SERMONS.

SERMON I. WHITSUNDAY.

OF THE SPIRIT OF GRACE.

ROMANS Viii. 9, 10.

But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of His: and if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the spirit is life because of righteous

ness.

THE day in which the church commemorates the descent of the Holy Ghost upon the apostles, was the first beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ. This was the first day that the religion was professed; now the apostles first opened their commission, and read it to all the people. "The Lord gave His spirit," or, "the Lord gave His word, and great was the company of the preachers";" for so I make bold to render that prophecy of David. Christ was the 'Word' of God, Verbum æternum; but the Spirit was the Word of God, Verbum patefactum: Christ was the Word manifested 'in' the flesh; the Spirit was the Word manifested 'to' flesh, and set in dominion over, and in hostility against, the flesh. The gospel and the Spirit are the same thing; not in substance; but the manifestation of the Spirit' is the gospel of Jesus Christ' and because He was this day manifested, the gospel was this day first preached, and it became a law to us, called "the law of the Spirit of life";" that is, a law taught us by the Spirit, leading us to life eternal.

But the gospel is called 'the Spirit,'

1. Because it contains in it such glorious mysteries which were revealed by the immediate inspirations of the Spirit, not only in the matter itself, but also in the manner and powers to apprehend them. For what power of human understanding could have found out the incarnation of a God; that two natures, a finite and an infinite, could n [Rom. viii. 2.]

[Ps. lxviii. 11.]

have been concentred into one hypostasis or person; that a virgin should be a mother; that dead men should live again; that the

Κόνις ὀστέων λυθέντων °,

'the ashes of dissolved bones,' should become bright as the sun, blessed as the angels, swift in motion as thought, clear as the purest noon; that God should so love us as to be willing to be reconciled to us, and yet that Himself must die that He might pardon us; that God's most holy Son should give us His body to eat, and His blood to crown our chalices, and His spirit to sanctify our souls, to turn our bodies into temperance, our souls into minds, our minds into spirit, our spirit into glory; that He who can give us all things, who is Lord of men and angels and King of all the creatures, should pray to God for us without intermission; that He who reigns over all the world, should at the day of judgment give up the kingdom to God the Father',' and yet after this resignation Himself and we with Him should for ever reign the more gloriously; that we should be justified by faith in Christ, and that charity should be a part of faith, and that both should work as acts of duty and as acts of relation; that God should crown the imperfect endeavours of His saints with glory, and that a human act should be rewarded with an eternal inheritance; that the wicked for the transient pleasure of a few minutes should be tormented with an absolute eternity of pains; that the waters of baptism, when they are hallowed by the Spirit, shall purge the soul from sin; and that the spirit of a man should be nourished with the consecrated and mysterious elements, and that any such nourishment should bring a man up to heaven: and after all this, that all christian people, all that will be saved, must be 'partakers of the divine nature,' of the nature, the infinite nature, of God, and must dwell in Christ, and Christ must dwell in them, and they must be in the Spirit, and the Spirit must be for ever in them? These are articles of so mysterious a philosophy that we could have inferred them from no premises, discoursed them upon the stock of no natural or scientifical principles; nothing but God and God's spirit could have taught them to us: and therefore the gospel is Spiritus patefactus, 'the manifestation of the Spirit',' ad ædificationem, as the apostle calls it, 'for edification,' and building us up to be a holy temple

to the Lord.

2. But when we had been taught all these mysterious articles, we could not by any human power have understood them unless the Spirit of God had given us a new light, and created in us a new capacity, and made us to be a new creature, of another definition. Animalis homo, Yuxikòs, that is, as St. Jude expounds the word, πveûμa μì exwv, 'the animal' or 'the natural man,' the man that hath not the Spirit,' "cannot discern the things of God, for they

are spiritually discerned," that is, not to be understood but by the light proceeding from the Sun of righteousness, and by that eye whose bird is the holy Dove, whose candle is the gospel.

Scio incapacem te sacramenti, impie,

Non posse cœcis sensibus mysterium

Haurire nostrum; nil diurnum nox capit".

