SERMON XIV.

PHIL. iv. 13.

I can do all things through Christ that strengtheneth me.

THOSE two contrary heresies that cost St. Austin and the fathers of his time so much pains; the one all for natural strength, the other for irrecoverable weakness, have had such unkindly influence on succeeding ages, that almost all the actions of the ordinary Christian have some tincture of one of these scarce any sin is sent abroad into the world without either this or that inscription. And therefore parallel to these, we may observe the like division in the hearts and practical faculties between pride and sloth, opinion of absolute power, and prejudice of absolute impotence: the one undertaking all upon its own credit, the other suing, as it were, for the preferment, or rather excuse of being bankrupts upon record; that so they may come to an easy composition with God for their debt of obedience: the one so busy in contemplation of their present fortunes that they are not at leisure to make use of them, their pride helping them to ease; and if you look nearly to poverty too, the other so fastened to this sanctuary, Rev. iii. 17. this religious piece of profaneness, that leaving the whole business to God, as the undertaker and proxy of their obedience, their idleness shall be deemed devotion, and their best piety sitting still.

These two differences of men, either sacrilegious or supine, imperious or lethargical, have so dichotomized this lower sphere of the world, almost into two equal parts, that the practice of humble obedience and obeying humility, the bemoaning our wants to God, with petition to repair them, and the observing and making use of those succours which God in Christ hath dispensed to us; those two foundations of all

Christian duty, providing between them that our religion be neither ἄθεος ἀρετὴ, nor ἀνέργητος εὐχὴ, “ neither the virtue of the atheist, nor the prayer of the sluggard," are almost quite vanished out of the world: as when the body is torn asunder, the soul is without any further act of violence forced out of its place, that it takes its flight home to heaven, being thus let out at the scissure, as at the window; and only the two fragments of carcase remain behind.

For the deposing of these two tyrants, that have thus usurped the soul between them, dividing the live child with that false mother, into two dead parts; for the abating this pride, and enlivening this deadness of practical faculties; for the scourging this stout beggar, and restoring this cripple to his legs; the two provisions in my text, if the order of them only be transposed, and in God's method the last set first, will, I may hope and pray, prove sufficient. "I can do," &c.

1. "Through Christ that strengtheneth me." You have there, first, the assertion of the necessity of grace; and secondly, that enforced from the form of the word évduvaμoûvτa, which imports the minutely continual supply of aids; and then, thirdly, we have not only positively, but exclusively declared the person thus assisting; in Christo confortante, it is by Him, not otherwise, we can do thus or thus. Three particulars, all against the natural confidence of the proud atheist.

2. The ioxów Távта, "I can do all things." First, the ioxów, and secondly, the Távτa; 1. the power; and 2. the extent of that power: 1. the potency; and 2. the omnipotency; and then 3. this not only originally of Christ that strengtheneth, but inherently of me, being strengthened by Christ. Three particulars again, and all against the conceived or pretended impotence, either of the false spy that Numb.xiii. brought news of the giants, Anakims, cannibals, in the way to Canaan; or of the sluggard, that is alway affrighting and keeping himself at home, with the lion in the streets, some μорμoλúкeιov or other difficulty or impossibility, whensoever Prov. xxvi. any work or travail of obedience is required of us.

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It will not befit the majesty of the subject to have so many particulars, by being severally handled, jointly neglected. Our best contrivance will be to shorten the retail for the increas

ing of the gross, to make the fewer parcels, that we may carry them away the better, in these three propositions.

I. The strength of Christ is the original and fountain of all ours; "Through Christ that," &c.

II. The strength of a Christian, from Christ derived, is a kind of omnipotency, sufficient for the whole duty of a Christian. "Can do all things," &c.

III. The strength and power being thus bestowed, the work is the work of a Christian, of the suppositum, the man strengthened by Christ. "I can do," &c.

Of these in this order, for the removing only of those prejudices out of the brain, which may trash and encumber the practice of piety in the heart. And first of the first.

