tears and gnashing of teeth quit us of that sad arrear of horrors that otherwise waits behind for us. Lord, do Thou give us that view of our ways; the errors, the follies, the furies of our extravagant, atheistical lives; that may, by the very reproach and shame, recover and return us to Thee! "Make our faces ashamed, O Lord, that we may seek Thy [Ps.lxxxiii. Law;" give us that pity and that indignation to our poor, 16.] perishing souls, that may at length awake and fright us out of our lethargies, and bring us so many confounded, humbled, contrite penitentiaries, to that beautiful gate of Thy temple of mercies, where we may retract our follies, implore Thy pardon, deprecate Thy wrath; and for Thy deliverance from so deep a hell, from so infamous a vile condition, from so numerous a tale of deaths, never leave praising Thee, and saying, "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts; heaven and earth are full of Thy glory; glory be to Thee, O God, most high."

To whom, with the Son and the Holy Ghost be ascribed, &c.

SERMON XVI.

MATT. i. 23.

Emmanuel, which is by interpretation, God with us.

THE different measure and means of dispensing divine knowledge to several ages of the world, may sufficiently appear by the gospels of the New, and prophecies of the Old Testament; the sunshine and the clearness of the one, and the twilight and dimness of the other: but in no point this more importantly concerns us than the incarnation of Christ. This hath been the study and theme, the speculation and sermon of all holy men and writers since Adam's fall; yet Mat. iii. 3. never plainly disclosed till John Baptist, in the third of Matthew and the third verse, and the angel in the next verses before my text, undertook the task, and then indeed was it fully performed; then were the writings, or rather the riddles, of the obscure, stammering, whispering prophets, Isa. xl. 3. turned into the voice of "one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the ways of the Lord," &c. Then did the cry, yea, shouting of the Baptist, at once both interpret and perform what it prophesied; at the sound of it, "every valley was exalted, and every hill was brought low: the crooked was made straight, and the rough places plain," that is, the hill and groves of the prophets were levelled into the open champaign of the gospel; those impediments which hindered God's approach unto men's rebel hearts were carefully removed; the abject mind was lifted up, the exalted was depressed, the intractable and rough was rendered plain and even; in the same manner as a way was made unto the Roman army marching against Jerusalem.

ver. 4.

This I thought profitable to be premised to you, both that you might understand the affinity of prophecies and gospel, as differing not in substance, but only in clearness of revelation, as the glorious face of the sun from itself being overcast and masked with a cloud; and also for the clearing of my text. For this entire passage of Scripture, of which these words are a close, is the angel's message or gospel unto Joseph, and set down by St. Matthew, as both the interpretation and accomplishment of a prophecy delivered long ago by Isaiah, but perhaps not at all understood by the Jews: to wit, "that a virgin should conceive and bear a son, and they should call His name Emmanuel."

Where first we must examine the seeming difference in the point of Christ's name, betwixt the place here cited from Isaiah, and the words here vouched of the angel, and proved Mat. i. 21. by the effect. For the prophet says, "He shall be called Em- ver. 25. manuel," but the angel commands He should be, and the Gospel records He was named Jesus.

And here we must resume and enlarge the ground premised in our preface, that prophecies being not histories, but rude imperfect draughts of things to come, do not exactly express and delineate, but only shadow and covertly veil those things which only the Spirit of God and the event must interpret. So that in the Gospel we construe the words, but in prophecies the sense; i. e. we expect not the performance of every circumstance expressed in the words of a prophecy, but we acknowledge another sense beyond the literal; and in the comparing of Isaiah with St. Matthew we exact not the same expressions, provided we find the same substance and the same significancy. So then the prophet's, "and call His name Emmanuel," is not, as human covenants are, to be fulfilled in the rigour of the letter, that He should be so named at His circumcision, but in the agreement of sense, that this name should express His nature; that He was indeed "God with us," and that at the circumcision He should receive a name of the same power and significancy. Whence the observation by the way is, that Emmanuel in effect signifies "Jesus," "God with us," "a Saviour;" and from thence the point of doctrine, that God's coming to us, i. e. Christ's incarnation, brought salvation into the world. For

Isa. vii. 14.

