springs up out of her Womb into a distinct individual man, a frail, fallen man, though without spot, in the Person of God. Thus is he Father and Son to himself; Father, and Husband, and Son to his Mother. Yea, he is also his own Mother in his Mother, of his own flesh taking flesh from her, inasmuch as he alone fills all in all, and is the Truth of all.

The Word was made Flesh. God in his essential Image and Glory, is the entire and compleat Person in the Humane Nature. This is the Unity in it: this subsists in it: this appears in every part and state of it: this acts and suffers all in it: this is named by every name of it: these are all proper to the Person. Thus all the Glories of p. 232the essential, of the Mediatory, of the shadowy Image of Christ in their most universal Latitude, as according to their several Orders they comprehend all Forms of things in themselves, being united in the simplicity of this Divine Person, do all meet in this Flesh, fill it, shine through it, become one with it, pass through all states and changes, live and die with it and in it. In like manner this Flesh subsists in the Unity of this Divine Person in the midst of all its Divine Forms and Glories. In the fellowship of these, surrounded with these it acts and suffers all things, it appears in every part and state, under every name it bears the name of these, passing through all the changes of Mortality in their Divine and immortal unchangeableness. We saw his Glory, saith St. John, speaking of Christ in the Flesh, the Glory as of the only begotten Son of God, Joh. 1. Thus is Jesus the same yesterday, to day, and for ever, amidst all the changes of Flesh, and Time unchangeable in the Unity of this Divine Person.

The Word made Flesh, is the whole Tree of Being Uncreated and Created, the Root, the Body with all the branches putting forth themselves into one little top-branch now withering, that through its death they may renew all unto a fresh and flourishing spring.

The Lord Jesus now being an universal Person, as the essential Image of God, as the spiritual and Mediatory Image, as the shadowy Image, the Head, the Original frame of the whole Creation in its utmost Latitude, as the Seed of the whole Creation spread through all the parts of it, running along through all Generations, bringing it forth, and sustaining it in it self, by taking Flesh and the Nature of fallen man upon himself, sets himself in the place of us all in our lowest estate. He takes our Sins and Sorrows, all the Diseases of our Bodies and Minds upon himself, that he may take them away from us. Taking together with our Flesh our Guilt, Shame, Weaknesses, Demerits, Enemies and Enmities, Death, the Divine Wrath into the Unity of the Divine Person: He makes an end of the Transgression with its trains of evils, consuming all, swallowing up all in the most beautiful and blissful flame of those Divine Purities, Powers, Righteousness, Rest, Glories, Pleasantnesses, Immortality, which receive them into themselves in the Unity of this blessed and eternal Person.

The holy Ghost clearly and fully expresseth this Mediatory Work of our Redemption by Christ in this ground and superstructure, Heb. 1. 3. Who being the brightness, or effulgency, out-shining, of the Glory of God, the express Image of his Person, or Substance, bearing up all things by the word of his Power, having purged away our Sins by himself. Jesus in his essential Image is the Glory of God, as the Woman is said to be the glory of the Man. In his Mediatory Form he is the Brightness, Effulgency, or out-shining of this Glory. The shadowy Image, in which Christ is the immediate Head of the first Creation, is properly, according to the Greek word, the Character of his Divine Nature and Person: For a Character is properly the engraving or impression of a Figure upon some forreign matter; as a Figure cut upon a Seal, or from a Seal imprinted upon Wax, or Letters stampt p. 233in Ink upon Paper: Such a Character is the Image of God in the Creature. The word in this Text bearing signifieth properly a twofold sense, bringing forth, and bearing up, as … Seed its Plant: So Jesus Christ is in the whole Creation, and in every Creature all along bearing all things by the Word, or flux of his Power; that is, by his seminal Virtue flowing forth, and springing up in all. Upon this ground, in this universal Person, Jesus Christ taking our flesh upon him (in our lost estate) into the Unity of his Person doth by himself, that is, by the Divinity of his Person, purge away all our Sins, and in them all our Evils.

Thus in the Incarnation, in the Word made Flesh, the Sun of Righteousness begins to turn towards us; The Day-spring from on high visiteth us in the midst of the shades of Night and Death. Righteousness begins to look down from Heaven, and to spring up out of the Earth, as this blessed Person in his Divine Union at once shineth forth from above, and springeth up in our flesh here below.

He dwelt among us. The words in Greek are foreign, he tabernacled in the midst of us. See here the Life of Christ in Flesh. His Flesh was the Tabernacle in which he journeyed through the Wilderness of this World, the Antetype to the Tabernacle, in which God sojourned with the Children of Israel, resting in the midst of them, marching before them through the Desart into the Land of Promise. This word foreign is constantly used for that Tabernacle, and particularly often, Heb. 9. Jesus Christ saith to the Jews, Destroy this Temple, and in three days I will build it up. The Spirit addeth there expresly, That he spake of his Body, in St. John. The Humane Nature of Christ in the Flesh was a moveable Tabernacle to be taken down, and so figured by the Tabernacle in the Wilderness. The Humanity of Christ in the Resurrection, in the Spirit was the true Temple immoveable, immutable, eternal in the Heavens, answering to Solomon's Temple on Mount Sion, or Mount Moriah.