He that shall discourse Euclid's elements to a swine, or preach, as venerable Bede's story reports of him, to a rock, or talk metaphysics to a boar, will as much prevail upon his assembly as St. Peter and St. Paul could do upon uncircumcised hearts and ears, upon the indisposed Greeks and prejudicate Jews. An ox will relish the tender flesh of kids with as much gust and appetite, as an unspiritual and unsanctified man will do the discourses of angels, or of an apostle, if he should come to preach the secrets of the gospel. And we find it true by a sad experience. How many times doth God speak to us by His servants the prophets, by His Son, by His apostles, by sermons, by spiritual books, by thousands of homilies, and arts of counsel and insinuation; and we sit as unconcerned as the pillars of a church, and hear the sermons as the Athenians did a story, or as we read a gazette? And if ever it come to pass that we tremble, as Felix did, when we hear a sad story of death, of 'righteousness and judgment to come,' then we put it off to another time, or we forget it, and think we had nothing to do but to give the good man a hearing; and as Anacharsis" said of the Greeks, they used money for nothing but to cast account withal; so our hearers make use of sermons and discourses evangelical, but to fill up void spaces of their time, to help to tell an hour with, or pass it without tediousness. The reason of this is, a sad condemnation to such persons; they have not yet entertained the Spirit of God, they are in darkness; they were washed in water, but never baptized with the Spirit; for these things "are spiritually discerned." They would think the preacher rude if he should say, they are not Christians, they are not within the covenant of the gospel; but it is certain that the Spirit of manifestation' is not yet upon them, and that is the first effect of the Spirit whereby we can be called sons of God or relatives of Christ. If we do not apprehend and greedily suck in the precepts of this holy discipline as aptly as merchants do discourse of gain or farmers of fair harvests, we have nothing but the name of Christians, but we are no more such really than mandrakes are men or sponges are living creatures.

3. The gospel is called 'Spirit,' because it consists of spiritual promises and spiritual precepts, and makes all men that embrace it truly to be spiritual men; and therefore St. Paul adds an epithet be

[1 Cor. ii. 14.]

Prudent. [Perist. hymn. x. lin. 588.] [Petr. de Natal. in Mai, xxvii., lib. v. cap. 55. fol. lxx.]

W

[Apud Plut. de profect. virtut. sent., tom. vi. p. 293.-See p. 136 above.] [to tell an hour with, or without tediousness,' in first two edd.]

yond this, calling it 'a quickening Spirity,' that is, it puts life into our spirits, which the law could not. The law bound us to punishment, but did not help us to obedience, because it gave not the promise of eternal life to its disciples. The Spirit, that is, the gospel, only does this; and this alone is it which comforts afflicted minds, which puts activeness into wearied spirits, which inflames our cold desires, and does avaлvρeîv, blows up sparks into live coals, and coals up to flames, and flames to perpetual burnings. And it is impossible that any man who believes and considers the great, the infinite, the unspeakable, the unimaginable, the never ceasing joys that are prepared for all the sons and daughters of the gospel, should not desire them; and unless he be a fool, he cannot but use means to obtain them, effective, hearty pursuances. For it is not directly in the nature of a man to neglect so great a good; there must be something in his manners, some obliquity in his will, or madness in his intellectuals, or incapacity in his naturals, that must make him sleep such a reward away, or change it for the pleasure of a drunken fever, or the vanity of a mistress, or the rage of a passion, or the unreasonableness of any sin. However, this promise is the life of all our actions, and the Spirit that first taught it is the life of our souls.

4. But beyond this is the reason which is the consummation of all the faithful. The gospel is called the Spirit, because by and in the gospel God hath given to us not only 'the Spirit of manifestation,' that is, of instruction and of catechism, of faith and confident assent, but the Spirit of confirmation,' or 'obsignation,' to all them that believe and obey the gospel of Christ: that is, the power of God is come upon our hearts, by which in an admirable manner we are made sure of a glorious inheritance; made sure, I say, in the nature of the thing; and our own persuasions also are confirmed with an excellent, a comfortable, a discerning, and a reasonable hope; in the strength of which, and by whose aid, as we do not doubt of the performance of the promise, so we vigorously pursue all the parts of the condition, and are enabled to work all the work of God, so as not to be affrighted with fear, or seduced by vanity, or oppressed by lust, or drawn off by evil example, or abused by riches, or imprisoned by ambition and secular designs. This the Spirit of God does work in all His servants; and is called 'the Spirit of obsignation,' or 'the confirming Spirit,' because it confirms our hope, and assures our title to life eternal; and by means of it, and other its collateral assistances, it also confirms us in our duty, that we may not only profess in word, but live lives according to the gospel. And this is the sense of the Spirit' mentioned in the text; "Ye are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you:" that is, if ye be made partakers of the gospel, or of the Spirit of manifestation;' if ye be truly entitled to God, and have received the promise of the Father, then are ye not carnal men; ye are 'spiritual,' ye are 'in the y [1 Cor. xv. 45.]