Rev. xiii. 8.

if there be a substantial agreement betwixt the prophet and the angel; if Emmanuel signify directly "Jesus;" if "God with us," and "a Saviour," be really the same title of Christ; then was there no Saviour, and consequently no salvation, before this presence of God with us. Which position we will briefly explain, and then, omitting unnecessary proofs, apply it.

In explaining of it we must calculate the time of Christ's incarnation, and set down how with it, and not before, came salvation.

We may collect in Scripture a threefold incarnation of Christ; 1. in the counsel of God, 2. in the promises of God, 3. in a personal open exhibiting of Him unto the world; the effect and complement of both counsel and promises.

1. In the counsel of God; so He was as "slain," so incarnate, "before the foundation of the world." For the word slain, being not competible to the eternal God, but only to the assumption of the human nature, presupposes Him incarnate, because slain. God then in His prescience, surveying before He created, and viewing the lapsed, miserable, sick estate of the future creation, in His eternal decree [Heb. xii. foresaw and pre-ordained Jesus, the Saviour, the "author and 2.] finisher of" the world's salvation. So that in the counsel of God, to whom all things to come are made present, Emmanuel and Jesus went together; and no salvation bestowed on us, but in respect to this, "God with us."

2. In the promises of God; and then Christ was incarnate Gen. iii. 15. when He was promised first in paradise, "The seed of the woman," &c., and so He is as old in the flesh as the world in sin, and was then in God's promise first born when Adam and mankind began to die. Afterwards He was, not again, but still incarnate in God's promise more evidently in AbraGen. xii.3; ham's time, "In thy seed," &c., and in Moses's time when xviii. 18; at the addition of the passover, a most significant repreExod. xiii. sentation of the incarnate and crucified Christ, He was

xxii. 18;

more than promised, almost exhibited. Under which times it is by some asserted that Christ, in the form of man, and habit of angel, appeared sundry times to the fathers, to give them not a hope, but a possession of the incarnate God, and to be præludium incarnationis, a pawn unto them that they a [Vid. Bulli Def. Fid. Nic., I. 1, 2, sqq.]

trusted not in vain. And here it is plain throughout, that this incarnation of Christ, in the promise of God, did perpetually accompany or go before salvation: not one blessing on the nations, without mention of "thy seed;" not one encouragement against fear, or unto confidence, but confirmed and backed with an "I am thy shield," &c., i. e. according to [Gen. xv. the Targum, "My Word is thy shield ;" i. e. my Christ, who 1.] is ó óyos, "the Word;" not any mention of righteousness [John i. 1.] and salvation but on ground and condition of belief of that Jesus which was then in promise, "Emmanuel, God with us." 3. In the personal exhibiting of Christ in form of flesh unto the world, dated at the fulness of time, and called in our ordinary phrase His incarnation; then no doubt was Emmanuel, Jesus; then was He openly shewed to all people in the form of God a Saviour, which Simeon most divinely Luke ii. 30. styles "God's salvation," thereby, no doubt, meaning the incarnate Christ, which by being "God with us," was sal

vation.

Thus do you see a threefold incarnation, a threefold Emmanuel, and proportionably a threefold Jesus.

1. A Saviour first decreed for the world, answerable to God, incarnate in God's counsel; and so no man was ever capable of salvation but through "God with us."

2. A Saviour promised to the world, answerable to the second "God with us," to wit, incarnate in the promise; and so there is no covenant of salvation but in this "God with us."

3. A Saviour truly exhibited and born of a woman, answerable to the third Emmanuel; and so also is there no manifestation, no proclaiming, no preaching of salvation, but by the birth and merits of "God with us."

To these three, if we add a fourth incarnation of Christ, the assuming of our immortal flesh, which was at His resurrection, then surely the doctrine will be complete, and this Emmanuel incarnate in the womb of the grave, and brought forth clothed upon with an incorruptible seed, is now more fully than ever proved an eternal Jesus; for "when He had overcome the sharpness of death, He opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers," as it is in our Te Deum; as if all that till then ever entered into heaven had been admitted by some