In the Tabernacle under the Law there was a three-fold Perfection: 1. All things there were exact Figures of the Pattern upon the Mount. 2. These Figures were taken immediately from the Pattern it self, formed, wrought, and ordered by the same Spirit in Bezaleel, Aholiab, Moses, Aron, the Priests and the Levites. 3. The Pattern it self in its Glory dwelt in the Tabernacle.

The Scriptures laid together, seem to demonstrate Jesus Christ to be this Pattern upon the Mount. The Law is said to have the shadow of good things to come, foreign, not the very Image of the thing, Heb. 1. 1. This very Image can be no other, than the first, the principal, the substantial Image, the Pattern it self upon the Mount. This word is applied to Jesus Christ, Col. 1. 15. He is said to be foreign, the Image of the invisible God. And that the very Image, the Original Image is understood, appears by that which is added, The first-born of every Creature.

The Jewish Rabbins teach us, That the Tabernacle was a model of the whole Creation; of the Divine World, as it is the Head of the Creation, and at the Head of the Creation appears in a created p. 234Figure, of the Angelical, and of the visible World. These were represented by the Holy of Holies, the holy place, and the outward Court. Thus far they were right, but in this they fell short, that they looked not to the beginning and end of these. The Messias in in his own Mediatory Glory, and in his Fathers Glory; as he was the Pattern of these upon the Mount, and as these stood originally in him.

But according to this Type in the Tabernacle in his Flesh, and in his Life on Earth, he fulfilled all Righteousness, the Righteousness of the Creature, the Law and the Letter, the Righteousness of God and of the Gospel. Jesus Christ saith of himself, What I see my Father do, that do I: The words that I speak are not mine, but my Fathers, he doth the Works. The Humane Nature of Christ in Flesh, his Motions, his Rest, all his Words and his Works answered to the Pattern upon the Mount, his own heavenly Image in the Glory of God, and were formed from that Pattern by the same Spirit forming his Humane Nature, subsisting in it, and acting it. The Father, saith he, hath sent me, and I live by the Father. The mission of the Father, and his living by the Father, were his springing forth from the Father, according to the eternal Image of things in the Father, by the Spirit of the Father in his Birth, Life and Death.

Thus he fulfilleth all Righteousness according to the Law, as it was at first engraven on the heart of man, as it was afterwards renewed on Tables of Stone in the Moral Ceremonial, and Judiciary parts of it.

The Pattern it self also, the heavenly and Divine Image, with the Original Righteousness and Glory, dwelt in this Flesh of Christ, in all his Motions and Rests, filling the figures with the substance. Thus it is said of him, The Word was made Flesh, and dwelt among us, full of Grace and Truth, Joh. 1. 14. It is said again, vers. 17. The Law was given by Moses, but Grace and Truth came by Jesus Christ. Grace is eternal Love, the naked Face of God, as it shines and smiles with all pleasantness in it, opposed to the Law, as it is a Ministry of Wrath, and a Vail upon the Divine Nature. Truth is the very Image, the Pattern, the everlasting Righteousness, the Original, and eternal Glory of God opposed to the shadows, the fading Righteousness, the vanishing Glory of the Law. Thus this Tabernacle of Flesh in the Unity of Christ's Person was full of Grace and Truth. The everlasting Love, and everlasting Righteousness, with their Sweetnesses, Strengths and Glories, which never fade nor pass away, at once formed, filled, and rested upon their own perfect and spotless figures in the flesh of Christ. So he fulfilled the first part of his Mediation, and our Redemption, while as an universal Person, comprehending all Mankind and the whole Creation in himself. He presents himself in his Birth, in his Life unto God in the place of all, and all in himself, as a perfect Figure of the Divine Righteousness and Glory, as in an exact Harmony, so in an inseparable, immediate Union with its Pattern.

p. 2352. The second Part of Christ's Mediatory Work in our Redemption, comprehendeth the Sufferings and Death of the Lord Jesus.

The Sufferings of Christ are to be considered in the manner and the merit of them.

