nothing; for Sanguis semen, The blood of the martyrs was the seed of the church, and ye are bought with a price, says the apostle'; it is pretiore, ye are preciously bought, even with the precious blood, of the only Son of God. And for our temporal and secular value, in God's account, we see how God expressed his care of the people, when he diverted Sennacherib from afflicting them, by turning him upon other wars. I gave Egypt for thy ransom, Ethiopia, and Seba for thee, because thou wast precious in my sight, and thou wast honourable, and I loved thee; therefore will I give men for thee, and people for thy sake". And this leads us into the second part, the consolation, that though, nay, Because we have sold ourselves for nothing, we shall be redeemed without money. Into this part then, there is at first a strange entrance; therefore, that therefore, because we have sold ourselves we should be redeemed; therefore because we have been prodigal, we should be made rich. But, this therefore, this reason, relates to the price, not to the work of the redemption, because it was for nothing, that we were sold, it is without money, that we are redeemed for, for that, there is reason in equity: but for the redemption itself, there is no therefore, no reason at all to be assigned, but only the eternal goodness of God himself, and the eternal purpose of his will: of which will of God, whosoever seeks a reason, Aliquid majus Deo quærit, says St. Augustine, He that seeks what persuaded or inclined the will of God, seeks for something wiser, and greater than God himself. In this redemption then God pursues the devil, in all those steps, by which he had made his profit, of a prodigality; for, first, as we gave away ourselves, so he restores us to ourselves again. It is well expressed in the parable of the prodigal; and his case is ours. The portion which he asked of his father, was the use of his free will. God gave it him; Adam's first immortality was, posse non mori, he needed not to have died: it was in his own power whether he would keep a free will, or no, and he spent that stock, he lost that free will. He spent not his free will so as Bellarmin understands this spending, that that man may be said to spend his life ill, that misemploys it, but yet he VOL. V. 51 Cor. vi. 20. • Isaiah XLiii. 3. 2 N hath this life in him still: but the prodigal, Adam, spent his utterly: he spent it so, that he and we have no free will at all left. But yet; even the prodigal said, that he would return to his father, and he came; he had not only some sudden thoughts of repentance, but he put himself actually in the way: Cum longe abesset, says that parable, when he was a great way off, yet because he was in the way, his father met him and kissed him, and put that robe upon him, which was not only dignitas, quam perdidit Adam, as St. Austin qualifies it, a restitution to the same integrity, which Adam had and had lost, but that was amictus sapientiæ, (so St. Ambrose calls it) it was an ability to preserve himself in that integrity, to which he was restored. It was a robe that was put upon him; it was none of his own; but when it was put upon him, it rectified and restored those faculties, which were his own: as the eye sees in a man restored to life, though the soul enable the eye and not the eye itself, so the faculty of free will works in us as well as it did in Adam, though only the grace of God enable that faculty. When God hath wrought that first cure (which he does by incorporating us in the church by baptism) that we are ourselves again, then (as in the case of prodigals in the law) as they had tutors, and curators appointed them, so he sends the Holy Ghost, to be our guardian, our curator: and as the office of that person, in that law, was double, first to reverse all contracts and bargains, which that prodigal person, in that state, had made, and secondly to inhibit, and hinder him, from making new contracts, so this blessed Spirit of consolation, by his sanctification, seals to our consciences a quietus est, a discharge of all former spiritual debts, he cancels all them, he nails them to the cross of Christ, and then he strengthens us against relapses into the same sins again. He proceeds farther than this; beyond restoring us, beyond preserving us; for he betters us, he improves us, to a better condition, than we were in, at first. And this he does, first, by us. purging and purifying us, and then by changing, and transmuting He purges us by his sunshine, by his temporal blessings; for, as the greatest globes of gold lie nearest the face and top of the earth, where they have received the best concoction from the heat of the sun; so certainly, in reason, they who have had 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 Genesis1o, 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 7 Mal. ii. 15. 81 John iii. 9. 10 Gen. iii. 15. 11 John viii. 44. 13 1 Cor. xv. 28. 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's, 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. 14 2 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 prophet'; 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. |