God's continual sunshine upon them, in a prosperous fortune, should have received the best concoction, the best digestion of the testimonies of his love, and consequently be the purer, and the more refined metal. If this purging prevail not, then he comes to purge those whom he means to lay up in his treasure, with tribulation; he carries them from the sunshine into the fire, and therefore, if those tribulations fall upon thee in a great and heavy measure, think thy dross needed this vehemence, and do not make afflictions, arguments of God neglecting thee, for he that is presented to have suffered very much, is also presented to have been very righteous, that is Job; and he that was the most innocent of all, suffered most of all, Christ Jesus thy Saviour.

From this purifying comes our transmutation, that we are changed in semen Dei, made the seed of God: for, so God calls children that are derived from honest, and godly parents, The seed of God, in the prophet': but more fully in the apostle, whosoever is born of God sinneth not, for his seed remaineth in him: for this generation, is our regeneration, of his own will begat he us, with the word of truth': this grace makes us as properly the seed of God, as sin makes us the seed of the devil, of the serpent, and so we are expressly called in Genesis', and so also in the apostle's, You are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father, you will do". So we are changed in naturam Dei, as St Peter expresses it by his precious promises we are made partakers of the divine nature: not Ab anteriori, nor à posteriori; not that we are so derived from the nature and essence of God, as that our souls should be of his very substance, as the Manichees imagined, nor, as Origen mistook, upon misinterpreting these words to the Corinthians, Ut Deus sit omnia in omnibus, That God should be all in all, so as that at last, the whole nature of mankind, and indeed, all other natures and substances (if Origen have been rightly understood by some men near his own times) should be swallowed up, and drowned in the very substance of God himself. But this transmutation is a glorious restoring of God's image in us, and it is our conformity to him; and when

either his temporal blessings, or his afflictions, his sun, or his fire, hath tried us up to that height, to a conformity to him, then come we to that transmutation, which admits no re-transmutation, which is a modest, but infallible assurance of a final perseverance, so to be joined to the Lord, as to be one spirit with him; for as a spirit cannot be divided, so they who are thus changed into him, are so much his, so much He, as that nothing can separate them from him; and this is the ladder, by which we may try, how far we are in the way to heaven.

And when we are come to this, then we are able to see, and to consider, the poverty, and the value of him, who had before bought us, for nothing, and enthralled us. The devil is called the Lord of the world; but that is, in the person of infidels; and we are none of that world. Though we have to do with principalities, and spiritual wickedness, yet St. Paul motions it thus much, Est nobis colluctatio, He arms us at all points, in that chapter 1, fit to endure any violent, or any long attempt, and yet he tells us, that all that we have to do with the devil, is but colluctatio, but a wrestling; we may be thrown, but we cannot be slain. So also is the same state of the saints of God's described, That the devil labours to devour, that he walks about, and seeks, those who are without the pale, without the church, and these that are rebellious and refractory within it, these he may devour without any resistance: they fall into his mouth; but for us, who are embraced by thy redemption, he is put to his labour, and to lose his labour too; he is put to seek, and put to miss too. He was put to sue out a commission, for Job's good; till then he confessed to God, thou hast put a hedge about him. He was put to renew this commission, for his person; touch his bones; but further he durst not ask. He hath a kingdom, but nobody knows where: I would we might still dispute, whether it were in the earth, or in the air, and not find this kingdom in our own hearts. Expel him thence; and God's spirit is as the air, that admits no vacuity, no emptiness: destroy this kingdom of Satan in yourselves, and God will establish his, God will be content with his place. Himself you cannot see ; that is one degree of his tyranny, to reserve himself, and not be 15 Ephes. vi. 10.

142 Cor. iv. 4.

seen; for his deformities would make ye hate him: but in his glasses in the riches, and in the vanities of this world, you see him and know him not; you see him, and know him, and embrace him, St. Chrysostom hath convinced you, in all that can be said, for the love of this world; If thou wilt (says he) that I must therefore look after worldly things, because they are necessary, E regione respondeo, says he: therefore thou needest not look after them, because they are necessary: Si essent superflua, non deberes confidere; quia sunt necessaria, non debes ambigere: for that which is more than necessary, thou shouldest not labour, and for that which is necessary thou shouldest not doubt, for, whatsoever God does not give thee, he knows was not necessary for thee, for he can make thee happy without these temporal things, as his way in this text is, to redeem without money, which is our last circumstance.