The manner of the Sufferings of Christs are set forth in diverse Scriptures, Isa. 53. 6. God laid the Iniquity of us all upon him. And vers. 10. He made his Soul an offering for Sin. St. Paul seems to relate to these Prophesies, when he saith, 2 Cor. 5. ult. Him, who knew no sin, hath God made sin for us. It is frequent in the Hebrew Language and Idiom, to express Sin, and metanomically the Sacrifice for sin, the panishment of sin by the same word, Gal. 3. 13. Christ hath purchased us from the Curse of the Law, being made a Curse for us. A cursed Person is a Person charged with all guilt and filth, and universal abomination and detestation to God, to Angels and Men. A Person devoted to Divine Vengeance and Wrath; excluded from all things holy and good, exposed to the opposition and enmity of all things holy and good; set apart to be cut off, and quite taken away in the shamefulest, dreadfulest, and direfulest manner.

Thus God personally in our flesh suffered. Our Jesus takes away our Sins, the Sins of the whole World, Joh. 1. by taking them upon himself. He stands in the place and person of all Sinners. He beareth the Sins of the whole World upon himself: Behold the Lamb of God which takes away the sins of the World, Joh. 1. The Greek word comprehendeth both senses, to take up, and to take away. He is set, as the abominable, execrable, detestable thing in the Eyes of God, and of all the Creatures. He is devoted by the most solemn, most sacred Curses, to bear the weight of all Guilt, to satisfie the Divine Justice, to sustain the Divine Wrath to the utmost. As the Sin-Offering was all consumed by fire, and was burnt without the Camp; so went Jesus out of the City, separated from the Society of all, in Heaven, and on Earth, bearing his shame, and to endure the pain. The Curse with all evils in their greatest extent and extremity, shame, pain, the pain of loss and of sense then fell most sensibly upon him, when he cryed out, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

A Wound is said to be a solution or separation of the Continuity, or parts united by one common Life. The Sun was eclipsed at the Death of Christ beyond the course of Nature: for it was eclipsed totally, not by the interposition of a dark Body between that and the Earth; but by the failing of the Light it self in the very body of the Sun. Was ever any Wound so bitter, so full of pain and anguish as this? Was ever any Eclipse so prodigious, so dreadful and direful? God in his own Person, in the most sweet, most vital, the supream Unity of his Divine Person is separated and divided from himself by the force and fury of an unexpressible Wrath. The Person of God in his own Spirit, in its Divine Strengths, Solaces and Glories, by a fury sharper and fiercer than any Sword or Flame, is divided from himself in his own Flesh. The all-chearing, and p. 236all-quickning Light of the eternal Sun faileth in the Person of God, as he is in Flesh, being turned into Sack-cloth and Blood.

Jesus now truly suffereth foreign, the Torments not only of an Eve-eternity, but of Eternity, for his Sufferings are extended and heightned not only according to the capacity of a particular individual man in flesh, of an immortal Soul, or an Angel great in Power; but according to the proportion of the Super-Angelical Head of the whole Creation, eminently and transcendently comprehending all Creatures in himself. And not only so, but his Sufferings in this nature are suited to the Divine and eternal Person subsisting and supporting the Nature, and to the Divine and eternal Person offended, coming down upon him in the full weight of his Wrath, in the full Opposition, the full Contrariety, the full Enmity of all the Attributes of God, of his entire Godhead, to his proper, most contrary, irreconcilable Enemy, the evil of Sin. This is the manner of Christ's Sufferings. Thus God personally suffered in Flesh.

The merit of these Sufferings consisteth in this, that this Flesh which suffereth, and the Sufferings of this Flesh stood in the Unity of the Divine Person. Our Jesus was God and Man in one Person, that being Man he might suffer, and this Man being God might merit by suffering. By this hypostatical or personal Union, by this mutual and indivisible Unity of the same Person in both Natures, the Righteousness, the Beauty, the Sweetness, the Glory, all the united Excellencies and Blessedness of the Godhead stood entirely in every Wound, in every Sigh, in every Blush of shame, in every pang of pain, in every part, in every degree of sufferings through the whole flesh of Christ. All these reciprocally were filled and encompassed with the full Glory, with the united Excellencies of the Divine Nature. Thus were they a Divine Price indeed paid down for us in the Blood and Life of our dear Saviour.

Now the same Divine Person, the God of all Loves and Lovelinesses, the God of all Peace, Righteousness, Joy and Immortality in the Tempests and Flames of Divine Justice and Wrath from above: In the tempests and flames of all guilt, sufferings, and shame from below meeteth with himself on both sides in all these. So the tempests and flames of Justice and Wrath from above in a moment vanish into a golden Calm and Sun-shine of Divine Loveliness and Love: In the same moment the tempests and flames of guilt, shame, and sufferings below, are transformed into the Divine unspotted Beauty of an everlasting Righteousness, into the triumphs of an eternal Life, Love, and Joy. In a word, the whole Contrariety thus come to its utmost point returns into, and is swallowed up in the most pure, the most perfect Sweetness and Harmony of that Divine Unity from which it went forth. So is our Jesus become Hylasterion, the Propitiation, the Atonement. Thus the Blood of God in the Person of Christ washeth Crimson and Scarlet sins, double died, in the Blood of God himself unto the whiteness of the wool of the Lamb of God, and of the Snow coming down new unstained from Heaven.