The strength of Christ is the original and fountain of all ours. The strength of Christ, and that peculiarly of Christ the second Person of the Trinity, who was appointed by consent to negotiate for us in the business concerning our souls. All our tenure or plea, to grace or glory, to depend not on any absolute, respectless, though free donation, but conveyed to us in the hand of a Mediator; that privy seal of His annexed [Acts vii.] to the patent, or else of no value at that court of pleas, or that grand assizes of souls. Our natural strength is the gift of God, as God is considered in the first article of our creed, and by that title of creation we have that privilege of all created substances, to be able to perform the work of nature, or else we should be inferior to the meanest creature in this; for the least stone in the street is able to move downwards by its own principle of nature: and therefore all that we have need of in the performing of these is only God's concurrence, whether previous or simultaneous; and in acts of choice, the government and direction of our will, by His general providence and power. However, even in this work of creation, Christ must not be excluded, "Gods," in the [Gen. i. 1.] plural, all the persons of the Deity, in the whole work, and peculiarly in the faciamus hominem, are adumbrated, if not [Gen. i. mentioned by Moses. And therefore God is said to have made all by His Word, that inward, eternal Word in His [John i. 3. ] bosom, an articulation, and, as it were, incarnation of which, was that fiat et factum est, which the heathen rhetorician so

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admired in Moses for a magnificent sublime expression". Yet in this creation, and consequently this donation of natural strength, peculiarly imputed to the first Person of the Trinity; because no personal act of Christ, either of His satisfaction or merit, of His humiliation or exaltation, did conduce to that; though the Son were consulted about it, yet was it not ev Xeipì μeoíτov, "delivered to us in the hand of a Mediator." Our natural strength we have of God, without respect to Christ incarnate, without the help of His mediation; but that 2Cor. iii. 5. utterly unsufficient to bring us to heaven. "Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing," i. e., saith Parisiensis", any thing of moment or valour, according to the dialect of Scripture, that calls the whole man by the name of his soul, —so many souls, i. e., so many men, and so ǹ ↓ʊxǹ oùo, the Pythagoreans' word, thy "soul is thou,"-counts of nothing, but what tends to the salvation of that. But then our supernatural strength, that which is called grace and Christian strength, that is of another date, of another tenure, of another allay; founded in the promise, actually exhibited in the death and exaltation of the Messias, and continually paid out to us, by the continued daily exercise of His offices. 1. The covenant sealed in His blood, after the manner of eastern nations, [Gen. xvii. as a counterpart of God's, to that which Abraham had sealed 11.] to before in his blood at his circumcision. 2. The benefits made over in that covenant were given up in numerato, with a kind of livery and seisin at His exaltation; which is the imEph. iv. 8. portance of that place, "Thou hast ascended on high." There is the date of it upon Christ's inauguration to His regal officed : "Thou hast led captivity captive." There is the evidence of conveyance unto Him, as a reward of His victory and part of His triumph: "Thou hast given gifts," or as the Psalm, “received" "gifts for men." Both importing the same thing in divers relations, received from His Father," All power is xxviii. 18.] given to Me," that He might give, dispense, convey, and steward it out to men; and so literally still, ev xeipì μeσítov, "in the hand of a Mediator." And then that which is thus

Ps. lxviii.

[18.]

[Matt.

[πᾶσα δόσις ἀγοθή.]

made over to us is not only the gift of grace, the habit by which we are regenerate: but above that account, daily bubblings out of the same spring, minutely rays of this Sun of Righteousness, which differ from that gift of grace, as the propagation of life from the first act of conception, conservation from creation; that which was there done in a minute is here done every minute; and so the Christian is still in fieri, not in facto esse: or as a line which is an aggregate of infinite points, from a point in suo indivisibili; the first called by the schools, auxilium gratiæ per modum principii, the other per modum concursus. And this is noted by the word δόσεις, "givings," neither gets as the heathen called their virtues, Jam. i. 17. as habits of their own acquiring; nor again so properly dŵpa, [raga 86"gifts," because that proves a kind of tenure after the receipt. Data, eo tempore quo dantur, fiunt accipientis, saith the law: but properly and critically dóσels, "givings," Christ always a giving, confirming minutely not our title but His own gift; or else that as minutely ready again to return to the crown. All our right and title to strength and power is only from God's minutely donation. And the evovvaμoûvтi, in the present tense, implies all depending on the perpetual presence and assistance of His strength. Hence is it that Christ is called "the Father of eternity," i. e., "of the life to come," Isa. ix. 6. -μéλλovтos alvos say the LXX, "the age to come,"-the state of Christians under the gospel, and all that belongs to it; "the Father" which doth not only beget the child, but educate, provide for, put in a course to live and thrive, and deserves far more for that He doth after the birth, than for the being itself; and therefore it is Proclus' observation of Plato, that he calls God, in respect of all creatures, Tonτηv, a "Maker;" but πатéρа, a "Father," in respect of man. And this the peculiar title of Christ, in respect of His offices; not to be the Maker only, the architect of that age to come, of grace and glory, but peculiarly the Father, which continues His paternal relation for ever; yea, and the exercises of paternal offices by the pedagogy of the Spirit, all the time of nonage, minutely adding and improving, and building him up to the measure and pitch of His own stature and fulness.

e [Arist. Eth. ii. 4.]