In delivering his people out of Egypt, he gave no money for them; nay, he made them get money and jewels at their coming away. In delivering them out of Babylon, he brought them away rich; here, in this redemption, it had been bribery to have given, in so good a cause: and it had been a new kind of simony, never heard of, to give money for the exercise of their own grace. He gave no money then; not because he had it not; for Domini est terra, The earth and all in it, is his: Ye have taken my silver, and my gold, says God in one prophet1; and he makes his continual claim, in another, The silver is mine, and the gold is mine. But it was God and not the devil, that was to be satisfied. In devilish trading there is no passing without money: in the temple itself there were, in the church, and church affairs there are buyers, and sellers too; if there were no buyers there would be no sellers; but there was a third sort that was whipped out too; which were changers. But in our case it was God, that was to be satisfied; and therefore we were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ 18.

Now this blood of Christ Jesus was not within the compass of this word, which is here translated money: though, as I noted at

16 Joel iii. 5.

17 Hagg. ii. 8.

18 1 Pet. i. 19.

the beginning, this word casaph includes all that the heart can wish, or desire for though the application of the blood of Christ, now that is shed is to be wished by every sinner to his own soul, though the shedding of that blood might have been wished by the patriarchs, to whom God had revealed, that in the fulness of time it should be shed, at the second coming of Christ, and the Resurrection may be wished for, by us now, yet, if we take rem integram, if we take the matter at first, without any such revealing of God's purpose as he in his Scripture hath afforded us; so no man might have wished, or prayed, without a greater sin in that wish and in that prayer than all his former sins, that the Son of God might come down and die for his sins: if it could possibly have fallen into his imagination, that this might have been a way for his redemption; yet he ought not to have wished that way: neither might it, neither certainly did it ever fall within the desire of any despairing sinner, that thought, that the death of Christ appertained not to him, to wish that, God the Father, or God the Holy Ghost, would come down, and become man and shed his blood for him. The blood of Christ by which we are redeemed was not this casaph it was not res appetibilis, a thing that a sinner might, or could desire to be shed for him, though being shed, he must desire, that it may be applied to him. And hence it is that some of the fathers argue, that when the devil began to tempt Christ, he knew him not to be the Son of God: for even to the devil himself, the blood of Christ could not be res appetibilis, a thing that deliberately he could have desired should have been shed. If the devil had considered, that the shedding of that blood, would have redeemed us, would he have hastened the shedding of that blood?

He redeemed us then without money; and as he bought so he sells he paid no money, he asks no money: but he proclaims freely to all, Ho every one that thirsteth come to the waters, and ye that have no silver, come, buy, and eat; come, I say, buy wine, and milk, without silver, and without money 19. But you must come ; and you must come to the market; to the magazine of his graces, his church; and you must buy, though you have no money: he paid obedience, and he asks obedience to himself, and his church,

19 Isaiah LV. 1.

But though

at your hands. And then, as Joseph did to his brethren, he will give you your corn, and your money again; he will give you grace, and temporal blessings too: he will refresh and re-establish your natural faculties, and give you supernatural. He hath already done enough for all, even in his mercy, he was just; just to the devil himself: for as we had done, so he did; he gave himself; both to the first death, as long as it could hold him, and to the second death, as far as it could reach him. all this be already done, yet, to conclude, there is a particular circumstance of comfort, in this word, you shall be that though the act of our redemption be past, the application is future: and in the elect and regenerate child of God, though his conscience tells him every day, that he sells away himself, yet his conscience shall tell him too, he shall be redeemed without money, he shall not perish finally as we cannot carry our thoughts to so high a time, but that God elected us, before that, so we cannot continue our sins of infirmity so long, but that God will have mercy upon us after that I cannot name a time, when God's love began; it is eternal: I cannot imagine a time, when his mercy will end: it is perpetual.

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SERMON CXLIII.

PREACHED At whitehalL, APRIL 12, 1618.

GENESIS XXXii. 10.

I am not worthy of the least of all thy mercies, and of all the truth which thou hast showed unto thy servant; for with my staff I passed over this Jordan, and now I am become two bands.

THIS text is in the midst of Jacob's prayer; and this prayer is in the midst of Jacob's preparation in the time of danger. His dangers were from persons near him, from his alliance, by marriage, and from his nearest kindred by blood. Laban, into whose house he had married, made advantages upon him, deluded him,