p. 237As Jesus Christ was a Divine Person, so was he an universal Person in his Sufferings. As Christ is God, he is the universal Being, in which all things have their Being; which is most intimately and universally in each thing, as the Being of every Being. He is the Mediator, by which all things in every kind or degree of Being descend and ascend. He is the Head, the Root, the pure and primitive Spirit of the whole Creation, as the Spirit containeth in it self the outward Form and Image. He goes forth into all forms and states of things from above the highest Heavens to the nethermost parts of the Earth filling all. He espouseth into the Unity of his Divine Person the Humane Nature, the Harmony and Model of the whole Creation unconfined by any particular personality: He takes upon him the Humane Nature in its lowest state, in fading, frail and dying flesh. The Father hath given him to the World, and for the World, Joh. 3. He hath …iven himself for us, Gal. 2. ult. Thus he suffereth as an universal Person, and becomes a ransome for all: So St. Paul layeth down the ground of this. Ransome, and this Ransome, 1 Tim. 2. There is one God the Father of all: there is one Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a Ransome for all.

The Death of Jesus Christ is the finishing of his Sufferings, and of his abode in Flesh. This is as the Mid-night, that Point in which the Sun of the Godhead in the Heaven of Christ's Person, is gone to the utmost distance from him, to the utmost degree of Contrariety to him, and now is returning towards him again in the beautiful and blessed Unity of the Divine Love. There is a two-fold mystery in the Death of Christ:

1. An universal Dissolution.

2. An universal Resolution.

1. The Death of Christ is an universal Dissolution. He spoiled Principalities and Powers, making a shew of them openly, and triumphing over them on his Cross, Col. 2. This true Sampson dying, taketh hold of the Pillars of the World, by a Divine force in his Death pulls them down, and the whole Creation, to fall together with himself into his Grave. Some teach us, That the Sun is the Center, the Corner-stone, the immediate Foundation of this visible World, and that if this should fall out from Heaven, or should lose its Light and Course in Heaven, all Motions, and so all Forms of things here would cease and be no more. Jesus Christ of a truth is the true Sun, the shining Pillar, which holds the Foundation of all things visible and invisible; the Root of all created Light, and so of the whole World. He dying, all things die in him, all things die together with him. If any man be in Christ, saith St. Paul, he is a new Creation, old things are passed away, 2 Cor. 5. It is a known story recited by Plutarch, That of a great Cry, with dreadful shrieks and groans to Thamus a Pilot, as he passed by a desolate Island, in the Reign of Tiberius, under whom Christ was put to death, Great Pan is dead, this great All is dead. The Heathen figured the whole Creation in the Person of their God Pan, the Angelical, Coelestial, and Elementary parts of it.

p. 2382. The Death of Christ is an universal Resolution or Return of all things, as they stand in Christ into their first and Divine Principles. The Light, the Life, the Forms, the Essences of all things return into their Ideal Forms, their incorruptible Originals and Patterns, their pure eternal Springs in the Mediatory Form, and Divine Nature of Christ. The shadowyness returns into that blessed shade, that fell immediately from the Person of Christ in Glory, that Primitive and Divine Darkness which was before the first Day, the Womb of the first Light, and of the whole Creation, which composed those Nights of Beauty, Peace and Pleasure, the Nights of the six Days, the Night of the seventh Day, and all the Nights of Paradise. Thus was Jesus with the good Thief, and all things with him, in him in Paradise at his Death. The Jewish Rabbins distinguish Paradise from Heaven thus; Heaven is a state of Divine Glory and Pleasure above in the open Light of …e Godhead. Paradise is a state of Divine, incorruptible Glory and Pleasure below, beneath the shades of the Earth. This is that pure, primitive, Divine Darkness, of which I speak, which was the shade, out of which the pure Earth with all the unstained Forms of things at first arose, and into which they now return again in Christ. This is the Divine sleep of all things in the Death of Christ, their retirement into their Divine Patterns, their sweet and entire rest in them, their contemplation and fruition of all the immortal Joys and Glories of their Patterns, and of themselves in those Joys and Glories, as a Divine dream in this sleep, within this sweet, this amiable, this more than Angelical shade which over-spreads them. Here they desirously and delightfully wait for the Day of the Resurrection from the Face of God, which they see by degrees dawning and rising upon them, when the sweet Peace of this lovely shade shall break up into the more full and glorious sweetness of the supream Light, and that eternal Day. St. Paul expresseth all this to us, when he teacheth us, That Christ hath gathered up all things into one in himself, Col. 2. The Greek word properly signifies there the Resolution, or Return of things back into their first Principle, their Original Spring and Pattern.

3. The third and last part of the Mediation of Christ in our Redemption, as it was accomplished in his own Person, is his Resurrection and Ascension. These two agree, are the same in nature and kind; differing only in degree. The Resurrection of Christ is the breaking up of that primitive shade, which over-spread him, into a clear Light of Glory. Now he springs up, and flourisheth throughout his whole Person, and all things together with him in his Person, in the Beauty and Immortality of his Mediatory Form. He is now become an entire Spirit in his Humane Nature, both Soul and Body. This two Scriptures make clear to us. Jesus Christ saith to Nicodemus, Joh. 3. 6. That that which is begotten of the Spirit is Spirit. The word there is a Substantive foreign, a spiritual substance, or substantial Spirit. Now it is manifest in the Scriptures, that the Resurrection of Christ in the Body was an immediate Generation by the eternal Spirit: p. 239So Divines interpret, and apply those words, Heb. 1. 5. cited from the second Psalm, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee: Suitable to this is that Scripture, Rom. 1. 4. Declared the Son of God with power, according to the holy spirit by the Resurrection from the dead. Two things are manifest from this Scripture:

1. That Jesus Christ was raised from the Dead by the immediate Power and Operation of the holy Spirit.

2. That this Resurrection was a Divine Generation by the Spirit, through which he was brought forth into the proper Form of the Son of God. That which we read declared foreign, signifieth properly defined, or determinately formed. This receives further Light from St. Peter, 1 Pet. 3. 18. Being put to death truly in the flesh, but quickned in the spirit: We read it by the Spirit, but in Gr… the Flesh and Spirit do so exactly answer one another in the construction and manner of expression, that one would think nothing to be plainer, than the intention of the Holy Ghost to signifie, that the Flesh and the Spirit had both the same relation to the Person of Christ in those different states of his dying and rising again, that by this change the Spirit came in the place of the Flesh, and that the Flesh was changed into a Spirit, as by a natural Generation, that that was Water, or Air, is made Fire. The words are these, foreign. In the same sense, in which he died in Flesh, or to the Flesh: So he rose again in the Spirit, or to Spirit. That same Body, which died a fleshly, compounded, mortal substance, rose again a simple, pure, immortal Spirit. As the Humanity of Christ rose again a Spirit, so it rose in an immediate inseparable Union with the eternal Spirit upon the same Root into the same Life and Image. St. Paul instructeth us in this mystery, 1 Cor. 15. 45. The first Adam was made a living Soul, the last Adam a quickning Spirit, vers. 45. The subject of St. Paul's Discourse there, and in many verses before, is the Resurrection of the Body. He said immediately before, It is sown a natural Body, foreign, a Body proper for a Soul; It is raised a spiritual Body, a Body proper for a Spirit, vers. 44. He illustrates this afterwards, The first man is of the Earth earthly, the second man is the Lord from Heaven, vers. 47. Then he distinguisheth them by the names of the earthly, and the heavenly man, or the Super-Coelestial, vers. 48. He likewise distinguisheth their two Images, the Image of the earthly, and the Image of the heavenly, or super-coelestial, vers. 49. Then he concludes with a a positive and emphatical Declaration, But this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot enter into the Kingdom of God, vers. 50.

From these Scriptures laid together, these particulars seem evidently to arise.

1. Jesus Christ by the Resurrection in his whole Humane Nature, both Soul and Body is a supernatural, super-coelestial Spirit, far above the nature of Souls or Angels in the first Creation.

2. The humanity of Christ hath now its Root in Heaven, in that Heaven out of which it comes forth, and appears as Lord of all: the Heaven of the Fathers Bosom; the Heaven of the eternal Spirit, p. 240and of the Godhead, where it hath the Root of its Personality, and its Life hidden with God from the natural eye of every Creature.

3. The whole Manhood of Christ is cloathed with an heavenly, or super-coelestial Image, an Image suitable and proper to that Heaven out which he springs.

4. The Manhood of Christ is so immediately, entirely, mutually united to the eternal Spirit, the Godhead it self, that Christ, as he is man, is said to be a quickning spirit. The Humane Nature, and the Divine in the Lord Jesus are so far now become one Spirit, as in a mystical Marriage, where at the height of their Unity they keep the distinction as high and clear.

5. …us Christ in his Humane Nature, in his Body, as well as his Soul is thus become a Spirit in opposition to the earthly and fleshly substance of the natural Body of the first man, which is declared incapable of entring into the Kingdom of God.

6. This spiritual and super-coelestial state above the natural Body, and above the natural Soul of the first man in his primitive state, and so above the Creation in its visible or invisible part, when it was most pure, is properly the Kingdom of God, to which that of St. Paul agreeth, when he placeth the Kingdom of God in the eternal Spirit.

Thus the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus is his Return with his Humane Nature, with his shadowy Image, with the whole Creation in himself, into the Immortality and Glory of his Mediatory Form, to be there, as he was at first. This is the Object of his Hope, the subject of his Prayer. Now, O Father, glorifie me with thy self, with that Glory which I had with thee before the World was, Joh. 17. 5. What time, that now relates unto, you may understand by the fore-going verse, I have glorified thee on Earth, I have finished the Work which thou gavest me to do. Jesus Christ speaketh this by a Prolepsis, or Anticipation, having his Eye upon the finishing his Work upon the Face of the Earth by dying, and finishing his Work in the Heart, or nethermost parts of the Earth by lying the appointed time in the Grave. Jesus Christ points out to us three eminent Circumstances in his Resurrection.

1. The first is a Glory with his Father, an Union and Fellowship with the Godhead, and with the Person of the Father in his own proper and Divine personal Glory. He expresseth this twice over, as the chiefest sweetness of his Hopes, and the principal Glory in the Glory. Glorifie me with thy self, with the Glory which I had with thee.

2. This Glory transcends that of the whole Creation in its greatest Perfection, as it also antecedes it, as it also is a Glory which was before the World was.

3. Here are three states distinctly represented to us:

1. Jesus Christ in Glory, before he came into this World, before this World was.

2. Jesus Christ coming forth from that Glory into this World, and being without that Glory all that interval of his Life here.

p. 2413. The return of Christ at his Death and Resurrection into the same Glory.

These three states must necessarily respect Jesus Christ in the same form under the same relation, to accommodate this sense, and make that proper. The Person of Christ in his shadowy Image, in which he was the Head of the whole Creation, and comprehended this all in himself, as he took flesh of the Virgin Mary, and set himself in the place of all in their fallen estate; So He was without the Glory. Before all this in his Mediatory Form, he stood together with God, and his Father in his shadowy Image, in Flesh and Blood, with all the changes accompanying him after a spiritual manner, filled and cloathed with a super-coelestial and eternal Glory.

Two Scriptures laid together give more light and strength to this place and this sense. Jesus Christ having spoken to the Jews of eating his Flesh, and drinking his Blood, Joh. 6. 56. Of his being the Bread coming down out of Heaven, vers. 58. Understanding the Jews to murmur, and be offended at the hardness of this saying, vers. 60, 61. makes this Reply to their murmurs; What if ye shall see the Son of man ascending thither, where he was at first, or before. It is the Spirit quickneth, the Flesh profiteth nothing: The words which I speak they are Spirit and Life. The other Scripture is that, Rom. 1. 4. Christ was raised from the dead by the Glory of God.

From these two Scriptures compared, the Truth of this mystery shines forth in these parts:

1. The flesh and blood of Jesus Christ, in the proper sense of Christ's words, are Spirit and Life.

2. They were Spirit and Life in the Glory of God, before the coming down of Christ upon the Earth.

3. From that state they came forth into their shadowy appearance here in this shadowy Image.

4. They returned again together with this shadowy Image into that first state, where casting off the Vail, or rather converting the Vail into the same Nature and Form, they were again all Spirit and Life, by the Glory of God in the Resurrection springing up in them, coming down upon them, and taking them into it self.

Lastly, The flesh and blood of Christ, even when they are come forth from this spiritual and immortal Glory, while they are in this shadowy state upon the Earth, abide unchangeably in this Glory, and are there still all Spirit, all Life, without any Vail or Cloud: Thus are they the food of a Saint.

The Lord Jesus expresseth this sense; No one hath ascended into Heaven, but he who comes down out of Heaven, the Son of Man, who is in Heaven.

Two things are remarkable here:

1. The being in Heaven is expressed by the Participle of the present Tense, a present and constant Act.

2. The Title of the Son of Man is particulary added to that clause of the being in Heaven constantly without interruption, while he comes down out of Heaven, while he ascends into Heaven, in the p. 242interval, or space of his being on Earth between both these. Jesus Christ, as he is the Son of Man, comes down at first out of that Heaven into which at last he returns and re-ascends. In the same Heaven also hath he his present and constant abode, while he is on Earth.

As the Heaven of Christ's Mediatory Glory, and of the Fathers Glory, which are far above all created Heavens, the Heavens of this Creation, come down together with him upon the Earth, obscured beneath the Vail of Flesh, and in this Flesh act all the parts of his living and dying here: So do these Heavens also at once comprehend this Earth in the Person of Christ, his flesh, their obscurity before it; All the parts of his Life and Death in the flesh, as parts of Glory in these Heavens; As Spirit and Life, as spiritual and immortal Glories in the Fountain of Life and Glory, the eternal Spirit.

St. Austin in his Discourses of the Trinity, interprets the mission, or sending Christ by the Father, to be his coming forth out of the invisible Glory of the Father into a visible state and form. The invisible Glory being immutable, undivided and unconfined, comprehendeth constantly in it self after its own manner, that visible Form which it sendeth forth from it self.

Object. How do we say, that the Manhood of Christ was a Spirit in its Resurrection, when he saith in one place to his Disciples, A Spirit hath not flesh and bone, as ye see me to have. In another place he shewed his hands and his side to the Apostles, Joh. 20. 20. Again, he calleth to Thomas, Bring thy finger hither, and see mine hands, and bring thine hand, and put it into my side; and be not unbelieving, but believing. In a visible form he ascended before the eyes of the Apostles, and a Cloud took him up out of their sight, Act. 1. 9. To this I give three Answers.

Answ. 1. Jesus Christ intended not that these outward appearances of a natural Form to their outward and natural senses, should be in themselves alone any demonstration of his Resurrection and Glory. Did not he know, that all their senses were equally capable of being deluded by a Fantom, or an Apparition of the Devil? If Satan can change himself into an Angel of Light, to the deluding of our most noble and Divine Faculty, our Understanding; can he not as easily by the same skill and power change himself into any known or agreeable Object, to abuse any of our senses? might not he either by false Species or Images impressed upon the outward Organs of sense, the natural Spirit, the Imagination, or by thickning and forming a Body of Air, counterfeit the softness, the warmth, the solidity of Christs Flesh, and his Wounds to the touch, and to the hands of St. Thomas, as well as to his sight, and to his eyes? Histories of those affairs, which write them with greatest Authority, and best Reputation, tell us of dissolute Persons, who have seemed to themselves in the warm embraces of a delightful Person on a soft and rich bed, who yet in the end have found themselves with a filthy sow in the mire.

p. 243Answ. 2. We read in Daniel, that the Bodies of the Saints in the Resurrection shine as the Sun in the Firmament. When Jesus Christ was transfigured, his Face did shine as the Sun in its strength. If then the Body of our Lord Jesus, risen from the dead, did remain flesh still, yet certainly it was rarified, and heightned to such a degree of Spirituality and Glory, that it could bear no resemblance to the natural Body, the Flesh of Christ in its Humiliation upon the Cross, stained and broken with Wounds, with Blood, with Agonies, with the forms of Death invading it. Can we think a glorified Body could bear any proportion to our natural senses, when our own reason, according to the Rules of Philosophy teacheth us, That a sensible Object, if it excel, destroys the sense? Our experience makes this plain to us in the Sun, which shining clearly forth, is uncapable of being lookt upon by us, chastizing us with a blindness, even to inferior Objects, if we dare to cast our eyes upon him; yet is he in his brightest Glory, but a shadowy Figure of the glorified Body of Christ, and of his Saints: For, when Christ shall appear in his glorified Body, and the Saints in their glorified Bodies shall appear, and shine in their full splendor with him; the Sun shall have no glory before this excelling Glory, but be turned into Sack-cloath, as the Stars lose their light, when the Sun riseth upon them.

Can we think then, our eyes, our natural senses, or those of the Apostles, capable of discerning or taking in the Glory of Christs spiritual Body in its proper and true Form, when he was risen from the dead?

Answ. 3. The holy Spirit saith expresly of these appearances of Christ to the natural senses of the Apostles, immediately upon that History of St. Thomus. Many truly therefore, and other signs Jesus wrought before his Disciples, Joh. 20. 30. We read also concerning these appearances of Christ to the Apostles, that Jesus Christ presented himself to them alive by many signs or wonders for the space of forty days appearing to them, and seen by them. These then were Signs or Miracles wrought by Christ, which had no force in the outward Form, any farther than the eternal Spirit with a Divine Power and Glory wrought in them, and shined through them. Such Signs and Wonders were the Images of things presented of old to the eyes or imaginations of the Prophets, which were of no use any farther than the eternal Word, the Glory of God opened it self to the Spirits of the Prophets through them, at once discovering them in it self, and it self in them. So now the Lord Jesus by these Signs to the outward senses at once opened, fortified, heightned, enlarged the Understanding, and the spiritual senses of the Apostles, and presented himself to them with his whole Man-hood, Soul and Body, risen into the Glory of his Mediatory Form, and of his Divine Nature. Here he set before them all those fleshly Forms of his Humiliation, of his Incarnation, Life and Death, through which he had passed in their proper Forms of their several seasons, not as shadowy Images to shadowy senses, but as the essential, eternal Truth, the Spirit and Life of them, as Mysteries and p. 244Glories unvailed, and sealing themselves upon the spiritual senses of those, whose eyes were thus anointed to behold them. This was the sight which Christ presented to Thomas, when he said to him with words, which carried a new Creation along with them, be not unbeliving, but believing. This was the sight which Thomas saw, when he cryed, My Lord and my God.

The Ascention of our Lord Jesus is his passage out of his Mediatory Form and Glory, carrying that also up together with himself into the Glory of the Father. Jesus Christ distinguisheth between his own Glory and the Glory of his Father, Luke 9. 26. When the Son of Man cometh in his own Glory, and the Glory of his Father, and the Glory of his holy Angels. The Glory of the holy Angels is that of this Creation, which is subjected to them, in which they are according to the Language of the Scripture, Principalities, Powers, and Thrones. His own Glory, the proper Glory of Christ, which he calls his own Glory, is that of his Mediatory Form. The Glory of his Father transcendeth that, shining forth in the supream Unity, and purest simplicity of the Godhead.

This three-fold Glory, Jesus Christ united in his own Person. Through this three-fold Glory he ascended, taking up all with him into the highest Glory. He cometh again in the Spirit of Glory, and of God, as the Root of this three-fold Glory, putting forth himself gradually in it, through the Saints, till by springing and forming himself in them, he bring them also to be where he is, to see the Glory of his Godhead, to see all Glories, and themselves also like him in that Glory.

Thus Jesus Christ ascends, and sits down at the right hand of the Father, above all Principality, and Power, and Dominion, and above every Name that is named; not only in this World, but in that which is to come. This World is the World of Angels, and of their Glories. The Names of Principalities, Powers, Dominions, Thrones, are the Names of Angels, and Names named in this, their World. The World to come is the Mediatory World, the Kingdom of the Mediator, where Christ alone Reigns over all, and in all, where Christ hath his own proper Glory above the Glory of the Angels, beneath the Glory of the Father; where Christ alone is named in every Name, by Names above every Name, which is named in this World of Angels. This distinction between these two Worlds seemeth to appear plain in the comparison of this Scripture, with that Heb. 2. 5. For he hath not put that World to come, of which we speak, in subjection to Angels. Then this is confirmed by a citation of the Psalmist, vers. 7. Having made him a little lower than the Angels, thou hast crowned him with Glory and Honour, and set him over the Works of thine hands. Thou hast put all things, even the Angels themselves, with their World, and their Glory under his feet.

In like manner th… Ascension of our Lord Jesus is represented to us in great Majesty and Glory, with a great pomp and train of Glories, Eph. 4. 10. He that descends, is the same who also ascends far above all Heavens. Behold our Jesus ascending through all the Heavens of p. 245Angels, all the H…hvens of his own Mediatory Form and Kingdom, leaving them all behind him. Behold himat the right hand of the Father, in the Bosom of the Father, in the purity and simplicity of the Godhead, entred into the Holy of Holies, ascended to an height above every name of Heavens, or Glories, or any thing named in any the highest Heavens, by any Glories, by any the highest and sweetest Names. Behold him, carrying along with him up to this height in his own Person, and by the Power of his Person and Spirit drawing up after him the long pomp and train of all these Heavens, and their several Glories. Here now Jesus sits down in his eternal Rest upon the Throne of Eternity, having nothing higher to which he may ascend.

The Resurrection of Christ is the beginning of his Ascension, his Ascension is the finishing of his Resurrection. Now Jesus Christ is perfectly ascended thither where he was at first. The Godhead of Christ in his Mediatory Form shineth forth immediately, nakedly, but gradually; in answerable degrees the Humane Nature of Christ is Light in the Light of the Godhead, a clear, pure Light in the naked Bosom of that Light, but an increasing Light. Now in the Ascension of Christ, the Glory of the Father shines out, not only immediately and nakedly, but entirely, fully. The Union, the Communion, the Conformity of the Humane Nature with the Divine is compleat, as in kind, so also in degree.

God is now all in all in the Person of Christ, and in both Natures. God is totus, & totalitèr in toto Christo, & in qualibet parte Christi. God is entirely full, and fully in the whole Person of Christ, in the whole Manhood of Christ, and in every part. God is all with his whole Godhead, all in every kind, in every degree, in every way and manner, in all Christ, in all the humanity of Christ.

The Humane Nature of Christ is now by a mutual, entire Union, Similitude, and Society married to its Idea, its heavenly Pattern, as it stood in the Mediatory Form of Christ, being an uncreated, and a created Spirit of Light, Glory, and Immortality in one Spirit. Now this created Spirit of Light, Glory, and Immortality it self, and the Humane Nature of Christ together with it, in it, lieth in the mutual embraces of its first Idea and Pattern, in the simplicity of the Godhead, in the high and holy place of Eternity, in its highest and purest simplicity, in its Idea and Pattern, its ever-flourishing Father and Husband. In this Bosome is the Marriage consummate: In this Light the Humane Nature seeth the Godhead eye to eye, is become like it, embraceth it, being embraced by it, as it is in its full Glories fully powring forth themselves into its Bosome, after which, and beyond which there is no Glory. This is the sense of St. Paul, when he saith, Col. 2. 9. That in Christ dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily; that is, substantially, entirely, distinctly.

FINIS.

End of the text · Peter Sterry, The Freedom of the Will (1675)